Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1994 premiere
Tuesday November 1st, Century Plaza Cinemas 2040 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles, CA 90067
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Kenneth Charles Branagh was born on December 10, 1960, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to parents William Branagh, a plumber and carpenter, and Frances (Harper), both born in 1930. He has two siblings, William Branagh, Jr. (born 1955) and Joyce Branagh (born 1970). When he was nine, his family escaped The Troubles by moving to Reading, Berkshire, England. At 23, Branagh joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he took on starring roles in "Henry V" and "Romeo and Juliet". He soon found the RSC too large and impersonal and formed his own, the Renaissance Theatre Company, which now counts Prince Charles as one of its royal patrons. At 29, he directed Henry V (1989), where he also co-starred with his then-wife, Emma Thompson. The film brought him Best Actor and Best Director Oscar nominations. In 1993, he brought Shakespeare to mainstream audiences again with his hit adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (1993), which featured an all-star cast that included, among others, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves. At 30, he published his autobiography and, at 34, he directed and starred as "Victor Frankenstein" in the big-budget adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein (1994), with Robert De Niro as the monster himself. In 1996, Branagh wrote, directed and starred in a lavish adaptation of Hamlet (1996). His superb film acting work also includes a wide range of roles such as in Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Valkyrie (2008) and his stunning portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn (2011), where once again he offered a great performance that was also nominated for an Academy Award.- Actress
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Emma Thompson was born on April 15, 1959 in Paddington, London, into a family of actors - father Eric Thompson and mother Phyllida Law, who has co-starred with Thompson in several films. Her sister, Sophie Thompson, is an actor as well. Her father was English-born and her mother is Scottish-born. Thompson's wit was cultivated by a cheerful, clever, creative family atmosphere, and she was a popular and successful student. She attended Cambridge University, studying English Literature, and was part of the university's Footlights Group, the famous group where, previously, many of the Monty Python members had first met.
Thompson graduated in 1980 and embarked on her career in entertainment, beginning with stints on BBC radio and touring with comedy shows. She soon got her first major break in television, on the comedy skit program Alfresco (1983), writing and performing along with her fellow Footlights Group alums Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. She also worked on other TV comedy review programs in the mid-1980s, occasionally with some of her fellow Footlights alums, and often with actor Robbie Coltrane.
Thompson found herself collaborating again with Fry in 1985, this time in his stage adaptation of the play "Me and My Girl" in London's West End, in which she had a leading role, playing Sally Smith. The show was a success and she received favorable reviews, and the strength of her performance led to her casting as the lead in the BBC television miniseries Fortunes of War (1987), in which Thompson and her co-star, Kenneth Branagh, play an English ex-patriate couple living in Eastern Europe as the Second World War erupts. Thompson won a BAFTA Award for her work on the program. She married Branagh in 1989, continued to work with him professionally, and formed a production company with him. In the late 80s and early 90s, she starred in a string of well-received and successful television and film productions, most notably her lead role in the Merchant-Ivory production of Howards End (1992), which confirmed her ability to carry a movie on both sides of the Atlantic and appropriately showered her with trans-Atlantic honors - both an Oscar and a BAFTA award.
Since then, Thompson has continued to move effortlessly between the art film world and mainstream Hollywood, though even her Hollywood roles tend to be in more up-market productions. She continues to work on television as well, but is generally very selective about which roles she takes. She writes for the screen as well, such as the screenplay for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995), in which she also starred as Elinor Dashwood, and the teleplay adaptation of Margaret Edson's acclaimed play Wit (2001), in which she also starred.
Thompson is known for her sophisticated, skillful, though her critics say somewhat mannered, performances, and of course for her arch wit, which she is unafraid to point at herself - she is a fearless self-satirist. Thompson and Branagh divorced in 1994, and Thompson is now married to fellow actor Greg Wise, who had played Willoughby in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995). Thompson and Wise have one child, Gaia, born in 1999. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama.- Actor
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- Sound Department
Thomas Edward Hulce was born in Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in Plymouth, MI, where he was raised with his two sisters and older brother. He is the son of Joanna (Winkleman), who had sung professionally, and Raymond Albert Hulce, who worked for Ford. He has English, German, and Irish ancestry. Wanting to be a singer, Tom had to make a switch in plans when his voice began changing. Knowing that if he wanted to be in show business he needed to become an actor, Tom began taking the necessary steps almost immediately.
When asked once why he chose acting Tom replied, "Because someone told me I couldn't." It is determination like this that has helped him achieve his respected position in the acting community to this day. Tom set goals early on. Graduating from school at 19 years old, he gave himself a decade to succeed as an actor. Working in Ann Arbor as usher and ticket seller with a small theatrical company was a start. It was around this time he saw the first play and actor that made him realize that acting was "cool." Christopher Walken was in a play in Stratford, Ontario. The performance made quite an impression on Tom.
While Mr. and Mrs. Hulce weren't totally sold on the idea of their son becoming a thespian, Tom had determination and headed off for the training he knew he'd need if he was going to achieve his goal. He studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem; at Booth Bay Harbor, Maine; Sarasota, Florida; and spent a summer in England before heading off to New York City to try his hand at Broadway. Within a month after his arrival, Tom was chosen to understudy the role being performed by Peter Firth in the Broadway play "Equus." He had originally been hired to play one of the horses, but it was decided that his time was better spent learning the understudy role and so he never donned the horse's attire.
Tom had pangs of guilt where this role was concerned. On one hand he wanted the role ... badly. On the other hand he wondered what would happen if Peter left the role; could he fill those shoes? When the time came, nine months after being hired, Tom found out that it was up to him to play the role as his own. He wasn't expected to be another Peter Firth... he had been hired to play the role his way. "... it actually went quite well, " Tom recalled. "I realized I was a different actor and that I would tackle the part in my own way." And tackle it he did! Equus has a few "firsts" for Tom. One, it was his first big role; two, it was his first Broadway role and third, it was his first nude performance. For nine minutes Tom and his costar, Roberta Maxwell, were naked in a scene that seemed impossible for the stage a decade earlier (1960s). In a past interview Tom reflected, "It's so skillfully written and developed that it doesn't seem an unusual thing to do. There's no embarrassment, I just don't think about it at all." During the run of "Equus," Tom turned down a big television offer, to the delight of the director and cast. At that time in Tom's life the stage was all there was, and he was going to do it right! Other plays that followed "Equus" were George S. Kaufman's "Butter and Egg Man," Arthur Miller's "Memory of Two Mondays," along with such works as "Julius Caesar," "Romeo and Juliet," Shaw's "Candida," and Chekhov's "The Sea Gull," and, again on Broadway in his Tony nominated role in Aaron Sorkin's "A Few Good Men."
Tom has even directed the off-Broadway musical "Sleep Around Town" at Playwrights Horizon. Back in 1977 Tom landed his first motion picture role in the film about the day James Dean died, September 30, 1955 (1977). This was to be the first of a long line of period films. His next was National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). Set in the 1960's, Tom played "Pinto" along with such comedy alumni as 'John Belushi', Tim Matheson, and Donald Sutherland.
1984 gave him the role that put him on the map. The title role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the Oscar-winner Amadeus (1984) was such a wonder that it even boosted the sales of Mozart's music by 30%! Filmed in Prague, it was eerie for Tom to actually be standing in the very spot where the original Amadeus had stood conducting the opera Tom was recreating for the film. Dressed in a purple velvet jacket, knickers, and white hose, wearing a bushy white wig and doling out a hilarious laugh (often likened to that of a hyena's) Tom's portrayal of the "man-child" musical genius was an Oscar-nominated performance.
Tom has been in many more films set in the past: Those Lips, Those Eyes (1980)(1950s), Shadowman (1988) (World War II), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) (1800s), Wings of Courage (1995)(1930's), and Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)(1500s). Tom appeared in Echo Park (1985) with Susan Dey, a film that had a struggle to get released remains one of Tom's best performances and one that he is quite proud of. Another film that Tom feels a lot of pride for is Dominick and Eugene (1988). Starring with Ray Liotta and Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom played Dominick Luciano, a mentally handicapped twin brother to Liotta's Eugene. The young man works as a garbage collector to help put his brother through medical school so he can become a "rich doctor" and they can afford to get a "house by a lake." Tom spent time studying people in a Pittsburgh neighborhood and handicapped people in an occupational training center so he could master the innocence and determination that the lead role required. He received the Best Actor award at the Seattle Fest for his performance.
Murder in Mississippi (1990) was Tom's second television movie (the first was Forget-Me-Not-Lane (1975) (aka "Neli, Neli"), a Hallmark Hall of Fame production). Playing the role of Michael Schwerner, the New York social worker and Freedom Fighter who is murdered by K.K.K. members in 1964 during Freedom Summer, Tom received an Emmy nomination and his third Golden Globe nomination.
The Inner Circle (1991) (aka "The Projectionist") took Tom to Russia where he was Ivan Sanshin, the private film projectionist to Stalin within the Kremlin walls. Based on a true story, Ivan was a perfect example of how many were blinded to the horrific conditions that men like Stalin conducted and followed in ignorant loyalty. While there, Tom was fortunate to meet and spend time with Alexander Ganshin, upon whose life the film was based.
The next three years held special items for Tom. His portrayal of Peter Patrone, in T.N.T.'s The Heidi Chronicles (1995), earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Special, and 1994 and 1996 brought two of Tom's last period pieces. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) had Tom playing opposite Kenneth Branagh as Victor Frankenstein's college chum, Henry. And 1996 was a whole new experience for Tom. Disney was looking for someone special to portray their gentle Quasimodo in their newest full feature animation motion picture, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996).
Tom had never done voiceover work for a full film; to sing before a microphone was one thing, but to do song and voice for someone that he couldn't watch while performing was a whole new experience for him. Herecalled that when he first auditioned he thought it strange that the producers and director stood looking at the floor while he sang...until he noticed they were looking at sketches of Quasimodo and were trying to "feel" if he sounded like their bell ringer.
1998 saw Tom returning to the stage but this time as director again, as he undertook the enormous task of bringing John Irving's 1985 novel, "The Cider House Rules", to the stage. An 8-hour production which required the audience two days to see the whole performance, it was quite an undertaking. Co-directing with Jane Jones (of "BookIt" in Seattle, Washington) Tom took the play from its Seattle opening to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, California where it received wonderful reviews.
During the past recent years Tom has resided in Seattle, Washington where he owns his own home. He figures he could live in Los Angeles or New York - the acting hubs - but in Seattle, he's near the things he loves. "Up in Seattle people look after their lives in a way you can't do in New York or Los Angeles," he says. But no matter where he calls home, we can always count on Tom for bringing us into a world that will thrill, excite, fascinate, move and inspire us either through his films, the stage, or his beautiful singing.- Actress
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Helena Bonham Carter is an actress of great versatility, one of the UK's finest and most successful.
Bonham Carter was born May 26, 1966 in Golders Green, London, England, the youngest of three children of Elena (née Propper de Callejón), a psychotherapist, and Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker. Through her father, she is the great-granddaughter of former Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith, and her blue-blooded family tree also contains Barons and Baronesses, diplomats, and a director, Bonham Carter's great-uncle Anthony Asquith, who made Pygmalion (1938) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), among others. Cousin Crispin Bonham-Carter is also an actor. Her maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón, was a Spanish diplomat who was awarded the honorific Righteous Among the Nations, by Israel, for helping save Jews during World War II (Eduardo's own father was a Czech Jew). Helena's maternal grandmother, Hélène Fould-Springer, was from an upper-class Jewish family from France, Austria, and Germany, and later converted to her husband's Catholic faith.
Bonham Carter experienced family dramas during her childhood, including her father's stroke - which left him wheelchair-bound. She attended South Hampstead High School and Westminster School in London, and subsequently devoted herself to an acting career. That trajectory actually began in 1979 when, at age thirteen, she entered a national poetry writing competition and used her second place winnings to place her photo in the casting directory "Spotlight." She soon had her first agent and her first acting job, in a commercial, at age sixteen. She then landed a role in the made-for-TV movie A Pattern of Roses (1983), which subsequently led to her casting in the Merchant Ivory films A Room with a View (1985), director James Ivory's tasteful adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel, and Lady Jane (1986), giving a strong performance as the uncrowned Queen of England. She had roles in three other productions under the Merchant-Ivory banner (director Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala): an uncredited appearance in Maurice (1987), and large roles in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) and Howards End (1992).
Often referred to as the "corset queen" or "English rose" because of her early work, Bonham Carter continued to surprise audiences with magnificent performances in a variety of roles from her more traditional corset-clad character in The Wings of the Dove (1997) and Shakespearian damsels to the dark and neurotic anti-heroines of Fight Club (1999). Her acclaimed performance in The Wings of the Dove (1997) earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination, a BAFTA Best Actress nomination, and a SAG Awards Best Actress nomination. It also won her a Best Actress Award from the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics, the Boston Society Film Critics, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Texas Society of Film Critics, and the Southeastern Film Critics Association.
In the late 1990s, Bonham Carter embarked on the next phase of her career, moving from capable actress to compelling star. Audiences and critics had long been enchanted by her delicate beauty, evocative of another time and place. Her late '90s and early and mid 2000s roles included Mick Jackson's Live from Baghdad (2002), alongside Michael Keaton, receiving a nomination for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe; Paul Greengrass' The Theory of Flight (1998), in which she played a victim of motor neurone disease; Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996), in which she played Olivia; opposite Woody Allen in his Mighty Aphrodite (1995); Mort Ransen's Margaret's Museum (1995); Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein (1994); and Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990).
Other notable credits include her appearance with Steve Martin in Novocaine (2001), Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes, in which she played an ape, Thaddeus O'Sullivan's The Heart of Me (2002), opposite Paul Bettany, and Big Fish (2003), her second effort with Tim Burton, in which she appeared as a witch.
In between her films, Helena has managed a few television appearances, which include her portrayal of Jacqui Jackson in Magnificent 7 (2005), the tale of a mother struggling to raise seven children - three daughters and four autistic boys; as Anne Boleyn in the two-parter biopic of Henry VIII starring Ray Winstone; and as Morgan Le Fey, alongside Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson, in Merlin. Earlier television appearances include Michael Mann's Miami Vice (1984) as Don Johnson's junkie fiancée, and as a stripper who wins Rik Mayall's heart in Dancing Queen (1993). Helena has also appeared on stage, in productions of Trelawney of the Wells, The Barber of Seville, House of Bernarda Alba, The Chalk Garden, and Woman in White.
Bonham Carter was nominated for a Golden Globe for the fifth time for her role in partner Tim Burton's film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), for which Burton and co-star Johnny Depp were also nominated. For the role, she was awarded Best Actress at the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2008. Other 2000s work includes playing Mrs Bucket in Tim Burton's massive hit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), providing the voices for the aristocratic Lady Campanula Tottington in Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and for the eponymous dead heroine in Tim Burton's spooky Corpse Bride (2005), and co-starring in Conversations with Other Women (2005) opposite Aaron Eckhart.
After their meeting while filming Planet of the Apes (2001), Bonham Carter and Tim Burton made seven films together. They lived in adjoining residences in London, shared a connecting hallway, and have two children: Billy Ray Burton, born in 2003, and Nell Burton, who was born in 2007. Ironically, a mutual love of Sweeney Todd was part of the initial attraction for the pair. Bonham Carter has said in numerous interviews that her audition process for the role of Mrs. Lovett was the most grueling of her career and that, ultimately, it was Sondheim who she had to convince that she was right for the role.- Actor
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With an almost unpronounceable surname and a thick Austrian accent, who would have ever believed that a brash, quick talking bodybuilder from a small European village would become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, marry into the prestigious Kennedy family, amass a fortune via shrewd investments and one day be the Governor of California!?
The amazing story of megastar Arnold Schwarzenegger is a true "rags to riches" tale of a penniless immigrant making it in the land of opportunity, the United States of America. Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born July 30, 1947, in the town of Thal, Styria, Austria, to Aurelia Schwarzenegger (born Jadrny) and Gustav Schwarzenegger, the local police chief. From a young age, he took a keen interest in physical fitness and bodybuilding, going on to compete in several minor contests in Europe. However, it was when he emigrated to the United States in 1968 at the tender age of 21 that his star began to rise.
Up until the early 1970s, bodybuilding had been viewed as a rather oddball sport, or even a mis-understood "freak show" by the general public, however two entrepreneurial Canadian brothers Ben Weider and Joe Weider set about broadening the appeal of "pumping iron" and getting the sport respect, and what better poster boy could they have to lead the charge, then the incredible "Austrian Oak", Arnold Schwarzenegger. Over roughly the next decade, beginning in 1970, Schwarzenegger dominated the sport of competitive bodybuilding winning five Mr. Universe titles and seven Mr. Olympia titles and, with it, he made himself a major sports icon, he generated a new international audience for bodybuilding, gym memberships worldwide swelled by the tens of thousands and the Weider sports business empire flourished beyond belief and reached out to all corners of the globe. However, Schwarzenegger's horizons were bigger than just the landscape of bodybuilding and he debuted on screen as "Arnold Strong" in the low budget Hercules in New York (1970), then director Bob Rafelson cast Arnold in Stay Hungry (1976) alongside Jeff Bridges and Sally Field, for which Arnold won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture". The mesmerizing Pumping Iron (1977) covering the 1975 Mr Olympia contest in South Africa has since gone on to become one of the key sports documentaries of the 20th century, plus Arnold landed other acting roles in the comedy The Villain (1979) opposite Kirk Douglas, and he portrayed Mickey Hargitay in the well- received TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980).
What Arnold really needed was a super hero / warrior style role in a lavish production that utilized his chiseled physique, and gave him room to show off his growing acting talents and quirky humor. Conan the Barbarian (1982) was just that role. Inspired by the Robert E. Howard short stories of the "Hyborean Age" and directed by gung ho director John Milius, and with a largely unknown cast, save Max von Sydow and James Earl Jones, "Conan" was a smash hit worldwide and an inferior, although still enjoyable sequel titled Conan the Destroyer (1984) quickly followed. If "Conan" was the kick start to Arnold's movie career, then his next role was to put the pedal to the floor and accelerate his star status into overdrive. Director James Cameron had until that time only previously directed one earlier feature film titled Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), which stank of rotten fish from start to finish. However, Cameron had penned a fast paced, science fiction themed film script that called for an actor to play an unstoppable, ruthless predator - The Terminator (1984). Made on a relatively modest budget, the high voltage action / science fiction thriller The Terminator (1984) was incredibly successful worldwide, and began one of the most profitable film franchises in history. The dead pan phrase "I'll be back" quickly became part of popular culture across the globe. Schwarzenegger was in vogue with action movie fans, and the next few years were to see Arnold reap box office gold in roles portraying tough, no-nonsense individuals who used their fists, guns and witty one-liners to get the job done. The testosterone laden Commando (1985), Raw Deal (1986), Predator (1987), The Running Man (1987) and Red Heat (1988) were all box office hits and Arnold could seemingly could no wrong when it came to picking winning scripts. The tongue-in-cheek comedy Twins (1988) with co-star Danny DeVito was a smash and won Arnold new fans who saw a more comedic side to the muscle- bound actor once described by Australian author / TV host Clive James as "a condom stuffed with walnuts". The spectacular Total Recall (1990) and "feel good" Kindergarten Cop (1990) were both solid box office performers for Arnold, plus he was about to return to familiar territory with director James Cameron in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The second time around for the futuristic robot, the production budget had grown from the initial film's $6.5 million to an alleged $100 million for the sequel, and it clearly showed as the stunning sequel bristled with amazing special effects, bone-crunching chases & stunt sequences, plus state of the art computer-generated imagery. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was arguably the zenith of Arnold's film career to date and he was voted "International Star of the Decade" by the National Association of Theatre Owners.
Remarkably, his next film Last Action Hero (1993) brought Arnold back to Earth with a hard thud as the self-satirizing, but confusing plot line of a young boy entering into a mythical Hollywood action film confused movie fans even more and they stayed away in droves making the film an initial financial disaster. Arnold turned back to good friend, director James Cameron and the chemistry was definitely still there as the "James Bond" style spy thriller True Lies (1994) co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold was the surprise hit of 1994! Following the broad audience appeal of True Lies (1994), Schwarzenegger decided to lean towards more family-themed entertainment with Junior (1994) and Jingle All the Way (1996), but he still found time to satisfy his hard-core fan base with Eraser (1996), as the chilling "Mr. Freeze" in Batman & Robin (1997) and battling dark forces in the supernatural action of End of Days (1999). The science fiction / conspiracy tale The 6th Day (2000) played to only mediocre fan interest, and Collateral Damage (2002) had its theatrical release held over for nearly a year after the tragic events of Sept 11th 2001, but it still only received a lukewarm reception.
It was time again to resurrect Arnold's most successful franchise and, in 2003, Schwarzenegger pulled on the biker leathers for the third time for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Unfortunately, directorial duties passed from James Cameron to Jonathan Mostow and the deletion of the character of "Sarah Connor" aka Linda Hamilton and a change in the actor playing "John Connor" - Nick Stahl took over from Edward Furlong - making the third entry in the "Terminator" series the weakest to date.
Schwarzenegger married TV journalist Maria Shriver in April, 1986 and the couple have four children.
In October of 2003 Schwarzenegger, running as a Republican, was elected Governor of California in a special recall election of then governor Gray Davis. The "Governator," as Schwarzenegger came to be called, held the office until 2011. Upon leaving the Governor's mansion it was revealed that he had fathered a child with the family's live-in maid and Shriver filed for divorce.
Schwarzenegger contributed cameo roles to The Rundown (2003), Around the World in 80 Days (2004) and The Kid & I (2005). Recently, he starred in The Expendables 2 (2012), The Last Stand (2013), Escape Plan (2013), The Expendables 3 (2014), and Terminator Genisys (2015).- Producer
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Maria Shriver was born on 6 November 1955 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She is a producer and actress, known for Last Action Hero (1993), Still Alice (2014) and Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert (2014). She was previously married to Arnold Schwarzenegger.- Actor
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In 1976, if you had told fourteen-year-old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be Tom Cruise, one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to join the priesthood. Nonetheless, this sensitive, deeply religious youngster who was born in 1962 in Syracuse, New York, was destined to become one of the highest paid and most sought after actors in screen history.
