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Jane Seymour was born as Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg in 1951 in Middlesex, England, to a nurse mother and gynaecologist/obstetrician father. She is of Polish Jewish (father) and Dutch (mother) descent. She adopted the acting name of "Jane Seymour" when she entered show business as it was easier for people to remember (and the name of one of King Henry VIII's wives). She attracted the attention of the James Bond film producers when they saw her on British television. She was cast as the main Bond girl, "Solitaire", in Live and Let Die (1973). The role gained her international recognition but she was in danger of losing it all like the previous Bond girls, so she came to the U.S.
A casting director advised her to lose her English accent and acquire an American accent to land roles on American television. She did and started getting roles, earning five Emmy nominations, resulting in one win for Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988) for playing Maria Callas. She won Golden Globe awards for both East of Eden (1981) and the American television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993), where she played the title role for 5 years. She occasionally appeared in feature films, memorably in Somewhere in Time (1980) and in Wedding Crashers (2005).
Married and divorced four times, she gave birth to four children and is a stepmother to two. They have children of their own, making her a grandmother. As of 2018, she has been acting in television movies and making guest-appearances.- Marg Helgenberger is an established dramatic actress whose prominence has been steadily increasing. Her work has been noted on stage, film and TV. Most of her career has been spent in dramatic roles on television, but she has also had a noteworthy presence in feature films.
Helgenberger earned a degree in drama at Northwestern University. A talent scout recruited her from there to work on the soap opera Ryan's Hope (1975) where she appeared over the course of the next four years.
Throughout the 1990s Helgenberger took on numerous roles in made-for-TV movies and as a guest star on many TV series. In particular she appeared in many movies made specifically for the Lifetime cable network and also for Showtime. She won critical acclaim for In Sickness and in Health (1992), Thanks of a Grateful Nation (1998) and Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenét and the City of Boulder (2000).
In TV series she won an Emmy for her portrayal of a hard-bitten prostitute who catered to Vietnam War soldiers, in the series China Beach (1988). She also was George Clooney's love interest in a multi-episode arc of the monumentally successful TV series ER (1994).
In feature films, Helgenberger has appeared in Tootsie (1982), Steven Spielberg's Always (1989), Species (1995) and In Good Company (2004).
Her greatest claim to fame on the silver screen may be when she played opposite Julia Roberts as a chemical exposure victim in the popular movie Erin Brockovich (2000).
Helgenberger is most known for her TV role as a crime scene investigator in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000). She shared in CSI's 2005 Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series.
In her personal life, Helgenberger is the daughter of a cancer survivor and is very active in supporting research for breast cancer. - Actress
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Gillian Anderson was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Rosemary Alyce (Lane), a computer analyst, and Homer Edward Anderson III, who owned a film post-production company. Gillian started her career as a member of an amateur actor group while at high school. In 1987, her love of the theatre took her to the National Theatre of Great Britain Summer Acting Programme held at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. For several weeks she studied under such NT greats as Peter Chelsom, Bardy Thomas, and Michael Joyce. Afterwards, Anderson returned to the Goodman Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois where she finished her education. Her big break came with The X-Files (1993) as Dana Scully. There, she met her future husband (Clyde Klotz), marrying on January 1st 1994. One month later, Gillian was pregnant. Her daughter, Piper Anderson-Klotz, was born on the 25th September 1994. Her film career started with the movie The Turning (1992) in 1997 and, the following year, she starred in Playing by Heart (1998) with Sean Connery, Ellen Burstyn, Angelina Jolie and Dennis Quaid.- Actress
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Vera Farmiga is an American actress who has received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Up in the Air (2009) and Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her roles in Bates Motel (2013) and When They See Us (2019).
She was born Vera Ann Farmiga, the second of seven children, on August 6, 1973, in Clifton, New Jersey, USA, to Ukrainian parents. She did not speak English until the age of six, and was raised in the Ukrainian Catholic home of her mother, Luba (Spas), a schoolteacher, and her father, Michael Farmiga, a computer systems analyst. Her younger sister is actress Taissa Farmiga, who is 21 years her junior. Young Vera was a shy, nearsighted girl, who played piano and folk danced with a Ukrainian touring company in her teens.
In 1991, she graduated from Hunterdon Central Regional High School. Farmiga initially dreamed of becoming an optometrist, but she later changed her mind and studied acting at Syracuse University's School of Performing Arts, graduating in 1995. The following year, she began her professional acting career, making her Broadway debut as an understudy in the play "Taking Sides". Her stage credits included performances in "The Tempest", "Good", "The Seagull", and in a well-reviewed off-Broadway production of "Second-Hand Smoke" (1997). That same year, she made her television debut as the female lead, opposite a then-unknown Heath Ledger, in Fox's adventure series Roar (1997).
In 1998, Farmiga made her big screen debut in the drama Return to Paradise (1998), then played the daughters of Christopher Walken in The Opportunists (1999) and Richard Gere in Autumn in New York (2000). She starred as a working-class mother struggling to keep her life and marriage together while hiding her drug addiction in Down to the Bone (2004), for which she was awarded Best Actress from the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Farmiga's acting talent shone in a range of characters, from her role as a senator's daughter in The Manchurian Candidate (2004), the wife of a mobster in Running Scared (2006), a humorous prostitute in Breaking and Entering (2006), and a police psychiatrist in The Departed (2006).
In 2010, Farmiga received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in Up in the Air (2009). In 2011, she made her directorial debut with the drama Higher Ground (2011), in which she also appeared in the leading role. Although the film had a limited release, Farmiga's direction and performance received attention at several festivals. In 2013, she began starring in the drama thriller series Bates Motel (2013), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in the first season. In 2019, she received a second Primetime Emmy Award nomination, this time in the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie category, for her role in the drama miniseries When They See Us (2019).
Farmiga was formerly married to actor Sebastian Roché, whom she met during production of Roar (1997). The two eloped to the Bahamas after the series ended in 1997. They separated and subsequently divorced in 2004. On September 13, 2008, she married musician Renn Hawkey, with whom she has two children, son Fynn McDonnell (b. 2009) and daughter Gytta Lubov Hawkey (b. 2010). Farmiga lives with her family in Hudson Valley, New York. Her other activities, outside her acting profession, include reading, playing piano, boxing, jujitsu, and spending time with her pet angora goats.- Actress
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Mariska (Ma-rish-ka) Magdolna Hargitay was born on January 23, 1964, in Santa Monica, California. Her parents are Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield. She is the youngest of their three children. In June 1967, Mariska and her brothers Zoltan and Mickey Jr. were in the back seat of a car when it was involved in the fatal accident which killed her mother. The children escaped with minor injuries. Her father remarried a stewardess named Ellen, and they raised the three children and gave them a normal childhood. They also financially supported the children, since Jayne Mansfield's debt-ridden estate left no money for them.
