Title	Time
Image file	Time Magazine logo.svg
Editor	Richard Stengel
Editor title	Managing Editor
Frequency	Weekly
Circulation	3,360,135
Category	Newsmagazine
Company	Time Inc. (Time Warner)
Firstdate	March 3, 1923
Political	liberal, progressive
Alignmentcountry	United States
Based	New York City
Language	English
Website	www.time.com
Issn	0040-781X}}

Time (trademarked in capitals as TIME) is an American news magazine. A European edition (Time Europe, formerly known as Time Atlantic) is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition (Time Asia) is based in Hong Kong. As of 2009, Time no longer publishes a Canadian advertiser edition. The South Pacific edition, covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, is based in Sydney.

Time is the world's largest weekly news magazine, and has a domestic audience of 20 million and a global audience of 25 million.

As of mid-2006, Richard Stengel is the managing editor.

History

Joseph G. Cannon on its first cover.]]

Time magazine was created in 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, making it the first weekly news magazine in the United States. The two had previously worked together as chairman and managing editor of the Yale Daily News and considered calling the magazine Facts. Hadden was a rather carefree figure, who liked to tease Luce and saw Time as something important but also fun. That accounts for its tone, which many people still criticize as too light for serious news and more suited to its heavy coverage of celebrities (including politicians), the entertainment industry, and pop culture. It set out to tell the news through people, and for many decades the magazine's cover was of a single person. The first issue of Time was published on March 3, 1923, featuring on its cover Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the United States House of Representatives; a facsimile reprint of Issue No. 1, including all of the articles and advertisements contained in the original, was included with copies of the February 28, 1938 issue as a commemoration of the magazine's 15th anniversary. On Hadden's death in 1929, Luce became the dominant man at Time and a major figure in the history of 20th-century media. According to Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1972–2004 by Robert Elson, "Roy Edward Larsen […] was to play a role second only to Luce's in the development of Time Inc." In his book, The March of Time, 1935–1951, Raymond Fielding also noted that Larsen was "originally circulation manager and then general manager of Time, later publisher of Life'', for many years president of Time, Inc., and in the long history of the corporation the most influential and important figure after Luce."

Around the time they were raising US$100,000 from rich Yale alumni like Henry P. Davison, partner of J.P. Morgan & Co., publicity man Martin Egan and J.P. Morgan & Co. banker Dwight Morrow, Henry Luce and Briton Hadden hired Larsen in 1922 – although Larsen was a Harvard graduate and Luce and Hadden were Yale graduates. After Hadden died in 1929, Larsen purchased 550 shares of Time Inc., using money he obtained from selling RKO stock which he had inherited from his father, who was the head of the B.F. Keith theatre chain in New England. However, after Briton Hadden's death, the largest Time Inc. stockholder was Henry Luce, who ruled the media conglomerate in an autocratic fashion, "at his right hand was Larsen," Time Inc.'s second-largest stockholder, according to "Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1923–1941". In 1929, Roy Larsen was also named a Time Inc. director and a Time Inc. vice-president. J.P. Morgan retained a certain control through two directorates and a share of stocks, both over Time and Fortune. Other shareholders were Brown Brothers W. A. Harriman & Co., and The New York Trust Company (Standard Oil).

since 1927. In 1999 Albert Einstein was named the Person of the Century.]]

By the time of Henry Luce's death in 1967, the Time Inc. stock which Luce owned was worth about US$109 million and yielded him a yearly dividend income of more than US$2.4 million, according to The World of Time Inc: The Intimate History Of A Changing Enterprise 1960–1989 by Curtis Prendergast. The value of the Larsen family's Time Inc. stock was now worth about $80 million during the 1960s and Roy Larsen was both a Time Inc. director and the chairman of its Executive Committee, before serving as Time Inc.'s vice-chairman of the board until the middle of 1979. According to the September 10, 1979 issue of The New York Times, "Mr. Larsen was the only employee in the company's history given an exemption from its policy of mandatory retirement at age 65."

After Time magazine began publishing its weekly issues in March 1923, Roy Larsen was able to increase its circulation by utilizing U.S. radio and movie theaters around the world. It often promoted both "Time" magazine and U.S. political and corporate interests. According to The March of Time, as early as 1924, Larsen had brought Time into the infant radio business with the broadcast of a 15-minute sustaining quiz show entitled Pop Question which survived until 1925." Then, according to the same book, "In 1928 […] Larsen undertook the weekly broadcast of a 10-minute programme series of brief news summaries, drawn from current issues of Time magazine […] which was originally broadcast over 33 stations throughout the United States."

Larsen next arranged for a 30-minute radio programme, The March of Time, to be broadcast over CBS, beginning on March 6, 1931. Each week, the programme presented a dramatisation of the week's news for its listeners, thus Time magazine itself was brought "to the attention of millions previously unaware of its existence," according to Time Inc.: The Intimate History Of A Publishing Enterprise 1923–1941, leading to an increased circulation of the magazine during the 1930s. Between 1931 and 1937, Larsen's The March of Time radio programme was broadcast over CBS radio and between 1937 and 1945 it was broadcast over NBC radio – except for the 1939 to 1941 period when it was not aired. People Magazine was based on Time's People page.

Time became part of Time Warner in 1989 when Warner Communications and Time, Inc. merged. Jason McManus succeeded Henry Grunwald in 1988 as Editor-in-Chief and oversaw the transition before Norman Pearlstine succeeded him in 1995.

Since 2000, the magazine has been part of AOL Time Warner, which subsequently reverted to the name Time Warner in 2003.

In 2007, Time moved from a Monday subscription/newsstand delivery to a schedule where the magazine goes on sale Fridays, and is delivered to subscribers on Saturday. The magazine actually began in 1923 with Friday publication.

During early 2007, the year's first issue was delayed for approximately a week due to "editorial changes." The changes included the job losses of 49 employees.

In 2009 Time announced that they were introducing a personalised print magazine, Mine, mixing content from a range of Time Warner publications based on the reader's preferences. The new magazine met with a poor reception, with criticism that its focus was too broad to be truly personal.

The magazine has an online archive with the unformatted text for every article published. The articles are indexed and were converted from scanned images using optical character recognition technology. There are still minor errors in the text that are remnants of the conversion into digital format.

