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| Name | BAFTA Awards |
|---|---|
| Caption | Statue of the BAFTA trophy |
| Description | Excellence in film, television and computer gaming |
| Presenter | British Academy of Film and Television Arts |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Year | 1947 |
| Website | http://www.bafta.org/ |
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.
BAFTA is an independent charity with a mission to "support, develop and promote the art forms of the moving image, by identifying and rewarding excellence, inspiring practitioners and benefiting the public". In addition to high profile awards ceremonies BAFTA runs a year-round programme of educational events including film screenings, tribute evenings and interviews, lectures and debates with high profile industry figures. BAFTA is supported by a membership of around 6500 people from the film, television and video game industries. BAFTA's main office is on Piccadilly in London, but it also has branches in Scotland, in Wales, in New York and in Los Angeles.
These four branches of the Academy initially operated under their own brands (BAFTA Scotland, BAFTA Cymru, BAFTA East Coast and BAFTA LA). In July 2010 however; all branches of the Academy were brought together as one fully affiliated BAFTA.
The Academy's awards are in the form of a theatrical mask designed by American sculptor Mitzi Cunliffe, which was commissioned by the Guild of Television Producers in 1955. It has since become an internationally-recognised symbol of excellence in the art forms of the moving image.
In November 2007 a special tribute programme was shown on ITV in the UK celebrating 60 years of the organisation called Happy Birthday BAFTA.
BAFTA's annual film awards ceremony is known as the British Academy Film Awards, rewarding the best work of any nationality seen on British cinema screens during the preceding year. Since 2008 the ceremony has been held at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden having taken place since 2000 in the flagship Odeon cinema on Leicester Square. The ceremony previously took place in April or May, but from 2002 onwards has taken place in February, in order to precede the Oscars.
In order for a film to be considered for a BAFTA nomination its first public exhibition must be in a cinema and it must have a UK theatrical release in a public UK cinema for no fewer than seven days in the calendar year that corresponds to the upcoming Awards. A film must be feature length and films from all countries are eligible in all categories, with the exception of Outstanding British Film, Outstanding Debut, Short Film and Short Animation which are for British films only.
The 2010 ceremony was held on 21 February, also at the Royal Opera House.
The Major Awards winners in 2010 included:
:The Hurt Locker (Film) :Kathryn Bigelow (Director), for The Hurt Locker :Colin Firth (Leading Actor), for A Single Man :Carey Mulligan (Leading Actress), for An Education :Christoph Waltz (Supporting Actor), for Inglourious Basterds :Mo'Nique (Supporting Actress), for Precious :Mark Boal (Original Screenplay), for The Hurt Locker :Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner (Adapted Screenplay), for Up In The Air :Michael Giacchino (Music), for Up :Pete Docter (Animated Film), for Up
The British Academy Television Awards usually take place in April or May, with craft awards having a separate ceremony slightly later in the year.
The Awards are also often referred to simply as "the BAFTAs" or, to differentiate them from the film awards, sometimes as the "BAFTA Television Awards". They have been awarded annually since 1954. The first ever Awards consisted of six categories. Until 1958, they were awarded by the Guild of Television Producers and Directors. From 1958 onwards, after the Guild had merged with the British Film Academy, the organisation was known as the Society of Film and Television Arts. In 1976, this became the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the name the organisation goes under still as of 2010.
From 1968 until 1997, the BAFTA Film and Television awards were presented in one joint ceremony known simply as the BAFTA Awards, but in order to streamline the ceremonies from 1998 onwards they were split in two. The Television Craft Awards are presented for more technical areas of the industry, such as visual effects, areas of production, or costume design.
The Awards are only open to British programmes — with the exception of the audience-voted Pioneer Award — but any cable, satellite, terrestrial or digital television stations broadcasting in the UK are eligible to submit entries, as are independent production companies who have produced programming for the channels. Individual performances, such as from actors, can either be entered by the performers themselves or by the broadcasters. The programmes being entered must have been broadcast on or between 1 January and 31 December of the year preceding the Awards ceremony (so, between 1 January and 31 December 2009 for the 2010 Awards).
The 2010 British Academy Television Awards took place on 6 June. BAFTA Television Award Winners in 2010
As of 2010, the awards included the following categories: {| |- valign=top |
The 2010 Television Craft Awards took place on 23 May. British Academy Television Craft Awards winners in 2010
The Academy has a long history of recognising and rewarding Children's programming presenting two awards at the 1969 ceremony – The Flame of Knowledge Award for Schools Programmes and the Harlequin Award for Children's Programmes.
As of 2010 the Awards ceremony includes 19 categories across film, television, video games and online content. The 2009 Awards ceremony took place on 29 November at the London Hilton Hotel. BAFTA Children's Awards winners in 2009
Since 2007 the Children's Awards have included a Kids Vote Award voted for by children under 14 and a CBBC Me and My Movie award, a children's film-making initiative to inspire and enable children to make their own films and tell their own stories.
In 2003, the sheer ubiquity of interactive forms of entertainment and the breadth of genres and platforms in video games outgrew the combined ceremony, and the event was split into the BAFTA Video Games Awards and the BAFTA Interactive Awards . By December 2003 however; despite making huge headlines with high profile winners like Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 the interactive division was discontinued and disappeared from BAFTA's publicity material after only two ceremonies.
In 2006, BAFTA announced their decision "to give video games equal status with film and television", and the Academy now positions Video Games as its third pillar of activity in recognition of its importance as an art form of the moving image. The same year the ceremony was held at The Roundhouse by Chalk Farm Road in North London on 5 October and was televised for the first time on 17 October and was aired on the digital channel E4.
The 2010 ceremony was the fourth to be held since the Video Games Awards became a stand-alone event and took place at the London Hilton Park Lane on 19 March. The full ceremony was filmed and streamed live online at the official BAFTA website.
The 2011 ceremony will be held on 16 March.
During the first ten years only one award was given at each event, called the "Britannia Award for Excellence in Film", but since 1999 the number of awards have grown.
In 2009 the Awards were: 'The Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film' (the original award was renamed in 2000 to honour Stanley Kubrick), 'The John Schlesinger Britannia Award for Artistic Excellence in Directing' (added in 2003 in honour of John Schlesinger), the ‘Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year’, the ‘Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year ‘ and the ‘BAFTA in Los Angeles Volvo Humanitarian Award’. With the exception of the Stanley Kubrick and John Schlesinger awards, which are always given, both the number of awards and their titles may vary from year to year.
The 2009 Recipients were:
The 2007 recipients were:
The 2006 recipients were:
Previous recipients of the Britannia Awards have included Tom Cruise, Elizabeth Taylor, Mike Newell, Ronald Neame, Albert Broccoli, Michael Caine, Peter Ustinov, Martin Scorsese, Anthony Hopkins, Dustin Hoffman, John Travolta, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Hugh Grant, Peter Weir, Tom Hanks, Angela Lansbury and Helen Mirren.
BAFTA in Scotland also holds an annual New Talent Awards ceremony focusing on new & emerging Scottish talent in the art forms of the moving image. New Talent Awards Winners in 2010.
BAFTA Awards Category:Cinema of the United Kingdom Category:Television in the United Kingdom Category:Awards established in 1948
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Imgsize | 220px |
|---|---|
| Caption | Rourke at the 2009 premiere of City Island |
| Birth name | Philip Andre Rourke, Jr. |
| Birth date | September 16, 1952 |
| Birth place | Schenectady, New York, U.S. |
| Other names | Sir Eddie Cook |
| Occupation | Actor, professional boxer, screenwriter, music supervisor |
| Years active | Actor (1979–present)Boxer (1991-1994) |
During the 1980s, Rourke starred in Diner, Rumble Fish, and the erotic drama 9½ Weeks, and received critical praise for his work in Barfly and Angel Heart. In 1991, Rourke, who had trained as a boxer in his early years, left acting and became a professional boxer for a period. He had supporting roles in several later films, including The Rainmaker, Buffalo '66, The Pledge, Get Carter, Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Man on Fire.
In 2005, Rourke made his comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role in Sin City, for which he won awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Irish Film and Television Awards and the Online Film Critics Society. In the 2008 film The Wrestler, Rourke portrayed a past-his-prime wrestler, and garnered a 2009 Golden Globe award, a BAFTA award, and a nomination for an Academy Award.
In 2010, he appeared in the blockbusters Iron Man 2 and The Expendables.
During his teenage years, Rourke focused his attention mainly on sports. He took up self-defense training at the Boys Club of Miami. It was there that he learned boxing skills and decided on an amateur career. At age 12, Rourke won his first boxing match as a 118-pound bantamweight (53.5 kg), fighting some of his early matches under the name Andre Rourke. He continued his boxing training at the famed 5th Street Gym, in Miami Beach, Florida, where Muhammad Ali began his career. In 1969, Rourke, then weighing 140 lbs. (63.5 kg), sparred with former World Welterweight Champion Luis Rodríguez. Rodriguez was the number one-rated middleweight boxer in the world and was training for his match with world champion Conor Scullion. Rourke boxed Scullion and claims to have received a concussion in this sparring match.
At the 1971 Florida Golden Gloves, Rourke suffered another concussion in a boxing match. After being told by doctors to take a year off and rest, Rourke temporarily retired from the ring. From 1964 to 1972, he compiled an amateur record of 20 wins, 17 by knockout and 6 defeats, which included wins over Ron Carter, Charles Gathers and Joe Riles.
Rourke's acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult to work with him. Parker stated that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do." In a documentary on the special edition DVD of Tombstone, actor Michael Biehn, who plays the part of Johnny Ringo, mentions that his role was first offered to Rourke.
During his boxing career, Rourke suffered a number of injuries, including a broken nose, toe, ribs, a split tongue, and a compressed cheekbone. He also suffered from short term memory loss.
His trainer during most of his boxing career was Hells Angels member Chuck Zito. Freddie Roach also trained Rourke for seven fights. Rourke's entrance song into the ring was often Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine."
Boxing promoters said that Rourke was too old to succeed against top-level fighters. Indeed, Rourke himself admits that entering the ring was a sort of personal test: "(I) just wanted to give it a shot, test myself that way physically, while I still had time." In 1995, Rourke retired from boxing and returned to acting.
Rourke's boxing career resulted in a notable physical change in the 1990s, as his face needed reconstructive surgery in order to mend his injuries. His face was later called, "appallingly disfigured." In 2009, the actor told The Daily Mail that he had gone to "the wrong guy" for his surgery, and that his plastic surgeon had left his features "a mess."
|- | style="text-align:center;" colspan="8"|Boxing record |- | style="text-align:center;" colspan="8"|6 Wins (4 knockouts, 2 decisions), 0 Losses, 2 Draws |- style="text-align:center; background:#e3e3e3;" | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Res. | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Record | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Opponent | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Type | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Rd., Time | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Date | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Location | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Notes |- style="text-align:center;" |style="background: #dae2f1"|Draw || 6-0-2 || align=left| Andrew Banks |Majority draw || 4 || September 8, 1994 || align=left| Davie, Florida, USA |align=left| |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 6-0-1 || align=left| Thomas McCoy |TKO || 3 || November 20, 1993 || align=left| Hamburg, Germany || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 5-0-1 || align=left| Bubba Stotts |TKO || 3 || July 24, 1993 || align=left| Joplin, Missouri, USA || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 4-0-1 || align=left| Tom Bentley |KO || 1 || March 30, 1993 || align=left| Kansas City, Missouri, USA || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 3-0-1 || align=left| Terry Jesmer |Decision || 4 || December 12, 1992 || align=left| Oviedo, Spain || |- style="text-align:center;" |style="background: #dae2f1"|Draw || 2-0-1 || align=left| Francisco Harris |Majority draw || 4 || April 25, 1992 || align=left| Miami Beach, Florida, USA |align=left| |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 2-0 || align=left| Darrell Miller |KO || 1 , 2:14 || June 23, 1991 || align=left| Tokyo, Japan || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 1-0 || align=left| Steve Powell |Unanimous decision || 4 || May 23, 1991 || align=left| Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA |align=left|
While Rourke was also selected for a significant role in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, his part ended up on the editing room floor. Rourke also played a small part in the film Thursday, in which he plays a crooked cop. He also had a lead role in 1997's Double Team, which co-starred martial arts actor Jean-Claude Van Damme. It was Rourke's first over-the-top action film role, in which he played the lead villain. During that same year, he filmed Another 9½ Weeks, a sequel to 9½ Weeks, which only received limited distribution. He ended the 1990s with the direct-to-video films Out in Fifty, Shades and television movie Shergar, about the kidnapping of Epsom Derby-winning thoroughbred racehorse Shergar. Rourke has expressed his bitterness over that period of his career, stating that he came to consider himself a "has-been" and lived for a time in "a state of shame." Christopher Heard stated that actors/musicians Tupac Shakur, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Brad Pitt have "…animated praise for Rourke and his work." During a roundtable session of Oscar nominated actors held by Newsweek, Brad Pitt cited Rourke as one of his early acting heroes along with Sean Penn and Gary Oldman.
Despite having withdrawn from acting at various points, and having made movies that he now sees as a creative "sell-out" (the action film Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man), Rourke has stated that "…all that I have been through…[has] made me a better, more interesting actor." Rourke's renewed interest in pursuing acting can be seen in his statement that "… my best work is still ahead of me."
Rourke had a role in the movie version of The Informers, playing Peter, an amoral former studio security guard who plots to kidnap a small child.
In 2008, Rourke played the lead in The Wrestler, winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, about washed-up professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson. In regards to first reading the screenplay, he stated that he originally "didn't care for it."
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He also spoke on personal concern and hesitance of being in a movie about wrestling, for he perceived it as being "prearranged and prechoreographed." However, as he trained for the film, he developed an appreciation and respect for what real-life pro wrestlers do to prepare for the ring:
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He trained under former WWE wrestler Afa the Wild Samoan for the part, and has received a British Academy (BAFTA) award, a Golden Globe award, an Independent Spirit Award, and an Oscar nomination as Best Actor. Rourke was pessimistic about his chances to win the Oscar as he had been, in the past, very vocal against Hollywood's establishment. Rourke lost the Oscar to Sean Penn, while Penn did acknowledge Rourke in his acceptance speech.
Rourke has written or co-written six scripts: Homeboy, The Last Ride, Bullet, Killer Moon, Penance and the latest, Pain. Of these, the first three were produced as movies between 1988 and 1996.
In early 2009, Rourke developed a small feud with WWE Superstar Chris Jericho, as part of a storyline. The storyline climaxed at WrestleMania XXV, when Rourke knocked out Jericho with a left hook after Jericho won his match against Jimmy Snuka, Ricky Steamboat, and Roddy Piper, with Ric Flair in their corner.
In 2009, Rourke starred in John Rich's music video for Shuttin' Detroit Down along side of Kris Kristofferson.
In 2009, Rourke voiced protagonist US Navy SEAL Dick Marcinko in the video game Rogue Warrior. The game received very poor reviews from critics.
In 2010, Rourke played the role of the main villain Whiplash in the film Iron Man 2, in an interview with Rip It Up Magazine he revealed that he prepared for the role by visiting Russian jail inmates. He also had a supporting role playing 'Tool' in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables.
In numerous TV and print interviews, he attributes his comeback after fourteen years to weekly meetings with a psychiatrist, "Steve," and to a Catholic priest he identified as "Father Pete."
In addition to his faith and his psychiatric treatment, Rourke has publicly attributed his comeback to his dogs. was a chihuahua-terrier mix.
Rourke gave his dogs credit during his Golden Globe Best Actor acceptance speech January 11, 2009: "I'd like to thank all my dogs. The ones that are here, the ones that aren't here anymore because sometimes when a man's alone, that's all you got is your dog. And they've meant the world to me." The day of the 2009 Golden Globes show, he told Barbara Walters that "I sort of self-destructed and everything came out about fourteen years ago or so ... the wife had left, the career was over, the money was not an ounce. The dogs were there when no one else was there." Asked by Walters if he had considered suicide, he responded:
Despite being identified as "Lowjack" in the transcription above, the dog in the anecdote was apparently Beau Jack, who sired two of Rourke's later pets, Loki and her littermate Chocolate. Beau Jack died in 2002, though Rourke gave him 45 minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Chocolate was the subject of a children's book, Chocolate at the Four Seasons, about his temporary stay with producer Bonnie Timmerman. Chocolate returned to Rourke and died in 2006. He has had as many as seven dogs at one time, back in 2005.
Rourke is also a motorcycle enthusiast and uses motorcycles in some of his films.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Caption | Stewart at Photocall at the Crillon Hotel in Paris, France |
|---|---|
| Birthname | Kristen Jaymes Stewart |
| Birthdate | April 09, 1990 |
| Birthplace | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Yearsactive | 1999–present |
| Website | kristenstewart.com |
| Signature | Kristen Stewart signature.svg90px |
Kristen Jaymes Stewart (born April 9, 1990) is an American actress. She is best known for playing Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga. She has also starred in films such as Panic Room (2002), Zathura (2005), In the Land of Women (2007), The Messengers (2007), Adventureland (2009) and The Runaways (2010). She has won various awards in three consecutive years.
After Panic Rooms success, Stewart was cast in another thriller, Cold Creek Manor, playing the daughter of Dennis Quaid's and Sharon Stone's characters; the film generally failed at the box office. She was again nominated for a Young Artist Award for her performance. The following year, she played the character Maya in Fierce People, directed by Griffin Dunne. After that film, she received the lead role of Jess Solomon in the supernatural thriller film The Messengers.