Mariska majored in theater at UCLA. Her first motion picture feature was the cult favorite, Ghoulies (1984), where she gave a memorable performance as Donna. Unlike her mother Jayne, who had changed her name, her hair color, and did nude pictorials to become a star, Mariska took a very different approach on her journey to become a star. She rejected advice to change her name and appearance. And she refused to copy her mother's sexy image by turning down nude scenes in her next film Jocks (1986). She told casting directors that she was her own person when she held onto her dark locks and athletic figure, when they were expecting another blond, buxom Jayne Mansfield. Mariska continued with her acting classes and waited on tables, while she landed forgettable roles in short-lived television shows. She appeared a few times on the nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1981). She also appeared in the hit film Leaving Las Vegas (1995), credited as 'Hooker at the bar', and in the flop film Lake Placid (1999) as Myra Okubo. Her recurring role on the top-rated show ER (1994) in 1998 gave her career enough of a jolt to land her the starring role of Det. Olivia Benson in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), the first spin off from the excellent franchise of Law & Order (1990). The hour-long show deals with sex crimes and the detectives who solve these cases. Mariska played Olivia as a tough, compassionate detective, who did action scenes and her own stunt work. She reaped the rewards from the hit TV show, after struggling and studying her craft for fifteen years. She became the highest paid actress on television, and she won Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her performance. The show also changed her personal life, since she met her husband actor Peter Hermann on the set and married him on August 28, 2004. That same year, she appeared in the television movie Plain Truth (2004), in which she played attorney Ellie Harrison. Mariska became an activist, when fans of her show who were abused, would write to her, and she founded a non-profit organization called "Joyful Heart Foundation" to help "survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse."
Mariska gave birth to her son August in 2006. But that tremendous joy was soon followed by tremendous sadness when her beloved father Mickey died just two months later at the age of 80. Mariska and her husband Peter adopted two children, a girl named Amaya, and a boy named Andrew, within a span of few months in 2011.
Mariska speaks English, Hungarian, French, Spanish, and Italian, and her husband also speaks several languages, including his native language German. They divide their time between New York and Los Angeles.- Actress
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Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim. In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". Other theatre credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe", Miranda in "The Tempest" and Rose in "The Blind Giant is Dancing", both for the Belvoir Street Theatre Company. In other television roles, Blanchett starred as Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), as Janie Morris in G.P. (1989) and in ABC's popular series Police Rescue (1994). She made her feature film debut in Paradise Road (1997).
Cate married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. She had met him a year earlier on a movie set, and they didn't like each other at first. He thought she was aloof, and she thought he was arrogant, but then they connected over a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later he proposed marriage and they quickly married before she went off to England to play her breakthrough role in films: the title character in Elizabeth (1998) for which she won numerous awards for her performance, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for the role but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a particularly busy year, with starring roles in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001) and playing Elf Queen Galadriel in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. She also gave birth to her first child, son Dashiell, in 2001. In 2004, she gave birth to her second son Roman.
Also, in 2004, she played actress Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for playing a teacher having an affair with an underage student in Notes on a Scandal (2006). In 2007, she returned to the role that made her a star in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). It earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She was nominated for another Oscar that same year as Best Supporting Actress for playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). In 2008, she gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius. She and her husband became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, choosing to spend more time in Australia raising their three sons. She also purchased a multi-million dollar home in Sydney, Australia and named it Bulwarra and made extensive renovations to it. Because of her life in Australia, her film work became sporadic, until Woody Allen cast her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), which won her the Academy Award as Best Actress. She ended her job as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, while her husband continued there for two more years before he too resigned.
In 2015, she adopted her daughter Edith in her father's homeland of the United States. That same year, she and her husband sold their multi-million dollar home in Australia at a profit and moved to America. Reasons varied from her wanting to work more in America to wanting to familiarize herself with her late father's American heritage. She played the title role of Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife in a lesbian affair with a younger woman, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While most actresses might slow down in their forties, Blanchett did the opposite by stretching her boundaries even further, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then making her Broadway debut in 2017 in "The Present", which is her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's play "Platonov" for which she earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2017, she was selected for the highest honor in her birth country: the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).- Producer
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Since melting audiences' hearts at the age of just six in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Drew Barrymore has emerged as one of the most beloved and singularly gifted actresses of her generation. Born in Culver City, California to John Drew Barrymore and Jaid Barrymore, the clutches of fame were near inescapable for young Drew, her father being a member of the esteemed showbiz dynasty fronted by stage star Maurice Barrymore, his thespian wife Georgiana and their three children: Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and John Barrymore.
Tailgating a turbulent adolescence that saw her grapple with insobriety, substance abuse, and cutthroat media vitriol, a diligent Barrymore threw herself into her career throughout the early-mid nineties, first with a succession of 'bad girl' parts in cultish B-pictures like Poison Ivy (1992), Guncrazy (1992) and - fittingly - Bad Girls (1994); then warmly received turns in prestige vehicles such as Boys on the Side (1995), Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and Wes Craven's game-changing Scream (1996). Equal portions of goofball - The Wedding Singer (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), Charlie's Angels (2000) - and gravitas - Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Donnie Darko (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) - came next, with a Golden Globe-grabbing pièce de résistance - her divine incarnation of Edith Bouvier Beale in Grey Gardens (2009) - confirming that her skill set was every bit as forceful and far-reaching as imagined.
Having already set in motion a bunch of lucrative projects via production house Flower Films (co-est. with Nancy Juvonen in '95), Barrymore fastened an additional string to her bow when she spearheaded the sports dramedy Whip It (2009), her glowingly appraised directorial debut. Fresh off a healthy run of movie parts at the launch of the 2010s, her star turn as zombified suburban realtor Sheila Hammond - a tour de force at once dizzy and detailed - on Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet (2017) saw her step with trademark resolve into newer territory still: the flourishing world of small screen entertainment, a metamorphosis she continues to espouse with her role as compère of spirited daytime staple The Drew Barrymore Show (2020).- Actress
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Sigourney Weaver has created a host of memorable characters, both dramatic and comic, ranging from Ripley in Alien to Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist to Gwen/Tawny in Galaxy Quest and most recently, 14-year-old Kiri in Avatar: The Way of Water. With a career spanning over 50 years, Weaver has captivated audiences and won acclaim as one of the most gifted and versatile actresses on stage and screen.
Born and educated in New York City, Weaver graduated from Stanford University and went on to receive a master's degree from the Yale School of Drama. Her first professional job was in Sir John Gielgud's production of The Constant Wife working with Ingrid Bergman.