Legal controversy

On September 10, 2007, the Indonesian Supreme Court awarded former Indonesian President Suharto damages against Time Asia magazine, ordering it to pay him one trillion rupiah for libel. The High Court reversed the judgment of the Appeal Court and Central Jakarta District Court (made in 2000 and 2001). Suharto sought more than US$27 billion ($32bn) in the suit against US-based Time over a 1999 article which published that he transferred stolen money abroad.

Circulation

During the second half of 2009 the magazine saw a 34.9% decline in news stand sales. During the first half of 2010 there was another decline of at least one third in Time magazine sales.

Style

The distinctive Time writing style was parodied in 1936 by Wolcott Gibbs in an article in The New Yorker: "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind […] Where it all will end, knows God!" The early days of incessantly inverted sentences, "beady-eyed tycoons" and "great and good friends", however, have long since vanished.

Up until the mid-1970s or so, Time had a weekly section called "Listings", which contained capsule summaries and/or reviews of then-current significant films, plays, musicals, television programs, and literary bestsellers, much like The New Yorker's section "Current Events".

Time is also known for its signature red border, introduced in 1927 and changed only three times since then. The issue released shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United States featured a black border to symbolize mourning. However, this edition was a special "extra" edition published quickly for the breaking news of the event; the next regularly scheduled issue contained the red border.

Time released another special edition magazine in June 2009 following the death of Michael Jackson. Additionally, the April 28, 2008 issue of Time featured a change from the signature red border: The 2008 Earth Day issue, dedicated to environmental issues, contained a green border.

In 2007 Time engineered a style overhaul of the magazine. Among other changes, the magazine reduced the red cover border in order to promote featured stories, enlarged column titles, reduced the number of featured stories, increased white space around articles, and accompanied opinion pieces with photographs of the writers. The changes have met both criticism and praise.

Special editions

Person of the Year

Times most famous feature throughout its history has been the annual "Person of the Year" (formerly "Man of the Year") cover story, in which Time recognizes the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news. Despite the title, the recipients are not necessarily individuals or even human beings – for instance, in 1982 the "Person" of the Year was the Personal Computer. It was recognized as "Machine of the Year" (Time.com). In 1989 "Endangered Earth" was named as "Planet Of The Year." In 1999, Albert Einstein was chosen by Time as Person of the Century.

Controversy has occasionally arisen because of the designation of alleged dictators and warmongers as "Persons of the Year". The distinction is supposed to go to the person who, for good or ill, has most affected the course of the year; it is therefore not necessarily an honor or a reward. In the past, such figures as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin have been Man of the Year.

In 2006 the Person of the Year was designated as "You", a move that was met with split reviews. Some thought the concept was creative; others wanted an actual person of the year. Editor Stengel reflected that, if it had been a mistake, "we're only going to make it once."

In 2008 the Person of the Year was Barack Obama, with Sarah Palin as a runner-up. Obama is the twelfth U.S. President (or President-elect) so honored, following a line of every president since Franklin Roosevelt, with the sole exception of Gerald Ford.

The most recent Person of the Year is Mark Zuckerberg, who was chosen in December 2010. The most recent winner of the Time online poll for Person of the Year was Julian Assange.

Time 100

In recent years Time has assembled an annual list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Originally, they had made a list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. These issues usually have the front cover filled with pictures of people from the list and devote a substantial amount of space within the magazine to the 100 articles about each person on the list. There have, in some cases, been over 100 people, when two people have made the list together, sharing one spot.

The magazine also compiled "All-TIME 100 best novels" and "All-TIME 100 best movies" lists in 2005, and "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME" in 2007.

Time For Kids

Written by young reporters, Time For Kids is a division magazine of Time that is especially published for children and is mainly distributed in classrooms. TFK contains some national news, a "Cartoon of the Week", and a variety of articles concerning popular culture. An annual issue concerning the environment is distributed near the end of the U.S. school term. The publication hardly ever reaches above fifteen pages front and back. It is used in many libraries.

Staff

Editors

Briton Hadden (1923–1929)

Henry Luce (1929–1949)

Thomas S. Matthews (1949–1953)

Managing Editors

Thomas S. Matthews (1943–1949)

Roy Alexander (1949–1960)

Otto Fuerbringer (1960–1968)

Henry Grunwald (1968–1977)

Ray Cave (1979–1985)

Jason McManus (1985–1987)

Henry Muller (1987–1993)

James R. Gaines (1993–1995)

Walter Isaacson (1996–2000)

Jim Kelly (2001–2006)

Richard Stengel (2006–present)

Notable contributors

Aravind Adiga, Time correspondent for three years, winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize for fiction

James Agee, book and movie editor for Time

Lasantha Wickrematunge, journalist

Margaret Carlson, the first female columnist for Time

Whittaker Chambers, Time employee from 1939 to 1948, ending as senior editor and then special projects editor to Henry Luce

Richard Corliss, film critic for the magazine since 1980

Nancy Gibbs, essayist and editor-at-large; has written more than 100 Time cover stories

Lev Grossman, brother of Bathsheba and Austin, writes primarily about books for the magazine

Robert Hughes, Time's long-tenured art critic

Joe Klein, author (Primary Colors) and a columnist for the magazine who writes the "In the Arena" column for the magazine

Andre Laguerre, Paris bureau chief 1948-1956, London bureau chief 1951-1956, also wrote about sports for Time; later longtime managing editor of Sports Illustrated

Nathaniel Lande, author, filmmaker, and former creative director of Time

Will Lang Jr. 1936–1968, Time Life International

Michael Schuman, American author and journalist who specializes in Asian economics, politics and history, currently the Asia business correspondent for TIME Magazine based in Hong Kong

Robert D. Simon 1950–1987, Time Life International

Joel Stein, columnist who wrote the Joel 100 just after Time Magazine's Most Influential issue in 2006

David Von Drehle, current Editor-at-Large

Fareed Zakaria, current Editor-at-Large

See also

Lists of people on the cover of Time magazine

"The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power", 1991 article about Scientology, by Richard Behar, which received the Gerald Loeb Award

References

Further reading

Lundberg, Ferdinand. America's Sixty Families. New York: Vanuguard Press, 1937

Swanberg, W. A. Luce and his Empire. New York: Scribner, 1972

Wilner, Isaiah. The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine, HarperCollins, New York, 2006

External links

Official mobile website

Time Archive – archive of magazines and covers from 1923 through present

Time Magazine Covers Timeline

Table of Contents of the premiere issue vol. 1, issue 1, March 3, 1923

Time articles by Whittaker Chambers

* Category:Time Warner subsidiaries Category:Publications established in 1923 Category:American news magazines Category:Canadian news magazines Category:Worth Bingham Prize recipients Category:American weekly magazines Category:American magazines Category:Time Persons of the Year

Name	Woody Allen
Caption	Allen at the 2009 premiere of Whatever Works
Nationality
Birth name	Allen Stewart Konigsberg
Birth date	December 01, 1935
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation	ActorDirectorScreenwriterComedianMusicianPlaywright
Years active	1950–present
Spouse	Harlene Rosen (1954–1959) Louise Lasser (1966–1969) Soon-Yi Previn (1997–present)

Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright.