Tom is the only son (among four children) of nomadic parents, Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and he has German, Irish, and English ancestry. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey with his mother and her new husband. While in high school, Tom wanted to become a priest but pretty soon he developed an interest in acting and abandoned his plans of becoming a priest, dropped out of school, and at age 18 headed for New York and a possible acting career. The next 15 years of his life are the stuff of legends. He made his film debut with a small part in Endless Love (1981) and from the outset exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences.
With handsome movie star looks and a charismatic smile, within 5 years Tom Cruise was starring in some of the top-grossing films of the 1980s including Top Gun (1986); The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). By the 1990s he was one of the highest-paid actors in the world earning an average 15 million dollars a picture in such blockbuster hits as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination for best actor. Tom Cruise's biggest franchise, Mission Impossible, has also earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Tom Cruise has also shown lots of interest in producing, with his biggest producer credits being the Mission Impossible franchise.
In 1990 he renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. A kind and thoughtful man well known for his compassion and generosity, Tom Cruise is one of the best liked members of the movie community. He was married to actress Nicole Kidman until 2001. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has indeed come a long way from the lonely wanderings of his youth to become one of the biggest movie stars ever.- Actress
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- Music Department
Elegant Nicole Kidman, known as one of Hollywood's top Australian imports, was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were there on educational visas.
Kidman is the daughter of Janelle Ann (Glenny), a nursing instructor, and Antony David Kidman, a biochemist and clinical psychologist. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Nicole's father pursued his research on breast cancer, and then, three years later, made the pilgrimage back to her parents' native Sydney in Australia, where Nicole was raised. Young Nicole's first love was ballet, but she eventually took up mime and drama as well (her first stage role was a bleating sheep in an elementary school Christmas pageant). In her adolescent years, acting edged out the other arts and became a kind of refuge -- as her classmates sought out fun in the sun, the fair-skinned Kidman retreated to dark rehearsal halls to practice her craft. She worked regularly at the Philip Street Theater, where she once received a personal letter of praise and encouragement from audience member Jane Campion (then a film student). Kidman eventually dropped out of high school to pursue acting full-time. She broke into movies at age 16, landing a role in the Australian holiday favorite Bush Christmas (1983). That appearance touched off a flurry of film and television offers, including a lead in BMX Bandits (1983) and a turn as a schoolgirl-turned-protester in the miniseries Vietnam (1987) (for which she won her first Australian Film Institute Award). With the help of an American agent, she eventually made her US debut opposite Sam Neill in the at-sea thriller Dead Calm (1989).
Kidman's next casting coup scored her more than exposure. While starring as Tom Cruise's doctor/love interest in the racetrack romance Days of Thunder (1990), she won over the Hollywood hunk hook, line and sinker. After a whirlwind courtship (and decent box office returns), the couple wed on December 24, 1990. Determined not to let her new marital status overshadow her fledgling career, the actress pressed on. She appeared as a catty high school senior in the Australian film Flirting (1991), then as Dustin Hoffman's moll in the gangster flick Billy Bathgate (1991). She reunited with Cruise for Far and Away (1992), the story of young Irish lovers who flee to America in the late 1800s, and starred opposite Michael Keaton in the tear-tugger My Life (1993). Despite her steady employment, critics and moviegoers still had not quite warmed to Kidman as a leading lady. She tried to spice up her image by seducing Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (1995), but achieved her real breakthrough with Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995). As a fame-crazed housewife determined to eliminate any obstacle in her path, Kidman proved that she had an impressive range and deadly comic timing. She took home a Golden Globe and several critics' awards for the performance. In 1996, Kidman stepped into a corset to work with her countrywoman and onetime admirer, Jane Campion, on the adaptation of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1996). A few months later, she tore across the screen as a nuclear weapons expert in The Peacemaker (1997), adding "action star" to her professional repertoire.
She and Cruise then disappeared into a notoriously long, secretive shoot for Stanley Kubrick's sexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut (1999). The couple's on-screen shenanigans prompted an increase in public speculation about their sex life (rumors had long been circulating that their marriage was a cover-up for Cruise's rumored homosexuality); tired of denying tabloid attacks, they successfully sued The Star for a story alleging that they needed a sex therapist to coach them through love scenes. Family life has always been a priority for Kidman. Born to social activists (mother was a feminist; father, a labor advocate), Nicole and her little sister, Antonia Kidman, discussed current events around the dinner table and participated in their parents' campaigns by passing out pamphlets on street corners. When her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, 17-year-old Nicole stopped working and took a massage course so that she could provide physical therapy (her mother eventually beat the cancer). She and Cruise adopted two children: Isabella Jane (born 1993) and Connor Antony (born 1995). Despite their rock-solid image, the couple announced in early 2001 that they were separating due to career conflicts. Her marriage to Cruise ended mid-summer of 2001.- Actor
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Jack Nicholson, an American actor, producer, director and screenwriter, is a three-time Academy Award winner and twelve-time nominee. Nicholson is also notable for being one of two actors - the other being Michael Caine - who have received an Oscar nomination in every decade from the '60s through the '00s.
Nicholson was born on April 22, 1937, in Neptune, New Jersey. He was raised believing that his grandmother was his mother, and that his mother, June Frances Nicholson, a showgirl, was his older sister. He discovered the truth in 1975 from a Time magazine journalist who was researching a profile on him. His real father is believed to have been either Donald Furcillo, an Italian American showman, or Eddie King (Edgar Kirschfeld), born in Latvia and also in show business. Jack's mother's ancestry was Irish, and smaller amounts of English, German, Scottish, and Welsh.
Nicholson made his film debut in a B-movie titled The Cry Baby Killer (1958). His rise in Hollywood was far from meteoric, and for years, he sustained his career with guest spots in television series and a number of Roger Corman films, including The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).
Nicholson's first turn in the director's chair was for Drive, He Said (1971). Before that, he wrote the screenplay for The Trip (1967), and co-wrote Head (1968), a vehicle for The Monkees. His big break came with Easy Rider (1969) and his portrayal of liquor-soaked attorney George Hanson, which earned Nicholson his first Oscar nomination. Nicholson's film career took off in the 1970s with a definitive performance in Five Easy Pieces (1970). Nicholson's other notable work during this period includes leading roles in Roman Polanski's noir masterpiece Chinatown (1974) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which he won his first Best Actor Oscar.
The 1980s kicked off with another career-defining role for Nicholson as Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Shining (1980). A string of well-received films followed, including Terms of Endearment (1983), which earned Nicholson his second Oscar; Prizzi's Honor (1985), and The Witches of Eastwick (1987). He portrayed another renowned villain, The Joker, in Tim Burton's Batman (1989). In the 1990s, he starred in such varied films as A Few Good Men (1992), for which he received another Oscar nomination, and a dual role in Mars Attacks! (1996).
Although a glimpse at the darker side of Nicholson's acting range reappeared in The Departed (2006), the actor's most recent roles highlight the physical and emotional complications one faces late in life. The most notable of these is the unapologetically misanthropic Melvin Udall in As Good as It Gets (1997), for which he won his third Oscar. Shades of this persona are apparent in About Schmidt (2002), Something's Gotta Give (2003), and The Bucket List (2007). In addition to his Academy Awards and Oscar nominations, Nicholson has seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. He also became one of the youngest actors to receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement award in 1994.
Nicholson has six children by five different women: Jennifer Nicholson (b. 1963) from his only marriage to Sandra Knight, which ended in 1966; Caleb Goddard (b. 1970) with Five Easy Pieces (1970) co-star Susan Anspach, who was automatically adopted by Anspach's then-husband Mark Goddard; Honey Hollman (b. 1982) with Danish supermodel Winnie Hollman; Lorraine Nicholson (b. 1990) and Ray Nicholson (b. 1992) with minor actress Rebecca Broussard; and Tessa Gourin (b. 1994) with real estate agent Jennine Marie Gourin. Nicholson's longest relationship was the 17 nonmonogamous years he spent with Anjelica Huston; this ended when Broussard announced she was pregnant with his child.- Actor
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Danny DeVito has amassed a formidable and versatile body of work as an actor, producer and director that spans the stage, television and film.
Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. was born on November 17, 1944, in Neptune, New Jersey, to Italian-American parents. His mother, Julia (Moccello), was a homemaker. His father, Daniel, Sr., was a small business owner whose ventures included a dry cleaning shop, a dairy outlet, a diner, and a pool hall.
While growing up in Asbury Park, his parents sent him to private schools. He attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel grammar school and Oratory Prep School. Following graduation in 1962, he took a job as a cosmetician at his sister's beauty salon. A year later, he enrolled at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts so he could learn more about cosmetology. While at the academy, he fell in love with acting and decided to further pursue an acting career. During this time, he met another aspiring actor Michael Douglas at the National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut. The two would later go on to collaborate on numerous projects. Soon after he also met an actress named Rhea Perlman. The two fell in love and moved in together. They were married in 1982 and had three children together.
In 1968, Danny landed his first part in a movie when he appeared as a thug in the obscure Dreams of Glass (1970). Despite this minor triumph, Danny became discouraged with the film industry and decided to focus on stage productions. He made his Off-Broadway debut in 1969 in "The Man With the Flower in His Mouth." He followed this up with stage roles in "The Shrinking Bride," and "Lady Liberty." In 1975, he was approached by director Milos Forman and Michael Douglas about appearing in the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which would star Jack Nicholson in the leading role. With box office success almost guaranteed and a chance for national exposure, Danny agreed to the role. The movie became a huge hit, both critically and financially, and still ranks today as one the greatest movies of all time. Unfortunately, the movie did very little to help Danny's career. In the years following, he was relegated to small movie roles and guest appearances on television shows. His big break came in 1978 when he auditioned for a role on an ABC sitcom pilot called Taxi (1978), which centered around taxi cab drivers at a New York City garage. Danny auditioned for the role of dispatcher Louie DePalma. At the audition, the producers told Danny that he needed to show more attitude in order to get the part. He then slammed down the script and yelled, "Who wrote this sh**?" The producers, realizing he was perfect for the part, brought him on board. The show was a huge success, running from 1978 to 1983.
Louie DePalma, played flawlessly by Danny, became one of the most memorable (and reviled) characters in television history. While he was universally hated by TV viewers, he was well-praised by critics, winning an Emmy award and being nominated three other times. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Danny maintained his status as a great character actor with memorable roles in movies like Romancing the Stone (1984), Ruthless People (1986), Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and Twins (1988). He also had a great deal of success behind the camera, directing movies like The War of the Roses (1989) and Hoffa (1992). In 1992, Danny was introduced to a new generation of moviegoers when he was given the role of The Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot in Tim Burton's highly successful Batman Returns (1992). This earned him a nomination for Best Villain at the MTV Movie Awards. That same year, along with his wife Rhea Perlman, Danny co-founded Jersey Films, which has produced many popular films and TV shows, including Pulp Fiction (1994), Get Shorty (1995), Man on the Moon (1999) and Erin Brockovich (2000). DeVito has many directing credits to his name as well, including Throw Momma from the Train (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Hoffa (1992), Death to Smoochy (2002) and the upcoming St. Sebastian.
In 2006, he returned to series television in the FX comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005). With a prominent role in a hit series, Devito's comic talents were now on display for a new generation of television viewers. In 2012, he provided the title voice role in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012).
These days, he continues to work with many of today's top talents as an actor, director and producer.- Actress
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Penny Marshall was born Carole Penny Marshall on October 15, 1943 in Manhattan. The Libra was 5' 6 1/2", with brown hair and green eyes. She was the daughter of Marjorie (Ward), a tap dance teacher, and Anthony "Tony" Marshall, an industrial film director. She was the younger sister of filmmakers Garry Marshall and Ronny Hallin. Her father was of Italian descent, originally surnamed "Masciarelli," and her mother was of German, Scottish, English, and Irish ancestry.
Penny was known in her family as "the bad one"... because not only did she walk on the ledge of her family's apartment building, but she snuck into the movies as a child and even dated a guy named "Lefty." She attended a private girls' high school in New York and then went to the University of New Mexico for two and a half years. There, Penny got pregnant with daughter, Tracy Reiner, and soon after married the father, Michael Henry, in 1961. The couple divorced two years later in 1963. She worked as a secretary for awhile. Her film debut came from her brother Garry Marshall, who put her in the movie How Sweet It Is! (1968) with the talented Debbie Reynolds and James Garner. She also did a dandruff commercial with Farrah Fawcett - the casting people, of course, giving Farrah the part of the "beautiful girl" and Penny the part of the "plain girl." This only added to Penny's insecurity with her looks.
She then married Rob Reiner on April 10, 1971, shortly after getting her big television break as Oscar Madison's secretary, Myrna Turner, on The Odd Couple (1970). She also played Mary Richards' neighbor, Paula Kovacks, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) for a couple of episodes. However, her Laverne & Shirley (1976) fame came when her brother needed two women to play "fast girls" who were friends of Arthur Fonzarelli and would date Fonzie and Richie Cunningham on Happy Days (1974). Penny had been working on miscellaneous writing projects ("My Country Tis Of Thee", a bicentennial spoof for Francis Ford Coppola and "Paper Hands" about the Salem Witch Trials) with writing partner Cindy Williams. Cindy happened to be a friend and ex-girlfriend of Henry Winkler's, so Garry asked the two to play the parts of these girls. The audience saw their wonderful chemistry, and loved them so much, a spin-off was created for them.
Penny was well-known as Laverne DeFazio. She and Rob had divorced in 1980. The show ended three years later, half a year after Cindy Williams left the show due to pregnancy (her first baby, Emily, from now ex-husband Bill Hudson)... they wanted Williams to work the week she was supposed to deliver.
Soon after, Penny began directing such films as Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986), Big (1988) and A League of Their Own (1992). Her hobbies included needlepoint, jigsaw puzzles and antique shopping. She was best friends with actress Carrie Fisher and was godmother to Carrie's daughter, Billie.
Penny died at 75 in Los Angeles, California.- Art Department
- Production Manager
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Alan Levine is known for They Live (1988), Escape from New York (1981) and In the Heat of the Night (1967).- Stacey Snider is a renowned entertainment industry leader having served atop studios such as 20th Century Fox, Dreamworks and Universal with a commitment to supporting talent, filmmakers and stories. In October 2019, Snider joined forces with Elisabeth Murdoch and Jane Featherstone to found SISTER, where as a co-founder she serves as the company's Global CEO. Prior to founding SISTER, Snider served as Chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox from June 2017 until its acquisition by Disney in April 2019. Before that, she served as the Co-Chairman/CEO of DreamWorks, and from 1999 to 2006, she was Chairman of Universal Pictures.
During her tenure at Fox, Snider greenlit and supported award-winning commercial hit films including Bohemian Rhapsody, Logan, and The Greatest Showman, and helped initiate global franchises such as The Fast and the Furious and The Bourne Identity series. Snider's long-time collaboration with Steven Spielberg generated a host of multi-award winning titles including The Post, Munich, Lincoln and the much-anticipated West Side Story. - Producer
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Marc Platt was born on 14 April 1957 in Pikesville, Maryland, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for La La Land (2016), Cruella (2021) and The Girl on the Train (2016). He has been married to Julie Beren since 1 July 1979. They have five children.- Producer
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Amongst Mark Canton's most notable films are 300, 300: Rise of an Empire, The Spiderwick Chronicles and Immortals. 300, based on the Frank Miller graphic novel and directed by Zack Snyder for Warner Bros Pictures, opened in 2007 to record-setting box office numbers, having grossed more than $460 million worldwide and is the highest-grossing March release in the history of the motion picture business. The Spiderwick Chronicles, based on the best-selling children books by Tony DiTerlizzi & Holly Black with Mark Waters (Mean Girls) directing, was released in February 2008 by Paramount Pictures and was the highest-grossing family film of early 2008. Immortals, an epic mythological tale set in war torn ancient Greece, was released on 11/11/11 and has amassed a worldwide gross of almost $250 million.
Canton initially joined Warner Bros. as Vice President of Production, rising to Senior Vice President and President of Worldwide Theatrical Production. During his tenure at the studio, Canton was instrumental in creating the notable Batman, Lethal Weapon and National Lampoon's Vacation film franchises. His creative influence brought some of today's most powerful filmmakers to the fore and some of the studio's most successful films to the screen. The latter included Tim Burton's Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Beetlejuice, the Academy award winning Driving Miss Daisy and Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. Canton also put into production such popular hits as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Purple Rain, Above the Law, The Witches of Eastwick, The Mission, and Presumed Innocent, among others.
He departed Warner Bros. to join Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia Pictures as Chairman. In the ensuing years, he rose to Chairman of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Companies, with all creative, operational and management responsibility for Columbia Pictures, Triumph Films, Sony Pictures Classics SPE's international theatrical operations and Columbia TriStar's strategic motion picture alliances
Among the films produced under Canton's aegis at Sony were the Academy Award winning As Good as It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt; Oscar-winner Jerry Maguire, starring Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr.; Men in Black, starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones; the Julia Roberts romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding; the thriller Anaconda; and the Wolfgang Peterson film Air Force One starring Harrison Ford.
A native of New York, Canton is a UCLA graduate (magna cum laude) and a member of UCLA's National Honor Society for American Studies. He delivered the 2011 commencement address at UCLA's School of History. In addition to serving on the UCLA Board of Councilors and the Deans Advisory Board for the School of Theatre, Film, and Television, Canton was Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute and Founder and is Chairman Emeritus of AFI's Third Decade Council. In recent years, he has been Honorary Chair of the prestigious Ischia Global Film & Music Festival and the Los Angeles, Italia Film Festival.- King Charles III was born November 14, 1948. His first military services appointment was in 1969. His favorite food is scrambled eggs and he likes to drink whisky. He enjoys going to Scotland, UK; Klosters, Switzerland; and the Eleuthra in the Caribbean. He enjoys hunting, shooting, fishing, polo, skiing, painting, writing and reading.
On February 24, 1981 the engagement of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer was announced at Buckingham Palace. On July 29, 1981 Charles married Princess Diana. The fairy-tale wedding took place at St. Paul's Cathedral. Eleven months later on June 21, 1982 Prince William of Wales was born. William is second in line for the throne after his father. Two years later their second son Prince Harry was born September 15, 1984. Diana said that during the months before was his birth, she and Charles were closer than they ever had been before, but after the birth of Harry the marriage went badly wrong. On August 28, 1996 the fairy-tale marriage came to an end: Charles and Diana divorced. A year later, on August 31, 1997, Diana died in a car crash.
Charles now is married to his long-time love, Queen Camilla. - Actress
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Margaret Cho was born on December 5, 1968 in San Francisco. Her grandfather was a Methodist minister who ran an orphanage in Seoul during the Korean War. Ignoring the traditions of her patriarchal culture, her mother bravely resisted an arranged marriage in Korea & married Margaret's father, who writes joke books in Korean.
What she did know is that she didn't love being a kid. Racing toward adulthood to escape bullying, she began writing jokes for stand up at 14 & professionally performing at 16. Getting picked on & feeling disenfranchised's a subject that's very near to her heart. She has become a sort of patron saint for outsiders, speaking for them when they are not able to speak for themselves.
Soon after starting her career, she won a comedy contest where first prize was opening for Jerry Seinfeld. She moved to Los Angeles in the early '90s & hit the college circuit, where she immediately became the most booked act in the market, garnering a nomination for Campus Comedian of The Year. She performed over 300 concerts within 2 years. Arsenio Hall introduced her to late night audiences, Bob Hope put her on a prime time special & seemingly overnight, she became a national celebrity.
Her groundbreaking, controversial & short-lived ABC sitcom All-American Girl soon followed. Oddly, while chosen because of who she was-a non-conformist Korean-American woman w/ liberal views-the network decided it wanted her to tone it down for the show. Challenging her feelings for both who she was & how she looked, she soon realized that though she was an executive producer, it was a battle she wouldn't win.
The experience was a traumatic one, bringing up unresolved feelings left over from childhood. She developed an eating disorder as a response to criticism about her body. She was so obsessive in her goal to try to be what she thought others wanted, she landed in the hospital w/ kidney failure. Throughout a period of self-abuse, she continued performing to sold-out audiences across the country in comedy clubs, theaters & on college campuses, working to channel her anger in to something more positive.
In 1999, her groundbreaking, off-Broadway one-woman show, I'm The One That I Want, garnered national acclaim. It was made into a best-selling book & feature film. After her experience w/ All-American Girl, she wanted to make sure she would only have to answer to herself, making sure she was responsible for the distribution & sales of her film, taking a page from what music artist Ani DiFranco did w/ her Righteous Babe Records. The concert film, which garnered incredible reviews, broke records for most money grossed per print in movie history. In 2001, after the success of her first tour, she launched Notorious C.H.O., a smash-hit 37-city national tour that culminated in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. It was recorded & released as a feature film, hailed by the New York Times as "Brilliant!" Both films were acquired by Showtime Cable Networks & produced by her production company, a testament to the success of her bold business model.
In March of 2003, she embarked on her third sold-out national tour, Revolution. It was heralded by the Chicago Sun Times as "Her strongest show yet!" The CD recording was nominated for a Grammy for Comedy Album of the Year. In 2005, she released Assassin, which The Chicago Tribune crowed "Packs passion in to each punch." The concert film premiered in select theaters as well as on the gay & lesbian premium channel Here! TV in late 2005.
In 2007, she hit the road w/ Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry & Erasure, along w/ indie faves The Dresden Dolls & The Cliks, to host the True Colors Tour, benefiting the Human Rights Campaign. A true entertainment pioneer, she also created & starred in The Sensuous Woman, a live variety show featuring vaudevillian burlesque & comedy, which she took for an extended off-Broadway run that fall.
She returned to TV in 2008 on the VH1 series, The Cho Show. It followed her, her real parents & her eccentric entourage through a series of irreverent & outrageous experiences shaped by her 'anything goes' brand of stand-up. It was beloved for the audience it was intended for, the ones who maybe don't quite fit in.
The aptly titled Beautiful came next, exploring the good, bad & ugly in beauty as well as the unattractive politicians & marketers who shape our world. The concert premiered in Australia at The Sydney Theater, marking the first time she debuted a tour abroad. While touring through the U.S., the concert was filmed at the Long Beach theater, aired as a special on Showtime in 2009, then released as both a DVD & a book.