After a walk-on in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, Weaver made her motion picture debut in Ridley Scott's 1979 blockbuster Alien. She later reprised the role of Warrant Officer Ripley in James Cameron's 1986 Aliens; her performance earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. In 1992, she again brought Ripley back to life in David Fincher's Alien 3, which she co-produced, and in 1997 she starred in and co-produced Alien: Resurrection for director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. In 1985, Weaver starred in Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters alongside Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd playing Dana Barrett and her possessed counterpart Zuul.
In 1988 Weaver portrayed primatologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist and Katharine Parker in the Mike Nichols comedy Working Girl. Both performances earned her Academy Award Nominations, and she was awarded two Golden Globes for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. Other films include Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) with Linda Hunt and Mel Gibson, Eyewitness (1981) with William Hurt, Half Moon Street (1986) with Michael Caine, Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) with Gerard Depardieu, Roman Polanski's gripping film adaptation of Death and the Maiden (1994), the thriller Copycat (1995) and Paul Rudnick's comedy Jeffery (1995). Weaver also starred in Showtime's live-action film Snow White (1997) based on the original Grimm's fairy tale, which earned her an Emmy nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination.
In 1997 Weaver joined the ensemble of Ang Lee's critically acclaimed film The Ice Storm alongside Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci. Her performance garnered her a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She later gave a galvanizing performance in A Map of the World (1999), Scott Elliott's powerful drama based on the novel by Jane Hamilton, which earned her universal critical praise and a Golden Globe nomination for best actress. Also in 1999, Weaver appeared in the science fiction comedy Galaxy Quest directed by Dean Parisot alongside Tim Allen and Alan Rickman. She delighted audiences with her flair for comedy, and the film proved to be a hit of the 1999 holiday season. She followed this with the popular comedies Company Man (2000) written and directed by Douglas McGrath and David Mirkin's Heartbreakers (2001) opposite Gene Hackman, Jennifer Love-Hewitt and the late Ray Liotta.
In 2002 Weaver starred in the film version of The Guys, with Anthony LaPaglia, directed by Jim Simpson, and in 2003 she portrayed the cold-blooded, red-headed warden in the hit comedy Holes directed by Andy Davis. The next year, Weaver appeared in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village and received rave reviews for her performance in Imaginery Heroes written and directed by Dan Harris.
In 2006 she appeared in three films - as Babe Paley in Douglas McGrath's Infamous, in Jake Kasdan's The TV Set, and in Snow Cake opposite Alan Rickman. In the following years, Weaver lent her voice to Pixar's 2008 box office smash WALL-E as well as The Tale of Despereaux (2008) with Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Watson. She also starred in the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy Baby Mama (2008) and Andy Fickman's comedy You Again (2010) with Jamie Lee Curtis. In December 2009 Weaver starred as Dr. Grace Augustine in Jim Cameron's groundbreaking film Avatar, which went on to be the highest grossing film of all time. The film won a Golden Globe for Best Picture and an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
Other credits include Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Miguel Arteta's Cedar Rapids (2011), Paul (2011), Amy Heckerling's Vamps (2012), and Neil Blomkamp's Chappie (2015). In December 2016 she starred in Focus Features' A Monster Calls alongside Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones and newcomer, Lewis MacDougall, followed by Lionsgate's The Assignment (2017) with Michelle Rodriguez directed by Walter Hill.
After coming to New York in the fall of 1975, Weaver performed Off-Off Broadway in Christopher Durang's The Nature and Purpose of the Universe (1974), Titanic (1976) and Das Lusitania Songspiel (1980). She and Durang co-wrote Das Lusitania which earned them both Drama Desk nominations. She has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway productions in New York, working with writers such as John Guare, Albert Innaurato, Richard Nelson and Len Jenkin. In regional repertory she has performed works by Pinter, Williams, Feydeau and Shakespeare. Weaver also appeared in the PBS mini-series "The Best of Families" (1977) and John Cheever's The Sorrows of Gin (1979), adapted by Wendy Wasserstein for PBS.
Weaver received a Tony Award nomination for her starring role in Hurlyburly (1984) on Broadway, directed by Mike Nichols. She played Portia in the Classic Stage Company of New York's production of The Merchant of Venice (1986). In 1996 Weaver returned to Broadway in the Lincoln Center production of Sex and Longing, written by Christopher Durang. In the Fall of 2012, she starred in the Lincoln Center production of Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike which moved to Broadway in 2013. That year Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike took home the Tony award for Best Play.
Weaver originated the female lead in Anne Nelson's The Guys (2001) at The Flea where it was commissioned and directed by Jim Simpson. The Guys tells the story of a fire captain played by Bill Murray dealing with the aftermath of 9/11. In 2002 she starred in Neil LaBute's play The Mercy Seat opposite Liev Schreiber - which John Lahr of The New Yorker described as offering "performances of a depth and concentration that haven't been seen in New York for many seasons." Weaver also originated roles in two A.R. Gurney world premieres, Mrs. Farnsworth (2004) at the Flea Theater (New York Times 10 Best Plays for 2004), and Crazy Mary (2007) at Playwrights Horizons.
In television Weaver received Emmy, Screen Actors' Guild and Golden Globe nominations for her role as Mary Griffith in Lifetime's "Prayers for Bobby," which was also Emmy nominated for Outstanding Made for Television Movie. In 2012 she was seen in USA Network's miniseries "Political Animals," for which she received SAG, Golden Globe, and Emmy nominations. Weaver also appeared in the Marvel series "The Defenders," released globally on Netflix in August 2017.
Ms. Weaver was honored to receive the GLAAD Media Award for her work in "Prayers for Bobby" as well as the Trevor Life Award in 2011. She has been the Honorary Chair of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund for the last 33 years. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, and she also served on the Board of Human Rights First for 25 years. Weaver was proud to receive the National Audubon Society's Rachel Carson Award in 2009 for her environmental work. She was also a co-founder of the original Flea Theater on White Street which championed young artists and new work.
Weaver appeared in season 4 of the French television series "Call My Agent!" which was released globally on Netflix in 2021 and won the International Emmy for Comedy Series. Additionally, she starred in Philippe Falardeau's My Salinger Year which opened the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. In April 2021 Weaver narrated James Cameron's "Secrets of the Whales," which debuted on Disney+ and garnered an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Narrator. The series also won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.