Allen’s distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to screwball sex comedies, have made him a notable American director. He is also distinguished by his rapid rate of production and his very large body of work. Allen writes and directs his movies and has also acted in the majority of them. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema, among a wealth of other fields of interest.

Allen developed a passion for music early on and is a celebrated jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage avocation has led to regular public performances at various small venues in his hometown of Manhattan, with occasional appearances at various jazz festivals. Allen joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral Ragtime Orchestra in performances that provided the film score for his 1973 comedy Sleeper, and performed in a rare European tour in 1996, which became the subject of the documentary Wild Man Blues.

Life and career

Early years

Allen was born and raised in New York City, the son of Nettie (née Cherrie; November 8, 1906 – January 27, 2002), a bookkeeper at her family’s delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg (December 25, 1900 – January 13, 2001), a jewelry engraver and waiter. His family was Jewish and his grandparents were immigrants who spoke Yiddish and German; Allen has a sister, Letty, who was born in 1943 and raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. His childhood was not particularly happy: his parents did not get along, and he had a rocky relationship with his stern, temperamental mother. Allen spoke Yiddish during his early years and, after attending Hebrew school for eight years, went to Public School 99 (now The Isaac Asimov School for Science and Literature) and to Midwood High School. During that time, he lived in an apartment at 1402 Avenue K, between East 14th and 15th Streets. He impressed students with his extraordinary talent at card and magic tricks.

To raise money he began writing gags for the agent David O. Alber, who sold them to newspaper columnists. According to Allen, his first published joke read: “Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O.P.S. prices – over people’s salaries.”

He began to call himself Woody Allen. He was an extremely talented young comedian and would later joke that when he was young he was often sent to inter-faith summer camps, where he “was savagely beaten by children of all races and creeds.”

After high school, he attended New York University (NYU), where he studied communication and film. He was never a committed student: he failed a film course and was eventually expelled. He later briefly attended City College of New York and eventually taught at The New School. He also studied with writing teacher Lajos Egri.

Comedy writer

After his false starts at NYU and City College, he became a full-time writer for Herb Shriner, earning $75 a week at first. By the time he was working for Caesar, he was making $1500 a week; with Caesar he worked alongside Danny Simon, whom Allen credits for helping him to form his writing style.

In 1961, he started a new career as a stand-up comedian, debuting in a Greenwich Village club called the Duplex.

Allen wrote for the popular Candid Camera television show, and appeared in some episodes. Together with his managers, Allen developed a neurotic, nervous, and intellectual persona for his stand-up routine, a successful move which secured regular gigs for him in nightclubs and on television.

Allen started writing short stories and cartoon captions for magazines such as The New Yorker; he was particularly inspired by the tradition of four prominent New Yorker’s humorists, S. J. Perelman, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley and Max Shulman, whose material he modernized. Allen is also an accomplished author having published four collections of his short pieces and plays. These are Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects and Mere Anarchy. His early comic fiction was heavily influenced by the zany, pun-ridden humour of S.J. Perelman. Allen brought significant innovation to the comedy monologue genre and his stand-up comedy is considered highly influential.

He has written several one-act plays, including 'Riverside Drive' and 'Old Saybrook' which both explore well-known Allen themes. They have been produced in England for the first time by The Nuffield Theatre, a south-coast art house theatre, Southampton (September 2010) and directed by Patrick Sandord.

Early films: formless comedy

All of Allen’s early films were formless comedies like those of the Marx Brothers. As all pure comedies, they needed only a thin plot, and were constituted entirely of comic inventions, a non-stop sequence of sight gags, one-liners and slapstick.

Allen directed Take the Money and Run in 1969. That same year he starred in his own TV special, The Woody Allen Special. On the show he performed standup comedy routines before a live audience and acted in a sketch with Candace Bergen in which they appeared nude but their bodies were kept hidden from view by the camera. The special also had guest appearances by the pop vocal group The 5th Dimension singing their hit singles “Workin’ On A Groovy Thing” and “Wedding Bell Blues”. The show’s sponsor, Libby's, broadcast comical commercials starring Tony Randall as a detective.

From 1971 to 1975 Allen directed Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), Sleeper, and Love and Death. Take the Money and Run and Bananas were co-written by his childhood friend, Mickey Rose.

Sophisticated Lubitsch-like comedies

After his initial pure comedies in the tradition of the Marx Brothers, Allen switched to sophisticated Lubitsch-like comedies, adding a plot and reducing the comic inventions.

Stardust Memories features Sandy Bates, a successful filmmaker played by Allen, who expresses resentment and scorn for his fans. Overcome by the recent death of a friend from illness, the character states, “I don’t want to make funny movies any more” and a running gag has various people (including a group of visiting space aliens) telling Bates that they appreciate his films, “especially the early, funny ones.” Allen believes this to be one of his best films.

By the mid-1980s, Allen had begun to combine tragic and comic elements with the release of such films as Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which he tells two stories that connect at the end. He also produced a vividly idiosyncratic tragi-comical parody of documentary, titled Zelig.

He made three films about show business; Broadway Danny Rose, in which he plays a New York show business agent, The Purple Rose of Cairo, a movie that shows the importance of the cinema during the Depression through the character of the naive Cecilia, and Radio Days, which is a film about his childhood in Brooklyn and the importance of the radio. Purple Rose was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best films of all time and Allen has described it as one of his three best films, along with Stardust Memories and Match Point. (Allen defines them as “best” not in terms of quality but because they came out the closest to his original vision.)

Before the end of the ‘80s, he made other movies that were inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s films. September resembles Autumn Sonata and Allen uses many elements from Wild Strawberries in Another Woman. Similarly, the Federico Fellini classic Amarcord strongly inspired Radio Days. In 1989, Allen teamed up with directors Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese to make New York Stories, an anthology film about New Yorkers. Allen's short "Oedipus Wrecks" was about a neurotic lawyer and his critical mother. His short pleased critics, but New York Stories had bombed at the box office.

