The Best Actress 2008
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Ask Kate Winslet what she likes about any of her characters, and the word "ballsy" is bound to pop up at least once. The British actress has made a point of eschewing straightforward pretty-girl parts in favor of more devilish damsels; as a result, she's built an eclectic resume that runs the gamut from Shakespearean tragedy to modern-day mysticism and erotica.
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, into a family of thespians -- parents Roger Winslet and Sally Anne Bridges-Winslet were both stage actors, maternal grandparents Oliver and Linda Bridges ran the Reading Repertory Theatre, and uncle Robert Bridges was a fixture in London's West End theatre district. Kate came into her talent at an early age. She scored her first professional gig at eleven, dancing opposite the Honey Monster in a commercial for a kids' cereal. She started acting lessons around the same time, which led to formal training at a performing arts high school. Over the next few years, she appeared on stage regularly and landed a few bit parts in sitcoms. Her first big break came at age 17, when she was cast as an obsessive adolescent in Heavenly Creatures (1994). The film, based on the true story of two fantasy-gripped girls who commit a brutal murder, received modest distribution but was roundly praised by critics.
Still a relative unknown, Winslet attended a cattle call audition the next year for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995). She made an immediate impression on the film's star, Emma Thompson, and beat out more than a hundred other hopefuls for the part of plucky Marianne Dashwood. Her efforts were rewarded with both a British Academy Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Winslet followed up with two more period pieces, playing the rebellious heroine in Jude (1996) and Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
The role that transformed Winslet from art house attraction to international star was Rose DeWitt Bukater, the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat in James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet, swooning over all that face time opposite heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and noting her refreshingly healthy, unemaciated physique. Winslet's performance also garnered a Best Actress nomination, making her the youngest actress to ever receive two Academy Award nominations.
After the swell of unexpected attention surrounding Titanic (1997), Winslet was eager to retreat into independent projects. Rumor has it that she turned down the lead roles in both Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Anna and the King (1999) in order to play adventurous soul searchers in Hideous Kinky (1998) and Holy Smoke (1999). The former cast her as a young single mother traveling through 1970s Morocco with her daughters in tow; the latter, as a zealous follower of a guru tricked into a "deprogramming" session in the Australian outback. The next year found her back in period dress as the Marquis de Sade's chambermaid and accomplice in Quills (2000). Kate holds the distinction of being the youngest actor ever honored with four Academy Award nominations (she received her fourth at age 29). As of 2016, she has been nominated for an Oscar seven times, winning one of them: she received the Best Actress Oscar for the drama The Reader (2008), playing a former concentration camp guard.
For her performance of Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs (2015), she received her seventh Academy Award nomination.
Off camera, Winslet is known for her mischievous pranks and familial devotion. She has two sisters, Anna Winslet and Beth Winslet (both actresses), and a brother, Joss.
In 1998, she married assistant director Jim Threapleton. They had a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, in October 2000. They divorced in 2001. She later married director Sam Mendes in 2003 and gave birth to their son, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, later that year. After seven years of marriage, in February 2010 they announced that they had amicably separated, and divorced in October 2010. In 2012, Kate married Ned Rocknroll, with whom she has a son. She was awarded Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to Drama.1590 points- Actress
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Born on 12 November 1978 in Bucharest, Romania, Alexandra Maria Lara fled to Germany with her parents when she was four and half years old. After graduating at the French High School, she studied acting at the Theaterwerkstatt Charlottenburg from 1997 and 2000, but had already played leading characters in several TV shows and movies such as Die Bubi Scholz Story (1998). Due to her critically acclaimed performance in The Tunnel (2001), she has appeared in several successful national and international projects, most notably the Oscar nominated Downfall (2004).1545 points- Hannah Herzsprung was born on 7 September 1981 in Hamburg, West Germany. She is an actress, known for The Reader (2008), Who Am I (2014) and Four Minutes (2006).1545 points
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Nadja Uhl was born on 23 May 1972 in Stralsund, German Democratic Republic. She is an actress, known for The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), Operation Sugar (2012) and Divided We Stand (2022).1499 points- Actress
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Vera Farmiga is an American actress who has received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Up in the Air (2009) and Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her roles in Bates Motel (2013) and When They See Us (2019).
She was born Vera Ann Farmiga, the second of seven children, on August 6, 1973, in Clifton, New Jersey, USA, to Ukrainian parents. She did not speak English until the age of six, and was raised in the Ukrainian Catholic home of her mother, Luba (Spas), a schoolteacher, and her father, Michael Farmiga, a computer systems analyst. Her younger sister is actress Taissa Farmiga, who is 21 years her junior. Young Vera was a shy, nearsighted girl, who played piano and folk danced with a Ukrainian touring company in her teens.
In 1991, she graduated from Hunterdon Central Regional High School. Farmiga initially dreamed of becoming an optometrist, but she later changed her mind and studied acting at Syracuse University's School of Performing Arts, graduating in 1995. The following year, she began her professional acting career, making her Broadway debut as an understudy in the play "Taking Sides". Her stage credits included performances in "The Tempest", "Good", "The Seagull", and in a well-reviewed off-Broadway production of "Second-Hand Smoke" (1997). That same year, she made her television debut as the female lead, opposite a then-unknown Heath Ledger, in Fox's adventure series Roar (1997).
In 1998, Farmiga made her big screen debut in the drama Return to Paradise (1998), then played the daughters of Christopher Walken in The Opportunists (1999) and Richard Gere in Autumn in New York (2000). She starred as a working-class mother struggling to keep her life and marriage together while hiding her drug addiction in Down to the Bone (2004), for which she was awarded Best Actress from the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Farmiga's acting talent shone in a range of characters, from her role as a senator's daughter in The Manchurian Candidate (2004), the wife of a mobster in Running Scared (2006), a humorous prostitute in Breaking and Entering (2006), and a police psychiatrist in The Departed (2006).
In 2010, Farmiga received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in Up in the Air (2009). In 2011, she made her directorial debut with the drama Higher Ground (2011), in which she also appeared in the leading role. Although the film had a limited release, Farmiga's direction and performance received attention at several festivals. In 2013, she began starring in the drama thriller series Bates Motel (2013), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in the first season. In 2019, she received a second Primetime Emmy Award nomination, this time in the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie category, for her role in the drama miniseries When They See Us (2019).
Farmiga was formerly married to actor Sebastian Roché, whom she met during production of Roar (1997). The two eloped to the Bahamas after the series ended in 1997. They separated and subsequently divorced in 2004. On September 13, 2008, she married musician Renn Hawkey, with whom she has two children, son Fynn McDonnell (b. 2009) and daughter Gytta Lubov Hawkey (b. 2010). Farmiga lives with her family in Hudson Valley, New York. Her other activities, outside her acting profession, include reading, playing piano, boxing, jujitsu, and spending time with her pet angora goats.1496 points- Actress
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Considered by many critics to be the greatest living actress, Meryl Streep has been nominated for the Academy Award an astonishing 21 times, and has won it three times. Meryl was born Mary Louise Streep in 1949 in Summit, New Jersey, to Mary Wolf (Wilkinson), a commercial artist, and Harry William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive. Her father was of German and Swiss-German descent, and her mother had English, Irish, and German ancestry.
Meryl's early performing ambitions leaned toward the opera. She became interested in acting while a student at Vassar and upon graduation she enrolled in the Yale School of Drama. She gave an outstanding performance in her first film role, Julia (1977), and the next year she was nominated for her first Oscar for her role in The Deer Hunter (1978). She went on to win the Academy Award for her performances in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Sophie's Choice (1982), in which she gave a heart-wrenching portrayal of an inmate mother in a Nazi death camp.
A perfectionist in her craft and meticulous and painstaking in her preparation for her roles, Meryl turned out a string of highly acclaimed performances over the next decade in great films like Silkwood (1983); Out of Africa (1985); Ironweed (1987); and A Cry in the Dark (1988). Her career declined slightly in the early 1990s as a result of her inability to find suitable parts, but she shot back to the top in 1995 with her performance as Clint Eastwood's married lover in The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and as the prodigal daughter in Marvin's Room (1996). In 1998 she made her first venture into the area of producing, and was the executive producer for the moving ...First Do No Harm (1997). A realist when she talks about her future years in film, she remarked that "...no matter what happens, my work will stand..."1490 points- Actress
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Johanna Wokalek was born on 3 March 1975 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany. She is an actress, known for The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), Pope Joan (2009) and Barefoot (2005). She is married to Thomas Hengelbrock. They have one child.1484 points- Actress
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The iconoclastic gifts of the highly striking and ferociously talented actress Tilda Swinton have been appreciated by art house crowds and international audiences alike. After her stunning Oscar-winning turn as a high-powered corporate attorney in the George Clooney starring and critically-lauded legal thriller Michael Clayton (2007), however, her androgynous looks and often bizarre appeal have been embraced by more mainstream crowds as well.
She was born Katherine Mathilda Swinton into a patrician Scottish military family on November 5, 1960, in London, England. Her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton (née Killen), was Australian, and her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, an army officer, was English-born. Her ancestry is Scottish, Northern Irish, and English, including a long tapestry of prominent Scottish ancestors. Educated at an English and a Scottish boarding school, Tilda subsequently studied Social and Political Science at Cambridge University and graduated in 1983 with a degree in English Literature.
During her tenure as a student, she performed countless stage productions and proceeded to work for a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company where she appeared in such productions as "Measure for Measure." The rebel insider her, however, was strong and she left the company after a year as her approach and interests began to shift dramatically. With a pungent taste for the unique and seldom tried, Tilda found some gender-bending stage roles come her way. She portrayed Mozart in Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri", and as a working class woman impersonating her dead husband during World War II, in Manfred Karge's "Man to Man," a role she later committed to film (Man to Man (1992)).
In 1985, the tall, slender performer with alabaster skin and carrot-topped hair began a professional association with gay experimental director Derek Jarman. She continued to live and work with the groundbreaking writer/director/cinematographer for the next nine years, involving herself in seven of his often notorious films. This quirky, highly fascinating alliance would produce such stark and radical turns as the Berlin International Film Festival winners Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), The Garden (1990) and Edward II (1991) (playing Isabella, in which she won "Best Actress" at the Venice Film Festival) and Wittgenstein (1993), as well as the films Soursweet (1988) (a movie with no spoken dialogue) and the Stockholm Film Festival Award winner Blue (1993).
Jarman succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1994. His untimely demise left a devastating void in Tilda's life for quite some time. Her most notable performance of her Jarman period, however, came from a non-Jarman film. For the vivid title role in Orlando (1992), her nobleman character lives for 400 years while changing sex from man to woman. The film, which Swinton spent years helping writer/director Sally Potter develop and finance, continues to this day to have a worldwide devoted fan following.
Over the years, Tilda has preferred art to celebrity, opening herself to experimental projects with new and untried directors and mediums, delving into the worlds of installation art and cutting-edge fashion. Consistently off-centered roles in Female Perversions (1996), Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), Teknolust (2002), Young Adam (2003), Broken Flowers (2005) and Béla Tarr's The Man from London (2007) have added to her mystique. Back in 1995, she delved into a performance art piece in the Serpentine Gallery, London, where she was put on display to the public for a week, asleep (or apparently so), in a glass case.
Following the birth of her twins in 1997, Tilda would leave lean for a time towards Hollywood mainstream filming. The thriller The Deep End (2001), earned her a number of critic's awards and her first Golden Globe nomination. Other visible U.S. pictures included The Beach (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio, fantasy epic Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, her Oscar-decorated performance in Michael Clayton (2007) and, of course, her iconic White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
Into the millennium, Tilda continued to amaze starring in the crime drama Julia (2008) and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). She learned Italian and Russian for Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (2009), starred in the psychological thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Bong Joon Ho's Snowpiercer (2013), and earned fine notice in Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem (2013). She also starred in the dark romantic fantasy drama Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) directed by Jim Jarmusch, had a small role in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), starred in Judd Apatow's comedy Trainwreck (2015), and played a rock star in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (2015).
Showing no signs of slowing up, Tilda continues to make creative, visual impressions in such films as the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! (2016) where she reunited with Clooney and had a dual role playing twin journalists, and as the wise Asian teacher of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the Marvel Comics action film Doctor Strange (2016), while repeating the part of The Ancient One in Avengers: Endgame (2019). She gave another eccentric, unhinged performance in the action adventure message movie Okja (2017), played Betsy Trotwood in a contemporary telling of The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) and teamed up again with writer/director Jim Jarmusch in the thoroughly offbeat fantasy horror comedy The Dead Don't Die (2019).1469 points- Actress
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Maggie Gyllenhaal was born on November 16, 1977 in New York City, New York as Margalit Ruth Gyllenhaal, the daughter of producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner and director Stephen Gyllenhaal, and the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal. She is of Ashkenazi Jewish (mother) and Swedish, English, and German (father) descent.
She made her film debut in Waterland (1992). She had sporadic roles throughout her teenage years though she took a break to attend Columbia University where she graduated w/ a degree in literature in 1999. In addition, she briefly studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, which helped w/ her post-graduation transition back into acting.
Soon after graduating, she had supporting roles in Cecil B. Demented (2000) & Donnie Darko (2001). Her breakout role came later when she starred in Secretary (2002), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She followed that up w/ supporting roles in 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Adaptation. (2002), & Mona Lisa Smile (2003) among other movies. She received her 2nd Golden Globe nomination for playing a recent prison parolee in Sherrybaby (2006). She followed that up w/ roles in World Trade Center (2006), Stranger Than Fiction (2006) & The Dark Knight (2008).
In 2009, she received great acclaim for her role in Crazy Heart (2009), which earned her 1st Oscar nomination. Since then, she has been seen in Nanny McPhee Returns (2010), Hysteria (2011) & Won't Back Down (2012).828 points- Actress
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Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award-winning actress who rose to fame after her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999), playing the title role in the "Lara Croft" blockbuster movies, as well as Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010) and Maleficent (2014). Off-screen, Jolie has become prominently involved in international charity projects, especially those involving refugees. She often appears on many "most beautiful women" lists, and she has a personal life that is avidly covered by the tabloid press.
Jolie was born Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, California. In her earliest years, Angelina began absorbing the acting craft from her actor parents, Jon Voight, an Oscar-winner, and Marcheline Bertrand, who had studied with Lee Strasberg. Her good looks may derive from her ancestry, which is German and Slovak on her father's side, and French-Canadian, Dutch, Polish, and remote Huron, on her mother's side. At age eleven, Angelina began studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she was seen in several stage productions. She undertook some film studies at New York University and later joined the renowned Met Theatre Group in Los Angeles. At age 16, she took up a career in modeling and appeared in some music videos.
In the mid-1990s, Jolie appeared in various small films where she got good notices, including Hackers (1995) and Foxfire (1996). Her critical acclaim increased when she played strong roles in the made-for-TV movies True Women (1997), and in George Wallace (1997) which won her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination. Jolie's acclaim increased even further when she played the lead role in the HBO production Gia (1998). This was the true life story of supermodel Gia Carangi, a sensitive wild child who was both brazen and needy and who had a difficult time handling professional success and the deaths of people who were close to her. Carangi became involved with drugs and because of her needle-using habits she became, at the tender age of 26, one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS. Jolie's performance in Gia (1998) again garnered a Golden Globe Award and another Emmy nomination, and she additionally earned a SAG Award.
Angelina got a major break in 1999 when she won a leading role in the successful feature The Bone Collector (1999), starring alongside Denzel Washington. In that same year, Jolie gave a tour de force performance in Girl, Interrupted (1999) playing opposite Winona Ryder. The movie was a true story of women who spent time in a psychiatric hospital. Jolie's role was reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), the role which won Nicholson his first Oscar. Unlike "Cuckoo", "Girl" was a small film that received mixed reviews and barely made money at the box office. But when it came time to give out awards, Jolie won the triple crown -- "Girl" propelled her to win the Golden Globe Award, the SAG Award and the Academy Award for best leading actress in a supporting role.
With her newfound prominence, Jolie began to get in-depth attention from the press. Numerous aspects of her controversial personal life became news. At her wedding to her Hackers (1995) co-star Jonny Lee Miller, she had displayed her husband's name on the back of her shirt painted in her own blood. Jolie and Miller divorced, and in 2000, she married her Pushing Tin (1999) co-star Billy Bob Thornton. Jolie had become the fifth wife of a man twenty years her senior. During her marriage to Thornton, the spouses each wore a vial of the other's blood around their necks. That marriage came apart in 2002 and ended in divorce. In addition, Jolie was estranged from her famous father, Jon Voight.
In 2000, Jolie was asked to star in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). At first, she expressed disinterest, but then decided that the required training for the athletic role was intriguing. The eponymous character was drawn from a popular video game. Lara Croft was a female cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. When the movie was released, critics were unimpressed with the final product, but critical acclaim wasn't the point of the movie. The public paid $275 million for theater tickets to see a buffed up Jolie portray the adventuresome Lara Croft. Jolie's father Jon Voight appeared in the movie, and during filming there was a brief rapprochement between father and daughter.
One of the Lara Croft movie's filming locations was Cambodia. While there, Jolie witnessed the natural beauty, culture and poverty of that country. She considered this an eye opening experience, and so began the humanitarian chapter of her life. Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world and came to be formally appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some of her experiences were written and published in her popular book "Notes from My Travels" whose profits go to UNHCR.
Jolie has stated that she now plans to spend most of her time in humanitarian efforts, to be financed by her actress salary. She devotes one third of her income to savings, one third to living expenses and one third to charity. In 2002, Angelina adopted a Cambodian refugee boy named Maddox, and in 2005, adopted an Ethiopian refugee girl named Zahara. Jolie's dramatic feature film Beyond Borders (2003) parallels some of her real life humanitarian experiences although, despite the inclusion of a romance between two westerners, many of the movie's images were too depressingly realistic -- the movie was not popular among critics or at the box office.
In 2004, Jolie began filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) with co-star Brad Pitt. The movie became a major box office success. There were rumors that Pitt and Jolie had an affair while filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jolie insisted that because her mother had been hurt by adultery, she herself could never participate in an affair with a married man, therefore there had been no affair with Pitt at that time. Nonetheless, Pitt separated from his wife Jennifer Aniston in January 2005 and, in the months that followed, he was frequently seen in public with Jolie, apparently as a couple. Pitt's divorce was finalized later in 2005.