In 2009, she nabbed a starring role in the comedy/drama series Drop Dead Diva, which aired on Lifetime. She enjoys being part of a team, not necessarily having the sole responsibility for keeping things afloat.
Never one to shy away from a challenge, she stepped right up to the proverbial plate when asked to do Season 11 of Dancing with the Stars. Paired w/ pro Louie Van Amstel, she was on 1 of the show's most controversial seasons, dancing alongside Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, David Hasselhoff, Jennifer Grey & Bristol Palin among others.
She got a very strong reaction to her Rainbow Dancing Dress during a time when the issue of bullying, especially among gay teens, was all over the media.
2010 culminated w/ another high honor, a second Grammy Award nomination for Comedy Album of the Year for Cho Dependent, her collection of music featuring collaborations w/ Fiona Apple, Andrew Bird, Grant Lee Phillips, Tegan & Sara, Ben Lee & more. The album received critical acclaim.
She self released Cho Dependent on her own Clownery Records & was encouraged by the acclaim, as there were only a handful of people putting out albums of comedy music-"Weird" Al Yankovic, Flight of the Conchords, The Lonely Island, to name a few-but no women. While thrilled that her hard work was rewarded w/ the nomination, she wasn't finished w/musical comedy yet, claiming to have more music in her.
In 2011, she released the live concert film of Cho Dependent, which also had its cable network debut on Showtime. Audiences who caught these performances live can attest that she hasn't lost any of her edge on Cho Dependent, her sixth live concert DVD. Shot at the Tabernacle in Atlanta. She remains uncensored, but never unhinged: taking aim at the Palin family, appearing on Dancing w/ the Stars, smoking pot & living in a world w/ sexting' The DVD's no-holds-barred Margaret & instantly a classic.
She then filmed the sixth & final season on Drop Dead Diva. She returned as "Teri" Girl Friday to Brooke Elliott's Jane Bingham, whose body's inhabited by the soul of a vapid model sent back to earth after Heaven judges her as a zero-zero for having committed no good & no bad deeds. Drop Dead Diva's not only beloved on Lifetime, but by the many stars who have lined up to guest on the show such as Paula Abdul, Wanda Sykes, Rosie O'Donnell, Vivica Fox & Kim Kardashian.
Not one to rest on her laurels, she spent whatever free time she had crafting her all new stand-up show Mother, which kicked off in September 2012, including both a U.S. & European tour.
Paradox not lost, she re-scheduled some of the shows she had booked mid-September so she could attend the Emmy Awards w/ her mother, having been nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her stint on 30 Rock as gender-bending North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.
In 2014, she filmed a pilot for FOX & was thrilled to work w/Tina Fey as well as the producing team from 30 Rock. The multi-camera comedy takes place at a women's college that had just opened its doors to men for the first time.
While thrilled w/ her 2 Grammy & recent Emmy nomination, she has never turned away from the causes that are important to her. She's active in anti-racism, anti-bullying & gay rights campaign. She has been recognized for her unwavering dedication, receiving the Victory Fund's 2008 Leadership Award & the first ever Best Comedy Performance Award at the 2007 Asian Excellence Awards. She also received the First Amendment Award from the ACLU of Southern California & the Intrepid Award from the National Organization for Women (NOW). Throughout her career, she has been honored by GLAAD, American Women in Radio & Television, the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund (AALDEF) & PFLAG for making a significant difference in promoting equal rights for all, regardless of race, sexual orientation or gender identity. In June 2011, she was honored by L.A. Pride w/ a Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing an individual whose lifetime body of work has left a lasting major imprint on the LGBT community.
Through her hard work, she has had the opportunity to be heard, to extend her point of view & become regarded as a true pioneer in her field. She takes none of it for granted.- Finerman was one of three producers who won the Academy Award for Best Picture for Forrest Gump in 1994 and a BAFTA Award for Fairy Tale in 1998. She has also produced such popular films as The Fan, Stepmom, Drumline, and The Devil Wears Prada. Finerman was formerly married to producer Mark Canton and now is married to David Peterson. The mother of four children, she is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and runs her own company, Wendy Finerman Productions.
- Make-Up Department
- Special Effects
- Actor
Rick Baker was born on 8 December 1950 in Binghamton, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Planet of the Apes (2001), Men in Black (1997) and The Wolfman (2010). He has been married to Silvia Abascal since 8 November 1987. They have two children. He was previously married to Elaine Alexander.- Additional Crew
- Actress
- Producer
Jeanine Basinger was born on 3 February 1936. She is an actress and producer, known for A Better Way to Die (2000), Party Girl (1995) and Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood (2010).- Actor
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Peter Bogdanovich was conceived in Europe but born in Kingston, New York. He is the son of immigrants fleeing the Nazis, Herma (Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a painter and pianist. His father was a Serbian Orthodox Christian, and his mother was from a wealthy Austrian Jewish family. Peter originally was an actor in the 1950s, studying his craft with legendary acting teacher Stella Adler and appearing on television and in summer stock. In the early 1960s he achieved notoriety for programming movies at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An obsessive cinema-goer, sometimes seeing up to 400 movies a year in his youth, Bogdanovich prominently showcased the work of American directors such as John Ford, about whom he subsequently wrote a book based on the notes he had produced for the MOMA retrospective of the director, and the then-underappreciated Howard Hawks. Bogdanovich also brought attention to such forgotten pioneers of American cinema as Allan Dwan.
Bogdanovich was influenced by the French critics of the 1950s who wrote for Cahiers du Cinema, especially critic-turned-director François Truffaut. Before becoming a director himself, he built his reputation as a film writer with articles in Esquire Magazine. In 1968, following the example of Cahiers du Cinema critics Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer who had created the Nouvelle Vague ("New Wave") by making their own films, Bogdanovich became a director. Working for low-budget schlock-meister Roger Corman, Bogdanovich directed the critically praised Targets (1968) and the not-so-critically praised Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), a film best forgotten.
Turning back to journalism, Bogdanovich struck up a lifelong friendship with the legendary Orson Welles while interviewing him on the set of Mike Nichols' film adaptation of Catch-22 (1970) from the novel by Joseph Heller. Subsequently, Bogdanovich has played a major role in elucidating Welles and his career with his writings on the great actor-director, most notably his book "This is Orson Welles" (1992). He has steadily produced invaluable books about the cinema, especially "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors," an indispensable tome that establishes Bogdanovich, along with Kevin Brownlow, as one of the premier English-language chroniclers of cinema.
The 32-year-old Bogdanovich was hailed by a critics as a Wellesian wunderkind when his most famous film, The Last Picture Show (1971) was released. The film received eight Academy Award nominations, including Bogdanovich as Best Director, and won two of them, for Cloris Leachman and "John Ford Stock Company" veteran Ben Johnson in the supporting acting categories. Bogdanovich, who had cast 19-year-old model Cybill Shepherd in a major role in the film, fell in love with the young beauty, an affair that eventually led to his divorce from the film's set designer Polly Platt, his longtime artistic collaborator and the mother of his two children.
Bogdanovich followed up The Last Picture Show (1971) with a major hit, What's Up, Doc? (1972), a screwball comedy heavily indebted to Hawks' Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), starring Barbra Streisand and 'Ryan O'Neal'. Despite his reliance on homage to bygone cinema, Bogdanovich had solidified his status as one of a new breed of A-list directors that included Academy Award winners Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin, with whom he formed The Directors Company. The Directors Company was a generous production deal with Paramount Pictures that essentially gave the directors carte blanche if they kept within strict budget limitations. It was through this entity that Bogdanovich's next big hit, the critically praised Paper Moon (1973), was produced.
Paper Moon (1973), a Depression-era comedy starring Ryan O'Neal that won his ten-year-old daughter Tatum O'Neal an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress, proved to be the highwater mark of Bogdanovich's career. Forced to share the profits with his fellow directors, Bogdanovich became dissatisfied with the arrangement. The Directors Company subsequently produced only two more films, Francis Ford Coppola's critically acclaimed The Conversation (1974) which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1974 and garnered Coppola an Oscar nod for Best Director, and Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller (1974), a film that had a quite different critical reception.
An adaptation of the Henry James novella, Daisy Miller (1974) spelled the beginning of the end of Bogdanovich's career as a popular, critically acclaimed director. The film, which starred Bogdanovich's lover Cybill Shepherd as the title character, was savaged by critics and was a flop at the box office. Bogdanovich's follow-up, At Long Last Love (1975), a filming of the Cole Porter musical starring Cybill Shepherd, was derided by some critics as one of the worst films ever made, noted as such in Harry Medved and Michael Medved's book "The Golden Turkey Awards: Nominees and Winners, the Worst Achievements in Hollywood History" (1980). The film also was a box office bomb despite featuring Burt Reynolds, a hotly burning star who would achieve super-nova status at the end of the 1970s.
Bogdanovich insisted on filming the musical numbers for At Long Last Love (1975) live, a process not used since the early days of the talkies, when sound engineer Douglas Shearer developed lip-synching at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The decision was widely ridiculed, as none of the leading actors were known for their singing abilities (Bogdanovich himself had produced a critically panned album of Cybill Shepherd singing Cole Porter songs in 1974). The public perception of Bogdanovich became that of an arrogant director hamstrung by his own hubris.
Trying to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was his early success, Bogdanovich once again turned to the past, his own and that of cinema, with Nickelodeon (1976). The film, a comedy recounting the earliest days of the motion picture industry, reunited Ryan O'Neal and 'Tatum O'Neal' from his last hit, Paper Moon (1973) with Burt Reynolds. Counseled not to use the unpopular (with both audiences and critics) Cybill Shepherd in the film, Bogdanovich instead used newcomer Jane Hitchcock as the film's ingénue. Unfortunately, the magic of Paper Moon (1973) was not be repeated and the film died at the box office. Jane Hitchcock, Bogdanovich's discovery, would make only one more film before calling it quits.
After a three-year hiatus, Bogdanovich returned with the critically and financially underwhelming Saint Jack (1979) for Hugh Hefner's Playboy Productions Inc. Bogdanovich's long affair with Cybill Shepherd had ended in 1978, but the production deal making Hugh Hefner the film's producer was part of the settlement of a lawsuit Shepherd had filed against Hefner for publishing nude photos of her pirated from a print of The Last Picture Show (1971) in Playboy Magazine. Bogdanovich then launched the film that would be his career Waterloo, They All Laughed (1981), a low-budget ensemble comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and the 1980 Playboy Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten. During the filming of the picture, Bogdanovich fell in love with Stratten, who was married to an emotionally unstable hustler, Paul Snider, who relied on her financially. Stratten moved in with Bogdanovich, and when she told Snider she was leaving him, he shot and killed her, then committed suicide.
They All Laughed (1981) could not attract a distributor due to the negative publicity surrounding the Stratten murder, despite it being one of the few films made by the legendary Audrey Hepburn after her provisional retirement in 1967 (the film would prove to be Hepburn's last starring role in a theatrically released motion picture). The heartbroken Bogdanovich bought the rights to the negative so that it would be seen by the public, but the film had a limited release, garnered weak reviews and cost Bogdanovich millions of dollars, driving the emotionally devastated director into bankruptcy.
Bogdanovich turned back to his first avocation, writing, to pen a memoir of his dead love, "The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten (1960-1980)" that was published in 1984. The book was a riposte to Teresa Carpenter's "Death of a Playmate" article written for The Village Voice that had won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize. Carpenter had lambasted Bogdanovich and Hugh Hefner, claiming that Stratten was as much a victim of them as she was of Paul Snider. The article served as the basis of Bob Fosse's film Star 80 (1983), in which Bogdanovich was portrayed as the fictional director "Aram Nicholas".
Bogdanovich's career as a noted director was over, and though he achieved modest success with Mask (1985), his sequel to his greatest success The Last Picture Show (1971), Texasville (1990), was a critical and box office disappointment. He directed two more theatrical films in 1992 and 1993, but their failure kept him off the big screen until 2001's The Cat's Meow (2001). Returning once again to a reworking of the past, this time the alleged murder of director Thomas H. Ince by Welles' bete noir William Randolph Hearst, The Cat's Meow (2001) was a modest critical success but a flop at the box office. In addition to helming some television movies, Bogdanovich has returned to acting, with a recurring guest role on the cable television series The Sopranos (1999) as Dr. Jennifer Melfi's analyst.
Bogdanovich's personal reputation suffered from gossip about his 13-year marriage to Dorothy Stratten's 19-year-old-kid sister Louise Stratten, who was 29 years his junior. Some gossip held that Bogdanovich's behavior was akin to that of the James Stewart character in Alfred Hitchcock's necrophiliac masterpiece Vertigo (1958), with the director trying to remold Stratten into the image of her late sister. The marriage ended in divorce in 2001.
Now in his early eighties, Bogdanovich has arguably imitated his hero Orson Welles, but in an unintended fashion, as filmmaker who never regained the acclaim bestowed on their first major success. However, unlike the widely acclaimed master Welles, the orbit of Bogdanovich's reputation has never recovered from the apogee it reached briefly in the early 1970s.
There has been speculation that Peter Bogdanovich's ruin as a director was guaranteed when he ditched his wife and artistic collaborator Polly Platt for Cybill Shepherd. Platt had worked with Bogdanovich on all his early successes, and some critics believe that the controlling artistic consciousness on The Last Picture Show (1971) was Platt's. Parting company with Platt after Paper Moon (1973), Bogdanovich promptly slipped from the heights of a wunderkind to a has-been pursuing epic folly, as evidenced by Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975).
In 1998 the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress named The Last Picture Show (1971) to the National Film Registry, an honor awarded only to the most culturally significant films.- Additional Crew
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Ronald V. Borst is known for Not of This Earth (1988), Hard to Die (1990) and 100 Years of Horror (1996).- Actor
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Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in WWII, and afterwards got a job playing the drums at nightclubs in the Catskills. Brooks eventually started a comedy act and also worked in radio and as Master Entertainer at Grossinger's Resort before going to television.
He was a writer for, Your Show of Shows (1950) Caesar's Hour (1954) and wrote the Broadway show Shinbone Alley. He also worked in the creation of The 2000 Year Old Man (1975) and Get Smart (1965) before embarking on a highly successful film career in writing, acting, producing and directing.
Brooks is famous for the spoofs of different film genres that he made such as Blazing Saddles (1974), History of the World: Part I (1981), Silent Movie (1976), Young Frankenstein (1974), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), High Anxiety (1977), Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), and Spaceballs (1987).- Producer
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Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated with a degree in drama from Hofstra University, and did graduate work at UCLA in filmmaking. He was training as assistant with filmmaker Roger Corman, working in such capacities as sound-man, dialogue director, associate producer and, eventually, director of Dementia 13 (1963), Coppola's first feature film. During the next four years, Coppola was involved in a variety of script collaborations, including writing an adaptation of "This Property is Condemned" by Tennessee Williams (with Fred Coe and Edith Sommer), and screenplays for Is Paris Burning? (1966) and Patton (1970), the film for which Coppola won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. In 1966, Coppola's 2nd film brought him critical acclaim and a Master of Fine Arts degree. In 1969, Coppola and George Lucas established American Zoetrope, an independent film production company based in San Francisco. The company's first project was THX 1138 (1971), produced by Coppola and directed by Lucas. Coppola also produced the second film that Lucas directed, American Graffiti (1973), in 1973. This movie got five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. In 1971, Coppola's film The Godfather (1972) became one of the highest-grossing movies in history and brought him an Oscar for writing the screenplay with Mario Puzo The film was a Best Picture Academy Award-winner, and also brought Coppola a Best Director Oscar nomination. Following his work on the screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974), Coppola's next film was The Conversation (1974), which was honored with the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and brought Coppola Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominations. Also released that year, The Godfather Part II (1974), rivaled the success of The Godfather (1972), and won six Academy Awards, bringing Coppola Oscars as a producer, director and writer. Coppola then began work on his most ambitious film, Apocalypse Now (1979), a Vietnam War epic that was inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1993). Released in 1979, the acclaimed film won a Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and two Academy Awards. Also that year, Coppola executive produced the hit The Black Stallion (1979). With George Lucas, Coppola executive produced Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), directed by Akira Kurosawa, and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), directed by Paul Schrader and based on the life and writings of Yukio Mishima. Coppola also executive produced such films as The Escape Artist (1982), Hammett (1982) The Black Stallion Returns (1983), Barfly (1987), Wind (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), etc.
He helped to make a star of his nephew, Nicolas Cage. Personal tragedy hit in 1986 when his son Gio died in a boating accident. Francis Ford Coppola is one of America's most erratic, energetic and controversial filmmakers.- Producer
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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
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One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in Manhattan, New York City, to artists Virginia (Admiral) and Robert De Niro Sr. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, and his other ancestry is Irish, English, Dutch, German, and French. He was trained at the Stella Adler Conservatory and the American Workshop. De Niro first gained fame for his role in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), but he gained his reputation as a volatile actor in Mean Streets (1973), which was his first film with director Martin Scorsese. He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Godfather Part II (1974) and received Academy Award nominations for best actor in Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Cape Fear (1991). He received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980).
De Niro has earned four Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, for his work in New York, New York (1977), opposite Liza Minnelli, Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). Other notable performances include Brazil (1985), The Untouchables (1987), Backdraft (1991), Frankenstein (1994), Heat (1995), Casino (1995) and Jackie Brown (1997). At the same time, he also directed and starred in such films as A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). De Niro has also received the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2010.
As of 2022, De Niro is 79-years-old. He has never retired from acting, and continues to work regularly in mostly film.- Actor
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Richard Dreyfuss is an American leading man, who has played his fair share of irritating pests and brash, ambitious hustlers.
He was born Richard Stephen Dreyfus in Brooklyn, New York, to Geraldine (Robbins), an activist, and Norman Dreyfus, a restaurateur and attorney. His paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and his mother's family was Russian Jewish.
Richard worked his way up through bit parts (The Graduate (1967), for one) and TV before gaining attention with his portrayal of Baby Face Nelson in John Milius' Dillinger (1973). He gained prominence as a college-bound young man in American Graffiti (1973) and as a nervy Jewish kid with high hopes in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974). By the latter part of the 1970s Dreyfuss was established as a major star, playing leads (and alter-egos) for Steven Spielberg in two of the top-grossing films of the that decade: Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He won a Best Actor Oscar in his first romantic lead as an out-of-work actor in The Goodbye Girl (1977). Dreyfuss also produced and starred in the entertaining private eye movie The Big Fix (1978). After a brief lull in the early 1980s, a well-publicized drug problem and a string of box-office disappointments (The Competition (1980), Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981), The Buddy System (1984)), a clean and sober Dreyfuss re-established himself in the mid-'80s as one of Hollywood's more engaging leads. He co-starred with Bette Midler and Nick Nolte in Paul Mazursky's popular Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). That same year he provided the narration and appeared in the opening and closing "bookends" of Rob Reiner's nostalgic Stand by Me (1986). He quickly followed that with Nuts (1987) opposite Barbra Streisand, Barry Levinson's Tin Men (1987) in a memorable teaming with Danny DeVito, and Stakeout (1987) with Emilio Estevez. Dreyfuss continued working steadily through the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, most notably in Mazursky's farce Moon Over Parador (1988), Spielberg's Always (1989), Postcards from the Edge (1990) and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990). He appeared as a member of an ensemble that included Holly Hunter, Gena Rowlands and Danny Aiello in the romantic comedy Once Around (1991) and as a pop psychiatrist, the author of several successful self-help books, who is driven to the edge by nutcase Bill Murray in the popular comedy What About Bob? (1991). Dreyfuss has also remained active in the theater ("Death and Maiden", 1992) and on TV. In his next project he starred the thriller Silent Fall (1994) with John Lithgow and Linda Hamilton, being the film debut of Liv Tyler, Steven Tyler's daughter (Aerosmith's lead vocals). Just later Dreyfuss made Another Stakeout (1993), sequel of Stakeout (1987) where was team again with Emilio Estevez accompanied of Rosie O'Donnell, the adaptation of Neil Simon's play Lost in Yonkers (1993) and followed with a supporting turn as the querulous political opponent in The American President (1995). Dreyfuss received some of the best notices of his career as a determined, inspiring music teacher coping with a deaf son and the demands of his career in Mr. Holland's Opus (1995). Closing the 20th century he was in Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan (1996) with Andy Garcia, the crime comedy Mad Dog Time (1996) as the mob boss Vic, the screwball comedy Krippendorf's Tribe (1998) about an anthropologist who creates a false lost New Guinea tribe for not losing his job in the university, TV movie Lansky (1999) about the infamous mob boss to end, the too TV movie Fail Safe (2000) playing The President, and The Crew (2000), about four older mobsters retired in Miami, partnering with Hollywood legends Burt Reynolds, Dan Hedaya and Seymour Cassel.
His start in the 21st century was with the adaption of Luis Sepúlveda's novel The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (2001), playing an old man to must to hunt a female jaguar turned crazy. It was followed by the supporting apparition in the comedy Who Is Cletis Tout? (2001) and another TV movie about 1981 Ronald Reagan's shooting The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001). After the short-lived TV series The Education of Max Bickford (2001) about a teacher in a women's college where his daughter is student, Dreyfuss returned to cinema in Silver City (2004) and the box-office bomb Poseidon (2006) with Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum and Josh Lucas. Playing former vice-president Dick Cheney in the Oliver Stone's biopic W. (2008) and Irv, the cunning tourist in Greece turned in assistant of a troubled tour guide in My Life in Ruins (2009), Dreyfuss participated in low-budget productions as Leaves of Grass (2009) and The Lightkeepers (2009), for making a cameo in the wild and crazy Piranha 3D (2010) about prehistoric men-eater piranhas that make a bloodbath in a spring break. Returning to first line playing evil Alexander Dunning in the actioner RED (2010), his further productions included Paranoia (2013) as Liam Hemsworth's father partnering Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, road movie Cas & Dylan (2013) opposites Tatiana Maslany and the biopic TV mini-series Madoff (2016) about the infamous multi-billion-dollar and hustler Bernie Madoff. Tireless and always implied in new projects, Dreyfuss played George, the funny online date of Candice Bergen in Book Club (2018), the comedy and road movie The Last Laugh (2019) with Chevy Chase, and the set in wilderness thriller Daughter of the Wolf (2019) with Gina Carano and Brendan Fehr. Making his 73rd birthday in 2020, Dreyfuss is an example of talent, diversity and love for his work, touching not only all the genres in cinema but leaving an unforgettable footprint at any of them.- Additional Crew
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Professor of Film at Columbia University's School of the Arts, and Moderator of the "Reel Pieces" series at Manhattan's 92Y, where she has interviewed over 200 film celebrities. She is the author of Intimations: The Cinema of Wojciech Has; Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski; Francois Truffaut, a study of the French director's work; Philip Kaufman, and the landmark study, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (with a foreword by Elie Wiesel). Her latest book is Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes, and she received the Mel Novikoff Award from the 2018 San Francisco Film Festival.- Additional Crew
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Sara Karloff was born on 23 November 1938 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for My Lovely Monster (1991), Deader Country (2009) and Horror Kung-Fu Theatre (1990). She was previously married to William J. "Sparky" Sparkman and Richard Cotten.- Actor
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Roger Moore will perhaps always be remembered as the man who replaced Sean Connery in the James Bond series, arguably something he never lived down.