Weaver's recent film work includes Phyllis Nagy's drama Call Jane alongside Elizabeth Banks, Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky's The Goos House alongside Kevin Kline. James Cameron's Avatar: The Way of Water premiered at the end of 2022 with Weaver playing Kiri, Grace Augustine's Na'vi daughter. A2 received "Best Picture" nominations for the Oscars, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice awards and has grossed almost 2.5 billion dollars. Upcoming projects include Amazon Studios' drama series, "The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart," which she also executive produced, and Paul Schrader's Master Gardener, opposite Joel Edgerton, which premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.- Actress
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Liv Hansen is a Danish actress known for her commanding onscreen presence and portrayal of headstrong and witty characters in film and television. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Liv has spent most of her life overseas and speaks with an American accent. She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in Los Angeles and has starred in numerous stage productions, including Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" as Corie and Reynold Price's "August Snow" as Taw Avery. Liv's on-screen appearances include City of Tiny Lights (2016) and the lead role in Born Evil (2017), which was selected for the Sitges International Film Festival. The Danish actress can be seen in the upcoming science-fiction thriller A Universe Apart (2023) and in the British crime drama Caught In Between (2023).- Actress
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Gail Edwards was born and raised in Coral Gables, Florida. In 1975, after graduating from the University of Miami cum laude, Gail Edwards wrote, produced, and starred in the off-Broadway musical 'Becoming'. It won the Miami Herald Critics' Choice award three times before debuting in New York. While in New York, Edwards signed with the LeMond/Zetter Management Group. Soon afterward, she landed the role of Sandy opposite Peter Gallagher in an East Coast tour of the very long-running musical 'Grease'. After producing and starring in two additional productions, 'The Good One' and 'Vanities', both earning her the Drama-Logue Critics' Award, Edwards turned her focus toward television.
Upon moving to Los Angeles in 1976, Edwards signed with the Ro Diamond Agency (later with the Gersh Agency) and immediately began landing guest-star roles on such television series as Happy Days (1974), Lou Grant (1977), M*A*S*H (1972), and Taxi (1978). In 1979, Edwards auditioned for a Witt/Thomas production, in which she landed the role of Dot Higgins on ABC's It's a Living (1980). The series ran on ABC from 1980-82, and was revived in first-run syndication from 1985-89. Edwards, along with Barrie Youngfellow, Paul Kreppel, and the late Marian Mercer, were the only four members of the It's a Living cast who lasted during the network and syndicated runs. After that show was canceled in 1982, her management was informed by the producers of Happy Days (1974) that they were offering her the role of new character K.C. Cunningham, the niece of Howard and Marion Cunningham, who was moving in with the family.
Without informing Edwards of the offer, her management declined the opportunity, reportedly stating that they did not want Edwards "playing a new character on an old show". Crystal Bernard was then hired for the part. Edwards did not learn of the incident until many years later. In 1985, Edwards and Bernard wound up as co-stars on It's a Living (1980) when it resumed production for first-run syndication. She appeared in many movies-of-the-week during the 1980s, along with numerous other guest-star appearances in such series as Benson (1979), Buffalo Bill (1983), Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989), Knight Rider (1982), Night Court (1984), and the premiere episode of Amazing Stories (1985), directed by Steven Spielberg.
In 1990, Edwards was reunited with former Happy Days (1974) producers Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett, when she was cast as divorced mother "Hilary Kozak" on the short-lived CBS sitcom The Family Man (1990). Upon that series' cancellation in mid-1991, Edwards was asked by Miller and Boyett to join the cast of their hit ABC series Full House (1987), feeling Edwards was just right for the role of "Vicky Larson", a talk show host who strikes up a relationship with Danny Tanner. Edwards made her debut late that year, when the Larson character first appeared as a substitute host on the fictional morning show "Wake Up, San Francisco". Vicky and Danny soon embarked on a long-term relationship and were engaged by the seventh season. Edwards' co-star on 'The Family Man', Scott Weinger, was also transferred over to Full House as "Steve Hale", D.J.'s high school boyfriend. During her tenure on Full House, Edwards also had a recurring guest role on NBC's Blossom (1990) as "Sharon LeMeure", the fast-talking mother of "Six LeMeure" (best-friend of the series' titular character).
Edwards concluded her roles on Full House (1987) (with Vicky and Danny breaking up) and Blossom (1990) in 1994. She retired from show business and relocated to Sedona, Arizona. Twenty-three years later, she reprised her role as "Vicky Larson" on the reboot of "Full House" titled Fuller House (2016) for a 2017 episode reasoning that "Once an actress is always an actress". Three years later, she would reprise the role again for the series finale. In 2022, she shared warm memories of working with her leading man Bob Saget to the media, upon learning of his sudden death.- Actress
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The iconoclastic gifts of the highly striking and ferociously talented actress Tilda Swinton have been appreciated by art house crowds and international audiences alike. After her stunning Oscar-winning turn as a high-powered corporate attorney in the George Clooney starring and critically-lauded legal thriller Michael Clayton (2007), however, her androgynous looks and often bizarre appeal have been embraced by more mainstream crowds as well.
She was born Katherine Mathilda Swinton into a patrician Scottish military family on November 5, 1960, in London, England. Her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton (née Killen), was Australian, and her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, an army officer, was English-born. Her ancestry is Scottish, Northern Irish, and English, including a long tapestry of prominent Scottish ancestors. Educated at an English and a Scottish boarding school, Tilda subsequently studied Social and Political Science at Cambridge University and graduated in 1983 with a degree in English Literature.
During her tenure as a student, she performed countless stage productions and proceeded to work for a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company where she appeared in such productions as "Measure for Measure." The rebel insider her, however, was strong and she left the company after a year as her approach and interests began to shift dramatically. With a pungent taste for the unique and seldom tried, Tilda found some gender-bending stage roles come her way. She portrayed Mozart in Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri", and as a working class woman impersonating her dead husband during World War II, in Manfred Karge's "Man to Man," a role she later committed to film (Man to Man (1992)).
In 1985, the tall, slender performer with alabaster skin and carrot-topped hair began a professional association with gay experimental director Derek Jarman. She continued to live and work with the groundbreaking writer/director/cinematographer for the next nine years, involving herself in seven of his often notorious films. This quirky, highly fascinating alliance would produce such stark and radical turns as the Berlin International Film Festival winners Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), The Garden (1990) and Edward II (1991) (playing Isabella, in which she won "Best Actress" at the Venice Film Festival) and Wittgenstein (1993), as well as the films Soursweet (1988) (a movie with no spoken dialogue) and the Stockholm Film Festival Award winner Blue (1993).
Jarman succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1994. His untimely demise left a devastating void in Tilda's life for quite some time. Her most notable performance of her Jarman period, however, came from a non-Jarman film. For the vivid title role in Orlando (1992), her nobleman character lives for 400 years while changing sex from man to woman. The film, which Swinton spent years helping writer/director Sally Potter develop and finance, continues to this day to have a worldwide devoted fan following.
Over the years, Tilda has preferred art to celebrity, opening herself to experimental projects with new and untried directors and mediums, delving into the worlds of installation art and cutting-edge fashion. Consistently off-centered roles in Female Perversions (1996), Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), Teknolust (2002), Young Adam (2003), Broken Flowers (2005) and Béla Tarr's The Man from London (2007) have added to her mystique. Back in 1995, she delved into a performance art piece in the Serpentine Gallery, London, where she was put on display to the public for a week, asleep (or apparently so), in a glass case.