Jolie and Pitt announced in early 2006 that they would have a child together, and Jolie gave birth to daughter Shiloh that May. They also adopted a three-year-old Vietnamese boy named Pax. The couple, who married in 2014 and divorced in 2019, continue to pursue movie and humanitarian projects, and now have a total of six children. She was appointed Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George at the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to United Kingdom foreign policy and the campaign to end warzone sexual violence.826 points- Actress
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Amy Ryan was born on May 3, 1968 in Queens, New York City, New York, USA as Amy Beth Dziewiontkowski. She is an actress, known for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), Gone Baby Gone (2007) and Escape Plan (2013). She has been married to Eric Slovin since August 23, 2011. They have one child.826 points- Kochi on the island of Shikoku was bombed from the air and razed to the ground by the USA during 1945, but Kochi castle still stands as a historical point of interest. More recently the city has acted as the birth place of short-haired tomboyish singer and actress Hirosue Ryoko. She signed up for the corporate Clearasil/P&G cosmetics' model contest in 1994 when she was 14 and subsequently made her television debut the following year singing on the TK Music Camp program. She began acting for television. She had moved to Kanagawa as a teenager where she had an aunt. By 1997 she was nominated for and won the Best Supporting Actress prize at the 14th Television Drama Academy Awards. She would go on to garner multiple awards for her work on both the small and big screen in the next decade. She released multiple singles and full-length albums of pop music during this time. She enrolled in Waseda University in 1999, but did not graduate. She appeared in the Tokyo-shot French film Wasabi in 2001 where she recited her French lines without understanding them. Hirosue married model Okazawa Takahiro on January 17th, 2004 and gave birth to their son three months later. The marriage actually lasted four years. The relationship though had lasted two since the wedding. She became a single mother at the age of 27. She worked less during her marriage and pregnancy, but had the occasion to appear on screen with Yu Aoi in Hana & Alice in 2004. She had the occasion to work with Yu again in Flowers in 2010. She played alternately an understanding/betraying/compromising wife in Departures in 2008, which won the 81st Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film. She married Izutsu Jun, a candle artist and candle shop owner, in late 2010. She had previously dated Nagai Masaru rumours be believed. They had met in Haiti in March of 2010 participating in earthquake relief there. They have two children. Nonetheless she was caught visiting actor Takeru Sato overnight at his place. Reportedly, she was living alone as she had requested to do during her first marriage, which had lead to that divorce. She cites karaoke and watching movies as favourite pastimes. Like the usual array of celebrities Hirosue fronts for corporate and material goods like NTT, Shiseido and Coca Cola.826 points
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Freida Selena Pinto was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), Maharashtra, India, to Sylvia, a school principal, and Frederick Pinto, a senior bank branch manager. She is from a Mangalorean family.
Pinto traversed the modeling circuit in Mumbai (represented by Elite Model Management India) for two years before gaining her big break when director Danny Boyle picked her out in the audition process to play the female lead, Latika, for his project Slumdog Millionaire (2008). In a promo interview, Boyle likened spotting her to his discovery of Kelly Macdonald for Trainspotting.
Surprisingly, Freida, who studied at Mumbai's St. Xaviers College, began taking acting classes (she has done amateur theater before) only after completing her debut film -- when she attended a three-month workshop by Barry John, the veteran theater guru.
Between 2006 and 2007, she anchored Full Circle, a travel show that was telecast on Zee International Asia Pacific. She went on assignments to Afghanistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Fiji, among other countries.823 points- Actress
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The acclaimed Cornish actress Dame Kristin Scott Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall, to Deborah (Hurlbatt) and Lieutenant Commander Simon Scott Thomas. Her father was a pilot for the British Royal Navy and died in a flying accident in 1964. Her stepfather, Lt. Cdr Simon Idiens, was also a pilot, and died six years later under similar circumstances. Her childhood home was Dorset, England. She left at the age of 19 to work as an au pair in Paris. She was married to French doctor François Oliviennes, with whom she had three children; Hannah, Joseph, and George.818 points- Actress
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Elsa Zylberstein was born on 16 October 1968 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France. She is an actress and producer, known for I've Loved You So Long (2008), Un + Une (2015) and Van Gogh (1991).818 points- Actress
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Evangeline Lilly, born in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, in 1979, was discovered on the streets of Kelowna, British Columbia, by the famous Ford modeling agency. Although she initially decided to pass on a modeling career, she went ahead and signed with Ford anyway, to help pay for her University of British Columbia tuition and expenses.815 points- Elizabeth Berrington is an English actress and graduate of the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, she is best known for her roles as Ruby Fry in Waterloo Road, Paula Kosh in Stella, Mel Debrou in Moving Wallpaper and Dawn Stevenson in The Syndicate. She has also featured in British television series such as The Bill, Doctor Who, The Office, Casualty, The Lakes, The Grimleys, Rose and Maloney and Stella.814 points
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Clémence Poésy was born Clémence Guichard in Paris in 1982. She took her mother's maiden name, Poésy, as her stage name. She attended an alternative school for most of her education, but spent her last year at L'École alsacienne.
She trained at the "Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique", with her first roles being for French TV series between 1997 and 1999, Un homme en colère (1997) and Les monos (1999). Her first feature film was a German production, Olga's Summer (2002) and her second the French production, Bienvenue chez les Rozes (2003).
Her first English speaking feature was as Mary, Queen of Scots, in the Gunpowder, Treason & Plot (2004) TV movie, for which she won the 2005 FIPA for best actress.
Since then she has starred in many films, the most notable being In Bruges (2008), which is probably the start of her worldwide recognition, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), the US TV series Gossip Girl (2007) and the English TV mini-series, Birdsong (2012). All of these have shown her to be very capable of roles in multiple languages, periods and roles.
She is known for her natural beauty, devoid of make-up and cosmetics, and she herself says that she does not like using them.814 points- Actress
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Shohreh Aghdashloo was born Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar on May 11, 1952 in Tehran, Iran. In the 1970s at age 20, she achieved nationwide stardom in her homeland of Iran, starring in some prominent pictures such as The Report (1977) directed by the renowned Abbas Kiarostami, which won critics awards at the Moscow Film Festival. In 1978, she won wider acclaim and established herself as one of Iran's leading ladies with Desiderium (1978) directed by the late Ali Hatami. During the 1978 Islamic revolution, Aghdashloo left Iran for England, to complete her education. Her interest in politics and her concern for social injustice in the world would lead her to receive a Bachelor's degree in International Relations.
She continued to pursue her acting career, which eventually brought her to Los Angeles, California in 1987. She went on to marry actor/playwright Houshang Touzie, performing in a number of his plays, successfully taking them to national and international stages. However, this was not easy getting work in Hollywood as a Middle Eastern actress with an accent; she had roles in some decent, though not great, films, including Twenty Bucks (1993), Surviving Paradise (2000) and Maryam (2002). She received good reviews for her 12 episodes on the fourth season of the Fox television series 24 (2001) as Dina Araz, a terrorist undercover as a well-to-do housewife and mother in Los Angeles. She had to wait quite some time to receive her break in Hollywood.
And finally, years after having read the acclaimed novel "House of Sand and Fog", DreamWorks were in the process of bringing the story to the silver screen. After having cast Ben Kingsley (as Massoud Amir Behrani) and Jennifer Connelly in the lead roles, they were looking for a relatively unknown Iranian actress to play Kingsley's wife, Nadi. Shohreh Aghdashloo was duly cast. She stole the limelight and earned herself an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress amongst many other prestigious awards, including the Independent Spirit Sward as best supporting actress in a feature film, the New York and Los Angeles film critics award and others.798 points- Actress
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Multi-talented, multi-award-winning actress Kathleen (Doyle) Bates was born on June 28, 1948, and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the youngest of three girls born to Bertye Kathleen (Talbot), a homemaker, and Langdon Doyle Bates, a mechanical engineer. Her grandfather was author Finis L. Bates. Kathy has English, as well as Irish, Scottish, and German, ancestry, and one of her ancestors, an Irish emigrant to New Orleans, once served as President Andrew Jackson's doctor.
Kathy discovered acting appearing in high school plays and studied drama at Southern Methodist University, graduating in 1969. With her mind firmly set, she moved to New York City in 1970 and paid her dues by working everything from a cash register to taking lunch orders. Things started moving quickly up the ladder after giving a tour-de-force performance alongside Christopher Walken at Buffalo's Studio Arena Theatre in Lanford Wilson's world premiere of "Lemon Sky" in 1970, but she also had a foreshadowing of the heartbreak to come after the successful show relocated to New York's off-Broadway Playhouse Theatre without her and Walken wound up winning a Drama Desk award.
By the mid-to-late 1970s, Kathy was treading the boards frequently as a rising young actress of the New York and regional theater scene. She appeared in "Casserole" and "A Quality of Mercy" (both 1975) before earning exceptional reviews for her role of Joanne in "Vanities". She took her first Broadway curtain call in 1980's "Goodbye Fidel," which lasted only six performances. She then went directly into replacement mode when she joined the cast of the already-established and highly successful "Fifth of July" in 1981.
Kathy made a false start in films with Taking Off (1971), in which she was billed as "Bobo Bates". She didn't film again until Straight Time (1978), starring Dustin Hoffman, and that part was not substantial enough to cause a stir. Things turned hopeful, however, when Kathy and the rest of the female ensemble were given the chance to play their respective Broadway parts in the film version of Robert Altman's Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). It was a juicy role for Kathy and film audiences finally started noticing the now 34-year-old.
Still and all, it was the New York stage that continued to earn Kathy awards and acclaim. She was pure textbook to any actor studying how to disappear into a role. Her characters ranged from free and life-affirming to downright pitiable. Despite winning a Tony Award nomination and Outer Critic's Circle Award for her stark, touchingly sad portrait of a suicidal daughter in 1983's "'night, Mother" and the Obie and Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for her powerhouse job as a romantic misfit in "Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune," Kathy had no box-office pull, however, and was never a strong consideration when the roles transferred to the screen. Her award-winning stage went to established film stars. First Sissy Spacek took over her potent role as the suicidal Jessie Cates in 'night, Mother (1986), then Michelle Pfeiffer seized the moment to play her dumpy lover character in Frankie and Johnny (1991). It would take Oscar glory to finally rectify the injustice.
It was Kathy's fanatical turn as the drab, chunky, porcine-looking psychopath Annie Wilkes, who kidnaps her favorite author (James Caan) and subjects him to a series of horrific tortures, that finally turned the tide for her in Hollywood. With the 1990 shocker Misery (1990), based on the popular Stephen King novel, Bates and Caan were box office magic. Moreover, Kathy captured the "Best Actress" Oscar and Golden Globe award, a first in that genre (horror) for that category. To add to her happiness she married Tony Campisi, also an actor, in 1991.
Quality film scripts now started coming her way and the 1990s proved to be a rich and rewarding time for her. First, she and another older "overnight" film star, fellow Oscar winner Jessica Tandy, starred together in the modern portion of the beautifully nuanced, flashback period piece Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). She then outdid herself as the detached and depressed housekeeper accused of murdering her abusive husband (David Strathairn) in Dolores Claiborne (1995). Surprisingly, she was left out of the Oscar race for these two excellent performances. Not so, however, for her flashy political advisor Libby Holden in the movie Primary Colors (1998), receiving praise and a "Best Supporting Actress" nomination.
Kathy has continued to work prolifically on TV as a 14-time Emmy winner or nominee thus far. She has also taken to directing a couple of TV-movies on the sly. As most actors, she has been in hit and miss TV shows. On the hit side, she has earned a Golden Globe and Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Jay Leno's manager playing tough politics in The Late Shift (1996) and played to the hilt the cruel-minded orphanage operator, Miss Hannigan, in Annie (1999) for which she also earned an Emmy nom. She has done some eye-catching, offbeat turns on regular series such as Six Feet Under (2001) (for which she also earned a DGA award for helming an episode), The Office (2005), Harry's Law (2011) and especially American Horror Story (2011) for which she won an Emmy as Ethel Darling. She also won an Emmy for a guest episode on the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men (2003).
Interesting millennium filming have included a Catholic school's Mother Superior in the comic drama Bruno (2000); Jesse James' mother in American Outlaws (2001); a quirky, liberal mom in About Schmidt (2002) for which she earned another "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar nomination; a brief but potent turn as Gertrude Stein in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011); Queen Victoria in the adventurous remake of Around the World in 80 Days (2004); wacky parent types in the comedies Failure to Launch (2006) and Relative Strangers (2006); Mother Claus in the seasonal farce Fred Claus (2007); an over-gushy foster mother in the dramedy The Great Gilly Hopkins (2015); and a wrenching performance as the mother of a suspected terrorist in Richard Jewell (2019) for which she earned her third "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar nomination.
Divorced from husband Campisi since 1997, Kathy has been the Executive Committee Chair of the Actors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors.796 points- Actress
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Jeanette Hain was born in Munich. While studying directing at the School of Television and Film in Munich, the by chance meeting with director Sherry Hormann made her childhood dream come true by resulting in her first leading part in "Die Cellistin - Liebe und Verhängnis". Since then she has been playing in German and international films.794 points- Susanne Lothar was born on 15 November 1960 in Hamburg, Germany. She was an actress, known for Funny Games (1997), The White Ribbon (2009) and The Reader (2008). She was married to Ulrich Mühe. She died on 21 July 2012 in Berlin, Germany.794 points
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Karoline Herfurth was born on 22 May 1984 in Berlin, Germany. She is an actress and director, known for Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), Text for You (2016) and Einfach mal was Schönes (2022).794 points- Swedish-born Lena Olin already had a successful career as an actress before she came to Hollywood. She acted at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm and was directed by Ingmar Bergman. She was born in Stockholm, to actors Britta Holmberg and Stig Olin, who appeared in six of Bergman's films. Lena also belongs to the Bergman "family". As a young actress, she played in the great classics of William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. She made her international debut as a movie actress in After the Rehearsal (1984) (aka "After the Rehearsal"), directed by Bergman. In western Europe, she became well-known in the political movie The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) as "Sabina", in a story about the Prague spring (1968). After coming to the US, she played mostly distinguished, exotic temptresses, intelligent women and crude vamps. Bergman had developed Lena's artistic gift to play different human emotions and express them in a subtle way. Sydney Pollack, director of Out of Africa (1985), rewrote the screenplay for Havana (1990) especially for her. This explains why this film recalls associations with the classic Casablanca (1942), starring Ingrid Bergman, also from Sweden. Olin received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Enemies, A Love Story (1989). She went on to have a choice role in Chocolat (2000), which received a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. She made a move to the smaller screen and played the role for one season as the deliciously evil "Irina Derevko", the mother to Jennifer Garner's "Sydney Bristow" in the series Alias (2001). Olin received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.794 points
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Amy Lou Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy, to American parents, Kathryn (Hicken) and Richard Kent Adams, a U.S. serviceman who was stationed at Caserma Ederle in Italy at the time. She was raised in a Mormon family of seven children in Castle Rock, Colorado, and has English, as well as smaller amounts of Danish, Swiss-German, and Norwegian, ancestry.
Adams sang in the school choir at Douglas County High School and was an apprentice dancer at a local dance company, with the ambition of becoming a ballerina. However, she worked as a greeter at The Gap and as a Hooters hostess to support herself before finding work as a dancer at Boulder's Dinner Theatre and Country Dinner Playhouse in such productions as "Brigadoon" and "A Chorus Line". It was there that she was spotted by a Minneapolis dinner-theater director who asked her to move to Chanhassen, Minnesota for more regional dinner theatre work.
Nursing a pulled muscle that kept her from dancing, she was free to audition for a part in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), which was filming nearby in Minnesota. During the filming, Kirstie Alley encouraged her to move to Los Angeles, where she soon won a part in the Fox television version of the film, Cruel Intentions (1999), in the part played in the film by Sarah Michelle Gellar, "Kathryn Merteuil". Although three episodes were filmed, the troubled series never aired. Instead, parts of the episodes were cobbled together and released as the direct-to-video Cruel Intentions 2 (2000). After more failed television spots, she landed a major role in Catch Me If You Can (2002), playing opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. But this did not provide the break-through she might have hoped for, with no work being offered for about a year. She eventually returned to television, and joined the short-lived series, Dr. Vegas (2004).
Her role in the low-budget independent film Junebug (2005) (which was shot in 21 days) got her real attention, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress as well as other awards. The following year, her ability to look like a wide-eyed Disney animated heroine helped her to be chosen from about 300 actresses auditioning for the role of "Giselle" in the animated/live-action feature film, Enchanted (2007), which would prove to be her major break-through role. Her vivacious yet innocent portrayal allowed her to use her singing and dancing talents. Her performance garnered a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Adams next appeared in the major production, Charlie Wilson's War (2007), and went on to act in the independent film, Sunshine Cleaning (2008), which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Her role as "Sister James" in Doubt (2008) brought her a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award, and a British Academy Film award. She appeared as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and as a post-9/11 hot line counselor, aspiring writer, amateur cook and blogger in Julie & Julia (2009). In the early 2010s, she starred with Jason Segel in The Muppets (2011), with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012), and alongside Clint Eastwood and Justin Timberlake in Trouble with the Curve (2012). She played reporter Lois Lane in Man of Steel (2013) and con artist Sydney Prosser in American Hustle (2013), before portraying real-life artist Margaret Keane in Tim Burton's biopic Big Eyes (2014).
In 2016, she reprised her role as Lane in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and headlined Denis Villeneuve's science fiction drama Arrival (2016) and Tom Ford's dark thriller Nocturnal Animals (2016). In 2018, she received another Oscar nomination, her sixth, for starring as Lynne Cheney in the biographical drama Vice (2018), opposite Christian Bale as Dick Cheney.788 points- Actress
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Viola Davis is a critically revered actress of film, television, and theater and has won rave reviews for her multitude of substantial and intriguingly diverse roles. Audiences across the United States and internationally have admired her for her work- including her celebrated, Oscar-nominated performances in The Help (2011), Doubt (2008), and her Oscar winning performance in Fences (2016). In 2015, Davis won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for her work in ABC's How To Get Away With Murder, making her the first black woman in history to take home the award. In addition to acting, Viola currently produces alongside her husband and producing partner, Julius Tennon, through their JuVee Productions banner. Together they have produced award-garnering productions across theater, television, and film.788 points- Actress
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This stunning and resourceful actress has been primarily a film player thus far. Only recently has she been opening herself up more to doing television (the series Gemini Division (2008), which she executive-produced), and animated voice-overs. Dawson's powerhouse talent stands out the most in edgy, urban filming that dates back to 1995 when she was only sixteen.
A rags-to-riches article entitled "Rosario Dawson: From Tenement to Tinseltown" probably says it all. Rosario was born on May 9, 1979 in New York City. Her mother, Isabel Celeste, of Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban descent, is a singer, and her stepfather, who raised her, Greg Dawson, of Irish descent, is a construction laborer. Her parents, who married when both were teenagers, eventually divorced. Rosario and her younger brother, Clay Dawson, had it hard while growing up, and were cared for by family members, most of whom were poverty-stricken, and some of whom were HIV-positive.