Roger George Moore was born on October 14, 1927 in Stockwell, London, England, the son of Lillian (Pope) and George Alfred Moore, a policeman. His mother was born in Calcutta, India, to a British family. Roger first wanted to be an artist, but got into films full time after becoming an extra in the late 1940s. He came to the United States in 1953. Suave, extremely handsome, and an excellent actor, he received a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His initial foray met with mixed success, with movies like Diane (1956) and Interrupted Melody (1955), as well as The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954).
Moore went into television in the 1950s on series such as Ivanhoe (1958) and The Alaskans (1959), but probably received the most recognition from Maverick (1957), as cousin Beau. He received his big breakthrough, at least internationally, as The Saint (1962). The series made him a superstar and he became very successful thereafter. Moore ended his run as the Saint, and was one of the premier stars of the world, but he was not catching on in America. In an attempt to change this, he agreed to star with Tony Curtis on ITC's The Persuaders! (1971), but although hugely popular in Europe, it did not catch on in the United States and was canceled. Just prior to making the series, he starred in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), which proved there was far more to Moore than the light-hearted roles he had previously accepted.
He was next offered and accepted the role of James Bond, and once audiences got used to the change of style from Connery's portrayal, they also accepted him. Live and Let Die (1973), his first Bond movie, grossed more outside of America than Diamonds Are Forever (1971); Connery's last outing as James Bond. He went on to star in another six Bond films, before bowing out after A View to a Kill (1985). He was age 57 at the time the film was made and was looking a little too old for Bond - it was possibly one film too many. In between times, there had been more success with appearances in films such as That Lucky Touch (1975), Shout at the Devil (1976), The Wild Geese (1978), Escape to Athena (1979) and North Sea Hijack (1980).
Despite his fame from the Bond films and many others, the United States never completely took to him until he starred in The Cannonball Run (1981) alongside Burt Reynolds, a success there. After relinquishing his role as Bond, his work load tended to diminish a little, though he did star in the American box office flop Feuer, Eis & Dynamit (1990), as well as the comedy Bullseye! (1990), with Michael Caine. He did the overlooked comedy Bed & Breakfast (1991), as well as the television movie The Man Who Wouldn't Die (1994), and then the major Jean-Claude Van Damme flop The Quest (1996). Moore then took second rate roles such as Spice World (1997), and the American television series The Dream Team (1999). Although his film work slowed down, he was still in the public eye, be it appearing on television chat shows or hosting documentaries.
Roger Moore was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire on December 31, 1998 in the New Years Honours for services to UNICEF, and was promoted to Knight Commander of the same order on June 14, 2003 in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to the charities UNICEF and Kiwanis International.
Roger Moore died of cancer on 23 May, 2017, in Switzerland. He was 89.- Actress
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Jane Seymour was born as Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg in 1951 in Middlesex, England, to a nurse mother and gynaecologist/obstetrician father. She is of Polish Jewish (father) and Dutch (mother) descent. She adopted the acting name of "Jane Seymour" when she entered show business as it was easier for people to remember (and the name of one of King Henry VIII's wives). She attracted the attention of the James Bond film producers when they saw her on British television. She was cast as the main Bond girl, "Solitaire", in Live and Let Die (1973). The role gained her international recognition but she was in danger of losing it all like the previous Bond girls, so she came to the U.S.
A casting director advised her to lose her English accent and acquire an American accent to land roles on American television. She did and started getting roles, earning five Emmy nominations, resulting in one win for Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988) for playing Maria Callas. She won Golden Globe awards for both East of Eden (1981) and the American television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993), where she played the title role for 5 years. She occasionally appeared in feature films, memorably in Somewhere in Time (1980) and in Wedding Crashers (2005).
Married and divorced four times, she gave birth to four children and is a stepmother to two. They have children of their own, making her a grandmother. As of 2018, she has been acting in television movies and making guest-appearances.- Writer
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American film historian and documentary writer-producer; frequent on-camera commentator and occasional bit-part actor. Author of the books 'Hollywood Gothic', the definitive chronicle of Bram Stoker's Dracula in its journey from page to stage to screen; 'The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror'; 'Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture'; 'V Is for Vampire' and many others. With Elias Savada, co-author of 'Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning'. Documentary projects include The World of Gods and Monsters: A Journey with James Whale (1999), a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the Academy Award-winning biopic 'Gods And Monsters', and 11 DVD documentaries for Universal Studio Home Video's classic horror and science fiction films. He resided in Los Angeles.- Actor
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One of Hollywood's finest character / "Method" actors, Eli Wallach was in demand for over 60 years (first film/TV role was 1949) on stage and screen, and has worked alongside the world's biggest stars, including Clark Gable, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, Peter O'Toole, and Al Pacino, to name but a few.
Wallach was born on 7 December 1915 in Brooklyn, NY, to Jewish parents who emigrated from Poland, and was one of the few Jewish kids in his mostly Italian neighborhood. His parents, Bertha (Schorr) and Abraham Wallach, owned a candy store, Bertha's Candy Store. He went on to graduate with a B.A. from the University of Texas in Austin, but gained his dramatic training with the Actors Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse. He made his debut on Broadway in 1945, and won a Tony Award in 1951 for portraying Alvaro Mangiacavallo in the Tennessee Williams play "The Rose Tattoo".
Wallach made a strong screen debut in 1956 in the film version of the Tennessee Williams play Baby Doll (1956), shined as "Dancer", the nattily dressed hitman, in director Don Siegel's film-noir classic The Lineup (1958), and co-starred in the heist film Seven Thieves (1960). Director John Sturges then cast Wallach as vicious Mexican bandit Calvera in The Magnificent Seven (1960), the western adaptation of the Akira Kurosawa epic Seven Samurai (1954). The Misfits (1961), in the star-spangled western opus How the West Was Won (1962), the underrated WW2 film The Victors (1963), as a kidnapper in The Moon-Spinners (1964), in the sea epic Lord Jim (1965) and in the romantic comedy How to Steal a Million (1966).
Looking for a third lead actor in the final episode of the "Dollars Trilogy", Italian director Sergio Leone cast the versatile Wallach as the lying, two-faced, money-hungry (but somehow lovable) bandit "Tuco" in the spectacular The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) (aka "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"), arguably his most memorable performance. Wallach kept busy throughout the remainder of the '60s and into the '70s with good roles in Mackenna's Gold (1969), Cinderella Liberty (1973), Crazy Joe (1974), The Deep (1977) and as Steve McQueen's bail buddy in The Hunter (1980).
The 1980s was an interesting period for Wallach, as he was regularly cast as an aging doctor, a Mafia figure or an over-the-hill hitman, such as in The Executioner's Song (1982), Our Family Honor (1985), Tough Guys (1986), Nuts (1987), The Two Jakes (1990) and as the candy-addicted "Don Altabello" in The Godfather Part III (1990). At 75+ years of age, Wallach's quality of work was still first class and into the 1990s and beyond, he has remained in demand. He lent fine support to Vendetta: Secrets of a Mafia Bride (1990), Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story (1992), Naked City: Justice with a Bullet (1998) and Keeping the Faith (2000). Most recently Wallach showed up as a fast-talking liquor store owner in Mystic River (2003) and in the comedic drama King of the Corner (2004).
In early 2005, Eli Wallach released his much anticipated autobiography, "The Good, The Bad And Me: In My Anecdotage", an enjoyable reading from one of the screen's most inventive and enduring actors.
Eli Wallach was very much a family man who remained married to his wife Anne Jackson for 66 years. When Wallach died at 98, in 2014, in Manhattan, NY, he was survived by his wife, three children, five grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.- Actor
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When he was 11, he wanted to be a comedian like Sid Caesar. Then, when he was 15 and saw Lee J. Cobb in 'Death of a Salesman,' he decided he would be a comedy actor and found that Mel Brooks was a great influence on his screen writing. He combined both talents with directing in The World's Greatest Lover (1977), followed by The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975).- Additional Crew
Leonard Wolf was a Professor of English at 'San Francisco State University' (SFSU). He is a poet and author and lives today in New York. Wolf is especially known for his authoritative annotated editions of classic gothic horror novels including "Dracula", "Frankenstein", The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", and "The Phantom of the Opera".- Actress
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Rae Dawn Chong was born February 28, 1961 in Edmonton, Canada. After a few film and television spots, Rae Dawn earned a Genie for her performance in Jean-Jacques Annaud's prehistoric-drama Quest for Fire (1981). She played the young, Ivaka prisoner, Ika. Other notables roles include Harpo's girlfriend "Squeek", aka, Mary Agnes in Steven Spielberg's five-time Academy Award-nominated film, The Color Purple (1985), and James Remar's beautiful and mysterious wife, Carola in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990).- Actor
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Immortalized as Cosmo Kramer on the classic sitcom Seinfeld (1989), West Coast comedy star Michael Richards was born on July 24, 1949, and raised in South Los Angeles, California, to Phyllis (Nardozzi), an Italian-American medical records librarian, and William Richards, an electrical engineer. Michael displayed an early talent for performance as a top Forensic League competitor during grade school. He went on to star in multiple high school and college productions while working as an ambulance attendant and hospital orderly. Michael trained as a medic in the US Army during the Vietnam War, was appointed writer and director of plays on drug abuse and race relations for the Army's V-Corp Training Roadshow. He attended the California Institute of the Arts and was mentored by famed performance art guru Allan Kaprow. He graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington with his BFA in drama.
After first performing with the San Diego Repertory Company, he subsequently returned to L.A. where he was discovered by Budd Friedman, founder of the Improv comedy club and talent manager Charles H. Joffe. Also a trained theater actor under the tutelage of Stella Adler, Michael starred in regional productions, Off-Broadway, and in London's West End. In addition to his comedic roles, Michael performed regularly in comedy clubs during the late 1970s and 1980s while driving a school bus by day.
Inspired by the physical comedy of such legends as Charles Chaplin and Jacques Tati, he paid his dues on the comedy circuit until comedian Billy Crystal noticed him and gave him a break on one of his comedy specials. Michael earned a regular spot on the sketch comedy series Fridays (1980), where he created the character of Battle Boy who liked to blow up army soldiers. He also appeared in such minor slapstick films such as Young Doctors in Love (1982) and Transylvania 6-5000 (1985).
Michael worked regularly as a dramatic "heavy" in television throughout the 1980s in shows such as "Miami Vice," "St. Elsewhere," and "Hill Street Blues." Following a recurring role on the offbeat comedy series Marblehead Manor (1987), everything finally came together for the elastic-faced comedian in 1989, after being cast as Cosmo Kramer, Jerry Seinfeld's wired, convulsive, frizzy-mopped neighbor and pal on Seinfeld (1989). The frenzied character earned him three Emmy awards, SAG awards, and instant cult status. He followed this success with his own short-lived series, the comedy mystery as a private investigator in The Michael Richards Show (2000) and the role of Micawber in a TV version of David Copperfield (2000).
Subsequent film credits include the cult classic UHF (1989), Problem Child (1990), Airheads (1994), Unstrung Heroes (1995) and Trial and Error (1997), a top-billed comedy role. TV work into the millennium has been very sporadic; however, he appeared as himself in several episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000), and played a regular role in Kirstie Alley's brief comedy series Kirstie (2013) with fellow TV comedy veteran and Rhea Perlman. He also made an isolated film appearance in the romantic comedy Faith, Hope & Love (2019).- George Martin was born on 15 August 1929 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Dead Poets Society (1989), Awakenings (1990) and Léon: The Professional (1994). He was married to Katherine Helmond. He died on 1 June 2010 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
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Finola Hughes was born in London. She studied at Arts Educational Schools and began her career in the Northern Ballet Company, after winning the Markova award. She went on to work in the West End, in the original cast of "Cats" and continued working with Andrew Lloyd Webber in "Song & Dance". After making Staying Alive (1983) in LA, she moved to California in 1984 and began working on General Hospital (1963), winning an Emmy award in 1991. She continued to make TV series and various movies for the next few years, Jack's Place (1992), Aspen Extreme (1993), Blossom (1990), Charmed (1998), and returned to ABC daytime, in 1999, to join the cast of All My Children (1970) in New York. Once in NY, she began entering the Fashion World and returned to Los Angeles to begin a 4-year stint on the Style Network, with a fabulous makeover show, How Do I Look? (2004). She returned for a brief sojourn to General Hospital (1963), and it's spin-off, "Night Shift". Finola lives in Santa Barbara with her husband, artist Russell Young, and their 3 children.- Actress
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Discovered by a talent scout at Northwestern University in 1958, Paula Prentiss was signed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer and teamed with Jim Hutton in a string of comedies. She rapidly became one of the best American comediennes of the 1960s. Her funny voice inflections, free acting style and brunette good looks established her as a leading lady in comedies of the screwball type, although she was very good in dramatic roles, too. Not much attracted to the Hollywood scene, she retired from films on several occasions, due also to illness and motherhood, but she was always admired and welcome whenever she made a comeback. She and her husband, the actor and director Richard Benjamin, are the parents of Ross Benjamin and Prentiss Benjamin.- Actor
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Although his actress wife Paula Prentiss became a star by the early 1960s, it took Richard Benjamin almost fifteen years to establish his screen persona, but the wait was rewarding. After extensive work in theatre as actor and director, and his participation in the cult TV series He & She (1967), in which he co-starred with Prentiss, he won the starring role in the screen adaptation of Philip Roth's best-seller, Goodbye, Columbus (1969). That was followed by roles in Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) and another Roth adaptation, Portnoy's Complaint (1972), that turned him into a prominent "archetype of East Coast Jewish intellectual agony", as critic Jonathan Romney defines him. But his forte was comedy and he won a Golden Globe when he repeated his stage role in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys (1975). Although he still performs, Benjamin turned to direction since the 80s with the highly acclaimed comedy My Favorite Year (1982).- Bruce Tyson was previously married to Shelley Long.
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Shelley Lee Long was born at 7:15 am on Tuesday, August 23, 1949 in Indian Village, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, the only child of Ivadine (Williams), a schoolteacher, and Leland Long, a teacher who had previously worked in the rubber industry. Shelley attended school at Kekionga Junior High for grades 6-9 and at South Side High School for grades 10-12. She enrolled at Northwestern University in 1967 as an undergraduate studying drama. Her first job was at the university as a meal plan checker. She left Northwestern to pursue a dual career in acting and modeling. She also had a brief marriage to her first husband that ended in divorce. In Chicago, she became a member of the celebrated Second City troupe, in addition to writing, producing and co-hosting a popular Chicago magazine program called "Sorting It Out" in 1975. The show ran for three years on a local NBC station and won three Emmy Awards for Best Entertainment Show.
She met her second husband, Bruce Tyson (a securities broker), on a blind date in 1979. They were married in October, 1981. In 1982, she played the character Diane Chambers in the new NBC comedy series, Cheers (1982). She played the part for five years, winning an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1983, winning Golden Globe Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1983, for Best Actress in a Comedy Series in 1985 and a Quality TV Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1986. She gave birth to a daughter, Juliana, on March 27, 1985. On her summer hiatus from "Cheers", Long made feature films, receiving a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress for Irreconcilable Differences (1984). In 1987, she starred in the hit comedy Outrageous Fortune (1987) with Bette Midler. Soon after, she left "Cheers" after five years to embark on a film career. However, her films Hello Again (1987) and Troop Beverly Hills (1989) were not hits, and she returned to television appearing in the final episode of Cheers in 1993. That same year, she appeared in her own television series "Good Advice" (1993) which was canceled. She returned to feature films playing Carol Brady in the The Brady Bunch Movie (1995). The film became a hit and spawned a sequel, A Very Brady Sequel (1996), which wasn't a hit. She returned to television playing the title role in "Kelly Kelly" (1998), which was canceled after a few episodes. She also played Diane Chambers a few times on "Frasier", the spinoff of Cheers. Her personal life took a huge blow when her husband divorced her in 2004 after more than 20 years of marriage. She recovered and continued on with her career, appearing in guest-starring roles on television, including a recurring role on Modern Family (2009). She supported her daughter Juliana Long Tyson's decision to follow in her footsteps as an actress. She also encouraged Juliana to get married, which she did in 2015, to management consultant Ryan Kissick. Shelley herself never remarried after her two divorces but continues to work in television.- Music Artist
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David Crosby was born on 14 August 1941 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a music artist and actor, known for Backdraft (1991), Hook (1991) and The Limey (1999). He was married to Jan Dance. He died on 18 January 2023 in Santa Ynez, California, USA.- Producer
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Canadian producer and director Ivan Reitman created many of American cinema's most successful and best loved feature film comedies and worked with Hollywood's acting elite. Reitman produced such hits as the ground-breaking sensation National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), which introduced John Belushi to American filmgoers, and the family features Beethoven (1992) and Beethoven's 2nd (1993). His directing credits include Meatballs (1979), Stripes (1981) and Ghostbusters (1984), films starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis; Dave (1993), which starred Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver, Junior (1994) which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito and Emma Thompson. Reitman also produced the HBO telefilm The Late Shift (1996), based on Bill Carter's non-fiction book about the late-night television wars which received seven Emmy nominations. Other producing endeavors include Commandments (1997), starring Aidan Quinn and Courteney Cox, Private Parts (1997), starring Howard Stern, as well as the animation/live action film Space Jam (1996), starring Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes characters. With Twins (1988), Reitman created an entirely new comedic persona for action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger -- and forged a personal and professional relationship that continued with Kindergarten Cop (1990) and Junior (1994). Acclaimed dramatic actors such as Robert Redford, Debra Winger, Sigourney Weaver, and Emma Thompson also revealed untapped comic talents under Reitman's direction. In 1984, Reitman was honored as Director of the Year by the National Association of Theater Owners and the next year received a Special Achievement Award at the Canadian Genie awards. In 1979 and again in 1989, for the films National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and Twins (1988), Reitman was honored with the People's Choice Award. In November of 1994, Reitman became the third director honored by Variety magazine in a special Billion Dollar Director issue.
Reitman was born in Czechoslovakia, to Jewish Holocaust survivors, and left with his family for Canada at the age of four. He attended Canada's McMaster University, where he produced and directed several television shorts. He followed with a live television show, Greed: The Series (1999), with Dan Aykroyd as its announcer. "Spellbound," which Reitman produced for the live stage, evolved into the Broadway hit "The Magic Show," starring Doug Henning. He continued producing for the stage with the Off-Broadway hit "The National Lampoon Show," and returned to Broadway to produce and direct the musical "Merlin," earning a Tony nomination for directing. Reitman headed The Montecito Picture Company, a film and television production company, with partner Tom Pollock. His television credits included the Emmy-nominated children's show The Real Ghostbusters (1986) and the Saturday morning animated series Beethoven (1994) for CBS. His last directing credited was Draft Day (2014), before his death in February 2022 in Montecito, California.- Actor
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A blond-haired, fair-complexioned actor with a toothy grin and capable of an unsettling glint in his eyes, Gary Busey was born in Goose Creek, Texas, and was raised in Oklahoma. He is the son of Sadie Virginia (Arnett), a homemaker, and Delmar Lloyd Busey, a construction design manager. He has English, as well as Irish, Scottish, and German, ancestry. He graduated from Nathan Hale High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1962 and for a while was a professional musician. A talented drummer, he played in several bands, including those of country-and-western legends Leon Russell, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson.
Busey's first film appearance was as a biker in the low-budget Angels Hard as They Come (1971) and, over the next few years, he landed several film roles generally as a country hick/redneck or surly, rebellious types. His real breakthrough came in the dynamic film The Buddy Holly Story (1978), with Busey taking the lead role as Buddy Holly, in addition to playing guitar and singing all the vocals! His stellar performance scored him a Best Actor nomination and the attention of Hollywood taking overcasting agents. Next up, he joined fellow young actors William Katt and Jan-Michael Vincent as surfing buddies growing up together in the cult surf film Big Wednesday (1978), directed by John Milius. However, a string of appearances in somewhat mediocre films took him out of the spotlight for several years, until he played the brutal assassin Mr. Joshua trying to kill Los Angeles cops Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the runaway mega-hit Lethal Weapon (1987). Further strong roles followed, including alongside Danny Glover once again in Predator 2 (1990). He was back on the beaches, this time tracking bank robbers with FBI agent Keanu Reeves, in Point Break (1991) and nearly stole the show as a psychotic Navy officer in league with terrorists led by Tommy Lee Jones taking over the USS Missouri in the highly popular Under Siege (1992).
The entertaining Busey has continued to remain busy in front of the cameras and has certainly developed a minor cult following among many film fans. Plus, he's also the proud father of accomplished young actor Jake Busey, whose looks make him almost a dead ringer for his famous father.- Actor
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Pierce Brendan Brosnan was born in Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland, to May (Smith), a nurse, and Thomas Brosnan, a carpenter. He lived in Navan, County Meath, until he moved to England, UK, at an early age (thus explaining his ability to play men from both backgrounds convincingly). His father left the household when Pierce was a child and although reunited later in life, the two have never had a close relationship. His most popular role is that of British secret agent James Bond. The death, in 1991, of Cassandra Harris, his wife of eleven years, left him with three children - Christopher and Charlotte from Cassandra's first marriage and Sean from their marriage. Since her death, he has had two children with his second wife, Keely Shaye Brosnan.
