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1-7 of 7
- Angela Pleasence was born in Chapeltown, South Yorkshire. She is the daughter of actor Donald Pleasence and his first wife, Miriam Raymond. The surname for both daughter and father has occasionally been credited as "Pleasance".
She remains best known for her performance as Catherine Howard in the 1970 BBC mini-series The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970). Other television credits include: The Barchester Chronicles (1982), Silas Marner (1985) and Midsomer Murders (1997).
She is also noted for her roles in horror films of the 1970s, including From Beyond the Grave (1974), Symptoms (1974) and The Godsend (1980). She made a guest appearance in the parody series Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible (2001), satirizing her earlier performances. - Actor
- Soundtrack
A RADA scholar who was spotted by Laurence Olivier, Bernard Bresslaw got professional security from the "Carry On" films but was typecast (as TV's The Army Game (1957) had done earlier). He was beginning to extend himself through stage work when, in 1993, just before a performance in "The Taming Of The Shrew" in Regent's Park, London, he had a heart attack and died at the age of 59.- According to narrator Gene Galusha, he may not be a crime-solver, but if he retains a fraction of the information he reads each week on The New Detectives: Case Studies in Forensic Science (1996), he may consider a career change. Gene began his announcing career when he graduated from high school and was hired as a summer replacement disc jockey at a local radio station in his hometown of Schenectady, N.Y. Then, while pursuing a philosophy degree at the College of William and Mary, he worked at several radio stations in Tidewater, Va., including one where he shared airtime with a nascent Wolfman Jack.
Gene then moved to New York, where he worked on several soap-opera sets as well as off- and off-off-Broadway stages. He concentrates now on commercials and documentary narration. He has recorded hundreds of commercials for major national advertisers. Among the documentary shows and series he has narrated for PBS, NFL Films, Court TV, National Geographic Explorer, TLC and others, none is more fascinating to him than "The New Detectives". - Writer
- Producer
- Actress
Joanne Rowling was born in Yate, near Bristol, a few miles south of a town called Dursley ("Harry Potter"'s Muggle-family). Her father Peter Rowling was an engineer for Rolls Royce in Bristol at this time. Her mother, Anne, was half-French and half-Scottish. They met on a train as it left King's Cross Station in London. Her sister Diana is about 2 years younger than Joanne. In 1971, Peter Rowling moved his family to the nearby village of Winterbourne (still in the Bristol vicinity). During the family's residence in Winterbourne, Jo and Di Rowling were friends with neighborhood children, Ian and Vikki Potter. In 1974, the Rowling family moved yet again, this time to Tutshill, near the Welsh border-town of Chepstow in the Forest of Dean and across the Severn River from the greater Bristol area. Rowling admits to having been a bit of a daydreamer as a child and began writing stories at the age of six. After leaving Exeter University, where she read French and Classics, she started work as a teacher but daydreamed about becoming a writer. One day, stuck on a delayed train for four hours between Manchester and London, she dreamed up a boy called "Harry Potter". That was in 1990. It took her six years to write the book. In the meantime, she went to teach in Portugal, married a Portuguese television journalist, had her daughter, Jessica, divorced her husband and returned to Britain when Jessica was just three months old. She went to live in Edinburgh to be near her sister, Di. Her sudden penury made her realize that it was "back-against-the-wall time" and she decided to finish her "Harry Potter" book. She sent the manuscript to two agents and one publisher, looking up likely prospects in the library. One of these agents that she picked at random based on the fact that she liked his name, Christopher Little, was immediately captivated by the manuscript and signed her on as his client within three days. During the 1995-1996 time-frame, while hoping to get the manuscript for "Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone" published, Rowling worked as a French teacher in Edinburgh. Several publishers turned down the manuscript before Bloomsbury agreed to purchase it in 1996.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Neil Buchanan is an affable, fast-talking Liverpudlian who left school with 5 0-Levels (including art) after being turned down by Liverpool Art College. He knew little of the ways of television until a short-lived career as a rock star in the mid-seventies collapsed in the inevitable morass of litigation and bad debt. When looking for a job, one advert in particular caught his eye, "Have You Ever Had Breakfast With A Gorilla?" It was advertising for acts on a new TVS Saturday morning children's show and, although he didn't get the part of the presenter, he was offered a spot on the anarchic kids' TV show, No 73, as a caricaturist.
The rest as they say is history; Buchanan has since presented many children's TV programs including No 73, Motormouth (1988), Finders Keepers (1991) and ZZZap! (1993). He then collaborated with Tim Edmunds to invent, present and produce Art Attack (1990), ITV's acclaimed children's art show. In the past five years, few of ITV children's shows have been as consistently successful as "Art Attack" and, as a home grown British show, it is also very popular with parents. Despite increased competition from dedicated children's channels such as Nickelodeon and The Children's Channel, "Art Attack" continues to command a loyal following of around five million viewers each week and is the most popular television program made especially for children! It is popular with TV bodies too and has won various awards from the likes of New York International Film and TV Festival, the Prix Danube, the Prix Jeunesse, The Royal Television Society and BAFTA.
