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The gender-neutral term "player" was common in film in the early days of the Motion Picture Production Code with regards to the cinema of the United States, but is now generally deemed archaic. However, it remains in use in the theatre, often incorporated into the name of a theatre group or company (such as the East West Players).
Actors were traditionally not people of high status, and in the Early Middle Ages travelling acting troupes were often viewed with distrust. In many parts of Europe, actors could not even receive a Christian burial, and traditional beliefs of the region and time period held that this left any actor forever condemned. However, this negative perception was largely reversed in the 19th and 20th centuries as acting has become an honoured and popular profession and art.
Method actors are often characterized as immersing themselves so totally in their characters that they continue to portray them even off-stage or off-camera for the duration of the project. However, this is a popular misconception. While some actors do employ this approach, it is generally not taught as part of the Method. Stella Adler, who was a member of the Group Theatre, along with Strasberg, emphasised a different approach of using creative imagination.
Method acting offered a systematized training that developed internal abilities (sensory, psychological, emotional); it revolutionized American theater
In representational acting, "actors want to make us 'believe' they are the character; they pretend."
When an eighteen year Puritan prohibition of drama was lifted after the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. Margaret Hughes is credited by some as the first professional actress on the English stage. This prohibition ended during the reign of Charles II in part due to the fact that he enjoyed watching actresses on stage. The first occurrence of the term actress was in 1700 according to the OED and is ascribed to Dryden.
In Japan, men (onnagata) took over the female roles in kabuki theatre when women were banned from performing on stage during the Edo period. This convention has continued to the present. However, some forms of Chinese drama have women playing all the roles.
In modern times, women sometimes play the roles of prepubescent boys. The stage role of Peter Pan, for example, is traditionally played by a woman, as are most principal boys in British pantomime. Opera has several "breeches roles" traditionally sung by women, usually mezzo-sopranos. Examples are Hansel in Hänsel und Gretel, Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier.
Women in male roles are uncommon in film with the notable exception of the film The Year of Living Dangerously. In this film Linda Hunt played the pivotal role of Billy Kwan. She received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
Having an actor dress as the opposite sex for comic effect is also a long standing tradition in comic theatre and film. Most of Shakespeare's comedies include instances of overt cross-dressing, such as Francis Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The movie A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum stars Jack Gilford dressing as a young bride. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon famously posed as women to escape gangsters in the Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot. Cross-dressing for comic effect was a frequently used device in most of the thirty Carry On films. Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams have each appeared in a hit comedy film (Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire, respectively) in which they played most scenes dressed as a woman.
Occasionally, the issue is further complicated, for example, by a woman playing a woman acting as a man pretending to be a woman, like Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria, or Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love. In , filmwatchers never learn the gender of the androgynous main characters Pat and Chris (played by Julia Sweeney and Dave Foley).
A few roles in modern films, plays and musicals are played by a member of the opposite sex (rather than a character cross-dressing), such as the character Edna Turnblad in Hairspray—played by Divine in the original film, Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway musical, and John Travolta in the 2007 movie musical. Linda Hunt won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously. Felicity Huffman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Bree Osbourne (a man in the process of becoming a woman) in Transamerica.
Category:Entertainment occupations Category:Acting Category:Theatrical professions
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Name | Won Bin |
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Caption | Won Bin in 2010 |
Birth name | Kim Do-jin |
Birth date | November 10, 1977 |
Birth place | Jeongseon, Gangwon-do, |
Nationality | |
Ethnicity | Koreans |
Education | BFTV |
Alma mater | Yong-In University,Baekje Arts College |
Occupation | Actor, model |
Years active | 1997 – present |
Agent | Eden Nine Entertainment |
Height | |
Weight |
Won Bin (; born Kim Do-jin; on November 10, 1977) is a South Korean actor and model.
In November 1995, a cable television station was looking to recruit and hire new actors; Won applied and was accepted in his last semester of high school. He started to take acting classes at the station's headquarters and appeared in several dramas. The following month, Won signed an acting contract with a talent agency.
He made his big breakthrough in 2000 with drama Kkokji and Autumn Fairy Tale. His role as a rebellious youngest son in Kkokji proved his acting potential and his role in the widely successful drama Autumn Fairy Tale landed him on the A-list for Korean performers. Autumn Fairy Tale gained wide popularity in Asia and he became one of the most popular Korean actors in Korea and Asia as well. In 2002, Won became the first Korean actor to get wide popularity in Japan through the first Japan and Korea joint production drama Friends.
Won also had roles in several popular movies, including Guns & Talks and My Brother, but it is his portrayal of the sensitive younger brother in the blockbuster war movie Taegukgi (aka ) (2004) that has truly cemented his fame in the international realm. With the success of the critically acclaimed Taegukgi, recognition of his acting skills has reached an ever-wider international audience. Taegukgi is the best selling movie in South Korea in 2004 with 11.75 million admissions.
His career was interrupted by his mandatory service to the South Korean Army. After graduating from the Graduate School of Arts in Yong-In University in 2005, Won started his military duty in November 2005 and stationed at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, a position for which he volunteered. On June 2, 2006, the military officially confirmed Won Bin's discharge. The decision was made by the military when Won Bin sustained injury to his ACL. He had undergone surgery and was officially discharged on June 7, 2006. After the surgery, he had gone through rehabilitation program for more than one year to recover from the injury.
Won was appointed as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador of the Korean Committee on September 6, 2007. He has participated in various programs and charity events in Korea for UNICEF from that time on, and has appeared in several promotional videos.
In April 2008, Won finally confirmed that his comeback project would be Mother directed by Bong Joon-ho. Filming started in September 2008 and finished in February 2009. The film was selected to compete in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. He walked the red carpet at the film's world premiere on May 16, 2009 in the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Won's new movie The Man from Nowhere was released in August 2010.
2007.09.06 - Appointed as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
Category:UNICEF people Category:South Korean film actors Category:South Korean television actors Category:South Korean male models Category:Yong-In University alumni Category:People from Gangwon Category:1977 births Category:Living people
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Name | Tino Rossi |
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Background | solo_singer |
Birth name | Constantino Rossi |
Born | April 29, 1907 |
Died | 26 September 1983 (age 76)Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France |
Origin | Ajaccio, Corsica, France |
Genre | Cabaret, French pop |
Occupation | Singer, actor |
Years active | 1929–1982 |
Label | Columbia Records |
Born Constantino Rossi in Ajaccio, Corsica, France, he became a tenor of French cabaret and one of the great romantic idols of his time. Gifted with an operatic voice, a "Latin Lover" persona made him a movie star as well. Over his career, Rossi made hundreds of records and appeared in more than 25 films, the most notable of which was the 1953 production, Si Versailles m'était conté directed by Sacha Guitry. His romantic ballads had women swooning and his art-songs by Jules Massenet (1842–1912), Reynaldo Hahn (1875–1947), and other composers helped draw sold out audiences wherever he performed.
Rossi's success was greatly aided by songwriter Vincent Scotto (1876–1952), who wrote his first hits and collaborated with him for many years, composing and arranging many Rossi songs. Prior to World War II Rossi was a major box office attraction in the French speaking world but expanded his audience to America with a 1938 visit followed up by wartime tours across the USA and Canada. Tino Rossi began his film career in Nuits moscovites, Les (1934) but his first real success came with Marinella (1936). All his films were musicals and capitalised on his success as a singer.
In 1946, his song "Petit Papa Noël" sold more than thirty million copies worldwide. A Christmas classic for the family, the song still sells by the thousands each Yuletide season. The recipient of many musical awards, including the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque, Tino Rossi is the most popular personality to ever come from Corsica other than Napoleon Bonaparte.
During the Occupation of France by Nazi Germany Rossi's film career reached its peak, notably with Mon amour est près de toi (1943) and L'Île d'amour (1944). At the Liberation, the French authorities reproached him for associating with the French Gestapo, but most importantly for actively supporting collaborationist causes such as the LVF (Légion des Volontaires Français) who sent French volunteers to work in German factories. He was arrested in October 1944 and spent three weeks in Fresnes prison (near Paris). Following a trial in 1945, his sentence was relatively light. Unlike his fellow entertainers Arletty, Mireille Balin, Josseline Gaël and Robert Le Vigan), Rossi received a retrospective and largely symbolic work suspension. He subsequently appeared only sporadically in films, concentrating on his singing career.
