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These people entertain me! 09/13/20, Corin Nemic became #600! Wow! 04/28/21, Frank Converse became #700.
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Jude Law is an English actor. Law has been nominated for two Academy Awards and continues to build a prolific body of work that spans from early successes such as Gattaca (1997) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to more recent turns as Dr. John Watson in Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), as Hugo's father in Hugo (2011) and in the titular role in Dom Hemingway (2013).
David Jude Law was born on December 29, 1972 in Lewisham, London, England, to Margaret Anne (Heyworth) and Peter Robert Law, both of whom taught at comprehensive schools; his father later became a headmaster. Law has said that he was named after both the book Jude the Obscure and the song Hey Jude.
In 1992, Jude began his stage career. He starred in many plays throughout London, and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award of "Outstanding Newcomer" After doing the play "Indiscretions" in London, he moved and did it again on Broadway. This time, he was alongside Kathleen Turner. He then received a Tony Nomination for "Outstanding Supporting Actor". He was then rewarded the Theatre World Award. After Broadway, Jude started on the big screen, in many independent films. His first big-named movie was Gattaca (1997), with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. He also had a good role in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). Jude's latest rise to fame has been because of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), in which he plays Matt Damon's obsession. The film did very well at the box office, and critics loved Jude's acting.
Following the success of Gattaca (1997) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Law's feature film career continued to gain momentum throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s with roles in such films as Enemy at the Gates (2001), Road to Perdition (2002), I Heart Huckabees (2004), The Aviator (2004) and many others. Law is one of three actors, along with Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp, to take over acting responsibilities in the Terry Gilliam project The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) following Heath Ledger's death.
Law is a partner in the production company "Natural Nylon". His partners include Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor and his ex-wife Sadie Frost.
Law has been active in many charitable activities and supports several different foundations and causes, doing work for organizations including the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Make Poverty History, Breast Cancer Care and others. Law is also a peace advocate, and in 2011, participated in street protests against the rule of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus.
Law married Sadie Frost in 1997 and the couple had two sons (Rafferty and Rudy) and a daughter (Iris) before divorcing in 2003. Law and Alfie (2004) co-star Sienna Miller were engaged to be married in 2005 and separated in 2006 (they would later rekindle their relationship in 2009, splitting once again in 2011). Law and American model Samantha Burke had a brief relationship in 2008 that resulted in the birth of Law's fourth child, daughter Sophia. Law's fifth child, with an ex-girlfriend, Catherine Harding, was born in 2015.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s, as the hunky lead actor in movies such as Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997), to then become a leading man in Hollywood blockbusters, made by internationally renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Irmelin DiCaprio (née Indenbirken) and former comic book artist George DiCaprio. His father is of Italian and German descent, and his mother, who is German-born, is of German, Ukrainian and Russian ancestry. His middle name, "Wilhelm", was his maternal grandfather's first name. Leonardo's father had achieved minor status as an artist and distributor of cult comic book titles, and was even depicted in several issues of American Splendor, the cult semi-autobiographical comic book series by the late 'Harvey Pekar', a friend of George's. Leonardo's performance skills became obvious to his parents early on, and after signing him up with a talent agent who wanted Leonardo to perform under the stage name "Lenny Williams", DiCaprio began appearing on a number of television commercials and educational programs.
DiCaprio began attracting the attention of producers, who cast him in small roles in a number of television series, such as Roseanne (1988) and The New Lassie (1989), but it wasn't until 1991 that DiCaprio made his film debut in Critters 3 (1991), a low-budget horror movie. While Critters 3 (1991) did little to help showcase DiCaprio's acting abilities, it did help him develop his show-reel, and attract the attention of the people behind the hit sitcom Growing Pains (1985), in which Leonardo was cast in the "Cousin Oliver" role of a young homeless boy who moves in with the Seavers. While DiCaprio's stint on Growing Pains (1985) was very short, as the sitcom was axed the year after he joined, it helped bring DiCaprio into the public's attention and, after the sitcom ended, DiCaprio began auditioning for roles in which he would get the chance to prove his acting chops.
Leonardo took up a diverse range of roles in the early 1990s, including a mentally challenged youth in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead (1995) and a drug addict in one of his most challenging roles to date, Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries (1995), a role which the late River Phoenix originally expressed interest in. While these diverse roles helped establish Leonardo's reputation as an actor, it wasn't until his role as Romeo Montague in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) that Leonardo became a household name, a true movie star. The following year, DiCaprio starred in another movie about doomed lovers, Titanic (1997), which went on to beat all box office records held before then, as, at the time, Titanic (1997) became the highest grossing movie of all time, and cemented DiCaprio's reputation as a teen heartthrob. Following his work on Titanic (1997), DiCaprio kept a low profile for a number of years, with roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and the low-budget The Beach (2000) being some of his few notable roles during this period.
In 2002, he burst back into screens throughout the world with leading roles in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002), his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. With a current salary of $20 million a movie, DiCaprio is now one of the biggest movie stars in the world. However, he has not limited his professional career to just acting in movies, as DiCaprio is a committed environmentalist, who is actively involved in many environmental causes, and his commitment to this issue led to his involvement in The 11th Hour, a documentary movie about the state of the natural environment. As someone who has gone from small roles in television commercials to one of the most respected actors in the world, DiCaprio has had one of the most diverse careers in cinema. DiCaprio continued to defy conventions about the types of roles he would accept, and with his career now seeing him leading all-star casts in action thrillers such as The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), DiCaprio continues to wow audiences by refusing to conform to any cliché about actors.
In 2012, he played a mustache twirling villain in Django Unchained (2012), and then tragic literary character Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013) and Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
DiCaprio is passionate about environmental and humanitarian causes, having donated $1,000,000 to earthquake relief efforts in 2010, the same year he contributed $1,000,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Character actor, dramatic leading man, or hilarious comic foil? With an astonishing range of roles already under his belt, John C. Reilly has played an eclectic host of rich characters to great effect over the years, from seedy ne'er-do-wells, to lovable, good-natured schlepps.
The fifth of six children, John Christopher Reilly was born in Chicago, to a father of mostly Irish descent, and a Lithuanian-American mother, and was brought up on Chicago's tough Southwest territory. His father, also named John, ran an industrial linen supply company business. On the amateur stage from age eight, Reilly trained at the Goodman School of Drama and eventually became a member of Chicago's renowned Steppenwolf Theatre.
His film break came with a small role in the Vietnam War drama Casualties of War (1989), wherein Brian De Palma liked his work so much during the early stages that he recast him in a major role by the start of shooting as a soldier bent on rape. Reilly gained momentum throughout the 1990s and showed his dazzling stretch of talent in such films as Days of Thunder (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and The River Wild (1994). He became a major stock player in director Paul Thomas Anderson's films, while finding some of his best roles in Hard Eight (1996) as a compulsive gambler, Boogie Nights (1997) in which he played a narcissistic porn star, and in Magnolia (1999) as a compassionate policeman. He went on to earn further critical points for his role of the soldier sent to the front lines in Terrence Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line (1998).
On stage, Reilly has wowed audiences in "The Grapes of Wrath" on Broadway, "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Othello" at Steppenwolf, and earned an Outer Critics Circle Award and Tony nomination for "True West" alongside another impeccable character player Philip Seymour Hoffman. Reilly finally received the film recognition he deserved in 2002 with a slew of choice, high-profile parts in The Hours (2002), The Good Girl (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), and especially Chicago (2002) as the put-upon husband, Amos Hart, who is played for a patsy by murderous wife Roxie (Renée Zellweger). For this last part, he received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.
Since then his stock has risen considerably, and he has further widened his cinematic repertoire, appearing in everything from dramatic roles - We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), The Aviator (2004) and Carnage (2011) - to broader comic turns - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Step Brothers (2008), Cyrus (2010) and Cedar Rapids (2011). Most recently, he has voiced the lead in Disney's animated smash Wreck-It Ralph (2012).
Reilly is married to producer Alison Dickey.- Actor
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Award-winning actor, writer and director, Danny Huston is known for his versatility and dramatic screen presence. Most recognized for his roles in films like Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men and Alejandro Inarritu's 21 Grams, Huston has worked with some of the finest film directors of his generation.
Huston got his start directing Mr. North with Robert Mitchum, Anthony Edwards and his sister Anjelica Huston. He went on to give his breakthrough acting performance in the independent film Ivansxtc for which he was nominated for Best Male Performance at the 2003 Independent Spirit Awards. Since then his film acting work has included: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, Hitchcock with Anthony Hopkins, Wrath of the Titans with Liam Neeson, The Constant Gardener with Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, John Sayles Silver City, The Libertador with Edgar Ramirez, The Congress with Harvey Keitel, John Hillcoat's The Proposition with Guy Pearce, Birth opposite Nicole Kidman, 30 Days of Night with Josh Hartnett, Peter Berg's The Kingdom, and many more.
In 2013, his critically acclaimed role of Ben the butcher in Magic City (STARZ), earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. His other television acting work includes the hit television series Masters Of Sex (Showtime), a recurring role in the hugely popular American Horror Story (FX), and performances in You Don't Know Jack (HBO)with Al Pacino and John Adams (HBO/Playtone).
Additional credits include, Paranoid for Netflix and ITV Studios, Marc Forster's All I See Is You, Frankenstein directed by Bernard Rose, Pressure, directed by Ron Scalpello; and Tim Burton's Big Eyes. Huston also directed himself in The Last Photograph which screened at The Edinburgh Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival.
In 2017, Huston portrayed Robert Evans in the stage adaptation of The Kid Stays in the Picture directed by Simon McBurney, for The Royal Court Theatre in London. Huston also recently appeared in the global box office hit Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins.
He could recently be seen in the Netflix feature IO opposite Anthony Mackie, as well as the feature Stan and Ollie, which was directed by Jon Baird for BBC films.
Huston will next be seen in Angel Has Fallen alongside Morgan Freeman and Gerard Butler, which will be released in theaters on August 23rd, 2019, as well as the IM Global feature Richard Says Goodbye with Johnny Depp for writer/director Wayne Roberts. Huston continues to star as "Dan Jenkins" on the Taylor Sheridan and Paramount TV series Yellowstone, which is now airing its second season. It is the number one Summer series of 2019. Huston can be see in a season long-arc on the critically acclaimed series Succession for HBO.
In addition, Huston starred in and directed the feature The Last Photograph (2017), which was on September 6, 2019.- Actor
- Producer
- Executive
Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor, singer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer and producer. Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as superhero, period, and romance characters. He is best known for his long-running role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series, as well as for his lead roles in the romantic-comedy fantasy Kate & Leopold (2001), the action-horror film Van Helsing (2004), the drama The Prestige and The Fountain (2006), the epic historical romantic drama Australia (2008), the film version of Les Misérables (2012), and the thriller Prisoners (2013). His work in Les Misérables earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and his first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy in 2013. In Broadway theatre, Jackman won a Tony Award for his role in The Boy from Oz. A four-time host of the Tony Awards themselves, he won an Emmy Award for one of these appearances. Jackman also hosted the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009.
Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, to Grace McNeil (Greenwood) and Christopher John Jackman, an accountant. He is the youngest of five children. His parents, both English, moved to Australia shortly before his birth. He also has Greek (from a great-grandfather) and Scottish (from a grandmother) ancestry.
Jackman has a communications degree with a journalism major from the University of Technology Sydney. After graduating, he pursued drama at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, immediately after which he was offered a starring role in the ABC-TV prison drama Correlli (1995), opposite his future wife Deborra-Lee Furness. Several TV guest roles followed, as an actor and variety compere. An accomplished singer, Jackman has starred as Gaston in the Australian production of "Beauty and the Beast." He appeared as Joe Gillis in the Australian production of "Sunset Boulevard." In 1998, he was cast as Curly in the Royal National Theatre's production of Trevor Nunn's Oklahoma. Jackman has made two feature films, the second of which, Erskineville Kings (1999), garnered him an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Actor in 1999. Recently, he won the part of Logan/Wolverine in the Bryan Singer- directed comic-book movie X-Men (2000). In his spare time, Jackman plays piano, golf, and guitar, and likes to windsurf.- Actor
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Russell Ira Crowe was born in Wellington, New Zealand, to Jocelyn Yvonne (Wemyss) and John Alexander Crowe, both of whom catered movie sets. His maternal grandfather, Stanley Wemyss, was a cinematographer. Crowe's recent ancestry includes Welsh (where his paternal grandfather was born, in Wrexham), English, Irish, Scottish, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian, and Maori (one of Crowe's maternal great-grandmothers, Erana Putiputi Hayes Heihi, was Maori).
Crowe's family moved to Australia when he was a small child, settling in Sydney, and Russell got the acting bug early in life. Beginning as a child star on a local Australian TV show, Russell's first big break came with two films ... the first, Romper Stomper (1992), gained him a name throughout the film community in Australia and the neighboring countries. The second, The Sum of Us (1994), helped put him on the American map, so to speak. Sharon Stone heard of him from Romper Stomper (1992) and wanted him for her film, The Quick and the Dead (1995). But filming on The Sum of Us (1994) had already begun. Sharon is reported to have held up shooting until she had her gunslinger-Crowe, for her film. With The Quick and the Dead (1995) under his belt as his first American film, the second was offered to him soon after. Virtuosity (1995), starring Denzel Washington, put Russell in the body of a Virtual Serial Killer, Sid6.7 ... a role unlike any he had played so far. Virtuosity (1995), a Sci-Fi extravaganza, was a fun film and, again, opened the door to even more American offers. L.A. Confidential (1997), Russell's third American film, brought him the US fame and attention that his fans have felt he deserved all along. Missing the Oscar nod this time around, he didn't seem deterred and signed to do his first film with The Walt Disney Company, Mystery, Alaska (1999). He achieved even more success and awards for his performances in Gladiator (2000), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and A Beautiful Mind (2001).- Actor
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Joaquin Phoenix was born Joaquin Rafael Bottom in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Arlyn (Dunetz) and John Bottom, and is the middle child in a brood of five. His parents, from the continental United States, were then serving as Children of God missionaries. His mother is from a Jewish family from New York, while his father, from California, is of mostly British Isles descent. As a youngster, Joaquin took his cues from older siblings River Phoenix and Rain Phoenix, changing his name to Leaf to match their earthier monikers. When the children were encouraged to develop their creative instincts, he followed their lead into acting. Younger sisters Liberty Phoenix and Summer Phoenix rounded out the talented troupe.
The family moved often, traveling through Central and South America (and adopting the surname "Phoenix" to celebrate their new beginnings) but, by the time Joaquin was age 6, they had more or less settled in the Los Angeles area. Arlyn found work as a secretary at NBC, and John turned his talents to landscaping. They eventually found an agent who was willing to represent all five children, and the younger generation dove into television work. Commercials for meat, milk, and junk food were off-limits (the kids were all raised as strict vegans), but they managed to find plenty of work pushing other products. Joaquin's first real acting gig was a guest appearance on River's sitcom, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1982).
He worked with his brother again on the afterschool special Backwards: The Riddle of Dyslexia (1984), then struck out on his own in other made-for-TV productions. He made his big-screen debut as the youngest crew member in the interstellar romp SpaceCamp (1986), then won his first starring turn in the Cold War-era drama Russkies (1987). In the late '80s, the Phoenix clan decided to pull up stakes and relocate again--this time to Florida. River's film career had enough momentum to sustain the move, but Joaquin wasn't sure what lay in store for him in the Sunshine State. As it happened, Universal Pictures had just opened a new studio in the area and he was cast almost immediately as an angst-ridden adolescent in Parenthood (1989). His performance was very well-received, but Joaquin decided to withdraw from acting for a while--he was frustrated with the dearth of interesting roles for actors his age, and he wanted to see more of the world.
His parents were in the process of separating, so he struck out for Mexico with his father. Joaquin returned to the public eye three years later under tragic circumstances. On October 31, 1993, he was at The Viper Room (a Los Angeles nightclub partly-owned by Johnny Depp) when his brother River collapsed from a drug overdose and later died. Joaquin made the call to 911, which was rebroadcast on radio and television the world over. Months later, at the insistence of friends and colleagues, Joaquin began reading through scripts again, but he was reluctant to re-enter the acting life until he found just the right part. He finally signed up to work with Gus Van Sant (who had directed River in My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)) to star as Nicole Kidman's obsessive devotee in To Die For (1995). The performance made Joaquin (who had dropped Leaf and reverted to his birth name) a critics' darling in his own right.
His follow-up turn in Inventing the Abbotts (1997) scored more critical kudos and, perhaps more importantly, introduced him to his one-time fiancée Liv Tyler. (The pair dated for almost three years.) He returned to the big screen later that year with a supporting role in Oliver Stone's U Turn (1997), then played a locked-up drug scapegoat in Return to Paradise (1998). He and "Paradise" co-star Vince Vaughn re-teamed almost immediately for the small-town murder caper Clay Pigeons (1998), which Joaquin followed with a turn as a porn store clerk in 8MM (1999). The film that confirmed Phoenix as a star was the historical epic Gladiator (2000). The Roman epic cast him as the selfish, paranoid young emperor Commodus opposite Russell Crowe's swarthy hero. Determined to make his character as real as possible, Phoenix gained weight and cultivated a pasty complexion during the shoot. He received international attention and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for that role.
Later that year, he appeared in two indies, playing a dock worker in The Yards (2000) (which he counts among his favorite experiences--and one of the only films of his that he can sit through) and the priest in charge of the Marquis de Sade's asylum in Quills (2000). He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor as the legendary musician Johnny Cash in the biography Walk the Line (2005). He also recorded an album, the film's soundtrack, for which he received the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Born in London, England, Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is the second child of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the U.K., and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His maternal grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema and head of the famous Ealing Studios. His older sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, is a documentarian. His father was of Northern Irish and English descent, and his mother was Jewish (from a family from Latvia and Poland). Daniel was educated at Sevenoaks School in Kent, which he despised, and the more progressive Bedales in Petersfield, which he adored. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic School. Daniel made his film debut in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), but then acted on stage with the Bristol Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Companies and did not appear on screen again until 1982, when he landed his first adult role, a bit part in Gandhi (1982). He also appeared on British television that year in Frost in May (1982) and How Many Miles to Babylon? (1982). Notable theatrical performances include Another Country (1982-83), Dracula (1984) and The Futurists (1986).
His first major supporting role in a feature film was in The Bounty (1984), quickly followed by My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A Room with a View (1985). The latter two films opened in New York on the same day, offering audiences and critics evidence of his remarkable range and establishing him as a major talent. The New York Film Critics named him Best Supporting Actor for those performances. In 1986, he appeared on stage in Richard Eyre's "The Futurists" and on television in Eyre's production of The Insurance Man (1986). He also had a small role in a British/French film, Nanou (1986). In 1987, he assumed leading-man status in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), followed by a comedic role in the unsuccessful Stars and Bars (1988). His brilliant performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (1989) won him numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor.
He returned to the stage to work again with Eyre, as Hamlet at the National Theater, but was forced to leave the production close to the end of its run because of exhaustion, and has not appeared on stage since. He took a hiatus from film as well until 1992, when he starred in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), a film that met with mixed reviews but was a great success at the box office. He worked with American director Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence (1993), based on Edith Wharton's novel. Subsequently, he teamed again with Jim Sheridan to star in In the Name of the Father (1993), a critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination. His next project was in the role of John Proctor in father-in-law Arthur Miller's play The Crucible (1996), directed by Nicholas Hytner. He worked with Scorsese again to star in Gangs of New York (2002), another critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Day-Lewis's wife, Rebecca Miller, offered him the lead role in her film The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), in which he played a dying man with regrets over how his wife had evolved and over how he had brought up his teenage daughter. During filming, he arranged to live separate from his wife to achieve the "isolation" needed to focus on his own character's reality. The film received mixed reviews. In 2007, he starred in director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!", titled There Will Be Blood (2007). Day-Lewis received the Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, and a variety of film critics' circle awards for the role. In 2009, Day-Lewis starred in Rob Marshall's musical adaptation Nine (2009) as film director Guido Contini. He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.- Actor
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American character actor and playwright Wallace Shawn has one of those fun, delightfully mischievously gnomish faces made for entertaining. Though he got out of the acting starting gate rather late, he quickly excelled film and TV while managing to turn himself into comedy egghead or loser types. Woody Allen's slightly threatened character in the movie Manhattan (1979) amusingly describes Wallace's benign gent as "a homunculus", which may be a pretty fair description of this predominantly bald, wan, pucker-mouthed, butterball-framed, slightly lisping gent. Shawn made his movie debut at age 36 in Allen's heralded classic in a brief but telling scene as Diane Keaton's ex-husband.
The 5'2" Jewish actor was born Wallace Michael Shawn into privilege on November 12, 1943 in New York City, as the son of Cecille (Lyon) (1906-2005), a journalist, and William Shawn (1907-1992), renowned and long-time editor of The New Yorker. His brother, Allen Shawn, went on to become a composer. Wallace was educated at both Harvard University, where he studied history, and Magdalen College, Oxford. Wallace initially taught English in India on a Fulbright scholarship, and then English, Latin and drama back in New York. However, a keen interest in writing and acting soon compelled him to leave his cushy position and pursue a stage career as both playwright and actor.
During his distinguished career, Wallace churned out several plays. "Our Late Night", the first of his works to be performed, was awarded an off-Broadway Obie in 1975. This was followed by "A Thought in Three Parts" (1976);, "The Mandrake" (1977) (which he translated from the original Italian and made his acting debut), "Marie and Bruce" (1979), "Aunt Dan and Lemon" (1985) and "The Fever," for which he received his second Obie for "Best New Play" during the 1990-91 season.
A popular supporting player of comedy and the occasional drama, Shawn's assorted kooks, creeps, brainiacs and schmucks possessed both endearing and unappetizing qualities. He earned his best early notices partnered with theatre director/actor Andre Gregory in the unique Louis Malle-directed film My Dinner with Andre (1981). Shawn co-wrote the improvisatory, humanistic piece with brother Allan as the composer. Shawn and Gregory would collaborate again for Malle in another superb, original-concept film Vanya on 42nd Street (1994).
Among Shawn's offbeat films have been Bruce Paltrow's A Little Sex (1982); James Ivory's The Bostonians (1984); Stephen Frears' Prick Up Your Ears (1987); Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987); Alan Rudolph's The Moderns (1988) and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994); and Paul Bartel's Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989). He also appeared in several other Woody Allen offerings including Radio Days (1987), Shadows and Fog (1991), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), Melinda and Melinda (2004) and the title role in Rifkin's Festival (2020).
Since the 1990s, he has lent his vocal talents to a considerable number of animated pictures including A Goofy Movie (1995), Toy Story (1995) (and its sequels), The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story (1998), The Incredibles (2004), Chicken Little (2005), Happily N'Ever After (2006), Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010) and Animal Crackers (2017). TV voices have included The Pink Panther (1993), The Lionhearts (1998), Family Guy (1999), Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness (2011), The Stinky & Dirty Show (2015) and The Bug Diaries (2019).
Millennium films graced with Shawn's participation include Southland Tales (2006), Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008), Jack and the Beanstalk (2009), The Speed of Thought (2011) and Vamps (2012). He co-starred as Halvard Solness and wrote the screen adaptation for Ibsen's classic play A Master Builder (2013) co-starring Julie Hagerty, and went on to appear in Don Peyote (2014), Maggie's Plan (2015), Robo-Dog (2015), Drawing Home (2016), Another Kind of Wedding (2017), Book Club (2018) and Marriage Story (2019).
Over the decades, Shawn has scurried about effortlessly with a number of television guest appearances including "Taxi," "Homicide: Life on the Streets," "Ally McBeal," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Sex and the City," "Desperate Housewives," "The Daily Show," "The 7D," "Life in Pieces," "The Good Fight," "Mr. Robot" and "Search Party. He has also drummed up a few recurring roles for himself in the process, including The Cosby Show (1984), Murphy Brown (1988), Clueless (1996) (based on the hit film Clueless (1995), revisiting his teacher role), Murphy Brown (1988), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), Crossing Jordan (2001), The L Word (2004), Gossip Girl (2007), The Good Wife (2009), Mozart in the Jungle (2014), and, more recently, as Dr. Sturgis in the comedy Young Sheldon (2017).- Actor
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Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born Richard Henry Sellers to a well-off acting family in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the son of Agnes Doreen "Peg" (Marks) and William "Bill" Sellers. His parents worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. His father was Protestant and his mother was Jewish (of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi background). His parents' first child had died at birth, so Sellers was spoiled during his early years. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force and served during World War II. After the war he met Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, who would become his future workmates.
After the war, he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music (he played the drums) and impressions. Then, all of a sudden, he burst into prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on the BBC radio program "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), and then making his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its fullest. In 1962, Sellers was cast in the role of Clare Quilty in the Stanley Kubrick version of the film Lolita (1962) in which his performance as a mentally unbalanced TV writer with multiple personalities landed him another part in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) in which he played three roles which showed off his comic talent in play-acting in three different accents; British, American, and German.
The year 1964 represented a peak in his career with four films in release, all of them well-received by critics and the public alike: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), for which he was Oscar nominated, The Pink Panther (1963), in which he played his signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau for the first time, its almost accidental sequel, A Shot in the Dark (1964), and The World of Henry Orient (1964). Sellers was on top of the world, but on the evening of April 5, 1964, he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack after inhaling several amyl nitrites (also called 'poppers'; an aphrodisiac-halogen combination) while engaged in a sexual act with his second wife Britt Ekland. He had been working on Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). In a move Wilder later regretted, he replaced Sellers with Ray Walston rather than hold up production. By October 1964, Sellers made a full recovery and was working again.