1990s

His 1992 film Shadows and Fog is a black-and-white homage to the German expressionists and features the music of Kurt Weill. Allen then made his critically acclaimed drama Husbands and Wives (1992), which received two Oscar nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Judy Davis and Best Original Screenplay for Allen. His film Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) combined suspense with dark comedy and marked the return of Diane Keaton, Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston.

He returned to lighter movies like Bullets Over Broadway (1994), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, followed by a musical, Everyone Says I Love You (1996). The singing and dancing scenes in Everyone Says I Love You are similar to many musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The comedy Mighty Aphrodite (1995), in which Greek drama plays a large role, won an Academy Award for Mira Sorvino. Allen’s 1999 jazz-based comedy-drama Sweet and Lowdown was also nominated for two Academy Awards for Sean Penn (Best Actor) and Samantha Morton (Best Supporting Actress). In contrast to these lighter movies, Allen veered into darker satire towards the end of the decade with Deconstructing Harry (1997) and Celebrity (1998). Allen made his only sitcom “appearance” to date (2009) via telephone on the show Just Shoot Me! in a 1997 episode, “My Dinner with Woody” which paid tribute to several of his films. Allen also provided the lead voice in the 1998 animated film Antz, which featured many actors he had worked with and had Allen play a character that was similar to his earlier neurotic roles.

2000s

Small Time Crooks (2000) was his first film with the DreamWorks studio and represented a change in direction: Allen began giving more interviews and made an attempt to return to his slapstick roots. Small Time Crooks was a relative financial success, grossing over $17 million domestically but Allen’s next four films floundered at the box office, including Allen’s most expensive film, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (with a budget of $26 million). Hollywood Ending, Anything Else, and Melinda and Melinda were given “rotten” ratings from film-review website Rotten Tomatoes and each earned less than $5 million domestically. Some critics claimed that Allen’s films since 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown were subpar and expressed concern that Allen’s best years were now behind him. Others have been less harsh; reviewing the little-liked Melinda and Melinda, Roger Ebert wrote, “I cannot escape the suspicion that if Woody had never made a previous film, if each new one was Woody’s Sundance debut, it would get a better reception. His reputation is not a dead shark but an albatross, which with admirable economy Allen has arranged for the critics to carry around their own necks.” Woody gave his godson Quincy Rose a small part in Melinda and Melinda. Match Point (2005) was one of Allen’s most successful films in the past 10 years and generally received very positive reviews. Set in London, it starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Scarlett Johansson. It is also markedly darker than Allen’s first four films with DreamWorks SKG. In Match Point, Allen shifts his focus from the intellectual upper class of New York to the moneyed upper class of London. It earned more than $23 million domestically (more than any of his films in nearly 20 years) and over $62 million in international box office sales. Match Point earned Allen his first Academy Award nomination since 1998 for Best Writing – Original Screenplay and also earned directing and writing nominations at the Golden Globes, his first Globe nominations since 1987. In an interview with Premiere Magazine, Allen stated this was the best film he has ever made.

Allen returned to London to film Scoop, which also starred Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Ian McShane, Kevin McNally and Allen himself (which remains to be the last film Allen has acted in). The film was released on July 28, 2006 and received mixed reviews. He has also filmed Cassandra's Dream in London. Cassandra’s Dream was released in November 2007 and stars Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkinson.

After finishing his third London film, Allen headed to Spain. He reached an agreement to film Vicky Cristina Barcelona in Avilés, Barcelona and Oviedo, where shooting started on July 9, 2007. The movie stars Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall and Penélope Cruz. Speaking of his experience there, Allen said: “I’m delighted at being able to work with Mediapro and make a film in Spain, a country which has become so special to me.” Vicky Cristina Barcelona was well received, winning “Best Musical or Comedy” at the Golden Globe awards. Penélope Cruz received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film.

Allen has said that he “survives” on the European market. Audiences there have tended to be more receptive to Allen’s films, particularly in Spain, France and Italy; countries where he has a large audience (something joked about in Hollywood Ending). “In the United States things have changed a lot, and it’s hard to make good small films now”, Allen said in a 2004 interview. “The avaricious studios couldn’t care less about good films – if they get a good film they’re twice as happy but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500 million.”

In April 2008, he began filming for a movie focused more towards older audiences starring Larry David, Patricia Clarkson and Evan Rachel Wood. He revealed in July 2008 the title of this film, to be released in 2009: Whatever Works, described as a dark comedy, follows the story of a botched suicide attempt turned messy love triangle. Whatever Works was written by Allen in the 1970s and the character now played by Larry David was originally written for Zero Mostel, who died the year Annie Hall came out.

2010s

Allen’s most recent project, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, filmed in London, stars Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Anupam Kher, Freida Pinto and Naomi Watts. Filming started in July 2009. It was released theatrically in the US on September 23, 2010 following a Cannes debut in May 2010 and a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2010. Allen has announced that his next film will be titled Midnight in Paris, which will star Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen and French First Lady Carla Bruni. The plot will follow a family travelling to Paris for a business trip, including a young engaged couple who see their lives transformed. Shooting took place in Paris in the summer of 2010.

Distinction in the film world

, Spain]] Over the course of his career, Allen has received a considerable number of awards and distinctions in film festivals and yearly national film awards ceremonies, saluting his work as a director, screenwriter, and actor. In 2002, Allen received the Palme des Palmes, a special lifetime achievement award granted by the Cannes Festival and whose sole other recipient is Ingmar Bergman.

In a 2005 UK poll The Comedian’s Comedian, Allen was voted the third greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

In June 2007, Allen received a Ph.D. degree Honoris Causa from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain.

Academy Awards

Woody Allen has won three Academy Awards and been nominated a total of 21 times: 14 as a screenwriter, six as a director, and one as an actor. He has more screenwriting Academy Award nominations than any other writer; all are in the “Best Original Screenplay” category. He is tied for fifth all-time with six Best Director nominations. His actors have regularly received both nominations and Academy Awards for their work in Allen films, particularly in the Best Supporting categories.

Annie Hall won four Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Actress). The film received a fifth nomination, for Allen as Best Actor. Hannah and Her Sisters won three, for Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories; it was nominated in four other categories, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Despite friendly recognition from the Academy, Allen has consistently refused to attend the ceremony or acknowledge his Oscar wins. He broke this pattern only once. At the Academy Awards ceremony in 2002, Allen made an unannounced appearance, making a plea for producers to continue filming their movies in New York City after the 9-11 attacks, where he stated, “I didn’t have to present anything. I didn’t have to accept anything. I just had to talk about New York City.” He was given a standing ovation before introducing a montage of movie clips featuring New York.