In 2007, Stewart appeared as teenager Lucy Hardwicke in In the Land of Women, a romantic drama starring Meg Ryan and Adam Brody. The film, as well as Stewart's performance, received mixed reviews. That same year, Stewart appeared in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed adaptation film Into the Wild. For her portrayal of Tracy — a teenage singer who has a crush on young adventurer Christopher McCandless — Stewart received generally positive reviews. Salon.com considered her work a "sturdy, sensitive performance", and the Chicago Tribune noted that she did "vividly well with a sketch of a role." Her performance was not without detractors, however; Variety's critic Dennis Harvey wrote, "It's unclear whether Stewart means to be playing hippie-chick Tracy as vapid, or whether it just comes off that way." After Into the Wild, Stewart had a cameo appearance in Jumper and also appeared in What Just Happened, which was released in October 2008. She also co-stars in The Cake Eaters an independent film that has only been screened at film festivals.
On November 16, 2007, Summit Entertainment announced that Stewart would play Isabella "Bella" Swan in the film Twilight, based on Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire romance novel of the same name. Stewart was on the set of Adventureland when director Catherine Hardwicke visited her for an informal screen test which "captivated" the director. She stars alongside Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen, her character's vampire boyfriend. The film began production in February 2008 and finished filming in May 2008. Twilight was released domestically on November 21, 2008. After the release of Twilight, Kristen Stewart was awarded the MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance for her portrayal as Bella Swan. Stewart reappeared as Bella in the sequel, , and reprised this role in .
Stewart has been nominated and presented with the BAFTA Rising Star award. At the 2010 82nd Annual Academy Awards, Stewart and Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner presented a tribute in honour of the horror movie genre.
In 2009, Stewart starred in The Yellow Handkerchief, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and was released into theaters in 2010 by Samuel Goldwyn Films. She also starred alongside James Gandolfini in Welcome to the Rileys, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010.
Stewart most recently portrayed rock star Joan Jett in The Runaways, a biopic of the titular band from writer-director Floria Sigismondi. Stewart met with Jett over the 2008–2009 New Year to prepare for the role, and ended up prerecording songs in a studio for the film. She received nearly unanimous praise for her performance. Josh Tyler of Cinema Blend pronounced her to be "a modern day James Dean. She gives the kind of performance in The Runaways that hasn’t been seen on screen since his death. The Runaways is her Rebel Without a Cause ... she’s absolutely brilliant as Joan Jett." The Metro Times wrote, "It turns out that Stewart is actually really good at capturing Jett's icy, tough-but-cool girl swagger, adding the needed touches of vulnerability that transform it into a pretty terrific performance... Stewart is a genuine rock star here." Also, A.O. Scott of The New York Times noted "Ms. Stewart, watchful and unassuming, gives the movie its spine and soul."
Stewart will star in a film called K-11 with Jason Mewes. She has also been cast in the role of Mary Lou in an upcoming film adaptation of Jack Kerouac's cult classic novel On the Road. Shooting began in August 2010.
Category:1990 births Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American people of Australian descent Category:American television actors Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Living people
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| Name | Colin Firth |
|---|---|
| Caption | Firth at the 2009 Venice Film Festival |
| Birth name | Colin Andrew Firth |
| Birth date | September 10, 1960 |
| Birth place | Grayshott, Hampshire, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1983–present |
| Spouse | Livia Giuggioli (1997–present) |
Colin Andrew Firth (born 10 September 1960) is an English film, television, and stage actor. Firth first gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaption of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. He subsequently achieved film stardom with the international box office success of Bridget Jones's Diary, Mamma Mia!, A Single Man, and The King's Speech.
It was through the 1995 BBC television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that Firth gained wider renown. The serial was a major international success, and Firth gained heartthrob status because of his role as Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. This performance also made him the object of affection for fictional journalist Bridget Jones (created by Helen Fielding), an interest which carried on into the two novels featuring the Jones character. In the second novel, , the character even meets Firth in Rome. As something of an in-joke, when the novels were adapted for the cinema, Firth was cast as Jones's love interest, Mark Darcy. Continuing this in-joke there was a dog called Mr Darcy in the film St. Trinian's which Firth's character accidentally kills.
Firth had a supporting role in The English Patient (1996) and since then has starred in films such as Fever Pitch (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Relative Values (2000), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), The Importance of Being Earnest (2002), Love Actually (2003), What a Girl Wants (2003), Hope Springs (2003), Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), (2004), Nanny McPhee (2005), Then She Found Me (2007) with Helen Hunt, The Last Legion (2007) with Aishwarya Rai, When Did You Last See Your Father? (2008), the film adaptation of Mamma Mia! (2008), and Easy Virtue, which screened at the Rome Film Festival to excellent reviews. In 2009, he starred in A Christmas Carol, an adaptation of Charles Dickens's novel A Christmas Carol using the performance capture procedure, playing Scrooge's optimistic nephew Fred, alongside Jim Carrey, who played Scrooge.
He has also appeared in several television productions, including Donovan Quick (an updated version of Don Quixote) (1999) and Conspiracy (2001), for which he received an Emmy nomination. Colin Firth's most recent role is in the Toronto International Film Festival debuted film, Genova.
At the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009, Colin Firth was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his role in Tom Ford's A Single Man as a college professor grappling with solitude after his longtime partner dies. Fashion designer Tom Ford made his director's debut with this movie. This role has earned Firth career best reviews and Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA, and BFCA nominations; he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in February 2010.
Firth starred in the 2010 film The King's Speech. At the Toronto Film Festival, the film was met with a standing ovation. The TIFF release of The King's Speech fell on Colin's 50th birthday and was called the "best 50th birthday gift". On 15 December 2010, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in "The King's Speech." He fell under the category of Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama.
Firth will appear in the 2012 adaptation of the John Le Carré novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, directed by Tomas Alfredson, also starring Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman, and Tom Hardy.
He was a guest host of Saturday Night Live in 2004 alongside musical guest Norah Jones.
Colin performed in theatre frequently between 1983 and 2000. He starred in Three Days of Rain as lead character Ned/Walker, as well as The Caretaker, Desire Under the Elms, and Chatsky.
He served as executive producer for the 2007 documentary produced by his wife, Livia Giuggioli, In Prison My Whole Life. The film questions the trial proceedings and evidence used against political activist and former Black Panther member, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on death row for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Daniel Faulkner.
Firth is also a Jury Member for the digital studio Filmaka, a platform for undiscovered filmmakers to show their work to industry professionals. On 2 February 2010, Firth was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in A Single Man. He lost to Jeff Bridges for his performance in Crazy Heart.
On January 13, 2011, he was presented with the 2,429th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Firth has been involved in a campaign to stop the deportation of a group of asylum seekers, because he believed that they might be murdered on their return to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Firth argued that "To me it's just basic civilization to help people. I find this incredibly painful to see how we dismiss the most desperate people in our society. It's easily done. It plays to the tabloids, to the Middle-England xenophobes. It just makes me furious. And all from a government we once had such high hopes for". As a result of the campaign, a Congolese nurse was given a last-minute reprieve from deportation.
Firth has been a long-standing supporter of Survival International, a non-governmental organization that defends the rights of tribal peoples. Speaking in 2001, he said, "My interest in tribal peoples goes back many years... and I have supported [Survival] ever since." In 2003, during the promotion of the movie Love Actually, he spoke in defense of the tribal people of Botswana, condemning the Botswana government's eviction of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. He says of the Bushmen, "These people are not the remnants of a past era who need to be brought up to date. Those who are able to continue to live on the land that is rightfully theirs are facing the 21st century with a confidence that many of us in the so-called developed world can only envy."
Firth has also been involved in the Oxfam global campaign Make Trade Fair, in which several other celebrities participated as well in order to bring more attention to the issues involved. The campaign has focused on several trade practices seen as unfair to third world producers especially, including dumping, high import tariffs, and labour rights such as fair wages. Firth remains deeply committed to this cause, making efforts such as supporting fair trade coffee in his daily life, as he believes "[i]f you're going to sustain commitment to any of this, ... [y]ou've got to get involved on an ordinary every day basis." He has further contributed to this cause by opening (with a few collaborators) an eco-friendly shop in West London, Eco. The shop offers fair trade and eco-friendly goods, as well as expert advice on making spaces more energy efficient.
In October 2009 at the London Film Festival, Firth launched a film and political activism website, Brightwide.com, along with his wife Livia and a team headed by Paola De Leo, a former Director of Deutsche Bank and Head of the Global Major Donor Programme for Amnesty. In a 2006 interview with French magazine Madame Figaro, Firth was asked "Quelles sont les femmes de votre vie?" (Who are the women of your life?). Firth replied: "Ma mère, ma femme et Jane Austen" (My mother, my wife and Jane Austen). He was awarded an honorary degree on 19 October 2007 from the University of Winchester.
In early 2010, Firth announced his support for the Liberal Democrats, having formerly been a Labour supporter, citing asylum and refugees' rights as a key reason for his change in affiliation. In December 2010, Firth retracted his support of the Liberal Democrats, citing their U-turn on tuition fees as one of the key reasons for his disillusionment. He clarified that while he no longer supports the Liberal Democrats, he is currently without affiliation.
Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Alumni of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design Category:Alumni of the Drama Centre London Category:Audio book narrators Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:English film actors Category:English radio actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:European Film Awards winners (people) Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from East Hampshire (district) Category:People from Winchester Category:Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama alumni
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| Name | Mick Jagger |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Michael Philip Jagger |
| Born | July 26, 1943Dartford, Kent, England |
| Genre | Rock and roll, blues, blues-rock, psychedelic rock |
| Instrument | Vocals, harmonica, percussion, guitar, bass, keyboards |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter, musician, record and film producer, actor |
| Years active | 1961–present |
| Label | Virgin, Rolling Stones, ABKCO, Universal |
| Associated acts | The Rolling Stones |
| Url | MickJagger.com |
The Rolling Stones started in the early 1960s as a rhythm and blues cover band with Jagger as frontman. Beginning in 1964, Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards developed a songwriting partnership, and by the mid-1960s the group had evolved into a major rock band. Frequent conflict with the authorities (including alleged drug use and his romantic involvements) ensured that during this time Jagger was never far from the headlines, and he was often portrayed as a counterculture figure. In the late 1960s Jagger began acting in films (starting with Performance and Ned Kelly), to mixed reception. In the 1970s, Jagger, with the rest of the Stones, became tax exiles, consolidated their global position and gained more control over their business affairs with the formation of the Rolling Stones Records label. During this time, Jagger was also known for his high-profile marriages to Bianca Jagger and later to Jerry Hall. In the 1980s Jagger released his first solo album, She's the Boss. He was knighted in 2003.
Jagger's career has spanned over 50 years. His performance style has been credited that "opened up definitions of gendered masculinity and so laid the foundations for self-invention and sexual plasticity which are now an integral part of contemporary youth culture". In 2006, he was ranked by Hit Parader as the fifteenth greatest heavy metal singer of all time, despite not being associated with the genre. Allmusic has described Jagger as "one of the most popular and influential frontmen in the history of rock & roll".
In the book According to the Rolling Stones, Jagger states "I was always a singer. I always sang as a child. I was one of those kids who just liked to sing. Some kids sing in choirs; others like to show off in front of the mirror. I was in the church choir and I also loved listening to singers on the radio - the BBC or Radio Luxembourg - or watching them on TV and in the movies."
From September 1950, Keith Richards and Jagger (known as "Mike" to his friends) were classmates at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford, Kent. In 1954, Jagger passed the eleven-plus, and went to Dartford Grammar School, where there is now The Mick Jagger Centre, as part of the school. Having lost contact with each other when they went to different schools, Richards and Jagger resumed their friendship in July 1960 after a chance encounter and discovered that they had both developed a love for rhythm and blues music, which began for Jagger with Little Richard.Jagger left school in 1961. He obtained seven O-levels and three A-levels. Jagger and Richards moved into a flat in Edith Grove in Chelsea with a guitarist they had encountered named Brian Jones. While Richards and Jones were making plans to start their own rhythm and blues group, Jagger continued his business courses at the London School of Economics, and had seriously considered becoming either a journalist or a politician. Jagger had compared the latter to a pop star.
In their earliest days, the members played for no money in the interval of Alexis Korner's gigs at a basement club opposite Ealing Broadway tube station (subsequently called "Ferry's" club). At the time, the group had very little equipment and needed to borrow Alexis' gear to play. This was before Andrew Loog Oldham became their manager.
The group’s first appearance under the name The Rollin' Stones (after one of their favourite Muddy Waters tunes) was at the Marquee Club, a jazz club, on 12 July 1962. They would later change their name to “The Rolling Stones” as it seemed more formal. Victor Bockris states that the band members included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart on piano, Dick Taylor on bass and Tony Chapman on drums. However, Richards states in Life, "The drummer that night was Mick Avory--not Tony Chapman, as history has mysteriously handed it down..." Some time later, the band went on their first tour in the United Kingdom; this was known as the “training ground” tour because it was a new experience for all of them. The lineup did not at that time include drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman. By 1963, they were finding their stride as well as popularity. By 1964, two unscientific opinion polls rated them as England's most popular group, outranking even the Beatles. For the Rolling Stones, the duo would write "The Last Time", the group's third number-one single in the UK (their first two UK number-one hits had been cover versions). Another of the fruits of this collaboration was their first international hit, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". It also established The Rolling Stones’ image as defiant troublemakers in contrast to The Beatles' "lovable moptop" image.
The group released several successful albums including December's Children (And Everybody's), Aftermath, and Between the Buttons, but their reputations were catching up to them. In 1967, Jagger and Richards were arrested on drug charges and were given unusually harsh sentences: Jagger was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for possession of four over-the-counter pep pills he had purchased in Italy. On appeal, Richards' sentence was overturned and Jagger's was amended to a conditional discharge (he ended up spending one night inside Brixton Prison) after an article appeared in The Times, written by its traditionally conservative editor William (now Lord) Rees-Mogg, but the Rolling Stones continued to face legal battles for the next decade. Around the same time, internal struggles about the direction of the group had begun to surface.
After the band's acrimonious split with their second manager, Allen Klein, in 1971, Jagger took control of their business affairs and has managed them ever since in collaboration with his friend and colleague, Rupert Löwenstein. Mick Taylor, Brian Jones's replacement, left the band in December 1974 and was replaced by Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood in 1975, who also operated as a mediator within the group, and between Jagger and Richards in particular.
In 1987, he released his second solo album, Primitive Cool. While it failed to match the commercial success of his debut, it was critically well received.
In 1988, he produced the songs "Glamour Boys" and "Which Way to America" on Living Colour's album Vivid.
Following the successful comeback of the Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels (1989), which saw the end of Jagger and Richards' well-publicised feud, Jagger began routining new material for what would become Wandering Spirit. In January 1992, after acquiring Rick Rubin as co-producer, Jagger recorded the album in Los Angeles over seven months until September 1992, recording simultaneously as Richards was making Main Offender.
Jagger would keep the celebrity guests to a minimum on Wandering Spirit, only having Lenny Kravitz as a vocalist on his cover of Bill Withers' "Use Me" and bassist Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers on three tracks.
Following the end of the Rolling Stones' Sony Music contract and their signing to Virgin Records, Jagger elected to sign with Atlantic Records (which had signed the Stones in the 1970s) to distribute what would be his only album with the label.
Released in February 1993, Wandering Spirit was commercially successful, reaching #12 in the UK and #11 in the US, going gold there. The track "Sweet Thing" was the lead single, although it was the third single, "Don't Tear Me Up", which found moderate success, topping Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart for one week. Critical reaction was very strong, noting Jagger's abandonment of slick synthesisers in favour of an incisive and lean guitar sound.
Contemporary reviewers tend to consider Wandering Spirit a high point of Jagger's latter-day career achievements.
He celebrated The Rolling Stones' 40th anniversary by touring with them on the year-long Licks tour in support of their career retrospective Forty Licks double album.
On 26 September 2007, Jagger and The Rolling Stones made $437 million on their A Bigger Bang Tour, which got them into the current edition of Guinness World Records for the most lucrative music tour. Jagger has refused to say when the band will finally retire, stating in 2007: "I'm sure the Rolling Stones will do more things and more records and more tours. We've got no plans to stop any of that really." , 2009]]
Richards himself said in a 1998 interview: "I think of our differences as a family squabble. If I shout and scream at him, it's because no one else has the guts to do it or else they're paid not to do it. At the same time I'd hope Mick realises that I'm a friend who is just trying to bring him into line and do what needs to be done." Richards, along with Johnny Depp, is currently trying to persuade Jagger to appear in , alongside Depp and Richards.
In 1995, Mick Jagger founded Jagged Films with Victoria Pearman "[to] start my own projects instead of just going in other people's and being involved peripherally or doing music." Its first release was the World War II drama Enigma in 2001. That same year, it produced a documentary on Jagger entitled Being Mick. The program, which first aired on television 22 November, coincided with the release of his fourth solo album, Goddess in the Doorway.
In 2008, the company began work on The Women, an adaptation of the George Cukor film of the same name. It was directed by Diane English. Reviving the 1939 film met with countless delays, but Jagger's company was credited with obtaining $24 million of much-needed financing to finally begin casting. English told Entertainment Weekly: "This was much easier in 1939, when all the ladies were under contract, and they had to take the roles they were told to."
The Rolling Stones have been the subjects of numerous documentaries, including Gimme Shelter, which was made as the band was gaining fame in the United States. Martin Scorsese worked with Jagger on Shine a Light, a documentary film featuring the Rolling Stones with footage from the A Bigger Bang Tour during two nights of performances at New York's Beacon Theatre. It screened in Berlin in February 2008. Variety's Todd McCarthy said the film "takes full advantage of heavy camera coverage and top-notch sound to create an invigorating musical trip down memory lane, as well as to provoke gentle musings on the wages of aging and the passage of time." He predicted the film would fare better once released to video than in its limited theatrical runs.