In 1947 he married Lilia Vetti, a young dancer he met while making a film. They had a son together and the marriage lasted a lifetime. A star of film and the operetta scene, Tino Rossi's career also evolved into the television era, appearing in a number of popular variety shows. Age, and the advent of rock and roll in the 1960s saw him take backstage with the new generation of music lovers but he remained enormously popular with a following built up over fifty years of performing.
In 1982, for his contribution to France and its culture, President François Mitterrand named Tino Rossi a Commander of the Legion of Honor. That same year Rossi gave his last public performance at the Casino de Paris, a show that popular demand turned into a three month stint.
Tino Rossi died of pancreatic cancer in 1983 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. His body returned to his native Ajaccio for burial in the family plot at the local cemetery. His hometown named a street and the sailing harbor in his honor and at Nogent-sur-Marne, on the River Marne in Paris, there is a square named Tino Rossi Square. He's also referenced in the comic book Asterix in Corsica.
Category:1907 births Category:1983 deaths Category:People from Ajaccio Category:French male singers Category:Deaths from pancreatic cancer Category:Cancer deaths in France
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Name | Scott Adkins |
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Birthdate | June 17, 1976 |
Birthplace | Sutton Coldfield |
Occupation | Actor, martial artist |
Scott Adkins (born June 17, 1976) is an English actor and martial artist who is perhaps best known for playing Boyka in and and Bradley Hume in Holby City and Ed Russell in Mile High. Adkins has also appeared in Dangerfield, Hollyoaks and many other TV series as well as many films.
Adkins holds a red belt in taekwondo and a black belt in kickboxing.
His first professional break came when he was offered a role in a Hong Kong martial arts film called “Extreme Challenge” and found himself in the East for the first time. Scott got the chance to work with some of Hong Kong cinema’s leading action directors including Yeun Wo Ping, Cory Yeun, Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan. Acting roles started to come in and he was offered a guest role in BBC’s “Doctors” filmed at Birmingham’s Pebble Mill. Roles followed in BBC’s “EastEnders” and “City Central”, Sky One comedy drama “Mile High” and a regular role in BBC’s “Holby City” as Bradley Hume, the assistant General Manager of Holby General. Scott's first leading role in Isaac Florentine's "Ninja" was released theatrically in Malaysia on Oct.29, 2009, and was released in the United States on March 2, 2010.
Category:1976 births Category:British judoka Category:British taekwondo practitioners Category:British wushu practitioners Category:English film actors Category:English soap opera actors Category:English television actors Category:Living people Category:British jujutsuka Category:People from Sutton Coldfield Category:English stunt performers
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Name | Salim Kumar |
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Caption | Kalpana, Salim Kumar, Harisree Ashokan and Manoj K. Jayan at the Sathyan memorial awards, 2001 |
Birthdate | June 10, 1969 |
Birthplace | Chittatukara, North Paravur, Kerala, India |
Occupation | Actor |
Yearsactive | 1997 - present |
Spouse | Sunitha |
Children | Chandu, Aromal |
Awards | Kerala State Film Award 2005 - Best Second Actor (Achanurangatha Veedu ) Sathyan Award 2005 - (Achanurangatha Veedu) Bharathan Award 2005 - (Achanuranghatha Veedu) |
For about four years, he was associated with professional drama in Arathi Theatres, Cochin.
Category:Malayali actors Category:Living people Category:Kerala State Film Award winners Category:1969 births
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Birthname | Paula Maxine Patton |
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Birthdate | December 05, 1975 |
Birthplace | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Yearsactive | 2005–present |
Spouse | Robin Thicke (2005 - present) |
Paula Maxine Thicke (née Patton; born December 5, 1975) is an American actress. She is mostly known for her appearances in the films Idlewild (2006), Déjà Vu (2006), Mirrors (2008), Precious (2009), and Just Wright.
Category:1975 births Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California Category:African American film actors Category:African American television actors Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Living people Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:University of Southern California alumni
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Name | Martial |
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Birthdate | March 1, 40 |
Birthplace | Augusta Bilbilis (now Calatayud, Spain) |
Deathdate | Between 102 and 104 AD |
Deathplace | Rome |
Occupation | Author |
Nationality | Roman |
Genre | Satire |
Notableworks | Epigrams |
Influences | Catullus, Pedo, and Marsus and Juvenal |
His name seems to imply that he was born a Roman citizen, but he speaks of himself as "sprung from the Celts and Iberians, and a countryman of the Tagus;" and, in contrasting his own masculine appearance with that of an effeminate Greek, he draws particular attention to "his stiff Hispanian hair" (x. 65, 7).
His home was evidently one of rude comfort and plenty, sufficiently in the country to afford him the amusements of hunting and fishing, which he often recalls with keen pleasure, and sufficiently near the town to afford him the companionship of many comrades, the few survivors of whom he looks forward to meeting again after his thirty-four years' absence (x. 104). The memories of this old home, and of other spots, the rough names and local associations which he delights to introduce into his verse, attest to the simple pleasures of his early life and were among the influences which kept his spirit alive in the stultifying routines of upper-crust social life in Rome.
He was educated in Hispania, a country which in the 1st century produced several notable Latin writers, including Seneca the Elder and Seneca the Younger, Lucan and Quintilian, and Martial's contemporaries Licinianus of Bilbilis, Decianus of Emerita and Canius of Gades. Martial professes to be of the school of Catullus, Pedo, and Marsus, and he admits his inferiority only to the first. The epigram bears to this day the form impressed upon it by his unrivalled skill.
Not much is known of the details of his life for the first twenty years or so after he came to Rome. He published some juvenile poems of which he thought very little in his later years, and he laughs at a foolish bookseller who would not allow them to die a natural death (I. 113). Martial had neither youthful passion nor youthful enthusiasm to precociously make him a poet. His faculty ripened with experience and with the knowledge of that social life which was both his theme and his inspiration; many of his best epigrams are among those written in his last years. From many answers which he makes to the remonstrances of friends—among others to those of Quintilian—it may be inferred that he was urged to practice at the bar, but that he preferred his own lazy Bohemian kind of life. He made many influential friends and patrons and secured the favor of both Titus and Domitian. From them he obtained various privileges, among others the semestris tribunatus, which conferred on him equestrian rank. Martial failed, however, in his application to Domitian for more substantial advantages, although he commemorates the glory of having been invited to dinner by him, and also the fact that he procured the privilege of citizenship for many persons on whose behalf he appealed to him.
The earliest of his extant works, known as Liber spectaculorum, was first published at the opening of the Colosseum in the reign of Titus. It relates to the theatrical performances given by him, but the book as it now stands was presented to the world in or about the first year of Domitian, i.e. about the year 81. The favour of the emperor procured him the countenance of some of the worst creatures at the imperial court—among them of the notorious Crispinus, and probably of Paris, the supposed author of Juvenal's exile, for whose monument Martial afterwards wrote a eulogistic epitaph. The two books, numbered by editors xiii. and xiv., and known by the names of Xenia and Apophoreta—inscriptions in two lines each for presents—were published at the Saturnalia of 84. In 86 he gave to the world the first two of the twelve books on which his reputation rests.
From that time till his return to Hispania in 98 he published a volume almost every year. The first nine books and the first edition of Book X. appeared in the reign of Domitian; Book XI. appeared at the end of 96, shortly after the accession of Nerva. A revised edition of book X., that which we now possess, appeared in 98, about the time of Trajan's entrance into Rome. The last book was written after three years' absence in Hispania, shortly before his death, which happened about the year 102 or 103.
These twelve books bring Martial's ordinary mode of life between the age of forty-five and sixty very fully before us. His regular home for thirty-five years was Rome. He lived at first up three flights of stairs, and his "garret" overlooked the laurels in front of the portico of Agrippa. He had a small villa and unproductive farm near Nomentum, in the Sabine territory, to which he occasionally retired from the boors and noises of the city (ii. 38, xii. 57). In his later years he had also a small house on the Quirinal, near the temple of Quirinus.
At the time when his third book was brought out he had retired for a short time to Cisalpine Gaul, in weariness, as he tells us, of his unprofitable attendance to the bigwigs of Rome. For a time he seems to have felt the charm of the new scenes which he visited, and in a later book (iv. 25) he contemplates the prospect of retiring to the neighbourhood of Aquileia and the Timavus. But the spell exercised over him by Rome and Roman society was too great; even the epigrams sent from Forum Corneli and the Aemilian Way ring much more of the Roman forum, and of the streets, baths, porticos and clubs of Rome, than of the places from which they are dated.