Brosnan is most famous for starring in the TV series Remington Steele (1982) as the title character, as well as portraying famous movie character James Bond in GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002).- Actress
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Keely Shaye Brosnan is an award-winning broadcast journalist turned award-winning documentary filmmaker. She has nurtured a diverse career covering a wide range of topics, from environmental journalism and animal advocacy to celebrity journalism and apprehending fugitives.
In 2016, Keely made her directorial debut with Poisoning Paradise, which opened at the Hawaii International Film Festival in Honolulu. To date, Poisoning Paradise has screened at 20 prestigious film festivals and won 11 awards (many for Best Documentary). In spring of 2018, Poisoning Paradise will screen in Geneva at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights, the Irvine International Film Festival, the London International Filmmaker Festival, and the Manchester Film Festival, American Documentary Film Festival & Film Fund, Sonoma International Film Festival, among others. In January 2018 Poisoning Paradise screened at the Malibu International Film Festival and won both the Grand Prize and the Audience Choice Award.
Formerly an entertainment correspondent for NBC's weekend edition of the "Today Show," and CBS's "Entertainment Tonight," Keely has interviewed a myriad of A-list celebrities. Previously, Keely was a correspondent on NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries" and served as a correspondent for ABC's "Good Morning America" and ABC's "Home Show" which earned her two Genesis Awards, a Special Achievement Award at the Environmental Film Festival, and a nomination from the Environmental Media Association.
Keely hosted "Great Bears," a series for the Outdoor Life Network as well as E!'s "Coming Attractions" and HBO's "World Entertainment Report." As a producer, she created and hosted "Home Green Home" for PBS, an eco-friendly home and garden "how-to" series. Keely was a contributor to Los Angeles Confidential Magazine and is currently completing her first book, Gourmet Gardener.
A world traveler, Keely's interests have led her to report on everything from toxic waste and biodiversity to children's issues and organic gardening. She regularly volunteers her time and talent to numerous environmental causes such as marine mammal and wetland protection, anti-nuclear, clean air and clean water campaigns, endangered species and environmental educational in the classroom for grades K-12.
The Jane Goodall Institute, Environmental Hall of Fame, Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, Environmental Media Association, Earth Communications Office, Heal the Bay, Women in Film, In Defense of Animals, Senator Barbara Boxer, Peace Over Violence, Organic Style Magazine and The Malibu Times have all honored Keely for her ongoing commitment to the environment.
Native to California, Keely resides in Malibu and Hawaii with her husband, Pierce Brosnan, their 21 year-old son Dylan, and 17 year-old son Paris.- Actor
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David Hyde Pierce was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA. He is the youngest child of George and Laura Pierce (both deceased) and has two older sisters (Barbara and Nancy) and an older brother (Thomas). As a child, he was very interested in music (particularly piano) and regularly played the organ at his local church (Bethesda Episcopal Church). David discovered a love of drama in high school and, upon his graduation in 1977, he received the Yaddo Medal which is to honor academic achievement and personal character. However, his love of music was still strong so he decided to study classical piano at Yale University.
Unfortunately, he soon grew bored with music history lessons and found that he wasn't dedicated enough to practice the required amount of hours to become a successful concert pianist. Instead, he returned to his love of drama and graduated in 1981 with a double major in English and Theatre Arts. He then moved to New York where he worked several menial jobs (including selling ties at Bloomingdales and working as a security guard) while acting in the theater during the late 80s and early 90s. He appeared in small roles in films such as Bright Lights, Big City (1988) before his life and career changed forever when he landed the role of "Dr. Niles Crane" in the television series Frasier (1993). Throughout the show's eleven year run (1993-2004), David was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series each year (he won four times: 1995, 1998-1999 and 2004). David resides in Los Angeles with his romantic partner, Brian Hargrove, and their two Wheaton Terriers, Maude and Mabel. He remains very close to his three siblings.- Actress
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Jane Leeves has made her mark in the entertainment world, acting in television, theater, and film over the past 20 years.
She is most famous for her role as "Daphne" in the award-winning show Frasier (1993). Leeves played one of the five main characters of the sitcom, a live-in physical therapist hired to take care of Frasier Crane's father. Leeves' character added a comical element to many scenes between Frasier and his family with her wit, down-to-earth remarks, and part-time, self-determined psychic abilities. Frasier Crane's brother becomes instantly smitten with her smile and Mancunian accent, which she had to fake for the whole duration of the show.
She became very good friends with the cast, including Peri Gilpin, David Hyde Pierce and John Mahoney, who are all godparents to her children.
Her role as Daphne Moon was awarded numerous awards nominations during the course of the TV series :- In 1994 she was nominated for the "Best Supporting Actress - Series, Miniseries or Television Film" Golden Globe Award.
- In 1995, she won the Q Award for "Best Supporting Actress in a Quality Comedy Series". She was nominated five more times in that same category (1994, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000).
- In 1998, she was nominated for the "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series" Primetime Emmy Award.
- In 1999 and 2003, she was nominated for the "Best Supporting Actress - Television Series, Musical or Comedy" Satellite Award.
- In 2001, she was nominated for the "Supporting Actress of the Vear in a Comedy Series" TV Guide Award.
Leeves stars in the Emmy® Award-winning TV Land series, Hot in Cleveland (2010), which in 2011 was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award® for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. Leeves plays eyebrow archer to the stars, "Joy Scroggs". The comedy revolves around three fabulous LA women of a certain age, and best friends (Leeves, Valerie Bertinelli and Wendie Malick) whose lives are changed forever when their plane, bound for Paris, unexpectedly lands in Cleveland.
She graced the world of theater by starring as "Sally Bowles" in the Roundabout production of "Cabaret" on Broadway. Leeves has also lent her voice to various animated television series, including The Penguins of Madagascar (2008), Phineas and Ferb (2007), and The Simpsons (1989), as well as the major motion picture, James and the Giant Peach (1996). Leeves also appeared in the film, Music of the Heart (1999), which co-starred Meryl Streep. On June 16, 2011, Leeves -- along with Hot in Cleveland (2010) co-stars Valerie Bertinelli, Wendie Malick and Betty White -- was presented with the key to the city of Cleveland by the mayor.
She recently started the "Tellurian Foundation", a line of all-natural skin care and baby products. A portion of the profits will be donated to those who strive to provide help to those in need, most recently "Food Share".- Actress
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Christina Applegate was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, to record producer/executive Robert Applegate and singer-actress Nancy Priddy. Her parents split-up shortly after her birth. She has two half-siblings from her father's re-marriage - Alisa (b. October 10, 1977) and Kyle (b. July 15, 1981). Alisa and Christina are best friends and even lived together while Alisa was going to college. Christina's mother took her along on all of her auditions and acting jobs. She made her acting debut at age five months, when her mother got her in a commercial for Playtex nursers. Her mother never remarried, but kept company with Stephen Stills. Christina still cherishes a guitar Stephen gave her when she was young. She played in a number of TV series before landing her breakout role in Married... with Children (1987). Christina still studies jazz dance.- Actress
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Paula Poundstone was born on 29 December 1959 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Home Movies (1999), Inside Out (2015) and Hyperspace (1984).- Producer
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Peter Guber, Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, has been a force in the entertainment industry for over fifty years. He has leveraged his creativity and business acumen into record-breaking profits and critical acclaim, establishing him as an enormously successful executive and entrepreneur in the entertainment and communications industries. Films he personally produced or executive produced, including Rain Man, Batman, The Color Purple, Midnight Express, Gorillas In The Mist, The Witches of Eastwick, Missing and Flashdance, have resonated with audiences all over the world, earning over three billion dollars worldwide and garnering more than 50 Academy Award nominations.
Guber joined Columbia pictures in 1968 and within three years became Studio Chief. During his tenure at the creative helm, Columbia surged to record breaking profits on the strength of such box office hits as Shampoo, Taxi Driver, Tommy, The Way We Were and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
In 1975, Guber quit Columbia Pictures and started Filmworks with a three-year producing pact, but over a year later, in 1976, Guber merged Filmworks with Casablanca Records to form Casablanca Record and Filmworks. Its record operation included such superstars as KISS, Donna Summer and The Village People, and included some of the most successful soundtracks of all time including Flashdance, which sold more than 14 million albums. In 1979 Guber renamed the film unit to PolyGram Pictures after PolyGram took a stake in the company, where he was Chairman of the Board and CEO. He sold his interest in Polygram in 1982 and formed and served as Co-Owner of the Guber-Peters Entertainment Company (GPEC) which established a major presence in motion pictures, television and music including producing the Grammy Award winning music and official soundtrack for the 1984 Summer Olympics. Within five years, GPEC became a public company and in 1989, was acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
In 1989, Guber was named Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE). Under his visionary leadership, the company re-framed its entire Loews exhibition circuit, introducing Sony's SDDS sound system, introduced the concept of IMAX theater and films integrated into multi-plex theaters and transformed the Sony lot into a state of the art digital production facility. Guber acquired for Sony the Magic Johnson Theatres and began an ongoing twenty year business relationship with Magic Johnson. SPE's motion picture business earned an industry best domestic box office market share averaging 17% over four years, propelled by an enormous string of successes including A Few Good Men, Philadelphia, Basic Instinct, A League of Their Own and Sleepless in Seattle among many others. During this same period, Sony Pictures led all competitors with a total of 120 Academy Award Nominations.
After leaving Sony as CEO in 1995, Guber formed Mandalay Entertainment Group as a multi-media joint venture with Sony in motion pictures and television. Mandalay Entertainment Group later added professional sports, sports entertainment and digital media as business enterprises.
Mandalay Pictures, a division of Mandalay Entertainment Group, produces motion pictures for the global marketplace. The company's rich history of creating filmed entertainment includes the box office hits, Donnie Brasco, Seven Years in Tibet, Wild Things, Les Miserables, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sleepy Hollow, Enemy At The Gates, The Score, Beyond Borders, Into the Blue, The Jacket, Never Back Down, When The Game Stands Tall, Horns, and Dark Places. Mandalay's most recent release, The Birth of a Nation, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and swept the two top prizes - the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the prestigious U.S. Dramatic Jury Award. The film sold to Fox Searchlight for a record breaking price.
Mandalay Vision is the company's independent development, production and financing label that focuses on innovative storytelling with premier talent. Mandalay Vision's first release, The Kids Are All Right, won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Mandalay Vision also released Soul Surfer starring Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt and Carrie Underwood, The Voices starring Ryan Reynolds, and Bernie, starring Matthew McConaughey and Jack Black. Bernie garnered a Golden Globe nomination for Jack Black and was selected as a 2012 Top Independent Film by the National Board of Review.
Following his location based entertainment leadership experience with Loews, Guber expanded Mandalay into a national entertainment sports provider with Mandalay Sports Entertainment. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors and is the Managing Partner of Mandalay Baseball LLC, which is a joint venture with ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers that recently acquired the Triple-A affiliated Minor League Baseball franchise in Oklahoma City, and commencing with the 2015 baseball season, became the Triple-A affiliate of the Dodgers. He also continues to serve as the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Mandalay Baseball Properties, which has owned and operated a national array of affiliated Minor League Baseball franchises and venues.
Peter Guber is the owner and serves as the Co-Executive Chairman of the NBA's Golden State Warriors. As co-managing partner, he and Joe Lacob were the driving forces behind the ownership group's NBA record-setting bid (at the time) to purchase the Warriors in 2010. The Warriors were named "Sports Team of the Year" by the Sports Business Journal at the seventh annual Sports Business Awards.
2015 was a monumental year for the Golden State Warriors. In April, two-time NBA All-Star, Steph Curry, was voted the NBA's Most Valuable Player. In May, the Warriors won the Western Conference Finals. In June, the Warriors won the NBA Championship. Also, in 2015, Steph Curry won the ESPY Award for Best Male Athlete and Steve Kerr won the ESPY Award for Best Coach/Manager.
2016 brought great success to the Golden State Warriors. The franchise went 73-9, breaking the record for the most wins in a single NBA season. Steve Kerr was named NBA Coach of the Year. Three-time NBA All-Star, Steph Curry, was unanimously voted the NBA's Most Valuable Player for a second year in a row. The Warriors were named "Sports Team of the Year" by the Sports Business Journal at the ninth annual Sports Business Awards. The team has 183 consecutive sellouts with over 28,000 members currently on the Season Ticket Priority Wait List.
In 2014, Guber and Lacob proposed to build a new state-of-the-art privately financed sports and entertainment venue in San Francisco and entered into an agreement with salesforce.com to purchase private land in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood. In 2016, the ownership group announced a 20 year naming rights partnership with JPMorgan Chase & Co. The new arena will be called the Chase Center where the team will play their 2019-2020 season.
Prior to the 2011-12 season, the Warriors ownership group acquired the D-League team, the Dakota Wizards, and moved the franchise to Santa Cruz, California. With a new name and location, the Santa Cruz Warriors are the official NBA D-League affiliate of the Golden State Warriors and play in the newly built Kaiser Permanente Arena. In 2015, the team won the NBA D-League Championship.
In 2012, in a third partnership with Magic Johnson, Peter Guber became an owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the storied Major League Baseball franchise, led by the Guggenheim Baseball Management group headed by Mark Walter together with Magic Johnson. Under their ownership, the franchise has won the 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 National League West championships.
Also in 2012, Guber and Mandalay Entertainment partnered with CAA Sports, the world's leading athlete representation agency and Mike Tollin, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning film and television producer/director to create Mandalay Sports Media. The diversified sports media business creates, finances, and acquires operating businesses, intellectual property, and varied enterprises within the sports and media sectors, as well as develops high-quality sports-themed entertainment programming for distribution across multiple platforms including film, television, mobile and digital. Mandalay Sports Media has several entertainment projects in development with ESPN, Turner Sports, New Line Cinema, and Incognito Pictures, among other distribution media venues.
In addition, in 2012, Guber joined with Guggenheim Partners and Allen Shapiro as CEO to purchase Dick Clark Productions. Founded by the late Dick Clark, Dick Clark Productions is a leading independent producer of television programming including perennial hits such as the American Music Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Academy of Country Music Awards, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve and So You Think You Can Dance.
Peter Guber is an investor, board member, and Chairman of the Strategic Advisory Board for NextVR. NextVR enables the transmission of live, long-form virtual reality content in broadcast quality - leading the way for live and on-demand VR to become a mainstream experience for sporting events, concerts, cinematic productions and more. As a board member and Chairman of the advisory board, Peter develops initiatives with established leagues and musical venues. In addition, he develops IP opportunities, creating value propositions from sponsors, investors and advertisers. In 2016, NextVR received the "Best in Sports Technology" Award at the ninth annual Sports Business Awards.
In October of 2014, Peter Guber became the owner and executive chairman of Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC). The ownership group includes sports veteran Tom Penn, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Mia Hamm Garciaparra and Tony Robbins, among others. LAFC is scheduled to debut in 2018 in the Banc of California Stadium, the first new open-air stadium built in the city of Los Angeles since Dodger Stadium in 1962.
In September of 2016, Peter Guber and Ted Leonsis led an ownership group in the purchase of the controlling interest in Team Liquid, one of the most successful global esports team franchises. Team Liquid competes at the highest level in global tournaments including StarCraft 2, League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, Halo, Street Fighter, and SSBM.
Peter Guber is a full professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and has been a member of the faculty for over 30 years. He also co-teaches an annual MBA course with the dean of UCLA's Anderson School of Management. He is a member of the UCLA Foundation Board of Trustees, as well as the winner of UCLA's prestigious Service Award for his accomplishments and association with the university. Guber is the Chair of the Founding Board of Advisors for The Center for Managing Enterprises in Media, Entertainment & Sports (MEMES) at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. MEMES is the preeminent Center for thought leadership and management education in the global media, entertainment and sports industries.
Guber has turned this legacy and experience in front of the camera where he has been seen every Sunday morning for six years on American Movie Classics (AMC) cable network, as co-host of the critically acclaimed national TV show, Shootout. AMC moved Guber's talents to prime time with a series of one hour specials in 2009 called StoryMakers. Guber was most recently seen as co-host of In the House, a weekly, national half-hour news and interview show on Encore and KNBC.
Peter Guber is a noted author with works including "Inside The Deep" and the L.A. Times best-seller "Shootout: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood," which was the impetus of his long running TV show of the same title. In December 2007, Guber wrote the cover article for the Harvard Business Review titled," The Four Truths of the Storyteller." He has also authored op-ed pieces for the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Guber recently released his third book, Tell To Win - Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, which became an instant #1 best seller in the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and on Amazon.com. Fortune magazine chose Tell To Win as one of their "5 Business Books You Can Really Use" and Hudson Booksellers, retail book stores in airports throughout North America, chose Tell To Win as one of the "5 Best Business Books of the Year."
A passionate, humorous, and tireless motivator, Guber is a sought after speaker for corporations and global events. He is a regular contributor in the national media, both in print and on television. Since October of 2008, he has been seen on Fox Business News, appearing on America's Nightly Scoreboard and After The Bell as an Entertainment and Media Analyst. He has also appeared on Good Morning America (ABC), Today (NBC), The Charlie Rose Show (PBS), Your World with Neil Cavuto (FOX NEWS), Lou Dobbs Tonight (FOX NEWS), Bloomberg TV and Morning Joe (MSNBC), among others.- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Lynda Guber is known for The Deep (1977) and Yoga Moves (1982). She has been married to Peter Guber since 1965. They have four children.- Elizabeth Guber was born on 3 April 1972 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Batman & Robin (1997), The Craft (1996) and Gossip (2000).
- Actress
- Writer
Ann Talman was born on 13 September 1957 in Welch, West Virginia, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Limitless (2011), Wall Street (1987) and Serendipity (2001).- Producer
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Rolonda Watts is a journalist, talk show host, actor, producer, writer, and voice-over talent.
Her name, face, and now even her distinctive voice are known by audiences everywhere, thanks to her work in radio, television, and film. Most viewers know Rolonda Watts from her internationally syndicated talk show, Rolonda (1994). Produced by King World and Watts Works Productions, the talker ran for four successful seasons. Rolonda was also part owner and supervising producer of the show.
Ro began her television career as a local news reporter in Greensboro, North Carolina, before moving on to larger markets. She landed a reporting and anchoring job at the New Jersey Network before joining WNBC-TV in New York, where she also anchored the local morning news cut-ins for the Today (1952) Show. While at WNBC-TV, Ro received an Emmy nomination for her "Live Spot News Coverage" of a deadly train crash. She later moved on to WABC-TV in New York to anchor, report, and moderate "Eyewitness News Conference," the station's weekly political forum.
Ready to spread her wings outside of local news, Ro gained national exposure and attention when she became host of Lifetime Television's talk show, "Attitudes." There, she received a Cable Ace nomination for "Best Talk Show." After that, the award-winning journalist went on to tackle news around the world, joining the "Inside Edition" news magazine team as senior correspondent, weekend anchor, and producer. Still bitten by the talk show bug, Ro jumped at the opportunity to host her own show when TV legend Roger King of King World Productions made her an offer she couldn't refuse.
Rolonda has also taken "The Ro Show" to radio, having worked with the Greenstone Media Network, which is offering pod casts of some of her most remarkable radio moments. (Visit: RadioRolonda.com).
She has also hosted other television reality shows, including "Lie Detector" for PAX-TV.
With that distinctive, warm, and recognizable voice, Rolonda has also emerged as one of the leading voice-over talents in America. She is the Announcer of "The Judge Joe Brown Show," as well as for the new game show, "Temptation." She is also the voice of Professor Wiseman in the animated television series, "Curious George." for Universal Studios. Ro also recently became one of the animated voices of Disney.
In commercials, Ro is the voice of Boeing, Wells Fargo Bank, Tropicana, Southwest Airlines, Big Lots, Children's Hospital, Wendy's, Aleve, and Alka Seltzer - and more.
From New York to Hollywood, Rolonda has demonstrated her comedic and dramatic talents in various television and feature films, including JAG (1995), The West Wing (1999), The District (2000), Boston Public (2000), Yes, Dear (2000), Sister, Sister (1994), My Wife and Kids (2000) and many more. She has also appeared in the daytime drama series Days of Our Lives (1965) and The Bold and the Beautiful (1987), In fact, she returns to Days of Our Lives (1965) in January 2008 in the recurring role as the sassy law shark, attorney "Cameron Reese". (See Ro's theatrical resume).
In film, Ro has worked with some of Hollywood's most talented directors, including Spike Lee, John Landis, Charles Winkler and the late Carrie Hamilton, who cast Ro in the role of Dorothy Dandridge, portraying the Hollywood legend the hour before her death.
New York City and Newark, NJ each established an official "Rolonda Day" for her journalistic, community, and humanitarian works. She has served on the Board of Directors for Literacy Volunteers of New York City, the Board of Advisors for the Rahway State Prison's Lifers Group, the Board of Advisors for New York University School of Dentistry, and the Board of Advisors for the United Negro College Fund. She has volunteered as a tutor for H.E.L.P. - the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project. She is a member of Women in Film, AFTRA, and SAG. The Spelman College Alumna Association awarded Ro for her community service. And the McDonald's Corporation honored her as a "Broadcast Legend".
A Southern girl from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Ro was graduated Magna Cum Laude from Spelman College in Atlanta, where she double-majored in Theatre Arts and English. She holds a Master of Science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Rolonda also holds an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Winston-Salem State University.
Rolonda is CEO/President of her own production company, Watts Works Productions. She and her Boxer, Jack, and her cat, Wolfe, reside in Los Angeles.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Anne Archer was nominated for an Academy Award®, a Golden Globe and the British (BAFTA) Academy Award for her role as Michael Douglas' sympathetic, tortured wife, "Beth Gallagher", in Adrian Lyne's 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction (1987). Archer is also well-known for her poignant Golden Globe-winning performance in the ensemble cast of Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993) and for playing CIA agent Jack Ryan's beleaguered wife, "Cathy", in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), both based on Tom Clancy bestsellers.