Her career actually started as a child when she made a minor showing on the children's show, Sesame Street (1969). As the story goes, she was "discovered" as an adolescent on her front porch step by two photographers. One of them, Harmony Korine, was an aspiring screenwriter who thought the inexperienced sixteen-year-old was ideal for the controversial cult film Kids (1995), in which she would portray a sexually active adolescent. It took time for Rosario's film career to kick in after that, but by the late 1990s, she had nabbed several independent films. Since then, she has moved into main-stream hits (and misses) and has surprised viewers with her earthy, provocative, uninhibited approach to her roles.
Reflecting New York's tougher, tawdrier side as assorted streetwalkers, homeless mothers, drug addicts, etc., her film highlights have included Light It Up (1999), Edward Burns' Sidewalks of New York (2001), Spike Lee's 25th Hour (2002) and Shattered Glass (2003). For Oliver Stone, she portrayed the duped bride of Colin Farrell's famed B.C. Macedonian warrior, Alexander (2004) (as in "...the Great"), which featured a notoriously violent-tinged nude/sex scene.
Expanding her horizons beyond film, she has always expressed interest in singing. She hooked up with Prince for the re-release of his 1980s hit "1999" and appeared in The Chemical Brothers' video for the song "Out of Control" from the album "Surrender". She is also featured on the Outkast track, "She Lives in My Lap". On stage, she co-starred as Julia in a revival of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" at the Public Theater's "Shakespeare in the Park" and appeared in "The Vagina Monologues".
She lucked into and got to show off her singing chops in the film adaptation of the hit New York musical Rent (2005), when Daphne Rubin-Vega, the original Mimi, became pregnant and was unable to reprise her exotic dancer role. Rosario also appeared as a prostitute in the adaptation of the graphic novel Sin City (2005). Of late, she has turned to producing. One of those, Descent (2007), had her playing a college coed who is brutally attacked and raped by a fellow student. Her more popular ventures have thus far included the role of Valerie Brown in the live-action version of the comic strip Josie and the Pussycats (2001), the Will Smith starrer Men in Black II (2002), Eagle Eye (2008) with Shia LaBeouf and Seven Pounds (2008), again with Smith, in which she offered one of her more tender-hearted performances as a woman with a potentially fatal heart condition.
More recent millennium films opposite some of Hollywood's top leading movie men include the tense actioneer Unstoppable (2010) with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine; the comedy/fantasy Zookeeper (2011) opposite Dalekmania (1995); romantic dramedy 10 Years (2011) with Channing Tatum; crime drama Fire with Fire (2012) with Bruce Willis; romantic comedy Top Five (2014) with Chris Rock; and action adventure Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) with Woody Harrelson. She has also top-lined independent films with her own feisty characters such as the thriller Unforgettable (2017) and the title role in the dramedy Krystal (2017).
Focusing also on TV projects, Rosario has graced such action series/mini-series as Daredevil (2015), Iron Fist (2017) and The Defenders (2017), as well as the comedy Jane the Virgin (2014) and animated cartoon series The Last Kids on Earth (2019).
Off-camera, the still-single Dawson is highly active in political, social and environmental causes and has been involved with such organizations/charities/campaigns as the Lower East Side Girls Club, Global Cool, the O.N.E. Campaign, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Control Arms, International Rescue Committee, Voto Latino (which she founded), Conservation International, Doctors Without Borders, National Geographic Society, The Nature Conservancy and Save the Children. In October 2008, she lent her voice to the RESPECT! Campaign, a movement aimed at preventing domestic violence.784 points- Actress
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Spencer is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, which she claims is the proverbial buckle of the Bible belt. She's the sixth of seven siblings and holds a BS in Liberal Arts from Auburn University. A "closet" lover of acting, this practical Alabamian knew that she'd someday work in the film industry, but never dreamed it would be in front of the camera. In 1995, acclaimed director Joel Schumacher changed all that by giving her a small part opposite Sandra Bullock in the hit film A Time to Kill, and Spencer was on her way. In 1996, she teamed up with Bullock again in Bullock's directorial debut of Making Sandwiches, a short film that premiered at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.
Spencer made her stage debut in Los Angeles and originated the role of "LaSonia" (pronounced lasagna) in famed writer/director Del Shore's, The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife, starring opposite veteran actors Beth Grant, Dale Dickey and David Steen (2003). The play garnered Spencer and her fellow cast mates critical acclaim and a bevy of awards. Since then, Spencer has continued to see success as an actor in both film and television, working alongside Hollywood's elite. In February 2009, she was lauded by Los Angeles Times publication: The Envelope, for her brief but memorable performance in the Will Smith drama Seven Pounds.784 points- Actress
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Marisa Tomei was born on December 4, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York, to Patricia "Addie" (Bianchi), a teacher of English, and Gary Tomei, a lawyer, both of Italian descent. Marisa has a brother, actor Adam Tomei. As a child, Marisa's mother frequently corrected her speech as to eliminate her heavy Brooklyn accent. As a teen, Marisa attended Edward R. Murrow High School and graduated in the class of 1982. She was one year into her college education at Boston University when she dropped out for a co-starring role on the CBS daytime drama As the World Turns (1956). Her role on that show paved the way for her entrance into film: in 1984, she made her film debut with a bit part in The Flamingo Kid (1984). Three years later, Marisa became known for her role as Maggie Lawton, Lisa Bonet's college roommate, on the sitcom A Different World (1987).
Her real breakthrough came in 1992, when she co-starred as Joe Pesci's hilariously foul-mouthed, scene-stealing girlfriend in My Cousin Vinny (1992), a performance that won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Later that year, she turned up briefly as a snippy Mabel Normand in director Richard Attenborough's biopic Chaplin (1992), and was soon given her first starring role in Untamed Heart (1993). A subsequent starring role -- and attempted makeover into Audrey Hepburn -- in the romantic comedy Only You (1994) proved only moderately successful.
Marisa's other 1994 role as Michael Keaton's hugely pregnant wife in The Paper (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. Fortunately for Tomei, she was able to rebound the following year with a solid performance as a troubled single mother in Nick Cassavetes' Unhook the Stars (1996) which earned her a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She turned in a similarly strong work in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), and in 1998 did some of her best work in years as the sexually liberated, unhinged cousin of Natasha Lyonne's Vivian Abramowitz in Tamara Jenkins' Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). Marisa co-starred with Mel Gibson in the hugely successful romantic comedy What Women Want (2000) and during the 2002 movie award season, she proved her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar win was no fluke when she received her second nomination in the same category for the critically acclaimed dark drama, In the Bedroom (2001). She also made a guest appearance on the animated TV phenomenon The Simpsons (1989) as Sara Sloane, a movie star who falls in love with Ned Flanders. In 2006, she went on to do 4 episodes for Rescue Me (2004). She played Angie, the ex-wife of Tommy Calvin (Denis Leary)'s brother Johnny (Dean Winters). At age 42, Marisa took on a provocative role in legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet's melodramatic picture Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), in which she appeared nude in love scenes with costars Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Marisa then took on another provocative role as a stripper in the highly acclaimed film The Wrestler (2008) opposite Mickey Rourke. Her great performance earned her many awards from numerous film societies for Best Supporting Actress, a third Academy Award nomination, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. Many critics heralded this performance as a standout in her career.783 points- Actress
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Evan Rachel Wood was born September 7, 1987, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her father, Ira David Wood III, is a theatre actor, writer and director, and her mother, Sara Wood, is an actress and acting coach. She has two older brothers--Dana Wood, a musician, and Ira David Wood IV, who has also acted. Evan and her brothers sometimes performed at Theatre In The Park in Raleigh, which her father founded and where he serves as executive director.
At the age of five she screen-tested against Kirsten Dunst for the lead role in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) after a long auditioning process. She moved to Los Angeles with her mom and brother Ira in 1996 and has had success ever since, appearing in a TV series, TV movies and feature films. She has appeared in Practical Magic (1998), starred in the comedy S1m0ne (2002) as Al Pacino's daughter, and followed that with Thirteen (2003), with Holly Hunter. Her breakout role as Tracy in "Thirteen" garnered her a Golden Globes nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture: Drama and for a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. At the time of this SAG nomination, she was the youngest actress to be nominated in the Leading Role category. She received a Golden Globe and Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie" for her portrayal of Veda Pierce in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011).
She also earned acclaim for her powerful performance as Stephanie, Mickey Rourke's estranged daughter, in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler (2008).783 points- Actress
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Rebecca Hall was born in London, England, the daughter of Peter Hall, a stage director and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Maria Ewing, an opera singer. Her father was English. Her mother, who is American, is of Dutch and African-American origin. Her parents separated when she was still young, and they divorced in 1990. She has a half-brother, Edward Hall, who is a theatre director, and four other half-siblings, including theatre designer Lucy Hall, veteran TV drama producer Christopher Hall, and Jennifer Caron Hall, a writer and painter.776 points- Actress
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- Music Department
Trine Dyrholm was born on 15 April 1972 in Odense, Denmark. She is an actress and director, known for Queen of Hearts (2019), Love Is All You Need (2012) and In a Better World (2010).768 points- Actress
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Alison Pill was most recently seen in HELLO TOMORROW! for Apple TV+. She previously starred in the CBS All Access series, STAR TREK: PICARD, Alex Garland's FX miniseries, DEVS, and the Amazon series, THEM. Pill's other television work includes Ryan Murphy's AMERICAN HORROR STORY: CULT, the ABC drama THE FAMILY, the acclaimed Aaron Sorkin HBO series THE NEWSROOM, the HBO drama IN TREATMENT, THE BOOK OF DANIEL, and LIFE WITH JUDY GARLAND: ME AND MY SHADOWS.
Alison's film credits include ALL MY PUNY SORROWS, which premiered at TIFF in 2021 and the Oscar nominated biopic, VICE, written and directed by Adam McKay, opposite Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Steve Carrell. Pill's other film credits include MISS SLOANE, HAIL CAESAR!, SNOWPIERCER, GOON, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, MILK, DAN IN REAL LIFE, DEAR WENDY, and PIECES OF APRIL. Next up for Alison is Michael Shannon's ERIC LARUE.
Alison starred on Broadway in the Tony nominated production of THREE TALL WOMEN, written by Edward Albee, directed by Joe Mantello, and opposite Glenda Jackson and Laurie Metcalf. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE and for a Lucille Lortel Award for ON THE MOUNTAIN. She won The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble in the U.S. premiere of THE DISTANCE FROM HERE.767 points- Actress
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Saffron Burrows, known for her work in critically acclaimed films, this fall reprises her role in the hit Netflix show YOU, season 3. Burrows previously starred in the Golden Globe winning Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle. In 2019 Burrows directed the short films: Michael & Indigo, starring Jason Isaacs & Richard Wilson. On stage Burrows starred in award-winning playwright Tom Dugan's one-woman drama Jackie Unveiled at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The searing drama is set against two of Jackie's most seminal life moments, examining the deeply personal struggles of a woman who seemed to have it all. Burrows' film credits include Henry Mason's Love Lies Bleeding; Noah Pritzker's Quitters; Bill Guttentag's Knife Fight; Jonas Åkerlund's Small Apartments; Jonas Pate's Shrink; Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job; Amy Redford's The Guitar; Peter Howitt's Dangerous Parking; Hal Hartley's Fay Grim; Mike Binder's Reign Over Me; Wolfgang Petersen's Troy; Raoul Ruiz's Klimt; Gerardo Herero's El Misterio Galíndez; Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1; Michael Apted's Enigma; Mike Figgis' Timecode, and his film adaptation of the classic play, Miss Julie, in the lead role; Pat O'Connor's Circle of Friends; and Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father. On the small screen, Burrows recurred on the ABC drama Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., CBS' comedy The Crazy Ones, NBC's drama series My Own Worst Enemy, as well as the award-winning series Boston Legal, earning her two cast SAG nominations. For the BBC, she starred opposite Albert Finney and Julie Christie in the production of Dennis Potter's Karaoke. In Los Angeles, Burrows starred in Melissa James Gibson's This for the Kirk Douglas Theater. She played Janey Morris in The Earthly Paradise for the Almeida Theatre, London; and in Neil LaBute's Some Girls(s) on the West End stage. Burrows' theater work includes Jeanette Winterson's The PowerBook for the Royal National Theatre. Burrows' theater debut was for the Bush Theatre, London, in the play Two Lips, Indifferent Red directed by Vicky Featherstone.764 points- Actress
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Diane Kruger was born Diane Heidkrüger in Algermissen, near Hildesheim, Germany, to Maria-Theresa, a bank employee, and Hans-Heinrich Heidkrüger, a computer specialist. She studied ballet with the Royal Ballet in London before an injury ended her career. She returned to Germany and became a top fashion model. She later pursued acting and relocated to Paris at the suggestion of filmmaker Luc Besson (The Fifth Element (1997)). She married French actor Guillaume Canet (The Beach (2000)) in 2001.755 points- Actress
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Martina Gedeck was born in Munich. After spending a year in the US, she studied drama at the Berlin University of the Arts. Martina's film career began while she was still at drama school. Her filmography covers practically all genres of film.
Gedeck has won a total of 23 major cinema and TV awards. She was nominated as Europe's best actress on her role in "Mostly Martha". The film was later remade with Catherine Zeta-Jones playing her role.
Her films were twice selected as Germany's entry to the Oscars. In 2007, "The Lives of Others" with her in the lead role won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2009 she again had the title role in Germany's Oscar contender "The Baader Meinhof Complex", also nominated for the Golden Globes.
Martina Gedeck resides in Berlin, Germany.751 points- Actress
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Isabelle Yasmine Adjani was born in Gennevilliers, Hauts-de-Seine, a suburb of Paris, to Emma Augusta "Gusti" (Schweinberger) and Mohammed Adjani. Her father was a Kabyle Algerian, from Iferhounène, and her mother was a Bavarian German. She grew up speaking German fluently. After winning a school recitation contest, she began acting in amateur theater by the age of twelve. At the age of 14, she starred in her first motion picture, Le Petit Bougnat (1970). Adjani has appeared in 30 films since 1970. She holds the record for most César Award for Best Actress (5), which she won for Possession (1981), One Deadly Summer (1983) (aka "One Deadly Summer"), Camille Claudel (1988), Queen Margot (1994) (aka "Queen Margot") and Skirt Day (2008) (aka "Skirt Day"). She was also given a double Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award in 1981. She also received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. She performs in French, English, Italian and German. Adjani was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 2010.750 points- Actress
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Hiam Abbass also Hiyam Abbas, is a Palestinian actress and film director. Abbass was born in Nazareth, Israel, to a Muslim Arab family. She was raised in the village of Deir Hanna. Since the late 1980s, she has lived in Paris and holds French citizenship. During the filming of the Steven Spielberg film Munich (2005), Abbass lived in a hotel with the Palestinian Arab and Israeli actors for three months. During that time, they had many discussions that "helped both sides grow closer." In an interview in 2006, Abbass said, "I still remember how difficult it was for the Arab actors to manhandle the Israeli actors in the first scene where the Israeli national team is taken hostage."750 points- Actress
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- Writer
Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim. In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". Other theatre credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe", Miranda in "The Tempest" and Rose in "The Blind Giant is Dancing", both for the Belvoir Street Theatre Company. In other television roles, Blanchett starred as Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), as Janie Morris in G.P. (1989) and in ABC's popular series Police Rescue (1994). She made her feature film debut in Paradise Road (1997).
Cate married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. She had met him a year earlier on a movie set, and they didn't like each other at first. He thought she was aloof, and she thought he was arrogant, but then they connected over a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later he proposed marriage and they quickly married before she went off to England to play her breakthrough role in films: the title character in Elizabeth (1998) for which she won numerous awards for her performance, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for the role but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a particularly busy year, with starring roles in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001) and playing Elf Queen Galadriel in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. She also gave birth to her first child, son Dashiell, in 2001. In 2004, she gave birth to her second son Roman.
Also, in 2004, she played actress Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for playing a teacher having an affair with an underage student in Notes on a Scandal (2006). In 2007, she returned to the role that made her a star in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). It earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She was nominated for another Oscar that same year as Best Supporting Actress for playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). In 2008, she gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius. She and her husband became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, choosing to spend more time in Australia raising their three sons. She also purchased a multi-million dollar home in Sydney, Australia and named it Bulwarra and made extensive renovations to it. Because of her life in Australia, her film work became sporadic, until Woody Allen cast her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), which won her the Academy Award as Best Actress. She ended her job as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, while her husband continued there for two more years before he too resigned.
In 2015, she adopted her daughter Edith in her father's homeland of the United States. That same year, she and her husband sold their multi-million dollar home in Australia at a profit and moved to America. Reasons varied from her wanting to work more in America to wanting to familiarize herself with her late father's American heritage. She played the title role of Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife in a lesbian affair with a younger woman, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While most actresses might slow down in their forties, Blanchett did the opposite by stretching her boundaries even further, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then making her Broadway debut in 2017 in "The Present", which is her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's play "Platonov" for which she earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2017, she was selected for the highest honor in her birth country: the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).750 points- Actress
- Producer
The dark and classically beautiful British actress and social activist Julia (Karin) Ormond was born on January 4, 1965, in Surrey, into England, the second of five children. Born of privilege as the daughter of a well-to-do laboratory technician, her parents divorced when she was young. Julia attended Guildford High School and Cranleigh, a private school, where she showed interest in theatre at that time appearing in a couple of their musicals.
Julia's grandparents were artists, and she initially intended to be one herself but, after one year of art school, renewed her dedication to acting and transferred to Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where she graduated in 1988.
Appearing in the play "Wuthering Heights" as Catherine, she met and eventually married her Heathcliff (actor Rory Edwards) in real life. In 1989 she won the London Drama Critic's Award for her performance in "Faith, Hope and Charity" as "best newcomer." Julia also made an immediate impression on TV with her debuting role as a young drug addict in the series Traffik (1989)
She earned star-making attention in the TV-movie Young Catherine (1991), in which she portrayed Catherine the Great (also featuring husband Edwards). She then portrayed wife Nadya in the TV movie Stalin (1992) starring Robert Duvall in the title role. She made the jump into feature films scoring a top-billed debut opposite Ralph Fiennes in The Baby of Mâcon (1993), a drama about a woman giving an "immaculate birth." She followed this this with lead or second lead roles in such films as the European biopic Nostradamus (1994); the romantic drama Captives (1994) co-starring Tim Roth; and the period war drama Legends of the Fall (1994) as the object of affection for both Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn. It was around the time of this career rise (1994) that her marriage ended.