His final departure from Rome was motivated by a weariness of the burdens imposed on him by his social position, and apparently the difficulties of meeting the ordinary expenses of living in the metropolis (x. 96); and he looks forward to a return to the scenes familiar to his youth. The well-known epigram addressed to Juvenal (xii. I 8) shows that for a time his ideal was realized; but the more trustworthy evidence of the prose epistle prefixed to Book XII. proves and that he could not live happily away from the literary and social pleasures of Rome for long. The one consolation of his exile was a lady, Marcella, of whom he writes rather as if she were his patroness—and it seems to have been a necessity of his being to have always a patron or patroness—than his wife or mistress.
During his life at Rome, although he never rose to a position of real independence, and had always a hard struggle with poverty, he seems to have known everybody, especially every one of any eminence at the bar or in literature. In addition to Lucan and Quintilian, he numbered among his friends or more intimate acquaintances Silius Italicus, Juvenal, the younger Pliny; and there were many others of high position whose society and patronage he enjoyed. The silence which he and Statius, although authors writing at the same time, having common friends and treating often of the same subjects, maintain in regard to one another may be explained by mutual dislike or want of sympathy. Martial in many places shows an undisguised contempt for the artificial kind of epic on which Statius's reputation chiefly rests; and it seems quite natural that the respectable author of the Thebaid and the Silvae should feel little admiration for either the life or the works of the bohemian epigrammatist.
Though many of his epigrams indicate a cynical disbelief in the character of women, yet others prove that he could respect and almost revere a refined and courteous lady. His own life in Rome afforded him no experience of domestic virtue; but his epigrams show that, even in the age which is known to modern readers chiefly from the Satires of Juvenal, virtue was recognized as the purest source of happiness. The tenderest element in Martial's nature seems, however, to have been his affection for children and for his dependents.
From Martial, for example, we have a glimpse of living conditions in the city of Rome:
: "I live in a little cell, with a window that won't even close, : In which Boreas himself would not want to live."
As Jo-Ann Shelton has written, "fire was a constant threat in ancient cities because wood was a common building material and people often used open fires and oil lamps. However, some people may have deliberately set fire to their property in order to collect insurance money." Martial makes this accusation in one of his epigrams:
: "Tongilianus, you paid two hundred for your house; : An accident much common in this city destroyed it. : You collected ten times more. Doesn't it seem, I pray, : That you set fire to your own house, Tongilianus?"
Martial also pours scorn on the doctors of his day:
:"I felt a little ill and called Dr. Symmachus. :Well, you came, Symmachus, but you brought 100 medical students with you. :One hundred ice-cold hands poked and jabbed me. :I didn't have a fever, Symmachus, when I called you –but now I do.
Martial's epigrams also refer to the extreme cruelty shown to slaves in Roman society. Below, he chides a man named Rufus for flogging his cook for a minor mistake:
: "You say that the rabbit isn't cooked, and ask for the whip; : Rufus, you prefer to carve up your cook than your rabbit."
Martial's epigrams are also characterized by their biting and often scathing sense of wit as well as for their lewdness; this has earned him a place in literary history as the original insult comic. Below is a sample of his more insulting work:
:"You feign youth, Laetinus, with your dyed hairSo suddenly you are a raven, but just now you were a swan. You do not deceive everyone. Proserpina knows you are grey-haired; She will remove the mask from your head."
:"Rumor tells, Chiona, that you are a virgin, and that nothing is purer than your fleshy delights. Nevertheless, you do not bathe with the correct part covered: if you have the decency, move your panties onto your face."
:"'You are a frank man', you are always telling me, Cerylus. Anyone who speaks against you, Cerylus, is a frank man."
:"Eat lettuce and soft apples eat: For you, Phoebus, have the harsh face of a defecating man."
Or the following two examples (in rather less stilted translations by Mark Ynys-Mon):
:Fabullus' wife Bassa frequently totes :A friend's baby, on which she loudly dotes. :Why does she take on this childcare duty? :It explains farts that are somewhat fruity.
:With your giant nose and cock :I bet you can with ease :When you get excited :check the end for cheese.
Category:40 births Category:102 deaths Category:1st-century Romans Category:2nd-century Romans Category:Latin-language writers Category:Roman era satirists Category:Silver Age Latin writers Category:Romans from Hispania Category:Epigrammatists
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Name | James Dean |
---|---|
Caption | Dean in 1955 |
Birthname | James Byron Dean |
Birth date | February 08, 1931 |
Birth place | Marion, Indiana, U.S. |
Death date | |
Death place | Cholame, California, U.S. |
Othername | Jimmy Dean |
Occupation | Actor |
Yearsactive | 1951–1955 |
James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied by the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as a troubled Los Angeles teenager, Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his stardom were as loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), and as the surly farmer, Jett Rink, in Giant (1956). Dean's enduring fame and popularity rests on performances in only these three films, all leading roles. His premature death in a car crash cemented his legendary status.
James Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Dean the 18th best male movie star on their AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list.
Unable to care for his son, Winton Dean sent James to live with Winton's sister Ortense and her husband Marcus Winslow on a farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in a Quaker background. Dean sought the counsel and friendship of Methodist pastor Rev. James DeWeerd. DeWeerd seemed to have had a formative influence upon Dean, especially upon his future interests in bullfighting, car racing, and the theater. According to Billy J. Harbin, "Dean had an intimate relationship with his pastor... which began in his senior year of high school and endured for many years." In high school, Dean's overall performance was mediocre. However, he was a popular school athlete, having successfully played on the baseball and basketball teams and studied drama and competed in forensics through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. After graduating from Fairmount High School on May 16, 1949, Dean moved back to California with his beagle, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. He enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in pre-law. Dean transferred to UCLA and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. He pledged the Sigma Nu fraternity but was never initiated. While at UCLA, he beat out 350 actors to land the role of Malcolm in Macbeth. At that time, he also began acting with James Whitmore's acting workshop. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor.
In October 1951, following actor James Whitmore's and his mentor Rogers Brackett's advice, Dean moved to New York City. There he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat the Clock. He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series, The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the legendary Actors Studio to study Method acting under Lee Strasberg. Proud of this accomplishment, Dean referred to the Studio in a 1952 letter to his family as "The greatest school of the theater. It houses great people like Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Arthur Kennedy, Mildred Dunnock. ... Very few get into it ... It is the best thing that can happen to an actor. I am one of the youngest to belong."
In contrast, the film chose to deal predominantly with the character of Cal Trask. Initially seeming more aloof and emotionally troubled than his twin brother Aron, Cal is quickly seen to be more worldly, aware, business savvy, and even sagacious than their pious and constantly disapproving father (played by Raymond Massey) seeking to invent vegetable refrigeration, and estranged mother, whom Cal discovers is a brothel-keeping 'madame' (Jo Van Fleet). Elia Kazan said of Cal before casting, "I wanted a Brando for the role". Osborn suggested Dean, who then met with Steinbeck; the future Nobel laureate did not like the bold youth personally, but thought him perfect for the part. Kazan set about putting the wheels in motion to cast the relatively unknown young actor in the role; on April 8, 1954, Dean left New York City and headed for Los Angeles to begin shooting.
Dean's performance in the film foreshadowed his role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause. Both characters are angst-ridden protagonists and misunderstood outcasts, desperately craving approval from a father figure.
Much of Dean's performance in the film is unscripted, including his dance in the bean field and his fetal-like posturing while riding on top of a train-car (after searching out his mother in a nearby town). The most famous improvisation during the film was when Cal's father rejects his gift of $5,000 (offered in reparation for his father's business loss). Instead of running away from his father as the script called for, Dean instinctively turned to Massey and, crying, embraced him. This cut and Massey's shocked reaction were kept in the film by Kazan.
For the 1955 Academy Awards, Dean received a posthumous nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in East of Eden, the first official posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history. (Jeanne Eagels was unofficially nominated for Best Actress in 1929, when the rules for selection of the winner were different.)
Giant would be Dean's last film. At the end of the film, Dean is supposed to make a drunken speech at a banquet; this is nicknamed the 'Last Supper' because it was the last scene before his sudden death. Dean mumbled so much that the scene had to later be re-recorded by his co-stars because Dean had died before the film was edited.
For the 1956 Academy Awards, Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in Giant.
During filming of Rebel Without a Cause, Dean traded in the 356 Speedster for one of only 90 Porsche 550 Spyders. He was contractually barred from racing during the filming of Giant, but with that out of the way, he was free to compete again. The Porsche was in fact a stopgap for Dean, as delivery of a superior Lotus Mk. X was delayed and he needed a car to compete at the races in Salinas, California.