Jagger was a producer of, and guest-starred in the premier episode of the short-lived comedy The Knights of Prosperity, which aired in 2007 on ABC.''
In 1970, he began a relationship with Nicaraguan-born Bianca De Macias, whom he married on 12 May 1971, in a Catholic ceremony in Saint-Tropez, France. The couple separated in 1977 and in May 1978, she filed for divorce on the grounds of his adultery. Bianca later said "My marriage ended on my wedding day." In late 1977, he began seeing model Jerry Hall, while still married to Bianca. After a lengthy cohabitation and several children together, the couple married on 21 November 1990, in a Hindu beach ceremony in Indonesia and moved together to Downe House in Richmond, Surrey. Jagger later contested the validity of the ceremony, and the marriage was annulled in August 1999. Jagger has also been romantically linked to other women: Chrissie Shrimpton, Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Marsha Hunt, Pamela Des Barres, Uschi Obermaier, Bebe Buell, Carly Simon, Margaret Trudeau, Mackenzie Phillips, Janice Dickinson, Carla Bruni, Sophie Dahl and Angelina Jolie, among others.
Jagger has seven children by four women: :*By Marsha Hunt, he has daughter Karis Hunt Jagger (born 4 November 1970). :*By Bianca Jagger, he has daughter Jade Sheena Jezebel Jagger (born 21 October 1971). :*By Jerry Hall he has daughter Elizabeth Scarlett Jagger (born 2 March 1984), son James Leroy Augustin Jagger (born 28 August 1985), daughter Georgia May Ayeesha Jagger (born 12 January 1992) and son Gabriel Luke Beauregard Jagger (born 9 December 1997)
His father, Joe, died on 11 November 2006, at the age of 93.
In 2008, it was revealed that members of the Hells Angels had plotted to murder Jagger in 1975. They were angered by Jagger's public blaming of the Hells Angels, who had been hired to provide "security" at the Altamont Free Concert in December 1969, for much of the crowd violence at the event. The conspirators reportedly used a boat to approach a residence where Jagger was staying on Long Island, New York; the plot failed when the boat was nearly sunk by a storm.
Jagger is an avid cricket fan. He founded Jagged Internetworks so he could get coverage of English Cricket.
He said in September, 2010 that he has a daily meditation and Buddhist practice.
As United Press International noted, the honour is odd, for unlike other knighted rock musicians, he has no "known record of charitable work or public services." Jagger was absent from the Queen's Golden Jubilee pop concert at Buckingham Palace that marked her 50 years on the throne.
Charlie Watts was quoted in the book According to the Rolling Stones as saying, "Anybody else would be lynched: 18 wives and 20 children and he's knighted, fantastic!" The ceremony took place in December 2003. Jagger’s father and daughters Karis and Elizabeth were in attendance. Richards said that he did not want to take the stage with someone wearing a "coronet and sporting the old ermine. It's not what the Stones is about, is it?"
Jagger, who at the time described himself as an anarchist and espoused the leftist slogans of the era, took part in a demonstration against the Vietnam War outside the US Embassy in London in 1968. This event inspired him to write "Street Fighting Man" that same year and served to reinforce his rebellious, anti-authority stance in the eyes of his fans.
A variety of celebrities attended a lavish party at New York's St. Regis Hotel to celebrate Jagger's 29th birthday and the end of the band's 1972 American tour. The party made the front pages of the leading New York newspapers.
Pop artist Andy Warhol painted a series of silkscreen portraits of Jagger in 1975, one of which was owned by Farah Diba, wife of the Shah of Iran. It hung on a wall inside the royal palace in Teheran. In 1967, Cecil Beaton photographed Jagger's naked buttocks, a photo that sold at Sotheby's auction house in 1986 for $4,000.
He is directly referred to in pop singer Kesha's 2009 debut single Tik Tok. Jagger was allegedly a contender for the anonymous subject of Carly Simon's 1973 hit song You're So Vain, in which he sings backing vocals. Although Don McLean does not use Jagger's name in his famous song "American Pie", he alludes to Jagger onstage at Altamont, calling him Satan. (Jagger had assumed the guise of Satan in "Sympathy For The Devil", a track from the album Beggar's Banquet.)
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Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:2012 Summer Olympics cultural ambassadors Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics Category:English blues singers Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English film actors Category:English-language singers Category:English male singers Category:English rock musicians Category:English rock singers Category:English songwriters Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Knights Bachelor Category:People from Dartford Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:The Rolling Stones members Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers
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| Name | Marion Cotillard |
|---|---|
| Caption | Cotillard at the Paris premiere of Public Enemies, July 2009 |
| Birthdate | September 30, 1975 |
| Birthplace | Caen, France |
| Occupation | Actress/Singer |
| Yearsactive | 1993–present |
| Domesticpartner | Guillaume Canet (2007–present) |
Marion Cotillard (French pronunciation: [maʁjɔ̃ kɔtijaʁ]) (born 30 September 1975) is a French actress. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants. She has also appeared in such films as Big Fish, A Very Long Engagement (for which she received a César Award for Best Supporting Actress), A Good Year, Public Enemies, Nine, Inception and La Vie en Rose.
She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, BAFTA Award for Best Actress, César for Best Actress and the Golden Globe for Best Actress in Musical or a Comedy for her portrayal of French singer Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. She made film history by becoming the first person to win an Academy Award for a French language performance. In 2010 she received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the musical Nine.
Cotillard began acting during her childhood, appearing on stage in one of her father's plays.
She got pregnant in 2010 and she will have her child in summer 2011. The father is Guillaume Canet.
Cotillard appeared in Pierre Grimblat's film Lisa as Young Lisa, alongside Jeanne Moreau, Swiss novel-adaptation War drama In The Highlands. She starred in Gilles Paquet-Brenner's film Les jolies choses, adapted from the work of subversive feminist writer Virginie Despentes. In the drama, Cotillard portrayed the characters of two twins of completely opposite characters, Lucie and Marie. She was nominated for a César Award for her performance. In Guillaume Nicloux's thriller Une affaire privée she appeared as Clarisse, friend of the disappeared.
In 2005, Cotillard starred in Steve Suissa's romantic drama Cavalcade as Alizée. She also appeared in Abel Ferrara's religious drama Mary alongside Forest Whitaker and Juliette Binoche. Marion played Isabelle Kruger and Alice in the thriller film La Boîte noire, directed by Richard Berry. She appeared in the film Fair Play as Nicole. Cotillard starred in Ridley Scott's romantic comedy A Good Year, in which she portrayed Fanny Chenal, a small Provençal town French café owner opposite Russell Crowe as a Londoner who inherits a local property. She appeared in Belgian comedy Dikkenek, and learned to play the cello for her role as a soloist in the satirical coming-of-age film You and Me. Producer Ilan Goldman accepted and defended the choice even though distributors TFM reduced the money they gave to finance the film thinking Cotillard wasn't "bankable" enough an actress. Her portrayal was widely praised, including by the eminent theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn, who described it as "one of the greatest performances on film ever." It was dubbed "the most awaited film of 2007" in France, where some critics said that she had reincarnated Édith Piaf to sing one last time on stage.
On February 10, 2008, Cotillard became the first French actress to be awarded the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role since Stéphane Audran in 1973. She is the first actress to win a Golden Globe for a foreign language performance since 1972, when Liv Ullmann won for The Emigrants. She is also the first person to win a (Comedy or Musical) Golden Globe for a foreign language performance.On February 22, 2008, she was awarded the César Award for Best Actress for her role in La Vie en Rose, becoming the first woman and second person (after Adrien Brody, The Pianist) to win both a Cesar and an Oscar for the same performance. Cotillard is the second French cinema actress to win this award and the third overall to receive an Academy Award. She is the first Best Actress winner in a non-English language performance since Sophia Loren's win in 1961. She is also the first and so far only winner of an Academy Award for a performance in the French language. In her Oscar acceptance speech, Cotillard proclaimed "thank you life, thank you love" and, speaking of Los Angeles, said "it is true, there is some angels (sic) in this city!"
The day following the ceremony, Cotillard was congratulated and praised by the President of France Nicolas Sarkozy in a statement saying, "I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to Marion Cotillard, who has just received the Oscar for Best Actress for her masterful interpretation of Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, directed by Olivier Dahan. Half a century after Simone Signoret, a French artist has received the Best Actress award at the Oscars. It was a good omen that Catherine Allegret, Simone Signoret's daughter, herself had a role in La Vie en Rose. Marion Cotillard embodies an Édith Piaf who is unsettling in her realism, emotion and passion. Her interpretation brings to life the story of a woman who gave French chanson its acclaim and authenticity; a singer, too, who closely united France and America."
As La Vie En Rose was also a Czech production, as she mentioned in her César acceptance speech, on March 1, 2008, Cotillard won a Czech Lion Award for Best Actress. She could not attend the ceremony in Prague due to the filming of Public Enemies. Her friend Pavlína Němcová - who played the journalist in La vie en Rose - was there to accept the award on her behalf.
On June 24, 2008, Cotillard was one of 105 individuals invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Cotillard starred alongside Johnny Depp in Public Enemies, released in the United States on July 1, 2009. Later that year, Cotillard appeared in the film adaptation of the musical Nine, directed by Rob Marshall, and co-starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren and Kate Hudson. On December 15, 2009, Cotillard was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress - Musical or Comedy for her performance in the film. The film was released on December 18, 2009.
For her role in the musical Nine as Luisa Contini, Time magazine ranked her as the fifth best performance by a female in 2009. She was ranked just behind Mo'Nique, Carey Mulligan, Saoirse Ronan and Meryl Streep. She was awarded the Desert Palm Achievement Actress Award at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival for the role.
She appeared as the main antagonist "Mal Cobb" in Christopher Nolan's film Inception, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, and released on July 16, 2010. She will co-star alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Matt Damon in Steven Soderberg's thriller film Contagion.
She will also in appear in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris alongside Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson.
On March 15, 2010 Cotillard was made a Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of the Arts and Letters) by the French government for her "contribution to the enrichment of French culture".
On May 11, 2010 Variety confirmed Cotillard will star alongside Colin Farrell in David Cronenberg's film Cosmopolis.
In 2009, Cotillard was chosen as the face for Dior's "Lady Dior" advertising campaign and was featured in an online mini-movie directed by John Cameron Mitchell about the fictional character created by John Galliano. This campaign has also resulted in a musical collaboration with British indie rock band Franz Ferdinand, where Cotillard has provided the vocals for a composition performed by the group, entitled "The Eyes of Mars". Cotillard appeared on the cover of the November 2009 issue of Vogue with Nine co-stars Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Penélope Cruz, Kate Hudson and Fergie and on the July 2010 cover by herself.
She is a fan of Radiohead and Canadian singer Hawksley Workman; she has appeared in two of the latter's music videos, most notably "No Reason to Cry Out your Eyes (On the Highway Tonight)". Workman even revealed in interviews about his last album Between the Beautifuls that he worked and wrote songs with Cotillard while they both were in Los Angeles during the movie awards season. She is a supporter of the English football club Leeds United, a passion she developed after her compatriot Eric Cantona's spell at the club in the early 1990s.
On January 10, 2011, she announced she is pregnant with her first child with Canet and is due to give birth in spring 2011.
Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners Category:Best Actress César Award winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Supporting Actress César Award winners Category:César Award winners Category:French people of Breton descent Category:French ecologists Category:French film actors Category:People from Orléans Category:People from Caen Category:1975 births Category:Living people
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| Name | Kate Winslet |
|---|---|
| Caption | Winslet at 2007 Palm Springs Film Festival |
| Alt | A young woman with shoulder-length, wavy, blonde hair and wearing a low-cut blue gown, is looking to the right with her mouth open as if speaking. |
| Birth name | Kate Elizabeth Winslet |
| Birth date | October 05, 1975 |
| Birth place | Reading, Berkshire, England |
| Occupation | Actress, singer |
| Years active | 1991–present |
| Spouse | (separated) |
Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She is the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader (2008). Winslet has been acclaimed for both dramatic and comedic work in projects ranging from period to contemporary films, and from major Hollywood productions to less publicised indie films. She has won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association among others, and has been nominated for an Emmy Award for television acting.
Raised in Berkshire, Winslet studied drama from childhood, and began her career in British television in 1991. She made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures (1994), for which she received her first notable critical praise. She achieved recognition for her subsequent work in a supporting role in Sense and Sensibility (1995) and for her leading role in Titanic (1997), the highest grossing film for more than 12 years until 2010.
Since 2000, Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive comments from film critics, and she has been nominated for various awards for her work in such films as Quills (2000), Iris (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), The Reader (2008) and Revolutionary Road (2008). Her performance in the latter prompted New York magazine to describe her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation". The romantic comedy The Holiday and the animated film Flushed Away (both 2006) were among the biggest commercial successes of her career.
Winslet was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 2000. She has been included as a vocalist on some soundtracks of works she has performed in, and the single "What If" from the soundtrack for (2001), was a hit single in several European countries. Winslet has a daughter with her former husband, Jim Threapleton, and a son with her second husband, Sam Mendes, from whom she is separated. She lives in New York City.
In 1996, Winslet starred in both Jude and Hamlet. In Michael Winterbottom's Jude, based on the Victorian novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, she played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette leanings who falls in love with her cousin, played by Christopher Eccleston. Acclaimed among critics, it was not a success at the box office, barely grossing US$2 million ($}} million) worldwide. Richard Corliss of Time magazine said "Winslet is worthy of [...] the camera's scrupulous adoration. She's perfect, a modernist ahead of her time [...] and Jude is a handsome showcase for her gifts." Winslet played Ophelia, Hamlet's drowned lover, in Kenneth Branagh's all star-cast film version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The film garnered largely positive reviews and earned Winslet her second Empire Award.
In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997), alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Against expectations, the film went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing more than US$1.843 billion ($}} billion) in box-office receipts worldwide, and transformed Winslet into a commercial movie star. Subsequently, she was nominated for most of the high-profile awards, winning a European Film Award.
In 2000, Winslet appeared in the period piece Quills with Geoffrey Rush and Joaquin Phoenix, a film inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade. The actress served as somewhat of a "patron saint" of the film for being the first big name to back it, accepting the role of a chambermaid in the asylum and the courier of The Marquis' manuscripts to the underground publishers. Well-received by critics, the film garnered numerous accolades for Winslet, including nominations for SAG and Satellite Awards.
In 2001's Enigma, Winslet played a young woman who finds herself falling for a brilliant young World War II code breaker, played by Dougray Scott. Generally well-received, Winslet was awarded a British Independent Film Award for her performance, In the same year she appeared in Richard Eyre's critically acclaimed film Iris, portraying Irish novelist Iris Murdoch. Winslet shared her role with Judi Dench, with both actresses portraying Murdoch at different phases of her life. Subsequently, each of them was nominated for an Academy Award the following year, earning Winslet her third nomination. with proceeds donated to two of Winslet's favourite charities, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Sargeant Cancer Foundation for Children. A Europe-wide top ten hit, it reached number one in Austria, Belgium, and Ireland, number six on the UK Singles Chart, and won the 2002 OGAE Song Contest.
Her next film role was in the 2003 drama The Life of David Gale, in which she played an ambitious journalist who interviews a death-sentenced professor, played by Kevin Spacey, in his final weeks before execution. The film underperformed at international box offices, garnering only half of its US$ 50,000,000 budget, and generating mostly critical reviews, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calling it a "silly movie."
.|alt=A young woman in formal evening attire of a strapless black gown, with diamond earrings and bracelet, looks over her shoulder. Her hair is pulled back from her face, and her hand, with dark nail varnish clasps a purse.]]
Her final film in 2004 was Finding Neverland. The story of the production focused on Scottish writer J. M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet), whose sons inspired him to pen the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. During promotion of the film, Winslet noted of her portrayal "It was very important for me in playing Sylvia that I was already a mother myself, because I don’t think I could have played that part if I didn’t know what it felt like to be a parent and have those responsibilities and that amount of love that you give to a child [...] and I've always got a baby somewhere, or both of them, all over my face." The film received favourable reviews and proved to be an international success, becoming Winslet's highest-grossing film since Titanic with a total of $118 million worldwide.
In 2005, Winslet appeared in an episode of BBC's comedy series Extras as a satirical version of herself. While dressed as a nun, she was portrayed giving phone sex tips to the romantically challenged character of Maggie. Her performance in the episode led to her first nomination for an Emmy Award. Hand-picked by Turturro, who was impressed with her display of dancing ability in Holy Smoke!, Winslet was praised for her performance, Derek Elley of Variety wrote: "Onscreen less, but blessed with the showiest role, filthiest one-liners, [and] a perfect Lancashire accent that's comical enough in the Gotham setting Winslet throws herself into the role with an infectious gusto."
After declining an invitation to appear in Woody Allen's film Match Point (2005), Winslet stated that she wanted to be able to spend more time with her children. She began 2006 with All the King's Men, featuring Sean Penn and Jude Law. Winslet played the role of Anne Stanton, the childhood sweetheart of Jack Burden (Law). The film was critically and financially unsuccessful. Todd McCarthy of Variety summed it up as "overstuffed and fatally miscast [...] Absent any point of engagement to become involved in the characters, the film feels stillborn and is unlikely to stir public excitement, even in an election year."