Archer was born into a show business family in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actors Marjorie Lord (née Marjorie F. Wollenberg), who appeared on TV's The Danny Thomas Show (1953), and John Archer (born Ralph Bowman), who starred in White Heat (1949). Her ancestry includes German, English, Czech, and Scots-Irish.
Archer studied theatre arts at Claremont College before debuting on the motion picture screen opposite Jon Voight in The All-American Boy (1973). She won critical acclaim for her leading role in Lifeguard (1976) as Sam Elliott's old flame.
Throughout her motion picture career, Archer has starred opposite some of Hollywood's most dynamic and respected leading men, not only Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford, but also Gene Hackman in Narrow Margin (1990), Tom Berenger in director Alan Rudolph's romantic comedy Love at Large (1990), Donald Sutherland in Eminent Domain (1990) and Sylvester Stallone in Paradise Alley (1978). In 2000, she appeared in The Art of War (2000) with Wesley Snipes and Rules of Engagement (2000) (her first project with Tommy Lee Jones), which was one of the box office hits in Spring of that year.
With husband Terry Jastrow (an Emmy-winning sports producer), she co-produced and starred in the feature Waltz Across Texas (1982), a modern romance set in the Texas oil fields. In 1998, Archer worked with husband Jastrow again as co-producer and co-host, with Isabella Rossellini, on ABC's World Fashion Premiere from Paris (1998), a history-making two-hour special. Again the following year, she served as a producer on the telecast. With complete backstage access, the shows spotlighted the haute couture shows of the most famous designers in the world.
Archer has essayed dramatic roles as complex and disparate characters in cable productions of equally distinct genres. She starred with Michael Murphy in the contemporary romantic drama Indiscretion of an American Wife (1998) for Lifetime and opposite William Petersen in Present Tense, Past Perfect (1995), based on a bittersweet story by Richard Dreyfuss, who also directed the Showtime drama. Previously, for the same network, she portrayed Dennis Hopper's sexy former wife in the contemporary, gritty Nails (1992) and for HBO, again, starred with Jon Voight in the period piece The Last of His Tribe (1992).
Her television performances have also included Neil Simon's Jake's Women (1996) opposite Alan Alda and CBS's Jane's House (1994) opposite James Woods. Recently, she received acclaim for a three episode arc on Fox-TV's series Boston Public (2000), created by David E. Kelley.
She had a starring role opposite Courteney Cox in the independent feature November (2004) and appeared in Revolution Studios' comedy Man of the House (2005), portraying Prof. Molly McCarthy, opposite Tommy Lee Jones. She also had a role on Showtime's provocative series The L Word (2004) with Jennifer Beals, Mia Kirshner and Pam Grier.
Her stage work includes the world premiere of "The Poison Tree" at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, the Williamstown Theatre Festival production of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" in Massachusetts and the starring role in the London West End production of "The Graduate", for which she received rave reviews. Archer's New York stage debut was as "Maude Mix" in the celebrated Off-Broadway production of John Ford Noonan's "A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking".- Actress
- Director
Geneviève Robert is known for Dave (1993), The Crowd Inside (1971) and Casual Sex? (1988). She was previously married to Ivan Reitman.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Jon Voight is an American actor of German and Slovak descent. He has won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role as paraplegic Vietnam War veteran Luke Martin in the war film "Coming Home" (1978). He has also been nominated for the same award other two times. He was first nominated for his role as aspiring gigolo Joe Buck in "Midnight Cowboy" (1969), He was last nominated for the award for his role as escaped convict Oscar "Manny" Manheim in "Runaway Train" (1985). He was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, for his role as sports journalist Howard Cosell (1918-1995) in "Ali" (2001).
In 1938, Voight was born in Yonkers, New York. His parents were professional golfer Elmer Samuel Voight (original name Elemír Vojtka) and his wife Barbara Agnes (Kamp). His paternal grandfather was a Slovak immigrant, as were the parents of his paternal grandmother. His maternal grandfather was a German immigrant, as were the parents of his maternal grandmother. His maternal great-uncle was political activist Joseph P. Kamp (1900-1993), a leader of the anti-communist organization "Constitutional Educational League".
Voight has two siblings: volcanologist Barry Voight (1937-) and singer-songwriter James Wesley Voight (pseudonym Chip Taylor, 1940-). Barry is most famous for first predicting and then investigating the eruption of Mount St. Helens (1980). James is most famous for writing the hit songs "Wild Thing" (1965) and "Angel of the Morning" (1967).
Voight was educated at Archbishop Stepinac High School, an all-boys Roman Catholic high school located at White Plains, New York. At the time, the school was operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. He took an interest in acting in his high school years, performing a comedic role in the school's annual musical, "The Song of Norway". He graduated in 1956, at the age of 18.
Voight continued his education at The Catholic University of America, located in Washington, D.C.. He majored in art, and graduated in 1960. He was 22-years-old at the time of graduation. He then moved to New York City, having decided to pursue an acting career.
In the early 1960s, Voight primarily worked as a television actor. He guest starred in episodes of then-popular television series, such as "Naked City", "The Defenders", "NET Playhouse", "12 O'Clock High", and "Gunsmoke". His first notable theatrical role was playing the illegal immigrant Rodolfo in a 1965 Off-Broadway production of the play "A View from the Bridge" (1955) by Arthur Miller (1915-2005). In the play, Rodolfo is the love interest of the American girl Catherine, and disliked by her uncle and guardian Eddie Carbone (who is in love with his niece).
Voight made his film debut in the superhero comedy "Fearless Frank" (1967), playing the role of the eponymous superhero. Frank was depicted as a murder victim who gets resurrected and granted superpowers by a scientist. Voiight's second film role was playing historical gunman and outlaw Curly Bill Brocius (1845-1882) in the Western film "Hour of the Gun" (1967). The historical Brocius was an an enemy of the Esrp family, and was killed by Wyatt Earp (1848-1929).
Voigh't third film appearance was "Midnight Cowboy" (1969), his first great success. He played the role of a naive hustler from Texas who tries to become a gigolo in New York City. The film was critically acclaimed, and became the only X-rated feature to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Voight was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, but the award was instead won by rival actor John Wayne (1907-1979).
Voight's first role in the 1970s was playing lieutenant Milo Minderbinder in the black comedy "Catch-22" (1970). The film was based on a 1961 satirical novel by Joseph Heller (1923-1999), and offered a satirical view on war and bureaucracy. Voight's next role was playing the left-wing student A in the political drama "The Revolutionary" (1970).
Voight found further critical acclaim with the thriller film "Deliverance" (1972), playing Atlanta businessman Ed Gentry. In the film, Gentry and his first are targeted by villainous mountain men in the northern Georgia wilderness. The film earned about 46 million dollars at the domestic box office, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
His subsequent roles included idealistic schoolteacher Pat Conroy in "Conrack" (1974), journalist Peter Miller in "The Odessa File" (1974). His next great success was playing paraplegic war veteran Luke Martin in "Coming Home" (1978), in a role inspired by the life of war veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic (1976-). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for this film. His co-star Jane Fonda (1937-) won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in this film.
Voight's early 1980s roles included conman Alex Kovac in "Lookin' to Get Out" (1982) and widowed father J. P. Tannen in "Table for Five" (1983). His next big success was the role of escaped convict Oscar "Manny" Manheim in "Runaway Train" (1985). He was again nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, but the Award was instead won by rival actor William Hurt (1950-).
Voight's next role was that of Jack Chismore in the drama film "Desert Bloom" (1986). Chismore is depicted as a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who is trying to raise three stepdaughters. He frequently abuses his stepdaughter Rose Chismore (played by Annabeth Gish), but is genuinely concerned for her safety when Rose runs away from home. This film was Voigh's last film role for several years, as he took a hiatus from acting.
Voight returned to acting with the drama film "Eternity" (1990), where he was also the screenwriter. The film deals with reincarnation, as a medieval war within brothers continues in modern American politics. Following his return to acting, Voight started appearing frequently in television films and miniseries. He also guest-starred in a 1994 episode of "Seinfeld", playing himself.
Voight returned to film acting with the crime drama "Heat" (1995), where he had a minor role as a fence. He had a more substantial role in the spy film "Mission: Impossible" (1996), where he played spymaster James Phelps. The film was an adaptation of the popular television series "Mission: Impossible" (1966-1973), about the adventures of a group of secret agents. The role of James Phelps was previously played by actor Peter Graves (1926-2010). The film was a great commercial success, earning about 458 million dollars at the worldwide box office.
Voight appeared in six different films in 1997, one of the busiest years of his career. The most notable among them was the horror film "Anaconda" (1997), where he played obsessive hunter Paul Serone, the film's main antagonist. The film won about 137 million dollars at the box office, despite a mostly negative critical reception. For this role, Voight was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor. He lost the award to rival actor Kevin Costner (1955-).
His next notable role was that Thomas Brian Reynolds, agent of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the action thriller "Enemy of the State" (1998). In the film, the NSA conspires to expand the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies over individuals and groups, at the cost of American citizens' right to privacy. The film was another box office success in Voight's career, earning about 251 million dollars at the box office.
In the same year, Voight played inspector Ned Kenny in the crime film "The General" (1998). The film was loosely based on the career of Irish crime boss Martin Cahill (1949-1994), who was nicknamed "the General". The film was critically acclaimed and director John Boorman won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director.
Voight's next notable role was that of domineering coach Bud Kilmer in the sports film "Varsity Blues" (1999). The film dealt with the difficulties in the life of the players of a Texas-based high school football team, and was not expected to attract much attention by audiences. It earned about 54 million dollars at the box office, making it a modest box office hit. It is credited with introducing Voight to a next generation of fans.
Voight's final film in the 1990s was "A Dog of Flanders" (1999), based on a 1872 novel by Ouida (1839-1908). He played the role of artist Michel La Grande, the mentor of Nello (played by Jeremy James Kissner), who is eventually revealed to be Nello's biological father. The film failed at the box office, failing to earn as much as its modest budget.
Voight appeared in no film released in 2000, but had a busy year in 2001. He appeared in several box office hits of the year. He played President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945, term 1933-1945) in the war drama "Pearl Harbor", Lara Croft's father Lord Richard Croft in the action film "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider", coal-miner and working class father Larry Zoolander in action comedy "Zoolander", and sports journalist Howard Cosell in the biographical film "Ali". For his role in "Ali", Voight was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The award was instead won by rival actor Jim Broadbent (1949-). It was Voight's fourth and (so far) last nomination for an Academy Award.
Voight had a notable role playing Pope John Paul II (1920-2005, term 1978-2005) in the miniseries "Pope John Paul II" (2005). He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, but the award was instead won by rival actor Andre Braugher (1962-).
Voight had a supporting role as John Keller, United States Secretary of Defense in the science fiction film "Transformers" (2007). The film was based on the Transformers toy line by Hasbro.It earned about 710 million dollars at the box office, one of the most commercially successful films in Voight's career.
In 2009, Voight had a notable television role, playing Jonas Hodges, the CEO of a Virginia-based private military company in the then-popular television series "24" (2001-2010, 2014). He was a main antagonist in the seventh season of the series. His role was inspired by the careers of Hessian colonel Johann Rall (c. 1726-1776), German industrialist Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1907-1967), and private military company CEO Erik Prince (1969-).
His 2010s notable film roles include the role of Dracula's enemy Loonardo Van Helsing in the horror film "Dracula: The Dark Prince" (2013), football coach Paul William "Bear" Bryant (1913-1983) in the sports drama "Woodlawn" (2015), and newspaper owner Henry Shaw Sr. in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (2016). "Fantastic Beasts" earned about 814 million dollars at the worldwide box office, being one of the most commercially successful films that Voight ever appeared in.
In 2020, was 82-years-old, and he is still working as an actor.- Damian Hardy was previously married to Charisma Carpenter.
- Producer
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- Actor
Terry Jastrow has been the Producer and / or Director of some of the world's greatest events over the last 30 years. Mr. Jastrow is also a Screenwriter, Playwright, Theatrical Director and Acting Teacher. The following is a partial list of his accomplishments: In Film / Television, Mr. Jastrow has received 7 Emmy Awards and been nominated 17 times. He started working for ABC Sports at age 21, being the youngest network television sports producer ever at age 23. He went on to serve as a Producer and / or Director at ABC Sports for 24 years. Among the many projects Mr. Jastrow Produced or Directed are: The Super Bowl XIX; 68 of golf's Major Championships including the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship; the Indy 500; and ABC's Wide World of Sports. Mr. Jastrow was the Producer / Director of six Olympic Games including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies most notably for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, as well as the Summer Olympics in Munich 1972 and Montreal 1976, as well as the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid 1980, Sarajavo 1984, and Calgary '88. In addition, he Produced many of the Howard Cosell telecasts during the prime of his career from 1974-1977. As President of Jack Nicklaus Productions for 12 years, Mr. Jastrow re-launched Shell's Wonderful World of Golf, and created Wendy's 3-Tour Challenge, The Diners Club Matches, Michael Douglas & Friends, Tommy Bahama Challenge, as well as produced a line of video games with Accolade, etc. He Produced / Directed golf instructional programs for Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman, Curtis Strange, Tom Kite, Phil Mickelson, Tom Watson, and Butch Harmon. Mr. Jastrow Produced the famed Haute Couture Paris Fashion Collections for ABC TV's prime time specials, and Produced the first English speaking programs of great Carnival in Rio, 2 hour prime time specials for The Travel Channel. In Feature Films, Mr. Jastrow Developed, Produced and Starred in the feature film Waltz Across Texas with Anne Archer. He is the Writer of Good Luck, Mr. Anthony, a feature film script in development at Beacon Pictures, and the Co-Creator, Commissioner and Executive Producer of The People's Games, in development for ABC. He has been Nominated for the Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award. In Theater, he Studied acting with Lee Strasberg at the Theater Institute and The Actor's Studio for 7 years, as well as studying acting with Milton Katselas at the Beverly Hills Playhouse for 15 years where he also taught an acting class for 6 years. He has acted in numerous feature films and episodes of television series, as well as plays in both New York City and Los Angeles. Mr. Jastrow Directed the Los Angeles stage premiere of A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, starring Anne Archer and Elizabeth Ashley, Directed the world stage premiere of As If It Matters at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, Wrote and Directed The Vaginal Lock produced by Camelot Productions at the Skylight Theater in Los Angeles, and most Wrote and Directed Jane Fonda in the Court of Public Opinion, which premiered at the Edgemar Theater in Los Angeles in October 2012. On a personal note, he has been Honored with the Boy Scouts of America Distinguished Citizen Award, and is married to actress Anne Archer.- David Justice was born on 14 April 1966 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He is an actor, known for Arli$$ (1996), 1995 National League Championship Series (1995) and Sunday Night Baseball (1990). He has been married to Rebecca Justice since 8 February 2001. They have two children. He was previously married to Halle Berry.
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Halle Maria Berry was born Maria Halle Berry on August 14, 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Oakwood, Ohio to Judith Ann Berry (née Hawkins), a psychiatric nurse & Jerome Jesse Berry, a hospital attendant. Her father was African-American and her mother is of mostly English and German descent. Halle first came into the spotlight at seventeen years when she won the Miss Teen All-American Pageant, representing the state of Ohio in 1985 and, a year later in 1986, when she was the first runner-up in the Miss U.S.A. Pageant. After participating in the pageant, Halle became a model. It eventually led to her first weekly TV series, 1989's Living Dolls (1989), where she soon gained a reputation for her on-set tenacity, preferring to "live" her roles and remaining in character even when the cameras stopped rolling. It paid off though when she reportedly refused to bathe for several days before starting work on her role as a crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991) because the role provided her big screen breakthrough. The following year, she was cast as Eddie Murphy's love interest in Boomerang (1992), one of the few times that Murphy was evenly matched on screen. In 1994, Berry gained a youthful following for her performance as sexy secretary "Sharon Stone" in The Flintstones (1994). She next had a highly publicized starring role with Jessica Lange in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah (1995). Though the movie received mixed reviews, Berry didn't let that slow her down, and continued down her path to super-stardom.
In 1998, she received critical success when she starred as a street smart young woman who takes up with a struggling politician in Warren Beatty's Bulworth (1998). The following year, she won even greater acclaim for her role as actress Dorothy Dandridge in made-for-cable's Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Movie/Mini-Series. In 2000, she received box office success in X-Men (2000) in which she played "Storm", a mutant who has the ability to control the weather. In 2001, she starred in the thriller Swordfish (2001), and became the first African-American to win Best Actress at the Academy Awards, for her role as a grieving mother in the drama Monster's Ball (2001).- Writer
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- Actor
Television would never be the same after David Letterman made his second attempt at a show in 1982. But his career before becoming host of the show was quite an interesting and long one.
Letterman was born in Broad Ripple, a neighborhood in Indianapolis, to Dorothy Marie (Hofert), a church secretary, and Harry Joseph Letterman, a florist. He is of German, English, and Scots-Irish descent. His childhood was relatively unremarkable, but he exhibited tendencies of the class clown and showed a very strong independent streak as a child. Letterman went on to graduate from Ball State University in the late 1960s and married Michelle Cook in 1969. From 1970 to 1974, he worked as a weatherman and TV announcer and from 1974 to 1975 as a radio talk show host.
As the late 1970s approached, Letterman was working as a struggling stand-up comic at The Comedy Store and started writing for television shows. He wrote for the summer series "The Peeping Times" and for such shows as Good Times (1974). Letterman had become something of a minor celebrity by 1978, by which time he had appeared on The Gong Show (1976), Mary Tyler Moore's variety series, Mary (1978), Liar's Club (1976), The $10,000 Pyramid (1973), Password Plus (1979) and the variety series, The Starland Vocal Band Show (1977). (It was also revealed on the Game Show Network that Letterman hosted a pilot of a game show in the seventies called The Riddlers (1977), but it was not made into a series.)
This exposure prompted many appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962). He became so popular that he was permanent substitute host by the end of the 1970s. NBC saw great potential in the young irreverent comedian, so they gave Letterman his own daytime talk show, The David Letterman Show (1980), which was a disaster and aired for only a few months. At about this time, Tom Snyder was having problems with his late-night show, Tomorrow Coast to Coast (1973), which aired after the "Tonight Show." His problems were mostly with his co-host, Rona Barrett, and Snyder was forced off air in late 1981. Letterman, who was still permanent co-host of the "Tonight Show," took over the post-Carson slot with [error].
Letterman's show was extremely unconventional. For starters, Letterman was very political, whereas Johnny Carson had steered away from political jokes. Letterman's early antics changed talk shows. He would often stage elevator races in Radio City Music Hall. He made random calls to strangers and talked about the strangest subjects. At one point, Letterman got his associate Larry "Bud" Melman to stand outside the Russian Embassy and hand out pamphlets encouraging defection. He often made his guests feel uncomfortable with his intelligent and abrasive style, and guests often participated in funny and unusual skits with him. Letterman became almost an instant success, and some say he surpassed Carson in popularity.
As the late 1980s approached, Letterman was becoming more and more of a household name, often at odds with the censors over his show, and never one to kowtow to guests' wishes. But that only made him more popular, and he garnered more and more status as a world class talk show host. Among the more classic moments in his early show was the time he covered his suit with Alka Seltzer and jumped in a vat of water. Letterman helped Andy Kaufman with his wrestling saga, as Kaufman and Jerry Lawler pretended to get in a fight on "Late Night." Letterman also became known for his on-screen reclusiveness with respect to other shows. While Carson at one point in his career would often make cameos and guest appearances, Letterman would shy away from cameos and stuck almost solely to doing his "Late Night" show.
In 1992 Johnny Carson made a landmark announcement: he was retiring. Many thought that Letterman would be the natural choice as Carson's replacement, but many at NBC were leaning toward current "Tonight Show" substitute host Jay Leno. The battle was very public and very vicious, but in the end Leno won out, and Letterman continued hosting the post-"Tonight Show" slot. But, in 1993, Letterman made his own big announcement: he was leaving NBC for a lucrative contract with CBS to star in the Late Show with David Letterman (1993). The battle intensified even more. NBC claimed that many of Letterman's gimmicks and jokes, including throwing the pencil at the camera, the Top Ten List, and Larry "Bud" Melman, among many others, were NBC's "intellectual property." NBC lost, but Larry "Bud" Melman would now be called by his real name, Calvert DeForest, on the CBS show. Competing in the late night wars with not only Leno but also Chevy Chase, Arsenio Hall and Ted Koppel, Letterman consistently won over all of his competition until the summer of 1995, when Leno had guest Hugh Grant on his show to discuss his highly publicized arrest for being caught with prostitute Divine Brown and Grant cried on screen. The ratings were tremendous, and Leno has consistently beaten Letterman ever since.
In recent years, Letterman has toned down his act. He dresses more conservatively and tends to go the more traditional route of talk shows. It can be said that every talk show since, including Craig Kilborn and especially 'Conan O'Brien', has been influenced a great deal by Letterman's unconventional, irreverent, off-the-wall style. It was thought that Letterman was going to retire in the mid-'90s, but an impressive 14 million-per-year deal has kept Letterman with CBS. Near-tragedy struck, however, in January of 2000 when Letterman was diagnosed with coronary arterial blockage and underwent quintuple bypass surgery. The operation was successful, however, and Letterman received countless get-well cards and a great deal of publicity. Among David's better-known incidents in recent years have been Drew Barrymore's infamous table dance, an interview with a bizarre and ditzy Farrah Fawcett, his appearance in the movie, Cabin Boy (1994) (written by and starring his former "Late Night" writer and performer Chris Elliott), his stint as host of The 67th Annual Academy Awards (1995), and his appearance in the Andy Kaufman biopic, Man on the Moon (1999). When Politically Incorrect (1993) was canceled in 2002, Letterman was sought after to leave CBS for ABC, but he declined to do so and stayed with CBS, where he remained until his retirement in May 2015.
Aside from being a talk show host, Letterman is an active producer. His production company is called Worldwide Pants. Over the years he has been executive producer of his original show, his new show, Everybody Loves Raymond (1996), The Building (1993), Bonnie (1995), The High Life (1996), The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn (1999), and Ed (2000).- Production Designer
- Art Department
- Art Director
Ken Adam was a British movie production designer, best known for his set designs for the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).