The mid-1960s were noted for the popularity of all things British, from the Beatles music (who were presented with their Grammy for Best New Artist by Sellers) to the James Bond films, and the world turned to Sellers for comedy. What's New Pussycat (1965) was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity was making Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. He turned down an offer from United Artists for the title role in Inspector Clouseau (1968), but was angry when the production went ahead with Alan Arkin in his place. His difficult reputation and increasingly erratic behavior, combined with several less successful films, took a toll on his standing. By 1970, he had fallen out of favor. He spent the early years of the new decade appearing in such lackluster B films as Where Does It Hurt? (1972) and turning up more frequently on television as a guest on The Dean Martin Show (1965) and a Glen Campbell TV special.
In 1974, Inspector Clouseau came to Sellers rescue when Sir Lew Grade expressed an interest in a TV series based on the character. Clouseau's creator, writer-director Blake Edwards, whose career had also seen better days, convinced Grade to bankroll a feature film instead, and The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) was a major hit release during the summer of Jaws (1975) and restored both men to prominence. Sellers would play Clouseau in two more successful sequels, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and Sellers would use his newly rediscovered clout to realize his dream of playing Chauncey Gardiner in a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There". Sellers had read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years for the film to reach the screen. Being There (1979) earned Sellers his second Oscar nomination, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
Sellers struggled with depression and mental insecurities throughout his life. An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behavior on and off the set and stage became more erratic and compulsive, and he continued to frequently clash with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his continuing alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. He never fully recovered from his 1964 heart attack because he refused to take traditional heart medication and instead consulted with 'psychic healers'. As a result, his heart condition continued to slowly deteriorate over the next 16 years. On March 20, 1977, Sellers barely survived another major heart attack and had a pacemaker surgically implanted to regulate his heartbeat which caused him further mental and physical discomfort. However, he refused to slow down his work schedule or consider heart surgery which might have extended his life by several years.
On July 25, 1980, Sellers was scheduled to have a reunion dinner in London with his Goon Show partners, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. However, at around 12 noon on July 22, Sellers collapsed from a massive heart attack in his Dorchester Hotel room and fell into a coma. He died in a London hospital just after midnight on July 24, 1980 at age 54. He was survived by his fourth wife, Lynne Frederick, and three children: Michael, Sarah and Victoria. At the time of his death, he was scheduled to undergo an angiography in Los Angeles on July 30 to see if he was eligible for heart surgery.
His last movie, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop. Director Blake Edwards' attempt at reviving the Pink Panther series after Sellers' death resulted in two panned 1980s comedies, the first of which, Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), deals with Inspector Clouseau's disappearance and was made from material cut from previous Pink Panther films and includes interviews with the original casts playing their original characters.- Actress
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Adrienne Jo Barbeau is an American actress and author best known for her roles on the sitcom Maude (1972) and in horror films, especially those directed by John Carpenter, with whom she was once married. She was born on June 11, 1945 in Sacramento, California, the daughter of an executive for Mobil Oil Company. Early on in her career, she starred in Someone's Watching Me! (1978), The Fog (1980) and Escape from New York (1981), all John Carpenter-related projects. She has collaborated with George A. Romero on occasion, such as Stephen King's anthology Creepshow (1982) and Two Evil Eyes (1990). Her work with other horror directors includes Wes Craven's superhero monster movie Swamp Thing (1982). During the 1990s, she became best known for providing the voice of Catwoman on Batman: The Animated Series (1992). She was the original tough-girl Betty Rizzo in the first Broadway production of "Grease". She is the author of the memoir "There Are Worse Things I Can Do" (2006), and the comedy romance vampire novels "Vampyres of Hollywood" (2008), "Love Bites" (2010) and "Make Me Dead" (2015).- Actress
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Jamie Lee Curtis was born on November 22, 1958 in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of legendary actors Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. She got her big break at acting in 1978 when she won the role of Laurie Strode in Halloween (1978). After that, she became famous for roles in movies like Trading Places (1983), Perfect (1985) and A Fish Called Wanda (1988). She starred in one of the biggest action films ever, True Lies (1994), for which she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance. Curtis also appeared on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), and starred in Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981) as the title role. Her first starring role was opposite Richard Lewis on the ABC situation comedy Anything But Love (1989). In 1998, she starred in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) in which she reprised her role that made her famous back in 1978.
Jamie Lee served as an honorary chairperson for the Building Resilience for Young Children Dealing with Trauma program held at the Shakespeare Theatre - Harman Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C. She was an inspiration for the youth that were celebrated. Curtis was also given an award from US Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman for her work on behalf of children through her charities and children's books.- Actress
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Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and psychology, at the University of the Pacific until she was "discovered" while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it. This led to a screen test at MGM and a starring role in The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947). MGM was looking for a young naive country girl and Janet filled the bill perfectly. She would play the young ingénue in a number of films and work with such stars as Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Orson Welles and Judy Garland. She appeared in a number of successful films, including Little Women (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Houdini (1953) and The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), among others. Janet would appear in a variety of films, from comedies to westerns to musicals to dramas. Of her more than 50 movies, she would be remembered for the 45 minutes that she was on the screen in the small-budget thriller Psycho (1960). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this 1960 classic would include the shower scene that would become a film landmark. Even though her character is killed off early in the picture, she would be nominated for an Academy Award and receive a Golden Globe. Her next film would be The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which she starred with Frank Sinatra. For the rest of the decade, her appearances in films would be rare, but she worked with Paul Newman in Harper (1966). In the 1970s she appeared on the small screen in a number of made-for-TV movies. In 1980, she appeared alongside her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog (1980), and later, in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). Janet Leigh died at age 77 in her home in Beverly Hills, California on October 3, 2004.- Actor
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Academy Award-winning actor John Houseman's main contribution to American culture was not his own performances on film but rather, his role as a midwife to one of the greatest actor-directors-cinematic geniuses his adopted country ever produced (Orson Welles) and as a midwife to a whole generation of actors as head of the drama division of the Juilliard School.
Houseman was born Jacques Haussmann on September 22, 1902 in Bucharest, Romania, to May (Davies) and Georges Haussmann, who ran a grain business. His father was from an Alsatian Jewish family, and his mother, who was British, was of Welsh and Irish descent. John was raised in England, where he was educated. He emigrated to America in 1925, establishing himself in New York City, where he directed "Four Saints in Three Acts" for the theater in 1934. He founded the Mercury Theatre along with Orson Welles (whom he affectionately called "The Dog-Faced Boy"). Their most important success was a modern-dress version of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", in which the spectre of Hitler and Mussolini's Fascist states were evoked.
As a producer assigned to Unit 891 of the Federal Theater Project funded by the government's Works Progress Administration, he produced the legendary production "Cradle Will Rock", a musical about the tyranny of capitalism, with music by Marc Blitzstein, creative input from Welles, and starring leftists Howard Da Silva and Will Geer. The production was so controversial, it was banned before its debut, although the did manage to stage one performance. On Broadway, apart from the Mercury Theatre and the WPA, Houseman directed "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1939) and "Liberty Jones" and produced "Native Son" (1941). During World War II, Houseman went to work for the Office of War Information and was involved in broadcasting radio propaganda for the Voice of America. After the war, Houseman returned to directing and produced Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's version of Julius Caesar (1953).
He had produced his first film, Orson Welles' Too Much Johnson (1938), while with the Mercury Theatre. He was involved with the pre-production of Citizen Kane (1941) but fell out with Welles due to Welles' already legendary ego. He produced a score of major films and was involved in three television series before devoting his life to teaching. He helped establish the acting program at New York's famous Julliard School for the Arts, where he influenced a new generation of actors. Ironically, he had appeared in only one major movie, in a supporting role, before being tapped to replace James Mason in The Paper Chase (1973). He won an Academy Award for the role and began a 15-year career as a highly sought after supporting player.
John Houseman, who wrote three volumes of memoirs, "Run-Through" (1972), "Front and Center" (1979) and "Final Dress" (1983), died at age 86 on October 31, 1988 after making major contributions to the theater and film.- Actor
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Harry Anderson was born on 14 October 1952 in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Night Court (1984), It (1990) and Tales from the Crypt (1989). He was married to Elizabeth Morgan and Leslie Pollack. He died on 16 April 2018 in Asheville, North Carolina, USA.- Actor
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Gaining fame on TV first, he was born Timothy Lee Reid on December 19, 1944, in Norfolk and raised in Chesapeake, Virginia. Coming from a troubled, impoverished childhood, he straightened out his life enough to attend Norfolk State College (now University) and graduate with a business administration degree. Married to wife Rita, whom he met at college, the couple went on to have two children, Tim Reid II and Tori Reid, both involved in the entertainment field.
Tim worked for Du Pont Chemicals in Chicago for a period of time in the late 60s. His first taste of the limelight came around the turn of the 70s when he met an insurance agent named Tom Dreesen, and the two decided to form a comedy nightclub act called "Tim and Tom". At this juncture, Tim decided to focus completely on acting, took up drama classes, and worked as a comic. TV and commercial work started coming his way, finding regular placements on a number of variety series that starred Frankie Avalon, The 5th Dimension singers Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., and Richard Pryor in the late 70s.
Making early appearances on such TV shows as "That's My Mama," "Rhoda," "Fernwood Tonite," "Lou Grant," "What's Happening" and "Maude," Tim received his star-making break after nabbing the cool and very hip role of "Venus Flytrap" on TV's WKRP in Cincinnati (1978). It is this radio disc jockey character for which Tim is still best known. Other TV series came his way, including his regular teacher role in the Lynn Redgrave sitcom Teachers Only (1982) and as Lt. Marcel "Downtown" Brown on Simon & Simon (1981)
Now firmly established, Tim started taking more control over his career. He went on to front the series Frank's Place (1987) in which he also executive-produced, received an Emmy nomination, and co-starred with his second wife Daphne Reid before playing a criminology professor in the comedy Snoops (1989), which also co-starred Daphne as his wife, and the more popular Sister, Sister (1994), wherein he starred alongside Jackée Harry as an adopted dad of identical twins Tia Mowry and Tamera Mowry-Housley.
Tim and Daphne went to to co-founded their own production studio (New Millennium Studios), the first ever built in his native state of Virginia. The short-lived program Linc's (1998), starring both Tim and Daphne, was the first to come out of the studio. Over the years, Daphne has been a frequent partner to Tim both in front and behind the camera lens, as actress and co-producer. Together they appeared in the TV movie Alley Cats Strike (2000) and the films Troop 491: the Adventures of the Muddy Lions (2013) and By the Grace of Bob (2016).
Toning down his slick facade over the years, the handsome, mustachioed actor has dedicated himself to films and other projects that have raised social issues as well as increase black awareness. He directed and starred in a hip-hop update of the Pygmalion story with the comedy For Real (2003), which was made at his studio (Daphne was executive producer). With Tim in the "Henry Higgins" role, the film opened the fifth anniversary of the Hollywood Black Film Festival.
In addition to recurring roles on Treme (2010) and That '70s Show (1998) and guest appearances on such shows as "Touched by an Angel," "That's So Raven," "The Soul Man," "Limitless," "Grey's Anatomy" and "My, Myself and I," Tim has graced such films as Trade (2007), The Cost of Heaven (2010), Tri (2016) and 93 Days (2016).- Actor
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Jonathan Southworth Ritter was born in Burbank, California, on September 17, 1948. He was the son of legendary country singer/actor Tex Ritter (born Woodward Maurice Ritter) and his wife, actress Dorothy Fay (née Dorothy Fay Southworth). The couple married in 1941 and had their first child, Tom Ritter, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. John was destined to follow in his parents footsteps. He was enrolled at Hollywood High School where he was student body president.
After graduation from high school, he attended the University of Southern California where he majored in Psychology and minored in Architecture. His first appearance on TV was in 1966 as a contestant on The Dating Game (1965) where he won a vacation to Lake Havasu, Arizona. After making his very first cameo appearance, he was induced to join an acting class taught by Nina Foch. He changed his major to Theater Arts, graduating in 1971 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drama. He also studied acting with Stella Adler at the Harvey Lembeck Comedy Workshop. Between 1968 and 1969, he appeared in a series of stage plays in England, Scotland, Holland and in Germany.
His TV debut came playing a campus revolutionary on Dan August (1970) which starred Burt Reynolds and Norman Fell, who later starred with him on Three's Company (1976). Then he appeared as "Reverend Matthew Fordwick" on The Waltons (1972). He continued making more guest appearances on Medical Center (1969), M*A*S*H (1972), The Bob Newhart Show (1972), The Streets of San Francisco (1972), Kojak (1973), Rhoda (1974) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970). While working on The Waltons (1972), he received word that his legendary father had passed away, just a day after New Year's Day in 1974. The following year, in late 1975, ABC picked up the rights for a new series based on a British sitcom, Man About the House (1973). Ritter beat out 50 people, including a young Billy Crystal, to get a major role. The first pilot was trashed, and in order for it to be improved, Joyce DeWitt, an unknown actress, played the role of "Janet Wood", along with Susan Lanier as the dumb blonde, "Chrissy Snow". It did better than the first pilot, but the producers still needed a change and Suzanne Somers came to the show at the very last minute to play "Chrissy". The series, Three's Company (1976), was born. When it debuted as a mid-season replacement, it became a ratings hit. It focused mainly on his character, "Jack Tripper", a chef who pretended to be gay in order to share an apartment with two attractive ladies.
Before playing "Jack Tripper" on the small screen, he also made his box office debut in the movie Nickelodeon (1976). Two years later, he worked with his close friend, Jenny Sullivan, in Breakfast in Bed (1977), and the following year, played "Pres. Chet Roosevelt" in the movie Americathon (1979). Also in 1977, he and his brother emceed the Annual United Cerebral Palsy Telethon which he continued to support for over 15 years. He also became more popular with movies such as Hero at Large (1980) and They All Laughed (1981). In 1980, when Three's Company (1976) was sold into syndication, the show became a ratings phenomenon. At the height of Ritter's popularity, he won a Golden Globe in 1983 for Best Performance by an Actor after being nominated twice for Best TV Actor in a Musical-Comedy Series and, one year later, he won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor In a Comedy Series after being nominated twice. By its eighth season, the show began to drop in the ratings and was canceled in 1984. After cancellation, he starred in its spin-off, called Three's a Crowd (1984), also starring Mary Cadorette, but it lasted for only one season.
His first animated movie was that of a man turning into a dragon, whose job was to defeat "Ommendon" in The Flight of Dragons (1982). The following year, he came back to series television as "Detective Harry Hooperman" in the comedy/drama, Hooperman (1987) for which he was nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe in 1988 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He also won a People's Choice Award for this role. He continued doing more box-office films such as Skin Deep (1989), in which he played a womanizing, alcoholic writer whose life seemed to be falling apart at the seams. In the movies, Problem Child (1990), and Problem Child 2 (1991), he played the surrogate father of a rebellious little boy who wrought havoc on the family. He also worked on Noises Off... (1992) and Stay Tuned (1992) before returning to another TV sitcom called Hearts Afire (1992) that also starred Billy Bob Thornton. The show had well-written scripts but failed to reach a massive audience which led to its cancellation in 1995. While he was working on Hearts Afire (1992), he played "Ward Nelson" on North (1994). Then, he had the opportunity to work with Billy Bob Thornton, in the movie Sling Blade (1996), in which Ritter played the gay manager of a department store. He also provided the voice of "Clifford" in Clifford the Big Red Dog (2000). He was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award 4 times in a row, totaling seven Emmy nominations in his 35-year career. In 1999, he was also nominated for an Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series playing the role of "George Madison" on an episode of Ally McBeal (1997).
Soon afterwards, he landed his last television role in 8 Simple Rules (2002), based on the popular book. On this sitcom he played "Paul Hennessey", a loving, yet rational dad, who laid down the ground rules for his three children and dealt with such topics as curfews, sex, drugs, getting arrested, etc. The show was a ratings winner in its first season and won a People's Choice Award for Best New Comedy and also won for Favorite Comedy Series by the Family Awards. While working on "8 Simple Rules," he also starred in his second-to-last film, Manhood (2003). That same year, he felt ill while rehearsing on set, and was taken across the street to Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, where he was mistakenly treated for a heart attack. He died from an undiagnosed aortic dissection which is a tear in the wall of the aorta. He underwent surgery and died on September 11, 2003, just six days shy of his 55th birthday. In the years that he worked, John Ritter was a brilliant comedian and a passionate actor, who wanted to make everybody laugh. Shortly before his death, his eldest son, Jason Ritter, was cast in the role of "Kevin" in the highly-rated drama Joan of Arcadia (2003).- Actor
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Timothy James Curry was born on April 19, 1946 in Grappenhall, Cheshire, England. His mother, Maura Patricia (Langmead), was a school secretary, and his father, James Curry, was a Methodist Royal Navy chaplain. Curry studied Drama and English at Birmingham University, from which he graduated with Combined Honors. His first professional success was in the London production of "Hair", followed by more work in the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Glasgow Citizens Repertory Company, and the Royal Court Theatre where he created the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in "The Rocky Horror Show". He recreated the role in the Los Angeles and Broadway productions and starred in the screen version entitled The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Curry continued his career on the New York and London stages with starring roles in "Travesties", "Amadeus", "The Pirates of Penzance", "The Rivals", "Love for Love", "Dalliance", "The Threepenny Opera", "The Art of Success" and "My Favorite Year". He also starred in the United States tour of "Me and My Girl". He has received two Tony Award nominations for best actor and won the Royal Variety Club Award as "Stage Actor of the Year".
A composer and a singer, Tim Curry toured the United States and Europe with his own band and released four albums on A&M Records. In addition to an active movie and television career, he is a sought-after actor for CD-ROM productions. His distinctive voice can be heard on more than a dozen audio books, and in countless animated television series and videos. He lives in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
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Seth Green has starred in numerous films and television series including the Austin Powers trilogy, The Italian Job (2003), Without a Paddle (2004), Party Monster (2003), Can't Hardly Wait (1998), Old Dogs (2009) and dozens more, including starring roles in Sexy Evil Genius (2013), The Story of Luke (2012) and Yellowbird (2014). He's portrayed Christopher Guest in Netflix's National Lampoon origin film, A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018), and he starred opposite Katie Holmes and Michael Caine in Dear Dictator (2017). Green made his feature film directorial debut with Changeland (2019) starring Green, Breckin Meyer, Brenda Song, Macaulay Culkin, Clare Grant and Randy Orton. He is the co-creator/executive producer/primary voice talent and a writer/director on Robot Chicken (2001), 2010 & 2016 Emmy® Award-winner for Outstanding Short Format Animation Program. Green has voiced Chris Griffin on Family Guy (1999) since the series' inception. Green has been singled out for many Emmy voiceover nominations for Adult Swim's Robot Chicken. The show, the network's highest-rated original program, and their specials have won numerous Annie Awards for writing and producing, including one for Green for directing. In 2011, Green and his partners created Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, a full-service animation studio with many other projects including: Crackle's SuperMansion, Adult Swim's Hot Streets (2016) and WWE's Camp WWE (2016). In December 2017, the company signed a two-year first-look deal with 20th Century Fox Film to develop animated and live-action projects. Green has always been fascinated by space travel and has done a PSA for NASA and designed the CASIS patch for ISS U.S. National Laboratory missions for research to benefit life on Earth.- Actress
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Annette O'Toole grew up in the Houston dance studio run by her mother. She made her television debut at the age of two, as a kid on The Don Mahoney Kiddie Trooper Show. When she was 13, with ten years of singing and dancing lessons behind her, she and her mother went to L.A. for a year to see if she could have a career in show business. Within two months, she got her first professional job: dancing with Danny Kaye on The Danny Kaye Show. "I've used my singing and dancing training in so many ways," she says. "The discipline you get from that is wonderful for an actor."
O'Toole's first acting role was in My Three Sons, followed by appearances in Gunsmoke, The Partridge Family, The Mod Squad, and Hawaii Five-O. Over the decades she has appeared in more than 40 series (among them Law & Order, Nash Bridges, and The Outer Limits), mini-series (Lonesome Dove, Dead by Sunset, Jewels) and TV movies, most notably playing (and singing as) Tammy Wynette in Stand By Your Man and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy in The Kennedys of Massachusetts, for which she received an Emmy nomination.
Playing Beverly Marsh in Stephen King's It is one of her fondest memories. (O'Toole judges her favorites based on the filming experience.) In this century, she played a bounty hunter on The Huntress, Clark Kent's adoptive mom on Smallville (where she and John Glover became lifelong friends) and Jim Carrey's mom on Kidding. She is currently a regular on the Netflix series Virgin River, renewed for a fifth season.
Her film career began in 1975, playing a Young American Miss contestant in Michael Ritchie's Smile. She has since appeared in such iconic films as 48 Hrs., Cat People, and Superman III as Lana Lang. (She has played Superman's adoptive mother and, here, his girlfriend.) Her favorite - out of all the TV and films - is the 1987 movie Cross My Heart, in which she co-starred with Martin Short as a couple on their third date, both of whom are trying to figure out how to share their biggest secrets.
For all her success in film and television, O'Toole's deepest love is the theater. When her six-year run on Smallville ended, she decided to focus on theater, which she has been doing for the past decade. She went to New York and her first audition led to her being cast in The Sea Gull. She has appeared in several off-Broadway productions, among them Adam Rapp's Kindness, Tracy Letts' Man from Nebraska, and Tennessee Williams' A Lovely Sunday For Creve Couer. (Performing on Broadway is still her goal.) She has also appeared in many regional productions, including Wendy Wasserstein's Third, Regina Taylor's Magnolia, and Jane Anderson's The Quality of Life.
Her most rewarding theatrical role was in Southern Comfort at the Public Theater in 2016. She played transgender male Robert Eads, for which she received the Lucille Lortel Award. ("Today they'd hire a transgender male," she says. "As they should.")
O'Toole's most fortuitous casting was co-starring with Michael McKean in the Lifetime movie Final Justice. Having known each other casually, they became good friends as they filmed in Portland. Back in L.A., their first date was the 1997 UCLA concert with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Van Morrison. Soon after that they were married, each bringing along two children from previous marriages. Prolific songwriters - they co-wrote the Academy Award-nominated song "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" for the Christopher Guest film A Mighty Wind, which McKean starred in - they took their repertoire on the road in 2005, performing all around Los Angeles and at Feinstein's at the Regency in New York. They are currently working on a new musical called Harold and Lillian, based on a documentary of the same name.
"I'm really lucky because I found something that I love early on," O'Toole says, "and I love it even more now than I did then."- Actor
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Jared Padalecki was born in San Antonio, Texas, to Sherri (Kammer), a teacher of English, and Gerald Padalecki, a tax accountant. He is of Polish (father) and German, English, Scottish, and French (mother) descent. Jared started to take acting lessons when he was 12. Then, he won the "Claim to Fame" Contest in 1999 and got to appear on the Teen Choice awards. Jared lived in San Antonio, Texas and attended James Madison High School. He was named a candidate for the year 2000 Presidential Scholars Program. After graduating in the year 2000, he moved to Los Angeles, California to pursue an acting career. He played "Dean Forester" on Gilmore Girls (2000) on the WB starting in 2000 and ending in 2005. From 2005 to 2020, he portrayed "Sam Winchester" on the CW's Supernatural (2005). He also has several feature film credits.- Actor
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Jensen Ross Ackles, better known as simply Jensen Ackles, was born on March 1, 1978, in Dallas, Texas, to Donna Joan (Shaffer) and actor Alan Ackles. He has English, German, and Scottish ancestry. Jensen grew up in Richardson, Texas, together with his older brother, Joshua, and a younger sister, Mackenzie. Jensen graduated from Dartmouth Elementary School in 1990, he graduated from Apollo Junior High School in 1993, and LV Berkner High School in 1996.
Jensen is a sports junkie. He loves football, lacrosse, baseball and basketball. He even played on the baseball and lacrosse teams in high school. The 6' 1" actor first started modeling when he was just 2 years old. When he turned 4, he started appearing in TV commercials for Nabisco, RadioShack and Wal-Mart. He caught the acting bug because he was mostly influenced by his father, who was an actor in Dallas. He used to watch his father study scripts, and that taught him a few things about the industry. During his later years in high school, he started taking theater classes, where he claimed he was the only "jock" in that department. When he was just a sophomore, a friend of Jensen had asked him to attend a local acting seminar. Two guys, Craig Wargo, and an agent, 'Michael Einfeld', were interested in Jensen's talent and wanted him to go to Los Angeles with them.
Jensen had to say no to the offer and admitted at one point, he thought they would forget about him but, eventually, when he went to Los Angeles, he still managed to get help from them. Prior to that, Jensen actually planned to study sports medicine at Texas Tech University and become a physical therapist, before he decided to move to Los Angeles to give acting a try. In 1996, he managed to secure guest roles on several TV shows, which included Wishbone (1995), Mr. Rhodes (1996) and Sweet Valley High (1994). Jensen's big break came when he was cast in the NBC soap opera, Days of Our Lives (1965), as Eric Brady in 1997. He won a Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Male Newcomer in 1998, and was nominated three times in 1998, 1999, and 2000 for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series for his work on Days of Our Lives (1965). After spending about three years on a soap set, he left Days of Our Lives (1965) and went on to appear in the mini-series Blonde (2001), which was about the life of Marilyn Monroe, playing Eddie G. He also auditioned for the role of Clark Kent on Smallville (2001), but lost the part to Tom Welling, instead.
Not giving up hope, he went for a few auditions and managed to secure a guest role on the popular James Cameron TV series, Dark Angel (2000), as serial killer Ben/X5-493, the brother of main character Max/X5-452, who was played by Jessica Alba. His character died in the episode, but Jensen eventually returned to the show as a regular in the second season as Ben's clone, Alec/X5-494 and continued on until the show's cancellation in 2002. In 2003, he joined the cast of Dawson's Creek (1998), playing the role of C.J., Jen Lindley's lover. He also filmed episodes of the TV series, Still Life (2003), playing the role of Max Morgan, not knowing that the series was actually dropped. He also had a small role in the short film, The Plight of Clownana (2004), playing the role of Jensen. That same year, he was offered the part of Eliza Dushku's love interest on the second season of Tru Calling (2003). Jensen, however, turned down the role which was later offered to another actor, Eric Christian Olsen. He was subsequently cast on Smallville (2001), as Assistant football coach Jason Teague, the new love interest of Lana Lang. In 2005, Jensen managed to earn a lead role in the movie, Devour (2005), playing the role of Jake Gray. Jensen also earned the opportunity to work his father, actor Alan Ackles, who happened to play his character's father, Paul Kilton. The movie, however, received mixed reviews from the public.