Following the birth of her twins in 1997, Tilda would leave lean for a time towards Hollywood mainstream filming. The thriller The Deep End (2001), earned her a number of critic's awards and her first Golden Globe nomination. Other visible U.S. pictures included The Beach (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio, fantasy epic Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, her Oscar-decorated performance in Michael Clayton (2007) and, of course, her iconic White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
Into the millennium, Tilda continued to amaze starring in the crime drama Julia (2008) and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). She learned Italian and Russian for Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (2009), starred in the psychological thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Bong Joon Ho's Snowpiercer (2013), and earned fine notice in Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem (2013). She also starred in the dark romantic fantasy drama Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) directed by Jim Jarmusch, had a small role in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), starred in Judd Apatow's comedy Trainwreck (2015), and played a rock star in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (2015).
Showing no signs of slowing up, Tilda continues to make creative, visual impressions in such films as the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! (2016) where she reunited with Clooney and had a dual role playing twin journalists, and as the wise Asian teacher of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the Marvel Comics action film Doctor Strange (2016), while repeating the part of The Ancient One in Avengers: Endgame (2019). She gave another eccentric, unhinged performance in the action adventure message movie Okja (2017), played Betsy Trotwood in a contemporary telling of The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) and teamed up again with writer/director Jim Jarmusch in the thoroughly offbeat fantasy horror comedy The Dead Don't Die (2019).- Actress
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Maggie Gyllenhaal was born on November 16, 1977 in New York City, New York as Margalit Ruth Gyllenhaal, the daughter of producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner and director Stephen Gyllenhaal, and the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal. She is of Ashkenazi Jewish (mother) and Swedish, English, and German (father) descent.
She made her film debut in Waterland (1992). She had sporadic roles throughout her teenage years though she took a break to attend Columbia University where she graduated w/ a degree in literature in 1999. In addition, she briefly studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, which helped w/ her post-graduation transition back into acting.
Soon after graduating, she had supporting roles in Cecil B. Demented (2000) & Donnie Darko (2001). Her breakout role came later when she starred in Secretary (2002), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She followed that up w/ supporting roles in 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Adaptation. (2002), & Mona Lisa Smile (2003) among other movies. She received her 2nd Golden Globe nomination for playing a recent prison parolee in Sherrybaby (2006). She followed that up w/ roles in World Trade Center (2006), Stranger Than Fiction (2006) & The Dark Knight (2008).
In 2009, she received great acclaim for her role in Crazy Heart (2009), which earned her 1st Oscar nomination. Since then, she has been seen in Nanny McPhee Returns (2010), Hysteria (2011) & Won't Back Down (2012).- Actress
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New Yorker Claire Catherine Danes was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Carla (Hall), a day-care provider and artist, and Christopher Danes, a computer consultant and photographer. She has an older brother, Asa. Her paternal grandfather, Gibson Andrew Danes, was a Dean of the Yale School of Art and Architecture. She is of mostly German and British Isles descent.
Claire was educated at Dalton School, New York, The New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, The Professional Performing Arts School and Lycée Français de Los Angeles. From 1998, she attended Yale University, studying psychology, but dropped out after two years to concentrate on her acting career.
Danes first came to major public attention when she appeared as "Angela Chase" in My So-Called Life (1994). She won an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe award for this performance. A successful film career followed, including the role of "Juliet", opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996). She continued acting in such varied project as The Hours (2002), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Stardust (2007).
In 2010, she appeared in the HBO Production, Temple Grandin (2010), playing the title character. She received huge critical acclaim for the role, and won an Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance. Since 2011, she has starred on the SHOWTIME series Homeland (2011), receiving great critical acclaim and winning Emmys and Golden Globes.- Actress
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Holland Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the third-born (and last) daughter of her mother, Virginia (Davis), a painter, and the only child of her father, C. Tracy Taylor, an attorney. She spent her teen years in nearby Allentown, PA, where Holland got the nickname, "Penny Taylor" because of her coppery hair color. Holland attended Quaker schools, then majored in drama at Bennington College. At the age of 22 Holland moved to New York with the desire to become a "great big Broadway star." After fifteen years of "disappointments and near misses" in New York and California, Holland was cast as Ruth Dunbar in the sitcom Bosom Buddies (1980) with Tom Hanks. It was Holland's "breakout" role and it led to many other TV and film offers including the movie Romancing the Stone (1984) as Kathleen Turner's book publisher and friend. Holland had hesitated to accept the role but her acting coach and mentor Stella Adler encouraged her not to be so "stage minded." In 1992 Holland was still living in Greenwich Village, New York and traveling back and forth between a rented apartment in Hollywood and New York in order to work on both coasts. Holland has said her first love was the theater but the work for her in TV and films was better. However, by 1992, Holland said she was dealing with traveling back and forth "less and less well". Over the next few years, Holland moved to California full-time. In the last couple of years, she gave up her apartment in West Hollywood for her own home in the Hollywood Hills. Holland won an Emmy in 1999 for her work in The Practice (1997).- Actress
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Minnie Driver was born January 31, 1970 in London and raised in Barbados until she was seven. Her mother, Gaynor Churchward, was a designer and former couture model. Her father, Charles Ronald "Ronnie" Driver, was a businessman. Minnie's mother was her father's mistress while he was still married to his wife. Minnie's sister, Kate Driver, is a manager and producer.
Her breakout role was in the 1995 film Circle of Friends. Minnie then appeared briefly in the James Bond picture Goldeneye. Since then, she has focused on working in a wide tonal range of films. These include several cult classics: Grosse Point Blank, Big Night, and Owning Mahowny; the painted romance of Good Will Hunting (earning an Oscar nomination for best actress in a supporting role); musicals like The Phantom of the Opera; period comedies like the Oscar Wilde classic An Ideal Husband; and Princess Mononoke, the seminal animated Japanese film by Hayao Miyazaki. Minnie has also starred in several family films such as Tarzan, Ella Enchanted, and the 2021 live action Cinderella.
Minnie has a wide-range of television work in place from FX's dark comedy classic The Riches, in which she co-starred with Eddie Izzard, to starring in two network sitcoms including NBC's About A Boy adaptation as well as ABC's Speechless. Both of which ran for several seasons. Minnie also pops up in key guest-starring roles such as her turn as Lorraine Finster on Will & Grace which lasted almost fifteen years and as Cath on the current BBC / HBO comedy Starstruck. Minnie is also starring in the Amazon anthology Modern Love which is on air now (2021).