With Hollywood now taking a firm notice, Julia was given the fetching role of Queen Guinevere alongside Sean Connery's King Arthur and Richard Gere's Lancelot in First Knight (1995) and, more importantly, was entrusted with Audrey Hepburn's title role in the revival of Sabrina (1995), her radiant presence nearly stealing the picture away from handsome co-stars Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear.
Strangely, Julia's major rise led her in a different direction. From there she instead went on to grace a number of independents and foreign features. She played the title role in the Danish/German/Swedish co-production Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997) as a woman who gets involved with a strange murder mystery; the Russian period drama The Barber of Siberia (1998) as a lovely American who gets dangerously involved with a young Russian cadet; and involved herself in another messy affair with Vince Vaughn in the indie drama The Prime Gig (2000). On stage, she appeared in David Hare's "My Zinc Bed," for which she received a 2001 Olivier Award nomination for "Best Actress."
Into the millennium, Julia found herself busy film-wise with the political drama Resistance (2003), cult filmmaker David Lynch's thoroughly offbeat Inland Empire (2006), I Know Who Killed Me (2007), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Music Never Stopped (2011), Albatross (2011), My Week with Marilyn (2011) (as Vivien Leigh), Chained (2012), Ladies in Black (2018) and Son of the South (2020). On TV she appeared in the mini-series Beach Girls (2005), and had recurring roles on CSI: NY (2004), Nurse Jackie (2009), Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001), Mad Men (2007), Gold Digger (2019), plus a series starring role as one of Witches of East End (2013). She also co-starred in the short-lived series Incorporated (2016).
In 1999, she married a second time to political activist Jon Rubin. They had one daughter, Sophie, before their divorce. On a political front, Julia has been involved fighting human trafficking since the mid-1990s. In 2005, she was appointed United Nations Goodwill Ambassador with a focus on anti-human-trafficking initiatives and awareness.750 points- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Taraji Penda Henson is an American actress and singer. She studied acting at Howard University and began her Hollywood career in guest roles on several television shows before making her breakthrough in Baby Boy (2001). She played a prostitute in Hustle & Flow (2005), for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture nomination; and a single mother of a disabled child in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), for which she received Academy Award, SAG Award and Critics Choice Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress. In 2010, she appeared in the action comedy Date Night, and co-starred in the remake of The Karate Kid.750 points- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
One of the pre-eminent divas of post-war German cinema, Hannelore Elsner (born 'Elstner') was the consummate actress: a gifted and versatile performer with a penchant for intense roles, often as emancipated, strong-willed women. A Bavarian engineer's daughter (her father died of tuberculosis when she was eight), 'Hanni' first took acting classes in Munich where she also debuted on stage at the Kammerspiele and the Kleine Komödie. She appeared on screen from 1959, initially in teenage melodramas and 'Paukerfilms', later featuring as a regular guest star on TV in procedural crime dramas like Isar 12 (1961) and Stahlnetz (1958) . From the late 60's, Elsner alternated 'sexy roles' (such as her native American maiden in Christoph Kolumbus oder Die Entdeckung Amerikas (1969) ) with more demanding fare. Under the direction of such prominent film makers as Wolfgang Staudte, Edgar Reitz and Alf Brustellin, she proved her diverse range, headlining, respectively, in the satirical caper comedy Die Herren mit der weissen Weste (1970), the period biopic Der Schneider von Ulm (1978) and the hard-luck drama Der Sturz (1979). Among many other notable big screen credits were the romantic drama Der grüne Vogel (1980) (directed by István Szabó) and the delightful Otto Sander farce Wer spinnt denn da, Herr Doktor? (1982). Elsner's powerful tour-de-force acting showcase Die Unberührbare (2000) won her the first of two German film awards as Best Actress, as well as a Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival. A patrician beauty well into middle age, she captured a large fan base on the small screen as star of Lady Cop (1994), a role which developed from two previous guest spots as a Chief Inspector in the long-running police series Tatort (1970).
She was married and divorced twice. Her subsequent life partner (from 1999) was Günter Blamberger, a professor of German philology. Her memoirs, entitled "Im Überschwang - Aus meinem Leben", appeared in 2011. Hannelore Elsner died after a long battle with cancer on April 21 2019 at the age of 76.748 points- Birgit Minichmayr was born on 3 April 1977 in Linz, Upper Austria, Austria. She is an actress, known for Downfall (2004), The White Ribbon (2009) and Everyone Else (2009). She is married to Hannes Minichmayr. They have two children.748 points
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Maria Heiskanen was born on 21 August 1970 in Finland. She is an actress, known for Everlasting Moments (2008), Il capitano (1991) and Täysin työkykyinen (2003).740 points- Actress
- Director
- Soundtrack
Ghita Nørby was born on 11 January 1935 in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is an actress and director, known for Hamsun (1996), Freud Leaving Home (1991) and Nøgle hus spejl (2015). She was previously married to Svend Skipper, Jørgen Reenberg, Dario Campeotto, Henrik Rosing Wiehe and Mogens Garth-Grüner.740 points- Actress
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Keira Christina Knightley was born March 26, 1985 in the South West Greater London suburb of Richmond. She is the daughter of actor Will Knightley and actress turned playwright Sharman Macdonald. An older brother, Caleb Knightley, was born in 1979. Her father is English, while her Scottish-born mother is of Scottish and Welsh origin. Brought up immersed in the acting profession from both sides - writing and performing - it is little wonder that the young Keira asked for her own agent at the age of three. She was granted one at the age of six and performed in her first TV role as "Little Girl" in Royal Celebration (1993), aged seven.
It was discovered at an early age that Keira had severe difficulties in reading and writing. She was not officially dyslexic as she never sat the formal tests required of the British Dyslexia Association. Instead, she worked incredibly hard, encouraged by her family, until the problem had been overcome by her early teens. Her first multi-scene performance came in A Village Affair (1995), an adaptation of the lesbian love story by Joanna Trollope. This was followed by small parts in the British crime series The Bill (1984), an exiled German princess in The Treasure Seekers (1996) and a much more substantial role as the young "Judith Dunbar" in Giles Foster's adaptation of Rosamunde Pilcher's novel Coming Home (1998), alongside Peter O'Toole, Penelope Keith and Joanna Lumley. The first time Keira's name was mentioned around the world was when it was revealed (in a plot twist kept secret by director George Lucas) that she played Natalie Portman's decoy "Padme" to Portman's "Amidala" in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). It was several years before agreement was reached over which scenes featured Keira as the queen and which featured Natalie!
Keira had no formal training as an actress and did it out of pure enjoyment. She went to an ordinary council-run school in nearby Teddington and had no idea what she wanted to do when she left. By now, she was beginning to receive far more substantial roles and was starting to turn work down as one project and her schoolwork was enough to contend with. She reappeared on British television in 1999 as "Rose Fleming" in Alan Bleasdale's faithful reworking of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1999), and traveled to Romania to film her first title role in Walt Disney's Princess of Thieves (2001) in which she played Robin Hood's daughter, Gwyn. Keira's first serious boyfriend was her Princess of Thieves (2001) co-star Del Synnott, and they later co-starred in Peter Hewitt's 'work of fart' Thunderpants (2002). Nick Hamm's dark thriller The Hole (2001) kept her busy during 2000, and featured her first nude scene (15 at the time, the film was not released until she was 16 years old). In the summer of 2001, while Keira studied and sat her final school exams (she received six A's), she filmed a movie about an Asian girl's (Parminder Nagra) love for football and the prejudices she has to overcome regarding both her culture and her religion). Bend It Like Beckham (2002) was a smash hit in football-mad Britain but it had to wait until another of Keira's films propelled it to the top end of the US box office. Bend It Like Beckham (2002) cost just £3.5m to make, and nearly £1m of that came from the British Lottery. It took £11m in the UK and has since gone on to score more than US$76m worldwide.
Meanwhile, Keira had started A-levels at Esher College, studying Classics, English Literature and Political History, but continued to take acting roles which she thought would widen her experience as an actress. The story of a drug-addicted waitress and her friendship with the young son of a drug-addict, Pure (2002), occupied Keira from January to March 2002. Also at this time, Keira's first attempt at Shakespeare was filmed. She played "Helena" in a modern interpretation of a scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" entitled The Seasons Alter (2002). This was commissioned by the environmental organization "Futerra", of which Keira's mother is patron. Keira received no fee for this performance or for another short film, New Year's Eve (2002), by award-winning director Col Spector. But it was a chance encounter with producer Andy Harries at the London premiere of Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) which forced Keira to leave her studies and pursue acting full-time. The meeting lead to an audition for the role of "Larisa Feodorovna Guishar" - the classic heroine of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago (2002), played famously in the David Lean movie by Julie Christie. This was to be a big-budget TV movie with a screenplay written by Andrew Davies. Keira won the part and the mini-series was filmed throughout the Spring of 2002 in Slovakia, co-starring Sam Neill and Hans Matheson as "Yuri Zhivago". Keira rounded off 2002 with a few scenes in the first movie to be directed by Blackadder and Vicar of Dibley writer Richard Curtis. Called Love Actually (2003), Keira played "Juliet", a newlywed whose husband's Best Man is secretly besotted with her. A movie filmed after Love Actually (2003) but released before it was to make the world sit up and take notice of this beautiful fresh-faced young actress with a cute British accent. It was a movie which Keira very nearly missed out on, altogether. Auditions were held in London for a new blockbuster movie called Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), but heavy traffic in the city forced Keira to be tagged on to the end of the day's auditions list. It helped - she got the part. Filming took place in Los Angeles and the Caribbean from October 2002 to March 2003 and was released to massive box office success and almost universal acclaim in the July of that year.
Meanwhile, a small British film called Bend It Like Beckham (2002) had sneaked onto a North American release slate and was hardly setting the box office alight. But Keira's dominance in "Pirates" had set tongues wagging and questions being asked about the actress playing "Elizabeth Swann". Almost too late, "Bend It"'s distributors realized one of its two stars was the same girl whose name was on everyone's lips due to "Pirates", and took the unusual step of re-releasing "Bend It" to 1,000 screens across the US, catapulting it from no. 26 back up to no. 12. "Pirates", meanwhile, was fighting off all contenders at the top spot, and stayed in the Top 3 for an incredible 21 weeks. It was perhaps no surprise, then, that Keira was on producer Jerry Bruckheimer's wanted list for the part of "Guinevere" in a planned accurate telling of the legend of "King Arthur". Filming took place in Ireland and Wales from June to November 2003. In July, Keira had become the celebrity face of British jeweller and luxury goods retailer, Asprey. At a photoshoot for the company on Long Island New York in August, Keira met and fell in love with Northern Irish model Jamie Dornan. King Arthur (2004) was released in July 2004 to lukewarm reviews. It seems audiences wanted the legend after all, and not necessarily the truth. Keira became the breakout star and 'one to watch in 2004' throughout the world's media at the end of 2003.
Keira's 2004 started off in Scotland and Canada filming John Maybury's time-travelling thriller The Jacket (2005) with Oscar-winner Adrien Brody. A planned movie of Deborah Moggach's novel, "Tulip Fever", about forbidden love in 17th Century Amsterdam, was canceled in February after the British government suddenly closed tax loopholes which allowed filmmakers to claw back a large proportion of their expenditure. Due to star Keira and Jude Law in the main roles, the film remains mothballed. Instead, Keira spent her time wisely, visiting Ethiopia on behalf of the "Comic Relief" charity, and spending summer at various grandiose locations around the UK filming what promises to be a faithful adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel Pride & Prejudice (2005), alongside Matthew Macfadyen as "Mr. Darcy", and with Donald Sutherland and Judi Dench in supporting roles. In October 2004, Keira received her first major accolade, the Hollywood Film Award for Best Breakthrough Actor - Female, and readers of Empire Magazine voted her the Sexiet Movie Star Ever. The remainder of 2004 saw Keira once again trying a completely new genre, this time the part-fact, part-fiction life story of model turned bounty hunter Domino (2005). 2005 started with the premiere of The Jacket (2005) at the Sundance Film Festival, with the US premiere in LA on February 28th. Much of the year was then spent in the Caribbean filming both sequels to Pirates Of The Caribbean. Keira's first major presenting role came in a late-night bed-in comedy clip show for Comic Relief with presenter Johnny Vaughan. In late July, promotions started for the September release of Pride & Prejudice (2005), with British fans annoyed to learn that the US version would end with a post-marriage kiss, but the European version would not. Nevertheless, when the movie opened in September on both sides of the Atlantic, Keira received her greatest praise thus far in her career, amid much talk of awards. It spent three weeks at No. 1 in the UK box office.
Domino (2005) opened well in October, overshadowed by the death of Domino Harvey earlier in the year. Keira received Variety's Personality Of The Year Award in November, topped the following month by her first Golden Globe nomination, for Pride & Prejudice (2005). KeiraWeb.com exclusively announced that Keira would play Helene Joncour in an adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's novella Silk (2007). Pride & Prejudice (2005) garnered six BAFTA nominations at the start of 2006, but not Best Actress for Keira, a fact which paled soon after by the announcement she had received her first Academy Award nomination, the third youngest Best Actress Oscar hopeful. A controversial nude Vanity Fair cover of Keira and Scarlett Johansson kept the press busy up till the Oscars, with Reese Witherspoon taking home the gold man in the Best Actress category, although Keira's Vera Wang dress got more media attention. Keira spent early summer in Europe filming Silk (2007) opposite Michael Pitt, and the rest of the summer in the UK filming Atonement (2007), in which she plays Cecilia Tallis, and promoting the new Pirates movie (her Ellen Degeneres interview became one of the year's Top 10 'viral downloads'). Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) broke many box office records when it opens worldwide in July, becoming the third biggest movie ever by early September. Keira sued British newspaper The Daily Mail in early 2007 after her image in a bikini accompanied an article about a woman who blamed slim celebrities for the death of her daughter from anorexia. The case was settled and Keira matched the settlement damages and donated the total amount to an eating disorder charity. Keira filmed a movie about the life of Dylan Thomas, The Edge Of Love (2008) with a screenplay written by her mother Sharman Macdonald. Her co-star Lindsay Lohan pulled out just a week before filming began, and was replaced by Sienna Miller.
What was announced to be Keira's final Pirates movie in the franchise, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End (2007), opened strongly in June, rising to all-time fifth biggest movie by July. Atonement (2007) opened the Venice Film Festival in August, and opened worldwide in September, again to superb reviews for Keira. Meanwhile, Silk (2007) opened in September on very few screens and disappeared without a trace. Keira spent the rest of the year filming The Duchess (2008), the life story of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, based on Amanda Foreman's award-winning biography of the distant relation of Princess Diana. The year saw more accolades and poll-topping for Keira than ever before, including Women's Beauty Icon 2007 and gracing the covers of all the top-selling magazines. She won Best Actress for Atonement (2007) at the Variety Club Of Great Britain Showbiz Awards, and ended the year with her second Golden Globe nomination. Christmas Day saw - or rather heard - Keira on British TV screens in a new Robbie The Reindeer animated adventure, with DVD proceeds going to Comic Relief. At the start of 2008, Keira received her first BAFTA nomination - Best Actress for Atonement, and the movie wins Best Film: Drama at the Golden Globes. Seven Academy Award nominations for Atonement soon follow. Keira wins Best Actress for her role as Cecilia Tallis at the Empire Film Awards. In May, Keira's first Shakespearean role is announced, when she is confirmed to play Cordelia in a big-screen version of King Lear, alongside Naomi Watts and Gwyneth Paltrow, with Sir Anthony Hopkins as the titular monarch. After two years of rumours, it is confirmed that Keira is on the shortlist to play Eliza Doolittle in a new adaptation of My Fair Lady. The Edge Of Love opens the Edinburgh Film Festival on June 18th, and opens on limited release in the UK and US. A huge round of promotions for The Duchess occurs throughout the summer, with cast and crew trying to play down the marketers' decision to draw parallels between the duchess and Princess Diana. Keira attends the UK and US premieres and Toronto Film Festival within the first week of September. The Duchess opens strongly on both sides of the Atlantic. Two more movies were confirmed for Keira during September - a tale of adultery called Last Night (2010), and a biopic of author F Scott Fitzgerald entitled The Beautiful and the Damned.
Keira spent October on the streets of New York City filming Last Night alongside Sam Worthington and Guillaume Canet. Keira helped to promote the sixtieth anniversary of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights, by contributing to a series of short films produced to mark the occasion. In January 2009 it was announced Keira had signed to play a reclusive actress in an adaptation of Ken Bruen's novel London Boulevard (2010), co-starring Colin Farrell. Keira continues her close ties with the Comic Relief charity by helping to launch their British icons T-shirts campaign. In the same week King Lear was revealed to have been shelved, it was announced that Keira would instead star alongside her Pride & Prejudice co-star Carey Mulligan in an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go (2010). A new short film emerges in March, recorded in the January of 2008 in which Keira plays a Fairy! The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers (2009) was written by Keira's boyfriend Rupert Friend and actor Tom Mison. It went to be shown at the London Film Festival in October and won Best Comedy Short at the New Hampshire Film Festival. Keira continued to put her celebrity to good use in 2009 with a TV commercial for WomensAid highlighting domestic abuse against women. Unfortunately, UK censors refused to allow its broadcast and it can only be viewed on YouTube. May and June saw Keira filming Never Let Me Go (2010) and London Boulevard (2010) back-to-back. In October, a new direction for Keira's career emerged, when it was announced she would appear on the London stage in her West End debut role as Jennifer, in a reworking of Moliere's The Misanthrope, starring Damian Lewis and Tara Fitzgerald. More than $2m of ticket sales followed in the first four days, before even rehearsals had begun! The play ran from December to March at London's Comedy Theatre.739 points- Actress
- Writer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Tessa Charlotte Rampling was born 5 February 1946 in Sturmer, England, to Isabel Anne (Gurteen), a painter, and Godfrey Lionel Rampling, an Olympic gold medalist, army officer, and colonel, who became a NATO commander. She was educated at Jeanne d'Arc Académie pour Jeunes Filles in Versailles, France and at the exclusive St. Hilda's school in Bushey, England. She was a model before entering films in Richard Lester's The Knack... and How to Get It (1965), followed by roles in Georgy Girl (1966) and Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969). Rampling is best known for her role in Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974), where she played a concentration camp survivor who is reunited with the Nazi guard (Dirk Bogarde) who tortured her throughout her captivity. In 1974, she co-starred with Sean Connery in John Boorman's science fiction adventure Zardoz (1974), with Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), with Woody Allen in his Stardust Memories (1980), and with Paul Newman in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (1982). An actress always willing to take on bold and meaningful roles, Rampling had perhaps the most off-beat one in Nagisa Ôshima's 1986 comedy Max My Love (1986) as Margaret, a woman in love with a chimpanzee. She has also voiced video games, such as The Ring.739 points- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Kate Beckinsale was born on 26 July 1973 in Hounslow, Middlesex, England, and has resided in London for most of her life. Her mother is Judy Loe, who has appeared in a number of British dramas and sitcoms and continues to work as an actress, predominantly in British television productions. Her father was Richard Beckinsale, born in Nottingham, England. He starred in a number of popular British television comedies during the 1970s, most notably the series Rising Damp (1974), Porridge (1974) and The Lovers (1970). He passed away tragically early in 1979 at the age of 31.