That same year, Jensen joined the cast of the CW series, Supernatural (2005), where he plays the role of Dean Winchester. Dean and his brother Sam, who is played by Jared Padalecki, are brothers who drive throughout the United States hunting paranormal predators, sometimes with their father, John Winchester, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It was reported that the creator of the show, Eric Kripke, mentioned that the show will last for a maximum of five seasons. In 2006, Jensen took on a role in the Independently filmed comedy/drama movie, Ten Inch Hero (2007), which explores the theme of honesty and the flaw of judging by appearances. In 2007 the film began a limited run at number of film festivals including the Newport Beach Film Festival, Phoenix Film Festival and the Santa Cruz Film Festival but never made it into major mainstream theatrical release. In the Spring of 2008 Ten Inch Hero was released onto DVD exclusively through Blockbuster. Jensen however, received high praise for his work as Priestly, who one of the movie's more quirky characters.
From June 5-10 in 2007 Jensen had his professional stage debut as Lt. Daniel Kaffee in "A Few Good Men" at Casa Manana Theatre in Fort Worth, Texas, working along side Lou Diamond Phillips. This proved to be another successful acting venture for Jensen, as critics were impressed with his work in this role. During his free time, Jensen enjoys golfing, horseback riding, scuba diving and photography. He is also a big fan of country music. His favorite musician is Garth Brooks. He even sang back-up vocals on good friend Steve Carlson's albums "Spot in the Corner" and "Rollin' On." In the summer of 2008 Jensen traveled to Kittaning, PA to film the horror/thriller movie, My Bloody Valentine (2009), which was filmed in the cutting edge Real D technology, Jensen played the lead role of Tom Hanniger and starred alongside Jaime King and Kerr Smith.
Jensen splits his time between Vancouver, British Columbia where he films Supernatural (2005) and his home in Austin, Texas.- Actor
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Jim Beaver is an American character actor, best known for his leading roles on the TV series Deadwood (2004) and Supernatural (2005). Born in Laramie, Wyoming a minister's son, he was raised in and around Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Following high school and a year of college, he joined the Marines and served as a radioman with the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam. He attended Oklahoma Christian College (now Oklahoma Christian University), Edmond, OK, where he first became interested in acting as a career. After one year, he transferred to Central State University (now the University of Central Oklahoma), Edmond, OK, and while a student made his professional debut in a production of "Rain" at the Oklahoma Theatre Center in 1972. He obtained a degree in theatre and returned to the Dallas area where he worked for five seasons with the Dallas Shakespeare Festival. He had written several plays in college and afterward (as well as a biography of actor John Garfield), and in 1979 he was commissioned for the first of three plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. He also began to make appearances in bit roles in films and television shows shot in the Dallas area, including Semi-Tough (1977) and Dallas (1978). Moving to New York in 1979, he worked in stock and in dinner theatre tours, and also maintained a side career as a critic, columnist, and feature writer for Films in Review, the magazine of the National Board of Review. An assignment for an article on TV Superman George Reeves led him to Los Angeles. During his research there, his play "Verdigris" was produced to solid reviews at Theatre West in Hollywood, and he was signed as a writer by Sam Adams, partner in the prestigious Triad Artists agency. He began a successful period as a television writer, penning episodes for shows such as Vietnam War Story (1987), Tour of Duty (1987), and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985), and was nominated for a CableAce Award for an episode of the latter. He had continued to act on stage and in small film and TV roles, and in 1988 he landed a substantial supporting role as Bruce Willis's best friend, an alcoholic Vietnam veteran, in Norman Jewison's production In Country (1989). He gave up television writing and concentrated on acting. Slowly his roles grew larger (and more varied). He was Mark Harmon's chain-smoking detective partner Earl Gaddis on Reasonable Doubts (1991) and Edward Asner's dim-witted mechanic assistant Leland on Thunder Alley (1994). He was frequently cast in Westerns (Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Bad Girls (1994), among many others) or as detectives, sheriffs, or police officers (Sister Act (1992), Sliver (1993), Joy Ride (2001)). After two seasons on 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996) as French Stewart's sullen bar-owner boss Happy Doug, Beaver landed his most prominent and critically acclaimed role, that of Ellsworth, the gruff but decent and beloved prospector in the landmark Western series Deadwood (2004). Nominated along with other cast members for a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award, he found his career in high gear following that series. From it he moved to the popular father-figure role of demon hunter Bobby Singer on Supernatural (2005), a part that brought him a worldwide fan base and a secondary career making personal appearances. He was married to and had a daughter with Cecily Adams, the actress-casting director daughter of Get Smart (1965)'s Don Adams. Following her death from lung cancer in 2004, he wrote a best-selling memoir, "Life's That Way." He has continued to write plays and, between acting jobs, to work on the George Reeves project, now planned as a book. He served as biographical consultant on Reeves for the semi-biopic Hollywoodland (2006).- Actor
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Misha Collins is an actor, director, producer, writer, and activist dedicated to inspiring cultural and civic engagement through works that "game-ify" philanthropy, inspire creativity, and promote social good.
For 12 years, Collins co-starred in Supernatural (2005), the longest running American science fiction television show in history. In addition to Supernatural (2005), his work is featured in film and television programs including Girl, Interrupted (1999), ER (1994), 24 (2001), and more. He co-produced the award-winning documentary feature Loot (2008) and created TSA America: Yeah, But Is It Ticking? (2014), TSA America: Suspicious Bulges (2014) and TSA America: Just Relax (2013), a series of shorts providing a biting satirical look at American governmental security practices, as well as the web series Cooking Fast & Fresh. In 2021, he starred in - and co-executive produced - Aaron Mahnke's #1 fiction podcast, Bridgewater (2021).
Misha Collins was born Misha Dmitri Tippens Krushnic in Boston, Massachusetts, to Rebecca Tippens and Richard Edward Krushnic. He is of Hungarian-Russian Jewish, German, English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. Before turning to acting, his diverse background included work as a carpenter and woodworker, a White House internship during the Clinton Administration, and work at National Public Radio headquarters. Collins is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where he earned a B.A. with honors in Social Theory.
A vocal activist for progressive causes, Collins engages with his over 11 million aggregate social media followers to help amplify social issues, generate political activism, and motivate social good.
Collins is also the creator of GISH, the Guinness World Record-holding global scavenger hunt which uses creativity to "game-ify" goodwill and generate social change. GISH is played in over 100 countries, with tens of thousands of annual participants. Among other successes, in the past seven years GISH participants have collaborated to save endangered rain forests, support Syrian refugees, and assist at-risk youth in Africa.
As a founder of the 100% volunteer-run non-profit Random Acts, Collins has inspired supporters to collaboratively engage in acts of social good such as building a school in Nicaragua and a children's center in Haiti, as well as facilitating thousands of random acts of kindness worldwide.
Misha and his wife Victoria co-authored the best-selling cookbook "The Adventurous Eater's Club" (Harper Collins). Collins is a published poet whose works can be found in literary journals including "The Columbia Poetry Review" and "The California Quarterly". He is the author of the New York Times Best selling poetry book, "Some Things I Still Can't Tell You" (Andrews McMeel), which hit shelves October 2021.
Misha is founder and one of three artists who comprise The Art Department, an artist's collaborative which creates large-scale public art installations in unexpected places. The Art Department has been heralded for their work in Southern California by "Time Out-LA", "The LA Weekly", "LA Times" and ABC National News.
Collins has been featured on the covers of magazines including "Entertainment Weekly" and "TV Guide". He has two children, West and Maison. Misha is a certified lifeguard, EMT and motorcyclist. In his spare time, Misha can be found baking, woodworking, meditating, and making fun of corrupt politicians.- Actor
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Mark Andreas Sheppard was born on May 30, 1964 in London, England. He is an actor director and producer, known for Supernatural (2005), Battlestar Galactica (2004), Firefly (2002), Leverage (2008), Doctor Who (2005) In the Name of the Father (1993) and many others. He has been married to Sarah Louise Fudge since November 9, 2015.- Actor
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Actor and musician Bruce Willis is well known for playing wisecracking or hard-edged characters, often in spectacular action films. Collectively, he has appeared in films that have grossed in excess of $2.5 billion USD.
Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19, 1955, in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany, to a German mother, Marlene Kassel, and an American father, David Andrew Willis (from Carneys Point, New Jersey), who were then living on a United States military base. His family moved to the U.S. shortly after he was born, and he was raised in Penns Grove, New Jersey, where his mother worked at a bank and his father was a welder and factory worker. Willis picked up an interest for the dramatic arts in high school, and was allegedly "discovered" whilst working in a café in New York City and then appeared in a couple of off-Broadway productions. While bartending one night, he was seen by a casting director who liked his personality and needed a bartender for a small movie role.
After countless auditions, Willis contributed minor film appearances, usually uncredited, before landing the role of private eye "David Addison" alongside sultry Cybill Shepherd in the hit romantic comedy television series Moonlighting (1985). His sarcastic and wisecracking P.I. is seen by some as a dry run for the role of hard-boiled NYC detective "John McClane" in the monster hit Die Hard (1988), in which Willis' character single-handedly battled a gang of ruthless international thieves in a Los Angeles skyscraper. He reprised the role of McClane in the sequel, Die Hard 2 (1990), set at a snowbound Washington's Dulles International Airport as a group of renegade Special Forces soldiers seek to repatriate a corrupt South American general. Excellent box office returns demanded a further sequel Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), this time co-starring Samuel L. Jackson as a cynical Harlem shop owner unwittingly thrust into assisting McClane during a terrorist bombing campaign on a sweltering day in New York.
Willis found time out from all the action mayhem to provide the voice of "Mikey" the baby in the very popular family comedies Look Who's Talking (1989), and its sequel Look Who's Talking Too (1990) also starring John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. Over the next decade, Willis starred in some very successful films, some very offbeat films and some unfortunate box office flops. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and Hudson Hawk (1991) were both large scale financial disasters that were savaged by the critics, and both are arguably best left off the CVs of all the actors involved, however Willis was still popular with movie audiences and selling plenty of theatre tickets with the hyper-violent The Last Boy Scout (1991), the darkly humored Death Becomes Her (1992) and the mediocre police thriller Striking Distance (1993).
During the 1990s, Willis also appeared in several independent and low budget productions that won him new fans and praise from the critics for his intriguing performances working with some very diverse film directors. He appeared in the oddly appealing North (1994), as a cagey prizefighter in the Quentin Tarantino directed mega-hit Pulp Fiction (1994), the Terry Gilliam directed apocalyptic thriller 12 Monkeys (1995), the Luc Besson directed sci-fi opus The Fifth Element (1997) and the M. Night Shyamalan directed spine-tingling epic The Sixth Sense (1999).
Willis next starred in the gangster comedy The Whole Nine Yards (2000), worked again with "hot" director M. Night Shyamalan in the less than gripping Unbreakable (2000), and in two military dramas, Hart's War (2002) and Tears of the Sun (2003) that both failed to really fire with movie audiences or critics alike. However, Willis bounced back into the spotlight in the critically applauded Frank Miller graphic novel turned movie Sin City (2005), the voice of "RJ" the scheming raccoon in the animated hit Over the Hedge (2006) and "Die Hard" fans rejoiced to see "John McClane" return to the big screen in the high tech Live Free or Die Hard (2007) aka "Die Hard 4.0".
Willis was married to actress Demi Moore for approximately thirteen years and they share custody to their three daughters.- Actor
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Colin Farrell is one of Ireland's biggest stars in Hollywood and abroad. His film presence has been filled with memorable roles that range from an inwardly tortured hit man, to an adventurous explorer, a determined-but-failing writer, and the greatest military leader in history.
Farrell was born on May 31, 1976 in Castleknock, Dublin, Ireland to Rita (Monaghan) and Eamon Farrell. His father and uncle were both professional athletes, and briefly it looked like Farrell would follow in their footsteps. Farrell auditioned for a part in the Irish boy band Boyzone, unsuccessfully. After dropping out of the Gaiety School of Acting, Farrell was cast in Ballykissangel (1996), a BBC television drama. "Ballykissangel" was not his first onscreen role. Farrell had previously been in The War Zone (1999), directed by Tim Roth and had appeared in the independent film Drinking Crude (1997). Farrell was soon to move on to bigger things.
Exchanging his thick Dublin accent for a light Texas drawl, Farrell acted in the gritty Tigerland (2000), directed by Joel Schumacher. Starring Farrell among a number of other budding young actors, the film portrays a group of new recruits being trained for the war in Vietnam. Farrell played the arrogant soldier Boz, drafted into the army and completely spiteful of authority. The film was praised by critics but made little money at the box office. It was Farrell's first big role on film, and certainly not his last. Farrell followed up with American Outlaws (2001), where he played the notorious outlaw Jesse James with Scott Caan, son of legendary actor James Caan, in the role of Cole Younger. The film was a box-office flop and a critical failure. Immediately, Farrell returned to the war drama film that had made him famous. Co-starring in the war film Hart's War (2002) opposite Bruce Willis, Farrell played the young officer captured by the enemy. The film was another failure. Farrell struck gold when he was cast in the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report (2002) that same year. Set in a futuristic time period, Farrell played the character Danny Witwer, a young member of the Justice Department who is sent after Tom Cruise's character. The film was a smash hit, and praised by critics.
Farrell continued this success when he reunited with Joel Schumacher on the successful thriller Phone Booth (2002). Farrell played the role of the victim who is harassed by an unseen killer (Kiefer Sutherland) and is made to reveal his sins to the public. 2003 was a big year for Farrell. He starred in the crime thriller The Recruit (2003) as a young CIA man mentored by an older CIA veteran (Al Pacino). Pacino later stated that Farrell was the best actor of his generation. Farrell certainly continued to be busy that year with Daredevil (2003), which actually allowed him to keep his thick Irish accent. The film was another success for Farrell, as was the crime film S.W.A.T. (2003) where Farrell starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson and LL Cool J. Farrell also acted in the Irish black comedy film Intermission (2003) and appeared another Irish film Veronica Guerin (2003) which reunited him with Joel Schumacher once again. The following year, Farrell acted in what is his most infamous film role yet: the title role in the mighty Oliver Stone film epic Alexander (2004), which is a character study of Alexander the Great as he travels across new worlds and conquers all the known world before him. Farrell donned a blond wig and retained his Irish accent, and gave a fine performance as Alexander. However, both he and the film were criticized. Despite being one of the highest grossing films internationally and doing a good job at the DVD sales, Farrell did not come out of the experience without a few hurts. Farrell attempted to rebound with his historical film The New World (2005). Reuniting with "Alexander" star Christopher Plummer, and also acting with Christian Bale, Farrell played the brave explorer John Smith, who would make first contacts with the Native peoples. The film did not do well at the box office, though critics praised the film's stunning appearance and cinematography.
Farrell returned to act in Michael Mann's film Miami Vice (2006) alongside Jamie Foxx. The film was a film adaptation of the famous television series, and did reasonably well at the box office. Farrell also acted in Ask the Dust (2006) with Salma Hayek and Donald Sutherland, though the film did not receive much distribution. The next year, Farrell acted alongside Ewan McGregor in the Woody Allen film Cassandra's Dream (2007) which received mixed reviews from critics. Farrell followed up with the hilarious black comedy In Bruges (2008). Written and directed by Irish theatre director Martin McDonagh, the film stars Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two Irish hit men whose latest assignment went wrong, leaving them to hide out in Bruges, Belgium. The film has been one of Farrell's most praised work, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe. As well as In Bruges (2008), Farrell acted alongside Edward Norton in the crime film Pride and Glory (2008) which was not as successful as the former film. As well as working with charity, and speaking at the Special Olympics World Games in 2007, he has donated his salary for Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) to Heath Ledger's little daughter (who was left nothing in a will that had not been updated in time). Ledger had originally been cast in the film and was replaced by Farrell, Johnny Depp and Jude Law. The film was a critical and financial success, and Farrell also played a small role in Crazy Heart (2009) which had the Dubliner playing a country singer. Farrell even sang a few songs for the film's soundtrack. As well as those small roles, Farrell took the lead role in the war film Triage (2009). Farrell incredibly lost forty-four pounds to play the role of a war photographer who must come to terms with what he has experienced in Kurdistan. While the film was finely made, with excellent performances from all involved, the film has received almost no distribution.
Farrell's other leading role that year was in Neil Jordan's Irish film Ondine (2009). In recent years, he co-starred in the comedy horror film Fright Night (2011), the science fiction action film Total Recall (2012), both remakes, and McDonagh's second feature, and the black comedy crime film Seven Psychopaths (2012). Since the mid-2000s, Farrell has cleaned up his act, and far from being a Hollywood hell raiser and party animal, he has shown himself to be a respectable and very talented actor.
He also starred in The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), both directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. For The Lobster he was nominated for a Golden Globe.- Actor
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Gary Graham was born on 6 June 1950 in Long Beach, California, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Robot Jox (1989), Star Trek: Enterprise (2001) and The Jackal (1997). He was married to Becky Hopkins, Diane Patricia Vaughan, Caren Leslie Williams and Susan Lavelle. He died on 22 January 2024 in Spokane Valley, Washington, USA.- Actor
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Jamie Foxx is an American actor, singer and comedian. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, for his work in the biographical film Ray (2004). The same year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the action film Collateral (2004). Other prominent acting roles include the title role in the film Django Unchained (2012), the supervillain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and William Stacks in the modern version of Annie (2014).
Jamie Foxx was born Eric Marlon Bishop in Terrell, Texas, to Louise Annette Talley and Darrell Bishop, who worked as a stockbroker and had later changed his name to Shahid Abdula. His mother was an adopted child. When her marriage to his father failed, his maternal grandparents, Mark and Estelle Talley, stepped in and, at age seven months, adopted Jamie too. He has said that he had a very rigid upbringing that placed him in the Boy Scouts and the church choir. During high school, he played quarterback for his high school team and was good enough that he got press in Dallas newspapers. He studied music in college. He released a music album, "Peep This" (1994), and sings the theme song for his movie, Any Given Sunday (1999). However, in 1989, his life changed when a girlfriend challenged him to get up onstage at the Comedy Club. In fact, he says he took his androgynous stage name because he learned that women got preference for mike time on open stage nights. That led to his being cast on Roc (1991) and In Living Color (1990).
Foxx had his own WB television show from 1996 to 2001, the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show (1996), in which he played Jamie King Jr. Foxx is also a Grammy Award-winning musician, producing four albums which have charted highly on the US Billboard 200: "Unpredictable" (2005), which topped the chart, "Intuition" (2008), "Best Night of My Life" (2010), and "Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses" (2015). In 2012, Foxx starred in the title role of the Quentin Tarantino written and directed Django Unchained (2012). Foxx starred alongside his Ray co-star Kerry Washington, as well as Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson. In 2013, Foxx was cast as President James Sawyer in White House Down (2013) alongside Channing Tatum. The following year, Foxx appeared as the villain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and co-starred with Quvenzhané Wallis in Annie (2014), Sony's Will Smith and Jay-Z produced update of the comic strip-turned-musical.
He has two children, including Corinne Foxx, (born 1994), who resides with her mother.- Actor
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Christoph Waltz is an Austrian-German actor. He is known for his work with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, receiving acclaim for portraying SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained (2012). For each performance, he won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Additionally, he received the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Landa.
Christoph Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria, into a theatrical family, his mother Elisabeth Urbancic, an Austrian-born costume designer, and Johannes Waltz, a German-born stage builder. He has three siblings. His maternal grandmother was Viennese Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was fellow Burgtheater actor Emmerich Reimers. His maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychologist and psychiatrist who wrote the 1949 book "Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness".
Waltz attended the Theresianium and Billrothstrasse in Vienna. Upon graduation, he attended the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar before going to New York to the Lee Strasberg Institute. While in New York, Christoph met his first wife, and moved back to Vienna, then to London.
During the 80s, Christoph worked primarily in theatre, commuting from his home in London to Germany. Slowly Waltz began to work in TV, taking one-off roles in series, and TV movies. Film roles soon followed. Attempts to break into English-speaking film and TV were, however, unsuccessful. Waltz has expressed his gratitude to have been able to make a living and support his family through acting. For thirty years he worked steadily, tirelessly, in this manner.
It was not until he met Quentin Tarantino that his career in Hollywood took off. The role of Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) catapulted Waltz from a lifetime working in German TV/film to the new life of an international superstar and Academy Award-winning actor. He won 27 awards for his performance as Hans Landa, including the Cannes prix d'interpretation Masculin for 2009, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, the BAFTA Best Supporting Actor award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (which he won again for 2012's Django Unchained (2012)).
He also has portrayed computer genius Qohen Leth in the film The Zero Theorem (2013), American plagiarist Walter Keane in the biographical film _Big Eyes (2014), and 007's nemesis and head of SPECTRE Ernst Stavro Blofeld in _Spectre (2015)_. In Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, Waltz portrayed SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa, aka "The Jew Hunter". Clever, courteous, and multilingual - but also self-serving, cunning, implacable, and murderous. Waltz played gangster Benjamin Chudnofsky in The Green Hornet (2011). That same year, he starred in Water for Elephants (2011), Roman Polanski's Carnage (2011), and a remake of The Three Musketeers (2011). He played German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), a role Tarantino wrote specifically for Waltz.
Waltz resides in Berlin and Los Angeles. His wife is costume builder Judith Holste.- Actor
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Best recalled as the eldest son and first member of the "Bonanza" Cartwright clan to permanently leave the Ponderosa in the hopes of greener acting pastures, dark, deep-voiced and durably handsome Pernell Roberts' native roots lay in Georgia. Born Pernell Elvin Roberts, Jr. on May 18, 1928, in North Carolina and moved to Waycross as an infant, he was singing in local USO shows while still in high school (where he appeared in plays and played the horn). He attended both Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland but flunked out of both colleges, with a two-year stint as a Marine stuck somewhere in between. He eventually decided to give acting a chance and supported himself as a butcher, forest ranger, and railroad riveter during the lean years while pursuing his craft.
On stage from the early 1950s, he gained experience in such productions as "The Adding Machine," "The Firebrand" and "Faith of Our Fathers" before spending a couple of years performing the classics with the renowned Arena Stage Company in Washington, DC. Productions there included "The Taming of the Shrew" (as Petruchio), "The Playboy of the Western Word," "The Glass Menagerie," "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "Twelfth Night." He made his Broadway debut in 1955 with "Tonight in Samarkind" and that same year won the "Best Actor" Drama Desk Award for his off-Broadway performance as "Macbeth," which was immediately followed by "Romeo and Juliet" as Mercutio. Other Broadway plays include "The Lovers" (1956) with Joanne Woodward, "A Clearing in the Woods" (1957) with Kim Stanley, a return to Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1957) and "The Duchess of Malfi" (1957). He returned to Broadway fifteen years later as the title role opposite Ingrid Bergman in "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" (1972).
Pernell then headed for Hollywood and found minor roles in films before landing the pivotal role of Ben Cartwright's oldest and best-educated son Adam in the Bonanza (1959) series in 1959. The series made Roberts a bona fide TV star, while the program itself became the second longest-running TV western (after "Gunsmoke") and first to be filmed in color. At the peak of his and the TV show's popularity, Pernell, displeased with the writing and direction of the show, suddenly elected not to renew his contract and left at the end of the 1964-1965 season to the utter dismay of his fans. The show continued successfully without him, but a gap was always felt in the Cartwright family by this abrupt departure. The story line continued to leave open the possibility of a return if desired, but Pernell never did.
With his newfound freedom, Roberts focused on singing and the musical stage. One solo album was filled with folks songs entitled "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies." Besides such standard roles in "Camelot" and "The King and I," he starred as Rhett Butler to Lesley Ann Warren's Scarlett O'Hara in a musical version of "Gone with the Wind" that did not fare well, and appeared in another misguided musical production based on the life of "Mata Hari." During this period he became an avid civil rights activist and joined other stalwarts such as Dick Gregory, Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte who took part in civil rights demonstrations during the 60s, including the Selma March.
The following years were rocky. He never found a solid footing in films with roles in rugged, foreign films such as Tibetana (1970) [The Kashmiri Run], Four Rode Out (1969), making little impression. He maintained a viable presence in TV, however, with parts in large-scale mini-series and guest shots on TV helping to keep some momentum. In 1979 he finally won another long-running series role (and an Emmy nomination) as Trapper John, M.D. (1979) in which he recreated the Wayne Rogers TV M*A*S*H (1972) role. Pernell was now heavier, bearded and pretty close to bald at this juncture (he was already wearing a toupee during his early "Bonanza" years), but still quite virile and attractive. The medical drama co-starring Gregory Harrison ran seven seasons.
The natural-born Georgia rebel was a heavily principled man and spent a life-time of work fighting racism, segregation, and sexism, notably on TV. He was constantly at odds with the "Bonanza" series writers of his concerns regarding equality. He also kept his private life private. Married and divorced three times, he had one son, Jonathan Christopher, by first wife Vera. Jonathan was killed in a motorcycle crash in 1989. In the 1990s, Pernell starred in his last series as host of FBI: The Untold Stories (1991). It had a short life-span.