Dean's 550 was customized by George Barris, who would go on to design the Batmobile. Dean's Porsche was numbered 130 at the front, side and back. The car had a tartan on the seating and two red stripes at the rear of its wheelwell. The car was given the nickname 'Little Bastard' by Bill Hickman, his language coach on Giant. Dean asked custom car painter and pin striper Dean Jeffries to paint Little Bastard on the car. When Dean introduced himself to actor Alec Guinness outside a restaurant, he asked him to take a look at the Spyder. Guinness thought the car appeared 'sinister' and told Dean: 'If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.' This encounter took place on September 23, 1955, seven days before Dean's death.
Early in Dean's career, after he signed his contract with Warner Brothers, the studio's public relations department began generating stories about Dean's liaisons with a variety of young actresses who were mostly drawn from the clientele of Dean's Hollywood agent, Dick Clayton. Studio press releases also grouped "Dean together with two other actors, Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, identifying each of the men as an 'eligible bachelor' who has not yet found the time to commit to a single woman: 'They say their film rehearsals are in conflict with their marriage rehearsals.'"
Shortly before filming began on East of Eden (film), Dean befriended horse trainer Monty Roberts. Roberts introduced Dean to the area and the two became close friends. Dean had planned to meet with Roberts shortly after the race on September 30 to discuss plans for the construction of a ranch, which would be owned by Dean but managed by Roberts. Roberts and his wife were the first people to learn of Dean's death through a telephone call placed by Dean's mechanic, Rolf Wütherich, immediately following the incident, in which Wütherich mumbled through a broken jaw that Dean had died. Roberts and his family did not attend Dean's funeral because, although the two considered themselves 'brothers', their friendship was unknown to Dean's family.
Dean's best-remembered relationship was with young Italian actress Pier Angeli, whom he met while Angeli was shooting The Silver Chalice on an adjoining Warner lot, and with whom he exchanged items of jewelry as love tokens. Angeli's mother was reported to have disapproved of the relationship because Dean was not Roman Catholic. In his autobiography, East of Eden director Elia Kazan, while dismissing the notion that Dean could possibly have had any success with women, paradoxically alluded to Dean and Angeli's "romance", claiming that he had heard them loudly making love in Dean's dressing room. For a very short time the story of a Dean-Angeli love affair was even promoted by Dean himself, who fed it to various gossip columnists and to his co-star, Julie Harris, who in interviews has reported that Dean told her about being madly in love with Angeli. However, in early October 1954, Angeli unexpectedly announced her engagement to Italian-American singer Vic Damone, to Dean's expressed irritation. Angeli married Damone the following month, and gossip columnists reported that Dean, or someone dressed like him, watched the wedding from across the road on a motorcycle. However, when Bast questioned him about the reports, Dean denied that he would have done anything so "dumb", and Bast, like Paul Alexander, believes the relationship was a mere publicity stunt. Pier Angeli only talked once about the relationship in her later life in an interview, giving vivid descriptions of romantic meetings at the beach that read like wishful fantasies, as Bast claims them to be.
Actress Liz Sheridan claims that she and Dean had a short affair in New York. In her memoir, she also states that Dean was having a sexual involvement with director Rogers Brackett, and describes her negative response to this situation. However, again Bast is skeptical whether this was a true love affair and claims Dean and Sheridan didn't spend much time together.
Dean was driving west on U.S. Route 466 (later State Route 46) near Cholame, California, when a black-and-white 1950 Ford Custom Tudor coupe, driven from the opposite direction by 23-year-old Cal Poly student Donald Turnupseed, moved to take the fork onto State Route 41 and crossed into Dean's lane. The two cars hit almost head-on. According to a story in the October 1, 2005, edition of the Los Angeles Times, California Highway Patrol officer Ron Nelson and his partner had been finishing a coffee break in Paso Robles, when they were called to the scene of the accident, where they saw an unconscious, heavily breathing Dean being placed into an ambulance. Paramedics were attending to Wütherich who had been thrown from the car and was lying on the shoulder of the road next to the mangled Porsche Spyder barely concious, but survived with a broken jaw and other injuries. Dean was taken to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 5:59 p.m. by the attending emergency room physician. His last known words, uttered right before impact when Wütherich told Dean to slow down when they saw the Ford coup in front of them about to drive into their lane, were said to have been: "That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us."
According to the postmortem, it is believed that Dean's head struck the front grill of the other car. This impact and the accompanying crash resulted in Dean suffering a broken neck, plus multiple fractures of the jaw, arms and legs, as well as massive internal injuries. He is believed to have died around 10 minutes after the crash upon examination in the ambulance. For years, there were rumors a photographer friend, traveling to the race in another car, took photos of Dean trapped in the car dead or dying. Such photos never surfaced in public.
Contrary to reports of Dean's speeding, which persisted decades after his death, Nelson said "the wreckage and the position of Dean's body indicated his speed was more like 55 mph (88 km/h)." Wütherich died in a road accident in Germany in 1981 after surviving several suicide attempts.
While completing Giant, and to promote Rebel Without a Cause, Dean filmed a short interview with actor Gig Young for an episode of Warner Bros. Presents in which Dean, instead of saying the popular phrase "The life you save may be your own" instead ad-libbed "The life you might save might be mine." [sic] Dean's sudden death prompted the studio to re-film the section, and the piece was never aired—though in the past several sources have referred to the footage, mistakenly identifying it as a public service announcement. (The segment can, however, be viewed on both the 2001 VHS and 2005 DVD editions of Rebel Without a Cause).
The dates and hours of Dean's birth and death are etched into the sculpture, along with a handwritten description by Dean's close friend, screenwriter William Bast, of one of Dean's favorite lines from Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince—"What is essential is invisible to the eye." , Indiana]]
Dean is mentioned or featured in various songs, which include titles such as "Jim Dean of Indiana" by Phil Ochs, "James Dean" by the Eagles, "A Young Man is Gone" by The Beach Boys, "American Boy" by Chris Isaak, "Mr. James Dean" by Hilary Duff, "Jimmy Dean" by Icehouse, "James Dean" by That Handsome Devil, ""Speechless" by Lady GaGa, "Vogue" by Madonna, "Allure" by Jay-Z, "James Dean (I Wanna Know)" by Daniel Bedingfield, "James Dean" by Bonnie Tyler, "Jack and Diane" by John Mellencamp, "Rock On" by David Essex, "American Pie" by Don McLean, "Peach Trees" by Rufus Wainwright, "Under the Gun" by The Killers, "We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel, "Daddy's Speeding" by Suede, "Electrolite" by R.E.M., "Flip-Top Box" by Self, "Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed, "Bla bla bla" (Blah Blah Blah) by Perfect, "Rockstar" by Nickelback, "Girl on TV" by LFO, "Hello my hate" by Black Veil Brides, "Chciałbym umrzeć jak James Dean" (lit. I Wish to Die Like James Dean) by Partia, "Famous" by Scouting for Girls, and "Teenage Wildlife" by AJ McLean of the Backstreet Boys.
In addition, he is often noted within television shows, films, books and novels. In an episode of , the character Liberty likens the rebellious, anti-social Sean Cameron to James Dean. On the sitcom Happy Days, Fonzie has a picture of Dean in his closet next to his mirror. A picture of Dean also appears on Rizzo's wall in the film Grease. On the American version of the TV series Queer as Folk, the main character Brian Kinney mentions James Dean together with Cobain and Hendrix, saying, "They're all legends. They'll always be young, and they will always be beautiful". In the alternate history book Homeward Bound by Harry Turtledove, Dean is stated to have not died in a car crash and to have made several more films, including Rescuing Private Ranfall, based on Saving Private Ryan.
Dean's estate still earns about $5,000,000 per year, according to Forbes Magazine.
On April 20, 2010, a long "lost" live episode of the General Electric Theater featuring James Dean was uncovered by NBC writer Wayne Federman while working on a Ronald Reagan television retrospective. The episode, originally broadcast in December 1954, drew international attention and highlights were featured on numerous national media outlets including: The CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and Good Morning America. It was later revealed that some footage from the episode, entitled The Dark, Dark Days, was first featured in the 2005 documentary, James Dean: Forever Young.