Five actors have won six Academy Awards for their work in Allen films: Diane Keaton (Best Actress, Annie Hall), Michael Caine (Best Supporting Actor, Hannah and Her Sisters), Dianne Wiest (Best Supporting Actress, Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway), Mira Sorvino (Best Supporting Actress, Mighty Aphrodite), and Penélope Cruz (Best Supporting Actress, Vicky Cristina Barcelona).

Ten actors have received Academy Award nominations for their work in Allen films: Allen himself (Best Actor, Annie Hall), Geraldine Page (Best Actress, Interiors), Martin Landau (Best Supporting Actor, Crimes and Misdemeanors), Chazz Palminteri (Best Supporting Actor, Bullets Over Broadway), Maureen Stapleton (Best Supporting Actress, Interiors), Mariel Hemingway (Best Supporting Actress, Manhattan), Judy Davis (Best Supporting Actress, Husbands and Wives), Jennifer Tilly (Best Supporting Actress, Bullets Over Broadway), Sean Penn (Best Actor, Sweet and Lowdown), and Samantha Morton (Best Supporting Actress, Sweet and Lowdown).

BAFTA

Allen has won a number of British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards and nominations for best picture, best director, best actor, and best screenplay. In 1997, he received the honorary BAFTA Fellowship for his work.

1978 — Won — Best Film — Annie Hall

1978 — Won — Best Screenplay — Annie Hall (with Marshall Brickman)

1978 — Won — Best Direction — Annie Hall

1980 — Won — Best Film — Manhattan

1980 — Won — Best Screenplay — Manhattan (with Marshall Brickman)

1985 — Won — Best Screenplay — Broadway Danny Rose

1986 — Won — Best Film — The Purple Rose of Cairo

1986 — Won — Best Screenplay — The Purple Rose of Cairo

1987 — Won — Best Screenplay — Hannah and Her Sisters

1987 — Won — Best Direction — Hannah and Her Sisters

1993 — Won — Best Screenplay — Husbands and Wives

Nominated for best film for Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Nominated for best actor for Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters.

Nominated for best director for Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Nominated for best screenplay for Zelig, Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bullets Over Broadway (with Douglas McGrath).

Title sequences

Most of Allen’s films since Love and Death begin with the same style of title sequence, incorporating a series of black-and-white title cards in a vintage typeface (most often Windsor Light Condensed) reminiscent of Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, set to a selection of jazz music occasionally heard later in the film (e.g., Radio Days). The cast is placed on one title card and listed in alphabetical order. There is a minor variation in Deconstructing Harry, where the titles are weaved in with a looped shot. Another exception is Manhattan, which opens with a series of black-and-white shots of the city set to Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue”; the film’s title is shown as the sign on a building. The titles are at the end of the film.

Theatre

Although best known for his films, Allen has also enjoyed a very successful career in theater, starting as early as 1960 when Allen wrote sketches for the revue From A to Z. His first great success was Don't Drink the Water, which opened in 1968 and ran for 598 performances for almost two years on Broadway. His success continued with Play it Again, Sam, which opened in 1969, starring Allen and Diane Keaton. The show played for 453 performances and was nominated for three Tony Awards, although none of the nominations were for Allen’s writing or acting.

In the ‘70s, Allen wrote a number of one-act plays, most notably God and Death, which were published in his 1975 collection Without Feathers.

In 1981, Allen’s play The Floating Light Bulb opened on Broadway. The play was a critical success but a commercial flop. Despite two Tony Award nominations, a Tony win for the acting of Brian Backer (who also won the 1981 Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award for his work), the play only ran for 62 performances. As of January 2008, it is the last Allen work that ran on Broadway.

After a long hiatus from the stage, Allen returned to the theater in 1995 with the one-act Central Park West, an installment in an evening of theater known as Death Defying Acts that was also made up of new work by David Mamet and Elaine May.

For the next couple of years, Allen had no direct involvement with the stage, yet notable productions of his work were being staged. A production of God was staged at The Bank of Brazil Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro, and theatrical adaptations of Allen’s films Bullets over Broadway and September were produced in Italy and France, respectively, without Allen’s involvement. In 1997, rumors of Allen returning to the theater to write a starring role for his wife Soon-Yi Previn turned out to be false.

In 2003, Allen finally returned to the stage with Writer’s Block, an evening of two one-acts – Old Saybrook and Riverside Drive – that played off-Broadway. The production marked the stage-directing debut for Allen. The production sold out its entire run.

Also that year, reports of Allen writing the book for a musical based on Bullets over Broadway surfaced, but no show ever formulated. In 2004, Allen’s first full-length play since 1981, A Second Hand Memory, was directed by Allen and enjoyed an extended run off-Broadway. – which debuted at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on September 6, 2008. Commenting on his direction of the opera, Allen said, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” His production of the opera opened the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, in June 2009.

Marriages and relationships

Harlene Rosen

At age 19, Allen married 16-year-old Harlene Rosen. The marriage lasted from 1954 to 1959. TIME stated that the years were "nettling" and "unsettling."

Stacey Nelkin

The film Manhattan is said by the Los Angeles Times to be widely known to have been based on his romantic relationship with the actress Stacey Nelkin. Her bit part in Annie Hall ended up on the cutting room floor, and their relationship, though never publicly acknowledged by Allen, reportedly began when she was 17 years old and a student at New York’s Stuyvesant High School.

Mia Farrow

Around 1980, Allen began a 12-year relationship with actress Mia Farrow, who had leading roles in several of his movies from 1982 to 1992. Farrow and Allen never married but they adopted two children, Dylan Farrow (who changed her name to Eliza and is now known as Malone) and Moshe Farrow (now known as Moses); they also had one biological child, Satchel Farrow (now known as Ronan Seamus Farrow). Allen did not adopt any of Farrow’s other family, including Soon-Yi Farrow Previn (the adopted daughter of Farrow and André Previn, now known as Soon-Yi Previn). Allen and Farrow separated in 1992 after Farrow discovered nude photographs that Allen had taken of Soon-Yi. In her autobiography, What Falls Away (New York: Doubleday, 1997), Farrow says that Allen admitted to a relationship with Soon-Yi.