On September 5, 2008, she gave birth to a boy named Henry Story Driver. She is in a long-term relationship with Addison O'Dea.- Actress
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Ask Kate Winslet what she likes about any of her characters, and the word "ballsy" is bound to pop up at least once. The British actress has made a point of eschewing straightforward pretty-girl parts in favor of more devilish damsels; as a result, she's built an eclectic resume that runs the gamut from Shakespearean tragedy to modern-day mysticism and erotica.
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, into a family of thespians -- parents Roger Winslet and Sally Anne Bridges-Winslet were both stage actors, maternal grandparents Oliver and Linda Bridges ran the Reading Repertory Theatre, and uncle Robert Bridges was a fixture in London's West End theatre district. Kate came into her talent at an early age. She scored her first professional gig at eleven, dancing opposite the Honey Monster in a commercial for a kids' cereal. She started acting lessons around the same time, which led to formal training at a performing arts high school. Over the next few years, she appeared on stage regularly and landed a few bit parts in sitcoms. Her first big break came at age 17, when she was cast as an obsessive adolescent in Heavenly Creatures (1994). The film, based on the true story of two fantasy-gripped girls who commit a brutal murder, received modest distribution but was roundly praised by critics.
Still a relative unknown, Winslet attended a cattle call audition the next year for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995). She made an immediate impression on the film's star, Emma Thompson, and beat out more than a hundred other hopefuls for the part of plucky Marianne Dashwood. Her efforts were rewarded with both a British Academy Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Winslet followed up with two more period pieces, playing the rebellious heroine in Jude (1996) and Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
The role that transformed Winslet from art house attraction to international star was Rose DeWitt Bukater, the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat in James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet, swooning over all that face time opposite heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and noting her refreshingly healthy, unemaciated physique. Winslet's performance also garnered a Best Actress nomination, making her the youngest actress to ever receive two Academy Award nominations.
After the swell of unexpected attention surrounding Titanic (1997), Winslet was eager to retreat into independent projects. Rumor has it that she turned down the lead roles in both Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Anna and the King (1999) in order to play adventurous soul searchers in Hideous Kinky (1998) and Holy Smoke (1999). The former cast her as a young single mother traveling through 1970s Morocco with her daughters in tow; the latter, as a zealous follower of a guru tricked into a "deprogramming" session in the Australian outback. The next year found her back in period dress as the Marquis de Sade's chambermaid and accomplice in Quills (2000). Kate holds the distinction of being the youngest actor ever honored with four Academy Award nominations (she received her fourth at age 29). As of 2016, she has been nominated for an Oscar seven times, winning one of them: she received the Best Actress Oscar for the drama The Reader (2008), playing a former concentration camp guard.
For her performance of Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs (2015), she received her seventh Academy Award nomination.
Off camera, Winslet is known for her mischievous pranks and familial devotion. She has two sisters, Anna Winslet and Beth Winslet (both actresses), and a brother, Joss.
In 1998, she married assistant director Jim Threapleton. They had a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, in October 2000. They divorced in 2001. She later married director Sam Mendes in 2003 and gave birth to their son, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, later that year. After seven years of marriage, in February 2010 they announced that they had amicably separated, and divorced in October 2010. In 2012, Kate married Ned Rocknroll, with whom she has a son. She was awarded Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to Drama.- Actress
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Carla Gugino was born in Sarasota, Florida, to Carl Gugino, an orthodontist. She is of Italian (father) and English-Irish (mother) ancestry. Gugino moved with her mother to Paradise, California, when Carla was just five years old. During her childhood, they moved many times within the state. But she remained a straight-A student throughout high school and graduated as valedictorian. A major modeling agency discovered Carla in San Diego and sent her to New York to begin a new career when she was 15. New York was more than she could handle at that young age, so she returned to LA in the summer, modeling and enrolling in an acting class at the suggestion of her aunt, Carol Merrill, known from Let's Make a Deal (1963). During her free time, Carla enjoys yoga, traveling and spending time with her friends in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Sarah Paulson was born on December 17, 1974 in Tampa, Florida, to Catharine Gordon (Dolcater) and Douglas Lyle Paulson II. She spent most of her early years in New York and Maine, before settling in Manhattan to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the High School for Performing Arts. Although she made her Broadway debut in "The Sisters Rosensweig" and performed in the off-Broadway "Talking Pictures", she debuted on the small screen in late 1994 in a guest shot on NBC's Law & Order (1990), then, in the following spring, landed her first TV-movie role in CBS' Friends at Last (1995) and finally became a TV series regular by fall 1995.
Best known for her amazing performance in CBS' supernatural drama American Gothic (1995) as the benevolent spiritual guide to her young brother, she was also a regular on the WB series Jack & Jill (1999) as "Elisa Cronkite", the former girlfriend of David "Jill" Jillefsky (Ivan Sergei) as well as the main character in the TV series Leap of Faith (2002), "Faith Wardwell", and as "Audrey" in the TV movie Metropolis (2000). She was also part of the cast of Shaughnessy (1996), The Long Way Home (1998) (as "Leanne Bossert") and Path to War (2002) as Luci Baines Johnson, as well as making notable appearances in Touched by an Angel (1994) playing "Zoe" in Manhunt (2001), 20 October 2001, and Cracker: Mind Over Murder (1997) playing "Nina" in True Romance: Part 1 (1997), 18 September 1997.
Sarah has now played in movies with such stars as Mel Gibson in the romantic comedy What Women Want (2000) (as "Annie", Gibson's secretary), Diane Keaton in the romantic drama The Other Sister (1999) (as "Heather Tate", Keaton's lesbian eldest daughter), Jamie Foxx in Held Up (1999) (as "Mary", a developmentally disabled young woman with an unfaithful boyfriend) and David Hyde Pierce in the romantic comedy Down with Love (2003) (as "Vicky Hiller", Pierce's crush). She also had two major roles in the comedy Bug (2002) and the drama, Levitation (1997), where she starred as a pregnant teenager who searches for her biological mother, with the help of a guardian angel.- Actress
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Mary Steenburgen is an Academy Award-winning American actress.
She was born in Newport, Arkansas, USA. Her mother, Nellie May (Wall) Steenburgen, was a school-board secretary, and her father, Maurice H. Steenburgen, was a freight-train conductor. Her surname comes from distant Dutch ancestry, and her roots also include English, Scottish, and Welsh.