Retiring in the late 1990s, Roberts was diagnosed with cancer in 2007 and died about two years later at age 81 on January 24, 2010, survived by fourth wife Eleanor Criswell. As such, the rugged actor, who never regretted leaving the "Bonanza" series, managed to outlive the entire Cartwright clan (Dan Blocker died in 1972; Lorne Greene in 1987); and Michael Landon in 1991).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
On the stage and on the big screen, Delroy Lindo projects a powerful presence that is almost impossible to ignore. Alhough it was not his first film role, his portrayal of the bipolar numbers boss West Indian Archie in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992) is what first attracted attention to Lindo's considerable talents. Since then, his star has slowly been on the rise.
The son of Jamaican parents, Lindo was born and raised in Lewisham, England, United Kingdom, until his teens when he and his mother, a nurse, moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A little later, they moved to the United States, where Lindo would graduate from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. After graduation, Lindo landed his first film role, that of an Army sergeant in More American Graffiti (1979). However, he did not appear in another film for ten years. In the meantime, Lindo worked on stage and, in 1982, debuted on Broadway in "Master Harold and the Boys" directed by the play's author, Athol Fugard. In 1988, Lindo earned a Tony nomination for his portrayal of Harald Loomis in Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
Though he was obviously a talented actor with a bright future, Lindo's career stalled. Wanting someone more aggressive and appreciative of his talents, Lindo changed agents (he'd had the same one through most of his early career). It was a smart move, but it was director Spike Lee who provided the boost Lindo's career needed. The director was impressed enough with Lindo to cast him as patriarch Woody Carmichael in Lee's semi-autobiographical comedy Crooklyn (1994).
For Lindo, 1996 was a big year. He landed major supporting roles in six features, including a heavy in Barry Sonnenfeld's Get Shorty (1995), another villainous supporting role in Lee's Clockers (1995), and still another bad guy in Feeling Minnesota (1996). Lest one believe that Lindo is typecast into forever playing drug lords and gangsters, that year he also played baseball player Leroy "Satchel" Paige in the upbeat Soul of the Game (1996) (a.k.a. Baseball in Black and White), for which he won a NAACP Image Award nomination. Since then, the versatile Lindo has shown himself equally adept at playing characters on both sides of the law. In 1997, he played an angel opposite Holly Hunter in Danny Boyle's offbeat romantic fantasy A Life Less Ordinary (1997) and, in 2009, a vengeful cop in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999).
Lindo graduated from San Francisco State University in 2004 with a degree in Cinema.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
American actor and producer Harvey Keitel was born on May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Miriam (Klein) and Harry Keitel. An Oscar and Golden Globe Award nominee, he has appeared in films such as Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), Ridley Scott's The Duellists (1977) and Thelma & Louise (1991), Peter Yates' Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992), Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), James Mangold's Cop Land (1997), Paolo Sorrentino's Youth (2015). He is regarded as one of the greatest method actors ever. Along with actors Al Pacino and Ellen Burstyn, he is the current co-president of the Actors Studio.
Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some Off-Broadway productions. During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a starring role as "J.R.", in Scorsese's first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967). Since then, Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on several projects. Keitel had the starring role in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), which also proved to be Robert De Niro's breakthrough film. Keitel re-teamed with Scorsese for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which he had a villainous supporting role, and appeared with Robert De Niro again in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), playing the role of Jodie Foster's pimp.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Mekhi Phifer was born in Harlem, Manhattan, and was raised by his mother, Rhoda, a high school teacher. Phifer's acting career began when he auditioned at an open casting call for director Spike Lee's Clockers (1995) and was selected for the leading role. Working alongside Harvey Keitel and Delroy Lindo, he garnered critical acclaim for his compelling performance as Strike, a young New Jersey drug dealer involved in a murder cover-up. Following his impressive screen debut, he appeared in the comedy spoof High School High (1996). In the Columbia/Tristar thriller I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), he co-starred with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. He also starred in Soul Food (1997), 20th Century Fox's film that starred Vanessa Williams, Vivica A. Fox and Nia Long. In 2002, Phifer starred as Future, opposite Eminem, Brittany Murphy and Kim Basinger in Curtis Hanson's critically acclaimed film, 8 Mile (2002), as well as in the Miramax feature Paid in Full (2002), directed by Charles Stone III. In June, he was honored by the American Black Film Festival, receiving the organization's "Rising Star" Award. Phifer also recently appeared in the feature film O (2001), where he starred opposite Julia Stiles and Josh Hartnett. Based on William Shakespeare's Othello, he portrayed Odin, the captain of a champion high school basketball team whose best friend becomes jealous of his relationship with his girlfriend. In addition to his escalating film career, Mr. Phifer added to his growing list of television credits a starring role on the Emmy Award winning series, ER (1994) as Dr. Gregory Pratt, for which he recently received a NAACP Image Award Nomination. Mekhi Phifer's other television credits include leading roles in MTV's highly rated film Carmen: A Hip Hopera (2001), in which he did all his own rap work and starred opposite Beyoncé. He appeared in the Emmy award winning HBO Original Movie, A Lesson Before Dying (1999) with Don Cheadle and Cicely Tyson, where his subtle performance as a man on death row won rave reviews and also earned him an NAACP Image Award Nomination. He tackled the challenging role of NFL Hall of Famer Gale Sayers in the ABC television special Brian's Song (2001) and appeared in the celebrated HBO Original Film The Tuskegee Airmen (1995). Phifer has also made guest appearances on the popular police dramas Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and New York Undercover (1994). Phifer recently completed work on Universal's Honey (2003), starring alongside Jessica Alba. He can also be seen in the Universal remake of the 1978 horror classic Dawn of the Dead (2004), starring Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley, and Slow Burn (2005) opposite Ray Liotta.- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Daniel Richard McBride is an American actor, comedian, producer, and writer. He starred in the HBO television series Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, and The Righteous Gemstones, also co-creating the former two with frequent collaborator Jody Hill while creating the latter himself. He has appeared in films such as The Foot Fist Way (2006), Hot Rod (2007), Pineapple Express (2008), Tropic Thunder (2008), Up in the Air (2009), Your Highness (2011), This Is the End (2013), and Alien: Covenant (2017). He has done voice acting for Despicable Me (2010), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), The Angry Birds Movie, Sausage Party (both 2016), The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019), and The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
John Stephen Goodman's an American film, TV & stage actor. He was born in Affton, Missouri to Virginia Roos (Loosmore), a waitress and saleswoman & Leslie Francis Goodman, a postal worker who died when he was a small child. He's of English, Welsh & German ancestry. He's best known for his role as Dan Conner on the TV show Roseanne (1988), which ran until 1997 & for which he earned him a Best Actor Golden Globe in 1993. He's also noted for appearances in films of the Coen brothers, w/ prominent roles in Raising Arizona (1987) as an escaped convict, in Barton Fink (1991) as a congenial murderer, in The Big Lebowski (1998) as a volatile bowler & in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) as a cultured thief. Additionally, he has done voice work in numerous Disney & Pixar films, including the Sulley in Monsters, Inc. (2001). Having contributed to more than 50 films, he has also won 2 American Comedy Awards & hosted Saturday Night Live (1975) 14 times.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Adam Patrick Devine is an American actor, comedian, singer, screenwriter, and producer. He is one of the stars and co-creators of the Comedy Central comedy television series Workaholics and Adam Devine's House Party. He played the role of Bumper in the musical films Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2. He had recurring sitcom roles as Andy Bailey in Modern Family and Adam DeMamp in Workaholics. He also had roles in the films The Intern, The Final Girls, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, Game Over, Man! and When We First Met. He has voiced characters in films including Ice Age: Collision Course and The Lego Batman Movie, as well as in the animated series Uncle Grandpa, Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero, Vampirina, Green Eggs and Ham, and Bad Ideas with Adam Devine.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Walton Goggins is an actor of considerable versatility and acclaim who has delivered provocative performances in a multitude of feature films and television series. He won a Critics' Choice Award for his performance in the HBO comedy series "Vice Principals" and landed an Emmy nomination for his role of 'Boyd Crowder' on FX's "Justified," among numerous accolades.
Goggins is the producer/star of the hit new CBS single-camera comedy "The Unicorn," which debuted as TV's #1 New Show and has been picked up for a full season. The series is about a tight-knit group of best friends and family who help 'Wade' (Goggins) embrace his "new normal" in the wake of the loss of his wife one year ago. As a sometimes ill-equipped but always devoted single parent to his two adolescent daughters, he is taking the major step of dating again. To Wade's amazement, he's a hot commodity with women, and his friends explain that he's the perfect single guy - a "unicorn": employed, attractive, and with a proven track record of commitment.
He has also re-teamed with his former "Vice Principals" co-star Danny McBride on HBO's comedy series "The Righteous Gemstones," which has been renewed for a second season. Written, directed and EP'ed by McBride, it tells the story of a world-famous televangelist family with a long tradition of deviance, greed and charitable work. Goggins plays 'Baby Billy,' a former child star who clogged and sang for Jesus. As an aging man, he's fallen on hard times and comes to the Gemstones for salvation.
On the feature front, Goggins plays the role of 'Christ' in THREE CHRISTS, which IFC Films will release in theaters, VOD and Digital on January 10, 2020. The story follows a doctor (Richard Gere) who is treating paranoid schizophrenic patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, each of whom believe they are Jesus Christ. The film made its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Goggins recently starred opposite Oscar winner Olivia Colman in the Appalachian thriller THEM THAT FOLLOW, which made its World Premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was released in August 2019. The film followed members of an isolated community of Pentecostal snake handlers led by 'Pastor Lemuel' (Goggins). In the can is the indie feature WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS.
In 2018, Goggins appeared in three major studio features: He starred opposite Alicia Vikander in Warner Bros./MGM's TOMB RAIDER reboot, in the role of villain 'Mathias Vogel.' The film opened as the #1 film globally. In its review, Variety proclaimed, "Goggins, a magnetic actor who projects the lean, hungry anger of vintage-period Jack Nicholson, never hits you over the head with evil; he lets Vogel's sleazy cruelty seep through his pores."
In Disney/Marvel's ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, the sequel to the superhero feature starring Paul Rudd, Goggins played 'Sonny Burch,' a character deep in the Marvel mythos. Additionally, he appeared in Twentieth Century Fox's MAZERUNNER: THE DEATH CURE, the third installment of the highly successful franchise that also opened at #1.
In recent years, Goggins has had pivotal roles in films by two of Hollywood's most important auteurs: Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg. His integral role as 'Chris Mannix,' a southern renegade who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock in Tarantino's THE HATEFUL EIGHT, marked his second collaboration with the Academy Award-winning writer/director. He previously played slave fight trainer 'Billy Crash' in Tarantino's 2012 DJANGO UNCHAINED. That same year, Goggins also appeared in Steven Spielberg's LINCOLN, where he portrayed Congressman 'Wells A. Hutchins.'
For television, Goggins headlined and executive-produced season two of the contemporary espionage thriller "Deep State." He starred as 'Nathan Miller,' a former CIA operative who now works in the private sector as a fixer for the deep state and is at the heart of the new season. The series aired in the U.S. on EPIX, and Fox Networks Group Europe & Africa aired it globally in 50 markets in the summer of 2019.
Goggins won a Critics Choice Award for his role opposite Danny McBride in the HBO series "Vice Principals," which aired for two seasons. Created by McBride and Jody Hill, who also created "Eastbound & Down," "Vice Principals" is a dark comedy about a high school and the two people who almost run it, the vice principals (McBride and Goggins).
He starred in the first season of HISTORY's "Six," a military action drama from A+E Studios and The Weinstein Co that was the top new cable series of 2017 in total viewers. Inspired by current events, it followed an elite team of Navy SEALs whose mission to eliminate a Taliban leader in Afghanistan went awry when they uncovered a U.S. citizen working with the terrorists. Goggins played 'Rip Taggart,' the one-time leader of the SEAL team SIX squad.
For over a decade, Goggins has been one of the most magnetic and intense actors on television. He received an Emmy® nomination and four Critics Choice Award nominations for his mesmerizing portrayal of 'Boyd Crowder' on FX's Peabody Award-winning Drama series "Justified," which ran for six seasons. Goggins' 'Boyd' was the long-time friend, yet ultimate nemesis to U.S. Marshal 'Raylan Givens' (Timothy Olyphant). Elmore Leonard, EP and writer of the short story "Fire in the Hole" on which the show is based, says of 'Boyd,' "There has never been a more poetic bad guy on television in the way that he sees the world."
Goggins' critical turn as the complex transgender prostitute 'Venus Van Dam' on the FX drama series "Sons of Anarchy" earned him two Critics Choice Award nominations and helped shed a fresh light on the transgender community.
For seven years Walton garnered much acclaim for his complex and edgy portrayal of 'Detective Shane Vendrell' on FX's gritty, award-winning drama series "The Shield." He was nominated for a Television Critics Association (TCA) Award in the category of "Individual Achievement in Drama."
He has also taken his turn behind the camera. Goggins' collaborations with his partners at Ginny Mule Pictures include winning an Academy Award® for their 2001 short film, THE ACCOUNTANT, which he produced and starred in. The team produced, directed and starred in their first feature, CHRYSTAL, starring Billy Bob Thornton, which was accepted into the 2005 Sundance Film Festival's Dramatic Competition. For their third collaboration, Goggins produced and starred in the feature RANDY AND THE MOB, which won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2007 Nashville Film Festival.
Goggins and his Ginny Mule partners completed their fourth feature, THAT EVENING SUN, starring Hal Holbrook and Goggins. The film made its world premiere at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, TX in 2009, where it won the Narrative Feature Audience Award and received the Special Jury Award for "Best Ensemble Cast." It went on to win awards at over 14 film festivals, culminating with the honor of the "Wyatt Award" from the Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA) and two Independent Spirit Award nominations.
Goggins is co-owner of Mulholland Distilling, a portfolio of premium spirits reflecting the vibrant, rich culture of Los Angeles and one of the first spirits companies from the city of Los Angeles since prohibition. Its namesake William Mulholland was the visionary who expanded the boundaries and possibilities of L.A. by bringing water to the desert town. Now, Mulholland Distilling is bringing a different kind of water to the city, the water of life. American Whiskey. Vodka. Gin. "The Spirit of Los Angeles." With a mission to create artisanal spirits inspired by the diversity and verve of Los Angeles, the brand has worked with top distillers, blenders and mixologists across the nation to bring only the best to the City of Angels (www.mulhollanddistilling.com).
Goggins enjoys traveling the world and has spent time in Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Central America, Morocco and India. He is an avid photographer and has captured many of his journeys on film.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Frankie Faison was born on 10 June 1949 in Newport News, Virginia, USA. He is an actor, known for Coming to America (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989) and White Chicks (2004). He is married to Samantha Jupiter Faison. He was previously married to Jane Mandel.- Actor
- Composer
- Producer
Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre, invited by Laurence Olivier, who could see the talent in Hopkins. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967).
From this moment on, he enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. Many successes came later, and Hopkins' remarkable acting style reached the four corners of the world. In 1977, he appeared in two major films: A Bridge Too Far (1977) with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell. In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980). Two good television literature adaptations followed: Othello (1981) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982). In 1987 he was awarded with the Commander of the order of the British Empire. This year was also important in his cinematic life, with 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), acclaimed by specialists. In 1993, he was knighted.
In the 1990s, Hopkins acted in movies like Desperate Hours (1990) and Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). His most remarkable film, however, was The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He also got a B.A.F.T.A. for this role.- Actress
- Director
- Producer
Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson was born in Paris, France, to British parents, Jacqueline Luesby and Chris Watson, both lawyers. She moved to Oxfordshire when she was five, where she attended the Dragon School. From the age of six, Emma knew that she wanted to be an actress and, for a number of years, she trained at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theatre Arts, a part-time theatre school where she studied singing, dancing and acting. By the age of ten, she had performed and taken the lead in various Stagecoach productions and school plays.
In 1999, casting began for Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone (2001), the film adaptation of British author J.K. Rowling's bestselling novel. Casting agents found Emma through her Oxford theatre teacher. After eight consistent auditions, producer David Heyman told Emma and fellow applicants, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, that they had been cast for the roles of the three leads, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. The release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) was Emma's cinematic screen debut. The film broke records for opening-day sales and opening-weekend takings and was the highest-grossing film of 2001. Critics praised the film and the performances of the three leading young actors. The highly distributed British newspaper, 'The Daily Telegraph', called her performance "admirable". Later, Emma was nominated for five awards for her performance in the film, winning the Young Artist Award for Leading Young Actress in a Feature Film.
After the release of the first film of the highly successful franchise, Emma became one of the most well-known actresses in the world. She continued to play the role of Hermione Granger for nearly ten years, in all of the following Harry Potter films: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011). Emma acquired two Critics' Choice Award nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics Association for her work in Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban and Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. The completion of the seventh and eight movies saw Emma receive nominations in 2011 for a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award, and for Best Actress at the Jameson Empire Awards. The Harry Potter franchise won the BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in February 2011.
2011 saw Emma in Simon Curtis's My Week with Marilyn (2011), alongside a stellar cast of Oscar nominees including Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe and Kenneth Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier, in addition to Eddie Redmayne, Dame Judi Dench, Dougray Scott, Zoe Wanamaker, Toby Jones and Dominic Cooper. Chronicling a week in Marilyn Monroe's life, the film featured Emma in the supporting role of Lucy, a costume assistant to Colin Clark (Redmayne). The film was released by The Weinstein Company and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical. In 2012 Emma was seen in Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of his coming-of-age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), starring opposite Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller. This independent drama centered around Charlie (Lerman), an introverted freshman who is taken under the wings of two seniors (Watson and Miller) who welcome him to the real world. The film premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and received rave reviews. The film won the People's Choice Award for Favourite Dramatic Movie and Emma also picked up the People's Choice Award for Favourite Dramatic Movie Actress. Emma was awarded a second time for this role with the Best Supporting Actress Award at the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards where the film also won the Best Ensemble Performance Award.
In summer 2013, Emma starred in Sofia Coppola's American satirical black comedy crime film, The Bling Ring (2013), opposite Katie Chang and Israel Broussard. The film took inspiration from real events and followed a group of teenagers who, obsessed with fashion and fame, burgled the homes of celebrities in Los Angeles. The film opened the Un Certain Regard section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Emma also appeared in a cameo role as herself in Seth Rogen's apocalypse comedy This Is The End (2013). The film tells the story about what happens to some of Hollywood's best loved celebrities when the apocalypse strikes during a party at James Franco's house.
In 2014, Emma was seen in Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014), opposite Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Douglas Booth, Logan Lerman, and Anthony Hopkins. The film told the epic, biblical tale of Noah and the ark. Emma plays the role of Ila, a young woman who develops a close relationship with Noah's son, Shem (Booth). Noah made an outstanding $300m since its release in March. In 2015, Emma starred in Regression (2015), written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar and Occultum Luciferus. Also headlined by Oscar-nominated Ethan Hawke, and set in Minnesota in 1990, Regression tells the story of Detective Bruce Kenner (Hawke), who investigates the case of young Angela, played by Emma, who accuses her father of sexual abuse.
In 2012, Emma was honored with the Calvin Klein Emerging Star Award at the ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards. In 2013, Emma was awarded the Trailblazer Award at the MTV Movie Awards in April and was honored with the GQ Woman of the Year Award at the GQ Awards in September. Further to her acting career, Emma is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN, promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women. Emma graduated from Brown University in May 2014.
In 2017, Emma starred in the live-action Disney fantasy Beauty and the Beast (2017), one of the biggest movies of all time in the U.S., and the dramatic thriller The Circle (2017).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. was born on December 28, 1954 in Mount Vernon, New York. He is the middle of three children of a beautician mother, Lennis, from Georgia, and a Pentecostal minister father, Denzel Washington, Sr., from Virginia. After graduating from high school, Denzel enrolled at Fordham University, intent on a career in journalism. However, he caught the acting bug while appearing in student drama productions and, upon graduation, he moved to San Francisco and enrolled at the American Conservatory Theater. He left A.C.T. after only one year to seek work as an actor. His first paid acting role was in a summer stock theater stage production in St. Mary's City, Maryland. The play was "Wings of the Morning", which is about the founding of the colony of Maryland (now the state of Maryland) and the early days of the Maryland colonial assembly (a legislative body). He played the part of a real historical character, Mathias Da Sousa, although much of the dialogue was created. Afterwards he began to pursue screen roles in earnest. With his acting versatility and powerful presence, he had no difficulty finding work in numerous television productions.
He made his first big screen appearance in Carbon Copy (1981) with George Segal. Through the 1980s, he worked in both movies and television and was chosen for the plum role of Dr. Philip Chandler in NBC's hit medical series St. Elsewhere (1982), a role that he would play for six years. In 1989, his film career began to take precedence when he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Tripp, the runaway slave in Edward Zwick's powerful historical masterpiece Glory (1989).
Washington has received much critical acclaim for his film work since the 1990s, including his portrayals of real-life figures such as South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in Cry Freedom (1987), Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X in Malcolm X (1992), boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in The Hurricane (1999), football coach Herman Boone in Remember the Titans (2000), poet and educator Melvin B. Tolson in The Great Debaters (2007), and drug kingpin Frank Lucas in American Gangster (2007). Malcolm X and The Hurricane garnered him Oscar nominations for Best Actor, before he finally won that statuette in 2002 for his lead role in Training Day (2001).
Through the 1990s, Denzel also co-starred in such big budget productions as The Pelican Brief (1993), Philadelphia (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), The Preacher's Wife (1996), and Courage Under Fire (1996), a role for which he was paid $10 million. He continued to define his onscreen persona as the tough, no-nonsense hero through the 2000s in films like Out of Time (2003), Man on Fire (2004), Inside Man (2006), and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009). Cerebral and meticulous in his film work, he made his debut as a director with Antwone Fisher (2002); he also directed The Great Debaters (2007) and Fences (2016).
In 2010, Washington headlined The Book of Eli (2010), a post-Apocalyptic drama. Later that year, he starred as a veteran railroad engineer in the action film Unstoppable (2010), about an unmanned, half-mile-long runaway freight train carrying dangerous cargo. The film was his fifth and final collaboration with director Tony Scott, following Crimson Tide (1995), Man on Fire (2004), Déjà Vu (2006) and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. He has also been a featured actor in the films produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and has been a frequent collaborator of director Spike Lee.
In 2012, Washington starred in Flight (2012), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. He co-starred with Ryan Reynolds in Safe House (2012), and prepared for his role by subjecting himself to a torture session that included waterboarding. In 2013, Washington starred in 2 Guns (2013), alongside Mark Wahlberg. In 2014, he starred in The Equalizer (2014), an action thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Richard Wenk, based on the television series of same name starring Edward Woodward. During this time period, he also took on the role of producer for some of his films, including The Book of Eli and Safe House.
In 2016, he was selected as the recipient for the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.
He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Pauletta Washington, and their four children.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Jodie Foster started her career at the age of two. For four years she made commercials and finally gave her debut as an actress in the TV series Mayberry R.F.D. (1968). In 1975 Jodie was offered the role of prostitute Iris Steensma in the movie Taxi Driver (1976). This role, for which she received an Academy Award nomination in the "Best Supporting Actress" category, marked a breakthrough in her career. In 1980 she graduated as the best of her class from the College Lycée Français and began to study English Literature at Yale University, from where she graduated magna cum laude in 1985. One tragic moment in her life was March 30th, 1981 when John Warnock Hinkley Jr. attempted to assassinate the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. Hinkley was obsessed with Jodie and the movie Taxi Driver (1976), in which Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, tried to shoot presidential candidate Palantine. Despite the fact that Jodie never took acting lessons, she received two Oscars before she was thirty years of age. She received her first award for her part as Sarah Tobias in The Accused (1988) and the second one for her performance as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Legendary actor Christopher Plummer, perhaps Canada's greatest thespian, delivered outstanding performances as Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), the chilling villain in The Silent Partner (1978), the iconoclastic Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), the empathetic psychiatrist in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the kindly and clever mystery writer in Knives Out (2019), and as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). It was this last role that finally brought him recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, when he was nominated as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, one of three Academy Award nominations he received in the 2010s, along with All the Money in the World (2017) (as J. Paul Getty) and Beginners (2010); he won for the latter role. He will also likely always be remembered as Captain Von Trapp in the atomic bomb-strength blockbuster The Sound of Music (1965), a film he publicly despised until softening his stance in his autobiography "In Spite of Me" (2008).
Christopher Plummer was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer on December 13, 1929 in Toronto, Ontario. He was the only child of Isabella Mary (Abbott), a secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and John Orme Plummer, who sold securities and stocks. Christopher was a great-grandson of John Abbott, who was Canada's third Prime Minister (from 1891 to 1892), and a great-great-great-grandson of Presbyterian clergyman John Bethune. He had Scottish, English, Anglo-Irish, and Cornish ancestry. Plummer was raised in Senneville, Quebec, near Montreal, at his maternal grandparents' home.
Aside from the youngest member of the Barrymore siblings (which counted Oscar-winners Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore in their number), Plummer was the premier Shakespearean actor to come out of North America in the 20th century. He was particularly memorable as Hamlet, Iago and Lear, though his Macbeth opposite Glenda Jackson was -- and this was no surprise to him due to the famous curse attached to the "Scottish Play" -- a failure.
Like another great stage actor, Richard Burton, early in his career Plummer failed to connect with the screen in a way that would make him a star. Dynamic on stage, he didn't succeed as a younger leading man in films. Perhaps if he had been born earlier, and acted in the studio system of Hollywood's golden age, he could have been carefully groomed for stardom. As it was, he shared the English stage actors' disdain -- and he was equally at home in London as he was on the boards of Broadway or on-stage in his native Canada -- for the movies, which did not help him in that medium, as he has confessed. As he aged, Plummer excelled at character roles. He was always a good villain, this man who garnered kudos playing Lucifer on Broadway in Archibald Macleish's Pulitzer Prize-winning "J.B.".