Journalist Joe Hyams suggests that any homosexual activity Dean might have been involved in appears to have been strictly "for trade", as a means of advancing his career. Val Holley notes that, according to Hollywood biographer Lawrence J. Quirk, gay Hollywood columnist Mike Connolly "would put the make on the most prominent young actors, including Robert Francis, Guy Madison, Anthony Perkins, Nick Adams and James Dean." However, the "trade only" notion is debated by Bast Aside from Bast's account of his own relationship with Dean, Dean's fellow biker and "Night Watch" member John Gilmore claims he and Dean "experimented" with homosexual acts on one occasion in New York, and it is difficult to see how Dean, then already in his twenties, would have viewed this as a "trade" means of advancing his career.
Screenwriter Gavin Lambert, himself homosexual and part of the Hollywood gay circles of the 1950s and 1960s, described Dean as being homosexual. Rebel director Nicholas Ray is on record as saying that Dean was homosexual. Additionally, William Bast and biographer Paul Alexander conclude that Dean was homosexual, while John Howlett concludes that Dean was "certainly bisexual". George Perry's biography reduces these aspects of Dean's sexuality to "experimentation". Still, Hyams and Paul Alexander also claim that Dean's relationship with pastor De Weerd had a sexual aspect, too. Bast also shows that Dean had knowledge of gay bars and customs. Consequently, Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon's book Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day'' (2001) includes an entry on James Dean.
One version of the tale goes as follows:
The famous car customizer George Barris bought the wreck for $2,500, only to have it slip off its trailer and break a mechanic's leg. Soon afterwards, Barris sold the engine and drive-train, respectively, to physicians Troy McHenry and William Eschrid. While racing against each other, the former would be killed instantly when his vehicle spun out of control and crashed into a tree, while the latter would be seriously injured when his vehicle rolled over while going into a curve. Barris later sold two tires, which malfunctioned as well. The tires, which were unharmed in Dean's accident, blew up simultaneously causing the buyer's automobile to go off the road. Subsequently, two young would-be thieves were injured while attempting to steal parts from the car. When one tried to steal the steering wheel from the Porsche, his arm was ripped open on a piece of jagged metal. Later, another man was injured while trying to steal the bloodstained front seat. This would be the final straw for Barris, who decided to store "Little Bastard" away, but was quickly persuaded by the California Highway Patrol (CHP) to lend the wrecked car to a highway safety exhibit. The first exhibit from the CHP featuring the car ended unsuccessfully, as the garage storing the Spyder went up in flames, destroying everything except the car itself, which suffered almost no damage whatsoever from the fire. The second display, at a Sacramento high school, ended when the car fell, breaking a student's hip. "Little Bastard" caused problems while being transported several times. On the way to Salinas, the truck containing the vehicle lost control, causing the driver to fall out, only to be crushed by the Porsche after it fell off the back. On two separate occasions, once on a freeway and again in Oregon, the car came off other trucks, although no injuries were reported, another vehicle's windshield was shattered in Oregon. Its last use in a CHP exhibit was in 1959. In 1960, when being returned to George Barris in Los Angeles, California, the car mysteriously vanished. It has not been seen since.
While it has proven impossible thus far to confirm or deny all the claims in this legend, it suffers from several clear factual errors. Barris was not the initial purchaser of the wrecked 550. Rather the doctors Troy McHenry and William Eschrid, both 550 Spyder owners, purchased the car directly from the insurance company. They removed the drivetrain, steering and other mechanical components to use as spares in their cars, then sold the shell to George Barris. William Eschrid used the engine in his Lotus race car. Troy McHenry was killed at a race at Pomona 1956 when the Pitman arm in his 550's steering failed; however this was not one of the "cursed" parts fitted to his 550.
Historic Auto Attractions in Roscoe, Illinois has claimed to have the last known piece of Dean's Spyder (a small chunk a few square inches in size). However this is untrue, as several other large parts are known to exist. The passenger door was on display at the Volo Auto Museum. The engine (#90059) is reported to still be in the possession of the son of the late Dr. Eschrich. Lastly the restored transaxle–gearbox assembly of the Porsche (#10046) is known to be in the possession of car collector Jack Styles.
Category:1931 births Category:1955 deaths Category:Actors from Indiana Category:Actors Studio alumni Category:American film actors Category:American Quakers Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Bisexual actors Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:People from Marion, Indiana Category:Road accident deaths in California Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni
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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
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.
Name | Corey Vidal |
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Caption | Corey Vidal hosting the 888 YouTube Gathering |
Birth name | Corey Steven Vidal |
Birth date | December 07, 1986 |
Birth place | St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada |
Nationality | Canadian |
Years active | August 2006–present |
Notable works | YouTube video series, 888 YouTube Gathering (host) |
Known for | YouTube Partner; Variety entertainment |
Website | youtube.com/coreyvidal |
Web alias | ApprenticeA, CoreyVidal |
Web host service | YouTube |
Meme | Star Wars (John Williams Is The Man) A Cappella Tribute |
Following his How To Dance series, Vidal branched into other types of videos. His channel career spans dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, beatboxing, acting in short films (including a major short film production by Niagara College), solving Rubik's Cubes, video blogging, and collaborating with other YouTubers. Microsoft Canada has contributed to one of Corey's videos, In May 2009, Vidal released a 33-part interactive choose-your-own-adventure-style video as part of a collaboration with Blendtec, of the 888 YouTube Gathering that took place August 8, 2008 in Toronto, Canada. Corey hosted a one-hour show featuring many of YouTube's most popular "cewebrities", including KevJumba, HappySlip, Dave Days, Charles Trippy, Shay Carl, Philip DeFranco, and more.
On December 7, 2008 the video was nominated for a 35th Annual People's Choice Awards on CBS as "Favorite User Generated Video" of 2008. It faced competition in its category from other viral videos such as Barack Roll, Fred Goes Swimming, Where the Hell is Matt? (2008), and Wassup 2008. Vidal attended the red carpet event in Los Angeles on January 7, 2009. Warner pulled down every video on YouTube that contained any of their material. This included a complete purging of Madonna's YouTube account and all her videos, including the official music video to 4 Minutes as well as Madonna's message to YouTube. However, because Vidal's claim had legally won in 2008, they were unable to remove his video. It currently has over 4 million views.
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Name | Colin Firth |
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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 | Sir Christopher Lee |
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Caption | Christopher Lee in 2009 |
Birth name | Christopher Frank Carandini Lee |
Birth date | May 27, 1922 |
Birth place | Belgravia, Westminster, England |
Occupation | Actor, singer |
Years active | 1948–present |
Spouse | Birgit Kroencke (1961–present) |
Website | http://www.christopherleeweb.com/ |
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ (born 27 May 1922)
Lee has performed roles in 266 films since 1948 making him the Guinness book world record holder for most film acting roles ever, and was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2009.
His parents separated when he was very young, and his mother took him and his sister to Switzerland. After enrolling in Miss Fisher's Academy in Wengen, he played his first villainous role as Rumpelstiltskin. The family returned to London, where Lee attended Wagner's private school. His mother then married Harcourt "Ingle" Rose, a banker and stepcousin of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels. Lee applied unsuccessfully for a scholarship to Eton although the interview was to prove portentous because of the presence of the noted ghost story author M. R. James. Lee later claimed in his autobiography that James had cut a very impressive figure; sixty years later Lee played the part of M.R. James for the BBC.
"James was at that time nick-named 'Black Mouse', derived in part from his faintly sinister black cape and mortar board, and part from his habit of mewing unexpectedly at recalcitrant pupils. I cannot in all honesty say that at the time I was wholly displeased in failing to secure a scholarship; in many ways it was a relief. But I do know this: few men have created such a profound impression upon me, and I partially attribute my lifelong interest in the occult to my subsequent discovery of the horror stories penned by that most intriguing and intimidating of men."
Instead, Lee attended Wellington College, where he won scholarships in classics.
Also in 1947, Lee made an uncredited appearance in Laurence Olivier's film version of Hamlet as a spear carrier (marking his first film with frequent co-star and close friend Peter Cushing, who played Osric). Throughout the next decade, he made nearly 30 films, playing mostly stock action characters.
(1960) US title: Horror Hotel]] Lee's first film for Hammer was The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), in which he played Frankenstein's monster, with Cushing as the Baron. A little later, Lee co-starred with Boris Karloff in the film Corridors of Blood (1958), but Lee's own appearance as Frankenstein's monster also led to his first appearance as the Transylvanian vampire in the 1958 film Dracula (known as Horror of Dracula in the US).