After Allen and Farrow separated, a long public legal battle for the custody of their three children began. During the proceedings, Farrow alleged that Allen had sexually molested their adopted daughter Dylan, who was then seven years old. The judge eventually concluded that the sex abuse charges were inconclusive but called Allen’s conduct with Soon-Yi “grossly inappropriate”. She called the report of the team that investigated the issue “sanitized and therefore, less credible” and added that she had “reservations about the reliability of the report”. Farrow won custody of their children. Allen was denied visitation rights with Malone and could see Ronan only under supervision. Moses, who was then 14, chose not to see Allen.

In a 2005 Vanity Fair interview, Allen estimated that, despite the scandal’s damage to his reputation, Farrow’s discovery of Allen’s attraction to Soon-Yi Previn by finding nude photographs of her was “just one of the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life. [...] It was a turning point for the better.” Of his relationship with Farrow, he said, “I’m sure there are things that I might have done differently. [...] Probably in retrospect I should have bowed out of that relationship much earlier than I did.”

Soon-Yi Previn

and Allen at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival]] After ending his relationship with Farrow in 1992, Allen continued his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn. Even though Allen never married or lived with Farrow and was never Previn’s legal stepfather, the relationship between Allen and Previn has often been referred to as a father involved romantically with his stepdaughter since he had been perceived as being in Previn’s life in a father-like capacity. For example, in 1991, The New York Times described Allen’s family life by reporting, “Few married couples seem more married. They are constantly in touch with each other, and not many fathers spend as much time with their children as Allen does.” the relationship became a scandal. At the time, Allen was 56 and Previn was 22. Asked whether their age difference was conducive to “a healthy, equal relationship,” Allen said equality is not necessarily a requirement in a relationship and said, “The heart wants what it wants. There’s no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that’s that.”

Allen and Previn married on December 24, 1997, in the Palazzo Cavalli in Venice. The couple has adopted two daughters, naming them Bechet and Manzie after jazz musicians Sidney Bechet and Manzie Johnson.

Allen and Farrow’s biological son, Ronan Seamus Farrow, said of Allen: "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent... I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children."

and Simon Wettenhall performing at Vienne Jazz Festival, Vienne, France, September 20, 2003]]

Clarinetist

Allen is a passionate fan of jazz, which is often featured prominently in the soundtracks to his films. He began playing as a child and took his stage name from clarinetist Woody Herman. He has performed publicly at least since the late 1960s, notably with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on the soundtrack of Sleeper. One of his earliest televised performances was on The Dick Cavett Show on October 20, 1971.

Woody Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band play every Monday evening at Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel, specializing in classic New Orleans jazz from the early twentieth century. The documentary film Wild Man Blues (directed by Barbara Kopple) documents a 1996 European tour by Allen and his band, as well as his relationship with Previn. The band has released two CDs: The Bunk Project (1993) and the soundtrack of Wild Man Blues (1997).

Allen and his band played the Montreal Jazz Festival on two consecutive nights in June 2008.

Work about or inspired by Woody Allen

Apart from Wild Man Blues directed by Barbara Kopple, there are a number of other documentaries featuring Woody Allen, including the 2002 cable-television documentary Woody Allen: a Life in Film, directed by Time Magazine film critic Richard Schickel, which interlaces interviews of Allen with clips of his films, and Meetin' WA, a short interview of Allen by French director Jean-Luc Godard.

Waiting for Woody Allen is a 2004 short film, starring Modi Rosenfeld, parodying Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. From 1976 to 1984, Stuart Hample wrote and drew Inside Woody Allen, a comic strip based on Allen’s film persona. Central Park West Stories (Baldini Castoldi Dalai publisher, 2005) by Glauco Della Sciucca (Italian contributor to Columbia Journalism Review, The New Yorker, and The Jewish Week, since September 2003) are inspired by Allen. “Death of an Interior Decorator” is a song on Death Cab for Cutie’s album Transatlanticism that was inspired by Woody Allen’s Interiors. Andy Hull, singer and songwriter for Manchester Orchestra, cites Allen as his top musical inspiration, and has written several songs in observance including: “Alice and Interiors”, “Play it Again Sam! You Don’t Have Any Feathers”, “Golden Ticket”, and “Sleeper 1972”. In Love Creeps, a novel by Amanda Filipacchi, a group of birders in Central Park spot Woody Allen and Soon-Yi stepping out onto their balcony and get very excited, which torments a nearby group of recovering stalkers from Stalkaholics Anonymous, causing one of them to suddenly lose his sobriety by grabbing the binoculars from around the neck of a birder to stare at Woody Allen and Soon-Yi.

In 1998, the Spanish novel Yo-Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi features a party scene in which Woody Allen fidgets and stammers while explaining literary classics and the films of Federico Fellini. In 1967, Woody Allen was a featured character (playing himself, of course) in Showcase Comics #71, which featured the one-shot mythical pop group, The Maniaks. The comic book was published and distributed via DC Comics (National Periodical Publications). In 2003, Keith Black wrote, directed and starred in the award-winning film Get the Script to Woody Allen. The feature was about a neurotic young man who is obsessed with getting his script to Woody.

In 2010 the independent British romantic comedy Mancattan was released. The plot features directors Phil Drinkwater and Colin Warhurst playing fictional versions of themselves having travelled to New York from their native Manchester in order to make a documentary about Woody Allen and how his cinema has influenced them from the other side of the world.

While not making a case for direct influence or affinity while reviewing American Splendor inspired by/about graphic artist Harvey Pekar, columnist Jaime Wolf drew attention to formal parallels between the film and subject, on one hand, and Allen, Annie Hall, and other Allen films, on the other.

Psychoanalysis

Allen spent at least 30 years undergoing psychoanalysis. Many of his films contain references to psychoanalysis. Even the film Antz, an animated feature in which Allen contributes the voice of lead character Z, opens with a classic piece of Allen analysis shtick.

Moment Magazine says, “It drove his self-absorbed work.” John Baxter, author of Woody Allen – A Biography, wrote, “Allen obviously found analysis stimulating, even exciting.”