Plummer won two Emmy Awards out of seven nominations stretching 46 years from 1959 and 2011, and one Genie Award in six nominations from 1980 to 2009. For his stage work, Plummer has racked up two Tony Awards on six nominations, the first in 1974 as Best Actor (Musical) for the title role in "Cyrano" and the second in 1997, as Best Actor (Play), in "Barrymore". Surprisingly, he did not win (though he was nominated) for his masterful 2004 performance of "King Lear", which he originated at the Stratford Festival in Ontario and brought down to Broadway for a sold-out run. His other Tony nominations show the wide range of his talent, from a 1959 nod for the Elia Kazan-directed production of Macleish's "J.B." to recognition in 1994 for Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land", with a 1982 Best Actor (Play) nomination for his "Iago" in William Shakespeare's "Othello".
Until the 2009 Academy Awards were announced, it could be said about Plummer that he was the finest actor of the post-World War II period to fail to get an Academy Award. In that, he was following in the footsteps of the late great John Barrymore, whom Plummer so memorably portrayed on Broadway in a one-man show that brought him his second Tony Award. In 2010, Plummer finally got an Oscar nod for his portrayal of another legend, Lev Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). Two years later, the first paragraph of his obituary was written when the 82-year-old Plummer became the oldest person in Academy history to win an Oscar. He won for playing a senior citizen who comes out as gay after the death of his wife in the movie Beginners (2010). As he clutched his statuette, the debonaire thespian addressed it thus: "You're only two years older than me darling, where have you been all of my life?"
Plummer then told the audience that at birth, "I was already rehearsing my Academy acceptance speech, but it was so long ago mercifully for you I've forgotten it." The Academy Award was a long time in coming and richly deserved.
Plummer gave many other fine portrayals on film, particularly as he grew older and settled down into a comfortable marriage with his third wife Elaine. He continued to be an in-demand character actor in prestigious motion pictures. If he were English rather than Canadian, he would have been knighted. (In 1968, he was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor and one which required the approval of the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.) If he lived in the company town of Los Angeles rather than in Connecticut, he likely would have several more Oscar nominations before winning his first for "The Last Station".
As it is, as attested to in his witty and well-written autobiography, Plummer was amply rewarded in life. In 1970, Plummer - then a self-confessed 43-year-old "bottle baby" - married his third wife Elaine Taylor, a dancer, who helped wean him off his dependency on alcohol. They lived happily with their dogs on a 30-acre estate in Weston, Connecticut. He thanked her from the stage during the 2012 Oscar telecast, quipping that she "deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for coming to my rescue every day of my life." Although he spent the majority of his time in the United States, he remained a Canadian citizen. He died in his Weston, Connecticut home on February 5, 2021 at age 91.
His daughter, with actress Tammy Grimes, is actress Amanda Plummer.- Director
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Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from artistic, education-grounded background; his father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta and developed his film making skills at Clark Atlanta University. After graduating from Morehouse, Lee attended the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), a ten-minute film. Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) which won a student Academy Award. In 1986, Spike Lee made the film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for $175,000, and earned $7 million at the box office, which launched his career and allowed him to found his own production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set at a historically black school, focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible, and uncaring. With his School Daze (1988) profits, Lee went on to make his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie based specifically his own neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The movie portrayed the racial tensions that emerge in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood on one very hot day. The movie garnered Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay, for Danny Aiello for supporting actor, and sparked a debate on racial relations. Lee went on to produce and direct the jazz biopic Mo' Better Blues (1990), the first of many Spike Lee films to feature Denzel Washington, including the biography of Malcolm X (1992), in which Washington portrayed the civil rights leader. The movie was a success, and garnered an Oscar nomination for Washington. The pair would work together again on He Got Game (1998), an excursion into the collegiate world showing the darker side of college athletic recruiting, as well as the 2006 film Inside Man (2006). Spike Lee's role as a documentarian has expanded over the years, highlighted by his participation in Lumière and Company (1995), the Oscar-nominated 4 Little Girls (1997), to his Peabody Award-winning biographical adaptation of Black Panther leader in A Huey P. Newton Story (2001), through his 2005 Emmy Award-winning examination of post-Katrina New Orleans in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and its follow-up five years later If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010). Through his production company 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks, Lee continues to create and direct both independent films and projects for major studios, as well as working on story development, creating an internship program for aspiring filmmakers, releasing music, and community outreach and support. He is married to Tonya Lewis Lee, and they have two sons, Satchel and Jackson.- Mark Margolis was an American actor who is well-known for his collaborations with film director Darren Aronofsky, particularly Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), Noah (2014), Black Swan (2010), and The Fountain (2006). Margolis also gained notoriety for his portrayal of "Tio" Hector Salamanca in the highly successful crossover series Breaking Bad (2008) and Better Call Saul (2015). He also acted in the hit films Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) and Scarface (1983). He has been married to Jacqueline Margolis since 1962 and has one child with her.
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Ray Milland became one of Paramount's most bankable and durable stars, under contract from 1934 to 1948, yet little in his early life suggested a career as a motion picture actor.
Milland was born Alfred Reginald Jones in the Welsh town of Neath, Glamorgan, to Elizabeth Annie (Truscott) and Alfred Jones. He spent his youth in the pursuit of sports. He became an expert rider early on, working at his uncle's horse-breeding estate while studying at the King's College in Cardiff. At 21, he went to London as a member of the elite Household Cavalry (Guard for the Royal Family), undergoing a rigorous 19-months training, further honing his equestrian skills, as well as becoming adept at fencing, boxing and shooting. He won trophies, including the Bisley Match, with his unit's crack rifle team. However, after four years, he suddenly lost his means of financial support (independent income being a requirement as a Guardsman) when his stepfather discontinued his allowance. Broke, he tried his hand at acting in small parts on the London stage.
There are several stories as to how he derived his stage name. It is known, that during his teens he called himself "Mullane", using his stepfather's surname. He may later have suffused "Mullane" with "mill-lands", an area near his hometown. When he first appeared on screen in British films, he was billed first as Spike Milland, then Raymond Milland.
In 1929, Ray befriended the popular actress Estelle Brody at a party and, later that year, visited her on the set of her latest film, The Plaything (1929). While having lunch, they were joined by a producer who persuaded the handsome Welshman to appear in a motion picture bit part. Ray rose to the challenge and bigger roles followed, including the male lead in The Lady from the Sea (1929). The following year, he was signed by MGM and went to Hollywood, but was given little to work with, except for the role of Charles Laughton's ill-fated nephew in Payment Deferred (1932). After a year, Ray was out of his contract and returned to England.
His big break did not come until 1934 when he joined Paramount, where he was to remain for the better part of his Hollywood career. During the first few years, he served an apprenticeship playing second leads, usually as the debonair man-about-town, in light romantic comedies. He appeared with Burns and Allen in Many Happy Returns (1934), enjoyed third-billing as a British aristocrat in the Claudette Colbert farce The Gilded Lily (1935) and was described as "excellent" by reviewers for his role in the sentimental drama Alias Mary Dow (1935). By 1936, he had graduated to starring roles, first as the injured British hunter rescued on a tropical island by The Jungle Princess (1936), the film which launched Dorothy Lamour's sarong-clad career. After that, he was the titular hero of Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937) and, finally, won the girl (rather than being the "other man") in Mitchell Leisen's screwball comedy Easy Living (1937). He also re-visited the tropics in Ebb Tide (1937), Her Jungle Love (1938) and Tropic Holiday (1938), as well as being one of the three valiant brothers of Beau Geste (1939).
In 1940, Ray was sent back to England to star in the screen adaptation of Terence Rattigan's French Without Tears (1940), for which he received his best critical reviews to date. He was top-billed (above John Wayne) running a ship salvage operation in Cecil B. DeMille's lavish Technicolor adventure drama Reap the Wild Wind (1942), besting Wayne in a fight - much to the "Duke's" personal chagrin - and later wrestling with a giant octopus. Also that year, he was directed by Billy Wilder in a charming comedy, The Major and the Minor (1942) (co-starred with Ginger Rogers), for which he garnered good notices from Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. Ray then played a ghost hunter in The Uninvited (1944), and the suave hero caught in a web of espionage in Fritz Lang's thriller Ministry of Fear (1944).
On the strength of his previous role as "Major Kirby", Billy Wilder chose to cast Ray against type in the ground-breaking drama The Lost Weekend (1945) as dipsomaniac writer "Don Birnam". Ray gave the defining performance of his career, his intensity catching critics, used to him as a lightweight leading man, by surprise. Crowther commented "Mr. Milland, in a splendid performance, catches all the ugly nature of a 'drunk', yet reveals the inner torment and degradation of a respectable man who knows his weakness and his shame" (New York Times, December 3, 1945). Arrived at the high point of his career, Ray Milland won the Oscar for Best Actor, as well as the New York Critic's Award. Rarely given such good material again, he nonetheless featured memorably in many more splendid films, often exploiting the newly discovered "darker side" of his personality: as the reporter framed for murder by Charles Laughton's heinous publishing magnate in The Big Clock (1948); as the sophisticated, manipulating art thief "Mark Bellis" in the Victorian melodrama So Evil My Love (1948) (for which producer Hal B. Wallis sent him back to England); as a Fedora-wearing, Armani-suited "Lucifer", trawling for the soul of an honest District Attorney in Alias Nick Beal (1949); and as a traitorous scientist in The Thief (1952), giving what critics described as a "sensitive" and "towering" performance. In 1954, Ray played calculating ex-tennis champ "Tony Wendice", who blackmails a former Cambridge chump into murdering his wife, in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954). He played the part with urbane sophistication and cold detachment throughout, even in the scene of denouement, calmly offering a drink to the arresting officers.
With Lisbon (1956), Ray Milland moved into another direction, turning out several off-beat, low-budget films with himself as the lead, notably High Flight (1957), The Safecracker (1958) and Panic in Year Zero! (1962). At the same time, he cheerfully made the transition to character parts, often in horror and sci-fi outings. In accordance with his own dictum of appearing in anything that had "any originality", he worked on two notable pictures with Roger Corman: first, as a man obsessed with catalepsy in The Premature Burial (1962); secondly, as obsessed self-destructive surgeon "Dr. Xavier" in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)-the Man with X-Ray Eyes, a film which, despite its low budget, won the 1963 Golden Asteroid in the Trieste Festival for Science Fiction.
As the years went on, Ray gradually disposed of his long-standing toupee, lending dignity through his presence to many run-of-the-mill television films, such as Cave in! (1983) and maudlin melodramas like Love Story (1970). He guest-starred in many anthology series on television and had notable roles in Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969) and the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) (as Quorum member Sire Uri). He also enjoyed a brief run on Broadway, starring as "Simon Crawford" in "Hostile Witness" (1966), at the Music Box Theatre.
In his private life, Ray was an enthusiastic yachtsman, who loved fishing and collecting information by reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica. In later years, he became very popular with interviewers because of his candid spontaneity and humour. In the same self-deprecating vein he wrote an anecdotal biography, "Wide-Eyed in Babylon", in 1976. A film star, as well as an outstanding actor, Ray Milland died of cancer at the age of 79 in March 1986.- Actress
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Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born into an unconventional a family at the turn of the 20th century. Her parents, James "Shamus" Sullivan and Edith "Biddy" Lanchester, were socialists - very active members of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in a rather broad sense - and did not believe in the institution of marriage and being tied to any conventions of legality, for that matter. Her mother had actually been committed to an asylum in 1895 by her father and older brothers because of her unmarried state with James. The incident received worldwide press as the "Lanchester Kidnapping Case."
Elsa had a great desire to become a classical dancer and to that end at age 10 her mother enrolled her at the famed Isadora Duncan's Bellevue School in Paris in 1912. But the uncertainties of WW1 brought her home after only two years. At age 12, she was sent to a co-educational boarding school in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, England, to teach dance classes in exchange for her education and board. In 1918, she was hired as a dance teacher at Margaret Morris's school on the Isle of Wight.
Next to dance, she loved the music halls of the period, so in 1920 she debuted in a music hall act as an Egyptian dancer. About the same time she founded the Children's Theater in Soho, London and taught there for several years. She made her stage debut in 1922 in the West End play "Thirty Minutes in a Street." In 1924 she and her partner, Harold Scott, opened a London nightclub called the Cave of Harmony. They performed one-act plays by Pirandello and Chekhov and sang cabaret songs. She would later collect and record these and many others. The spot was frequented by literati like Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells and also James Whale, working in London theater and soon to be directing on Broadway and Hollywood's most famous horror films. Lanchester kept busy including, on her own admission, posing nude for artists. During a 1926 comic performance in the Midnight Follies at London's Metropole, a member of the British Royal family walked out as she sang, "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father." She closed her nightclub in 1928 as her film career began in earnest.
Perhaps not beautiful in the more conventional sense, Lanchester was certainly pretty as a young woman with a turned-up nose that gave her a pert, impish expression, all the more striking with her large, expressive dark eyes and full lips. She had a lithe figure that she carried with the assuredness of her dancing background. Her voice was bright and distinctive, and had a delightful rush and trill that had an almost Scottish burr quality. What clicked on stage would do the same in the movies.
Her first film appearance was actually in an amateur movie by friend and author Evelyn Waugh called The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama (1925). Her formal film debut was in the British movie One of the Best (1927). She continued stage work and became associated in 1927 with a rather self-possessed but keenly dedicated actor, Charles Laughton. He appeared with her in three of four films Lanchester did in 1928. (Three of these were written for her by H.G. Wells). They did a few plays as well and wed in 1929. According to Lanchester, after two years, she discovered Laughton was homosexual but they remained married until his death in 1962. Lanchester declared in a 1958 interview that she kept to a separate career path from her husband. They appeared together on occasion, moving through 1931 with several smart play-like films including Potiphar's Wife (1931) with Laurence Olivier. She had done the play "Payment Deferred" in London in 1930 and followed it to Broadway in 1931.
MGM offered her a contract in 1932. In 1933 Alexander Korda was casting his The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and decided that Laughton was the perfect choice - and his wife would be just as perfect as one of Henry's six wives. Her versatility pointed to a part with some comedic elements and fitting more into a caricature. She looked most like Hans Holbein's famous portrait of Anne of Cleves (Henry's fourth wife who was actually somewhat more homely than the painter depicted). In costume Lanchester was charming if not striking. Her interpretation of Anne was a perfect integration with herself, and her scene with Laughton informally playing cards on the marriage bed and deciding on annulment is a high point of the movie.
Of course, it would be hard to mention her film career of the 1930s without mentioning the one role that would forever dog her, Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Having come to Hollywood with Laughton in 1932 (but not permanently until 1939), Lanchester did only a few films up to 1935 and was disappointed enough with Hollywood's reception to return to London for a respite. She was quickly called back by an old friend from London, stage and film associate James Whale, now the noted director of Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933). He wanted her for two parts in Bride: author Mary Shelley and the bride. A central joke of the movie build-up was the tag lines: "WHO will be The Bride of Frankenstein? WHO will dare?"
Indeed, it was no honeymoon for her. For some ten days, Lanchester was wrapped in yards of bandage and covered in heavy makeup. The stand-on-end hairdo was accomplished by combing it over a wire mesh cage. Lanchester was in real agony with her eyes kept taped wide open for long takes - and it showed in her looks of horror. Her monster's screaming and hissing sounds (based on the sounds of Regents Park swans in London) were taped and then run backward to spook-up the effect. She was delightfully melodramatic and picturesque as Wollstonecraft, and her bride would become iconic. Many have considered Bride of Frankenstein (1935) the best of the golden age horror movies.
Lanchester stood out in her next movie with Laughton the next year, Korda's dark Rembrandt (1936), but she only did a few more films for the remainder of the decade. Through the 1940s she was doubly busy - a couple of films per year while regenerating her beloved musical revue sketches. She performed for 10 years at the Turnabout Theater in Hollywood, using old London music hall/cabaret songs and others written for her. Later she would have to split her time further doing a similar act at a supper club called The Bar of Music. By the later 1940s she had become rather matronly, and the roles would settle appropriately. But she always lent her sparkle, as with her charming maid Matilda in The Bishop's Wife (1947). She would be nominated for best supporting actress in Come to the Stable (1949).
She entered the 1950s busy with road touring of her nightclub act with pianist J. Raymond Henderson (who went by "Ray" and who is sometimes confused with popular songwriter Ray Henderson). There was a series of tours to complement Laughton's famous reading tours, called Elsa Lanchester's Private Music Hall which ended in 1952; Elsa Lanchester--Herself which ended in 1961; and once more in 1964 at the Ivar Theater. She was equally busy with a stock of film roles and a large share of TV playhouse theater. She made ten movies with Laughton, the last of which, Witness for the Prosecution (1957) garnered her second supporting actress nomination. But her dizzy Aunt Queenie Holroyd of Bell Book and Candle (1958) is a fond remembrance of that time.
With the two decades from the 1960s to early 1980s, Lanchester was a fixture on episodic TV and an institution in Disney and G-rated fare - perhaps a bit ironic for the unconventional Lanchester. She wrote two autobiographies: "Charles Laughton and I" (1938) and "Elsa Lanchester: Herself" (1983), both recalling her nearly 100 roles before the camera. Lanchester remained humorously reflective in regard to her film career, describing it as "...large parts in lousy pictures and small parts in big pictures." It was the mix of silly, bawdy, and outrageous in her revues that was her great joy: "I was content because I was fully aware that I did not like straight acting but preferred performing direct to an audience. You might call what I do vaudeville. Making a joke, especially impromptu, and getting a big laugh is just plain heaven."- Actor
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Harry Morgan was a prolific character actor who starred in over 100 films and was a stage performer. Known to a younger generation of fans as "Col. Sherman T. Potter" on M*A*S*H (1972). Also known for his commanding personality throughout his career, he tackled movies and television in a way no other actor would do it.
Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan to Anna Olsen, a homemaker who immigrated from Sweden, and Henry Bratsberg, a mechanic who immigrated from Norway. After graduating from Muskegon High School in Muskegon, Michigan, he took on a salesman job before becoming a successful actor.
Several of his most memorable film roles were: The Omaha Trail (1942), in the next quarter-century, he would also appear in The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), Wing and a Prayer (1944), State Fair (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), All My Sons (1948), Red Light (1949), Outside the Wall (1950), Dark City (1950) where he met future Dragnet 1967 (1967) co-star Jack Webb, who would be best friends until Webb's death, late in 1982, along with Appointment with Danger (1950). His films credits also include: High Noon (1952), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), Strategic Air Command (1955), among many others. He also co-starred with James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971).
On television, he is fondly remembered as Spring Byington's jokingly henpecked neighbor, "Pete Porter" on December Bride (1954), where he became the show's scene-stealer. It was also based on a popular radio show that transferred into television. The show was an immediate success to viewers, which led him into starring his own short-lived spin-off series, Pete and Gladys (1960), which co-starred Cara Williams, who met Morgan in the movie, The Saxon Charm (1948).
Morgan began his eight-year association with old friend, Jack Webb, and Universal, starting with Dragnet 1967 (1967), which he played Off. Bill Gannon. For the second time, like December Bride (1954) before this, it was an immediate hit, where it tackled a lot of topics. Dragnet was canceled in 1970, after a 4-season run, due to Morgan's best friend and co-star (Jack Webb) leaving the show to continue producing other shows, such as Adam-12 (1968) and Emergency! (1972). Morgan would later work with Webb in both short-lived series, The D.A. (1971), opposite Robert Conrad and Hec Ramsey (1972), opposite Richard Boone. After those roles, Morgan ended his contract with both Universal and Mark VII, to sign with 20th Century Fox.
Morgan's biggest role was that of a tough-talking, commanding, fun-loving, serious Army Officer, "Col. Sherman T. Potter" on M*A*S*H (1972), when he replaced McLean Stevenson, who left the show to unsuccessfully star in his own sitcom. For the third time, the show was still a hit with fans, and at 60, he was nominated for Emmies nine times and won his first and only Emmy in 1980, for Outstanding Supporting Actor. By 1983, M*A*S*H's series was getting very expensive, as well as with the cast, hence, CBS reduced it to 16 episodes. Despite M*A*S*H's finale in 1983, Morgan went on to star in a short-lived spin-off series AfterMASH (1983), co-starring Jamie Farr and William Christopher, from the original M*A*S*H (1972) series, without series' star Alan Alda.
He also co-starred in 2 more short-lived series, as he was over 70, beginning with Blacke's Magic (1986) with Hal Linden and his final role with You Can't Take It with You (1987). That same year, he reprised his role, for a second time as "Off. Bill Gannon" in the film, Dragnet (1987), which starred Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks. Then, he guest-starred in several shows such as: The Twilight Zone (1985), Renegade (1992), The Jeff Foxworthy Show (1995), for the third time, he also reprised his "Off. Bill Gannon" role, supplying his voice on The Simpsons (1989). Towards the end of his acting career, as he reached 80, he had a recurring role as the older college professor on 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996), opposite John Lithgow. Afterwards, he retired from show business and lived with his family. Harry Morgan died on December 7, 2011 at 96. On confirming his death, his son Charles said that he had been recently treated for pneumonia. Morgan was also one of the oldest living Hollywood male actors.- Actor
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George Dzundza was born on 19 July 1945 in Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany. He is an actor and assistant director, known for Crimson Tide (1995), Basic Instinct (1992) and The Deer Hunter (1978). He has been married to Mary Jo Vermeulen since 1982. They have three children.- Actor
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Actor, raconteur, art collector and connoisseur of haute cuisine are just some of the attributes associated with Vincent Price. He was born Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, to Marguerite Cobb "Daisy" (Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, who was President of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, also named Vincent, invented Dr. Price's Baking Powder, which was tartar-based. His family was prosperous, as he said, "not rich enough to evoke envy but successful enough to demand respect." His uniquely cultivated voice and persona were the result of a well-rounded education which began when his family dispatched him on a tour of Europe's cultural centres. His secondary education eventually culminated in a B.A. in English from Yale University and a degree in art history from London's Courtauld Institute.
Famously, his name has long been a byword for Gothic horror on screen. However, Vincent Price was, first and foremost, a man of the stage. It is where he began his career and where it ended. He faced the footlights for the first time at the Gate Theatre in London. At the age of 23, he played Prince Albert in the premiere of Arthur Schnitzler 's 'Victoria Regina' and made such an impression on producer Gilbert Miller that he launched the play on Broadway that same year (legendary actress Helen Hayes played the title role). In early 1938, he was invited to join Orson Welles 's Mercury Theatre on a five-play contract, beginning with 'The Shoemaker's Holiday'. He gave what was described as "a polished performance". Thus established, Vincent continued to make sporadic forays to the Great White Way, including as the Duke of Buckingham in Shakespeare's 'Richard III' (in which a reviewer for the New Yorker found him to be "satisfactorily detestable") and as Oscar Wilde in his award-winning one man show 'Diversions and Delights', which he took on a hugely successful world-wide tour in 1978. While based in California, Vincent was instrumental in the success of the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, starring in several of their bigger productions, including 'Billy Budd' and 'The Winslow Boy'. In 1952, Vincent joined the national touring company of 'Don Juan in Hell' in which he was cast as the devil. Acting under the direction of Charles Laughton and accompanied by noted thespians Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead, he later recalled this as one of his "greatest theatrical excitements".
As well as acting on stage, Vincent regularly performed on radio network programs, including Lux Radio Theatre, CBS Playhouse and shows for the BBC. He narrated or hosted assorted programs ranging from history (If these Walls Could Speak) to cuisine (Cooking Price-Wise). He wrote several best-selling books on his favourite subjects: art collecting and cookery. In 1962, he was approached by Sears Roebuck to act as a buying consultant "selling quality pictures to department store customers". As if that were not enough, he lectured for 15 years on art, poetry and even the history of villainy. He recorded numerous readings of poems by Edgar Allan Poe (nobody ever gave a better recital of "The Raven"!), Shelley and Whitman. He also served on the Arts Council of UCLA, was a member of the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, a former chairman of the Indian Arts & Crafts Board and on the board of trustees of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
And besides all of that, Vincent Price remained a much sought-after motion picture actor. He made his first appearance on screen as a romantic lead in Service de Luxe (1938), a frothy Universal comedy which came and went without much fanfare. After that, he reprized his stage role as Master Hammon in an early television production of 'The Shoemaker's Holiday'. For one reason or another, Vincent was henceforth typecast as either historical figures (Sir Walter Raleigh, Duke of Clarence, Mormon leader Joseph Smith, King Charles II, Cardinal Richelieu, Omar Khayyam) or ineffectual charmers and gigolos. Under contract to 20th Century Fox (1940-46), Laura (1944) provided one of his better vehicles in the latter department, as did the lush Technicolor melodrama Leave Her to Heaven (1945) which had Vincent showcased in a notably powerful scene as a prosecuting attorney. His performance was singled out by the L.A. Times as meriting "attention as contending for Academy supporting honors".
His first fling with the horror genre was Dragonwyck (1946), a Gothic melodrama set in the Hudson Valley in the early 1800's. For the first time, Vincent played a part he actually coveted and fought hard to win. His character was in effect a precursor of those he would later make his own while working for Roger Corman and American-International. As demented, drug-addicted landowner Nicholas Van Ryn, he so effectively terrorized Gene Tierney's Miranda Wells that the influential columnist Louella Parsons wrote with rare praise: "The role of Van Ryn calls for a lot of acting and Vincent admits he's a ham and loves to act all over the place, but the fact that he has restrained himself and doesn't over-emote is a tribute to his ability". If Vincent was an occasional ham, he proved it with his Harry Lime pastiche Carwood in The Bribe (1949). Much better was his starring role in a minor western, The Baron of Arizona (1950), in which he was convincingly cast as a larcenous land office clerk attempting to create his own desert baronetcy.