Stories vary as to why Lee did not feature in the 1960 sequel The Brides of Dracula. Some state that Hammer was unwilling to pay Lee his current fee, but most tend to believe that he simply did not wish to be typecast. Lee did, however, return to the role in Hammer's in 1965. Lee's performance is notable in that he has no lines, merely hissing his way through the film. Again, stories vary as to the reason for this: Lee states he refused to speak the poor dialogue he was given, but screenwriter Jimmy Sangster claims that the script did not contain any lines for the character. This film set the standard for most of the Dracula sequels in the sense that half the film's running time was spent on telling the story of Dracula's resurrection and the character's appearances were brief. Lee has gone on record to state that he was virtually "blackmailed" by Hammer into starring in the subsequent films; unable or unwilling to pay him his going rate, they would resort to reminding him of how many people he would put out of work if he did not take part.
His roles in the films Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969), and Scars of Dracula (1970) all gave the Count very little to do, but were all commercially successful. Although Lee may not have liked what Hammer was doing with the character, worldwide audiences embraced the films, which are now considered classics of the genre. Lee starred in two further Dracula films for Hammer in the early 1970s, both of which attempted to bring the character into the modern-day era. These were not commercially successful.
Lee's other work for Hammer included The Mummy (1959). This was one of Lee's best performances, despite being able to convey emotion only through his eyes for the majority of the film. Lee also portrayed Rasputin in Rasputin, the Mad Monk (Lee apparently met Rasputin's assassin Felix Yussupov when he was a child) and Sir Henry Baskerville (to Cushing's Sherlock Holmes) in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959). Lee later played Holmes himself in 1962's Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, and returned to Holmes films with Billy Wilder's British-made The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), in which he plays Sherlock's decidedly smarter brother, Mycroft.
He was responsible for bringing acclaimed occult author Dennis Wheatley to Hammer. The company made two films from Wheatley's novels, both starring Lee. The first, The Devil Rides Out (1967), is generally considered to be one of Hammer's crowning achievements. According to Lee, Wheatley was so pleased with it that he offered the actor the film rights to his remaining black magic novels free of charge. However, the second film, To the Devil a Daughter (1976), was fraught with production difficulties and was disowned by its author. Although financially successful, it was Hammer's last horror film and marked the end of Lee's long association with the studio that brought him fame.
Like Cushing, Lee also appeared in horror films for other companies during the 20-year period from 1957 to 1977. Other films in which Lee performed include the series of Fu Manchu films made between 1965 and 1969, in which he starred as the villain in heavy oriental make-up; I, Monster (1971), in which he played Jekyll and Hyde; The Creeping Flesh (1972); and his personal favourite, The Wicker Man (1973), in which he played Lord Summerisle. Lee was attracted to the latter role by screenwriter Anthony Shaffer and apparently gave his services for free, as the budget was so small. Lee also appeared in Eugenie (1970), unaware that it was softcore pornography, as the sex scenes were shot separately.
Because of his filming schedule in Bangkok, film director Ken Russell was unable to sign Lee to play The Specialist in Tommy (1975). That role was eventually given to Jack Nicholson. In an AMC documentary on Halloween, John Carpenter states that he offered the role of Samuel Loomis to Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee before Donald Pleasence took the role. Years later, Lee met Carpenter and told him that the biggest regret of his career was not taking the role of Dr. Loomis.
In 1978, Lee surprised many people with his willingness to go along with a joke by appearing as guest host on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
In 1979, he played German officer Capt. Wolfgang Von Kleinschmidt in the film 1941 directed by Steven Spielberg.
In 1982, Lee appeared in The Return of Captain Invincible. In this film, Lee plays a fascist who plans to rid America (and afterwards, the world) of all non-whites. Lee also sings on two tracks in the film ("Name Your Poison" and "Mister Midnight"), written by Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley (who had written The Rocky Horror Picture Show seven years previously).
Lee made his latest appearances to date as Sherlock Holmes in 1991's Incident at Victoria Falls and 1992's Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady.
In 1994, Lee played the character of the Russian commandant in .
In 1998, Lee starred in the role of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of modern Pakistan, in the film Jinnah. While talking about his favorite role in film at a press conference at Brussels Fantasy film festival, he declared that his role in Jinnah was by far his best performance.
Lee was at one point considered for the role of comic book villain/hero Magneto in the screen adaptation of the popular comic book series X-Men but he lost the role to Ian McKellen.
He has had many television roles, including that of Flay in the BBC television miniseries, based on Mervyn Peake's novels, Gormenghast (2000), and Stefan Wyszyński in the CBS film John Paul the Second (2005). He played Lucas de Beaumanoir, the Grand Master of the Templar Order, in the BBC/A&E; co-production of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1997). He also played a role in the made-for-TV series La Révolution française (1989) in part 2, "Les Annees Terribles", as the executioner, Sanson, who beheaded Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre and others. Lee played Saruman in the The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. In the commentary he states he had a decades-long dream to play Gandalf but that he was now too old and his physical limitations prevented his being considered. The role of Saruman, by contrast, required no horseback riding and much less fighting. Gandalf was given to Ian McKellen and Lee played Saruman. Lee had met Tolkien once (making him the only person in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy to have done so) and makes a habit of reading the novels at least once a year. In addition, he performed for the album The Lord of the Rings: Songs and Poems by J. R. R. Tolkien in 2003. Lee had his appearance in the third film's theatrical release cut, resulting in a frosty friendship with Peter Jackson. However, the scene was reinstated in the extended edition. in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy]] The Lord of the Rings marked the beginning of a major career revival that continued in (2002) and (2005), in which he played Count Dooku, a name allegedly chosen to reflect his fame playing Count Dracula. His autobiography states that he did much of the swordplay himself, though a double was required for the more vigorous footwork. His good friend and frequent co-star, Peter Cushing, portrayed the equally icy Grand Moff Tarkin in . in Westminster in 2007]] According to the Oracle of Bacon website at the University of Virginia, Lee is ranked second (just behind Rod Steiger) as the "Center of the Hollywood Universe" due to his large number of films with a correspondingly large number of different castmates.
In addition to more than a dozen feature films together for Hammer Films, Amicus Productions and other companies, Lee and Peter Cushing both appeared in Hamlet (1948) and Moulin Rouge (1952) albeit in separate scenes; and in separate installments of the Star Wars films, Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in the original film, Lee years later as Count Dooku. The last project which united them in person was a documentary, Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994), which they jointly narrated. It was the last time they saw each other as Cushing died two months later. While they frequently played off each other as mortal enemies onscreen—Lee's Count Dracula to Cushing's Professor Van Helsing—they were close friends in real life.
Lee appeared on the cover of the 1973 Wings album Band on the Run along with other people, including chat show host Michael Parkinson, movie actor James Coburn, world boxing champion John Conteh and broadcaster Clement Freud.
Lee is one of the favorite actors of Tim Burton and has become a regular in many of Burton's films, having now worked for the director four times since 1999. He had a small role as the Burgomaster in the film Sleepy Hollow. In 2005 Lee then went on to voice the character of Pastor Galswells in Corpse Bride co-directed by Burton and Mike Johnston and play a small role in the Burton's reimagining of the classic Roald Dahl tale Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as Willy Wonka's strict dentist father Dr. Wilbur Wonka.
In 2007, Lee collaborated with Burton on playing the spirit of Sweeney Todd's victims called The Gentleman Ghost alongside Anthony Head, with both singing "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", its reprises and the Epilogue. These songs were recorded, but eventually cut since director Tim Burton felt that the songs were too theatrical for the film. Lee's appearance was completely cut from the film, but Head still has an uncredited one-line cameo.
In 2010, Lee marked their fourth collaboration by voicing the Jabberwocky in Burton's adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic book Alice in Wonderland alongside Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway. While it only had a couple of lines, Burton said that he felt Lee to be a good match for the iconic character because he is "an iconic guy". Also in 2009, Lee starred in Stephen Poliakoff's British period drama Glorious 39 with Julie Christie, Bill Nighy, Romola Garai and David Tennant, Academy Award-nominated director Danis Tanović's war film Triage with Colin Farrell and Paz Vega, and also Duncan Ward's comedy Boogie Woogie alongside Amanda Seyfried, Gillian Anderson, Stellan Skarsgård and Joanna Lumley.
2010 is also shaping up to as prolific for Lee, with roles in The Resident alongside Hilary Swank.
He is also reprising his role as Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Tree, adapted and directed by The Wicker Man director Robin Hardy from his 2006 novel Cowboys for Christ.
Lee narrated in late November 2009 the Science+Fiction Festival in Trieste, Italy.