Allen says he ended his psychoanalysis visits around the time he began his relationship with Previn. He says he still is claustrophobic and agoraphobic. |- | style="text-align:center;"| 1975 | God | Writer | style="text-align:center;"|— |- | style="text-align:center;"| 1975 | Death | Writer | style="text-align:center;"|— |- | style="text-align:center;"| 1981 | The Floating Light Bulb | Writer | style="text-align:center;"|Vivian Beaumont Theatre |- | style="text-align:center;"| 1995 | Central Park West | Writer | style="text-align:center;"|Variety Arts Theatre |- | style="text-align:center;"| 2003 | Old Saybrook | Writer, Director | style="text-align:center;"|Atlantic Theatre Company |- | style="text-align:center;"| 2003 | Riverside Drive | Writer, Director | style="text-align:center;"|Atlantic Theatre Company |- | style="text-align:center;"| 2004 | A Second Hand Memory | Writer, Director | style="text-align:center;"|Atlantic Theater Company |}

Bibliography

Published plays

Don’t Drink the Water: A comedy in two acts (1967), ASIN B0006BSWBW

Play It Again, Sam (1969), ISBN 0-394-40663-X

God: A comedy in one act (1975), ISBN 0-573-62201-9

The Floating Light Bulb (1981)

Three One-Act Plays: Riverside Drive / Old Saybrook / Central Park West (2003), ISBN 0-8129-7244-9

Writer’s Block: Two One-Act Plays (2005), ISBN 0-573-62630-8 (includes Riverside Drive and Old Saybrook)

A Second Hand Memory: A drama in two acts (2005)

The one-act plays God and Death are both included in Allen’s 1975 collection Without Feathers (see below).

Short stories

Getting Even (1971), ISBN 0-394-47348-5

Without Feathers (1975), ISBN 0-394-49743-0

Side Effects (1980), ISBN 0-394-51104-2

Mere Anarchy (2007), ISBN 978-1-4000-6641-4

Anthologies

Complete Prose of Woody Allen (1992), ISBN 0-517-07229-7. (Collection of Allen’s short stories first published in Getting Even, Without Feathers and Side Effects.)

The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007, ISBN 978-0812978117.

Chapbook

Lunatic’s Tale (1986), ISBN 1-55628-001-7 (Short story previously included in Side Effects.)

References

Further reading

Stardust Memories: Visiting Woody Michael Žantovský recalls a memorable meeting between two giants, Woody Allen and Václav Havel

Essay by Victoria Loy on Woody Allen's career

The Essential Woody Allen; Lauren Hill

Fun With Woody, The Complete Woody Allen Quiz Book (Henry Holt), Graham Flashner

The Importance of Being Famous: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity Industrial Complex by Maureen Orth p233 ISBN 0-8050-7545-3

Woody Allen – A Biography; John Baxter (1999) ISBN 0-7867-0666-X

Woody Allen: Conversations with Filmmakers Series, ed. R. E. Kapsis and K. Coblentz, (2006) ISBN 1-57806-793-6

Woody Allen; Stephan Reimertz, (rororo-Monographie), Reinbek (2005) ISBN 3-499-50410-3 (in German)

Woody Allen: Eine Biographie; Stephan Reimertz, Reinbek (2000) ISBN 3-499-61145-7 (in German)

Woody Allen On Location, by Thierry de Navacelle (Morrow, 1987); a day-to-day account of the making of Radio Days (1987)

Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation With Stig Bjorkman (1995), ISBN 0-8021-1556-X

Woody Allen: Profane and Sacred; Richard A. Blake (1995) ISBN 978-0-810-82993-0

"Woody plots film return to London" by A Correspondent, Times Online, November 30, 2005

External links

Woody Allen Bibliography (via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center)

The Official Site of Woody Allen

in 2009

Happy 75th, Woody Allen! - slideshow by Life magazine

Woody Allen Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Category:1935 births Category:Actors from New York City Category:American Dixieland revivalists Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American jazz clarinetists Category:American Jews Category:American screenwriters Category:American short story writers Category:American stand-up comedians Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Director Academy Award winners Category:Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winners Category:César Award winners Category:Dixieland revivalist clarinetists Category:English-language film directors

Category:Film theorists Category:Independent Spirit Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish American musicians Category:Jewish American writers Category:Jewish comedians Category:Jewish comedy and humor Category:Jewish dramatists and playwrights Category:Living people Category:O. Henry Award winners Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners

Name	Van Morrison
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	George Ivan Morrison
Alias	Van the ManThe Belfast Cowboy
Born	August 31, 1945
Origin	Belfast, Northern Ireland
Genre	Blues, rhythm and blues, folk, blue-eyed soul, celtic, rock and roll, jazz fusion, country
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, harmonica, saxophones, keyboards, drums, tambourine, ukelele
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician
Years active	1958–present
Label	Decca, Bang, Warner Bros., London, Mercury, Exile/Polydor, Lost Highway Records, Listen to the Lion/EMI
Associated acts	Them
Url	www.vanmorrison.com

Van Morrison, OBE (born George Ivan Morrison; 31 August 1945) is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely viewed as among the greatest ever made.

Known as "Van the Man" to his fans, Morrison started his professional career when, as a teenager in the late 1950s, he played a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone in a range of Irish showbands who covered the popular hits of the day before rising to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the gritty Northern Irish R&B; band Them with whom he recorded the garage band classic, "Gloria". His solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967. After Berns' death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks in 1968. Even though this album would gradually garner high praise, it was initially poorly received; however, the next one, Moondance, established Morrison as a major artist, and throughout the 1970s he built on his reputation with a series of critically acclaimed albums and live performances. Morrison continues to record and tour, producing albums and live performances that sell well and are generally warmly received, sometimes collaborating with other artists, such as Georgie Fame and The Chieftains. In 2008 he performed Astral Weeks live for the first time since 1968.

Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and R&B;, such as the popular singles, "Brown Eyed Girl", "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", "Domino" and "Wild Night". An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, loosely connected, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz, and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as Astral Weeks and lesser-known works such as Veedon Fleece and Common One. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic Soul".

Morrison has received considerable acclaim, including six Grammy Awards, being inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and appearing on several "Greatest Artists" lists.

Early life and musical roots: 1945–64

George Ivan (Van) Morrison was born on 31 August 1945, in Bloomfield, Belfast, Northern Ireland as the only child of George Morrison, a shipyard electrician, and Violet Stitt Morrison, a singer and tap dancer in her youth. Van Morrison's family roots descend from the Ulster Scots population that settled in Belfast. From 1950 to 1956, Morrison, who began to be known as "Van" during this time, attended Elmgrove Primary School. Morrison's father had what was at the time one of the largest record collections in Ulster (acquired during his sojourn in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1950s), and the young Morrison grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, and Solomon Burke; of whom Morrison later said, "If it weren't for guys like Ray and Solomon, I wouldn't be where I am today. Those guys were the inspiration that got me going. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now." His father's record collection exposed him to various musical genres, such as the blues of Muddy Waters; the gospel of Mahalia Jackson; the jazz of Charlie Parker; the folk music of Woody Guthrie; and country music from Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, while the first record he ever bought was by blues musician Sonny Terry. When Lonnie Donegan had a hit with "Rock Island Line", written by Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), Morrison felt he was familiar with and able to connect with skiffle music as he had been hearing Lead Belly before that.