Young Steenburgen was fond of arts and literature. Mary grew up tap-dancing her way through talent shows and school functions. She was active in her school drama class. After appearing in a number of high school plays, she enrolled at Hendrix College, a highly progressive Southern School located in Conway, Arkansas. Upon the recommendation of her drama professor, she left college in 1972 and moved to New York to study acting professionally. In the past several years, Mary Steenburgen has emerged as one of the most accomplished and sought-after screen actresses. Ever since Jack Nicholson discovered her and cast her as a sassy adventuress in his rollicking western, Goin' South (1978), her career has skyrocketed and she has won acclaim for exceptional performances in each of her diverse film roles. In Nicholas Meyer's Time After Time (1979), Steenburgen was afforded critical praise for her portrayal of a somewhat dippy but liberated young bank clerk in San Francisco who crosses paths, via time machine, with English author H.G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell, who later became her husband). In 1980 she shot to fame with her role as Lynda Dummar in Melvin and Howard (1980) for which she won Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Steenburgen again impressed audiences and critics alike with her stunning performance as the strong-willed turn-of-the-century mother in Ragtime (1981).
Steenburgen is a notable patron of arts. She is also an active supporter of humanitarian causes. She has two children from her previous marriage to actor Malcolm McDowell. Since 1995 she has been married to actor Ted Danson, and the couple is living in the Los Angeles area.- Actress
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Actress and philanthropist Rooney Mara was born on April 17, 1985 in Bedford, New York. She made her screen debut in the slasher film Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005), went on to have a supporting role in the independent coming-of-age drama Tanner Hall (2009), and has since starred in the horror remake A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), the biographical drama The Social Network (2010), the thriller remake The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and the romantic drama Carol (2015).
Patricia Rooney Mara is one of four children of Kathleen McNulty (née Rooney) and NFL football team New York Giants executive Timothy Christopher Mara. Her grandfathers were Wellington Mara, co-owner of the Giants, and Timothy Rooney, owner of Yonkers Raceway, and her grand-uncle is Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney, the former Ambassador to Ireland. She is the great-granddaughter of Art Rooney, the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers football franchise. Her father has Irish, German, and French-Canadian ancestry, and her mother is of Irish and Italian descent.
After graduating from Bedford's Fox Lane High School, she went to Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia in South America for four months as part of the Traveling School, an open learning environment. She attended George Washington University for a year and then transferred to New York University, where she studied international social policy psychology and nonprofits. She took her degree from New York University in 2010. Her studies focused on non-profit organizations, as her family has a tradition of involvement in philanthropic causes.
She had thought of acting after watching old movies and attending musical theater, but did not think of it as a serious vocation and was afraid she might fail at this. As a result of her reservations, she appeared in only one play while in high school.
She began seriously focusing on acting when she was at New York University, appearing in student films. Inspired by her older sister, actress Kate Mara, she began to pursue the craft, auditioning for acting jobs at age 19. She appeared with her sister Kate in the video horror movie Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005), billing herself as "Patricia Mara". As "Tricia Mara", she had guest roles on television and won her first lead in the movie Tanner Hall (2009), which was shot in the fall of 2007.
She originally auditioned for the supporting role of Lucasta in "Tanner Hall", a $3-million independent film, but director Tatiana von Fürstenberg was so impressed by the young actress, she had her return to audition for the lead role of Fernanda, which Mara won. Furstenberg was delighted with her nuanced performance, saying, "Still waters run deep".
Continuing to call herself Tricia Mara, this was during the making of "Tanner Hall" that she considered changing her professional name to Rooney Mara, soliciting the advice of the cast and crew. After premiering at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, her performance in "Tanner Hall" brought the rechristened Rooney Mara a "Rising Star" award at the 2009 Hamptons Film Festival and a "Stargazer Award" at the 2010 Gen Art Film Festival.
She received her first lead role in a major feature, in the $35 million remake A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010). The movie proved disappointing at the box office, grossing only $63 million domestically and racking up a worldwide gross of just under $116 million. However, she was noticed by critics in the small but pivotal role of the Boston University undergrad Erica Albright who dumps Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010). Director David Fincher subsequently cast her as the lead, Lisbeth Salander, in his thriller remake, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), based on Stieg Larsson's Millennium book series. She received critical acclaim for her performance, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama.
She starred in the thriller film Side Effects (2013), the independent drama Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013), and the acclaimed sci-fi romantic drama Her (2013). The following year, she starred in the adventure drama Trash (2014). She garnered further critical acclaim for her performance in Todd Haynes' romantic drama Carol (2015), for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama and the SAG, BAFTA, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In the spirit of her family's philanthropic endeavors, Rooney created Faces of Kibera, a charity that provides food, medical care and housing to orphans in Nairobi, Kenya's Kibra district, a small slum that houses a million people. There are many orphans as AIDS is rampant in the slum.- Actress
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Katherine Kiernan Mulgrew, or Kate Mulgrew, was born on April 29, 1955. She grew up in Dubuque, Iowa, the second oldest child (and oldest girl) in a large Irish Catholic family. When Kate expressed an interest in acting as a child, her mother, Joan, encouraged her to audition for local theater productions. Kate left Iowa for New York City at age 17 to pursue a career in acting. Kate was accepted into the Stella Adler Conservatory (part of New York University's acting program) and studied there for only a year, as she landed the lead role in the ABC soap opera Ryan's Hope in 1975, vaulting her to instant stardom.
At the same time she was filming Ryan's Hope, Kate played the role of Emily in the American Shakespeare Theatre's production of "Our Town" in Stratford, Connecticut. At age 23, following her success on Ryan's Hope, Kate was offered the lead role of Kate Columbo in "Mrs. Columbo," playing the wife of one of television's most beloved detectives, Lt. Columbo, as made famous by actor Peter Falk. While critically successful, the series was canceled after two seasons.
In 1981, Mulgrew co-starred with Richard Burton and Nicholas Clay in Lovespell, a film set in the era of Arthurian legend, as Irish princess Isolt, whose love story with Tristan is a classic tale of doomed love. That same year, Kate co-starred with Pierce Brosnan in the six-hour miniseries, The Manions of America, set in 19th century America just before the start of the Civil War. In 1985, she had a notable role in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins as officer Major Fleming. In 1986, Kate appeared in a number of of Cheers episodes as congresswoman Janet Eldridge, a love interest for series lead Sam Malone (Ted Danson). In 1987, she appeared in Throw Momma from the Train as Margaret, Billy Crystal's ex-wife.
In 1992, Kate appeared on several episodes of Murphy Brown as Hillary Wheaton, a Toronto-based anchorwoman brought in to replace Murphy Brown during her maternity leave, but who also struggled with alcoholism (just as Brown did at the beginning of the series). Also in 1992, she played a guest-starring role as a soap opera star who kills her husband and tries to cover it up, on Murder, She Wrote, episode #170, titled "Ever After". Kate also guest-starred in three episodes of Batman: The Animated Series as the terrorist Red Claw. Kate has gone on to do a great deal of voice work for animated series and video games.
Shortly after, Kate married theater director Robert H. Egan in 1982. They have two sons, Ian Thomas and Alexander James. The two officially divorced in 1995.