His first major screen credit was as production designer on the British thriller Spin a Dark Web (1956). In 1961 he was hired for the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962).
Adam did not work in the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love (1963) because he was working in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). This enabled him to make his name with his innovative, semi-futuristic sets for further James Bond films, such as Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and his last Bond film was Moonraker (1979).
Adam returned to work with Kubrick on Barry Lyndon (1975), for which he won an Oscar. He also worked in The Ipcress File (1965) and its sequel Funeral in Berlin (1966), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Sleuth (1972), and The Madness of King George (1994), for which he won his second Oscar for Best Art Direction.
In 2003, Adam was knighted for services to the film industry and Anglo-German relations.
He died on 10 March 2016 at his home in London at the age of 95.- Actor
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Joe Alaskey, among the most talented voice actors in the business, impeccably recreated many of the original characters which the late cartoon pioneer Mel Blanc invented. A natural mimic and gifted actor, his amazing "ear" for voices enabled him to imitate almost anything, including some of the most obscure show business personalities. Alaskey was one of the most employed voice actors in the business during his career.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Timothy Allen Dick was born on June 13, 1953, in Denver, Colorado, to Martha Katherine (Fox) and Gerald M. Dick. His father, a real estate salesman, was killed in a collision with a drunk driver while driving his family home from a University of Colorado football game, when Tim was eleven years old. His mother, a community service worker, remarried her high school sweetheart, an Episcopalian deacon, two years after Tim's father's death. He was raised with his many siblings and step-siblings. When Tim was young, his family moved to Birmingham, Michigan.
In high school, his favorite subject was shop, of course, and after high school, he attended Western Michigan University and graduated with a degree in Television Production in 1975. In 1978, he was arrested on drug charges and spent two years in jail. Upon his release, he had a new outlook on life and on a dare from a friend, started his comedy career at the Comedy Castle in Detroit. Later, he went on to do several cable specials, including, Comedy's Dirtiest Dozen (1988) and Tim Allen: Men Are Pigs (1990). In 1991, he became the star of his own hit television series on ABC called Home Improvement (1991). While continuing to film his television series throughout most of the 1990s, he starred in a string of blockbuster movies, including The Santa Clause (1994), Toy Story (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999) and Galaxy Quest (1999). In August 1996, he developed and unveiled his own signature line of power tools, manufactured by Ryobi. On top of all that, he has his own racing team, Tim Allen/Saleen RRRRacing. In May 1999, he ended his series Home Improvement (1991) after eight seasons and in 2001, he filmed such movies as Big Trouble (2002) and Joe Somebody (2001).- Writer
- Director
- Editor
Together with Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni is credited with defining the modern art film. And yet Antonioni's cinema is also recognized today for defying any easy categorization, with his films ultimately seeming to belong to their own distinctive genre. Indeed, the difficulty of precisely describing their category is itself the very quintessence of Antonioni's films. Among the most-cited contributions of Antonioni's cinema are their striking descriptions of that unique strain of post-boom ennui everywhere apparent in the transformed life and leisure habits of the Italian middle and upper classes. Detecting profound technological, political and psychological shifts at work in post-WWII Italy, Antonioni set out to explore the ambiguities of a suddenly alienated and dislocated Italy, not simply through his oblique style of narrative and characters, nor through any overt political messaging, but instead by tearing asunder the traditional boundaries of cinematic narrative in order to explore an ever shifting internal landscape expressed through architecture, urban space and the sculptural, shaping presence of objects, shapes and emotions invented by camera movement and depth of focus.
Antonioni deftly manipulates the quieter, indirect edges of cinematic structure, often so discretely that his existential puzzles are felt before they can be intellectualized. The negative space is as prominent as the positive, silence as loud as noise, absence as palpable as presence, and passivity as driving a force as direct action. Transgressing unspoken cinematic laws, Antonioni frequently focuses on female protagonists while refusing to sentimentalize or morally judge his characters and placing them on equal footing with the other elements within his total dynamic system, like sounds or set pieces. And he violates spoken rules with unconventional cutting techniques, fractured spatial and temporal continuity, and a camera that insistently lingers in melancholy pauses, long after the actors depart, as if drifting just behind an equally distracted, dissipating narrative. Leaving questions unanswered and plot points irresolute, dispensing with exposition, suspense, sentimentality and other cinematic security blankets, Antonioni releases the viewer into a gorgeous, densely layered fog to contemplate and wrestle with his characters' imprecise quandaries and endless possibilities. Culminating in tour de force endings that often reframe the narrative in a daring, parting act of deconstruction, Antonioni's rigorously formal, yet open compositions allow his great, unwieldy questions to spill over into the world outside the cinema and outside of time.
Born into a middle-class family in the northern Italian town of Ferrara, Antonioni studied economics at the University of Bologna where he also co-founded the university's theatrical troupe. While dedicating himself to painting, writing film reviews, working in financial positions and in different capacities on film productions, Antonioni suffered a few false starts before expressing his unique directorial vision and voice in his first realized short film, Gente del Po, a moving portrait of fisherman in the misty Po Valley where he was raised. Uncomfortable with the neo-realist thrust of Italian cinema, Antonioni directed a series of eccentric and oblique documentary shorts that, in retrospect, reveal his desire to investigate the psyche's mysterious interiors. In his first fictional feature, Story of a Love Affair, Antonioni immediately subtly challenged traditional plot and audience expectation in ways that anticipate the formal and emotional expressionist dynamic that would fully flower within the groundbreaking L'Avventura (1960).
Reversing its raucous 1960 premiere to an infuriated Cannes audience, L'Avventura was rapturously lauded by fellow artists and filmmakers and awarded a special Jury Prize "for its remarkable contribution toward the search for a new cinematic language." It also presented the controlled ambivalence of Monica Vitti, who would become his partner, muse and psychological constant throughout his famed trilogy of L'Avventura, La Notte (1961) and L'Eclisse (1962) in addition to the exquisite Red Desert (1964), a film that marked another significant shift toward expressive color, male leads and working with soft focus and faster cuts. After the phenomenal commercial success of the MGM-produced Blow-Up (1966), Antonioni was devastated by the anti-climactic box office disaster of Zabriskie Point (1970) and returned to documentary. Invited to make Chung Kuo China by the Chinese government, Antonioni delivered a mesmerizing yet unsentimental four-hour tour of China which was vehemently rejected by its solicitors. A few years later, Antonioni returned to fictional form in his last masterpiece, The Passenger (1975), an enigmatic fable of vaporous identity that offers a bold companion piece to L'Avventura. Aside from the thematically retrospective Identification of a Woman (1982) and a period film made for television, The Mystery of Oberwald (1980) in which he conducted unusual experiments with color and video, Antonioni closed out his career with mostly short films, many of which were made after he suffered a stroke in 1985.
Tremendously influential yet largely taken for granted, Antonioni made difficult, abstract cinema mainstream. Embracing an anarchic geometry, Antonioni turned the architecture of narrative filmmaking inside-out in the most eloquent way possible, with many of his iconic scenes eternally preserved in the depths of the cinema's psyche. Observing modern maladies without judgment - sexism, dissolution of family and tradition, ecological/technological quandaries and the eternal questions of our place in the cosmos - Antonioni's prescience continues to resonate deeply as we find our way in the quickly moving fog.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Award-winning filmmaker Roger Avary first began experimenting in Beta I video and 8mm film formats during the late 1970s. In 1983, his Super-8mm supernatural thriller The Worm Turns won Best Film from the Los Angeles Film Teachers Association Film Expo. He went on to attend the Pasadena Art Center College of Design's film program. Avary then worked in advertising at DMB&B and J. Walter Thompson.
In 1994, Avary was awarded an Academy Award for his work as a writer with Quentin Tarantino on their screenplay for Pulp Fiction. The screenplay for Pulp Fiction earned Avary and Tarantino additional accolades, including a BAFTA, the Boston Society of Film Critics Award, the Chicago Society of Film Critics Award, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, the New York Film Critics Circle Award, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.
Also in 1994, Avary wrote and directed the French neonoir crime thriller Killing Zoe, which Roger Ebert hailed as 'Generation X's first Bank Caper Movie.' Killing Zoe is notable as the first feature film to utilize swing and tilt bellows lenses in its production. The film was honored with le Prix tres special a Cannes, the same year that Pulp Fiction took home the Palm d'Or. Killing Zoe continued to win awards worldwide on the festival circuit, including Best Film at Japan's Yubari International Film Festival and the Italian Mystfest. The film was also celebrated by the Cinemathique Francaise, who heralded Avary as the Antonin Artaud of cinema during their Cinema of Cruelty retrospective.
In 2002, Avary wrote and directed the filmed adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel The Rules of Attraction, which he also executive-produced. The Rules of Attraction is notable as the first studio motion picture to prove reliable use of Apple's Final Cut Pro editing system. Roger Avary became an Apple spokesperson for Final Cut Pro 3, appearing in print and web ads worldwide. His film within the film, Glitterati (2004), used elements of Victor's European trip and was shot entirely on digital video with a crew of two (Avary and producer Greg Shapiro). In 2005, he purchased the rights to another Bret Easton Ellis novel, Glamorama, which is in development at Avary's company for him to direct.
In 2006, he penned the movie adaptation of the hit Konami video game Silent Hill for French director Christophe Gans. Silent Hill debuted as #1 at the U.S. box office and has been embraced by video game fans as one of the first game-to-film adaptations that is true to the imagery and spirit of its source material.
In 2007, novelist Neil Gaiman & Roger Avary wrote and produced an adaptation of Beowulf with director Robert Zemeckis for Paramount Pictures. Utilizing a complex process of digitally enhanced live action, the film tells the oldest English language story through the use of the most modern technology available.
In 2017 Avary directed a French language filmed adaptation of Jean Cocteau's one-woman play, La voix humaine, starring actress Elsa Zylberstein.
Also in 2017 Avary wrote and directed the comedic thriller, Lucky Day, for producer Don Carmody, and starring Luke Bracey, Nina Dobrev, Crispin Glover, David Hewlett, and Tomer Sisley.
Roger Avary divides his time between Los Angeles, Paris, and Toronto. He is represented by his attorney, Craig Emanuel of Paul Hastings LLP Los Angeles.- Actress
- Producer
Offbeat, unconventionally pretty, and utterly mesmerizing, Ellen Barkin was born on April 16, 1954 in the Bronx, New York, to Evelyn (Rozin), a hospital administrator, and Sol Barkin, a chemical salesman. Her parents were both from Russian Jewish families. Raised in the South Bronx and Queens, New York area, she wanted to be an actress as early as her teens and was eventually accepted into Manhattan's High School of the Performing Arts.
Barkin then attended Hunter College and received her degree after double majoring in history and drama. At one point she wanted to teach ancient history, but instead turned her thoughts back to her first love: acting. Barkin then continued her education at New York's Actor's Studio. Fearful of the auditioning process, she studied acting for seven years before finally landing her first audition. While continuing her studies, she worked as a waitress at the avant-garde Ocean Club. Performing off-Broadway in such plays "Shout Across the River" (1979), "Extremities" (1983), "Fool for Love" (1984) and "Eden Court" (1985), she was applauded across the board for her first film lead in Diner (1982) opposite Mickey Rourke and Daniel Stern, and pursued sexy tough-cookie status thereafter with such quirky roles in The Big Easy (1986) starring Dennis Quaid and Siesta (1987) with Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, whom she married in 1987 and separated from in 1993 after producing a son and daughter. She and Byrne divorced in 1999.
With trademark squinting eyes and slightly off-kilter facial features, Barkin continued the fascination of her seamy/steamy girl-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks status most notably opposite Al Pacino in the thriller Sea of Love (1989). In addition, she was well cast as Robert De Niro's abused wife in This Boy's Life (1993), and portrayed "Calamity Jane" in Wild Bill (1995) with earnest. Other impressionable offbeat projects included roles in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) and Mercy (2000). On TV, she was well-cast in the mini-movie Blood Money (1988) and won an Emmy award for her gripping performance in Before Women Had Wings (1997) opposite Oprah Winfrey as another abused wife who, in this case, turns her violent anger on her own daughters.
In 2000, Barkin married billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, eleven years her senior and chairman of the Revlon company, and put her career relatively on hold, appearing sporadically in edgy films like She Hate Me (2004) and Palindromes (2004). Barkin and Perelman went through an acrimonious divorce in 2006.
Just prior to her divorce in late 2005, Barkin ventured into independent film production with Applehead Pictures, a company she set up with her brother George Barkin, who is a scriptwriter and former editor-in-chief of National Lampoon and High Times, and former Independent Film Channel executive Caroline Kaplan. In her first major acting appearance since her divorce from Perelman, Barkin co-starred in Ocean's Thirteen (2007) with George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and former co-star Pacino. She followed up Ocean's with a supporting role in Antoine Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest (2009), Happy Tears (2009) with Parker Posey and Demi Moore, and Twelve (2010).
Barkin has produced features over time, including Letters to Juliet (2010) and Another Happy Day (2011) (she also starred in the latter project). On the small screen, she appeared in an episode of Modern Family (2009) and her new NBC show, The New Normal (2012), got a sneak peek during the Olympics.
More recent sightings have included the films The Chameleon (2010), Very Good Girls (2013), The Cobbler (2014), Hands of Stone (2016) and Active Adults (2017). She has had regular roles on the TV series The New Normal (2012) and Animal Kingdom (2016).- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Captivating, gifted, and sensational, Angela Bassett's presence has been felt in theaters and on stages and television screens throughout the world. Angela Evelyn Bassett was born on August 16, 1958 in New York City, to Betty Jane (Gilbert), a social worker, and Daniel Benjamin Bassett, a preacher's son. Bassett and her sister D'nette grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida with their mother. As a single mother, Betty stressed the importance of education for her children. With the assistance of an academic scholarship, Bassett matriculated into Yale University. In 1980, she received her B.A. in African-American studies from Yale University. In 1983, she earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Yale School of Drama. It was at Yale that Bassett met her husband, Courtney B. Vance, a 1986 graduate of the Drama School.
Bassett first appeared in small roles on The Cosby Show (1984) and Spenser: For Hire (1985), but it was not until 1990 that a spate of television roles brought her notice. Her breakthrough role, though, was playing Tina Turner, whom she had never seen perform before taking the role, in What's Love Got to Do with It (1993). Bassett's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination and a Golded Globe Award for Best Actress.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Editorial Department
Hinton Battle was born on 29 November 1956 in Neubrücke, Germany. He was an actor, known for Dreamgirls (2006), Quantum Leap (1989) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997). He died on 30 January 2024 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Sound Department
Bob Beemer was born on 8 February 1955 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is known for Dreamgirls (2006), Speed (1994) and Gladiator (2000).- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Lawrence Bender is a movie producer working in the entertainment industry for 20 years. He helped produce Hollywood films like Reservoir Dogs (1992), Good Will Hunting (1997), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django (2012). Lawrence won 6 Academy Awards with 29 nominations including 3 Best Picture films. An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary he produced that raised awareness of climate change and won him an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Lawrence Bender was born in The Bronx, New York City, as Lawrence Kirk Bender. His mother was a kindergarten teacher. Lawrence's father was a college history professor. In high school, he was inspired to follow his grandfather's career as a civil engineer. At the University of Maine in 1979, he graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering. After he graduated, he became a dancer for several years which ended after an injury. Lawrence is a political and environmental activist as the co-founder of the Detroit Project. In 2003 he worked with environmentalists in targeting gas-guzzling SUVs. As the Dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, he sits on the Advisory Board. Lawrence has used his influence to support philanthropic initiatives working with Yahoo, the Muppets, the EPA, and Wal-Mart. He is a Director for CleanSource Power, LLC and a board member of The Creative Coalition Inc.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Annette Bening was born on May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, the youngest of four children. Her family moved to California when she was young, and she grew up there. She graduated from San Francisco State University and began her acting career with the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, eventually moving to New York where she acted on the stage (including a Tony-award nomination in 1987 for her work in the Broadway play "Coastal Disturbances") and got her first film roles, in a few TV movies.
As is so often the case, her first big-screen role was in a forgettable movie, this one The Great Outdoors (1988), in which she had little screen time. However, her next work onscreen was in Milos Forman's Valmont (1989), a film adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' "Les Liaisons Dangereuses". Unfortunately, de Laclos' story had also just served as the source of a more Hollywoodized and successful movie version, Dangerous Liaisons (1988), which had been released the previous year, and Foreman's treatment went little noticed. Bening's career turned an important corner the following year when she co-starred with Anjelica Huston and John Cusack in Stephen Frears's powerful, entertaining screen adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel The Grifters (1990), and her artful turn as a con artist gained her the first of several Academy award nominations. On the strength of this performance Warren Beatty cast Bening as Virginia Hill, Bugsy Siegel's fiery actress moll, in his Bugsy (1991), the story of Siegel's founding of Las Vegas. Although the movie itself did not fare well, it resulted in a relationship with Beatty which led to Bening's pregnancy and then her marriage to Beatty in 1992 - it was the second marriage for Bening, who had been separated from her first husband since 1986 but did not finalize her divorce until 1991. The couple then collaborated on the extravagant flop Love Affair (1994), though the next year her career rebounded with her turn as Queen Elizabeth in the highly-regarded 1995 production of Richard III (1995). Notable performances have since included an obsessive, pushy real estate agent in American Beauty (1999), and as the eponymous character in István Szabó's screen adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel Being Julia (2004) - both were duly noted by the Academy, with Oscar nominations.
Bening has great poise and screen presence and, at her best, can turn in a very strong performance. Although her resume often features long stretches of mediocre productions before the next good part turns up, when it does, it proves worth the wait. Bening has four children with Beatty.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Peter Capaldi was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to Nancy (Soutar) and Gerald John Capaldi. His parents owned an ice cream business. He is of Italian (from his paternal grandfather), Scottish, and Irish descent. Capaldi attended drama classes and was accepted into the Glasgow School of Art. After graduating he secured his breakthrough role in Local Hero (1983). Prior to becoming an actor he also worked as a graphic designer for BBC Scotland TV.
Peter was announced as the Twelfth Doctor in Doctor Who (2005) on 4th August 2013 on a BBC special programme. He had to hide it from his daughter who remarked to him why it is his name never came up during the buzz. It was a huge relief not to have to keep the secret anymore. His agent called and said "Hello Doctor" when informing him he had gotten the part.- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Costume Designer
- Actor
Tim Chappel was born in 1967 in New South Wales, Australia. He is a costume designer and actor, known for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), Miss Congeniality (2000) and The Dressmaker (2015).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
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.- Sinéad Cusack was born on 18 February 1948 in Dalkey, Ireland. She is an actress, known for V for Vendetta (2005), Eastern Promises (2007) and Stealing Beauty (1996). She has been married to Jeremy Irons since 28 March 1978. They have two children.
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Matt Dillon's successful film career has spanned over three decades and has showcased his wide range of dramatic and comedic talents. Dillon displayed his versatility with an arresting performance co-starring as a racist cop in the critically acclaimed Paul Haggis film Crash. This role earned him nominations for an Academy award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Critics Choice Award, BAFTA Award and won him an Independent Spirit Award. In addition, the film earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Critics Choice Award for Best Ensemble. As the New York Times' Film Critic A.O. Scott put it, "He seems to be getting better with every film."
He starred opposite Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson in Universal Pictures' comedy, You, Me and Dupree and in Factotum for which he received glowing reviews for portraying Charles Bukowski's alter ego when the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. From his breakthrough performance in The Outsiders to his hilarious turn as an obsessed private investigator in There's Something About Mary, he has proven himself to be one of the most diverse actors of his generation.
In 1990 Dillon won an IFP Spirit Award for his gritty performance as a drug addict in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy. From there he went on to star in such films as Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls opposite Uma Thurman and Natalie Portman, Cameron Crowe's Singles, In & Out with Kevin Kline, Kevin Spacey's Albino Alligator, Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish, Garry Marshall's Flamingo Kid, Van Sant's To Die For with Nicole Kidman, and John McNaughton's Wild Things. He starred in Nothing But The Truth, opposite Kate Beckinsale and Vera Farmiga, Disney's Old Dogs, opposite John Travolta, Robin Williams and Kelly Preston, and the Screen Gems films Armored and Takers.
Aside from being an accomplished actor, Dillon wrote, and made his feature film directorial debut with City of Ghosts, in which he also starred with Gérard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgård, and James Caan. Prior to City of Ghosts, Dillon made his television directorial debut in 1997 with an episode of HBO's gritty prison drama Oz.
Dillon's achievements continued with television appearances in an HBO adaptation of Irwin Shaw's Return To Kansas City and a part co-narrating the documentary Dear America: Letters From Home.
Dillon's multi-talents have also landed him on stage starring on Broadway in The Boys In Winter as well as the PBS/American Playhouse production of The Great American Fourth Of July And Other Disasters.
His recent film credits include the comedy Girl Most Likely opposite Annette Bening and Kristen Wiig; the drama Sunlight, Jr. opposite Naomi Watts, and the heist comedy The Art Of The Steal opposite Kurt Russell. Dillon most recently starred in M. Night Shyamalan's hit television event series Wayward Pines for FOX.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in music and mechanics, but was an otherwise bored student; this resulted in being held back a grade. In 1949, the year he is said to have graduated from high school, his parents and younger sister Jeanne moved to Seattle. Clint spent a couple years in the Pacific Northwest himself, operating log broncs in Springfield, Oregon, with summer gigs life-guarding in Renton, Washington. Returning to California in 1951, he did a two-year stint at Fort Ord Military Reservation and later enrolled at L.A. City College, but dropped out to pursue acting.
During the mid-1950s he landed uncredited bit parts in such B-films as Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula (1955) while digging swimming pools and driving a garbage truck to supplement his income. In 1958, he landed his first consequential acting role in the long-running TV show Rawhide (1959) with Eric Fleming. Although only a secondary player the first seven seasons, he was promoted to series star when Fleming departed--both literally and figuratively--in its final year, along the way becoming a recognizable face to television viewers around the country.