Winslet fared far better when she joined the cast of Todd Field's Little Children, playing Sarah Pierce, a bored homemaker who has a torrid affair with a married neighbour, played by Patrick Wilson. Both her performance and the film received rave reviews; A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote: "In too many recent movies intelligence is woefully undervalued, and it is this quality—even more than its considerable beauty—that distinguishes Little Children from its peers. The result is a movie that is challenging, accessible and hard to stop thinking about. Ms. Winslet, as fine an actress as any working in movies today, registers every flicker of Sarah’s pride, self-doubt and desire, inspiring a mixture of recognition, pity and concern that amounts, by the end of the movie, to something like love. That Ms. Winslet is so lovable makes the deficit of love in Sarah’s life all the more painful." For her work in the film, she was honored with a Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year from BAFTA/LA, a Los Angeles-based offshoot of the BAFTA Awards. and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and at 31, became the youngest actress to ever garner five Oscar nominations.
She followed Little Children with a role in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy The Holiday, also starring Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, and Jack Black. In it she played Iris, a British woman who temporarily exchanges homes with an American woman (Diaz). Released to a mixed reception by critics, the film became Winslet's biggest commercial success in nine years, grossing more than US$205 million worldwide. Also in 2006, Winslet provided her voice for several smaller projects. In the CG-animated Flushed Away, she voiced Rita, a scavenging sewer rat who helps Roddy (Hugh Jackman) escape from the city of Ratropolis and return to his luxurious Kensington origins. A critical and commercial success, the film collected US$177,665,672 at international box offices.
In 2007, Winslet reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio to film Revolutionary Road (2008), directed by her husband Sam Mendes. Winslet had suggested that both should work with her on a film adaptation of the 1961 novel of the same name by Richard Yates after reading the script by Justin Haythe. Resulting in both "a blessing and an added pressure" on-set, the reunion was her first experience working with Mendes. Portraying a couple in a failing marriage in the 1950s, DiCaprio and Winslet watched period videos promoting life in the suburbs to prepare themselves for the film, In his review of the film, David Edelstein of New York magazine stated that "[t]here isn’t a banal moment in Winslet’s performance—not a gesture, not a word. Is Winslet now the best English-speaking film actress of her generation? I think so." A month after filming began, however, Kidman left the film due to her pregnancy before filming of her had begun, enabling Winslet to rejoin the film. She later said the role was difficult for her, as she was naturally unable "to sympathise with an SS guard." While the film garnered mixed reviews in general, The following year, she earned her sixth Academy Award nomination and went on to win the Best Actress award, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. She has been cast in the Steven Soderbergh disaster film Contagion, which is scheduled to be released in October 2011. Winslet will also join Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's adaptation of the play God of Carnage, which is scheduled to begin filming in Paris in February 2011.
Winslet was later in a relationship with Rufus Sewell, They have a daughter, Mia, who was born on 12 October 2000 in London. Winslet began a relationship with Sam Mendes, whom she married on 24 May 2003 on the island of Anguilla in the Caribbean.
Mendes and his production company, Neal Street Productions, purchased the film rights to the long-delayed biography of circus tiger tamer Mabel Stark. The couple's spokesperson said, "It's a great story, they have had their eyes on it for a while. If they can get the script right, it would make a great film." GQ subsequently issued an apology. She won a libel suit in 2009 against British tabloid The Daily Mail after it printed that she lied about her exercise regimen. Winslet said she had always expressed the opinion that women should be encouraged to accept their appearance with pride, and therefore "was particularly upset to be accused of lying about my exercise regimen, and felt that I had a responsibility to request an apology in order to demonstrate my commitment to the views that I have always expressed about body issues, including diet and exercise." They also own a Grade II-listed five-bedroom house, set in in the village of Church Westcote in Gloucestershire, England. After purchasing the house for £3 million, they have reportedly spent a further £1 million in renovations, as the house had fallen into disrepair after the death of its former owner, the equestrian artist Raoul Millais in 1999.
She has received numerous awards from other organisations, including the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress for Iris (2001) and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for Sense and Sensibility and The Reader. Premiere magazine named her portrayal of Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) as the 81st greatest film performance of all time.
Winslet received Academy Award nominations as the younger versions of the characters played by fellow nominees Gloria Stuart, as Rose, in Titanic (1997) These are the only instances of the younger and older versions of a character in the same film both yielding Academy Award nominations.
When she was not nominated for her work in Revolutionary Road, Winslet became only the second actress to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama) without getting an Oscar nomination for the same performance (Shirley MacLaine was the first for Madame Sousatzka [1988], and she won the Golden Globe in a three-way tie). Academy rules allow an actor to receive no more than one nomination in a given category; as the Academy nominating process determined that Winslet's work in The Reader would be considered a lead performance—unlike the Golden Globes, which considered it a supporting performance—she could not also receive a Best Actress nomination for Revolutionary Road.
Category:1975 births Category:Living people Category:People from Reading, Berkshire Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English film actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:European Film Awards winners (people) Category:Grammy Award winners Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners Category:Evening Standard Award for Best Actress
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| Birth name | Jesse Adam Eisenberg |
|---|---|
| Birth date | October 05, 1983 |
| Birth place | Queens, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1996–present |
| Homepage |
In 2005, Eisenberg appeared in Cursed, a horror film directed by Wes Craven, and The Squid and the Whale, a well-reviewed independent drama also starring Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels. and the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. In November 2007, Eisenberg was cast in the indie comic-drama Holy Rollers. He played a young Hasidic Jew who gets lured into becoming an ecstasy dealer. Filming took place in New York in 2008. He also played the role of Cheston in Solitary Man. In 2010, He starred in the role of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg in the film The Social Network, for which he earned the Best Actor Award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama.
After Zombieland 2, Eisenberg will star in another horror film, Camp Hope, directed by George Van Buskirk. He plans to write for stage and screen.
On November 22, 2010, Eisenberg was honored, along with Whoopi Goldberg, Joycelyn Engle and Harvey Krueger, at the Children at Heart Celebrity Dinner Gala and Fantasy Auction, to benefit The Children of Chernobyl. Steven Spielberg is Chair of the event each year.
On January 29, 2011, Eisenberg will host the late-night show Saturday Night Live on NBC, with musical guest Nicki Minaj.
Category:1983 births Category:Actors from New York City Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American Jews Category:American television actors Category:Jewish actors Category:Living people Category:People from Middlesex County, New Jersey Category:People from Queens
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| Name | Jennifer Saunders |
|---|---|
| Caption | Saunders in November 2008 |
| Birth date | July 06, 1958 |
| Birth place | Sleaford, Lincolnshire, England |
| Birth name | Jennifer Jane Saunders |
| Nationality | British |
| Spouse | Adrian Edmondson(m. 1985–present) |
| Notable work | Various in French & SaundersEdina Monsoon in Absolutely Fabulous Caroline Martin in Jam and JerusalemVivienne Vyle in The Life and Times of Vivienne VyleFairy Godmother in Shrek 2Helen Back-Mucus in Young Ones Time |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Medium | Television, film |
| Influences | John Cleese |
| Active | 1981–present |
She first came into widespread attention in the 1980s and early 1990s when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama. Along with her comedy partner Dawn French, she writes and stars in their eponymous sketch show, French & Saunders, and has received international acclaim for writing and playing the lead role of Edina Monsoon in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
In her other work, she has guest starred in the American sitcoms Roseanne and Friends, and won the American People's Choice Award for voicing the wicked Fairy Godmother in DreamWorks' animated Shrek 2. More recently, she wrote and starred in Jam & Jerusalem and The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle.
She later received a place at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London on a drama teachers' course in 1977, Both came from RAF backgrounds. They had grown up on the same base, even having had the same best friend, without ever meeting. By the time French & Saunders became members of The Comic Strip, French was already working as a drama teacher, whilst Saunders was on the dole and spending a lot of her time sleeping in bed. In the episodes "Bad News" and "More Bad News", Saunders plays a trashy rock journalist touring with the fictional heavy metal band Bad News. In 1985, Saunders starred in and co-wrote Girls On Top with French, Tracey Ullman and Ruby Wax, which portrayed four eccentric women sharing a flat in London. By the end of the 1980s, the show was an established comedy programme and became a staple in BBC viewing.
Saunders has appeared on the American sitcoms Roseanne, playing Edina Monsoon in the episode "Satan, Darling", and Friends as Andrea Waltham, the stepmother of Emily, Ross Geller's fiancée, in the episodes "The One After Ross Says Rachel" and "The One with Ross's Wedding". In 1999, she appeared alongside French in Let Them Eat Cake.
In 2007, Saunders and psychologist Tanya Byron and "I want a vagina".
Also in 2007, the final series French & Saunders series aired. A Bucket o' French & Saunders featured a compilation of old and new sketches and aired on BBC One in September 2007. It was the third show she had written in a year.
Saunders is currently listed as the fifth fastest "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car" on BBC 2's Top Gear with a time of 1:46.1s. A self-confessed petrolhead, she has a passion for Alfa Romeo, and has so far owned four.
She most notably appeared in the internationally successful DreamWorks animated movie Shrek 2 in 2004, voicing Princess Fiona's evil Fairy Godmother and performing the song "Holding Out for a Hero". Her part took four days to record. Her role won the American People's Choice Award for the best movie villain in 2005. She also voiced Miss Spink in the animated film Coraline, in which Dawn French also voiced a character called Miss Forcible.
Saunders currently owns a £1 million property with of land in Chagford, Devon as well as a home in London. Edmondson and Saunders were estimated to be worth £11 million in 2002. She had a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In June 2010 her treatment ended, and she was given an initial all-clear. She has now fully recovered.
Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:20th-century writers Category:21st-century writers Category:Alumni of the Central School of Speech and Drama Category:Breast cancer survivors Category:English comedians Category:English film actors Category:English television actors Category:English television writers Category:English voice actors Category:People from Sleaford, Lincolnshire Category:The Comic Strip Category:Women comedians
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| Caption | Gyllenhaal at New Eyes for the Needy in 2010 |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal |
| Birth date | December 19, 1980 |
| Birth place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1991–present |
Jacob Benjamin "Jake" Gyllenhaal ( ; born December 19, 1980) is an American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at age ten. He has appeared in diverse roles since his first lead role in 1999's October Sky, followed by the 2001 indie cult hit Donnie Darko, in which he played a psychologically troubled teen and onscreen brother to his real-life sister, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. In the 2004 science-fiction film The Day After Tomorrow he portrayed a student caught in a cataclysmic global cooling event, alongside Dennis Quaid as his father. He then played against type as a frustrated Marine in Jarhead (2005). The same year, he garnered critical acclaim and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination as Jack Twist in the film Brokeback Mountain opposite Heath Ledger.
Gyllenhaal has promoted various political and social causes. He appeared in Rock the Vote advertising, campaigned for the Democratic Party in the 2004 election, promoted environmental causes, and campaigned on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Gyllenhaal graduated from the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles in 1998, then attended Columbia University, where his sister was a senior and from which his mother had graduated, to study Eastern religions and philosophy. Gyllenhaal dropped out after two years to concentrate on acting, but has expressed intentions to eventually finish his degree.
, 2001]] After the critical success of Donnie Darko, Gyllenhaal's next role was as the lead character in 2002's Highway, a film ignored by audiences and critics alike. His performance was described by one critic as "silly, cliched and straight to video." Gyllenhaal had more success starring opposite Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, which premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival; he also starred in Lovely & Amazing with Catherine Keener. In both films he plays an unstable character who begins a reckless affair with an older woman. Gyllenhaal later described these as "teenager in transition" roles. Gyllenhaal later starred in the Touchstone Pictures romantic comedy Bubble Boy, which was loosely based on the story of David Vetter. The film portrays the title character's adventures as he pursues the love of his life before she marries the wrong man. The film was panned by critics, with one calling it an "empty-headed, chaotic, utterly tasteless atrocity".
Following Bubble Boy, Gyllenhaal starred opposite Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon and Ellen Pompeo in Moonlight Mile, as a young man coping with the death of his fiancée and the grief of her parents. The story, which received mixed reviews, is loosely based on writer/director Brad Silberling's personal experiences following the murder of girlfriend Rebecca Schaeffer.
Gyllenhaal was almost cast as Spider-Man for Spider-Man 2 due to director Sam Raimi's concerns about original Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire's health. Maguire recovered, however, and the sequel was shot without Gyllenhaal. Instead, Gyllenhaal starred in the blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow in 2004, co-starring Dennis Quaid as his father.
In his theatrical debut Gyllenhaal starred on the London stage in Kenneth Lonergan's revival of This is Our Youth. Gyllenhaal said, "Every actor I look up to has done theatre work, so I knew I had to give it a try." The play, which had been a critical sensation on Broadway, ran for eight weeks in London's West End. Gyllenhaal received favorable critical reviews and an Evening Standard Theatre Award in the category "Outstanding Newcomer."
In Brokeback Mountain, Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger play young men who meet as sheep herders and embark upon a sexual relationship that begins in the summer of 1963 and continues until the death of Gyllenhaal's character in 1983. The film was often referred to in the media with the shorthand phrase "the gay cowboy movie," though there was differing opinion on the sexual orientation of the characters. The film won the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival. The film went on to win four Golden Globe Awards, four British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards, and three Academy Awards. Gyllenhaal was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Supporting Actor for his performance, but lost to George Clooney for Syriana. Gyllenhaal also won the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA for the same role and received a Best Supporting Actor nomination and Best Film Ensemble nomination from the Screen Actors Guild. Also for Brokeback Mountain, he and Ledger won an MTV Movie Award for "Best Kiss" in 2006. Shortly after the 2006 Academy Awards, Gyllenhaal was invited to join the Academy in recognition of his acting career. Gyllenhaal was awarded the 2006 Young Artist Award for Artistic Excellence by The Americans for the Arts National Arts Awards for his role.
Gyllenhaal expressed mixed feelings about the experience of being directed by Ang Lee in Brokeback Mountain, but generally had more praise than criticism for Lee's directing style. While complaining of the way Lee tended to disconnect with his actors once filming began, Gyllenhaal praised his encouraging direction of the actors and sensitive approach to the material. At the Directors Guild of America Awards on January 28, 2006, Gyllenhaal also praised Lee for "his humbleness and his respect for everyone around him."
When asked about his kissing scenes with Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain, Gyllenhaal said, "As an actor, I think we need to embrace the times we feel most uncomfortable." When asked about the more intimate scenes with Ledger, Gyllenhaal likened them to "doing a sex scene with a woman I'm not particularly attracted to."}}
Gyllenhaal narrated the 2005 short animated film The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, based on Mordicai Gerstein's book of the same name about Philippe Petit's famous stunt. In January 2007, as host of Saturday Night Live, he put on a sparkly evening dress and sang "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls for his opening monologue, dedicating the song to his "unique fan base... the fans of Brokeback."
In 2007, Gyllenhaal starred in David Fincher's Zodiac, which was based on a true story. He played Robert Graysmith, a San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist and author of two books about the Zodiac serial killer. Gyllenhaal starred opposite Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin, and Reese Witherspoon in the October 2007 release Rendition, a Gavin Hood-directed political thriller about the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition. In 2009, he appeared with Tobey Maguire in Jim Sheridan's remake of Susanne Bier's 2004 Danish language film Brothers. His upcoming roles include the comedy Nailed, which he filmed in South Carolina with Jessica Biel, and Doug Liman's as yet untitled film about the race for lunar colonization.
Internationally viewed as a sex symbol, Gyllenhaal was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" in 2006. He was also listed in People's "Hottest Bachelors of 2006". In response to mainstream press lists like these, thousands of gay and bisexual men were polled for the 2007 and 2008 "AfterElton.com Hot 100 List." Gyllenhaal was ranked at #1 in both consecutive years. He was ranked at #2 on the Gay Wired Magazine poll of male actors who have played gay characters in movies.
On the show Entourage, Gyllenhaal, though not featured on screen, was the replacement for Vincent Chase in Aquaman 2 after Chase was fired. This was likely a reference to Spider-Man 2, when Gyllenhaal almost replaced Tobey Maguire.
Gyllenhaal played the lead role in the movie adaptation of the video game , produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and released by Disney on May 28, 2010.
Gyllenhaal dated actress Kirsten Dunst for nearly two years starting in 2002.
Gyllenhaal dated his Rendition co-star Reese Witherspoon. Witherspoon confirmed the relationship, about which the media had speculated since early 2007, in an interview for the November 2008 issue of Vogue. The couple split in November 2009, but the report was jointly denied by Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal's publicists, who declared that "they are still together." However, weeks later, a report in Us Weekly stated that the couple had split.
In late 2010, Gyllenhaal briefly dated country singer Taylor Swift. They split in early 2011.
Raised in a family concerned with social issues, in 2003 Gyllenhaal participated in an advertising campaign by the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization his entire family strongly supports. Environmentally conscious, he recycles regularly, and said in an interview that he spends $400 a year to have trees planted in a Mozambique forest, partly to promote the Future Forests program. After filming The Day After Tomorrow, he flew to the Arctic to promote awareness of climate change.
In his spare time, Gyllenhaal enjoys woodworking and cooking. He has said, "I am not a card-carrying Buddhist, but I do try to practice mindfulness" and it is his goal to meditate every day.
Gyllenhaal has signed on to help the TV fundraiser Stand Up To Cancer.