Kate attended the private school Godolphin and Latymer School in London for her grade and primary school education. In her teens she twice won the British bookseller W.H. Smith Young Writers' competition - once for three short stories and once for three poems. After a tumultuous adolescence (a bout of anorexia - cured - and a smoking habit which continues to this day), she gradually took up the profession of acting.
Her major acting debut came in a TV film about World War II called One Against the Wind (1991), filmed in Luxembourg during the summer of 1991. It first aired on American television that December. Kate began attending Oxford University's New College in the fall of 1991, majoring in French and Russian literature. She had already decided that she wanted to act, but to broaden her horizons she chose university over drama school. While in her first year at Oxford, Kate received her big break in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1993). Kate worked in three other films while attending Oxford, beginning with a part in the medieval historical drama Royal Deceit (1994), cast as Ethel. The film was shot during the spring of 1993 on location in Denmark, and she filmed her supporting part during New College's Easter break. Later in the summer of that year she played the lead in the contemporary mystery drama Uncovered (1994). Before she went back to school, her third year at university was spent at Oxford's study-abroad program in Paris, France, immersing herself in the French language, Parisian culture and French cigarettes.
A year away from the academic community and living on her own in the French capital caused her to re-evaluate the direction of her life. She faced a choice: continue with school or concentrate on her flourishing acting career. After much thought, she chose the acting career. In the spring of 1994 Kate left Oxford, after finishing three years of study. Kate appeared in the BBC/Thames Television satire Cold Comfort Farm (1995), filmed in London and East Sussex during late summer 1994 and which opened to spectacular reviews in the United States, grossing over $5 million during its American run. It was re-released to U.K. theaters in the spring of 1997.
Acting on the stage consumed the first part of 1995; she toured in England with the Thelma Holts Theatre Company production of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull". After turning down several mediocre scripts "and going nearly berserk with boredom", she waited seven months before another interesting role was offered to her. Her big movie of 1995 was the romance/horror movie Haunted (1995), starring opposite Aidan Quinn and John Gielgud, and filmed in West Sussex. In this film she wanted to play "an object of desire", unlike her past performances where her characters were much less the siren and more the worldly innocent. Kate's first film project of 1996 was the British ITV production of Jane Austen's novel Emma (1996). Her last film of 1996 was the comedy Shooting Fish (1997), filmed at Shepperton Studios in London during early fall. She played the part of Georgie, an altruistic con artist. She had a daughter, Lily, in 1999 with actor Michael Sheen.738 points- 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.738 points- Actress
- Additional Crew
Jennifer Ulrich was born on 18 October 1984 in Berlin, Germany. She is an actress, known for The Wave (2008), Diaz - Don't Clean Up This Blood (2012) and We Are the Night (2010).738 points- Christiane Paul, an Emmy-Award-winning actress known for "In July," "Counterpart," "Parliament," and "FBI International" was born behind the Berlin wall in East Berlin. At the age of 28, she already was a medical doctor, had a little daughter and had starred in more than 20 movies including the national top-sellers "In July" and "Life is all you get." As the only daughter of a surgeon and a anesthetist, she was initially headed for an academic life. Acting caught her when she had already developed a successful modeling career. In order to unfold her full potential she decided to dedicate herself completely to acting. Since she has starred in more than 80 movie and television productions and is one of the most celebrated and sought-after actresses in Germany. She has won a number of awards including the international Emmy Award in 2016 and was nominated for numerous awards including the Germany Academy Award in 2017. Recently she has worked in English and French productions along side J.K. Simmons, Olivia Williams and Olivier Marchall. Christiane is married to an internationally renown physicist since 2017.738 points
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ingeborga Dapkunaite was born on 20 January 1963 in Vilnius, Lithuanian SSR, USSR. She is an actress, known for Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Hannibal Rising (2007).731 points- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Yolande Moreau was born on 27 February 1953 in Brussels, Belgium. She is an actress and director, known for When the Sea Rises (2004), Amélie (2001) and Seraphine (2008).727 points- Actress
Anne Bennent was born on 13 October 1963 in Lausanne, Switzerland. She is an actress, known for Lulu (1980), The Wild Duck (1976) and Princesse Marie (2004).727 points- Actress
- Music Department
- Producer
Isabelle Huppert was born March 16, 1953, in Paris, France, but spent her childhood in Ville d'Avray. Encouraged by her mother Annick Huppert (who was a teacher of English), she followed the Conservatory of Versailles and won an acting prize for her work in Alfred de Musset's "Un caprice". She then studied at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique and followed an illustrious theatrical career, which includes Ivan Turgenev's "A Month in the Country", Euripides' "Medea" (title role) etc. She made her movie debut in Le Prussien (1971) and soon became one of the top actresses of her generation, giving fine performances in important films, like Claude Goretta's The Lacemaker (1977), as a simple-minded girl who falls in love with - and is betrayed by - a student, Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man for Himself (1980), as a prostitute, and Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980), as an upper-class woman who is physically attracted by a young vagabond. She made an inconsequential US debut in Otto Preminger's Rosebud (1975) before playing a brothel madam in Michael Cimino's disastrous Heaven's Gate (1980), but she fared better in Curtis Hanson's The Bedroom Window (1987) (as an adulteress who witnesses an attack). Huppert has an extremely productive collaboration with Claude Chabrol, who cast her in several movies, including Violette (1978), in which she played a woman who murders her parents, and Story of Women (1988), in which she gave an excellent performance as a shameless abortionist, the last woman to be executed in France. More recent good films include Patricia Mazuy's Saint-Cyr (2000) and Michael Haneke's controversial The Piano Teacher (2001), as a sexually repressed piano teacher.726 points- Actress
- Director
- Producer
Born into a family of doctors and educated in China at the Shanghai Film Academy and the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Languages, Joan Chen was discovered by veteran Chinese director Jin Xie while observing a filming with a school group. Her performance in Xiao hua (1979) (A.K.A. "The Little Flower") won China's Best Actress award, and resulted in the Chinese press dubbing her "The Elizabeth Taylor of China" for having achieved top stardom while still in her teen years. She came to the U.S. to attend college in 1981, first at the State University of New York at New Paltz, later at California State University at Northridge. She a succession of small parts in movies and T.V., with her first break coming in 1986 when, in true Hollywood legend, producer Dino De Laurentiis noticed her in the parking lot of Lorimar Studios and cast her in Tai-Pan (1986). The film bombed, but it led to her being cast as the ill-fated Empress in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), which won critical acclaim. This, and her role as enigmatic mill owner Josie Packard in the cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990), are her best-known roles in Europe and North America. However, Hollywood's practice of type-casting East Asians has led to a dearth of major roles for Chen since then, and in recent roles, she has often been cast as a villainess.
After taking a few years off to start a family, Joan returned to the screen in important supporting roles playing women in early middle age, such as the mother of a principle adult character. As a result, her career is flourishing again on both sides of the Pacific. Her two directing efforts were well-received critically, and in a 2008 interview she revealed she planned to direct again but was putting that off until her daughters were grown, since directing took her away from them too much, whereas acting could be done on a part-time basis.722 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Rachel Anne McAdams was born on November 17, 1978 in London, Ontario, Canada, to Sandra Kay (Gale), a nurse, and Lance Frederick McAdams, a truck driver and furniture mover. She is of English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish descent. Rachel became involved with acting as a teenager and by the age of 13 was performing in Shakespearean productions in summer theater camp; she went on to graduate with honors with a BFA degree in Theater from York University. After her debut in an episode of Disney's The Famous Jett Jackson (1998), she co-starred in the Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows (2003), a comedy-drama about the trials and travails of a Shakespearean theater group, and won a Gemini award for her performance in 2003.
Her breakout role as Regina George in the hit comedy Mean Girls (2004) instantly catapulted her onto the short list of Hollywood's hottest young actresses. She followed that film with a star turn opposite Ryan Gosling in the adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks bestseller The Notebook (2004), which was a surprise box office success and became the predominant romantic drama for a new, young generation of moviegoers. After filming, McAdams and Gosling became romantically involved and dated through mid-2007. McAdams next showcased her versatility onscreen with the manic comedy Wedding Crashers (2005), the thriller Red Eye (2005), and the holiday drama The Family Stone (2005).
McAdams then explored the independent film world with Married Life (2007), which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and also starred Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson. Starring roles in the military drama The Lucky Ones (2008), the newspaper thriller State of Play (2009), and the romance The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) followed before she starred opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in Guy Ritchie's international blockbuster Sherlock Holmes (2009). McAdams played the plucky producer of a failing morning TV show in Morning Glory (2010), the materialistic fiancée of Owen Wilson in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), and returned to romantic drama territory with the hit film The Vow (2012) opposite Channing Tatum. The actress also stars with Ben Affleck in Terrence Malick's To the Wonder (2012) and alongside Noomi Rapace in Brian De Palma's thriller Passion (2012).
In 2005, McAdams received ShoWest's "Supporting Actress of the Year" Award as well as the "Breakthrough Actress of the Year" at the Hollywood Film Awards. In 2009, she was awarded with ShoWest's "Female Star of the Year." As of 2011, she has been romantically linked with her Midnight in Paris (2011) co-star Michael Sheen.720 points- Marie-Josée Croze first studied fine arts before opting for the stage at La Veillée-Prospero Theatre workshop in Montreal. In 1993 she got her first movie part in La Florida (1993) and started working for numerous Canadian TV series and movies.
In 2000, with her performance in Denis Villeneuve's Maelstrom (2000) she got national (Jutra and Genie best actress awards) and international recognition, and began shooting with some of the most acclaimed Canadian directors: Atom Egoyan for Ararat (2002) and Denys Arcand for The Barbarian Invasions (2003), for which she got the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003.
After the Cannes award many French directors used her incredible versatility: she played a mysterious and glamorous movie star in Ordo (2004), adapted from Donald E. Westlake's novel, a single mother overwhelmed by her responsibilities in Jean-Pierre Denis' drama La petite Chartreuse (2005), a down-to-earth architect in the romantic comedy The Story of My Life (2004).
Chosen by Steven Spielberg to play the seductive Dutch assassin in Munich (2005), Marie-Josée Croze associated with high profile projects. She played the mother of the young and rebellious peasant from Eugène Le Roy's novel in the historical drama Jacquou le croquant (2007), and Dr. Beck's murdered wife in Tell No One (2006), the French adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel.720 points - Jennifer Anne Ehle is an American actress, the daughter of English actress Rosemary Harris and American author John Ehle. She won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice. For her work on Broadway, she won the 2000 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for The Real Thing, and the 2007 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for The Coast of Utopia.719 points
- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Lake Siegel Bell is an American actress, screenwriter and director. She has starred in various television series, including Boston Legal (2004-2006), Surface (2005-2006), How to Make It in America (2010-2011), Childrens Hospital (2008-2016), and Bless This Mess (2019-2020) and in films including Over Her Dead Body (2008), What Happens in Vegas (2008), It's Complicated (2009), No Strings Attached (2011), Million Dollar Arm (2014), No Escape (2015), Man Up (2015), The Secret Life of Pets (2016), Shot Caller (2017) and Home Again (2017).
She wrote and directed the short film Worst Enemy, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012, followed by her 2013 feature film directing debut In a World..., in which she also starred. In 2017, she directed, wrote, co-produced and starred in I Do... Until I Don't. As of 2021, Bell starred as the voice of Poison Ivy in the HBO Max series Harley Quinn (2019-present), and Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in the Disney+ series What If...? (2021).719 points- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Carmen Elizabeth Ejogo was born in Kensington, London, England, to a Nigerian father and a Scottish mother. Her television career began in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, where she presented the children's series Saturday Disney (1990). Subsequently, she has had an acting career in the United States. She has appeared in Metro (1997) with Eddie Murphy, What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001) with Martin Lawrence, and Love's Labour's Lost (2000) with Kenneth Branagh, among other films, and also presented "The Carmen Ejogo Video Show" - her own video show on BSB's Power Station channel. She starred as Thomas Jefferson's slave concubine in the television drama Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000) as Sally Hemings and also as Sister Anderson in the remake version of the cult classic original film Sparkle (2012).
Ejogo is also a vocalist, having collaborated with several artists in the 1990s. She wrote and sang lead vocals on the song "Candles" by English drum 'n' bass DJ Alex Reece - she appeared in the music video and is listed in the production credits as 'Carmen'. She also sang vocals and duets with British artist Tricky on a song called "Slowly". Aside from "Candles", Ejogo appears on four songs of the Sparkle (2012) original soundtrack album from the movie of the same name, singing lead on "Yes I Do" (as a solo), and co-lead vocals with Jordin Sparks and Tika Sumpter on "Jump", "Hooked on Your Love" and "Something He Can Feel". She is also a member of Mensa International, the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world.719 points- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Frances Louise McDormand was born on June 23, 1957, in Gibson City, Illinois. She was adopted by Canadian-born parents Noreen Eloise (Nickleson), a nurse from Ontario, and Rev. Vernon Weir McDormand, a Disciples of Christ minister from Nova Scotia, who raised her in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. She earned a BA in theater from Bethany College in 1979 and an MFA from Yale University in 1982. Her career after graduation began onstage, and she has retained her association with the theater throughout her career. She soon obtained prominent roles in movies as well, first starring in Blood Simple (1984), in which she worked with filmmaker Joel Coen, whom she married that year. She frequently collaborated with Coen and his brother, Ethan Coen, in their films.
McDormand's skilled and versatile acting has been recognized by both the critics and the Academy, and in addition to many critics' awards, she has been nominated for an Academy Award six times - Supporting in Mississippi Burning (1988), Almost Famous (2000), and North Country (2005), and Lead in Fargo (1996), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and Nomadland (2020), winning the Oscar for the latter three. She also won a Best Picture Oscar as co-producer of "Nomadland." Keenly intelligent and possessed of a sharp wit, McDormand is the antithesis of the Hollywood starlet - rather than making every role about Frances McDormand, she dissolves into the characters she plays. Accordingly, she has expressed some reservations about the iconic recognition she has gained from her touching and amusing portrayal of Police Chief Marge Gunderson, the quintessential Minnesota Scandinavian, in Fargo (1996).
McDormand and Coen adopted a son, Pedro McDormand Coen, who was born in Paraguay, in 1994. They live in New York.719 points- Actress
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Director
Agnes Kittelsen was born on 20 May 1980 in Kristiansand, Norway. She is an actress and assistant director, known for Max Manus: Man of War (2008), Kon-Tiki (2012) and Happy, Happy (2010). She has been married to Lars Winnerbäck since 2016.716 points- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Toni Collette is an Academy Award-nominated Australian actress, best known for her roles in The Sixth Sense (1999) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
Collette was born Toni Collett (she later added an "e") on November 1, 1972, in Blacktown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. She is the first of three children of Judith (Cook), a customer service representative, and Bob Collett, a truck driver. From age six, she was brought up in suburban Sydney. At the age of eleven, she showed her phenomenal acting skills when she faked appendicitis out of boredom and longing for attention; her act was so convincing that doctors had to remove her appendix, even though the test showed nothing was wrong with it. At 16, she left school and enrolled in the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA). At that time, she was a struggling actress, supporting herself by delivering pizzas. After 18 months of studies, she left NIDA for her feature film debut as "Wendy Robinson", opposite Russell Crowe and Anthony Hopkins, in The Efficiency Expert (1991), and earned herself a nomination for Best Supporting Actress from the Australian Film Institute. Collette made her stage debut with the Sydney Theatre Company, as "Sonya" in Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya", a performance that won her a critic's circle award as Best Newcomer. She also appeared in stage productions at the Belvoir Street Theatre, under directorship of Geoffrey Rush. In 1994, she won the Australian Best Actress in a Lead Role for her work in Muriel's Wedding (1994), for which she had to gain 40 pounds in seven weeks. In 1995, Toni Collette came to Hollywood with a supporting role in The Pallbearer (1996), then had a string of supporting roles. Her first lead as "Diana Spencer", an Australian woman who shares the name and birthday of Princess Diana, in the comedy, Diana & Me (1997), was obscured by the real Diana's death, which practically occurred at the same time when the movie was released. Her breakthrough came with the role as "Lynn Sear" in The Sixth Sense (1999), for which she quite rightly won an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Her latest memorable role as "Sheryl", a beaten-down but loving mother, in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), is also a fine ensemble work with Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, and Alan Arkin. Since 2003, Toni Collette has been married to musician Dave Galafassi, with whom she recorded her singing and songwriting debut album, titled "Beautiful Awkward Pictures", in 2006. She co-owns an independent production company in Australia, and also continues her music career as a singer. Toni resides with her husband in Sydney, Australia, and owns a second home in Ireland.714 points- Alexa most recently starred as "Special Agent Gaines" on FBI: MOST WANTED on CBS, alongside Dylan McDermott. She also starred in Amazon's Emmy-award winning drama series, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Her other television work includes Marvel's THE PUNISHER and Frank Darabont's MOB CITY.
Alexa's film work includes supporting roles in DEFIANCE alongside Daniel Craig, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK opposite Vin Diesel and Judi Dench, FEAST OF LOVE opposite Morgan Freeman, THE MIST with Marcia Gay Harden, and CLASH OF THE TITANS opposite Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, and Ralph Fiennes.714 points - Actress
- Writer
Iben Hjejle (22 March 1971) is a Danish actress, notable for starring in the Stephen Frears film High Fidelity (2000). In Denmark, she is perhaps best known for appearing in the Danish television sitcom Langt fra Las Vegas (Far from Las Vegas) and playing the girlfriend of Danish comedian Casper Christensen, her former real life partner. She also plays Christensen's girlfriend in the sitcom Klovn (Clown) and the title role in the TV crime series Dicte.
Hjejle was born in Copenhagen. She has starred in a series of Danish movies, including a Dogme 95 movie, and also in Danish-produced action films such as Old Men in New Cars. She also played the Swedish Queen Sofia Magdalena in SVT's successful period drama production of The Marriage of Gustav III in 2001.