More notably in 1995, Kate received a call that a part for which she'd auditioned but another actress had been chosen for - Captain Kathryn Janeway, the first female Star Trek captain. The first actress quit within two days of beginning production, leading producers to call Kate back and offer her the role. Star Trek: Voyager, as the newly-created UPN's flagship network show, had found its captain. Kate portrayed Janeway for seven seasons, and also appeared briefly in Star Trek: Nemesis as Admiral Kathryn Janeway.
Mulgrew played Katharine Hepburn in the one-woman play "Tea at Five", debuting in Hartford, Connecticut in 2002 and going on to tour across the U.S. after a stint on Broadway. For this role, Kate received a Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress, an Outer Critics Circle nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance, Broadway.com's Audience Award for Favorite Solo Performance, and won the award for Best Actress at the 29th Carbonell Awards for her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn, all in 2003.
Kate married Tim Hagan, former Ohio gubernatorial candidate and former commissioner of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in April 1999. The two divorced in 2014.
From 2003 to 2013, Kate had many memorable television appearances, including stints on The Black Donnellys, Mercy, cult favorite Warehouse 13, and NTSF:SD:SUV. In 2013, Kate began work on Netflix breakout out Orange Is The New Black as the wildly popular prison chef Galina "Red" Reznikov. OITNB is set to conclude in the summer of 2019.
Kate is also an author of two memoirs - 2016's Born With Teeth (Little Brown) and 2019's How To Forget: A Daughter's Memoir (Harper Collins). She is filming the newest season of Mr. Mercedes, a serial killer drama based on Stephen King's Bill Hodges trilogy. Mr. Mercedes airs on the AT&T Audience network and can be streamed on DirecTV.- A versatile actress, Annabeth Gish weathered the transition from child actor to adult, with a variety of dramatic and comedic roles on film and television.
Anne Elizabeth Gish was born on March 13, 1971 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and moved with her family to Cedar Falls, at the age of two. Her parents were both teachers; her father, Robert Gish, was an English professor at the University of Northern Iowa, her mother, Judy, taught at Malcolm Price Laboratory School. Performing in community theater productions throughout her childhood, Gish began her professional acting career, at the age of eight, by appearing in a number of commercials. She made her screen debut, at the age of 13, in the teen film, Desert Bloom (1986), opposite Jon Voight, and, in following years, has found success in film and television. Gish starred in the films, Hiding Out (1987), with Jon Cryer, Mystic Pizza (1988), with Julia Roberts, and on Shag (1988), opposite Phoebe Cates and Bridget Fonda. She also played the lead role, as rape victim "Lyn McKenna", in the TV movie, When He's Not a Stranger (1989). Gish went on to graduate from Cedar Falls' Northern University High School in 1989. In addition to acting, Gish took time to focus on her academic career and attended Duke University. Studying English as well as theater, she graduated with honors, in 1993, with a BA in English.
Gish returned to screens in the mid-1990s, with appearances in supporting roles, in films Wyatt Earp (1994), The Last Supper (1995) and critical praise biopic, Nixon (1995). The next year, Gish appeared in the ensemble cast movie, Beautiful Girls (1996). On television, Gish played the younger sister of Dana Delany's character in True Women (1997), a epic miniseries, based on the best seller novel by Janice Woods Windle. Her other credits include the miniseries, Scarlett (1994), the short-lived Patricia Wettig's drama series Courthouse (1995), the box office bomb superhero film, Steel (1997), a supporting role on Ashley Judd's success thriller, Double Jeopardy (1999), and several other independent films.
Most recently, Gish played "Special Agent Monica Reyes" on the cult series, The X-Files (1993) (2001-2002), for which she was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television. She also starred in the Showtime drama, Brotherhood (2006) (2006-2008) and appeared in recurring roles on The West Wing (1999) (2003-2006), Flashforward (2009) (2010), Pretty Little Liars (2010) (2011-2012) and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000) (2011-2012). In 2012, she starred on the ABC drama series, Americana (2012), as Ashley Greene's character's mother. - Actress
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Frances Louise McDormand was born on June 23, 1957, in Gibson City, Illinois. She was adopted by Canadian-born parents Noreen Eloise (Nickleson), a nurse from Ontario, and Rev. Vernon Weir McDormand, a Disciples of Christ minister from Nova Scotia, who raised her in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. She earned a BA in theater from Bethany College in 1979 and an MFA from Yale University in 1982. Her career after graduation began onstage, and she has retained her association with the theater throughout her career. She soon obtained prominent roles in movies as well, first starring in Blood Simple (1984), in which she worked with filmmaker Joel Coen, whom she married that year. She frequently collaborated with Coen and his brother, Ethan Coen, in their films.
McDormand's skilled and versatile acting has been recognized by both the critics and the Academy, and in addition to many critics' awards, she has been nominated for an Academy Award six times - Supporting in Mississippi Burning (1988), Almost Famous (2000), and North Country (2005), and Lead in Fargo (1996), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and Nomadland (2020), winning the Oscar for the latter three. She also won a Best Picture Oscar as co-producer of "Nomadland." Keenly intelligent and possessed of a sharp wit, McDormand is the antithesis of the Hollywood starlet - rather than making every role about Frances McDormand, she dissolves into the characters she plays. Accordingly, she has expressed some reservations about the iconic recognition she has gained from her touching and amusing portrayal of Police Chief Marge Gunderson, the quintessential Minnesota Scandinavian, in Fargo (1996).
McDormand and Coen adopted a son, Pedro McDormand Coen, who was born in Paraguay, in 1994. They live in New York.- Actress
- Camera and Electrical Department
Frances Fisher began by apprenticing at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia. She spent 14 years based in New York City, playing leads in over 30 productions of plays by such noted writers as John Arden, Noël Coward, Emily Mann, Joe Orton, Sam Shepard, William Shakespeare, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams. She won a Drama Logue Award - Best Ensemble for the American Premier of Caryl Churchill's "Three More Sleepless Nights", played in the American premier of Judith Thompson's "The Crackwalker" and originated roles in Elia Kazan's "The Chain" and Arthur Miller's last play "Finishing the Picture". Besides working with Kazan and Miller, some of Ms. Fisher's more interesting theater experiences were creating roles from two great works of literature: George Orwell's "1984" and Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Ms. Fisher worked at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles alongside Annette Bening and Alfred Molina in Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard". Fisher starred in "Sexy Laundry" with Paul Ben-Victor at the Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles. She studied with Stella Adler and became a lifetime member of the Actors Studio by actually "walking up the stairs" and auditioning for legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Ms. Fisher recently completed The Host (2013), Love on the Run (2016), Red Wing (2013) and will work with Catherine Hardwicke in her new film Plush (2013) in August 2012. Ms. Fisher was honored for a Lifetime Achievement Award 2011 in her old hometown of the Pacific Palisades, California.