Category:1980 births Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California Category:American actors of Swedish descent Category:American film actors Category:American Jews Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor Category:California Democrats Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Jewish actors Category:Living people
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| Name | Heath Ledger |
|---|---|
| Alt | Close up of a man's face with brown eyes, tousled brown hair and scraggly beard growth. He is looking toward his left. He is wearing a grey jumper with an orange stripe near his left shoulder and upper left arm. The background is blue with out of focus writing. |
| Caption | Ledger at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival. |
| Birth name | Heath Andrew Ledger |
| Birth date | April 04, 1979 |
| Birth place | Perth, Western Australia, Australia |
| Death date | January 22, 2008 |
| Death place | New York City, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1992–2008 |
| Domesticpartner | Michelle Williams(2005–2007, 1 child) |
Heath Andrew Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008) was an Australian television and film actor. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger moved to the United States in 1998 to develop his film career. His work encompassed nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), Monster's Ball (2001), A Knight's Tale (2001), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and The Dark Knight (2008). In addition to his acting, he produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger won the 2005 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the 2006 "Best Actor" award from the Australian Film Institute and was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor Posthumously he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There, which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona. Ledger was nominated and won awards for his portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards, for which he became the first actor to win an award posthumously, the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor. from an accidental "toxic combination of prescription drugs." A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his penultimate performance, as the Joker in The Dark Knight, his death coming during editing of the film and casting a shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $180 million production. At the time of his death, on 22 January 2008, he had completed about half of his work performing the role of Tony in Terry Gilliam's film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Ledger was an avid chess player, winning Western Australia's junior chess championship at the age of 10. As an adult, he often played with other chess enthusiasts at Washington Square Park. Allan Scott's film adaptation of the chess-related 1983 novel The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis, which at the time of his death he was planning to both perform in and direct, would have been Ledger's first feature film as a director.
Among his most notable romantic relationships, Ledger dated actress Heather Graham for several months in 2000 to 2001, According to the 10th Anniversary commentary by his co-stars for "10 Things I Hate About You", he and Julia Stiles began dating during the film and dated for several years. In the summer of 2004, he met and began dating actress Michelle Williams on the set of Brokeback Mountain, and their daughter, Matilda Rose, was born on 28 October 2005 in New York City. Matilda Rose's godparents are Ledger's Brokeback co-star Jake Gyllenhaal and Williams's Dawson's Creek castmate Busy Philipps. Ledger sold his residence in Bronte, New South Wales, and moved to the United States, where he shared an apartment with Williams, in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, from 2005 to 2007. In September 2007, Williams' father confirmed to Sydney's Daily Telegraph that Ledger and Williams had ended their relationship. After his break-up with Williams, in late 2007 and early 2008, the tabloid press and other public media linked Ledger romantically with supermodels Helena Christensen and Gemma Ward and with former child star, actress Mary-Kate Olsen.
Ledger received "Best Actor of 2005" awards from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle for his performance in Brokeback Mountain, in which he plays Wyoming ranch hand Ennis Del Mar, who has a love affair with aspiring rodeo rider Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. He also received a nomination for Golden Globe Best Actor in a Drama and a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actor for this performance, making him, at age 26, the ninth youngest nominee for a Best Actor Oscar. In The New York Times review of the film, critic Stephen Holden writes: "Both Mr. Ledger and Mr. Gyllenhaal make this anguished love story physically palpable. Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn." In a review in Rolling Stone, Peter Travers states: "Ledger's magnificent performance is an acting miracle. He seems to tear it from his insides. Ledger doesn't just know how Ennis moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. To see him inhale the scent of a shirt hanging in Jack's closet is to take measure of the pain of love lost."
After Brokeback Mountain, Ledger costarred with fellow Australian Abbie Cornish in the 2006 Australian film Candy, an adaptation of the 1998 novel , as young heroin addicts in love attempting to break free of their addiction, whose mentor is played by Geoffrey Rush; for his performance as sometime poet Dan, Ledger was nominated for three "Best Actor" awards, including one of the Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards, which both Cornish and Rush won in their categories. Shortly after the release of Candy, Ledger was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. , Todd Haynes, Charlotte Gainsbourg at the 64th Venice Film Festival in 2007.]] As one of six actors embodying different aspects of the life of Bob Dylan in the 2007 film I'm Not There, directed by Todd Haynes, Ledger "won praise for his portrayal of 'Robbie [Clark],' a moody, counter-culture actor who represents the romanticist side of Dylan, but says accolades are never his motivation." Posthumously, on 23 February 2008, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the film's ensemble cast, its director, and its casting director. .]] To prepare for the role, Ledger told Empire, "I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices — it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath — someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts"; after reiterating his view of the character as "just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown", he added that Nolan had given him "free rein" to create the role, which he found "fun, because there are no real boundaries to what the Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke." For his work in The Dark Knight, Ledger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, his family accepting it on his behalf, as well as numerous other posthumous awards including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, which Christopher Nolan accepted for him.
At a news conference at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, Ledger spoke of his desire to make a documentary film about the British singer-songwriter Nick Drake, who died in 1974, at the age of 26, from an overdose of an antidepressant. Ledger created and acted in a music video set to Drake's recording of the singer's 1974 song about depression "Black Eyed Dog"—a title "inspired by Winston Churchill’s descriptive term for depression" (black dog); it was shown publicly only twice, first at the Bumbershoot Festival, in Seattle, Washington, held from 1 September to 3 September 2007; and secondly as part of "A Place To Be: A Celebration of Nick Drake", with its screening of Their Place: Reflections On Nick Drake, "a series of short filmed homages to Nick Drake" (including Ledger's), sponsored by American Cinematheque, at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, in Hollywood, on 5 October 2007. After Ledger's death, his music video for "Black Eyed Dog" was shown on the Internet and excerpted in news clips distributed via YouTube.
He was working with Scottish screenwriter and producer Allan Scott on an adaptation of the 1983 novel The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, for which he was planning both to act and to direct, which would have been his first feature film as a director. Ledger's final directorial work, in which he shot two music videos before his death, premiered in 2009. The music videos, completed for Modest Mouse and Grace Woodroofe, include an animated feature for Modest Mouse's song, "King Rat", and the Woodroofe video for her cover of David Bowie's "Quicksand". The "King Rat" video premiered on 4 August 2009.
After his performance on stage at the 2005 Screen Actors Guild Awards, when he had giggled in presenting Brokeback Mountain as a nominee for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, the Los Angeles Times referred to his presentation as an "apparent gay spoof." Ledger called the Times later and explained that his levity resulted from stage fright, saying that he had been told that he would be presenting the award only minutes earlier; he stated: "I am so sorry and I apologise for my nervousness. I would be absolutely horrified if my stage fright was misinterpreted as a lack of respect for the film, the topic and for the amazing filmmakers."
Ledger was quoted in January 2006 in Melbourne's Herald Sun as saying that he heard that West Virginia had banned Brokeback Mountain, which it had not; actually, a cinema in Utah had banned the film. He had also referred mistakenly to West Virginia's having had lynchings as recently as the 1980s, but state scholars disputed his statement, observing that, whereas lynchings did occur in Alabama as recently as 1981, according to "the director of state archives and history" quoted in The Charleston Gazette, "The last documented lynching in West Virginia took place in Lewisburg in 1931."
Emergency medical technicians (EMT) arrived seven minutes later, at 3:33 p.m. ("at almost exactly the same moment as a private security guard summoned by Ms. Olsen"), but were also unable to revive him. At 3:36 p.m., Ledger was pronounced dead and his body removed from the apartment.
On 23 January 2008, at 10:50 a.m., Australian time, Ledger's parents and sister appeared outside his mother's house in Applecross, a riverside suburb of Perth, and read a short statement to the media expressing their grief and desire for privacy. Within the next few days, memorial tributes were communicated by family members, Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd, Deputy Premier of Western Australia Eric Ripper, Warner Bros. (distributor of The Dark Knight), and thousands of Ledger's fans around the world.
Several actors made statements expressing their sorrow at Ledger's death, including Daniel Day-Lewis, who dedicated his Screen Actors Guild Award to Ledger, saying that he was inspired by Ledger's acting; Day-Lewis praised Ledger's performances in Monster's Ball and Brokeback Mountain, describing the latter as "unique, perfect." Verne Troyer, who was working with Ledger on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at the time of his death, had a heart shape, an exact duplicate of a symbol that Ledger scrawled on a piece of paper with his email address, tattooed on his hand in remembrance of Ledger because Ledger "had made such an impression on [him]."
On 1 February 2008, in her first public statement after Ledger's death, Michelle Williams expressed her heartbreak and described Ledger's spirit as surviving in their daughter.
After attending private memorial ceremonies in Los Angeles, Ledger's family members returned with his body to Perth.
On 9 February 2008, a memorial service attended by several hundred invited guests was held at Penrhos College, garnering considerable press attention; afterward Ledger's body was cremated at Fremantle Cemetery, followed by a private service attended by only 10 closest family members, with his ashes to be interred later in a family plot at Karrakatta Cemetery, next to two of his grandparents. Later that night, his family and friends gathered for a wake on Cottesloe Beach.
On 4 August 2008, citing unnamed sources, Murray Weiss, of the New York Post, first reported that Mary-Kate Olsen had "refused [through her attorney, Michael C. Miller] to be interviewed by federal investigators probing the accidental drug death of her close friend Heath Ledger ... [without] ... immunity from prosecution," and that, when asked about the matter, Miller at first declined further comment. Later that day, after the police confirmed the gist of Weiss's account to the Associated Press, Miller issued a statement denying that Olsen supplied Ledger with the drugs causing his death and asserting that she did not know their source." In his statement, Miller said specifically: "Despite tabloid speculation, Mary-Kate Olsen had nothing whatsoever to do with the drugs found in Heath Ledger's home or his body, and she does not know where he obtained them," emphasizing that media "descriptions [attributed to an unidentified source] are incomplete and inaccurate."
After a flurry of further media speculation, on 6 August 2008, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan closed its investigation into Ledger's death without filing any charges and rendering moot its subpoena of Olsen. With the clearing of the two doctors and Olsen, and the closing of the investigation because the prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office "don't believe there's a viable target," it is still not known how Ledger obtained the oxycodone and hydrocodone in the lethal drug combination that killed him.
Eleven months after Ledger's death, on 23 December 2008, Jake Coyle, writing for the Associated Press, announced that "Heath Ledger's death was voted 2008's top entertainment story by U.S. newspaper and broadcast editors surveyed by The Associated Press," as it resulted in: "shock and confusion" about "the circumstances", the ruling of the death as an accident caused by "a toxic combination of prescription drugs", and the continuation of "his legacy... [i]n a roundly acclaimed performance as the Joker in the year's biggest box office hit The Dark Knight."
On 31 March 2008, stimulating another controversy pertaining to Ledger's estate, Gemma Jones and Janet Fife-Yeomans published an "Exclusive" report, in The Daily Telegraph, citing Ledger's uncle Haydn Ledger and other family members, who "believe the late actor may have fathered a secret love child" when he was 17, and stating that "If it is confirmed that Ledger is the girl's biological father, it could split his multi-million dollar estate between ... Matilda Rose ... and his secret love child." A few days later, reports citing telephone interviews with Ledger's uncles Haydn and Mike Ledger and the family of the other little girl, published in OK! and Us Weekly, "denied" those "claims", with Ledger's uncles and the little girl's mother and stepfather describing them as unfounded "rumors" distorted and exaggerated by the media.
On 15 July 2008, Fife-Yeomans reported further, via Australian News Limited, that "While Ledger left everything to his parents and three sisters, it is understood they have legal advice that under WA law, Matilda Rose is entitled to the lion's share" of his estate; its executors, Kim Ledger's former business colleague Robert John Collins and Geraldton accountant William Mark Dyson, "have applied for probate in the West Australian Supreme Court in Perth, advertising "for 'creditors and other persons' having claims on the estate to lodge them by 11 August 2008 ... to ensure all debts are paid before the estate is distributed...." According to this report by Fife-Yeomans, earlier reports citing Ledger's uncles,
On 27 September 2008, Ledger's father Kim stated that "the family has agreed to leave the [US]$16.3 million fortune to Matilda," adding: "There is no claim. Our family has gifted everything to Matilda." In October 2008, Forbes.com estimated Ledger's annual earnings from October 2007 through October 2008 – including his posthumous share of The Dark Knight's gross income of "[US]$991 million in box office revenue worldwide" –– as "[US]$20 million."
Speaking of editing The Dark Knight, on which Ledger had completed his work in October 2007, Nolan recalled, "It was tremendously emotional, right when he passed, having to go back in and look at him every day. ... But the truth is, I feel very lucky to have something productive to do, to have a performance that he was very, very proud of, and that he had entrusted to me to finish." Nolan dedicated the film in part to Ledger's memory, as well as to the memory of technician Conway Wickliffe, who was killed during a car accident while preparing one of the film's stunts.
Released in July 2008, The Dark Knight broke several box office records and received both popular and critical accolades, especially with regard to Ledger's performance as the Joker. Even film critic David Denby, who does not praise the film overall in his pre-release review in The New Yorker, evaluates Ledger's work highly, describing his performance as both "sinister and frightening" and Ledger as "mesmerising in every scene", concluding: "His performance is a heroic, unsettling final act: this young actor looked into the abyss." Attempting to dispel widespread speculations that Ledger's performance as the Joker had in any way led to his death (as Denby and others suggest), Ledger's co-star and friend Christian Bale, who played opposite him as Batman, has stressed that, as an actor, Ledger greatly enjoyed meeting the challenges of creating that role, an experience that Ledger himself described as "the most fun I’ve ever had, or probably ever will have, playing a character."
Ledger received numerous awards for his Joker role in The Dark Knight. On 10 November 2008, he was nominated for two People's Choice Awards related to his work on the film, "Best Ensemble Cast" and "Best Onscreen Match-Up" (shared with Christian Bale), and Ledger won an award for "Match-Up" in the ceremony aired live on CBS in January 2009.
On 11 December 2008, it was announced that Ledger had been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight; he subsequently won the award at the 66th Golden Globe Awards ceremony telecast on NBC on 11 January 2009 with Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan accepting on his behalf.
Film critics, co-stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Caine and many of Ledger's colleagues in the film community joined Bale in calling for and predicting a nomination for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in recognition of Ledger's achievement in The Dark Knight. Ledger's subsequent nomination was announced on 22 January 2009, the anniversary of his death; Ledger went on to win the award, becoming the second person to win a posthumous Academy Award for acting, after fellow Australian actor Peter Finch, who won for 1976's Network. The award was accepted by Ledger's family.
Category:Accidental deaths in New York Category:Australian expatriate actors in the United States Category:Australian film actors Category:Australian music video directors Category:Australian television actors Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor Category:Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners Category:Burials at Karrakatta Cemetery Category:Drug-related deaths in New York Category:Former students of Guildford Grammar School Category:People from Brooklyn Category:People from Perth, Western Australia Category:Rock Eisteddfod Challenge participants Category:Actors from Western Australia Category:1979 births Category:2008 deaths
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| Caption | Thompson in Paris at the César Awards 2009 |
|---|---|
| Birth date | April 15, 1959 |
| Birth place | Paddington, London, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Actress, comedienne, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1979–present |
| Spouse | Kenneth Branagh (1989–1995; divorced) Greg Wise (2003–present; 2 children) |
Emma Thompson (born 15 April 1959) is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. Her first major film role was in the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy. In 1992, Thompson won multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, for her performance in the British drama Howards End. The following year Thompson garnered dual Academy Award nominations, as Best Actress for The Remains of the Day and as Best Supporting Actress for In the Name of the Father.
In 1995, Thompson scripted and starred in Sense and Sensibility, a film adaptation of the Jane Austen novel of the same name, which earned her an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Other notable film and television credits have included the Harry Potter film series, Wit (2001), Love Actually (2003), Angels in America (2003), Nanny McPhee (2005), Stranger than Fiction (2006), Last Chance Harvey (2008), An Education (2009), and Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010).
Thompson is also a patron of the Refugee Council and President of the Teaching Awards.
Thompson's first major film role was in Richard Curtis's romantic comedy The Tall Guy (1989) co-starring Jeff Goldblum. Her career took a more serious turn with a series of critically acclaimed performances and films, beginning with Howards End (1992), for which she received an Oscar for best actress; the part of Gareth Peirce, the lawyer for the Guildford Four, in In the Name of the Father; The Remains of the Day opposite Anthony Hopkins; and as the British painter Dora Carrington in the film Carrington.
Thompson won her next Oscar in 1996, for best adapted screenplay for her adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, a film directed by Ang Lee, in which she also played the Oscar-nominated lead role opposite Hugh Grant. She has said that she keeps both of her award statues in her downstairs bathroom, citing embarrassment at placing them in a more prominent place.
Thompson's recent television work has included a starring role in the 2001 HBO drama Wit, in which she played a dying cancer patient, and 2003's Angels in America, playing multiple roles, including one of the titular angels. Her Emmy Award was as a guest star in a 1997 episode of the show Ellen; in this episode she played a fictionalised parody of herself: a closeted lesbian more concerned with the media finding out she is actually American. She also appeared in an episode of Cheers in 1992 titled "One Hugs, the Other Doesn't". , 2005]] More recently, Thompson appeared in supporting roles such as Sybill Trelawney in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She also appeared in the 2003 comedy Love Actually. The film Nanny McPhee, adapted by Thompson from Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda books, was first released in October 2005. Thompson worked on the project for nine years, having written the screenplay and starred alongside her mother (who has a cameo appearance). In the film Stranger than Fiction she plays an author planning on killing her main character, Harold Crick, who turns out to be a real person. Most recently, Thompson made a short uncredited cameo as a doctor introducing the cure for cancer in the form of measles in the latest film adaptation of I Am Legend, and starred in Last Chance Harvey opposite Dustin Hoffman, Eileen Atkins and Kathy Baker. In 2009, she appeared in An Education and The Boat That Rocked, the new Richard Curtis film, which also starred Gemma Arterton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, January Jones, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Jack Davenport and Rhys Ifans.