With House of Wax (1953) , Vincent fine-tuned the character type he had established in Dragonwyck, adding both pathos and comic elements to the role of the maniacal sculptor Henry Jarrod. It was arduous work under heavy make-up which simulated hideous facial scarring and required three hours to apply and three hours to remove. He later commented that it "took his face months to heal because it was raw from peeling off wax each night". However, the picture proved a sound money maker for Warner Brothers and firmly established Vincent Price in a cult genre from which he was henceforth unable to escape. The majority of his subsequent films were decidedly low-budget affairs in which the star tended to be the sole mitigating factor: The Mad Magician (1954), The Fly (1958) (and its sequel), House on Haunted Hill (1959), the absurd The Tingler (1959) (easily the worst of the bunch) and The Bat (1959). With few exceptions, Vincent's acting range would rarely be stretched in the years to come.
Vincent's association with the genial Roger Corman began when he received a script for The Fall of the House of Usher, beginning a projected cycle of cost-effective films based on short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. As Roderick Usher, Vincent was Corman's "first and only choice". Though he was to receive a salary of $50,000 for the picture, it was his chance "to express the psychology of Poe's characters" and to "imbue the movie versions with the spirit of Poe" that clinched the deal for Vincent. He made another six films in this vein, all of them box office winners. Not Academy Award stuff, but nonetheless hugely enjoyable camp entertainment and popular with all but highbrow audiences. Who could forget Vincent at his scenery chewing best as the resurgent inquisitor, luring Barbara Steele into the crypt in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)? Or as pompous wine aficionado Fortunato Luchresi in that deliriously funny wine tasting competition with Montresor Herringbone (Peter Lorre) in Tales of Terror (1962)? Best still, the climactic battle of the magicians pitting Vincent's Erasmus Craven against Boris Karloff's malevolent Dr. Scarabus in The Raven (1963) (arguably, the best offering in the Poe cycle). The Comedy of Terrors (1963) was played strictly for laughs, with the inimitable combo of Price and Lorre this time appearing as homicidal undertakers.
For the rest of the 60s, Vincent was content to remain in his niche, playing variations on the same theme in City in the Sea (1965) and Witchfinder General (1968) (as Matthew Hopkins). He also spoofed his screen personae as Dr. Goldfoot and as perennial villain Egghead in the Batman (1966) series. He rose once more to the occasion in the cult black comedy The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) (and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)) commenting that he had to play Anton Phibes "very seriously so that it would come out funny". The tagline, a parody of the ad for Love Story (1970), announced "love means never having to say you're ugly".
During the 70s and 80s, Vincent restricted himself mainly to voice-overs and TV guest appearances. His final role of note was as the inventor in Edward Scissorhands (1990), a role written specifically for him. The embodiment of gleeful, suave screen villainy, Vincent Price died in Los Angeles in October 1993 at the age of 82. People magazine eulogized him as "the Gable of Gothic." Much earlier, an English critic named Gilbert Adair spoke for many fans when he said "Every man his Price - and mine is Vincent."- Producer
- Director
- Actor
Roger William Corman was born April 5, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan. Initially following in his father's footsteps, Corman studied engineering at Stanford University but while in school, he began to lose interest in the profession and developed a growing passion for film. Upon graduation, he worked a total of three days as an engineer at US Electrical Motors, which cemented his growing realization that engineering wasn't for him. He quit and took a job as a messenger for 20th Century Fox, eventually rising to the position of story analyst.
After a term spent studying modern English literature at England's Oxford University and a year spent bopping around Europe, Corman returned to the US, intent on becoming a screenwriter/producer. He sold his first script in 1953, "The House in the Sea," which was eventually filmed and released as Highway Dragnet (1954).
Horrified by the disconnect between his vision for the project and the film that eventually emerged, Corman took his salary from the picture, scraped together a little capital and set himself up as a producer, turning out Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954). Corman used his next picture, The Fast and the Furious (1954), to finagle a multi-picture deal with a fledgling company called American Releasing Corp. (ARC). It would soon change its name to American-International Pictures (AIP) and with Corman as its major talent behind the camera, would become one of the most successful independent studios in cinema history.
With no formal training, Corman first took to the director's chair with Five Guns West (1955) and over the next 15 years directed 53 films, mostly for AIP. He proved himself a master of quick, inexpensive productions, turning out several movies as director and/or producer in each of those years--nine movies in 1957, and nine again in 1958. His personal speed record was set with The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which he shot in two days and a night.
In the early 1960s he began to take on more ambitious projects, gaining a great deal of critical praise (and commercial success) from a series of adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories, most of them starring Vincent Price. His film The Intruder (1962) was a serious look at racial integration in the South, starring a very young William Shatner. Critically praised and winning a prize at the Venice Film Festival, the movie became Corman's first--and, for many years, only--commercial flop. He called its failure "the greatest disappointment in my career." As a consequence of the experience, Corman opted to avoid such direct "message" films in the future and resolved to express his social and political concerns beneath the surface of overt entertainments.
Those messages became more radical as the 1960s wound to a close and after AIP began re-editing his films without his knowledge or consent, he left the company, retiring from directing to concentrate on production and distribution through his own newly formed company, New World Pictures. In addition to low-budget exploitation flicks, New World also distributed distinguished art cinema from around the world, becoming the American distributor for the films of Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut and others. Selling off New World in the 1980s, Corman has continued his work through various companies in the years since--Concorde Pictures, New Horizons, Millenium Pictures, New Concorde. In 1990, after the publication of his biography "How I Made A Hundred Movies in Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime"--one of the all-time great books on filmmaking--he returned to directing but only for a single film, Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
With hundreds of movies to his credit, Roger Corman is one of the most prolific producers in the history of the film medium and one of the most successful--in his nearly six decades in the business, only about a dozen of his films have failed to turn a profit. Corman has been dubbed, among other things, "The King of the Cult Film" and "The Pope of Pop Cinema" and his filmography is packed with hundreds of remarkably entertaining films in addition to dozens of genuine cult classics. Corman has displayed an unrivaled eye for talent over the years--it could almost be said that it would be easier to name the top directors, actors, writers and creators in Hollywood who DIDN'T get their start with him than those who did. Among those he mentored are Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, James Cameron, Robert De Niro, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante and Sandra Bullock. His influence on modern American cinema is almost incalculable. In 2009 he was honored with an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.- 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.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
Kris Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, to Mary Ann (Ashbrook) and Lars Henry Kristofferson. His paternal grandparents were Swedish, and his father was a United States Air Force general who pushed his son to a military career. Kris was a Golden Gloves boxer and went to Pomona College in California. From there, he earned a Rhodes scholarship to study literature at Oxford University. He ultimately joined the United States Army and achieved the rank of captain. He became a helicopter pilot, which served him well later. In 1965, he resigned his commission to pursue songwriting. He had just been assigned to become a teacher at USMA West Point. He got a job sweeping floors in Nashville studios. There he met Johnny Cash, who initially took some of his songs but ignored them. He was also working as a commercial helicopter pilot at the time. He got Cash's attention when he landed his helicopter in Cash's yard and gave him some more tapes. Cash then recorded Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down", which was voted the 1970 Song of the Year by the Country Music Association. Kris was noted for his heavy boozing. He lost his helicopter pilot job when he passed out at the controls, and his drinking ruined his marriage to singer Rita Coolidge, when he was reaching a bottle and half of Jack Daniels daily. He gave up alcohol in 1976. His acting career nose-dived after making Heaven's Gate (1980). In recent years, he has made a comeback with his musical and acting careers. He does say that he prefers his music, but says his children are his true legacy.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Norman Reedus was born in Hollywood, Florida. He is of Italian, English, Scottish and Irish descent. He is an accomplished photographer with several books of his photography published and continues to do art shows in galleries all around the world every year. His first novel was published in 2022 and was on the New York Times best seller list as well as the Los Angeles Times best seller list titled "The Ravaged". Reedus has a production company named Bigbaldhead, Inc. With his producing partner Amanda Verdon as well as a first look deal with AMC studios.
Norman's first movie as an actor was Guillermo del Toro's horror thriller Mimic (1997), where he played the character Jeremy. He has also played roles in the movies Floating (1997), Six Ways to Sunday (1997), Gossip (2000), Blade II (2002) and Deuces Wild (2002). He also starred in the movies Red Canyon (2008), Robert Redford's The Conspirator (2010), and John Hillcoat's Triple 9 (2016). Norman played the role of Murphy MacManus in the movie The Boondock Saints (1999) opposite Sean Patrick Flanery and Willem Dafoe. He later reprised the role in the sequel The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009).
His directorial debut happened in 2005 for the multi-awarded short film on Miles Davis I Thought of You (2006).
As of 2010, he stars as Daryl Dixon on the AMC television series The Walking Dead (2010). The character was not originally in the comic book series of the same name, but was created specifically for Reedus by Frank Darabont. The Walking Dead comic creator Robert Kirkman has stated he feels "absolutely blessed [Reedus] has honored the show with his presence, and the way he has come in and taken over that role and defined Daryl Dixon. A great deal of Norman's portrayal of the character in the first season inspired all the writers to do what we did with him in the second season. We love writing him and end up doing cool stuff with him."- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Danny John-Jules was born on 16 September 1960 in London, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for Blade II (2002), Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). He is married to Petula Langlais. They have two children.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Guillermo del Toro was born October 9, 1964 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Raised by his Catholic grandmother, del Toro developed an interest in filmmaking in his early teens. Later, he learned about makeup and effects from the legendary Dick Smith (The Exorcist (1973)) and worked on making his own short films. At the age of 21, del Toro executive produced his first feature, Dona Herlinda and Her Son (1985). Del Toro spent almost 10 years as a makeup supervisor, and formed his own company, Necropia in the early 1980s. He also produced and directed Mexican television programs at this time, and taught film.
Del Toro got his first big break when Cronos (1992) won nine Ariel Awards (the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars), then went on to win the International Critics Week Prize at Cannes. Following this success, del Toro made his first Hollywood film, Mimic (1997), starring Mira Sorvino.
Del Toro had some unfortunate experiences working with a demanding Hollywood studio on Mimic (1997), and returned to Mexico to form his own production company, The Tequila Gang.
Next for del Toro, was The Devil's Backbone (2001), a Spanish Civil War ghost story. The film was hailed by critics and audiences alike, and del Toro decided to give Hollywood another try. In 2002, he directed the Wesley Snipes vampire sequel, Blade II (2002).
On a roll, Del Toro followed up Blade II (2002) with another successful comic-book inspired film, Hellboy (2004), starring one of Del Toro's favorite actors, Ron Perlman.
Del Toro is divorced, has a daughter and a son and lives in Los Angeles and Toronto.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Parker Posey was born two months premature in Baltimore, Maryland, to Lynda (Patton) and Chris Posey. The family moved to Monroe, La. and then Laurel, Mississippi, where Chris became owner of Laurel's own Posey Chevrolet. Parker attended high school at R. H. Watkins High School in Laurel, and college at the prestigious SUNY Purchase. While at SUNY she roomed with Sherry Stringfield of TV's ER (1994).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Dominic was born in England, to a Norwegian father and Irish mother. At the age of two, Dominic and his family moved from England to Sydney's Bondi and then moved to the Western Suburbs. After trying his hand at landscape gardening he decided to become an actor whilst watching the war movie Platoon (1986). Due to his working-class background, acting seemed a very unlikely choice of career, so he didn't pursue it until some time later. He studied at The Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) and then later enrolled at the Western Australian Academy of Performing arts where he met his future wife Rebecca and studied with Hugh Jackman. In 1997, Dominic scored a role in the TV series Raw FM (1997) and then landed a part in Mission: Impossible II (2000), which was filmed in Australia. He became a TV star. In 2000, he won the Green Card lottery and now lives in Los Angeles with his family. He was spotted by a US talent scout and has been working constantly with roles in the movie Equilibrium (2002), the TV show John Doe (2002), Blade: Trinity (2004), and in the upcoming thriller Three Way (2004) and a new police television drama, Strut.- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
John Michael Higgins was born on 12 February 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for A Mighty Wind (2003), Pitch Perfect (2012) and Best in Show (2000). He has been married to Margaret Welsh since 1 February 2003. They have two children.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Patton Oswalt has been headlining at comedy clubs all over the United States since 1996, as well as appearing in his own standup specials on Comedy Central and HBO. He was chosen as Entertainment Weekly's "It" comedian in 2002. He is a regular on Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993). His other television credits include appearances on Seinfeld (1989) and NewsRadio (1995).
As a writer, Oswalt spent two seasons on Mad TV (1995) and has also written for the MTV Music Video Awards. He is currently writing screenplays and has appeared in the feature films Starsky & Hutch (2004), Man on the Moon (1999) and Magnolia (1999).- Actor
- Soundtrack
An award-winning Canadian actor, Christopher Heyerdahl co-stars in one of Amazon's number 1 series of 2021 Little Marvin's anthology series: "Them", "Chapelwaite" for Epix, James Gunn's "The Peacemaker", WGNA's "Pure", USA's "Damnation" Sky Atlantic's "Tin Star", SyFy's "Van Helsing" and AMC's hit series "Hell On Wheels," playing the enigmatic 'Swede." This post-Civil War drama debuted as the second highest rated original series in AMC history. He started 2021 shooting the feature "Corner Office" with director Joachim Back and has appeared in the feature films "Sicario: Day of The Soldado", "Adopt a Highway" and co-starring in Robert Budreau's "Stockholm".
Born in British Columbia, Heyerdahl is known internationally for his powerful performances in film, theatre and television. His previous credits include roles as H.P. Lovecraft in the Gemini award winning "Out Of Mind: The Stories Of H.P. Lovecraft"." Fluent in French, he also starred in Québecois films "Le Dernier Tunnel," "Cadavres" and "La Loi Du Cochon." All directed by Érik Canuel and many recurring roles in French language television.
Heyerdahl has an impressive list of television credits including recent guest starring roles on "50 States of Fright" ," Star Trek: Discovery", "Messiah", "Deadly Class", "Midnight, Texas", "Minority Report", "Vegas," "Castle," "CSI," and "Falling Skies," as well as recurring guest roles on "Supernatural," "Caprica," "Smallville," "Human Target," "Stargate Atlantis," the award-winning children's series "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" In addition to Steven Spielberg's Emmy and Golden Globe Award winning mini-series "Into The West" for Dreamworks TNT.
In 2017 Heyerdahl was nominated for a both Canadian Screen Award and Leo Award for his portrayal of Sam on SYFY's Van Helsing. In 2015 he won a Leo Award for Best performance by a male (supporting) in a motion picture for "Eadweard" and Best Performance in a Children's Program for R.L. Stine's "The Haunting Hour - Fear Never Knocks" In 2012. Additionally, in 2010 and 2006 Heyerdahl won Leo Awards for Best Supporting Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series for "Sanctuary" and Best Guest Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series respectfully for his performance as Jan Van Der Heyden in "The Collector."
In 2009, Heyerdahl was nominated for Best Supporting Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series for "Sanctuary- Revelations Part 2" and a Gemini Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Guest Role in a Dramatic Series, also for "Sanctuary."
On stage, Heyerdahl has a long list of theatre credits including "Love's Labour's Lost", "The Changeling" and "Knight of the Burning Pestle" at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum", "The Last Comedy", and "Savage Love", to name a few.
Most recently, Heyerdahl shot a leading role alongside Susan Sarandon, Donald Sutherland and Ellen Burstyn in the indie crime-drama "The Calling," Gil Bellows in "3 Days in Havana" and Michael Eklund in "Eadwaerd." Heyerdahl is internationally known for his dual roles of John Druitt and Bigfoot in SyFy's hit series "Sanctuary" and the mega hit "Twilight" franchise as the "sensitive" Volturi Leader Marcus.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Eric Bogosian was born in Boston and grew up in Woburn, Massachusetts. After graduating from Woburn Memorial High School in 1971, he attended the University of Chicago and graduated from Oberlin College in 1976, whereupon he moved to New York City. In New York he was hired by the Kitchen as an assistant, established a dance series there and after five years left to devote all his energies to his theater work. Between 1976 and 1982, Bogosian wrote, directed and/or starred in over sixteen productions Off-Off-Broadway. In 1982, he toured the Midwest with Fab Five Freddy and the Rock Steady Crew.
In the early 1980's Eric Bogosian became well-known in New York for his intense one-man theater pieces, winning the Obie Award three times as well as the Drama Desk Award. In 1983, after attending one of his one-man shows, Larry Cohen cast Bogosian as the homicidal director in his low-budget film Special Effects (1984). Four years later, Bogosian's Pulitzer-nominated play, (in which he also starred), "Talk Radio" caught the attention of the greater film world. Robert Altman cast Bogosian in his film of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1988) while producer Edward R. Pressman obtained the rights to the play and brought it to director Oliver Stone. Stone and Bogosian adapted the play script to film script, Bogosian again played the lead and the film of Talk Radio (1988) opened in December 1988. Bogosian received the prestigious "Silver Bear" at the 1989 Berlin Festival for his work on the film.
After the release of "Talk Radio", Bogosian worked regularly as an actor in film and television while remaining very active in the theater. 1994 was a banner year in which Bogosian co-starred with Steven Seagal in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) as the diabolical "Travis Dane", was featured in Dolores Claiborne (1995), staged another one-man show Off-Broadway and authored the play, "subUrbia" directed by Robert Falls and produced by Lincoln Center Theater, ("subUrbia" was adapted for film by director Richard Linklater). Around this time, Bogosian would also cameo appearances in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997), Atom Egoyan's Ararat (2002), Cindy Sherman's Office Killer (1997) and Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996).
In the 1990's Bogosian continued to write for film and TV, adapting his own work as well as receiving assignments from studios. He began to write for television when he was invited to co-create a show for Steven Spielberg: High Incident (1996) in 1996. As an actor, in 2003, he co-starred with Val Kilmer as the notorious Eddie Nash in James Cox's Wonderland (2003). In 2006 he was invited onboard Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001) as Captain Danny Ross (where he appeared in over sixty episodes).
In 2010, Bogosian starred on Broadway in Donald Margulies' "Time Stands Still" with Laura Linney, Brian d'Arcy James, Alicia Silverstone and Christina Ricci.
In 2013, Bogosian created a website featuring his numerous monologues performed by notable actors. Visit 100monologues.com to view the complete catalog of over 75 monologues.
More recently, Bogosian landed a series of featured television roles on Netflix's The Get Down (2016), Showtime's Billions (2016) and as Senator Gil Eavis on HBO's Succession (2018).
Bogosian has been featured in Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie's Uncut Gems (2019) (starring Adam Sandler).
In addition to his numerous plays, Bogosian is the author of three novels "Mall", "Wasted Beauty" and "Perforated Heart." His non-fiction history, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide was published by Little, Brown in 2015.
He lives in New York City with his wife, director Jo Bonney with whom he has two children; Travis Bogosian and Harry Bogosian.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Stephen Dorff was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Nancy and Steve Dorff, a composer. Chosen from over 2000 young men from around the world, he auditioned and won the coveted role of "PK" in John G. Avildsen's The Power of One (1992) in 1992, starring opposite Morgan Freeman, John Gielgud and Fay Masterson. For his performance, he was awarded the Male Star of Tomorrow Award from the National Association of Theater Owners.
Dorff then amassed an impressive list of screen credits, chief among them New Line's Blade (1998), in which he starred opposite Wesley Snipes and won the "Best Villain" at both the MTV Movie and Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. He also co-starred with Susan Sarandon in HBO's Earthly Possessions (1999), based on Anne Tyler's novel about an unlikely romance between a young, fumbling bank robber and his hostage. He also starred in Scott Kalvert's street gang drama, Deuces Wild (2002), for MGM and as the champion of bad cinema in the John Waters comedy, Cecil B. Demented (2000), co-starring Melanie Griffith.
Additional credits include XIII: The Conspiracy (2008), Entropy (1999), Blood and Wine (1996) with Jack Nicholson, and opposite Harvey Keitel in City of Industry (1997). He starred as the fifth Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe, in Iain Softley's Backbeat (1994), and as the notorious Candy Darling in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996).
His 2000s credits include Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (2006), Robert Ludlum's Covert One: The Hades Factor (2006), .45 (2006) with Milla Jovovich, Shadowboxer (2005) with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren, and the Disney thriller, Cold Creek Manor (2003), with Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone for director Mike Figgis.
Stephen appeared as disillusioned Hollywood actor and single father Johnny Marco in Sofia Coppola's Somewhere (2010), which won a Golden Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. In 2009, Dorff teamed with Somewhere producer G. Mac Brown on Michael Mann's gangster drama Public Enemies (2009), starring opposite Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.
Dorff was most recently cast in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel Leatherface (2017) and the fantasy family film Albion: Rise of the Dannan (2016) _.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
David S. Goyer was born on 22 December 1965 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Dark City (1998), The Dark Knight (2008) and Flashforward (2009). He is married to Marina Black. They have two children. He was previously married to Jessika Borsiczky.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ken Leung was raised in the Two Bridges section of the Lower East Side in New York City. His family moved to Midwood, Brooklyn where he grew up before finishing high school in Old Bridge, New Jersey. He attended NYU and studied acting with Catherine Russell and Nan Smithner, then briefly with Anne Jackson at HB Studio.
He emerged from Manhattan's downtown theater community in the 1990s and flourished in non-traditional productions that included Jeff Weiss' Hot Keys; Terrence McNally's passion play Corpus Christi; and as Buckingham opposite Austin Pendleton's Richard III.
His early career is defined by the relationships he established with theater groups like Ma-Yi, New Perspectives, and STAR, a traveling troupe of actors-educators based in Mount Sinai Hospital. In 2002, he made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Leung has gone on to establish himself in mainstream features including two films with Spike Lee.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Having made over one hundred films in his legendary career, Willem Dafoe is internationally respected for bringing versatility, boldness, and daring to some of the most iconic films of our time. His artistic curiosity in exploring the human condition leads him to projects all over the world, large and small, Hollywood films as well as Independent cinema.
In 1979, he was given a role in Michael's Cimino's Heaven's Gate, from which he was fired. Since then, he has collaborated with directors who represent a virtual encyclopedia of modern cinema: James Wan, Robert Eggers, Sean Baker, Kenneth Branagh, Kathryn Bigelow, Sam Raimi, Alan Parker, Walter Hill, Mary Harron, Wim Wenders, Anton Corbijn, Zhang Yimou, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, William Friedkin, Werner Herzog, Lars Von Trier, Abel Ferrara, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Anthony Minghella, Theo Angelopoulos, Robert Rodriguez, Phillip Noyce, Hector Babenco, John Milius, Paul Weitz, The Spierig Brothers, Andrew Stanton, Josh Boone, Dee Rees and Julian Schnabel.
Dafoe has been recognized with four Academy Award nominations: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Platoon, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Shadow Of The Vampire, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Florida Project, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, and most recently, Best Leading Actor for At Eternity's Gate, for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination. Among his other nominations and awards, he has received two Los Angeles Film Critics Awards, a New York Film Critics Circle Award, a National Board of Review Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup, as well as a Berlinale Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.
Willem was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Muriel Isabel (Sprissler), a nurse, and William Alfred Dafoe, a surgeon. He is of mostly German, Irish, Scottish, and English descent. He and his wife, director Giada Colagrande, have made three films together: Padre, A Woman, and Before It Had A Name.
His natural adventurousness is evident in roles as diverse as Marcus, the elite assassin who is mentor to Keanu Reeves in the neo-noir John Wick; in his voice work as Gil the Moorish Idol in Finding Nemo and Ryuk the Death God in Death Note; as Paul Smecker, the obsessed FBI agent in the cult classic The Boondock Saints; and as real life hero Leonhard Seppala, who led the 1925 Alaskan dog sled diphtheria serum run in Ericson Core's Togo. That adventurous spirit continues with upcoming films including Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, Abel Ferrara's Siberia, and Paul Schrader's The Card Counter.
Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He created and performed in all of the group's work from 1977 thru 2005, both in the U.S. and internationally. Since then, he worked with Richard Foreman in Idiot Savant at The Public Theatre (NYC), with Robert Wilson on two international productions: The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic and The Old Woman opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov and developed a new theatre piece, directed by Romeo Castellucci, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil. He recently completed work on Marina Abramovic's opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
A grand, well-respected character lead and support of stage, film and television, most people mistakenly think New Zealander Clive Revill is British. A delightfully comic eccentric praised for his sterling work on the musical stage, the blue-eyed, curly, red-haired gent is also highly regarded for his formidable dramatic work in Shakespearean roles.
Clive Selsby Revill was born on April 18, 1930, in Wellington, New Zealand, and educated at Rongotai College and Victoria University (Wellington). Once trained for a career as an accountant, he abruptly switched gears and made his stage debut in Auckland, New Zealand playing Sebastian in "Twelfth Night" in 1950. He then moved to England to study with the Old Vic School in London. While there he appeared at Stratford-on-Avon in mid-1950s presentations of "Hamlet", "Love's Labour's Lost", "The Merchant of Venice", "Julius Caesar" and "The Tempest", among others.
Having made his Broadway debut back in 1952 with "Mr. Pickwick", the man of many skills took a juicy chunk out of the Big Apple upon returning to New York in the 1960s with his critically lauded, Tony Award-nominated work in "Irma La Douce" and as "Fagin" in "Oliver!" He has amused audiences for years with his larger-than-life musical roles, particularly in such Gilbert and Sullivan operettas as "The Mikado" and "The Pirates of Penzance". Others have included "Sherry", "Lolita" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" -- replacing the late George Rose in the last mentioned after that actor's untimely death in 1988.
Making an inauspicious debut in an unbilled role in 1956, his more pronounced movie work includes Kaleidoscope (1966), The Assassination Bureau (1969), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Avanti! (1972), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, The Legend of Hell House (1973) (a rare lead), Mack the Knife (1989), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). Quite proficient at ethnic roles (playing everything from Chinese to Russian), Clive's acute sense of comic timing and uncanny use of body language is parallel to none, often engaging audiences as delightfully pompous, even "hissable" gents.