Hjejle also appeared in the 1996 film Portland, Mifune's Last Song in 1999, The Emperor's New Clothes in 2002, and in Dreaming of Julia and Flickering Lights in 2003. For her performance in Mifune's Last Song, she won an Honourable Mention at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival. It was also at the same festival that she was discovered by Stephen Frears, who offered her a part in his film High Fidelity (2000), where she played John Cusack's character's girlfriend Laura. In 2008 he offered her a part in Chéri, in a cameo as Marie Laure. Her involvement was a part of a minor international comeback. Additionally, the same year she worked on Defiance with Daniel Craig and in 2009 she filmed The Eclipse, which received a limited theatrical release in 2010.
Iben Hjejle was a part of the Danish popular television series Anna Pihl until its ending in April 2008, after three seasons. In 2012, she was cast as the lead in the crime-show Dicte The show debuted in early 2013, while reviews were mixed, Hjejle received good reviews for her performance.
She had a part in Lars von Trier's Direktøren for det hele (2006, also known as The Boss of It All).
From 1996-1999, she was married to Emil de Waal. She turned down the role of Éowyn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy because she did not like the idea of being so far from home. In an episode of Langt fra Las Vegas, her character Liva makes a joke about The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.714 points- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Mia is an Australian actress, born and raised in the country's capital, Canberra. She is the daughter of photographers Marzena Wasikowska and John Reid. Her mother is Polish and her father is an Australian of British ancestry. She has an older sister, Jess, and a younger brother, Kai. At age eight, her family moved to Poland for a year.
At age nine, Mia took ballet classes with dreams of becoming a professional ballerina. However, an injury prevented this from happening and she quit at age fourteen. Mia turned to acting, having been excited by European and Australian cinema. She was attending Canberra High School, but left to pursue her career as an actor.
She had just turned 15 when she landed the role of Lilya in Suburban Mayhem (2006). Her breakthrough role came when she was cast as Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010).714 points- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Veerle Baetens studied Musical Theatre at the "Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts" in Brussels. After this she had roles in theatre and then started her TV career for VTM.
In 2005 she won the "John Kraaijkamp Musical Award" for her role in the theatre version of Pippi Longstocking. And in 2008 she won awards for her performance of "Sara" (the Flemish version of the TV show Ugly Betty). After this TV show ended she starred in the movie Loft. Then another big role came as Hannah Maes in the TV show "Code 37" where she played the tough police chief. This show lasted for 3 seasons.
In 2012 she started her own band together with friend Sandrine called "Dallas" and the album "Take it All" came out in 2012. Another album that Veerle was part of was the movie soundtrack of "The Broken Circle Breakdown" where she played the role of Elise, a woman who loses her daughter.
She and her boyfriend Geert have a daughter (2008) and live in Belgium.714 points- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Hannah Dakota Fanning was born on the 23rd of February 1994, in Conyers, Georgia, USA, to Heather Joy (Arrington) and Steven Fanning. Her mother played professional tennis, and her father, now an electronics salesman, played minor league baseball. She is of German, Irish, English, French, and Channel Islander descent. Before her debut into the cinematic world, Dakota did her own acting around her house. She was very active for her age, and often put a blanket under her shirt and pretended to be having a baby, using her younger sister, Elle Fanning, who is also an actress now, as the baby. Dakota went to a playhouse near her home, where the children that attended put on a play every week to show to their parents. But the people running the playhouse noticed that Dakota stood out, and advised her parents to take her to an agency. They believed that she was extremely talented.
The Fanning family were advised to spend six weeks in Los Angeles, a long way from their home in Georgia. But there Dakota managed to get her first work; to star in a national Tide commercial. She was chosen out of many, many other children.
The family then decided to move to Los Angeles permanently, for it looked like Dakota's career was looking very good. After they moved, Dakota signed with a professional agency, and soon won a role in the movie Tomcats (2001). She then went onto a small project called Father Xmas (2001) as Clairee.
But Dakota's big break-through was yet to come. She auditioned for one of the main characters in I Am Sam (2001), and the director and the rest of the crew were amazed by her extraordinary talent. Dakota was cast, and starred in the movie as Lucy Diamond Dawson, alongside major Hollywood stars Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer.
After I Am Sam (2001) her talent was immediately recognized around the world. She went straight onto Trapped (2002) as Abby Jennings, alongside Charlize Theron, then played the younger version of Reese Witherspoon in 2002's Sweet Home Alabama (2002) But Dakota still had two more movies to come in 2002. Firstly she got a huge role in Steven Spielberg's Taken (2002), the mini-TV series, and narrated the ten whole episodes, as well as having a part. This was a little more challenging, as she was playing a troubled alien child, but she managed to do brilliantly. Her last movie for 2002 was the children's movie Hansel & Gretel (2002) as Katie.
2003 was also a brilliant year for Dakota, as she starred in a number of exciting projects. Firstly, it was as Sally Walden in The Cat in the Hat (2003) with Mike Myers, then she played Lorraine "Ray" Schleine, a bratty little girl, in the sweet comedy Uptown Girls (2003) alongside Brittany Murphy. She then voiced preschool Kim in Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time (2003).
In 2004, Dakota appeared in the violent thriller, Man on Fire (2004), alongside Denzel Washington. Her reviews were excellent.
First in 2005 was Nine Lives (2005), as Maria, then the chilling Hide and Seek (2005) alongside Robert De Niro. By now, she was the busiest child actress in Hollywood, with a resume to die for. Her younger sister, (Elle Fanning), had also been discovered a few years earlier.
After Hide and Seek (2005) came War of the Worlds (2005), which was one of her major movies out of everything she'd worked in. Not only did it make her more popular, but she got to play the daughter of A-list Hollywood actor Tom Cruise. They had four very successful premieres; the first in Tokyo, Japan, the second in France, the third in London, England and the fourth in New York, USA. The reviews were outstanding, especially Dakota's. She then voiced Lilo in Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005).713 points- Music Artist
- Producer
- Actress
Jennifer Kate Hudson was born on September 12, 1981 in Chicago, Illinois to Darnell Donerson (née Hudson) & Samuel Simpson. She is an Academy Award-winning actress, Grammy Award-winning recording artist and best-selling author. This bright, beautiful and booming-voiced talent is a perfect example of how NOT winning the title of American Idol (2002) can still be a superstar boon to your career and not the disappointment of a life time.
She earned minor attention as one of the twelve finalists on the third season of the FOX TV series in 2004, but finished an underwhelming sixth runner-up. Hudson grew up singing in gospel choirs, acting in community theater productions, singing on cruise ships and touring for in Disney's "Hercules: The Musical." With no formal musical training, her raw vocal power initially pleased the panel of Idol judges and she, Fantasia Barrino and La Toya London were initially promoted as the show's very own "Dreamgirls" and were expected to be the final three standing at the end of the competition. Surprisingly, all three were midway placed in the bottom group at one point, and Jennifer was cut from the pack. Fantasia eventually won the competition and, seemingly, all the glory and the fame.
Hudson appeared with the "American Idol" summer tour and performed on the road in concerts over the next two years. When it was time to audition for the coveted role of "Effie Melody White" in the long-awaited film version of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls (2006), among Jennifer's competition would be Fantasia herself. This time Jennifer was the winner and earned the right to play the coveted role. Immediately ordered to gain weight for the role, the film was loosely based on the real-life pursuits of The Supremes, with the character of Effie taking on the tragic form of the group's ill-fated co-founder Florence Ballard (1943-1976), but with a far less tragic ending.
Jennifer's performance became the most triumphant musical film debut since Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (1968). Making the role her own, she delivered the same heart-breaking, gut-wrenching one-two punch that made Jennifer Holliday, who originated the role on stage, the toast of the Broadway scene in 1981. It was no easy task to outshine both Beyoncé and Eddie Murphy in one movie, but Jennifer was the movie's heart and soul and easily won over the critics. She went on to win not only the Oscar, Golden Globe, British Film, New York Film Critics and National Board of Review awards for "Best Supporting Actress," she picked up nearly every film critic's award there was to be had!
Hudson's meteoric rise made quite an impact in the world of music with the successful release of both her Sony/Arista Records albums. Her 2008 debut, self-titled record debuted at #2 on the "Billboard Hot 100" and won a Grammy Award for "Best R & B Album, and her sophomore album, "I Remember Me," also debuted at #2 and went on to win three awards at the 2009 NAACP Image Awards including "Best Album." Her third album, 2014's "JHUD," released by RCA, was a highly successful throwback to 70's inspired R&B.
Continuing to distinguish herself on the large screen, Jennifer began things off featured in the film version of Sex and the City (2008) with Sarah Jessica Parker. She then played the concerned daughter of compulsive gambler Forest Whitaker in the drama Winged Creatures (2008); earned a NAACP Image Award nomination for her moving effort in the tender drama The Secret Life of Bees (2008); portrayed Winnie Mandela opposite Terrence Howard's Nelson in the biopic Winnie Mandela (2011); co-starred with Whitaker again and Angela Bassett in the family Christmas drama Black Nativity (2013); co-starred as an amateur singer taken in by talent agent Adam Sandler in the romantic comedy Sandy Wexler (2017); appeared as Grizabella in the film version of the hit musical Cats (2019); and was given the opportunity to play the "Queen of Soul" herself, Aretha Franklin, in the biopic Respect (2021). Back in 2013, she was honored, at such a young stage, with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
On TV, Jennifer has played the recurring roles of Veronica Moore in the musical series Smash (2012) and Michelle White in the dramatic series Empire (2015). She also was given the distinction of playing and singing the role of Motormouth Maybelle in the live TV movie Hairspray Live! (2016).
As for other special live performances over the years, Jennifer was invited to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl XLVIII in Tampa, Florida on February 1, 2009. It would be her first live performance since the October 24, 2008 family tragedy of losing mother Darnell and older brother Jason in a domestic shooting incident. In January of 2013, she was asked to perform at the Obama Presidential Inaugural Ball and in 2019, was invited to sing the nominated song "I'll Fight" from the movie RBG (2018), a documentary chronicling the life and career of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Honored at VH1's Do Something Awards for her charitable work and also the recipient of the Samsung Galaxy Impact Award at Variety's Power of Women luncheon with the Samsung Galaxy Impact Award, Jennifer, along with her sister Julia Hudson, founded The Julian D. King Gift Foundation in 2009, as a catalyst for change in children's health, education and welfare. The Foundation exists to provide stability, support and positive experiences for children of all backgrounds so that they will become productive, confident and happy adults.
Expanding her talents in the arts, Hudson added author to her list of accomplishments in January 2012 with the release her New York Times best-selling memoir, "I Got This: How I Changed My Ways, Found Myself and Lost Everything that Weighed Me Down."713 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Sophie Okonedo is a British actress. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Tatiana Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda (2004).
Okonedo was born within London in 1968. Her parents were Henry Okonedo (1939-2009) and Joan Allman. Her father was British Nigerian employed as a government worker. Her mother was a British Jew employed as a Pilates teacher. Sophie's maternal grandparents were Yiddish-speaking emigrants to the United Kingdom, one from Poland and the other from Russia.
Henry Okonedo abandoned his family around 1973, when Sophie was 5. Joan raised her daughter as a single mother in the Chalkhill Estate, a large council estate within the Wembley Park district of the London Borough of Brent. The Chalkhill Estate consisted of "about 1900 houses and flats" and was located at a short distance from the Wembley Stadium. The Chalkhill Estate was often vandalized by football hooligans during during the 1970s and suffered from high crime rates from the 1970s to the 1990s. The Estate's buildings were eventually demolished in 2000.
Sophie was raised as a practicing Jew, and always had access to books despite her family's relative poverty. She chose to follow acting as a profession, and was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, one of the oldest and most prestigious drama schools in the United Kingdom.
Okonedo made her film debut at 23, in the coming-of-age film "Young Soul Rebels" (1991). The film was a historical fiction work, examining the youth culture of London in the late 1970s, and the interactions between different culture movements: the skinheads, the punks, and the soul-boys. Sophie Okonedo played Tracy, the girlfriend of the main character Chris (Valentine Nonyela).
In 1995, Okonedo gained the role of Moira Levitt in the first season of the prison drama "The Governor" (1995-1996). The series primarily concerned the lives of a prison's staff members. Also in 1995, Okonedo played the role of the Wachati Princess, Ace Ventura's love interest in the comedy film "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls". In the film, the virgin princess of an African tribe has been engaged to a heir from another tribe, but disagrees with the arranged marriage and attempts to seduce pet detective Ace Ventura (Jim Carrey) instead. Ace has recently become a Buddhist monk and has taken an oath of celibacy, but feels tempted by the offer.
From 1996 to 1997, Okonedo played the main role of Kelly Booth in the medical drama series "Staying Alive". In 2000, Okonedo played a main role in the legal drama mini-series "In Defence". While originally planned to be a multi-season television series, the series was cut short due to poor ratings.
In 2000, Okonedo co-stared in the dramatic television film "Never Never". She was nominated for a "Royal Television Society Award for Best Actor - Female", for her role in the film. In 2002, Okonedo played the role of the prostitute Juliette in the social thriller film "Dirty Pretty Things", which depicted the lives of impoverished immigrants in London.
In 2003, Okonedo voiced the role of Alison Cheney in the flash-animated series "Scream of the Shalka", a spin-off of "Doctor Who". In the series, Alison is a barmaid at a Lancashire village who becomes the newest time-traveling companion of the Doctor (played by Richard E. Grant). Alison also befriends the Master (played by Derek Jacobi), an arch-enemy-turned-assistant of the Doctor who is permanently trapped within the time machine known as the Tardis.
In 2004, 36-year-old Okonedo had her breakthrough role as the co-star of the historical drama film "Hotel Rwanda", depicting the Rwandan genocide (1994). Okonedo played the historical figure Tatiana Rusesabagina (1958-), a professional nurse from the Tutsi ethnic group who helped over a 1000 individuals to escape the massacre. Okonedo won a Black Reel Award for Best Actress for her role. She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but the Award for that year was won by rival actress Cate Blanchett (1969-).
In 2005, Okonedo had the role of Sithandra in the science fiction film "Æon Flux". The film was set in the 25th century, within the fictional city-state of Bregna. The characters Æon Flux (played by Charlize Theron) and Sithandra are female assassins, tasked with assassinating Trevor Goodchild, the local head-of-state. But in the process, Æon finds out that the city-state's main rebel-organization is actually a tool for a coup d'état orchestrated by other politicians. And also discovers some dark secrets about the city's past. The film gained a worldwide box office total of 52 million dollars, smaller than its actual budget,
In 2006, Okonedo played the intelligence agent "Mrs. Jones" in the spy film "Stormbreaker", an adaptation of the "Alex Rider" novel series by Anthony Horowitz (1955-). In the film, Mrs. Jones (full name "Tulip Jones" in the novels) is an an agent of the Special Operations Division of MI6, and the de facto second-in-command of MI6. When subordinate agent Ian Rider gets assassinated by enemy agents, Mrs. Jones recruits Ian's nephew and surrogate son Alex Rider as a replacement agent. Blackmailing the boy by threatening to deport his housekeeper and primary caretaker Jack Starbright (played by Alicia Silverstone) if he refuses to serve the agency. The film gained about 24 million dollars at the international box office, receiving only a limited release in the United States.
Also in 2006, Okonedo played the role of Anna in the British comedy-drama film "Scenes of a Sexual Nature", an anthology film depicting seven loosely connected stories, all set in the nature reserve of Hampstead Heath within Greater London. Anna was depicted as a woman suffering from extreme mood swings, which convince her boyfriend to leave her alone in the nature reserve. The depressed Anna is approached by the weirdly-acting stranger Noel (played by Tom Hardy) who attempts to cheer her up and befriend her. Anna is at turns amused and annoyed by Noel, attempts to have sex with him, and then abruptly abandons him due to another sudden change in her mood. The film opened in niche cinemas.
Also in 2006, Okonedo played the role of Susie Carter in the mini-series "Tsunami: The Aftermath", which depicted the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. In the film, Susie is a young mother who is searching for her daughter Martha Carter (Jazmyn Maraso). Martha was swept away by the tsunami, and her whereabouts are unknown for most of the series. Okonedo won an "NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special" for this role, and was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Okonedo's next films were the comedy-drama "Martian Child" (2007), the drama film "The Secret Life of Bees" (2008), and the biographical film "Skin" (2008). The last two films allowed Okonedo to be nominated for several Black Reel Awards, NAACP Image Awards, Satellite Awards, and British Independent Film Award. Despite the critical acclaim for her acting roles, Okonedo never actually won these awards.
In 2010, 42-year-old Okonedo was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire, a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences. The Order was established in 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom (reigned 1910-1936) and counts among its members several actors.
In 2010, Okonedo returned to the Doctor Who franchise, playing another character in the most recent "Doctor Who" television series. She was cast as Elizabeth X (nicknaned "Liz Ten"), a Queen regnant of the United Kingdom in the 29th century. In the series, Elizabeth is immortal, but has limited access to her own memories due to a series of mind-wipes. She was depicted as still alive and reigning in an episode set in the 52nd century, at which point she was over 2300 years old.
Okonedo was limited to television roles for much of the early 2010s, but returned to theatrical films with the post-apocalyptic science fiction film "After Earth" (2013). The film is set in the 31st century, when the planet Earth has long been abandoned by humanity. Most humans live in the colony world Nova Prime, which is protected from alien threats by the Ranger Corps. Okonedo was cast in the role of Faia Raige, wife of the General Cypher Raige (Will Smith), the commanding officer of the Rangers. Early in the film, Faia convinces Cypher to take their son Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) with him in mission, as a bonding experience. Young Kitai's application to become a Ranger has already being rejected due to reckless behavior, Kitai suffers from survivor's guilt for playing a part in his sister's death, and his father sees him as a failure. Faia's request for a bonding experience results in father and son being left stranded on planet Earth, the only two humans alive on the planet. The film was poorly received by critics, but earned about 244 million dollars at the worldwide box office. Becoming the commercially most successful film in Okonedo's entire career at this point.
Okonedo's next film was the political drama "War Book" (2014). The film depicts British civil servants who participate in a war-game, concerning government reactions in a potential nuclear war. In 2016, Okonedo had a major role in the mini-series "The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses", depicting the historical Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), a series of English civil wars involving rival branches of the royal family. Okonedo was cast in the role of Queen consort Margaret of Anjou (1430-1482, terms as Queen 1445-1461, 1470-1471). The historical Margaret was the wife and consort of Henry VI of England (1421-1471, reigned 1422-1461, 1470-1471), the mother of Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales (1453-1471), and the mother-in-law of Anne Neville (1456-1485). Due to Henry's health problems and Edward's underage status, Margaret served as the de facto head of the House of Lancaster and the Lancastrian military faction in early phases of the war. The defeat of her army at the Battle of Tewkesbury (1471) caused the deaths of both her husband and her son, and allowed the rival House of York to dominate the English throne until 1485.