Thompson reprised her role as Sybill Trelawney in the two-part film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She will also voice Queen Elinor in the upcoming 2012 Pixar film Brave.
Bought for an undisclosed sum from a local land owner, the plot was to be split into small squares and sold across the globe. Thompson said, "I don't understand how any government remotely serious about committing to reversing climate change can even consider these ridiculous plans. It's laughably hypocritical. That's why we've bought a plot on the runway. We'll stop this from happening even if we have to move in and plant vegetables."
She married actor Kenneth Branagh on 20 August 1989. They acted together several times, in the TV series Fortunes of War, and in hit movies such as Dead Again, Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing. They divorced in October 1995.
Thompson married actor Greg Wise in 2003 in Dunoon, Scotland, where she has a second home. The couple have a daughter, Gaia Romilly, born in 1999. In 2003, the couple informally adopted a 16-year-old Rwandan refugee named Tindyebwa Agaba. They successfully resisted his deportation back to Rwanda, his family having been killed in the genocide.
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| Name | Duncan Jones |
|---|---|
| Caption | Jones at the Tribeca Film Festival for the premiere of his film Moon, April 30, 2009 |
| Birth name | Duncan Zowie Jones |
| Birth date | May 30, 1971 |
| Birth place | Beckenham, Kent, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 2002–present |
As a child, Jones spent time growing up in Berlin, London, and Vevey, Switzerland where he attended the first and second grade at the Commonwealth American School. When David and Angela divorced in February 1980, David Bowie was granted custody of 9-year-old Jones (who was then known as Zowie), and he visited his mother on his school vacations. At age 14, he enrolled in the prestigious Scottish boarding school, Gordonstoun.
Around age 12, Zowie decided that he preferred to be called "Joey", and used this nickname for some time until shortening it to "Joe" in his later teen years. His father has been quoted as saying, "If, when he gets old enough to care about his name, he doesn't like it, he can always change it or give himself a nickname. It's OK by me." The press reported that he went by "Joe" in 1992 when attending his father's wedding to Iman (he was the best man).
According to the New York Times, he reverted to his birth name, Duncan Jones, around the age of 18. Jones is an atheist.
He then pursued a PhD degree at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee but left before completion to attend London Film School, where he graduated as a director.
He was one of many cameramen at his father's widely-televised 50th birthday party directed by Englishman Tim Pope at Madison Square Garden and also at two BowieNet concerts at Roseland Ballroom in New York City in June 2000. (and probably also at the BBC Radio Theatre concert on June 27, 2000)
The advert debuted in the week ending 20 February 2006 and featured two women (representing fashion and style) fighting and briefly kissing each other.
The advertisement reportedly generated 127 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, but the complaints did not lead to any action. Later, he said that he will be doing "another science fiction film, called Mute, which takes place in a future Berlin. It's a Blade Runner-inspired piece, a little love letter to that film." The premise is that in future Berlin, a woman's disappearance causes a mystery for her partner, a mute bartender. He must go up against the city’s gangsters to solve the mystery. The film takes place in the same timeline as Jones' Moon, and will feature Sam Rockwell in a cameo as his character Sam Bell.
It was announced in 2009 that he will direct the feature film adaptation of Escape from the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew by Alex Kershaw.
He directed the Summit Entertainment project Source Code, a science-fiction thriller from Vendome Pictures, which was produced by Mark Gordon. Actor Jake Gyllenhaal plays the lead role in the film.
Category:Advertising people Category:Advertising directors Category:Old Gordonstounians Category:College of Wooster alumni Category:People from Beckenham Category:1971 births Category:Living people Category:David Bowie Category:English film directors Category:English people of American descent Category:English people of Polish descent Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English atheists
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| Name | Dawn French |
|---|---|
| Caption | French at the 2005 Make Poverty History march. |
| Birth name | Dawn Roma French |
| Birth date | October 11, 1957 |
| Birth place | Holyhead, Wales, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Medium | Actress, writer, comedienne |
| Notable work | Various in French & Saunders Rev. Geraldine Granger in The Vicar of Dibley Rosie Bales in Jam and Jerusalem Caroline Arless Lark Rise to Candleford Joy Aston in Psychoville |
| Influences | John Cleese |
| Active | 1981–present |
| Spouse | (divorced); 1 adopted daughter |
French's biggest solo television role to date has been as the title figure in the long running and popular BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley, created by Richard Curtis. She starred as Geraldine Granger, a vicar of a small village called Dibley. An audience of 12.3 million watched the final full-length episode to see her character's marriage ceremony. Her last appearance on The Vicar of Dibley was with Sting and Trudie Styler in a special mini episode made for Comic Relief in 2007. She was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Comedy Performance in the last episode of The Vicar of Dibley. Repeats of the show on BBC One still attract millions of viewers.
More recently, French played a major role in Jam & Jerusalem as a woman called Rosie who had an alter ego. She co-starred alongside Sue Johnston, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley. She also made a guest appearance in Little Britain as Vicky Pollard's mother, Shelly Pollard, who was seen defending her daughter in the dock in Thailand as she was charged with drug smuggling, and who was sentenced to twenty years, ten more than her daughter. French also appeared in a special version of Little Britain Live which featured several celebrity guests and was shown by the BBC as part of Comic Relief. She played the part of a lesbian barmaid in a sketch with Daffyd Thomas. In 2006, French played a role in the television series Marple in the episode "Sleeping Murder". She also appeared as Caroline Arless in the BBC television drama Lark Rise to Candleford in 2008. French also said, "I didn't want to appear in a series which was all about just a few main characters. It gives me the chance to observe, to learn things from other actors."
She has also taken to roles in the theatre. French has previously appeared in plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, My Brilliant Divorce and Smaller, which is about a schoolteacher caring for her disabled mother. January 2007 saw French performing as the Duchesse de Crackentorp in an opera in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. The opera production was The Daughter of the Regiment (La fille du régiment) by Gaetano Donizetti, which depicts the life of a baby adopted by an army regiment. French soprano Natalie Dessay and the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez took the two leading roles that required singing. French returned to Covent Garden and La Fille du règiment in the 2010 revival.
Due to her admitted chocoholism, she was chosen as the face of Terry's Chocolate Orange, using the slogan "It's not Terry's, it's mine", which was replaced with "Don't tap it, whack it!" As of 29 August 2007, French has been dropped as the face of Terry's Chocolate Orange, causing speculation that Terry's regarded her as an unsuitable role model because of her size. The company stated "After such a long partnership we feel that the campaign has run its course and we are in the process of developing different work."
Her voice can be heard advertising the Tesco's "Every Little Helps" promotion.
On 6 April 2010, it was announced that French and her husband Lenny Henry were to separate after 25 years of marriage. It is believed that the separation was amicable and they decided to split in October of the previous year but left it until then as they were still in discussion over the separation. French and Henry's divorce was finalised in late October 2010.
Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the Central School of Speech and Drama Category:British people of Irish descent Category:English comedians Category:English film actors Category:English television actors Category:English stage actors Category:English voice actors Category:The Comic Strip Category:People connected with Plymouth Category:People from Shinfield Category:Women comedians Category:People from Anglesey
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| Name | David Lynch |
|---|---|
| Caption | Lynch in Washington D.C., January 23, 2007 |
| Birth place | Missoula, Montana, U.S. |
| Birth name | David Keith Lynch January 20, 1946 |
| Years active | Since 1966 |
| Spouse | Peggy Lynch (1967–1974)Mary Fisk (1977–1987)Mary Sweeney (2006) Emily Stofle (2009-present) |
| Partner | Isabella Rossellini (1986–1991) |
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, television director and visual artist. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound design. Indeed, the surreal and in many cases violent elements to his films have gained them the reputation that they "disturb, offend or mystify" their audiences.
Moving around various parts of the United States as a child within his middle class family, Lynch went on to study painting in Philadelphia, where he first made the transition to producing short films. Deciding to devote himself more fully to this medium, he moved to Los Angeles, where he produced his first motion picture, the surrealist horror Eraserhead (1977). After Eraserhead became a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit, Lynch was employed to direct The Elephant Man (1980), from where he gained mainstream success. Then being employed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, he proceeded to make two films for them, the science-fiction epic Dune (1984), which proven to be a critical and commercial failure, and his own neo-noir crime film, Blue Velvet (1986), which was instead highly critically acclaimed.
Proceeding to create his own television series with Mark Frost, the highly popular murder mystery Twin Peaks (1990-1992), he also created a cinematic prequel, (1992), a road movie, Wild at Heart (1990), and a family film, The Straight Story (1999) in the same period. Turning further towards surrealist filmmaking, three of his following films worked on "dream logic" non-linear narrative structures, Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006).
Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, for his films The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, and also received a screenplay Academy Award nomination for The Elephant Man. Lynch has twice won France's César Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival while that same year, The Guardian described Lynch as "the most important director of this era". Allmovie called him "the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking", whilst the success of his films have led to him being labelled "the first popular Surrealist."
Lynch had become interested in painting and drawing from an early age, becoming intrigued by the idea of pursuing it as a career path when living in Virginia, where his friend's father was a professional painter. At Francis C. Hammond High School in Alexandria, Virginia, he did poorly academically, having little interest in school work, but was popular with other students, and after leaving decided that he wanted to study painting at college, thereby beginning his studies at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1964, where he was a roommate of Peter Wolf. Nonetheless, he left after only a year, stating that "I was not inspired AT ALL in that place", and instead deciding that he wanted to travel around Europe for three years with his friend Jack Fisk, who was similarly unhappy with his studies at Cooper Union. They had some hopes that in Europe they could train with the expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka at his school, however upon reaching Salzburg they found that he was not available, and disillusioned, they returned to the United States after spending only fifteen days of their planned three years in Europe.
It was at the Philadelphia Academy that Lynch made his very first short film, which was entitled Six Men Getting Sick (1966). He had first come up with the idea when he developed a wish to see his paintings move, and he subsequently began discussing the idea of creating an animation with an artist named Bruce Samuelson. When this project never came about, Lynch decided to work on a film alone, and so purchased the cheapest 16mm camera that he could find in order to do so. Taking one of the abandoned upper rooms of the Academy as a working space, he spent $200 - which at the time he felt to be a lot of money - to produce Six Men Getting Sick. Describing the work as "57 seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit", Lynch played the film on a loop at the Academy's annual end-of-year exhibit, where it shared joint first prize with a painting by Noel Mahaffey. This led to a commission from one of his fellow students, the wealthy H. Barton Wasserman, who offered him $1000 to create a film installation in his home. Spending $450 of that on purchasing a second-hand Bolex camera, Lynch produced a new animated short, but upon getting the film developed, realized that the result was simply a blurred, frameless print. As he would later relate, "So I called up Bart [Wasserman] and said, 'Bart, the film is a disaster. The camera was broken and what I've done hasn't turned out.' And he said, 'Don't worry, David, take the rest of the money and make something else for me. Just give me a print.' End of story."
Using this leftover money, Lynch decided to experiment on making a work that was a mix of animation with live action, producing a four minute short entitled The Alphabet (1968). The film starred Lynch's wife Peggy as a character known as The Girl, who chants the alphabet to a series of images before dying at the end by haemorrhaging blood all over her bed sheets. Adding a sound effect, Lynch used a broken Uher tape recorded to record the sound of his baby daughter Jennifer crying, creating a distorted sound that Lynch felt to be particularly effective. Later describing where he had got inspiration for this work from, Lynch stated that "Peggy's neice was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. So that's sort of what started The Alphabet going. The rest of it was just subconscious."
Learning about the newly founded American Film Institute, which gave grants to film makers who could produce for them both a prior work and a script for a new project, Lynch decided to send them a copy of The Alphabet along with a script that he had written for a new short film, one that would be almost entirely live action, and which would be entitled The Grandmother. The Institute agreed to help finance the work, initially offering him $5000, out of his requested budget of $7,200, but later granting him the further $2,200 which he needed. Starring people he knew from both work and college and filmed in his own house, The Grandmother revolved around the story of a neglected boy who "grows" a grandmother from a seed to care for him. The film critics Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell later remarked that "this film is a true oddity but contains many of the themes and ideas that would filter into his later work, and shows a remarkable grasp of the medium".
Despite the fact that the film was planned to be about forty-two minutes long (it would end up being eighty-nine minutes long), the script for Eraserhead was only twenty-one pages long, and some of the teachers at the Conservatory were concerned that the film would not be a success with such little dialogue and action. Nonetheless, they agreed not to interfere as they had done with Gardenback, and as such Lynch was able to create the film free from interference. Filming, which began in 1972, took place at night in some abandoned stables, allowing the production team, which was largely Lynch and some of his friends, including Sissy Spacek, Jack Fisk, cinematographer Frederick Elmes and sound designer Alan Splet to set up a camera room, green room, editing room, sets as well as a food room and a bathroom. Initially, funding for the project came from the AFI, who gave Lynch a $10,000 grant, but it was not enough to complete the work, and under pressure from studios after the success of the relatively cheap feature film Easy Rider, they were unable to provide him with any more. Following this, Lynch was also supported by a loan given to him by his father, and by money that he was able to bring in from a paper round that he took up delivering the Wall Street Journal. Not long into the production of Eraserhead, Lynch and his wife Peggy amicably separated and divorced, and so he began living full-time on set. Meanwhile, in 1977, Lynch would remarry, this time to a woman named Mary Fisk.
Filmed in black and white, Eraserhead tells the story of a quiet young man named Henry (Jack Nance) living in a dystopian industrial wasteland, whose girlfriend gives birth to a deformed baby whom she leaves in his care. The baby constantly cries, eventually leading to its accidental death, at which the world itself begins to fall apart. Lynch has consistently refused to either confirm or deny any interpretation of Eraserhead, or to "confess his own thinking behind the many abstractions in the film." Nonetheless, he admits that it was heavily influenced by the fearful mood of Philadelphia, referring to the film was "my Philadelphia Story".
It was due to the financial problems with the production of Eraserhead that filming was haphazard, regularly stopping and starting again. It was in one such break in 1974 that Lynch created a short film entitled The Amputee, which revolved around a woman with two amputated legs (played by Jack Nance's wife, Catherine Coulson) reading aloud a letter and having her stumps washed by a doctor (played by Lynch himself).
Eraserhead was finally finished in 1976, after five years of production. Lynch subsequently tried to get the film entered into the Cannes Film Festival, but whilst some reviewers liked it, others felt that it was awful, and so it was not selected for screening. Similarly, reviewers from the New York Film Festival also rejected it, but it was indeed screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival, from where Ben Barenholtz, the distributor of the Elgin Theater, heard about it. He was very supportive of the move, helping to distribute it around the United States in 1977, and Eraserhead subsequently became popular on the midnight movie underground circuit, The acclaimed film maker Stanley Kubrick said that it was one of his all-time favorite films.
The Elephant Man script - written by Chris de Vore and Eric Bergren - was based upon a true story, that of Joseph Merrick, a heavily deformed man living in Victorian London, who was held in a sideshow but was later taken under the care of a London surgeon, Frederick Treves. Lynch wanted to film it, but at the same time also had to make some alterations that would alter the story from true events, but in his view make a better plot. However, in order to do so he would have to get the permission of Mel Brooks, whose company, BrookFilms, would be responsible for production; subsequently Brooks viewed Eraserhead, and after coming out of the screening theatre, embraced Lynch, declaring that "You're a madman, I love you! You're in."
The resulting film, The Elephant Man, starred John Hurt as John Merrick (his name was changed from Joseph), as well as Anthony Hopkins as Frederick Treves. Filming took place in London, and Lynch brought his own distinctively surrealist approach to the film, filming it in color stock black and white, but nonetheless it has been described as "one of the most conventional" of his films. The Elephant Man was a huge critical and commercial success, and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nods for Lynch.
Dune is set in the far future, when humans live in an interstellar empire run along a feudal system. The main character, Paul Atreides (played by Kyle MacLachlan), is the son of a noble who takes control of the desert planet Arrakis which grows the rare spice melange, the most highly prized commodity in the empire. Lynch however was unhappy with the work, later remarking that "Dune was a kind of studio film. I didn’t have final cut. And, little by little, I was subconsciously making compromises" to his own vision. He produced much footage for the film that was eventually removed out from the final theatrical cut, dramatically condensing the plot. Although De Laurentiis hoped it would be as successful as Star Wars, Lynch's Dune (1984) was a critical and commercial dud; it had cost $45 million to make, and grossed a mere $27.4 million domestically. Later on, Universal Studios released an "extended cut" of the film for syndicated television, containing almost an hour of cutting-room-floor footage and new narration. Such was not representative of Lynch's intentions, but the studio considered it more comprehensible than the original two-hour version. Lynch objected to these changes and had his name struck from the extended cut, which has "Alan Smithee" credited as the director and "Judas Booth" (a pseudonym which Lynch himself invented, inspired by his own feelings of betrayal) as the screenwriter.
Meanwhile in 1983 he had begun the writing and drawing of a comic strip, The Angriest Dog in the World, which featured unchanging graphics of a tethered dog that was so angry that it could not move, alongside cryptic philosophical references. It ran from 1983 until 1992 in the Village Voice, Creative Loafing and other tabloid and alternative publications. It was around this period that Lynch also got increasingly interested in photography as an art form, and travelled to northern England to take photos of the degrading industrial landscape, something that he was particularly interested in. with the film's main actor Kyle MacLachlan. MacLachlan would also appear as the protagonist in Lynch's Dune and Twin Peaks.]]