From the 1990s into the millennium, Clive has pretty much settled in the States. His distinctive voice has been greatly utilized in animated features and video games (Dr. Doom, Darth Gravus, Jetfire), plus a few films including Intrepid (2000), Crime and Punishment (2002), Gentlemen Broncos (2009) and The Queen of Spain (2016). Twice divorced, Revill has one daughter, Kate Selsby (aka Kate Selsby Revill), by his second marriage to Suzi Schor-Revill. He makes his home in Los Angeles.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Joe Gilgun was born on March 9, 1984 in Chorley, Lancashire, England. He is an actor who first appeared in Coronation Street (1960) when he was only ten years old. Later he became known through Emmerdale Farm (1972) and the film This Is England (2006). He also appeared in its spin-off series This Is England '86 (2010), This Is England '88 (2011) and This Is England '90 (2015).
He then replaced Robert Sheehan as the lead in Misfits (2009) from the third series onwards. He then managed to win another big role by starring as the vampire Cassidy in AMC's critically acclaimed drama series Preacher (2016).
As of 2021 he's the lead in the Sky One comedy-drama Brassic (2019), a role he's been playing since 2019.
Besides these television roles, he also appeared in feature films like Harry Brown (2009), Screwed (2011), Lockout (2012), Pride (2014), The Last Witch Hunter (2015) and The Infiltrator (2016).- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Ruth Negga was born on 4 May 1981 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is an actress and producer, known for Loving (2016), Passing (2021) and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013).- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Pablo Tell Schreiber was born in Ymir, British Columbia, Canada, to Lorraine Reaveley, a Canadian psychotherapist, and Tell Schreiber, an American actor. His paternal half-brother is actor Liev Schreiber. Pablo, who is named after Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, was raised in Ymir, and moved to Seattle, Washington, as a teenager.
Pablo Schreiber was nominated for a Tony Award for his Broadway debut performance in the revival of Clifford Odets' classic Awake and Sing! directed by Bartlett Sher.
Schreiber has appeared in many films, including: Josh Radnor's Happythankyoumoreplease (2010), which won the Audience Award at Sundance, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Tell Tale (2009), Nights in Rodanthe (2008), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), Allegiance (2012), Breaking Upwards (2009), Into the Fire (2005), The Mudge Boy (2003) and Invitation to a Suicide (2004). Upcoming he appears in the independent features Fort Bliss (2014), The Dramatics: A Comedy (2015) and Preservation (2014).
Television credits include his classic role as "Nick Sobotka" in HBO's critically acclaimed The Wire (2002); and most recently as the menacing villain "William Lewis" on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), NBC's "Ironside" and as "Pornstache" in Jenji Kohan's hit series Orange Is the New Black (2013). He's also appeared in Stephen Frears' Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (2013) for HBO and on Weeds (2005), A Gifted Man (2011), Lights Out (2011), The Good Wife (2009), White Collar (2009), The Beast (2009), Life on Mars (2008), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005), Fear Itself (2008), Dirt (2007), John Grisham's A Painted House (2003), Law & Order (1990), Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001), and The Black Donnellys (2007).
Schreiber has performed in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway plays including: Desire Under the Elms on Broadway directed by Robert Falls, Rajiv Joseph's Gruesome Playground Injuries at Second Stage, Neil LaBute's Reasons to be Pretty at MCC (for which he won the Drama Desk Award), Dying City at Lincoln Center, Mr. Marmalade at Roundabout, Sin: A Cardinal Deposed at The New Group, Manuscript at the Daryl Roth Theatre, Julius Caesar at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and Blood Orange, his professional debut.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
A natural at portraying complex villains, anti-heroes, and charming heavies, Ian McShane is the classically trained, award-winning actor who has grabbed attention and acclaim from audiences and critics around the world with his unforgettable gallery of scoundrels, kings, mobsters and thugs.
And, now, a god as well!
McShane just completed his third season (as star and executive producer) on the hit Starz series, "American Gods," the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel. As Mr. Wednesday, a shifty, silver-tongued conman, he masks his true identity - that of the Norse god of war, Odin, who's assembling a team of elders to bring down the new false idols. A series McShane calls "like nothing else I've seen on television."
It's a comment that also befits McShane's critically-acclaimed role of the charismatic, menacing and lawless 19th century brothel-and-bar keep, Al Swearengen, in the profound and profane HBO western series "Deadwood," which ran for just 36 episodes over three seasons from 2004-06. For his work on the series' second season, McShane won the 2005 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Drama (in addition to Emmy and Screen Actors Guild nominations as Outstanding Lead Dramatic Actor). He also received the Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama for his work in the show's debut season (with a second nomination in 2005).
It is a role and performance the New York Times dubbed "one of the most interesting villains on television." And, a recent online poll called Swearengen a more compelling onscreen gangster over the likes of Tony Soprano and Michael Corleone. After a twelve-year hiatus from portraying maybe his most iconic character ("it was the most satisfyingly creative three years of my professional career" he says), McShane recently reprised the unforgettable rogue when HBO resurrected the 1870s western in a two-hour telefilm, "Deadwood: The Movie," nominated for the Outstanding Television Movie Emmy.
At an age when many successful thespians turn to cameo appearances and character parts, McShane's busy career (which dates back to 1962) also includes three very different starring roles on the big screen. He was seen alongside David Harbour in Neil Marshall's reimagined comic book epic, "Hellboy." McShane also co-starred with Gary Carr in the Dan Pritzker drama, "Bolden," the biopic of musician Buddy Bolden, the father of jazz and a key figure in the development of ragtime music (McShane portrays Bolden's nemesis, Judge Perry). And, he reprised his role (reuniting with Keanu Reeves) as Winston, the suave and charming owner of the assassins-only Tribeca hotel in the latest installment of director Chad Stahelski's action trilogy, "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum," which opened to enormous box office success.
Years before his triumphant role in "Deadwood," McShane had compiled a long and diverse career on both British and American television. He produced and starred in the acclaimed series "Lovejoy" for the BBC (and A&E in the U.S.), directing several episodes during the show's lengthy run. The popular Sunday night drama (which attracted 18 million viewers weekly during its run from 1990-94) saw McShane in the title role of an irresistible, roguish Suffolk antiques dealer. He would reunite with the BBC by producing and starring in the darker and more serious drama, Madson.
He collected a second Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Miniseries for his portrayal of the scheming Waleran Bigod in Starz's Emmy-nominated "Pillars of the Earth." The production, which originated on the U.K.'s Channel 4, was based on Ken Follett's bestselling historic novel about the building of a 12th-century cathedral during the time known as "the Anarchy" after King Henry I had lost his only son in the White Ship disaster of 1120. It's a character McShane says "would fit into the Vatican."
He is also well-known to TV audiences for his roles in FX's "American Horror Story," Showtime's "Ray Donovan" and, more recently, Amazon's "Dr. Thorne" and HBO's juggernaut, "Game of Thrones" ("I loved the character and did it because my three grandkids, big fans of the show, wouldn't have forgiven me if I hadn't"). And, he first worked with "American Gods" producer Michael Green on the short-lived NBC drama, "Kings," a show (inspired by The Book Of Samuel) he calls "far too revolutionary for network television."
Other notable small screen roles include his appearance in David Wolper's landmark miniseries "Roots" (as the British cockfighting aficionado), "Whose Life Is it Anyway?," Heathcliff in the 1967 miniseries "Wuthering Heights" and Harold Pinter's Emmy-winning "The Caretaker." McShane has also played a variety of real-life subjects like Sejanus in the miniseries "A.D.," the title role of Masterpiece Theater's "Disraeli: Portrait of A Romantic" and Judas in NBC's "Jesus of Nazareth" (directed by Franco Zeffirelli).
McShane, who shows no signs of slowing down in a career now entrenched in its sixth decade ("acting is the only business where the older you get, the parts and the pay get better"), began his career during Britain's New Wave Cinema of the early 1960s. He landed his first lead role in the 1962 English feature "The Wild and the Willing," which also starred another acting upstart and fellow Brit - McShane's lifelong friend, the late John Hurt. McShane later revealed that he had ditched class at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to audition for the role.
Since that 1962 motion picture debut, McShane has enjoyed a fabulous run of character roles such as the sinister Cockney mobster, Teddy Bass, opposite Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley in "Sexy Beast"; the infamous pirate, Blackbeard, alongside Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz in "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides"; and Richard Burton's bi-sexual partner, Wolfie, in the 1971 heist film, "Villain." He gave Hayley Mills her first onscreen kiss as a smoldering gypsy in 1965's "Sky West and Crooked," was part of the stellar ensemble cast (James Mason, James Coburn, Dyan Cannon) in the Stephen Sondheim-Anthony Perkins scripted big screen mystery, "The Last of Sheila," and played a retired sheriff with a violent past opposite Patrick Wilson in the gritty drama, "The Hollow Point."
Other film credits include Guy Hamilton's all-star WWII epic, "The Battle of Britain," the romantic comedy "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," "Pottersville," "Hercules," "Snow White and the Huntsman" and "Jawbone" (reuniting with fellow Brit Ray Winstone in both), "Jack the Giant Slayer," Woody Allen's "Scoop," Rodrigo Garcia's indie drama "Nine Lives" (Gotham Award nominee for Best Ensemble Performance) and the darkly perverse crime drama, "44 Inch Chest," a film in which McShane not only starred, but also produced.
While also making his professional theatre debut in 1962 ("Infanticide in the House of Fred August," Arts Theatre, London), McShane appeared onstage in the original 1965 production of Joe Orton's "Loot." Two years later, he starred alongside Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in the hit stage play, "The Promise," a production which transferred to Broadway in 1967 (with Eileen Atkins replacing Dench). He would return to Broadway one more time forty years later (2008), starring in the 40th anniversary staging of Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming," for which he shared a Drama Desk Award as Best Cast Ensemble.
McShane also returned to the West End boards in 2000, charming audiences as the seductive, sex-obsessed Darryl Van Horne while making his musical stage debut in Cameron Mackintosh's "The Witches of Eastwick," an adaptation of the 1987 film. At the esteemed Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles, he appeared in Harold Pinter's "Betrayal," and John Osborne's "Inadmissible Evidence," earning a pair of Los Angeles Drama Critics' Awards for Lead Performance in the process. He also starred in the world premiere of Larry Atlas' "Yield of the Long Bond."
In addition to his work in front of the camera, McShane is also well-known for his voiceover work, with his low, distinctive baritone on display in a variety of projects. He voiced the eccentric magician, Mr. Bobinsky, in Henry Selick's award nominated "Coraline" (scripted by "American Gods" author Neil Gaiman), lent a sinister air to Tai Lung, the snow leopard adept at martial arts, in "Kung Fu Panda" (Annie Award nominee), and created the notorious Captain Hook in "Shrek the Third." He also narrated Grace Jones' 1985 album, Slave to the Rhythm, succumbing to producer Trevor Horn's request to take the job because, per Horn," Orson Welles was dead, and I needed a voice." The album sold over a million copies worldwide. In the virtual reality domain, he recently lent his voice to the award- winning VR animated short "Age of Sail" in the role of the elderly sailor, William Avery, adrift alone in the North Atlantic.
After almost sixty years entertaining audiences across the performance spectrum, McShane admits he did not set out for a career in the footlights while growing up in Manchester, England (he was actually born in Blackburn). It was by unexpected circumstances after McShane broke his leg playing soccer that he ended up performing in the school play production of Cyrano De Bergerac where he met his life-long friend and teacher, Leslie Ryder. Before he knew it, he auditioned for the Royal Academy of Arts where he was accepted and then left a term early to appear in the film, "The Wild and The Willing".
McShane never looked back.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Orlando Jones was born on 10 April 1968 in Mobile, Alabama, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Evolution (2001), The Time Machine (2002) and Drumline (2002). He has been married to Jacqueline Staph since 2 January 2009. They have two children.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The legendary actress set a record when at age 82, she appeared on Dancing with the Stars (2005). Cloris Leachman was born on April 30, 1926 in Des Moines, Iowa to Berkeley Claiborne "Buck" Leachman and the former Cloris Wallace. Her father's family owned a lumber company, Leachman Lumber Co. She was of Czech (from her maternal grandmother) and English descent. After graduating from high school, Leachman attended Illinois State University and Northwestern University, where she majored in drama. After winning the title of Miss Chicago 1946 (as part of the Miss America pageant), she acted with the Des Moines Playhouse before moving to New York.
Leachman made her credited debut in 1948 in an episode of The Ford Theatre Hour (1948) and appeared in many television anthologies and series before becoming a regular on The Bob & Ray Show (1951) in 1952. Her movie debut was memorable, playing the doomed blonde femme fatale Christina Bailey in Robert Aldrich's classic noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Other than a role in Rod Serling's movie The Rack (1956) in support of Paul Newman, Leachman remained a television actress throughout the 1950s and the 1960s, appearing in only two movies during the latter decade, The Chapman Report (1962) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Though she would win an Oscar for Peter Bogdanovich's adaptation of Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show (1971) and appear in three Mel Brooks movies, it was in television that her career remained and her fame was assured in the 1970s and into the second decade of the new millennium.
Leachman was nominated five times for an Emmy Award playing Phyllis Lindstrom, Mary Tyler Moore's landlady and self-described best friend on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) and on the spin-off series Phyllis (1975). She won twice as Best Supporting Actress in a comedy for her "Mary Tyler Moore" gig and won a Golden Globe Award as a leading performer in comedy for "Phyllis", but her first Emmy Award came in the category Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in 1973 for the television movie A Brand New Life (1973). She also won two Emmy Awards as a supporting player for Malcolm in the Middle (2000).
She was married to director-producer George Englund from 1953 to 1979. They had five children together. Cloris Leachman died of natural causes on January 27, 2021 in Encinitas, California.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Elizabeth Folan Gilpin is an American actress. She is best known for portraying Debbie "Liberty Belle" Eagan in the Netflix comedy series GLOW (2017-2019), for which she was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She also starred as Dr. Carrie Roman in the Showtime comedy-drama series Nurse Jackie (2013-2015). Gilpin has appeared in films such as the mystery thriller True Story (2015), the science fiction romantic comedy Future '38 (2017), the fantasy romantic comedy Isn't It Romantic (2019), the drama A Dog's Journey (2019), and the action comedy Stuber (2019). In 2020, Gilpin starred in the horror film The Grudge, the satirical action thriller The Hunt, and the action comedy Coffee & Kareem. For The Hunt, she won a Critics' Choice Super Award for Best Actress in an Action Movie.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Corbin Bernsen made his initial mark on the seminal television series L.A. Law as opportunistic divorce lawyer "Arnie Becker" earning him multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations over the show's eight-year run. He proved along the way the role was not to be a dead-end stereotype, maintaining a steady career in both television and film over the course of three decades. Moreover, his intent devotion to his career and love for the craft has compelled him in recent years to climb into the producer/writer, and director's chair.
Born in North Hollywood, California, on September 7, 1954, Corbin was raised in and around the entertainment business. The eldest of three children, his father film and television producer Harry Bernsen and mother, veteran actress Jeanne Cooper encouraged him to continue the family tradition. After high school he originally attended UCLA with the intention of pursuing law, but instead, he went on to receive a BFA in Theatre Arts and MFA in Playwriting. He worked on the Equity-waiver L.A. stage circuit as both actor and set designer, making his film debut as a bit player in his father's picture Three the Hard Way. He then set his sights on New York in the late 70s. In the early years he carved out a living as a carpenter building rooftop decks in NYC that still stand to this day. Then in 1983 he landed the role of "Ken Graham" on daytime's Ryan's Hope and he put his tool belt away. This break led to an exclusive deal with NBC and eventually the TV role in L.A. Law. The perks of his "newly-found stardom" on L.A. Law included a hosting stint on Saturday Night Live and the covers of numerous major magazines.
Not one to settle for what he knew could be fleeting comfort, he worked diligently to parlay his small screen success into a diverse resume of feature film roles, both starring and supporting, often enjoying the challenge of portraying unsympathetic characters with an infusion of charm and likability. He co-starred as Shelley Long's egotistical husband in the reincarnation comedy Hello Again; played an equally vain Hollywood star in the musical comedy Bert Rigby, You're a Fool; and starred as a disorganized ringleader of a band of crooks in the bank caper Disorganized Crime. He capped the 1980s decade opposite Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger in the box office hit Major League, which took advantage of his natural athleticism, playing ballplayer-cum-owner "Roger Dorn". Two sequels followed. Other notable feature film work includes the mystery thriller Shattered, directed by Wolfgang Peterson, which re-teamed him with Tom Berenger, Stephen Frears' Lay The Favorite, and a turn opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
On the TV front, he has appeared in many MOW's including Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story as the famed civil rights attorney who founded the Southern Poverty Law Center. Topping it off, Corbin's title role in the horror/ thriller The Dentist for HBO had audiences developing a similar paranoia of tooth doctors as Anthony Perkins invoked decades before to motel clerks. As spurned husband-turned-crazed dentist "Dr. Alan Feinstone", Corbin reached cult horror status. The movie spawned a sequel in which he also served as a producer. Most recently, he has reunited with Dentist director Brian Yuzna on a slate of films exploring similar themes starting with "The Plastic Surgeon."
More recently Bernsen wrapped eight seasons on USA Network's hit series Psych as Henry Spencer playing James Roday's retired cop father who taught his "fake psychic," crime solving son everything he knows.
In 2006 he formed his own production company, Team Cherokee Productions to exert more creative control over his projects and begin exploring material both as writer, director and producer. Today that company has taken root as Home Theater Films, an early player in the Faith and Family film genre. The company has explored a wide variety of themes beginning with the film "Rust" which was distributed by Sony Pictures. With five other films under their belt, including "25 Hill," "Beyond the Heavens," "Christian Mingle" starring Lacey Chabert, and the upcoming "Jesse and Naomi," Home Theater Films has firmly carved a niche and name in this lucrative genre.
Corbin has been happily married (since 1988) to British actress Amanda Pays who most recently be seen on "The Flash." They have appeared together in the sci-fi film Spacejacked and the TV-movies Dead on the Money and The Santa Trap, among others. The couple has four sons. Never one to become complacent or fall prey to the hype - a lesson learned from his mother - he still practices his carpenter skills at home as he continues to write, produce, and direct. Perseverance and dedication has played a large part in his continued success. Having a savvy take-charge approach hasn't hurt either -- characteristics worthy of many of the characters he's explored on screen.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Tracie Thoms has had wide-ranging success in film, television and theatre throughout her busy career.
Tracie's currently a series regular opposite Oscar winner Octavia Spencer on the Apple series, Truth Be Told, while at the same time recurring on Fox's 9-1-1 and ABC's Station 19.
Tracie realized a long-held dream when she starred as 'Joanne' in the final weeks of the historic Broadway run of the iconic musical, Rent. She played the same key role in Sony's film of Rent opposite Rosario Dawson and Idina Menzel. She was seen opposite Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Rian Johnson's Looper, and with Denzel Washington in Safe House. She starred with Kurt Russell in Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse: Death Proof and opposite Anne Hathaway in David Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada. She was featured in Columbia's remake of Annie with Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhané Wallis. She's also been featured in dozens of indie films throughout her career.
Tracie starred on Broadway most recently in the acclaimed production of James Lapine's Falsettos. She also starred opposite Dulé Hill and Mekhi Phifer in Stick Fly, and opposite Alfre Woodard in Drowning Crow. She starred Off-Broadway in Working at Encores! Off-Center, with Oscar nominee John Hawkes in the world premiere of David Auburn's Lost Lake at Manhattan Theatre Club, and she was a lead in the acclaimed The Exonerated at The Culture Project. She's been featured in The 24 Hour Plays, The 24 Hour Musicals, and 10 Things To Do Before I Die at New York's Second Stage.
Tracie was a series regular for six years on CBS' Cold Case. She starred for Fox in Wonderfalls and recurred on Hulu's The First, WGN's Gone, Lifetime's UnREAL, Netflix's Love and NBC's Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector. She's guest starred on Veep, Person of Interest, Suits, The Shield, The Good Wife, The Mindy Project, Criminal Minds, The Affair, The Good Doctor, Grey's Anatomy, Mad About You, Run, Curb Your Enthusiasm and NCIS: Los Angeles.
Tracie began studying acting in her hometown of Baltimore at age 9. She attended high school at the prestigious Baltimore School for the Arts. Later, she received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Howard University and a graduate degree in acting from New York City's renowned Juilliard School.- Jeremy Davies attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California. He made his film debut starring in David O. Russell's acclaimed first film, the Indy classic, "Spanking the Monkey", which became a surprise Sundance Film Festival winner, earning Jeremy an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Debut Performance.
Davies' portrayal of Tom Hanks' interpreter, 'Corporal Upham', in Steven Spielberg's Academy Award winning film, "Saving Private Ryan" also earned him considerable critical acclaim and subsequent Oscar buzz.
Davies' other film credits include Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris", with George Clooney and Viola Davis; "Going All the Way" with Ben Affleck; "The Locusts" with Vince Vaughn; Wim Wenders' "Million Dollar Hotel"; Lars von Trier's acclaimed avant-garde films, "Dogville" and "Manderlay" with Nicole Kidman and Stellan Skarsgard; "Rescue Dawn" with Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, and directed by the legendary Werner Herzog; "Nell" with Jodie Foster and Liam Neeson; "Half Nelson" writer/directors Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden's "It's Kind of a Funny Story"; "Guncrazy" with Drew Barrymore, and Jan de Bont's "Twister" with Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
In television, Davies was invited to join the cast of JJ Abram's groundbreaking show, "Lost", and soon after, his character, 'Daniel Faraday', quickly became an integral part of the "Lost" mythology and a favorite of critics and fans (to the extent that ABC began selling Faraday bobbleheads).
After "Lost", Davies joined Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins and Margo Martindale on Graham Yost's acclaimed, Emmy winning FX show, "Justified", based on a short story by the great Elmore Leonard. Wildly against his better judgment, Yost generously granted Jeremy unusual freedom to develop the character of Mags Bennett's middle son, and Davies' subsequent ferocious and fragile Richard the Third-esque portrayal of Harlan, Kentucky outlaw 'Dickie Bennett' was so far removed from 'Daniel Faraday', his work earned him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor.
Davies' television work also includes the Emmy-honored HBO film, "The Laramie Project".
Davies was raised without television, and experienced a vividly nomadic (non-military brat), low-income childhood, growing up throughout the US and abroad, including Vermont, Seattle, Oregon, Kansas, Michigan, New Orleans, Latin America, Canada, Denmark, Sweden and the Kingdom of California. - Actor
- Producer
Widely regarded as one of England's finest stage, screen and TV actors, David Suchet's international reputation has only grown over the years, greatly enhanced by his definitive interpretation of Agatha Christie's suave Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot, a character he played for nearly 25 years in various TV episodes (1988-2013). Born in London on May 2, 1946, the son of actress Joan Patricia Jarché and renowned Lithuanian-Jewish obstetrician and gynecologist Jack Suchet, David, following boarding school, took an early desire in acting and was given a membership with the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain at age 16. He then studied for three years at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and, after a significant route in repertory work, became a company member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1973 where he evolved into one of its most dominant players.
In the 1970s, Suchet also began to come into his own on British television. In classical tradition, his first television movie was A Tale of Two Cities (1980). His first cinematic detective was as a Greek inspector in the Disney mystery comedy Trenchcoat (1983). This was followed by a versatile range of film roles that also express the width of his acting nationalities, such as a Middle Eastern terrorist in The Little Drummer Girl (1984), a Russian operative in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), a French hunter in Harry and the Hendersons (1987), a Polish bishop in To Kill A Priest (1988), and the emperor Napoleon in Sabotage! (2000).
Suchet's masterful work in television roles also includes portrayals of historical, biblical, entertainment and fictional figures, such as Sigmund Freud in Freud (1984), news reporter William L. Shirer in Murrow (1986), Aaron in Moses (1995), movie mogul Louis B. Mayer in RKO 281 (1999), Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII (2003), vampire nemesis Van Helsing in Dracula (2006), and Robert Maxwell in Maxwell (2007).
Suchet's memorable theatre incarnations have included Shakespearean interps of Iago in "Othello", Tybalt in "Romeo and Juliet", Caliban in "The Tempest", and the title role of "Timon of Athens", as well as vibrant classical roles such as George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1996), as composer Salieri in "Amadeus" (1998), a mesmerizing performance that earned both Olivier and Tony nominations, as Joe Keller in "All My Sons" (2010), as James Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" (2012) (and in the 2014 film), as Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Earnest" (2015) (and in the 2015 film), and as Gregory Solomon in "The Price" (2019).
Long married to former actress Sheila Ferris, the couple have two children: Robert Suchet (born 1981) and Katherine Suchet (born 1983). His older brother is BBC newscaster-turned-journalist John Suchet. David was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to drama. He was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire at the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to drama and to charity.- Malika Haqq was born on 10 March 1983 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Sky High (2005), ATL (2006) and 20 Years After (2008).
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Kourtney was born in Los Angeles, California as the eldest of four children of Kris Jenner (née Kristen Mary Houghton) and attorney Robert Kardashian, with siblings Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, and Rob Kardashian. Her father was of Armenian descent and her mother is of mostly English and Scots-Irish ancestry. In 1991, when she was age 12, her parents divorced and she spent her time between their separate houses in Beverly Hills. Her mother married Caitlyn Jenner, 1976 Olympic Gold Metal Champion for the Decathlon and later had two children with him, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner. After the O.J. Simpson murder trial propelled Kourtney's father, Bob, into the spotlight (he was a member of the "Dream Team" of lawyers defending the accused murderer in what journalists hail the "Trial of the Century"), her mother decided it would be safer to move her family to Hidden Hills, California.