In 2018, Okonedo returned to voice acting. She voiced Kanga the kangaroo of the Hundred Acre Wood in the fantasy film "Christopher Robin", a sequel to the Winnie-the-Pooh novels of Alan Alexander Milne (1882-1956). The film depicts an adult Christopher Robin as a World War II veteran and aging businessman. He thinks that his childhood friends from the Hundred Acre Wood were imaginary, until said friends come searching for him. He has aged, but they have not. The film earned about 198 million dollars at the worldwide box office, becoming the highest-grossing film in Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise.
In 2019, Okonedo played the seer Lady Hatton in the superhero film "Hellboy", the first superhero film of her career. The film earned about 40 million dollars at the worldwide box office, lower than its own budget. The film was criticized for its excessive gore, including an opening scene where King Arthur mutilates the corpse of his enemy Nimue.
Also in 2019, Okonedo was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2010, and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019., for her services in drama. She is living with her only daughter Aoife Okonedo Martin in Muswell Hill, a suburban district of north London. Aoife is employed as a Personal Trainer. At 51, Okonedo continues to work regularly in her chosen field.713 points- Actress
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Valeria Golino is an Italian actress and film director. She is known to English-language audiences for her role in Rain Man, Big Top Pee-wee and the two Hot Shots! films, especially the olive-in-the-belly-button scene. The second child of an Italian germanist and a Greek painter, Valeria Golino grew up in Naples until her parents parted. After three years in Athens with her mother and another three in Naples with her father, she began to work as a model. She left high school after her first movie and didn't study performing arts at all. In 1985 she got the leading role in Little Flames (1985) by Peter Del Monte and the next year won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for Storia d'amore (1986). After some European co-productions (Dernier été à Tanger (1987), The Gold Rimmed Glasses (1987), Three Sisters (1988)) she began to work in Hollywood (Big Top Pee-wee (1988)). She soon gained prominent roles in Rain Man (1988), Hot Shots! (1991) and Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993). Now she works in the US (Clean Slate (1994), An Occasional Hell (1996)), Europe (The King's Whore (1990), Immortal Beloved (1994)) and in Italy. too, especially with young directors (Come due coccodrilli (1994), Le acrobate (1997), L'albero delle pere (1998)). In 1994 she produced and acted in Slaughter of the Cock (1996) by Greek director Andreas Pantzis. Her voice is more appreciated in Hollywood (where she took speech therapy) than in Italy (where she is sometimes dubbed); in "The Slaughter of the Cock" she acts as a deaf and dumb woman. She speaks four languages: Italian, Greek, French and English. Her brother is a musician and their uncle Enzo Golino is a famous journalist.711 points- Actress
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Samantha Morton has established herself as one of the finest actors of her generation, winning Oscar nominations for her turns in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and Jim Sheridan's In America (2002). She has the talent to become one of the major performers in the cinema of this young century.
Samantha Morton was born on May 13, 1977 in Nottingham, England to parents who divorced when she was three years old. Peter and Pamela Morton took other spouses and made Samantha part of a mixed family of 13; she has eight brothers and sisters. She turned to play-acting early in her life, while she was a school-girl.
At 13, she left regular school to train as an actress at the Central Junior Television Workshop, where she learned her craft for three years. It was at the end of her training then that she decided that a life as a professional actress was for her.
She honed her skills in television roles, working her way up from series television to TV-movies and prestigious mini-series, such as Emma (1996) and Jane Eyre (1997). Her first major film role, Under the Skin (1997), won her the Best Actress Award from the Boston Film Critics Society. Woody Allen cast her as Hattie, the "dumb" (unspeaking) lover of Sean Penn's caddish jazz guitarist in Sweet and Lowdown (1999), a beautiful performance in a role that could have flummoxed a less-talented performer. Penn was Oscar-nominated for his performance, but it was Morton's Hattie that was central to the success of the film, Allen's last unqualified success. She provided the moral and narrative center of the film. It was quite a remarkable performance for a 21-year old as she had to do all her acting with her face, having been shorn of her voice. The role of Hattie won Morton a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination.
Ironically, Morton had never seen a Woody Allen movie before. (She grew up watching the TV and listening to the radio.) She agreed to do the film after reading the script (as she says, well-written roles for women are hard to find), and the movie made her a hot commodity in Hollywood after she won the Oscar nomination. (She lost out to Angelina Jolie). Morton was offered many roles, but was very choosy as she was not in acting as a game with a payoff of stardom and money.
She had consolidated her reputation by following up the Allen film with work in indie features that showed that she was not only talented, but quite courageous as a performer. She played a heroin addict in the underrated Jesus' Son (1999) and gave a brilliant performance in Morvern Callar (2002), the story of a Scottish supermarket clerk coping with her boyfriend's suicide.
Steven Spielberg cast her, opposite superstar Tom Cruise, as the clairvoyant in Minority Report (2002), in which she more than held her own opposite Cruise and the special effects. (She took the role as Cruise and Steven Spielberg are favorites of hers). As good as she was, Morton was better served by Irish director Jim Sheridan, Sheridan cast her as a character modeled after his wife in an autobiographical picture more in line with persona and that made better use of her talents. Her performance as the young Irish mother coping with life in New York City in In America (2002) won her numerous critics' awards and another Oscar nod, this time as Best Actress.
At this point, one feels that the odds of her winning the Oscar are even or better. Samantha Morton continues to deliver fine work in provocative films such as Michael Winterbottom's Code 46 (2003), though she is branching out towards the mainstream, taking a role in the remake of that perennial family favorite, Lassie (2005).711 points- Actress
- Producer
- Music Department
A small-town girl born and raised in rural Kalispell, Montana, Michelle Ingrid Williams is the daughter of Carla Ingrid (Swenson), a homemaker, and Larry Richard Williams, a commodity trader and author. Her ancestry is Norwegian, as well as German, British Isles, and other Scandinavian. She was first known as bad girl Jen Lindley in the television series Dawson's Creek (1998). She appeared in the comedy film Dick (1999), which was a parody of the Watergate Scandal along with Kirsten Dunst, as well as Prozac Nation (2001) with Christina Ricci. Since then, Michelle has worked her way into the world of independent films such as The Station Agent (2003), Imaginary Heroes (2004), and The Baxter (2005). But her real success happened in 2005 when she starred in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005) as Alma Beers Del Mar. A woman who realizes her husband is in love with another man. Her talent shown in Brokeback Mountain (2005) landed her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 2011, she received her first lead role Academy Award nomination for Blue Valentine (2010). She followed this in 2012 with a lead role Academy Award nomination for My Week with Marilyn (2011).
Michelle has a daughter, Matilda, with late Australian actor Heath Ledger.711 points- Actress
- Producer
- Casting Department
Catherine Keener is an American actress, Oscar-nominated for her roles in the independent films Being John Malkovich (1999) and Capote (2005). Acclaimed in her community for her quirky roles in independent film and mainstream such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Keener got her start as a casting director in New York City.
Catherine Ann Keener was born in Miami, Florida, and was raised in Hialeah, FL. She is the daughter of Evelyn (Jamiel) and James Keener, who owned an auto shop. She is of Lebanese (mother) and English, Scottish, and German (father) descent. Keener attended Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She began taking acting classes when she was unable to sign up for a photography class. After graduating, Keener managed a McDonalds in New York City before becoming an assistant casting director and soon relocating to Los Angeles.
Not long after, Keener told her superior of her aspirations for acting and she landed a one-worded role as a waitress in About Last Night (1986). Two years later, she landed a role in a film called Survival Quest (1988), where she met her future husband, Dermot Mulroney. After struggling for years in the industry, Keener landed a role in an independent film, opposite the unknown Brad Pitt, in Johnny Suede (1991). Her ascent in independent film began as she starred in Living in Oblivion (1995) and Walking and Talking (1996) before her mainstream break with Being John Malkovich (1999) in 1999, which earned Keener her first Oscar nomination. Since then, Catherine Keener has starred in several critically acclaimed films.711 points- Actress
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Davis, second of three children, was born in Englewood, New Jersey, the daughter of Joan, a librarian (at one time, for the elementary section of Elisabeth Morrow School), and William Davis, an engineer. Davis has described her mother as a "great storyteller" who would take Davis and her siblings to museums or to "something cultural" every Sunday after church. Davis was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey and graduated in 1982 from Tenafly High School. She was a childhood friend of Mira Sorvino, with whom she wrote and acted in backyard plays. She is married to actor Jon Patrick Walker. They have two daughters, Georgia (born August 31, 2002) and Mae (born December 30, 2004).711 points- Actress
- Producer
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Jennifer Jason Leigh was born Jennifer Lee Morrow in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of writer Barbara Turner and actor Vic Morrow. Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother was of Austrian Jewish ancestry. She is the sister of Carrie Ann Morrow and half-sister of actress Mina Badie.
Jennifer's parents divorced when she was two. Jennifer worked in her first film at the age of nine, in a nonspeaking role for the film Death of a Stranger (1973). At 14 she attended summer acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg and later landed a role in the Disney TV movie The Young Runaways (1978). She received her Screen Actors Guild membership for an episode of the TV series Baretta (1975) when she was 16. Jennifer performed in several TV movies and dropped out of Pacific Palisades High School six weeks short of graduation for her major role in the film Eyes of a Stranger (1981). Her first major success came as the female lead in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).
Jennifer was married to writer/director Noah Baumbach from 2005 to 2013, and the two have a son.711 points- Actress
- Producer
Arta Dobroshi was born on 2 October 1980 in Prishtina, Kosovo, Yugoslavia. She is an actress and producer, known for Lorna's Silence (2008), Three Worlds (2012) and Stray (2018).709 points- Actress
- Art Department
- Additional Crew
Juliette Binoche was born in Paris, France, to Monique Yvette Stalens, a director, teacher, and actress, and Jean-Marie Binoche, a sculptor, director, and actor. Her mother was born in Czestochowa, Poland, of French, Walloon Belgian, and Polish descent, while her father is French. Juliette was only 23 when she first attracted the attention of international film critics with The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times film critic with an international following of his books on film and TV reviews, wrote that she was "almost ethereal in her beauty and innocence". That innocence was gone by the time Binoche completed Louis Malle's Damage (1992) (aka "Fatale"). In an interview after the film was released, Binoche said: "Malle was trying direct and wanted something more sophisticated". A year later, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue (1993) was added to her film credits. After a sabbatical from film-making to become a mother in 1994, Binoche was selected as the heroine of France's most expensive ($35 million) movie ever: The Horseman on the Roof (1995). More recently, she has made The English Patient (1996), for which she won an Oscar for 'Best supporting actress' and Chocolat (2000).709 points- Édith Scob was a French stage and screen actress. Though Édith Scob was a major figure in French theater for over half a century and appeared in over a hundred feature film and television productions, she will always be remembered first for her performance as Christiane in Georges Franju's "Les yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face" (1960). It was two years before that Scob, still a student of French and drama at the Sorbonne, had begun appearing onstage, launching a remarkable theatrical career that would include cofounding a theater in the late 1960s with her husband, composer Georges Aperghis. Later she appeared in films by Luis Buñuel, Raúl Ruiz, Jacques Rivette, Andrzej Zutawskiand, Olivier Assayas and Mia Hansen-Løve. Leos Carax cast Édith Scob in "Les amants du Pont-Neuf/The Lovers on the Bridge" (1991) and two decades later, he offered her the role of Céline, the close friend and chauffeur of Denis Lavant's mysterious Oscar in "Holy Motors" (2012).709 points
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- Costume Designer
Charlize Theron was born in Benoni, a city in the greater Johannesburg area, in South Africa, the only child of Gerda Theron (née Maritz) and Charles Theron. She was raised on a farm outside the city. Theron is of Afrikaner (Dutch, with some French Huguenot and German) descent, and Afrikaner military figure Danie Theron was her great-great-uncle.
Theron received an education as a ballet dancer and has danced both the "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker". There was not much work for a young actress or dancer in South Africa, so she soon traveled to Europe and the United States, where she got a job at the Joffrey Ballet in New York. She was also able to work as a photo model. However, an injured knee put a halt to her dancing career.
In 1994, her mother bought her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, and Charlize started visiting all of the agents on Hollywood Boulevard, but without any luck. She went to a bank to cash a check for $500 she received from her mother, and became furious when she learned that the bank would not cash it because it was an out-of-state check. She made a scene and an agent gave her his card, in exchange for learning American English, which she did by watching soap operas on television.
Her first role was in the B-film Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995), a non-speaking part with three seconds of screen time. Her next role was as Helga Svelgen in 2 Days in the Valley (1996), which landed her the role of Tina Powers in That Thing You Do! (1996). Since then, she has starred in movies like The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and The Italian Job (2003). On February 29, 2004, she won her first Academy Award, a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Monster (2003).707 points- Actress
- Additional Crew
One tough cookie who can definitely hold her own next to the boys on film and TV, lovely, dark-haired Rachel Ticotin has stepped up to the plate many times in strong-armed femme roles, playing everything from cops and bodyguards to military corporals.
Born on November 1, 1958, and raised in the Bronx, Rachel is of Puerto Rican, Russian-Jewish descent and learned the fine art of discipline at a young age with ballet training at age 8. She made her first stage appearance at age 10 as a Siamese princess in a production of "The King and I" at NYC's City Center Theatre. At age twelve she joined the Ballet Hispanico of New York and went on to work with such famed choreographers as Alvin Ailey, Geoffrey Holder and Anna Sokolow.
Rachel made her film debut at age 20 in a bit role as a gypsy dancer in the King of the Gypsies (1978) starring Eric Roberts. She gained valuable experience in off-Broadway shows and on the other side of the camera as a production assistant for such films as The Wanderers (1979), Dressed to Kill (1980) and Raging Bull (1980).
Rachel earned her big break after being handed the top female role opposite Paul Newman and Edward Asner in the brutal police film Fort Apache the Bronx (1981). Television became a viable forum with the TV pilot For Love and Honor (1983) as Corporal Grace Pavlik. The pilot introduced her to up-and-coming actor David Caruso. They married later that year. Rachel went on to appear in the short-lived series version of For Love and Honor (1983) without Caruso. Other television projects included assertive roles in Prison Stories: Women on the Inside (1991), Aftershock: Earthquake in New York (1999) and Warden of Red Rock (2001). On the big screen she played tough in Critical Condition (1987), Where the Day Takes You (1992), and Falling Down (1993).
Her best known role is probably the Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi blockbuster Total Recall (1990) in which the athletic Rachel has a memorable fisticuffs scene with Sharon Stone. In 1997, Rachel earned an ALMA award for her role as a prison guard in Con Air (1997). Divorced from Caruso after six years in 1989, she later met actor Peter Strauss on the set of the TV movie Thicker Than Blood: The Larry McLinden Story (1994). They married in 1998. In series drama she joined the cast of Ohara (1987) as a U.S. attorney and played detective in the police drama Crime & Punishment (1993).
A proven talent who is as alluring as she is enduring, Rachel's work has included the popular films Something's Gotta Give (2003) starring Jack Nicholson and Oscar-nominated Diane Keaton, Man on Fire (2004) with Denzel Washington, as well as the recent The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005) and its sequel The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008). She also was part of the critically acclaimed bi-cultural series American Family (2002).
Although gracing such recent films as horror opus The Eye (2008), the romantic crimer The Burning Plain (2008) and the dramatic thriller América (2011), Rachel has focused on TV as of late with guest roles on the revamped "The Outer Limits," as well as "Lost," "Law & Order: LA," "NCIS: Los Angeles," "Homeland," "Grey's Anatomy" and "The Act."707 points- Actress
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As the highest-paid actress in the world in 2015 and 2016, and with her films grossing over $5.5 billion worldwide, Jennifer Lawrence is often cited as the most successful actress of her generation. She is also the first person born in the 1990s to have won an acting Oscar.
Jennifer Shrader Lawrence was born August 15, 1990, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Karen (Koch), who manages a children's camp, and Gary Lawrence, who works in construction. She has two older brothers, Ben and Blaine, and has English, German, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.
Her career began when she traveled to Manhattan at the age of fourteen after dropping out of the 8th grade. After conducting her first cold read, agents told her mother that "it was the best cold read by a 14-year-old they had ever heard," and tried to convince her stage mother that she needed to spend the summer in Manhattan. After leaving the agency, Jennifer was spotted by an agent in the midst of shooting an H&M ad and asked to take her picture. The next day, that agent followed up with her and invited her to the studio for a cold-read audition. Again, the agents were highly impressed and strongly urged her mother to allow her to spend the summer in New York City. As fate would have it, she did and subsequently appeared in commercials such as MTV's "My Super Sweet 16" and played a role in the movie The Devil You Know (2013).
Shortly thereafter, her career forced her and her family to move to Los Angeles, where she was cast in the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007), and in smaller movies such as The Poker House (2008) and The Burning Plain (2008).
Her big break came when she played Ree in Winter's Bone (2010), which landed her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Shortly thereafter, she secured the role of Mystique in franchise reboot X-Men: First Class (2011), which went on to be a hit in Summer 2011. Around this time, Lawrence scored the role of a lifetime when she was cast as Katniss Everdeen in the big-screen adaptation of literary sensation The Hunger Games (2012). The film went on to become one of the highest-grossing movies ever, with over $407 million at the US box office, and instantly propelled Lawrence to the A-list among young actors and actresses. Three Hunger Games sequels were released in each consecutive November: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014), and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015), with Lawrence reprising her role.
In 2012, the romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook (2012) earned her the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Satellite Award, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress, among other accolades, making her the youngest person ever to be nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Actress and the second-youngest Best Actress winner.