Lee won the "Spirit of Hammer" award in the Metal Hammer Golden Gods 2010. The award was presented by Tony Iommi.
In the 1980s, during the height of Italo Disco, Lee provided vocals to Kathy Joe Daylor's "Little Witch".
Lee reprised his role as Saruman in the video game along with the other actors of the films.
Lee provided the off-camera voice of "U.N. Owen", the mysterious host who brings disparate characters together in Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (1965). The film was produced by Harry Alan Towers, for whom Lee had worked repeatedly in the 1960s. Even though he is not credited on the film, the voice is unmistakable.
Lee appears on Peter Knight and Bob Johnson's (of Steeleye Span) 1970s concept album The King of Elfland's Daughter. Lee also provided the voices for the roles of DiZ (Ansem the Wise) in the video games Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, but was replaced by veteran voice actor Corey Burton for and Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep.
He contributed his voice as Death in the animated versions of Terry Pratchett's Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters and reprised the role in the Sky1 live action adaptation The Colour of Magic, taking over the role from the late Ian Richardson.
He is fluent in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, and moderately proficient in Swedish, Russian and Greek. He was the original voice of Thor in the German dubs in the Danish 1986 animated movie Valhalla, and of King Haggard in both the English and German dubs of the 1982 animated adaptation of The Last Unicorn.
Lee bridged two disparate genres of music by performing a heavy metal variation of the Toreador Song from the opera Carmen with the band Inner Terrestrials. Lee narrated and sang for the Danish musical group The Tolkien Ensemble, taking the role of Treebeard, King Théoden and others in the readings or singing of their respective poems or songs. Lee also appeared as a narrator for Italian symphonic fantasy power metal band Rhapsody of Fire, playing the Wizard King in the latest three albums, , Triumph or Agony and The Frozen Tears of Angels. He narrates several tracks on the albums, as well as singing a duet with lead vocalist Fabio Lione in the single "The Magic of the Wizard's Dream" from the Symphony of Enchanted Lands II album. Lee was the voice of Lucan D'Lere in the trailers for Everquest II.
Some thirty years after playing Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun, Lee provided the voice of Scaramanga in the video game .
In 2005 Lee provided the voice of the Pastor Galswells in The Corpse Bride co-directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnston. He also served as the narrator on The Nightmare Before Christmas's poem written by Tim Burton as well.
In 2007, Lee voiced the transcript of The Children of Húrin, by J. R. R. Tolkien for the audiobook version of the novel.
Lee reprised his role of Count Dooku in the animated film but did not appear in the . Corey Burton takes his place for Count Dooku.
Lee has been signed by Falcon Picture Group to host the syndicated radio series "Mystery Theater", a nightly two-hour program featuring classic radio mystery shows. The program is distributed by Syndication Networks Corporation with a launch date of 2 March 2009.
Lee has also recently collaborated again with Tim Burton, this time by voicing the Jabberwocky in Burton's adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic book Alice in Wonderland.
Lee has provided the vocals for a symphonic metal concept album called . It was released on 15 March 2010.
Lee is working with Manowar while they are recording a new version of their first album, Battle Hymns. The original voice was done by Orson Welles. The new album, Battle Hymns MMXI was released on November 26, 2010.
Lee is a step-cousin of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond spy novels.
He has been married to the Danish model Birgit "Gitte" Kroencke Lee since 1961. They have a daughter named Christina Erika Carandini Lee.
In 1999, Lee confirmed he has lost an inch in height and is now (1.93 m)
Category:1922 births Category:Living people Category:English people of Italian descent Category:Carandini family Category:Commanders of the Order of St John Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:English film actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:Old Summerfieldians Category:Old Wellingtonians Category:People from Belgravia Category:Royal Air Force officers Category:Royal Air Force personnel of World War II Category:Special Operations Executive personnel Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Actors awarded British knighthoods
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Name | Sir Charlie Chaplin KBE |
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Birth name | |
Birth date | |
Birth place | Walworth, London, United Kingdom |
Death date | |
Death place | Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland |
Medium | Film, music, mimicry |
Nationality | British |
Active | 1895–1976 |
Genre | Slapstick, mime, visual comedy |
Influenced | Milton BerleRowan Atkinson |
Spouse | 1 child 2 children 8 children |
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor and film director of the silent film era. He became one of the best-known film stars in the world before the end of the First World War. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing, and from 1918 composing the music. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.
Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent movie comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time. In 2008, Martin Sieff, in a review of the book , wrote: "Chaplin was not just 'big', he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler, he stayed on the job. ... It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most". George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".
As a small child, Chaplin also lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street and 39 Methley Street. His paternal grandmother's mother was from the Smith family of Romanichals, a fact of which he was extremely proud, though he described it in his autobiography as "the skeleton in our family cupboard". Chaplin's father, Charles Chaplin Sr., was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his half-brother briefly lived with their father and his mistress, Louise, at 287 Kennington Road. The half-brothers lived there while their mentally ill mother lived at Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon. Chaplin's father's mistress sent the boy to Archbishop Temples Boys School. His father died of cirrhosis when Charlie was twelve in 1901. As of the 1901 Census, Chaplin resided at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth, as part of a troupe of young male dancers, The Eight Lancashire Lads, managed by a William Jackson.
A larynx condition ended the singing career of Chaplin's mother. After Chaplin's mother was again admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum, her son was left in the workhouse at Lambeth in south London, moving after several weeks to the Central London District School for paupers in Hanwell.
In 1903 Chaplin secured the role of Billy the pageboy in Sherlock Holmes, written by William Gillette and starring English actor H. A. Saintsbury. Saintsbury took Chaplin under his wing and taught him to marshal his talents. In 1905 Gillette came to England with Marie Doro to debut his new play, Clarice, but the play did not go over well. When Gillette staged his one-act curtain-raiser, The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes as a joke on the British press, Chaplin was brought in from the provinces to play Billy. When Sherlock Holmes was substituted for Clarice, Chaplin remained as Billy until the production ended on December 2. During the run, Gillette coached Chaplin in his restrained acting style. It was during this engagement that the teenage Chaplin fell hopelessly in love with Doro, but his love went unrequited and Doro returned to America with Gillette when the production closed.
They met again in Hollywood eleven years later. She had forgotten his name but, when introduced to her, Chaplin told her of being silently in love with her and how she had broken his young heart. Over dinner, he laid it on thick about his unrequited love. Nothing came of it until two years later, when they were both in New York and she invited him to dinner and a drive. Instead, Chaplin noted, they simply “dined quietly in Marie’s apartment alone.” However, as Kenneth Lynn pointed out, “Chaplin would not have been Chaplin if he had simply dined quietly with Marie.”
Mack Sennett did not warm to Chaplin right away, and Chaplin believed Sennett intended to fire him following a disagreement with Normand.
Chaplin was given over to Normand, who directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films. Chaplin did not enjoy being directed by a woman, and they often disagreed. As Chaplin recalled in his autobiography: }}
"The Tramp" is a vagrant with the refined manners, clothes, and dignity of a gentleman. "Fatty" Arbuckle contributed his father-in-law's derby and his own pants (of generous proportions). Chester Conklin provided the little cutaway tailcoat, and Ford Sterling the size-14 shoes, which were so big, Chaplin had to wear each on the wrong foot to keep them on. He devised the moustache from a bit of crepe hair belonging to Mack Swain. The only thing Chaplin himself owned was the whangee cane.
The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. The 1931 production City Lights featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in the film Modern Times (released 5 February 1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song.
Two films Chaplin made in 1915, The Tramp and The Bank, created the characteristics of his screen persona. While in the end the Tramp manages to shake off his disappointment and resume his carefree ways, “the pathos lies in The Tramp's hope for a more permanent transformation through love, and his failure to achieve this.”
Chaplin's early Keystones use the standard Mack Sennett formula of extreme physical comedy and exaggerated gestures. Chaplin's pantomime was subtler, more suitable to romantic and domestic farces than to the usual Keystone chases and mob scenes. The visual gags were pure Keystone, however; the tramp character would aggressively assault his enemies with kicks and bricks. Moviegoers loved this cheerfully earthy new comedian, even though critics warned that his antics bordered on vulgarity. Chaplin was soon entrusted with directing and editing his own films. He made 34 shorts for Sennett during his first year in pictures, as well as the landmark comedy feature Tillie's Punctured Romance.