Kourtney attended Marymount High School in Los Angeles, an all-girls private Catholic high school. After graduation, she enrolled at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. After two years, she transferred to the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. She graduated in May of 2002 with a Bachelor's Degree in Theatre Arts with a minor in Spanish. After graduation, she and her mother opened up children's clothing boutiques in both the Los Angeles Area (818) and New York City, called "Smooch", which carries the brand "Crib Rock Couture." At the age of 26, she starred in a reality television show called Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive (2005) that earned money for charity.
Kourtney has a son and daughter with her boyfriend Scott Disick, who she met in 2006.- Producer
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Born in Los Angeles, Khloé Alexandra Kardashian is a model, actress, and businesswoman who became famous with the reality TV series Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007) where she shared the success with her family, most notably her older sister Kim Kardashian. On top of spin-offs with her sister Kourtney Kardashian with whom she launched many fashion clothing lines and fragrances, she also had her own reality show after marrying basketball player Lamar Odom. They divorced in 2018, since then she had a relationship with Tristan Thompson and they had a daughter together. Khloé learned the ropes of production which allowed her to executive-produce her own talk show Kocktails with Khloé (2016) and more recently she hosted Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian (2017), a reality show where she and personal trainers helped people taking revenge on their body.- Producer
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Kris Jenner was born on 5 November 1955 in San Diego, California, USA. She is a producer and writer, known for The Mindy Project (2012), Love Advent (2011) and Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007). She was previously married to Caitlyn Jenner and Robert Kardashian.- Producer
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TV star, entrepreneur, fashion designer, and author (New York Times best-seller - "Kardashian Konfidential"), Kim Kardashian was born in Los Angeles, California, to Kris Jenner (née Kristen Mary Houghton) and attorney Robert Kardashian. Her father was of Armenian descent and her mother is of mostly English and Scots-Irish ancestry. Kim first burst onto the scene in 2007, after the premiere of her hit E! Entertainment reality series, Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007). The show follows the exploits of the Kardashian/Jenner family, which includes her stepfather Caitlyn Jenner, her mother, Kim, her siblings Kourtney Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, Rob Kardashian, and younger half-sisters Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner. The show was the highest-rated program on the E! Network. She also stars alongside her sister Kourtney in Kourtney & Kim Take New York (2011), which premiered its second season in November of this year. Most recently, Kardashian shared her wedding with the world in a two-part special, Kim's Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event - Part 1 (2011) and Kim's Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event - Part 2 (2011). The special ranks as E!'s most-watched event, ever, bringing in 10.5 million viewers. In addition to starring in her own reality shows for E!, she has appeared as an actress in a number of other projects, including the feature, Disaster Movie (2008) (Lionsgate), CW's hit show, 90210 (2008) and TV's How I Met Your Mother (2005) and Brothers (2009), among others. In 2010, she produced The Spin Crowd (2010), her first TV show for E!, which premiered to 2.46 million households. Additionally, in September 2008, Kardashian competed on the ABC hit series, Dancing with the Stars (2005), where she was paired with defending Champion Mark Ballas.
In recent years, Kardashian has become a highly-sought-after name and face for a number of high profile brands. She is the face of "Sketchers Shape-ups", the sneaker designed to get you fit while you walk, work, shop, and more. She was featured in a Sketchers commercial during Super Bowl XLV. Also, she (along with her sisters), has her own line of "Nicole by OPI" nail polish, "Kardashian Kolors", which will be available on holiday 2011. She has created a line of contemporary jewelry line, "Belle Noel", with famed jewelry designer Pascal Mouawad. Kardashian also serves as the official spokesperson for "Midori Melon Liqueur" and its new "Stand-Out" marketing campaign.
Employing her entrepreneurial business skills, Kim began her fashion career as a stylist and became an immediate sought-after wardrobe stylist for infomercials, television shows, music videos and photo shoots. But it was her organizational, orderly arrangement and construction of high-fashion closets that led her into a unique line of work, overhauling and designing closets for celebrities.
In 2006, together with her sisters Kourtney and Khloe, Kardashian opened the designer clothing store, "Dash", in Calabasas, California; a must-shop-at store for those with discriminating, yet fashionable taste. Because of high consumer demands, other stores in Miami and New York opened in 2009 and 2010, respectively. In 2010, Kim co-designed a fashion line with her sisters, Kourtney and Khloe, in conjunction with the Bebe fashion brand. This collaboration led to a partnership between the three sisters and Bruno Schiavi on a complete brand launch, "Kardashian Kollection", encompassing apparel, shoes, lingerie, home, jewelry and accessories. "Kardashian Kollection" is sold at over 500 Sears, nationwide. Sears has created a store within a store concept, specifically for "Kardashian Kollection". It is also sold in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany.
In 2009, Kim launched her own perfume, "Kim Kardashian", which is available worldwide. Her second perfume, "Kim Kardashian Gold", was launched in 2010. A limited edition scent, "Kim Kardashian Gold", launched in August 2011. Her online shoe company, "ShoeDazzle.com", was launched in March 2009 and provides affordable, fashionable shoes to its members.
Kim has graced the covers of numerous publications around the world, including Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Allure, Harper's Bazaar, Prestige (Hong Kong), and Self, among others. Additionally, she has appeared, as a guest, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992), Late Show with David Letterman (1993), Larry King Live (1985), among others.
Kardashian's official website gets 6 million page views a month, making it the fastest growing celebrity blog on the web. She also has over 10 million followers on Twitter.
When not working, Kim gives her time to charitable causes. She is a Dream Foundation ambassador which grants last wishes to terminally ill adults and does regular sales on Ebay to generate donations for the charity. She enjoys spending time with children at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles and is passionate about cancer foundations since her father, the late Robert Kardashian, passed away from esophageal cancer. Kardashian recently gave a heart-felt speech about her father at Gabrielle's Angel Foundations' Angel Ball which supports cancer research.- Actress
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Kendall Nicole Jenner was born on November 3, 1995 in Los Angles, California, to parents Kris Jenner (née Kristen Mary Houghton) and Caitlyn Jenner (formerly known as Bruce Jenner), a U.S Olympic gold medal decathlon winner. Kendall is an American socialite, television personality and model. She is featured on the E! reality TV show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007), along with the rest of her family. She is a successful model who has modeled for the Sherri Hill dress line, which specializes in dresses for proms and pageants. She was also featured in People magazine's "Beautiful People" article. Kendall is also a runway model and appears at public events. She made her runway debut at Sherri Hill's Spring 2012 Fashion Show.
Kendall Jenner is the eldest daughter from her parents' marriage. She has a younger sister, Kylie Jenner. Through her mother, she has three older half-sisters, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Khloé Kardashian, and one older half-brother, Rob Kardashian.- Actress
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Kylie Jenner was born on August 10, 1997 in Los Angeles, California to Kris Jenner (née Kristen Mary Houghton) and athlete Caitlyn Jenner. Kylie has one full sibling, Kendall Jenner. She also has 4 half siblings from her mothers side including Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian and Rob Kardashian, and 4 half siblings from her fathers side including Burt Jenner, Brody Jenner, Brandon Jenner and Casey Jenner. Kylie is the youngest child out of all of her parents children. Kylie began her modeling career with the Sears line "Crush Your Style" and has since done photo shoots for OK! Magazine, Teen Vogue, and photographer Nick Saglimbeni. She also modeled for Avril Lavigne's Abby Dawn Runway in 2011 for New York Fashion Week. Kylie has expressed an interest in acting but feels college is a greater priority. Kylie is a part of the Kardashian Kolors by O.P.I, she has 2 colors called "Wear Something Spar-Kylie" and "Rainbow in the S-Kylie". In 2012 Kylie was featured alongside her sister, Kendall Jenner, on the cover of Teen Vogue.- Actor
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Scott Disick was born on 26 May 1983 in Eastport, New York, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Youthful Daze (2012), Royal Pains (2009) and Mally Mall & Tyga Feat. Sean Kingston, French Montana, Pusha T: Wake Up in It (2014).- Actor
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The Emmy Award-winning actor stars in NBC's Emmy and Golden Globe nominated drama series This Is Us (2016). For his role as Randall Pearson, Brown won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, as well as a Golden Globe, becoming the first African-American actor to win his category in the award show's 75-year history. Additionally, Brown made history by becoming the first African-American actor to receive the SAG Award for Outstanding Male Actor in a Drama and also received a SAG award alongside his cast for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. He also has won an NAACP Image Award and Critics Choice Award, and has been nominated for a TCA Award and a Teen Choice Award. In 2016, Brown portrayed prosecutor Christopher Darden in FX's highly-rated award-winning television event series Inside Look: The People v. O.J. Simpson - American Crime Story (2016). He won an Emmy Award and Critics Choice Award for the role and was nominated for a Golden Globe, SAG Award, and NAACP Image Award.
Brown was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Aralean Banks and Sterling Brown. His father died when he was ten, after a heart attack. Brown graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Drama from Stanford University, before receiving his Master's Degree in Fine Arts from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.
Brown can be seen in Marvel's Black Panther (2018). Later in the year, he co-starred in Fox's The Predator (2018) and Hotel Artemis (2018), with Jodie Foster and Brian Tyree Henry. In 2017, Brown co-starred in Open Road's Marshall (2017), for which he received an NAACP Image Award nomination for his role. In 2016, Brown co-starred with Tina Fey in Paramount's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016).
A lover of theater, Brown has performed in a variety of staged shows, including NY and LA productions of Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3), for which he won an NAACP Theatre Award and was nominated for an Ovation Award. His additional stage credits include MacBeth, The Brother/Sister Plays and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui opposite Al Pacino.
For seven years, Brown portrayed Dr. Roland Burton in the critically acclaimed Lifetime series Army Wives (2007). Additional television credits include Supernatural (2005), Person of Interest (2011), Masters of Sex (2013), Castle (2009) and Criminal Minds (2005). His film credits include Our Idiot Brother (2011), The Suspect (2013), Righteous Kill (2008), Trust the Man (2005), and Spaceman (2016).- Actor
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Shemar Franklin Moore (born April 20, 1970) is an American actor and former fashion model. His notable roles are that of Malcolm Winters on The Young and the Restless from 1994 to 2005, Derek Morgan on CBS's Criminal Minds from 2005 to 2016, and as the third permanent host of Soul Train from 1999 to 2003.- Actor
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McRaney holds the distinction of being the last guest star to meet "Matt Dillon" in a gunfight on Gunsmoke (1955) - in the episode, Hard Labor (1975), first broadcast on February 24, 1975 (he lost). In fact, in the early portion of Gerald McRaney's career he almost always played the villain; but, since his first series, Simon & Simon (1981), hit it big, he's played mostly good guys. The character of passionate but irresponsible "Rick Simon" gave McRaney the opportunity to play a dramatic role with a comedic edge. A second hit series, Major Dad (1989), showcased his talent for comedy. McRaney met and fell in love with fellow southerner Delta Burke when she guest-starred on Simon & Simon (1981). He later appeared on her series, Designing Women (1986), as her ex-husband, although it is an unwritten rule that actors with current series don't do guest roles; they were married not long after.- Actress
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With over 300 television appearances to her credit, Debra Jo Rupp is perhaps best known for her role as the hilarious and beloved high-strung mom 'Kitty Forman' in the long-running FOX comedy series "That '70s Show." Her performance established her as a sitcom legend, and one of TV's Favorite Moms of all time!
Debra Jo was welcomed into the Marvel Universe with her memorable turn as 'Mrs. Hart' in Marvel Studios' "WandaVision" for Disney+.
Fans of "That '70s Show" can now look forward to Debra Jo reprising her iconic role of 'Kitty Forman' in the upcoming "That '90s Show" for Netflix! Debra Jo and Kurtwood Smith ('Red Forman') will anchor the new spin-off series, for which they will also serve as executive producers. Set in Wisconsin in 1995, they play grandparents to 'Leia' (daughter of 'Eric' and 'Donna') who visits over the summer and bonds with a new generation of Point Place kids, under the watchful eye of 'Kitty' and the stern glare of 'Red.' Production is scheduled to begin Q1 2022 on 10 episodes.
Debra Jo's memorable television roles include Phoebe's sister-in-law 'Alice' on "Friends," Jerry's Booking Agent 'Katie' on "Seinfeld," and more recently as Beth and Randall's social worker 'Linda' on "This is Us" and Abby's mother, 'Janice Phillips,' on "The Ranch." Notable guest-starring roles include "NCIS: Los Angeles," "From the Earth to the Moon" directed by Sally Field, and "The Office." She also previously starred in the ABC comedy series, "Better With You."
She made her feature film debut with Tom Hanks in "Big." She went on to play Jay Baruchel's mom in "She's Out of My League" and Jamie Kennedy's mom in "Kickin It Old Skool." Additional feature credits include "The Opposite Sex" with Mena Suvari, Geoff Stults and Kristin Chenoweth, "She Wants Me" with Josh Gad, Charlie Sheen and Hilary Duff, "Clockwatchers" with Toni Collette and Parker Posey, "Lucky 13" and "Sgt. Bilko" with Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd.
Debra Jo has lent her voice to the Emmy-winning "Teacher's Pet" with Nathan Lane (both cartoon and feature film), "Garfield," "Air Buddies" and various other projects with tiny animals.
Debra Jo has a rich and impressive theatre background and has appeared on and off-Broadway for the past four decades. She appeared on Broadway with Kathleen Turner and Charles Durning in the 1990 revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." She starred off-Broadway in Cynthia Heimel's "A Girl's Guide to Chaos" (American Place Theatre), "Frankie and Johnnie in The Clair de Lune" (Westside Arts) and "The Butcher of Baraboo" (Second Stage Theatre) directed by Judith Ivey. She has also starred in numerous regional productions at Williamstown Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, Chester Theatre Company and Berkshire Theatre Group.
In recent years, Debra Jo has enjoyed getting back to her theater roots. She starred off-Broadway in the one-woman show, "Becoming Dr. Ruth," based on the life of pioneering radio and television sex therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. She was nominated for both a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award, in the category of Outstanding Solo Performance.
In 2019, she starred off-Broadway in Bekah Brunstetter's play, "The Cake," at The Manhattan Theatre Club, after originating the role at The Echo Theater Company (Los Angeles), Barrington Stage Company (Pittsfield, MA) and Geffen Playhouse (L.A.). For her performance in "The Cake," Debra Jo won the L.A. Stage Ovation Award and L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award.
Aside from acting, Debra Jo's eclectic interests range from gardening, needlepointing and grilling, to playing Bridge, video war games and Fantasy Football. During Covid lockdowns, she kept herself occupied by taking long walks in the snow and ordering huge boxes of Nacho Cheese Doritos in small bags in order to consume as much salt as possible! She also recorded a multitude of Cameo videos, with proceeds helping to keep local restaurant workers afloat in The Berkshires. Ever by Debra Jo's side are her loyal Yorkies, Olive and Martini, who have both had all their knees replaced and are looking forward to their impending move to the west coast where "That '90s Show" will film.- Actor
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Screen legend, superstar, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second son of Arthur Sigmund Newman (died 1950) and Theresa Fetsko (died 1982). His elder brother was Arthur S. Newman Jr., named for their father, a Jewish businessman who owned a successful sporting goods store and was the son of emigrants from Poland and Hungary. Newman's mother (born Terézia Fecková, daughter of Stefan Fecko and Mária Polenak) was a Roman Catholic Slovak from Homonna, Pticie (former Austro-Hungarian Empire), who became a practicing Christian Scientist. She and her brother, Newman's uncle Joe, had an interest in the creative arts, and it rubbed off on him. He acted in grade school and high school plays. The Newmans were well-to-do and Paul Newman grew up in affluent Shaker Heights. Before he became an actor, Newman ran the family sporting goods store in Cleveland, Ohio.
By 1950, the 25-year-old Newman had been kicked out of Ohio University, where he belonged to the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, for unruly behavior (denting the college president's car with a beer keg), served three years in the United States Navy during World War II as a radio operator, graduated from Ohio's Kenyon College, married his first wife, Jacqueline "Jackie" Witte (born 1929), and had his first child, Scott. That same year, his father died. When he became successful in later years, Newman said if he had any regrets it would be that his father was not around to witness his success. He brought Jackie back to Shaker Heights and he ran his father's store for a short period. Then, knowing that wasn't the career path he wanted to take, he moved Jackie and Scott to New Haven, Connecticut, where he attended Yale University's School of Drama.
While doing a play there, Newman was spotted by two agents, who invited him to come to New York City to pursue a career as a professional actor. After moving to New York, he acted in guest spots for various television series and in 1953 came a big break. He got the part of understudy of the lead role in the successful Broadway play "Picnic". Through this play, he met actress Joanne Woodward (born 1930), who was also an understudy in the play. While they got on very well and there was a strong attraction, Newman was married and his second child, Susan, was born that year. During this time, Newman was accepted into the much admired and popular New York Actors Studio, although he did not actually audition.
In 1954, a film Newman was very reluctant to do was released, The Silver Chalice (1954). He considered his performance in this costume epic to be so bad that he took out a full-page ad in a trade paper apologizing for it to anyone who might have seen it. He had always been embarrassed about the film and reveled in making fun of it. He immediately wanted to return to the stage, and performed in "The Desperate Hours". In 1956, he got the chance to redeem himself in the film world by portraying boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), and critics praised his performance. In 1957, with a handful of films to his credit, he was cast in The Long, Hot Summer (1958), co-starring Joanne Woodward.
During the shooting of this film, they realized they were meant to be together and by now, so did his then-wife Jackie, who gave Newman a divorce. He and Woodward wed in Las Vegas in January 1958. They went on to have three daughters together and raised them in Westport, Connecticut. In 1959, Newman received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). The 1960s would bring Newman into superstar status, as he became one of the most popular actors of the decade, and garnered three more Best Actor Oscar nominations, for The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967). In 1968, his debut directorial effort Rachel, Rachel (1968) was given good marks, and although the film and Woodward were nominated for Oscars, Newman was not nominated for Best Director. However, he did win a Golden Globe Award for his direction.
1969 brought the popular screen duo of Newman and Robert Redford together for the first time when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was released. It was a box office smash. Through the 1970s, Newman had hits and misses from such popular films as The Sting (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974) to lesser known films as The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) to a cult classic Slap Shot (1977). After the death of his only son, Scott, in 1978, Newman's personal life and film choices moved in a different direction. His acting work in the 1980s and on is what is often most praised by critics today. He became more at ease with himself and it was evident in The Verdict (1982) for which he received his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination and, in 1987, finally received his first Oscar for The Color of Money (1986), almost thirty years after Woodward had won hers. Friend and director of Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Robert Wise accepted the award on Newman's behalf as the actor did not attend the ceremony.
Films were not the only thing on his mind during this period. A passionate race car driver since the early 1970s (despite being color-blind), he was co-founder of Newman-Haas racing in 1982, and also founded "Newman's Own", a successful line of food products that has earned in excess of $100 million, every penny of which Newman donated to charity. He also started The Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, an organization for children with serious illness. He was as well known for his philanthropic ways and highly successful business ventures as he was for his legendary actor status.
Newman's marriage to Woodward lasted a half-century. Connecticut was their primary residence after leaving Hollywood and moving East in 1960. Renowned for his sense of humor, in 1998 he quipped that he was a little embarrassed to see his salad dressing grossing more than his movies. During his later years, he still attended races, was much involved in his charitable organizations, and in 2006, he opened a restaurant called Dressing Room, which helps out the Westport Country Playhouse, a place in which Newman took great pride. In 2007, while the public was largely unaware of the serious illness from which he was suffering, Newman made some headlines when he said he was losing his invention and confidence in his acting abilities and that acting was "pretty much a closed book for me". A smoker for many years, Newman died on September 26, 2008, aged 83, from lung cancer.- Producer
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Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz in New York City, New York, to Marian (Laskin), a teacher, and Donald Leibowitz, a physics professor. His family is Ashkenazi Jewish (from Austria, Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus). Stewart moved to Lawrenceville, New Jersey during his childhood. He graduated from the College Of William And Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1984. He made his breakthrough on The Larry Sanders Show (1992), where he had a role playing himself, the oft-timed "Guest Host" of "The Larry Sanders Show". He became as much a part of the show's fabric as some of the regular performers.
In the 2000s, Stewart emerged as a bonafide television personality with his ascension to host of The Daily Show (1996)/Comedy Central, taking over for Craig Kilborn in 1999. Audiences have embraced his sarcastic, sardonic and incisive sense of humor, covering politics and other news stories.
Stewart and his wife, Tracey, have two children.- Writer
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Stephen Tyrone Colbert (pronounced "cole-BEAR") was born on May 13, 1964 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. He is the son of Lorna Elizabeth (Tuck) and James William Colbert, Jr., a doctor and medical school dean at Yale, Saint Louis University, and MUSC. He is the youngest of eleven children, and is of Irish Catholic background.
Stephen studied acting at Northwestern and performed with the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago before teaming up with fellow cast members Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello to create the sketch comedy Exit 57 (1995) for Comedy Central. During its two-season run in the mid-1990s, it garnered five CableACE nominations for best writing, performing, and comedy series. After the demise of Exit 57 (1995) from 1997 (until his departure in October 2005), Stephen was a correspondent on The Daily Show (1996), then hosted by Craig Kilborn. Initially billed as "The New Guy," Stephen became the show's longest-running correspondent before getting his own show, The Colbert Report (2005), which has done well in its slot following The Daily Show (1996).
At the time he left The Daily Show (1996), Stephen had been its longest-running and most diverse correspondent. In addition to his role as Senior Political Correspondent, he was one of the hosts of "Even Stepheven," a point-counterpoint assault featuring co-correspondent Steve Carell, and the host of "This Week in God," a recurring segment in which he reported on all things theological with the assistance of the "God Machine."
Stephen helped The Daily Show (1996) win numerous Emmy and Peabody Awards and contributed to "America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction" (Warner Books) which immediately topped the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for 15 consecutive weeks.
His personality, intelligence, and leftist political satire could only have led him to The Colbert Report (2005), a half-hour nightly platform for him to give his tongue-in-cheek take on the issues of the day, and more importantly, to tell you why he thinks everyone else's take is just plain wrong.
His other notable credits include serving as both writer and cast member on The Dana Carvey Show (1996), writing for Saturday Night Live (1975), and providing the voice of Ace in Robert Smigel's "Ambiguously Gay Duo," which originated on The Dana Carvey Show (1996) and was a semi-regular feature in Smigel's "TV Funhouse" segment on SNL. He was also featured on "Mr. Goodwrench" commercials (2003-2005).
Stephen lives in northern New Jersey with his wife and three children.- Producer
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Trevor Noah is a South African comedian, television host, actor, and political commentator. He is the host of The Daily Show, an American satirical news program on Comedy Central.
Born in Johannesburg, Noah began his career in South Africa in 2002. He had several hosting roles with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and was the runner-up in the fourth season of South Africa's iteration of Strictly Come Dancing in 2008. From 2010 to 2011, he hosted the late-night talk show Tonight with Trevor Noah, which he created and aired on M-Net and DStv.
In 2014, Noah became the Senior International Correspondent for The Daily Show, and in 2015 succeeded long-time host Jon Stewart. His autobiographical comedy book Born a Crime was published in 2016. He hosted the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2021 and the 64th Annual Grammy Awards edition in 2022.
Noah has won various awards, including an MTV Africa Music Award and a Primetime Emmy Award from eleven nominations. He was named one of "The 35 Most Powerful People in New York Media" by The Hollywood Reporter in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, Time magazine named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world.- Writer
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John Oliver was born on 23 April 1977 in Birmingham, England, UK. He is a writer and producer, known for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2014), The Lion King (2019) and The Smurfs (2011). He has been married to Kate Norley since October 2011. They have two children.- Actor
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Currently a correspondent on 'The Daily Show w/ Trevor Noah', Roy has been described by the Hollywood Reporter as "A Standout", and Entertainment Weekly called his brand of thought provoking comedy as "charismatic crankiness". In 2016 'Variety' magazine named him one of 10 Comics to watch.
Prior to 'The Daily Show' Roy spent three years on the TBS' sitcom, Sullivan and Son. And is still a regular on
He's currently a regular on 'Conan', ESPN's 'SportsNation' & Comedy Central's @Midnight.
A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Roy began his comedy career in 1998 at the age of 19 while attending Florida A&M University. He went on to make his television debut in 2006 on The Late Show with David Letterman. and finished third in the 2010 season of Last Comic Standing.
He's also appeared on HBO's Def Comedy Jam, Comedy Central's Premium Blend and The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson
Prior to this he also appeared at the 2006 Montreal Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in the "New Faces Showcase". In 2006, Wood appeared on the Bob and Tom Radio Show: The Comedy Tour on Comedy Central.
Also a veteran of radio (2001-2012) Roy's morning show took home awards from the Alabama Broadcasters association for 'Best Large Market Morning Show'.
Wood has recorded three nationally-released prank call CD's: My Momma Made Me Wear This (2003), Confessions of a High School Bench Warmer (2005) and I'll Slap You to Sleep! (2009). And has recently released his first comedy CD Things I think, I think (2013)- Actress
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Jessica Renee Williams, born July 31, 1989 in Los Angeles County, California, is an American actress and comedian. She is best known for her work as a senior correspondent on The Daily Show, where she was the youngest correspondent ever at the age of twenty-two, and as co-host of the podcast 2 Dope Queens.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Brian Unger was born in Dayton, Ohio, USA. He is an actor, writer, and producer, known for Comedy Central's The Daily Show (1996), Discovery's Some Assembly Required (2009), History's How the States Got Their Shapes (2011), Travel Channel's Time Traveling with Brian Unger (2015) and F/X's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2009-2016).- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Hasan Minhaj was born on 23 September 1985 in Davis, California, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for The Daily Show (1996), 2017 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2017) and Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King (2017). He has been married to Beena Minhaj since 2 January 2015. They have one child.