"Art Attack" is currently in its 10th series for the ITV network and there have been three Christmas specials.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
At only 17, Jobson first gained success as front-man with the Scottish punk band, The Skids, who had a string of hits in a 2-year period, from 1979 to 1981, the biggest song being the top-10 hit, "Into the Valley" in 1979. The band was formed by Jobson and his friend, Stuart Adamson, who later formed the band, Big Country. After Adamson departed the band, The Skids commercially declined and disbanded in 1982. Shortly after, Jobson formed the short-lived band, The Armoury Show and, although not a commercial success, were critically-acclaimed by the music press. This was to be Jobson's last foray as a musician as he turned his attention to modeling for a few years and once claimed he was the highest male earner in the industry.
For the past decade, Jobson has been working on SKY-TV in Britain, presenting predominately film shows and the odd music show on VH-1 Britain. However, after the death of his old friend, Stuart Adamson, in December 2001, he reunited The Skids at a tribute gig for Adamson on May 31, 2002 in Glasgow and, needless to say, stole the show. His next project will be in directing films - he is currently working on his first film in this category, 16 Years of Alcohol (2003).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Sam Rockwell was born on November 5, 1968, in San Mateo, California, the only child of two actors, Pete Rockwell and Penny Hess. The family moved to New York when he was two years old, living first in the Bronx and later in Manhattan. When Sam was five years old, his parents separated, at which point he and his father moved to San Francisco, where he subsequently grew up, while summers and other times were spent with his mother in New York.
He made his acting debut when he was ten years old, alongside his mother, and later attended J Eugene McAteer High School in a program called SOTA. While still in high school, he got his first big break when he appeared in the independent film Clownhouse (1989). The plot revolved around three escaped mental patients who dressed up as clowns and terrorized three brothers home alone--Sam played the eldest of the brothers. His next big break was supposed to have come when he was slated to star in a short-lived NBC TV-series called Dream Street (1989), but he was soon fired.
After graduating from high school, Sam returned to New York for good and for two years he had private training at the William Esper Acting Studio. During this period he appeared in a variety of roles, such as the ABC Afterschool Specials (1972): Over the Limit (1990) (TV) and HBO's Lifestories: Families in Crisis (1992): Dead Drunk: The Kevin Tunell Story (Season 1 Episode 7: 15 March 1993); the head thug in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990); and a guest-star turn in an Emmy Award-winning episode of Law & Order (1990), while working a string of regular day jobs and performing in plays.
In 1994, a Miller Ice beer commercial finally enabled him to quit his other jobs to concentrate on his acting career, which culminated in him having five movies out by 1996: Basquiat (1996); The Search for One-eye Jimmy (1994); Glory Daze (1995); Mercy (1995); and Box of Moonlight (1996). It was the latter film that would prove to be his real break-out in the industry. In Tom DiCillo's film, he found himself playing an eccentric named the Kid, a man-child living in a half-built mobile home in the middle of nowhere with a penchant for dressing like Davy Crockett, who manages to bring some much-needed chaos into the life of an electrical engineer played by John Turturro. The movie was not a box-office success, but it managed to generate a great deal of critical acclaim for itself and Sam.
In 1997, he found himself the star of another critically lauded film, Lawn Dogs (1997). Once again, he portrayed a societal outcast as Trent, a working-class man living in a trailer, earning a living mowing lawns inside a wealthy, gated Kentucky community. Trent soon finds himself befriended by 10-year-old Devon (Mischa Barton), and the movie deals with the difficulties in their friendship and the outside world. He also gave strong performances in the quirky independent comedy Safe Men (1998), in which he plays one half of a pretty awful singing duo (the other half being played by Steve Zahn) that gets mistaken for two safecrackers by Jewish gangsters; and the offbeat hitman trainee in Jerry and Tom (1998) against Joe Mantegna.
After a few smaller appearances in films such as Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) and the modern version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999), in which he played Francis Flute, he had larger roles in two of the bigger hit movies to emerge: The Green Mile (1999) and Galaxy Quest (1999), wowing audiences and critics alike with his chameleon-like performances as a crazed killer in the former and a goofy actor in the latter.
More recently, he appeared in another string of mainstream films, most notably as Eric Knox in Charlie's Angels (2000) and as Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), while continuing to perform in smaller independent movies. After more than ten years in the business, Sam has earned his success. In 2018, he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as a troubled police deputy in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).