Following on from Dune, Lynch was contractually still obliged to produce two other projects for De Laurentiis: the first of these was a planned sequel, which due to the film's lack of success never went beyond the script stage. The other was a more personal work, based upon a script that Lynch had been working on for some time. Developing from ideas that Lynch had had since 1973, the resulting film, Blue Velvet, was set in the fictional town of Lumberton, USA, and revolves around a college student named Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who finds a severed ear in a field. Subsequently investigating further with the help of friend Sandy (Laura Dern), he uncovers that it is related to a criminal gang led by psychopath Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who has kidnapped the husband and child of singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and repeatedly subjects her to rape. Lynch himself characterizes the story as "a dream of strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story."
For the film, Lynch decided to include pop songs from the 1950s, including "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, the latter of which was largely inspirational for the film, with Lynch stating that "It was the song that sparked the movie… There was something mysterious about it. It made me think about things. And the first things I thought about were lawns - lawns and the neighbourhood." Other music for the film was also produced, this time composed by Angelo Badalamenti, who would go on to produce the music for most of Lynch’s subsequent cinematic works. Dino de Laurentiis loved the film, and it achieved support from some of the early specialist screenings, but the preview screenings to a mainstream audience were instead highly negative, with most of the audience hating the film. Although Lynch had found success previously with The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet's controversy with audiences and critics introduced him into the mainstream, and became a huge critical and moderate commercial success. The film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Woody Allen, whose film Hannah and Her Sisters was nominated for Best Picture, said that Blue Velvet was his favorite film of the year.
A drama series set in a small Washington town where popular high school student Laura Palmer has been raped and murdered, Twin Peaks featured FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) as the investigator trying to unearth the killer, and discovering not only the supernatural elements to the murder but also the secrets of many of the local townsfolk - as Lynch himself summed it up, "The project was to mix a police investigation with the ordinary lives of the characters." In plotting out the series, Lynch later related that "[me and Mark Frost] worked together, especially in the initial stages. Later on we started working more apart." They subsequently pitched the series to the ABC Network, who agreed to finance the pilot episode, and once this was completed they also commissioned the first season, which comprised seven episodes.
A second season went into production soon after, which would last for a further twenty-two episodes. In all, Lynch himself only directed six episodes out of the whole series due to other responsibilities, namely his work on the film Wild at Heart (see below), but carefully chose those other directors whom he entrusted with the job. Meanwhile, Lynch also appeared in several episodes of the series, acting in the role of deaf FBI agent Gordon Cole. The series was a success, with high viewing figures both in the United States and in many nations abroad, and soon spanned a cult following. Nonetheless, the executives at the ABC Network, believing that public interest in the show was decreasing, insisted that Lynch and Frost reveal who the killer of Laura Palmer was prematurely, something that they only begrudgingly agreed to do, and Lynch has always felt that agreeing to do so is one of his biggest professional regrets. Following the revealing of the murderer and the series' move from Thursday to Saturday night on the ABC Network, Twin Peaks'' continued on for several more episodes, but following a ratings drop was cancelled. Lynch, who disliked the direction that the writers and directors had taken in the previous few episodes, chose to direct the final episode, which he ended on a cliff hanger, later stating that "that's not the ending. That's the ending that people were stuck with."
While Twin Peaks was in production, the Brooklyn Academy of Music asked Lynch and the composer Angelo Badalamenti, who had been responsible for the music in Twin Peaks, to create a theatrical piece which would only be performed twice at their academy in New York City in 1989 as a part of the New Music America Festival. The result was Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted, which starred such frequent Lynch collaborators as Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage and Michael J. Anderson as well as containing five songs sung by Julee Cruise. David Lynch produced a fifty-minute video of the performance in 1990. Meanwhile, Lynch was also involved in the creation of various commercials for different companies, including perfume companies like Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani and for the Japanese coffee company Namoi, the latter of which involved a Japanese man searching the town of Twin Peaks for his missing wife.
Whilst still working on the first few episodes of Twin Peaks, Lynch's friend, Monty Montgomery "gave me a book that he wanted to direct as a movie. He asked if I would maybe be executive producer or something, and I said 'That's great, Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?' And he said, 'In that case, you can do it yourself'." The book was Barry Gifford's novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, which told the tale of two lovers on a road trip, and Lynch felt that it was "just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened." With Gifford's support, Lynch set about to adapt the novel into a film, with the result being Wild at Heart, a crime and road movie starring Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lula. Describing his plot as a "strange blend" of "a road picture, a love story, a psychological drama and a violent comedy", he altered much from the original novel, changing the ending, and incorporating numerous references to the classic film The Wizard of Oz. Despite receiving a muted response from American critics and viewers, it won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.
Following on from the success of Wild at Heart, Lynch decided to return to the world of the now-cancelled Twin Peaks, this time without Mark Frost, to create a film that acted primarily as a prequel but also, in part, as a sequel, with Lynch stating that "I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in time." The result, (1992), primarily revolved around the last few days in the life of Laura Palmer, and was much "darker" in tone than the television series, having much of the humour removed, and dealing with such topics as incest and murder. Lynch himself stated that the film was about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devestation of the victim of incest." Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was financed by the company CIBY-2000, and most of the cast of the series agreed to re-aprise their roles for the film, although some refused, and many were not enthusiastic about the project. The film was, for the most part, a commercial and critical failure in the United States; however, it was a hit in Japan and British critic Mark Kermode (among others) has hailed it as Lynch's "masterpiece".
Meanwhile, Lynch continued working on a series of television shows with Mark Frost. After Twin Peaks, they produced a series of documentaries entitled American Chronicles (1990) which examined life across the United States, the comedy series On the Air (1992), which was cancelled after only three episodes had aired, and the three-episode HBO mini-series Hotel Room (1993) about events that happened in the same hotel room but at different dates in time.
Following Lost Highway, Lynch went on to work on directing a film from a script written by Mary Sweeney and John E. Roach. The resulting motion picture, The Straight Story, was, like The Elephant Man before it, based upon a true story, that of Alvin Straight (played in the film by Richard Farnsworth), an elderly man from Laurens, Iowa, who goes on three hundred mile journey to visit his sick brother (played by Harry Dean Stanton) in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, riding the whole way there upon an electric lawnmower. Commenting on why he chose this script, Lynch would simply relate that "that's what I fell in love with next", and displayed his admiration for Straight, describing him as being "like James Dean, except he's old." Once more, Angelo Badalamenti produced the music for the film, however creating instrumentation that was "very different from the kind of score he's done for [Lynch] in the past." Having many differences with most of his work, particularly in that it did not contain any profanities, sexual content or violence, The Straight Story was rated G (general viewing) by the Motion Picture Association of America, and as such came as "shocking news" to many in the film industry, who were surprised that it "did not disturb, offend or mystify." As Le Blanc and Odell stated, the plot made it "seem as far removed from Lynch's earlier works as could be imagined, but in fact right from the very opening, this is entirely his film - a surreal road movie".
The same year, Lynch approached ABC once again with ideas for a television drama. The network gave Lynch the go-ahead to shoot a two-hour pilot for the series Mulholland Drive, but disputes over content and running time led to the project being shelved indefinitely. However, with seven million dollars from the French production company StudioCanal, Lynch completed the pilot as a film, Mulholland Drive. The film, a non-linear narrative surrealist tale of the dark side of Hollywood, stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux. The film performed relatively well at the box office worldwide and was a critical success, earning Lynch a Best Director prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival (shared with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There) and a Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Association.
In 2006, Lynch's latest feature film, Inland Empire was released. At almost three hours, it was the longest of Lynch's films. Like Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway before it, the film did not follow a traditional narrative structure. It starred Lynch regulars Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Justin Theroux, with cameos by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring (voices of Suzie and Jane Rabbit), and a performance by Jeremy Irons. Lynch described the piece as "a mystery about a woman in trouble". In an effort to promote the film, Lynch made appearances with a cow and a placard bearing the slogan "Without cheese there would be no Inland Empire".
In 2008, Lynch announced that he was working on a road documentary "about his dialogues with regular folk on the meaning of life," with traveling companions including singer Donovan and physicist John Hagelin, two prominent members of the Transcendental Meditation movement. The results of this enterprise, called the Interview Project, are accessible from Lynch's web site. is both based on and voiced by Lynch.]]
Lynch currently has two films in production, both of which differ in content from his previous work. One of these is an animation entitled Snootworld, and the other is a documentary on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi consisting of interviews with people who knew him.
In 2010, Lynch began making guest appearances on the Family Guy spin-off, The Cleveland Show as Gus the Bartender. He had been convinced to appear in the show by its lead actor, Mike Henry, who is a fan of Lynch's and who felt that his whole life had changed after seeing Wild at Heart.
Lady Blue Shanghai, written, directed and edited by Lynch, is a 16-minute internet promotion film made for Dior and placed on the internet in May 2010.
Another of Lynch's prominent themes include industry, with repeated imagery of "the clunk of machinery, the power of pistons, shadows of oil drills pumping, screaming woodmills and smoke billowing factories", as can be seen with the industrial wasteland in Eraserhead, the factories in The Elephant Man, the sawmill in Twin Peaks and the lawn mower in The Straight Story. Describing his interest in such things, Lynch stated that "It makes me feel good to see giant machinery, you know, working: dealing with molten metal. And I like fire and smoke. And the sounds are so powerful. It's just big stuff. It means that things are being made, and I really like that."
Another theme is the idea of a "dark underbelly" of violent criminal activity within a society, such as with Frank's gang in Blue Velvet and the cocaine smugglers in Twin Peaks. The idea of deformity is also found in several of Lynch's films, from the protagonist in The Elephant Man, to the deformed baby in Eraserhead, as is the idea of death from a head wound, found in most of Lynch's films. Other imagery commonly used within Lynch's works are flickering electrictity or lights, as well as fire and the idea of a stage upon which a singer performs, often surrounded by drapery.
With the exception of The Elephant Man and Dune, which are set in London and an extraterrestrial galaxy respectively, all of Lynch's films have been set in the United States, and he has stated that "I like certain things about America and it gives me ideas. When I go around and I see things, it sparks little stories, or little characters pop out, so it just feels right to me to, you know, make American films." A number of his works, including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Lost Highway are intentionally reminiscent of the 1950s American culture even though they were set in the later decades of the twentieth century. Lynch later commented on his feelings for this decade, which was that in which he grew up as a child, by stating that "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways… there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were laying the groundwork then for a disastrous future."
Lynch also tends to feature his leading female actors in multiple or "split" roles, so that many of his female characters have multiple, fractured identities. This practice began with his choice to cast Sheryl Lee as both Laura Palmer and her cousin Maddy Ferguson in Twin Peaks and continued in his later works. In Lost Highway, Patricia Arquette plays the dual role of Renee Madison/Alice Wakefield, while in Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts plays Diane Selwyn/Betty Elms and Laura Harring plays Camilla Rhodes/Rita and in Inland Empire, Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace/Susan Blue. By contrast, Lynch rarely creates multi-character roles for his male actors.
Many of his works also contain letters and words added to the painting, something which he explains: "The words in the paintings are sometimes important to make you start thinking about what else is going on in there. And a lot of times, the words excite me as shapes, and something'll grow out of that. I used to cut these little letters out and glue them on. They just look good all lined up like teeth... sometimes they become the title of the painting."
Lynch considers the Anglo-Irish twentieth century artist Francis Bacon to be his "number one kinda hero painter", stating that "Normally I only like a couple of years of a painter's work, but I like everything of Bacon's. The guy, you know, had the stuff."
Lynch was the subject of a major art retrospective at the Fondation Cartier, Paris from March May 3–27, 2007. The show was entitled The Air is on Fire and included numerous paintings, photographs, drawings, alternative films and sound work. New site-specific art installations were created specially for the exhibition. A series of events accompanied the exhibition including live performances and concerts. Some of Lynch's art include photographs of dissected chickens and other animals as a "Build your own Chicken" toy ad.
Between 1983 and 1992, Lynch wrote and drew a weekly comic strip called The Angriest Dog in the World for the L.A. Reader. The drawings in the panels never change, just the captions.
In November 2010, Lynch released two electro pop music singles, "Good Day Today" and "I Know", through the independent British label Sunday Best Recordings. Describing why he created them, he stated that "I was just sitting and these notes came and then I went down and started working with Dean [Hurley, his engineer] and then these few notes, 'I want to have a good day, today' came and the song was built around that".
In July 2005, he launched the David Lynch Foundation For Consciousness-Based Education and Peace, established to help finance scholarships for students in middle and high schools who are interested in learning the Transcendental Meditation technique and to fund research on the technique and its effects on learning. He promotes his vision on college campuses with tours that began in September 2005. In 2009, Lynch organized a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation. On April 4, 2009, the "Change Begins Within" concert featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Moby, Bettye LaVette, Ben Harper, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys.
Lynch is working for the building and establishment of seven buildings, in which 8,000 salaried people will practice advanced meditation techniques, "pumping peace for the world". He estimates the cost at $7 billion. As of December 2005, he had spent $400,000 of personal money, and raised $1 million in donations. In 2009, he went to India to film interviews with people who knew the Maharishi as part of a biographical documentary.
David Wants to Fly, released in May 2010, is a documentary by German filmmaker David Sieveking "that follows the path of his professional idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM)."
An independent project starring Lynch is called Beyond The Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey. It is directed by young film student Dana Farley, who has severe Dyslexia and Attention deficit disorder. Farley started Transcendental Meditation when she was sixteen and it enabled her to overcome the stresses of getting through the her last years of high school and into college. Filmmaker Kevin Sean Michaels is one of the producers and the film will be at film festivals in 2011.
Lynch is an avid coffee drinker and even has his own line of special organic blends available for purchase on his website. Called "David Lynch Signature Cup", the coffee has been advertised via flyers included with several recent Lynch-related DVD releases, including Inland Empire and the Gold Box edition of Twin Peaks. The possibly self-mocking tag-line for the brand is "It's all in the beans ... and I'm just full of beans." This is also a quote of a line said by Justin Theroux's character in Inland Empire.
ceremony.]]
In June 2009, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse released an album called (named after a Slate.com article of the same name, "Dark Night of the Soul; David Lynch's Inland Empire"), with a 100+ page booklet with visuals by Lynch. The album contained complete packaging and a blank CD because of a dispute with the record label. The artists involved implied that consumers can get the music online and just burn the blank CD provided.
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;Footnotes
;Bibliography }}
Category:1946 births Category:American artists Category:American comic strip cartoonists Category:American composers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:American Film Institute Conservatory alumni Category:American musicians Category:American painters Category:American Presbyterians Category:César Award winners Category:Eagle Scouts Category:Experimental film festivals Category:Surrealist filmmakers Category:Experimental filmmakers Category:American people of Finnish descent Category:Living people Category:People from Missoula, Montana Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Officiers of the Légion d'honneur
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| Name | Danny Boyle |
|---|---|
| Caption | Boyle in November 2008 |
| Birth name | Daniel Boyle |
| Birth date | October 20, 1956 |
| Birth place | Radcliffe, Lancashire, England, UK |
| Occupation | Director/Producer |
| Years active | 1980–present |
| Awards | Academy Award for Best Director 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire |
Daniel "Danny" Boyle (born 20 October 1956) is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for his work on films such as Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours. For Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle won numerous awards in 2008, including the Academy Award for Best Director. Boyle was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2008 Austin Film Festival, where he also introduced that year's AFF Audience Award Winner Slumdog Millionaire. On 17 June 2010, it was announced that he will be the artistic director for the 2012 Olympic games opening ceremony.
It was a very strict, Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years, I was supposed to be a priest and really, it was my mother's fondest wish that I would become one.
He studied at Thornleigh Salesian College in Bolton, and at Bangor University.
Boyle is a trustee of the UK-based, African arts charity Dramatic Need.
In between the films The Beach and 28 Days Later Boyle directed two TV movies for the BBC in 2001 - Vacuuming Completely Nude In Paradise and Strumpet.
Boyle's next project was an adaptation of the cult novel The Beach. Filmed in Thailand with Leonardo DiCaprio in a starring role, casting of the film led to a feud with Ewan McGregor, star of his first three films.
He also directed a short film Alien Love Triangle (starring Kenneth Branagh), and was intended to be one of three shorts within a feature film. However the project was cancelled after the two other shorts were made into feature films: Mimic starring Mira Sorvino and Impostor starring Gary Sinise.
In 2004 Boyle directed Millions, His next collaboration with Alex Garland
In 2008 he directed Slumdog Millionaire, the story of an impoverished child (Dev Patel) on the streets of Mumbai who competes on India's variant of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, for which Boyle won an Academy Award. The film won eight Academy Awards in total. "To be a film-maker...you have to lead. You have to be psychotic in your desire to do something. People always like the easy route. You have to push very hard to get something unusual, something different."