She starred in David O. Russell's popular drama-comedy American Hustle (2013), as Roselyn Rosenfield, and teamed with the director again to play inventor Joy Mangano in another family comedy, Joy (2015), for which she earned Oscar nominations for both roles (Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, respectively).707 points- Actress
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Kim Basinger was born December 8, 1953, in Athens, Georgia, the third of five children. Both her parents had been in entertainment, her dad had played big-band jazz, and her mother had performed water ballet in several Esther Williams movies. Kim was introspective, from her father's side. As a schoolgirl, she was very shy. To help her overcome this, her parents had Kim study ballet from an early age. By the time she reached sweet sixteen, the once-shy Kim entered the Athens Junior Miss contest. From there, she went on to win the Junior Miss Georgia title, and traveled to New York to compete in the national Junior Miss pageant. Kim, who had blossomed to a 5' 7" beauty, was offered a contract on the spot with the Ford Modeling Agency. At the age of 20, Kim was a top model commanding $1,000 a day. Throughout the early 1970s, she appeared on dozens of magazine covers and in hundreds of ads, most notably as the Breck girl. Kim took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, performed in various Greenwich Village clubs, and she sang under the stage name Chelsea. Kim moved to Los Angeles in 1976, ready to conquer Hollywood. Kim broke into television doing episodes of such hit series as Charlie's Angels (1976). In 1980, she married Ron Snyder (they divorced in 1989). In movies, she had roles like being a Bond girl in Never Say Never Again (1983) and playing a small-town Texan beauty in Nadine (1987). Her breakout role was as photojournalist Vicki Vale in the blockbuster hit Batman (1989). There was no long-orchestrated campaign on her part to snag this plum role, Kim was a last-minute replacement for Sean Young. This took her to a career high.
With perhaps too much disposable income, Kim headed up an investment group that purchased the entire town of Braselton, in her native Georgia, for $20 million (she would later have to sell it). In 1993, Kim married Alec Baldwin, and in 1995 they had a daughter, Ireland Eliesse. Kim took some time off to stay at home with her child. Kim, who loves animals and is a strict vegetarian, devoted energy to animal rights issues, and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), even posing for some ads. In 1997, Kim gave an Oscar-winning performance in the film noir classic L.A. Confidential (1997). Kim's salary for I Dreamed of Africa (2000) was $5,000,000, putting her firmly in the category of big-name movie star. And no doubt there are still many great things ahead, in the career of cover girl turned Oscar-winning actress Kim Basinger.707 points- Actress
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Known outside her native country as the "Spanish enchantress," Penélope Cruz Sánchez was born in Madrid to Eduardo Cruz, a retailer, and Encarna Sánchez, a hairdresser. As a toddler, she was already a compulsive performer, re-enacting TV commercials for her family's amusement, but she decided to focus her energies on dance. After studying classical ballet for nine years at Spain's National Conservatory, she continued her training under a series of prominent dancers. At 15, however, she heeded her true calling when she bested more than 300 other girls at a talent agency audition. The resulting contract landed her several roles in Spanish TV shows and music videos, which in turn paved the way for a career on the big screen. Cruz made her movie debut in El laberinto griego (1993) (The Greek Labyrinth), then appeared briefly in the Timothy Dalton thriller Framed (1992). Her third film was the Oscar-winning Belle Epoque (1992), in which she played one of four sisters vying for the love of a handsome army deserter. The film also garnered several Goyas, the Spanish equivalent of the Academy Awards. Her resume continued to grow by three or four films each year, and soon Cruz was a leading lady of Spanish cinema. Live Flesh (1997) (Live Flesh) offered her the chance to work with renowned Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar (who would later be her ticket to international fame), and the same year she was the lead actress in the thriller/drama/mystery/sci-fi film Open Your Eyes (1997), a huge hit in Spain that earned eight Goyas (though none for Cruz). Her luck finally changed in 1998, when the movie-industry comedy The Girl of Your Dreams (1998) won her a Best Actress Goya. Cruz made a few more forays into English-language film, but her first big international hit was Almodóvar's All About My Mother (1999), in which she played an unchaste but well-meaning nun. As the film was showered with awards and accolades, Cruz suddenly found herself in demand on both sides of the Atlantic. Her next big project was Woman on Top (2000), an American comedy about a chef with bewitching culinary skills and a severe case of motion sickness. While in the US, she also signed up to star opposite Johnny Depp in the drug-trafficking drama Blow (2001) and opposite Matt Damon in Billy Bob Thornton's All the Pretty Horses (2000). Cruz says she's wary of being typecast as a beautiful young damsel, but it's hard to imagine disguising her wide-eyed charms and generous nature. Fortunately, with Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky (2001) (a remake of Open Your Eyes (1997)) and a John Madden collaboration looming in her future, Damsel Penelope isn't likely to disappear just yet.706 points- Actress
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This remarkable, one-of-a-kind actress has, since the early 1990s, intrigued film and TV audiences with her glowing, yet careworn eccentricity and old world-styled glamour. Very much in demand these days as a character player, Patricia Clarkson nevertheless continues to avoid the temptation of money-making mainstream filming while reaping kudos and acting awards in out-of-the-way projects.
The New Orleans born-and-bred performer with the given name of Patricia Davies Clarkson was born on December 29, 1959, the daughter of Arthur ("Buzz") Clarkson, a school administrator, and Jackie Clarkson, a local city politician and councilwoman. Patricia demonstrated an early interest in acting and managed to appear in a few junior high and high school-level plays while growing up. She took her basic college studies at Louisiana State University, studying speech for two years, before transferring to New York's Fordham University and graduating with honors in theatre arts.
Accepted into the prestigious Yale School of Drama graduate program, she earned her Master of Fine Arts after gracing a wide range of productions including "Electra," "Pericles," "Twelfth Night", "The Lower Depths," "The Misanthrope," "Pacific Overtures" and "La Ronde". From there she took on New York City where she attracted strong East Coast notice in 1986 for her portrayal of Corrina in "The House of Blue Leaves" and in such other plays as "Eastern Standard" (1988) and "Wolf-Man" (1989).
Known for her organic approach to acting, the flaxen-maned actress decided to try out her trademark whiskey voice in Hollywood at age 28, making her movie debut as Mrs. Eliot Ness in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) starring Kevin Costner. The following years she gained attention for playing Samantha Walker in The Dead Pool (1988) where she starred opposite Clint Eastwood's popular "Dirty Harry" character. Playing supportive, wifely types at the onset, she became a strong contender for character stardom by the mid-to-late 1990s, not only on stage but in the independent film arena.
On stage Patricia received impressive notices for her contributions to the plays "Raised in Captivity," "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan," "Three Days of Rain" and, in particular, "The Maiden's Prayer," which nabbed her both Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Award nominations. In 2004, she finally enacted the classic part she seemed born to play, that of Southern belle Blanche DuBois in the Kennedy Center production of "A Streetcar Named Desire". She earned glowing notices.
On camera she was offered roles of marked diversity. From the heavier dramatics of a film like Pharaoh's Army (1995), she could move deftly into light comedy, courtesy of Neil Simon in the TV-movie London Suite (1996). It was, however, her bleak, convulsive portrayal of Greta, a strung-out, heroin-happy German has-been actress, opposite a resurgent Ally Sheedy in the acclaimed art film High Art (1998) that truly put Patricia on the indie map. From this she was handed a silver plate's worth of excitingly offbeat roles. In 2003 alone, Patricia received a special acting prize at the Sundance Film Festival for her superb work in three films: as a somber, grieving artist in The Station Agent (2003), a cold-hearted cancer victim in Pieces of April (2003), and a jokey, get-with-it mom in All the Real Girls (2003). She was nominated for a "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar for the second film mentioned.
On TV Patricia received two Emmys for her recurring guest part as Frances Conroy's free-spirited sister in the acclaimed black comedy series Six Feet Under (2001). She also received the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics awards for her supporting work in the gorgeous, 1950s-styled melodrama Far from Heaven (2002), as a prim and proper Stepford-wife and deceptive friend to Julianne Moore.
No matter the size, such as her extended cameos in The Green Mile (1999), All the Real Girls (2003), Miracle (2004) and Elegy (2008), Patricia manages to make the most of whatever screen time she has, often stealing scenes effortlessly. Working for director/actor Woody Allen in a small but notable role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), he was impressed enough to promote her with a lead in a subsequent film Whatever Works (2009).
More recent work includes leads and supports in the films Vincent in Brixton (2003), Legendary (2010), Friends with Benefits (2011), Learning to Drive (2014), The Bookshop (2017), Delirium (2018), Out of Blue (2018), Almost Love (2019) and as the antagonist Ava Paige in the sci-fi thrillers The Maze Runner (2014), Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015) and Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018). On TV, the never-married Patricia earned a supporting Golden Globe for her fine work in the mini-series Sharp Objects (2018) and had a strong recurring role on the political series House of Cards (2013).706 points- Actress
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Amanda Seyfried was born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Ann (Sander), an occupational therapist, and Jack Seyfried, a pharmacist. She is of German, and some English and Scottish, ancestry. She began modeling when she was eleven, and acted in high school productions as well as taking singing lessons.
More soap work followed as she completed her schooling and had already secured a place at Fordham University when she was offered a role in the Tina Fey-penned teen comedy Mean Girls (2004). She deferred her university education to complete the film. More television work followed, raising her profile across America, while her appearances in Mamma Mia! (2008) and Red Riding Hood (2011) helped establish her international fame.702 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
For decades, British actress and comedienne Dame Julie Walters has served as a sturdy representation of the working class with her passionate, earthy portrayals on England's stage, screen and television. A bona fide talent, her infectious spirit and self-deprecating sense of humor eventually captured the hearts of international audiences. The small and slender actress with the prominent cheekbones has yet to give an uninteresting performance.
She was born Julia Mary Walters on February 22, 1950 in Edgbaston, England, the youngest of three children and only daughter of Mary Bridget (O'Brien), an Irish-born postal clerk from County Mayo, and Thomas Walters, an English-born builder, from Birmingham. Convent schooled in Birmingham, she expressed an early desire to act. However, her iron-willed mother had other ideas and geared her towards a nursing career. Dutifully applying at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, Julie eventually gave up nursing when the pull to be an actress proved too strong.
Studying English and Drama at Manchester Polytechnic, she subsequently joined a theatre company in Liverpool and apprenticed as a stand-up comic. A one-time company member of the Vanload improv troupe, she made her London stage debut in the aptly-titled comedy "Funny Peculiar" in 1975, and went on to develop a successfully bawdy act on the cabaret circuit. While at Manchester, Julie befriended aspiring writer/comedienne Victoria Wood and the twosome appeared together in sketch comedy. A couple of their works, "Talent" and "Nearly a Happy Ending", transferred to television and were accompanied by rave reviews. Eventually, they were handed their own television series, Wood and Walters (1981).
In 1980, Julie scored a huge solo success under the theatre lights when she made her London debut in Willy Russell's "Educating Rita". For her superlative performance, she won both the Variety Critic's and London Critic's Circle Awards as the young hairdresser who vows to up her station in life by enrolling in a university. She conquered film as well when Educating Rita (1983) transferred to the big screen opposite Michael Caine as her Henry Higgins-like college professor, collecting a Golden Globe Award and Oscar nomination. Reuniting with Victoria Wood in 1984, the pair continue to appear together frequently on television, most recently with the award-winning series dinnerladies (1998). On stage, Julie has impressed in a variety of roles ranging from the contemporary ("Fool for Love", "Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune") to the classics ("Macbeth", "The Rose Tattoo" and "All My Sons"), winning the Laurence Olivier Award for the last-mentioned play.
Following her success as Rita, she immediately rolled out a sterling succession of film femmes including her seedy waitress-turned successful brothel-owner in Personal Services (1987); the unsophisticated, small-town wife of Phil Collins in Buster (1988); a boozy, man-chasing mum in Killing Dad or How to Love Your Mother (1989); and Liza Minnelli's abrasive tap student in Stepping Out (1991). Playing a wide variety of ages, she also mustered up a very convincing role as the mother of Joe Orton in the critically-acclaimed Prick Up Your Ears (1987).
Julie capped her career in films as the abrasively stern but encouraging dance teacher in Billy Elliot (2000) which earned her a second Oscar nomination and a healthy helping of quirky character roles, including her charming, charity-driven widow who poses à la natural in Calendar Girls (2003), and the maternal witch-wife Molly Weasley in the J.K. Rowling "Harry Potter" series beginning with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and ending with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011). For her work on film and television, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has honored Julie five times, including four awards in a row (2001-2004).
Married to Grant Roffey since 1997 after a 12-year relationship, the couple tend to a 70-acre organic farm they bought in Sussex. They have one daughter, Maisie Mae Roffey (born 1988). In 1999, Julie was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) at the Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama, and in 2008, was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In 2017, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Other more recent millennium films for Dame Julie include Wah-Wah (2005), Becoming Jane (2007) (as Jane Austen's mother), Mamma Mia! (2008), Paddington (2014), Brooklyn (2015), Paddington 2 (2017), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), Mary Poppins Returns (2018) and The Secret Garden (2020) as Mrs. Medlock.702 points- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Christine Baranski is an American actress from Buffalo, New York. She has had a relatively lengthy career in both film and television. She has been nominated for 15 Emmy Awards, winning once. One of her most popular roles was that of neuroscientist Dr. Beverly Hofstadter in the sitcom " The Big Bang Theory ". She played this role from 2009 to 2019.
Baranski was born to a Polish-American family. Her parents were newspaper editor Lucien Baranski and his wife Virginia Mazurowska. Her grandparents were reportedly Polish theatrical actors. She was raised in the town of Cheektowaga, a suburb of Buffalo. Polish Americans have long been the dominant ethnicity in Cheektowaga.
Baranski received her secondary education at the Villa Maria Academy, a Catholic high school operated by the Felician Sisters. In 1970, she enrolled in the Juilliard School, a private performing arts conservatory located in New York City. She studied drama for four years. She graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
In 1980, Baranski made both her Off-Broadway debut and her Broadway debut. She later received critical acclaim for the leading role of Charlotte in the play "The Real Thing" (1982) by Tom Stoppard. For this role, Baranski won the 1984 "Tony Award Best Featured Actress in a Play".
In 1986, Baranski had a supporting role in the BDSM-themed erotic film "9½ Weeks", loosely based on the novel "Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair" (1978) by Ingeborg Day (1940-2011). The film earned 100 million dollars at the worldwide box office, and became a cult favorite. It was the first popular film in Baranski's career.
In 1990, Baranski had a role in the courtroom drama "Reversal of Fortune". The film was based on the trial of lawyer Claus von Bülow (1926-2019) for the attempted murder of his wife. The film under-performed at the box office, but was nominated for several awards.
In 1993, Baranski played the tyrannical camp counselor Becky Martin-Granger in the black comedy film "Addams Family Values". The film was loosely based on the comic strip "The Addams Family" by Charles Addams (1912-1988). Becky was one of the film's main antagonists, and an opponent for Wednesday Addams (played by Christina Ricci). The film earned about 49 million dollars at the domestic box office, and was well-received critically.
In 1995, Baranski gained a major television role in the sitcom "Cybill" (1995-1998). She played Maryann Thorpe, a wealthy and sharp-tonged woman. Maryann suffered from long-term ennui, motivating her to become more involved in the personal life of her best friend Cybill Sheridan (played by Cybill Shepherd). The series lasted for 4 seasons and a total of 87 episodes. Baranski won critical acclaim for this role. She won the 1995"Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series".
In 1996, Baranski played the supporting role of Katharine Archer in the comedy film "The Birdcage". In the film, Katharine is a former lover of the openly gay Armand Goldman (played by Robin Williams) and the mother of his son Val Goldman (played by Dan Futterman). She agrees to pretend to be Armand's wife in a meeting with Val's prospective in-laws. The film earned about 185 million dollars at the worldwide box office, one of the greatest box office hits in Baranski's career.
In 2000, Baranski played Martha May Whovier in the Christmas film "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". The film was based on the 1957 children's story of the same name by Dr. Seuss (1904-1991). In this adaptation, the Grinch (played by Jim Carrey) has a life-long romantic interest in Martha May, but has trouble expressing his feelings to her. The film earned about 363 million dollars at the worldwide box office, and became the sixth highest-grossing film of 2000.
Also in 2000, Baranki was cast in the major role of producer Marsha Bickner in the short-lived sitcom "Welcome to New York" (2000-2001). The sitcom depicted the inner workings of morning news show. It lasted a single season and a total of 16 episodes. The series was canceled due to low ratings.
In 2002, Baranski was cast as the baker Mrs. Lovett in a revival of the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (1979) by Stephen Sondheim (1930-) and Hugh Wheeler (1912 - 1987). The play features Lovett as the accomplice of the serial killer Sweeney Todd. It is a loose adaptation of the penny dreadful "The String of Pearls" (1846-1847). For this role, Baranski won the 2003 "Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical".
Also in 2002, Baranski played sensationalist reporter Mary Sunshine in the black comedy film "Chicago". The film earned about 307 million dollars at the worldwide box office. At the time t held the record as the highest grossing live-action musical in film history.
In 2003, Baranski was cast in the main role of Annie Brennan in the sitcom "Happy Family" (2003-2004). The sitcom depicted the problems of aging patents who have to deal with the eccentricities of their grown-up children. The series lasted a single season and a total of 22 episodes. Due to low ratings, there were no plans for a second season.
In 2008, Baranski played Tanya Chesham-Leigh in the romantic comedy "Mamma Mia! (film)". It was based on the theatrical musical "Mamma Mia!" (1999) by Catherine Johnson (1957-), and used hit songs by the Swedish pop group ABBA. In the film, Tanya is an old friend of the main character Donna Sheridan-Carmichael (played by Meryl Streep). The film earned about 616 million dollars at the worldwide box office, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 2008. Baranski returned to her role in the sequel "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" (2018), which was also a box office hit.
In 2009, Baranski was cast in the recurring role of Dr. Beverly Hofstadter in the sitcom "The Big Bang Theory". The character is depicted as a brilliant but self-centered scientist, who has a problematic relationship with her son Leonard Hofstadter (played by Johnny Galecki). Baranski appeared in 16 episodes of the series, and her character was popular. For this role, Baranski was nominated four times for the "Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series".
Also in 2009, Baranski was cast in the role of Diane Lockhart in the legal drama "The Good Wife" (2009-2016). Diane was depicted as a senior partner in a law firm, and the mentor of protagonist Alicia Florrick (played by Julianna Margulies). She was one of the series' main characters, and appeared in 156 episodes. The role was critically acclaimed, and Baranski was nominated 6 times for the "Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series".
In 2014, Baranski played Cinderella's Stepmother in the fairy-tale-themed fantasy film "Into the Woods". The film earned about 213 million dollars at the worldwide box office, and was praised by critics. The film reunited Baranski with her colleague Meryl Streep.
In 2017, Baranski returned to the role of Diane Lockhart in the legal drama "The Good Fight" (2017-), a sequel series "The Good Wife". This time Diane is the main character. In the initial episodes, she has lost her savings and is forced to resume her legal career to earn a living. As of 2021, four seasons of the series have been completed and a fifth one is about to begin.
In 2018, Baranski was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Eligible inductees for this hall of fame include theatrical actors, playwrights and other theater practitioners who have had an American theatrical career for at least 25 years, and have at least five credits on major Broadway productions.
As of 2021, Baranski is 69-years-old. She has never retired from acting, and she remains highly popular with both critics and audiences.702 points