Eastwood's big-screen breakthrough came as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy of excellent spaghetti westerns: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). The movies were shown exclusively in Italy during their respective copyright years with Enrico Maria Salerno providing the voice of Eastwood's character, finally getting American distribution in 1967-68. As the last film racked up respectable grosses, Eastwood, 37, rose from a barely registering actor to sought-after commodity in just a matter of months. Again a success was the late-blooming star's first U.S.-made western, Hang 'Em High (1968). He followed that up with the lead role in Coogan's Bluff (1968) (the loose inspiration for the TV series McCloud (1970)), before playing second fiddle to Richard Burton in the World War II epic Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Lee Marvin in the bizarre musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). In Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Kelly's Heroes (1970), Eastwood leaned in an experimental direction by combining tough-guy action with offbeat humor.
1971 proved to be his busiest year in film. He starred as a sleazy Union soldier in The Beguiled (1971) to critical acclaim, and made his directorial debut with the classic erotic thriller Play Misty for Me (1971). His role as the hard edge police inspector in Dirty Harry (1971), meanwhile, boosted him to cultural icon status and helped popularize the loose-cannon cop genre. Eastwood put out a steady stream of entertaining movies thereafter: the westerns Joe Kidd (1972), High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) (his first of six onscreen collaborations with then live-in love Sondra Locke), the Dirty Harry sequels Magnum Force (1973) and The Enforcer (1976), the action-packed road adventures Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Gauntlet (1977), and the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979). He branched out into the comedy genre in 1978 with Every Which Way But Loose (1978), which became the biggest hit of his career up to that time; taking inflation into account, it still is. In short, The Eiger Sanction (1975) notwithstanding, the 1970s were nonstop success for Eastwood.
Eastwood kicked off the 1980s with Any Which Way You Can (1980), the blockbuster sequel to Every Which Way but Loose. The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), was the highest-grossing film of the franchise and spawned his trademark catchphrase: "Make my day." He also starred in Bronco Billy (1980), Firefox (1982), Tightrope (1984), City Heat (1984), Pale Rider (1985) and Heartbreak Ridge (1986), all of which were solid hits, with Honkytonk Man (1982) being his only commercial failure of the period. In 1988, he did his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool (1988). Although it was a success overall, it did not have the box office punch the previous films had. About this time, with outright bombs like Pink Cadillac (1989) and The Rookie (1990), it seemed Eastwood's star was declining as it never had before. He then started taking on low-key projects, directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie Parker that earned him a Golden Globe, and starring in and directing White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an uneven, loose biopic of John Huston (both films had a limited release).
Eastwood bounced back big time with his dark western Unforgiven (1992), which garnered the then 62-year-old his first ever Academy Award nomination (Best Actor), and an Oscar win for Best Director. Churning out a quick follow-up hit, he took on the secret service in In the Line of Fire (1993), then accepted second billing for the first time since 1970 in the interesting but poorly received A Perfect World (1993) with Kevin Costner. Next was a love story, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), where Eastwood surprised audiences with a sensitive performance alongside none other than Meryl Streep. But it soon became apparent he was going backwards after his brief revival. Subsequent films were credible, but nothing really stuck out. Absolute Power (1997) and Space Cowboys (2000) did well enough, while True Crime (1999) and Blood Work (2002) were received badly, as was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), which he directed but didn't appear in.
Eastwood surprised again in the mid-2000s, returning to the top of the A-list with Million Dollar Baby (2004). Also starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, the hugely successful drama won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. He scored his second Best Actor nomination, too. His next starring vehicle, Gran Torino (2008), earned almost $30 million in its opening weekend and was his highest grosser unadjusted for inflation. 2012 saw him in a rare lighthearted movie, Trouble with the Curve (2012), as well as a reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Company (2012).
Between acting jobs, he chalked up an impressive list of credits behind the camera. He directed Mystic River (2003) (in which Sean Penn and Tim Robbins gave Oscar-winning performances), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) (nominated for the Best Picture Oscar), Changeling (2008) (a vehicle for Angelina Jolie), Invictus (2009) (again with Freeman), Hereafter (2010), J. Edgar (2011), Jersey Boys (2014), American Sniper (2014) (2014's top box office champ), Sully (2016) (starring Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger) and The 15:17 to Paris (2018). Back on screens after a considerable absence, he played an unlikely drug courier in The Mule (2018), which reached the top of the box office with a nine-figure gross, then directed Richard Jewell (2019). At age 91, Eastwood made history as the oldest actor to star above the title in a movie with the release of Cry Macho (2021).
Away from the limelight, Eastwood has led an aberrant existence and is described by biographer Patrick McGilligan as a cunning manipulator of the media. His convoluted slew of partners and children are now somewhat factually acknowledged, but for the first three decades of his celebrity, his personal life was kept top secret, and several of his families were left out of the official narrative. The actor refuses to disclose his exact number of offspring even to this day. He had a longtime relationship with similarly abstruse co-star Locke (who died aged 74 in 2018, though for her entire public life she masqueraded about being younger), and has fathered at least eight children by at least six different women in an unending string of liaisons, many of which overlapped. He has been married only twice, however, with a mere three of his progeny coming from those unions.
His known children are: Laurie Murray (b. 1954), whose mother is unidentified; Kimber Eastwood (b. 1964) with stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis; Kyle Eastwood (b. 1968) and Alison Eastwood (b. 1972) with his first ex-wife, Margaret Neville Johnson; Scott Eastwood (b. 1986) and Kathryn Eastwood (b. 1988) with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Eastwood (b. 1993) with actress Frances Fisher; and Morgan Eastwood (b. 1996) with his second ex-wife, Dina Eastwood. The entire time that he lived with Locke she was legally married to sculptor Gordon Anderson.
Eastwood has real estate holdings in Bel-Air, La Quinta, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cassel (in remote northern California), Idaho's Sun Valley and Kihei, Hawaii.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Sally Margaret Field was born November 6, 1946 in Pasadena, California, to actress Margaret Field (née Morlan) and salesman Richard Dryden Field. Her parents divorced in 1950 and her mother then married stuntman Jock Mahoney, and they had a daughter, Princess O'Mahoney. She also has a brother, Richard Field. Sally attended Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California.
Her acting career began in 1965, when she landed the role of Frances Elizabeth 'Gidget' Lawrence in Gidget (1965); it was canceled after only one season because of bad ratings. She went on to star in The Flying Nun (1967), which ran for three seasons. She also appeared in her first film in 1967, The Way West (1967) opposite Kirk Douglas. In the next few years she appeared in numerous TV movies and TV shows such as Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971), Marriage: Year One (1971), The Girl with Something Extra (1973), and Sybil (1976). In 1977 she starred alongside then-boyfriend Burt Reynolds in the box office hit Smokey and the Bandit (1977), which led to a less successful sequel in 1980. In 1979 she starred in the popular film Norma Rae (1979) and she received her first Oscar for that role.
In the years that followed she starred in films such as Absence of Malice (1981), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), Places in the Heart (1984) (she received her second Oscar for her role), Murphy's Romance (1985), Punchline (1988) and Steel Magnolias (1989). In 1993 she starred alongside Robin Williams and Pierce Brosnan in the popular comedy Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). A year after, she played the role of Tom Hanks character's mother (even though she's only ten years older than he is in real life) in Forrest Gump (1994). The film was a huge commercial success and won six Academy awards.
Since then she has appeared in TV movies and miniseries such as A Woman of Independent Means (1995), Merry Christmas, George Bailey (1997), From the Earth to the Moon (1998) and David Copperfield (2000). In 2000 she appeared in the film Where the Heart Is (2000) with Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd, and in 2003 she starred alongside Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003). She also appeared in 12 episodes of ER (1994) from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2011, she played the role of matriarch Nora Walker in the hit television show Brothers & Sisters (2006), which earned her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Getting back into film, she earned her third Oscar nomination for Lincoln (2012) and played Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its blockbuster sequel.
Sally has been married twice, first to Steven Craig from 1968 to 1973. They had two sons together, Peter Craig and Eli Craig. Her second marriage was to film producer Alan Greisman from 1984 to 1994. They had one son together, Samuel Greisman. Between marriages, from 1976 to 1980, she was in a relationship with Burt Reynolds.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
David Fine was born on 13 September 1960 in Toronto, Canada. He is a writer and director, known for Animal Behaviour (2018), Bob's Birthday (1993) and George and Rosemary (1987). He is married to Alison Snowden.- Sound Department
- Producer
- Music Department
- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Born in New York City to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and Ontario-born New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Seymour Fonda was destined early to an uncommon and influential life in the limelight. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of "The Country Girl". Her interest in acting grew after meeting Lee Strasberg in 1958 and joining the Actors Studio. Her screen debut in Tall Story (1960) (directed by Logan) marked the beginning of a highly successful and respected acting career highlighted by two Academy Awards for her performances in Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978), and five Oscar nominations for Best Actress in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), The Morning After (1986) and On Golden Pond (1981), which was the only film she made with her father. Her professional success contrasted with her personal life, which was often laden with scandal and controversy. Her appearance in several risqué movies (including Barbarella (1968)) by then-husband Roger Vadim was followed by what was to become her most debated and controversial period: her espousal of anti-establishment causes and especially her anti-war activities during the Vietnam War. Her political involvement continued with fellow activist and husband Tom Hayden in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1980s she started the aerobic exercise craze with the publication of the "Jane Fonda's Workout Book". She and Hayden divorced, and she married broadcasting mogul Ted Turner in 1991.- 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).- Costume Designer
- Writer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Lizzy Gardiner was born in 1966 in Australia. She is a costume designer and writer, known for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), The Railway Man (2013) and Hacksaw Ridge (2016).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Hugh Grant, one of Britain's best known faces, has been equally entertaining on-screen as well as in real life, and has had enough sense of humor to survive a media frenzy. He is known for his roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), with Andie MacDowell, Notting Hill (1999), opposite Julia Roberts, and Music and Lyrics (2007), opposite Drew Barrymore, among his other works.
He was born Hugh John Mungo Grant on September 9, 1960, in Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom. His mother, Fyvola Susan (MacLean), was a teacher. His father, James Murray Grant, was an artist and carpet salesman, and his grandfather was in the British Army during WWII. He is of mostly Scottish and English descent, with many recent ancestors who were prominent in the military. Young Grant was fond of literature and acting. He won a scholarship to Oxford, going up to New College in 1979. There he was involved in student drama, and considered a career as an art historian. After Oxford, he turned down a scholarship to do postgraduate studies in Art History at the Courtauld Institute in London, and focused on his acting career. In 1982, while still a student, Grant made his big screen debut in Privileged (1982) by director Michael Hoffman.
Grant's breakthrough came with the leading role as Charles in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), opposite Andie MacDowell, a role which won him a Golden Globe Award, as well as a BAFTA Film Award for Best Actor. During the 1990s Grant established himself as a very original and resourceful actor. He played a string of characters projecting a positive mindset, showing how do you stay optimistic when you are actually worried about a cascade of troubles. Grant had his own experience as a survivor of an unfortunate episode in his private life, which he managed to overcome thanks to having a pretty damn good outlook on life.
His forte is playing characters projecting warmth and sincere happiness, with his hallmark stuttering, albeit some accused him of reprising the same character he has been playing for the past two decades. Grant's ability to show his character development within a limited screen time shines in Love Actually (2003), with his witty portrayal of a Prime Minister whose personal insecurities become intertwined with his country's international affairs, a performance that earned him a nomination for European Audience Award. His screen presence and skillful understatement takes his characters beyond the written script, thanks to his mastery of timing and effortless style.
Outside of his acting profession, Grant has been a good athlete, he played cricket and football in his younger years. He enjoys playing golf, frequently taking part in Pro-Am tournaments. He has been an avid art lover since his younger years, and has been collecting fine art, a passion he inherited from his father.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
David Alan Grier was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Aretas Ruth (Dudley), a schoolteacher, and William Henry Grier, a psychiatrist and writer. He trained in Shakespeare at Yale University, where he received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.
Grier began his professional career on Broadway as Jackie Robinson in "The First", for which he earned a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and won the Theatre World Award (1981). He then joined the Broadway cast of "Dreamgirls", before going on to star opposite Denzel Washington in "A Soldier's Play", for which both actors reprised their roles in the film adaptation titled A Soldier's Story (1984). He appeared in Robert Altman's Streamers (1983) as "Roger", a role for which he won the Golden Lion for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival (1983).
His television work is highlighted by a turn as a principal cast member on the Emmy Award-winning In Living Color (1990) (1990-1994), where he helped to create some of the show's most memorable characters, "DAG" (2000-2001) and "Life with Bonnie" (2002-2004), for which he earned Image and Golden Satellite nominations. David also created, wrote and executive-produced a show for Comedy Central called Chocolate News (2008). Grier also won America's votes as a smooth, debonair, and outrageously irreverent contestant on ABC's smash hit, Dancing with the Stars (2005), in 2009. But Grier didn't hang up his dance shoes just then - he later appeared in the Wayans Brothers' spoof movie, Dance Flick (2009), which hit theaters in May 2009.
In Grier's first book, "Barack Like Me: The Chocolate Covered Truth" (Touchstone / Simon & Schuster; October 6, 2009), the acclaimed comedian expounds on politics, culture and race while recounting his own life story in this edgy, timely, timeless, and hilarious memoir and look at all things Barack Obama.
Grier returned to his theatrical roots 2009/2010; he starred in David Mamet's acclaimed play, "Race", opposite James Spader and Kerry Washington, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway for which he received a Tony Award nomination.
He has been named one of Comedy Central's "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time".- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Charles Guggenheim was born into a wealthy Cincinnati family (his father was a furniture manufacturer). While studying agriculture in college in 1943, Guggenheim was drafted into the army. Upon discharge from the service he decided against an agricultural career and moved to New York to pursue a career in broadcasting. He founded Charles Guggenheim and Associates, a film production company. He developed an interest in politics, and soon moved the company from New York to Washington, DC, where he became a media adviser to many Democratic political figures. After Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, Guggenheim put together a tribute to him culled from the thousands of feet of film he had shot of Kennedy over the years. The resulting film, Robert Kennedy Remembered (1968), won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. Although Guggenheim occasionally ventured into feature film production, he stayed mostly with documentaries, where he received his first Academy Award for 1964's Nine from Little Rock (1965), about the desegregation effort in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. He won two more Oscars for documentary filmmaking, in 1989 and 1994. His last documentary, Berga: Soldiers of Another War (2003), was about a group of 350 American soldiers captured by the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge who, because they were either Jewish or the Nazis thought they "looked Jewish", were sent to concentration camps instead of POW camps (Guggenheim had been assigned to the unit that was captured, but a severe illness resulted in his being left behind when it was sent to the front lines so he was not with them when the men were captured). He finished the film just a few months before his death in October of 2002.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
In addition to helming the iconic feature hits An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Against All Odds (1984), Ray (2004), and the cult thriller The Devil's Advocate (1997), Taylor Hackford has directed the films Dolores Claiborne (1995), Everybody's All-American (1988), and Proof of Life (2000). Taylor developed and produced La Bamba (1987), the most successful Latin-themed feature film in history. Mr. Hackford has been an active member of the Directors Guild of America for over 40 years, including twice as elected President of the DGA, beginning in 2009.- Special Effects
- Visual Effects
- Actor
Allen Hall was born May 4, 1946 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of a commercial airline pilot. In the early 60s his family relocated to Burbank, California where he came in contact with the film industry living so close to all the major studios. As a result, his interest in films began at an early age. In high school Allen distinguished himself by becoming president of his junior class at Burbank High School.
Shortly before his senior year his family moved to Thousand Oaks, California, where he graduated from T.O. High School in 1964. After high school he returned to Utah, where he attended Brigham Young University, obtaining a degree in Zoology. Allen was gifted with natural artistic talent and took an avid interest in oil painting, sculpture, music and engineering.
His creative desires led him to the movie business. In 1973, he met Glen Robinson, one of the greatest special effects supervisors at the time, who after six months of pestering gave Allen his break taking him under his wing on the film "Hindenburg." This was a big motion picture that was accorded an Academy Award Nomination and Technical Achievement Award in 1975. A few years later Allen met Joe Lombardi, another special effects icon, whose specialty was pyrotechnics.
Lombardi took a liking to the young talented Hall, and hired him to work on the classic war film "Apocalypse Now," where he designed and fabricated the burned and charred bodies of soldiers on the battlefield of Vietnam. Hall, went on to work on a host of films among which are the following successful pictures; "Top Gun," "The Untouchables," "Dead Poets Society," "Backdraft," "Forrest Gump," "Road to Perdition," "Terminator III Rise of the Machines," and "Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest."
Hall's career has taken him to various international locations where he has spent over seven years of his career. He has worked for all the major studios and with highly recognized directors, Barry Levinson, Brian De Palma, Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis, Francis Ford Coppola, the late Robert Altman, Tony Scott, Sam Mendes, and Jonathan Mostow.
Hall, is a four time Academy Award Nominee and winner of two Oscars, the most recent in 2007, for his work on "Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man' Chest." His passion for the art of films continues and his career is still flourishing. He is a member of the Visual Effects Branch - Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as well as the Visual Effects Society. He has been a speaker to symposiums on film and to the educational community.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born in Concord, California, to Janet Marylyn (Frager), a hospital worker, and Amos Mefford Hanks, an itinerant cook. His mother's family, originally surnamed "Fraga", was entirely Portuguese, while his father was of mostly English ancestry. Tom grew up in what he has called a "fractured" family. He moved around a great deal after his parents' divorce, living with a succession of step-families. No problems, no alcoholism - just a confused childhood. He has no acting experience in college and credits the fact that he could not get cast in a college play with actually starting his career. He went downtown, and auditioned for a community theater play, was invited by the director of that play to go to Cleveland, and there his acting career started.
Ron Howard was working on Splash (1983), a fantasy-comedy about a mermaid who falls in love with a business executive. Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, which eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks landed the lead role and the film went on to become a surprise box office success, grossing more than $69 million. After several flops and a moderate success with the comedy Dragnet (1987), Hanks' stature in the film industry rose. The broad success with the fantasy-comedy Big (1988) established him as a major Hollywood talent, both as a box office draw and within the film industry as an actor. For his performance in the film, Hanks earned his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor.
Hanks climbed back to the top again with his portrayal of a washed-up baseball legend turned manager in A League of Their Own (1992). Hanks has stated that his acting in earlier roles was not great, but that he subsequently improved. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hanks noted his "modern era of movie making ... because enough self-discovery has gone on ... My work has become less pretentiously fake and over the top". This "modern era" began for Hanks, first with Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and then with Philadelphia (1993). The former was a blockbuster success about a widower who finds true love over the radio airwaves. Richard Schickel of Time magazine called his performance "charming", and most critics agreed that Hanks' portrayal ensured him a place among the premier romantic-comedy stars of his generation.
In Philadelphia, he played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination. Hanks lost 35 pounds and thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role. In a review for People, Leah Rozen stated, "Above all, credit for Philadelphia's success belongs to Hanks, who makes sure that he plays a character, not a saint. He is flat-out terrific, giving a deeply felt, carefully nuanced performance that deserves an Oscar." Hanks won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia. During his acceptance speech, he revealed that his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth and former classmate John Gilkerson, two people with whom he was close, were gay.
Hanks followed Philadelphia with the blockbuster Forrest Gump (1994) which grossed a worldwide total of over $600 million at the box office. Hanks remarked: "When I read the script for Gump, I saw it as one of those kind of grand, hopeful movies that the audience can go to and feel ... some hope for their lot and their position in life ... I got that from the movies a hundred million times when I was a kid. I still do." Hanks won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Forrest Gump, becoming only the second actor to have accomplished the feat of winning consecutive Best Actor Oscars.
Hanks' next role - astronaut and commander Jim Lovell, in the docudrama Apollo 13 (1995) - reunited him with Ron Howard. Critics generally applauded the film and the performances of the entire cast, which included actors Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Kathleen Quinlan. The movie also earned nine Academy Award nominations, winning two. Later that year, Hanks starred in Disney/Pixar's computer-animated film Toy Story (1995), as the voice of Sheriff Woody. A year later, he made his directing debut with the musical comedy That Thing You Do! (1996) about the rise and fall of a 1960s pop group, also playing the role of a music producer.
As of 2022, Hanks is 66-years-old. He has never retired from acting, and has remained active in the film industry for more than four decades.- Actor
- Producer
Widely regarded as one of the greatest stage and screen actors both in his native UK and internationally, the unparalleled Nigel Hawthorne was born in Coventry, England on 5 April 1929, raised in South Africa and returned to the UK in the 1950s with his extensive work as a great gentleman of acting following during the decade as well as in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. His portrayal of 'Sir Humphrey Appleby' in the BBC comedy Yes Minister (1980) won him international acclaim in the 1980s. In 1992, he was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for his sublime interpretation of 'George III' in Alan Bennett's hit stage play, "The Madness of King George III" and he was also nominated for an Academy Award of Best Actor in a Leading Role in its brilliant film adaptation The Madness of King George (1994), both of them exquisitely directed by Nicholas Hytner.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Arthur Hiller was born on 22 November 1923 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He was a director and producer, known for Love Story (1970), The Hospital (1971) and See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989). He was married to Gwen Hiller. He died on 17 August 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- 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.- Choreographer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Tara Nicole Hughes is a professional Choreographer and Movement Coach for film, television and stage. Hughes has worked on every major musical film over the last decade including Chicago, Nine, Rock of Ages, Burlesque, Mary Poppins Returns, Disney's live-action film The Little Mermaid, and Joker: Folie a' Deux starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.
As warm, patient and inspiring as she is talented, Hughes has a particular gift for creating a safe and energizing work environment for actors who may be intimidated by movement. As a result she's worked with some of the most brilliant of our time including Daniel Day Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Tom Hanks, Marion Cotillard, Al Pacino, Penelope Cruz and Tobey Maguire, as well as with major music stars including Pharrell Williams, Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson.
Other choreographic credits include, for television, Good Girls Revolt, Transparent, The Guest Book, House of Lies, The Middle, Trophy Wife, Raising Hope and My Name is Earl. Feature films include Kiss of the Spider Woman (Dir. Bill Condon), Good Fortune (Dir. Aziz Ansari) Danny Collins starring Al Pacino (Dir. Dan Fogelman), The Terminal (Dir. Steven Spielberg) and The Next Best Thing (Dir. John Schlesinger).