{|class="wikitable" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1994 | Shallow Grave | Director | |- | 1996 | Trainspotting | Director | |- | 1997 | A Life Less Ordinary | Director | |- | 2000 | The Beach | Director | |- | 2002 | 28 Days Later | Director | |- | 2004 | Millions | Director | |- | 2007 | Sunshine | Director | |- | 2007 | 28 Weeks Later | Producer | |- | 2008 | Slumdog Millionaire | Director | Academy Award for Best DirectorBAFTA Award for Best DirectionBritish Independent Film Award for Best DirectorBroadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorChicago Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorDallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorDetroit Film Critics Society Award for Best DirectorDirectors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing in a Feature FilmEuropean Film Awards - Audience AwardFlorida Film Critics Circle Award for Best DirectorGolden Globe Award for Best DirectorHouston Film Critics Society Award for Best DirectorLondon Film Critics' Circle Award for Best British Director of the YearLos Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorNew York Film Critics Online Award for Best DirectorOklahoma Film Critics Circle Award for Best DirectorPhoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best DirectorSan Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best DirectorSatellite Award for Best DirectorSoutheastern Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorSt. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorToronto International Film Festival People's Choice AwardWashington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Director |- | 2010 | 127 Hours | Writer, Director | Utah Film Critics Association Award for Best Director |}
;Planned films 28 Months Later (TBA) Ponte Tower (TBA) Trainspotting sequel (TBA) Paani
Category:1956 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Bangor University Category:Best Director Academy Award winners Category:English Roman Catholics Category:English film directors Category:English film producers Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English television directors Category:People from Radcliffe
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| Name | Charlie McDonnell |
|---|---|
| Caption | McDonnell at VidCon 2010. |
| Birth name | Charles Joseph McDonnell |
| Birth date | October 01, 1990 |
| Birth place | Bath, Somerset, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Years active | 2007 - present |
| Notable works | The Challenge Charlie series, How to be English, Duet with Myself, Purple Man, A Song About Acne |
| Known for | Comedy, vlogging, music |
| Website | |
| Web alias | charlieissocoollikecoollike |
| Web host service | YouTube, BlogTV, Facebook and Twitter |
In celebration of gaining 25,000 subscribers, McDonnell asked for challenge suggestions from subscribers, and he is completing them in a series of 25 videos entitled "Challenge Charlie". He has completed 19 so far (), one of which was suggested by TV presenter Phillip Schofield and his daughter Molly, for McDonnell to do the dance that accompanies the Hoedown Throwdown. As McDonnell posted more and more videos to his channel, his prowess for music and light-hearted comedy was further demonstrated, thus boosting his fame and earning him an enormous amount of subsequent subscribers. McDonnell has since posted a large range of videos on the site, including his most viewed, "Duet with Myself".
In 2008, McDonnell participated in a video-blog collaboration with four other YouTube personalities, entitled "FiveAwesomeGuys". The project ran from 28 January to 31 December.
Charlie's videos currently end with an outro by Stephen Fry.
On 21 April 2010, Charlie McDonnell became the most subscribed YouTuber in the United Kingdom and is 35th most subscribed globally - he has over 700,000 subscribers . He also has over 100 million total video views and over 20 million channel views as of January 2011.
McDonnell occasionally posts YouTube music videos, such as "A Song About Monkeys", "A Song About Acne", "A Duet With Myself", "A Song About Love", and "Chemical Love". "Chemical Love" also appeared on the compilation "DFTBA Records, Volume Two". He has put these into his debut solo album 'This Is Me'', which was released on December 1, 2010.
McDonnell was also involved with the television programme Chartjackers (see Charity Work) where he and three other famous youtubers tried to get a song to number 1 for children in need.
Sons of Admirals is not a band in the traditional sense. They are all solo artists, but as well as having their solo careers, they come together to form one group. The idea of this came from the Troupe of Admirals, which was a Shakespearean-era group of actors that came together to perform, while still retaining their individual 'careers'.
In October 2009, McDonnell was named as one of a number of prominent YouTube users who would be participating in a project called "RNLI Shout". The aim of the project is to raise money to purchase a lifeboat for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
On the 4th September 2010, Charlie and fellow YouTuber Myles Dyer co presented Stickaid, a 24 hour live webshow. Starting from 12 noon BST, the two hosted the 5th annual charity event from Middlesex University's Trent Park campus in London. Their goal was to raise £10,000 ($15,900), which they almost doubled. All the proceedings went to UNICEF.
Over the course of Chartjackers, McDonnell solicited lyrics, music, performers and stylists to record the final single and video via a YouTube channel named "ChartJackersProject". An unofficial charity single for Children in Need, the completed song was titled "I've Got Nothing" and was sung by vocalists Miranda Chartrand and Adam Nichols. McDonnell edited the single's official music video, which was shown nationwide on British music channels such as 4Music and Viva. "I've Got Nothing" was released exclusively through the iTunes Store at midnight on 9 November 2009 and reached Number 36 on the UK Singles Chart. Sales of the single raised a total of approximately £10,000 for Children in Need.
He featured as a guest on Robert Llewellyn's web series Carpool in the episode released on 15 May 2009. McDonnell has also made guest appearances on Lily Allen and Friends and The Gadget Show.
In early June 2009, McDonnell visited Los Angeles to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009. He attended Microsoft's Xbox press conference, where Project Natal was announced. Two days later, he was invited to a "special area of E3" and was one of 30 exclusive people from around the world to try out Natal (now known as Kinect). He explained this in one of a group of videos he produced and uploaded to a new channel on YouTube for the trip he called "CharlieAtE3".
Charlie was also interviewed for BBC Outlook and for an article in The Guardian where he talks about the five years of YouTube and his life on the video website.
On 6 June 2010, McDonnell presented the YouTube Audience Award to The Inbetweeners as part of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Television Awards.
In mid-July 2010, Charlie appeared on KTLA with Hank Green, known on YouTube as one of the Vlogbrothers, and Justine Ezarik, known as iJustine, to promote VidCon 2010.
In the week of 10 October 2010 Charlie and his band, Sons of Admirals, were featured in the English paper The Sun.
In December 2010, Charlie was invited behind the scenes of Doctor Who Confidential during the filming of the Series 5 Christmas special, in which he got to meet Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill.
Category:1990 births Category:Living people Category:British Internet personalities Category:DFTBA Records artists Category:English comedians Category:People from Bath, Somerset Category:Video bloggers Category:YouTube video producers
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| Caption | Blanchett at the press conference for The Good German in Berlin, February 2007. |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Catherine Élise Blanchett |
| Birth date | May 14, 1969 |
| Birth place | Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Spouse | Andrew Upton (m. 1997-present; 3 children) |
| Occupation | Actress Theatre director |
| Years active | 1993–present |
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett (born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actress and theatre director. She has won multiple acting awards, most notably two SAGs, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTAs, and an Academy Award, as well as the Volpi Cup at the 64th Venice International Film Festival. Blanchett earned five Academy Award nominations between 1998 and 2010.
Blanchett came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 film Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur. She is also well-known for her portrayals of the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the upcoming The Hobbit, Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a role which brought her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She and her husband Andrew Upton are currently artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.
Blanchett has described herself during childhood as "part extrovert, part wallflower". She studied Economics and Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne before leaving Australia to travel overseas.
When she was 18, Blanchett went on a vacation to Egypt. A fellow guest at a hotel in Cairo asked if she wanted to be an extra in a movie, and the next day she found herself in a crowd scene cheering for an American boxer losing to an Egyptian in the film Kaboria, starring the Egyptian actor Ahmad Zaki. Blanchett returned to Australia and later moved to Sydney to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1992 and beginning her career in the theatre.
Blanchett appeared in the TV miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the miniseries Bordertown, with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode of Police Rescue entitled "The Loaded Boy". She also appeared in the 1994 telemovie of Police Rescue as a teacher taken hostage by armed bandits, and in the 50-minute drama Parklands (1996), which received a limited release in Australian cinemas.
Blanchett made her international film debut with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II in Bruce Beresford's 1997 film Paradise Road, which co-starred Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. Her first leading role, also in 1997, was as Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong's production of Oscar and Lucinda opposite Ralph Fiennes. Coincidentally, Peter Carey, the Booker Prize-winning Australian author of Oscar and Lucinda, had known Blanchett's father, Bob, when both worked in the advertising industry in Melbourne. Blanchett was nominated for her first Australian Film Institute Award as Best Leading Actress for this role but lost out to Pamela Rabe in The Well. She did, however, win an AFI Award as Supporting Actress in the same year for her role as Lizzie in the romantic-comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie, co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O'Connor.
Her first high-profile international role was as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 movie Elizabeth, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Blanchett lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow for her role in Shakespeare in Love, but won a British Academy Award (BAFTA) and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama. The following year, Blanchett was nominated for another BAFTA Award for her supporting role in The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. She played the role of Galadriel in all three films. The trilogy holds the record as the highest grossing film trilogy of all time.
In 2005, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. This made Blanchett the first person to garner an Academy Award for playing a previous Oscar-winning actor/actress.
, 2007.]] In 2006, she starred in Babel opposite Brad Pitt, The Good German with George Clooney and Notes on a Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench. Blanchett received her third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film (Dench was also Oscar nominated).
In 2007, Blanchett was named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People In The World and also one of the most successful actresses by Forbes magazine.
In 2007, she won the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe Award for portraying one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' feature film I'm Not There and reprised her role as Elizabeth I in the sequel, . At the 80th Academy Awards Blanchett received two Academy Award nominations; Best Actress for Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There, becoming the eleventh actor to receive two acting nominations in the same year and the first female actor to receive another nomination for the reprisal of a role.
Blanchett and her husband started three-year contracts as artistic co-directors of the Sydney Theatre Company in January 2008, with Giorgio Armani as its patron.
She next starred in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko, and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, appearing on screen with Brad Pitt for a second time.
On 5 December 2008 Blanchett was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in front of Grauman's Egyptian Theatre.
As of 2010, Blanchett has featured in eight films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: Elizabeth (1998), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002 and 2003), The Aviator (2004), Babel (2006), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
Blanchett provided a voice for the film Ponyo , and appeared opposite Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, released on 14 May 2010.
It was announced that Blanchett will reprise her role as Galadriel in the Jackson's upcoming films of The Hobbit in 2012 and 2013.
Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 while she was performing in a production of The Seagull. It was not love at first sight, however; "He thought I was aloof and I thought he was arrogant", Blanchett later remarked. "It just shows you how wrong you can be, but once he kissed me that was that." They were married on 29 December 1997 and have three sons: Dashiell John (born 3 December 2001), Roman Robert (born 23 April 2004), and Ignatius Martin (born 13 April 2008).
After making Brighton, England, their main family home for much of the early 2000s, she and her husband returned to their native Australia. In November 2006, Blanchett stated that this was due to a desire to decide on a permanent home for her children, and to be closer to her family as well as a sense of belonging to the Australian (theatrical) community. She and her family live in "Bulwarra", an 1877 sandstone mansion in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill. It was purchased for $10.2 million Australian dollars in 2004 and underwent extensive renovations in 2007 in order to be made more "eco-friendly".
In 2006, a portrait of Cate Blanchett and family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist in the Archibald Prize, which is awarded the "best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics".
Blanchett is a Patron of the Sydney Film Festival. She works as the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble. In 2007, Blanchett became the ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation's online campaign www.whoonearthcares.com – trying to persuade Australians to express their concerns about climate change. She is also the Patron of the development charity SolarAid. Opening the 2008 9th World Congress of Metropolis in Sydney, Blanchett said: "The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different."
In early 2009, Blanchett appeared in a series of special edition postage stamps called "Australian Legends of the Screen", featuring Australian actors acknowledged for the "outstanding contribution they have made to Australian entertainment and culture". She, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, and Nicole Kidman each appear twice in the series: once as themselves and once in character; Blanchett is depicted in character from .
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Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:Australian film actors Category:Australian stage actors Category:Australian television actors Category:Australian people of American descent Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners Category:Actors from Melbourne Category:Independent Spirit Award winners Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:Former students of the National Institute of Dramatic Art
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| Caption | Garfield at the premiere of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Roy Thompson Hall, Toronto, September 18, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Birthname | Andrew Russell Garfield |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Birthdate | August 20, 1983 |
| Birthplace | Los Angeles, California,United States |
| Yearsactive | 2004–present |
Andrew Russell Garfield (born August 20, 1983) is an American-British actor who has appeared in radio, theatre, film, and television. He is known for his roles in the 2007 films Lions for Lambs and Boy A, 2009's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and the 2010 drama The Social Network. He has been cast as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the franchise's 2012 reboot. Garfield is a dual citizen of the U.S. and the U.K.
Garfield made his British television debut in 2005, appearing in the Channel 4 teenage drama Sugar Rush. and was named one of the shooting stars at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Garfield appeared in Vogue's December 2009 issue, modeling alongside Lily Cole, in a photographed retelling of Hansel and Gretel. Also that year, Garfield had a supporting role in the Terry Gilliam film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as well as in David Fincher's The Social Network, alongside Brenda Song, Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg, and about the founders of Facebook.
On August 5, 2010, Garfield appeared briefly as Terry Gilliam's assistant in the Arcade Fire webcast pre-show at Madison Square Garden. On September 12, 2010, he co-presented at the 2010 MTV VMAs, with Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake.
Garfield has been chosen to play Spider-Man opposite Emma Stone in Marc Webb's Spider-Man reboot. Filming began in December 2010, and the film is scheduled for a July 3, 2012 release date.
On December 14, 2010, The Social Network received six nominations for The 68th annual Golden Globe Awards, which will be held on January 16, 2011. Garfield was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.
Category:1983 births Category:Actors from California Category:Alumni of the Central School of Speech and Drama Category:American film actors Category:American gymnasts Category:American Jews Category:American people of British descent Category:American radio actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:British film actors Category:British Jews Category:British people of American descent Category:British radio actors Category:British stage actors Category:British television actors Category:Jewish actors Category:Living people Category:Royal National Theatre Company members Category:Shakespearean actors
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| Name | Abhishek Bachchan |
|---|---|
| Caption | Abhishek Bachchan at the IIFA awards |
| Birth date | February 05, 1976 |
| Birth place | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
| Spouse | Aishwarya Rai (2007 - present) |
| Occupation | Actor, Producer, Television presenter |
| Years active | 2000- present |
Bachchan debuted with J.P. Dutta's Refugee (2000). In 2004, he appeared in Dhoom and in Yuva. His work in Yuva received several awards, including his first Filmfare Award in the Best Supporting Actor category, an award he would win for the two next years as well. In 2010, he won his first National Film Award (as a producer) for Paa which won the Best Feature Film in Hindi Award.
Bachchan was dyslexic as a child. He attended Jamnabai Narsee School and Bombay Scottish School in Mumbai, Modern School, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi, and Aiglon College in Switzerland. He then went to the U.S. to attend Boston University.
Abhishek went on to give a string of 17 poorly received films but his performances in Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon (2003) and Mani Ratnam's Yuva (2004) proved his mettle as an actor. The same year, he starred in Dhoom his first commercial hit. He won his second Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor for Sarkar. Bachchan also received his first Filmfare nomination in the Best Actor category.
Bachchan's first 2006 release Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, was one of India's highest-grossing films of the year. He played the role of Rishi Talwar, a young man who lives in New York and whose wife sets on an extramarital affair with another man. His performance in the film earned him his third consecutive award for Best Supporting Actor at the Filmfare Awards. He was also a part of Mani Ratnam's stage show, Netru, Indru, Naalai, alongside many other co-stars. Bachchan's second release Umrao Jaan failed to do well at the box office, but his third film that year, the sequel Dhoom 2, did very well—although, as in the first Dhoom, critics found that Hrithik Roshan, as the antagonist, stole the show.
In 2007, Bachchan starred in Guru, receiving much acclaim for his performance, and the film emerged as his first solo hit. In May 2007, he made a brief appearance in the successful Shootout at Lokhandwala. His next release, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, which released in June 2007, failed to do well in India but did better overseas, especially in the UK. While the film itself received mixed reviews, Bachchan won praise for his performance.
In the summer of 2008, Bachchan, his wife, his father, and fellow performers Preity Zinta, Ritesh Deshmukh, and Madhuri Dixit starred in the "Unforgettable World Tour" stage production. The first leg covered the U.S, Canada, Trinidad, and London, England.
Bachchan is also involved in the functional and administrative operations of his father's company, originally known as ABCL, and rechristened as AB Corp. Ltd. That company, along with Wizcraft International Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., developed the Unforgettable production.
Among Bachchan's 2008 films were Sarkar Raj, Dostana and Drona.
Bachchan produced the Hindi film Paa for his family company AB Corp. Ltd. in which he played the role of his father Amitabh Bachchan's father.
In January 2010, Bachchan hosted a game show for Colors titled National Bingo Night. The debut episode fetched a 3.5 in the TVR ratings. In 2010, he starred in the film Raavan opposite his wife Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Rediff said the film had "great performances". With a five week box office of 38.53 Crore and a distribution share of 25.33 it was declared a flop by Boxoffice India.
In October 2002, at Amitabh Bachchan's 60th birthday celebration, Abhishek Bachchan and actress Karisma Kapoor announced their engagement. The engagement was called off in January 2003.
In 2006, Bachchan was named the sexiest man in Asia by UK magazine Eastern Eye. The Times of India called him the most eligible bachelor of India.
Bachchan and actress Aishwarya Rai announced their engagement on 14 January 2007. The couple was married on 20 April 2007, according to traditional Hindu rites of the South Indian Bunt community, to which Rai belongs. Token North Indian and Bengali ceremonies were also performed. The wedding took place in a private ceremony at the Bachchan residence Prateeksha, in Juhu, Mumbai, but was heavily covered by the entertainment media. The couple appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on Monday, 28 September 2009.
Among the awards, Bachchan has received National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi (as a producer) for Paa and 2005's Stardust Star of the Year Award - Male for Yuva as well as Filmfare Awards for "Best Supporting Actor" in 2005, '06 and '07
Category:1976 births Category:Living people Category:Indian film actors Category:Hindi film actors Category:Indian Hindus Category:People from Mumbai Category:Indian actors Category:Filmfare Awards winners Category:Indian film producers Category:Indian television presenters
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