The Tramp character was featured in the first movie trailer to be exhibited in a U.S. cinema, a slide promotion developed by Nils Granlund, advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theatre chain, and shown at the Loew's Seventh Avenue Theatre in Harlem in 1914. In 1915, Chaplin signed a much more favourable contract with Essanay Studios, and further developed his cinematic skills, adding new levels of depth and pathos to the Keystone-style slapstick. Most of the Essanay films were more ambitious, running twice as long as the average Keystone comedy. Chaplin also developed his own stock company, including ingénue Edna Purviance and comic villains Leo White and Bud Jamison.
As new immigrant groups arrived in waves to America silent movies were able to cross all the barriers of language, and spoke to every level of the American Tower of Babel, precisely because they were silent. Chaplin was emerging as the supreme exponent of silent movies, an emigrant himself from London. Chaplin's Tramp enacted the difficulties and humiliations of the immigrant underdog, the constant struggle at the bottom of the American heap and yet he triumphed over adversity without ever rising to the top, and thereby stayed in touch with his audience. Chaplin's films were also deliciously subversive. The bumbling officials enabled the immigrants to laugh at those they feared.
It is a tribute to Chaplin's versatility that he also has one film credit for choreography for the 1952 film Limelight, and another as a singer for the title music of The Circus (1928). The best known of several songs he composed are "Smile", composed for the film Modern Times (1936) and given lyrics to help promote a 1950s revival of the film, famously covered by Nat King Cole. "This Is My Song" from Chaplin's last film, A Countess from Hong Kong, was a number one hit in several different languages in the late 1960s (most notably the version by Petula Clark and discovery of an unreleased version in the 1990s recorded in 1967 by Judith Durham of The Seekers), and Chaplin's theme from Limelight was a hit in the 1950s under the title "Eternally." Chaplin's score to Limelight won an Academy Award in 1972; a delay in the film premiering in Los Angeles made it eligible decades after it was filmed. Chaplin also wrote scores for his earlier silent films when they were re-released in the sound era, notably The Kid for its 1971 re-release.
In the speech, Chaplin says ""I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible – Jew, Gentile – black man – white. "We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness – not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there's room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone."
In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of Limelight. Hoover learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit, exiling Chaplin so he could not return for his alleged political leanings. Chaplin decided not to re-enter the United States, writing: "Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States."
Chaplin then made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and also to discuss how his films would be re-released and marketed.
In his pictorial autobiography My Life In Pictures, published in 1974, Chaplin indicated that he had written a screenplay for his daughter, Victoria; entitled The Freak, the film would have cast her as an angel. According to Chaplin, a script was completed and pre-production rehearsals had begun on the film (the book includes a photograph of Victoria in costume), but were halted when Victoria married. "I mean to make it some day," Chaplin wrote. However, his health declined steadily in the 1970s which hampered all hopes of the film ever being produced.
From 1969 until 1976, Chaplin wrote original music compositions and scores for his silent pictures and re-released them. He composed the scores of all his First National shorts: The Idle Class in 1971 (paired with The Kid for re-release in 1972), A Day's Pleasure in 1973, Pay Day in 1972, Sunnyside in 1974, and of his feature length films firstly The Circus in 1969 and The Kid in 1971. Chaplin worked with music associate Eric James whilst composing all his scores.
Chaplin's last completed work was the score for his 1923 film A Woman of Paris, which was completed in 1976, by which time Chaplin was extremely frail, even finding communication difficult.
Chaplin was interred in Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery, Vaud, Switzerland. On 1 March 1978, his corpse was stolen by a small group of Swiss mechanics in an attempt to extort money from his family. The plot failed; the robbers were captured, and the corpse was recovered eleven weeks later near Lake Geneva. His body was reburied under of concrete to prevent further attempts.
This is one reason why Chaplin took so much longer to complete his films than those of his rivals. In addition, Chaplin was an incredibly exacting director, showing his actors exactly how he wanted them to perform and shooting scores of takes until he had the shot he wanted. (Animator Chuck Jones, who lived near Charlie Chaplin's Lone Star studio as a boy, remembered his father saying he watched Chaplin shoot a scene more than a hundred times until he was satisfied with it. This combination of story improvisation and relentless perfectionism—which resulted in days of effort and thousands of feet of film being wasted, all at enormous expense—often proved very taxing for Chaplin, who in frustration would often lash out at his actors and crew, keep them waiting idly for hours or, in extreme cases, shutting down production altogether. It was also Michael Jackson's favourite song. This Is My Song, written and composed by Chaplin for his film A Countess from Hong Kong, hit number 1 on the UK charts when sung by Petula Clark in the 1960s. In 1973, Chaplin won the Oscar for Best Film Score for his film Limelight. Chaplin was not the only member of his family with musical talent; his nephew, Spencer Dryden was the drummer for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted band, Jefferson Airplane.
in Canning Town, London, 1931.]] Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for the First World War which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe. For most of the Second World War he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with actress Joan Barry (see below). After the war, his 1947 black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux showed a critical view of capitalism. Chaplin's final American film, Limelight, was less political and more autobiographical in nature. His following European-made film, A King in New York (1957), satirised the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the U.S. five years earlier.
For Chaplin's entire career, some level of controversy existed over claims of Jewish ancestry. Nazi propaganda in the 1930s and 40s prominently portrayed him as Jewish (named Karl Tonstein) relying on articles published in the U.S. press before, and FBI investigations of Chaplin in the late 1940s also focused on Chaplin's ethnic origins. There is no documentary evidence of Jewish ancestry for Chaplin himself. For his entire public life, he fiercely refused to challenge or refute claims that he was Jewish, saying that to do so would always "play directly into the hands of anti-Semites." Although baptised in the Church of England, Chaplin was thought to be an agnostic for most of his life.
Chaplin's lifelong attraction to younger women remains another enduring source of interest to some. His biographers have attributed this to a teenage infatuation with Hetty Kelly, whom he met in Britain while performing in the music hall, and which possibly defined his feminine ideal. Chaplin clearly relished the role of discovering and closely guiding young female stars; with the exception of Mildred Harris, all of his marriages and most of his major relationships began in this manner.
The South African duo Locnville, Andrew and Brian Chaplin, are related to Chaplin (their grandfather was Chaplin's first cousin).
Chaplin was knighted in 1975 at the age of 85 as a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour had been first proposed in 1931. Knighthood was suggested again in 1956, but was vetoed after a Foreign Office report raised concerns over Chaplin's communist views and his moral behaviour in marrying two 16 year girls; it was felt that honouring him would damage both the reputation of the British honours system and relations with the United States.
Among other recognitions, Chaplin was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1970; that he had not been among those originally honoured in 1961 caused some controversy. Chaplin's Swiss mansion is to be opened as a museum tracing his life from the music halls in London to Hollywood fame.
A statue of Charlie Chaplin was made by John Doubleday, to stand in Leicester Square in London, United Kingdom. It was unveiled by Sir Ralph Richardson in 1981. A bronze statue of him is at Waterville, County Kerry.
The 1st Academy Awards ceremony: When the first Oscars were awarded on 16 May 1929, the voting audit procedures that now exists had not yet been put into place, and the categories were still very fluid. Chaplin's The Circus was set to be heavily recognised, as Chaplin had originally been nominated for Best Production, Best Director in a Comedy Picture, Best Actor and Best Writing (Original Story). However, the Academy decided to withdraw his name from all the competitive categories and instead give him a Special Award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus". The only other film to receive a Special Award that year was The Jazz Singer.
From 1917 to 1918, silent film actor Billy West made more than 20 films as a comedian precisely imitating Chaplin's tramp character, makeup and costume.
A listing of the dozens of Chaplin films and alternate versions can be found in the Ted Okuda-David Maska book Charlie Chaplin at Keystone and Essanay: Dawn of the Tramp. Thanks to The Chaplin Keystone Project, efforts to produce definitive versions of Chaplin's pre-1918 short films have come to a successful end: after ten years of research and clinical international cooperation work, 34 Keystone films have been fully restored and published in October 2010 on a 4-dvd box set. All twelve Mutual films were restored in 1975 by archivist David Shepard and Blackhawk Films, and new restorations with even more footage were released on DVD in 2006.
Today, nearly all of Chaplin's output is owned by Roy Export S.A.S. in Paris, which enforces the library's copyrights and decides how and when this material can be released. French company MK2 acts as worldwide distribution agent for the Export company. In the U.S. as of 2010, distribution is handled under license by Janus Films, with home video releases from Criterion Collection, affiliated with Janus.
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