Morrison's father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was eleven, and he learned to play rudimentary chords from the song book, The Carter Family Style, edited by Alan Lomax. A year later, when he was twelve years old, Morrison formed his first band, a skiffle group, "The Sputniks", named after the recently launched Soviet satellite, Sputnik 1. In 1958, the band played at some of the local cinemas, and Morrison took the lead, contributing most of the singing and arranging. Other short-lived groups followed – at fourteen, he formed Midnight Special, another modified skiffle band and played at a school concert. and took lessons in tenor sax and music reading. Now playing the saxophone, Morrison joined with various local bands, including one called Deanie Sands and the Javelins, with whom he played guitar and shared singing. Later the four main musicians of the Javelins, with the addition of Wesley Black as keyboard player, became known as the Monarchs.

Morrison attended Orangefield High School, leaving in July 1960 with no qualifications. As a member of a working-class community, it was expected that he would get a regular full-time job, so after several short apprenticeship positions, he settled into a job as a window cleaner— later alluded to in his songs, "Cleaning Windows" and "Saint Dominic's Preview". However, he had been developing his musical interests from an early age and continued playing with the Monarchs part-time. Young Morrison also played with the Harry Mack Showband, the Great Eight, with his older workplace friend, Geordie Sproule whom he later named as one of his biggest influences.

At age 17, he toured Europe for the first time with the Monarchs, now calling themselves the International Monarchs. This Irish showband, with Morrison playing saxophone, guitar and harp, in addition to back-up duty on bass and drums, toured steamy clubs and US Army bases in Scotland, England, and Germany, often playing five sets a night.

Upon returning to Belfast in November 1963, the group disbanded, so Morrison connected with Geordie Sproule again and played with him in the Manhattan Showband along with guitarist Herbie Armstrong. When Armstrong auditioned to play with Brian Rossi and the Golden Eagles, Morrison went along and was hired as a blues singer.

Them: 1964–66

The roots of Them, the band that first broke Morrison on the international scene, came in April 1964 when Morrison responded to an advert for musicians to play at a new R&B; club at the Maritime Hotel – an old dance hall frequented by sailors. The new R&B; club needed a band for its opening night; however, Morrison had left the Golden Eagles (the group with which he had been performing at the time), so he created a new band out of The Gamblers, an East Belfast group formed by Ronnie Millings, Billy Harrison, and Alan Henderson in 1962. Eric Wrixon, still a schoolboy, was the piano player and keyboardist. Morrison played saxophone and harmonica and shared vocals with Billy Harrison. They followed Eric Wrixon's suggestion for a new name, and The Gamblers morphed into Them, their name taken from the Fifties horror movie Them!.

The band's strong R&B; performances at the Maritime attracted attention. Them performed without a routine and Morrison ad libbed, creating his songs live as he performed. While the band did covers, they also played some of Morrison's early songs, such as "Could You Would You", which he had written in Camden Town while touring with The Manhattan Showband. The debut of Morrison's "Gloria" took place on stage here. Sometimes, depending on his mood, the song could last up to twenty minutes. Morrison has stated that "Them lived and died on the stage at the Maritime Hotel," believing that the band did not manage to capture the spontaneity and energy of their live performances on their records. The statement also reflected the instability of the Them lineup, with numerous members passing through the ranks after the definitive Maritime period. Morrison and Henderson would remain the only constants, and a highly unsuccessful version of Them even soldiered on after Morrison's departure.

Dick Rowe of Decca Records became aware of the band's performances, and signed Them to a standard two-year contract. In that period, they released two albums and ten singles, with two more singles released after Morrison departed the band. They had three chart hits, "Baby, Please Don't Go" (1964), "Here Comes the Night" (1965), and "Mystic Eyes" (1965), though it was the b-side of "Baby, Please Don't Go", the garage band classic, "Gloria", that went on to become a rock standard covered by Patti Smith, The Doors, Shadows of Knight, Jimi Hendrix and others.

Building on the success of their singles in the United States, and riding on the back of the British Invasion, Them undertook a two month tour of America in May and June 1966 that included a residency from 30 May to 18 June at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. The Doors were the supporting act on the last week, and Morrison's influence on The Doors singer, Jim Morrison, was noted by John Densmore in his book Riders On The Storm. Brian Hinton relates how "Jim Morrison learned quickly from his near namesake's stagecraft, his apparent recklessness, his air of subdued menace, the way he would improvise poetry to a rock beat, even his habit of crouching down by the bass drum during instrumental breaks." On the final night, the two Morrisons and the two bands jammed together on "Gloria".

Toward the end of the tour the band members became involved in a dispute with their manager, Decca Records' Phil Solomon, over the revenues paid to the band; that, coupled with the expiry of their work visas, meant the band returned from America dejected. After two more concerts in Ireland, Them split up. Morrison concentrated on writing some of the songs that would appear on Astral Weeks, while the remnants of the band reformed in 1967 and relocated in America.

Start of solo career with Bang Records and "Brown Eyed Girl" – 1967

Bert Berns, Them’s producer and composer of their 1965 hit, "Here Comes the Night", persuaded Morrison to return to New York to record solo for his new label, Bang Records. Morrison flew over and signed a contract he had not fully studied. Then, during a two-day recording session at A & R Studios starting 28 March 1967, eight songs were recorded originally intended to be used as four singles. Instead, these songs were released as the album Blowin' Your Mind! without Morrison being consulted. He said he only became aware of the album's release when a friend mentioned on a phone call that he had just bought a copy of it. He later commented to Donal Corvin in a 1973 interview: "I wasn't really happy with it. He picked the bands and tunes. I had a different concept of it."

However, from these early sessions, emerged "Brown Eyed Girl". Captured on the 22nd take on the first day, this song was released as a single in mid-June 1967, reaching number ten in the US charts in 1967. "Brown Eyed Girl" became Morrison's most played song and over the years it has remained a classic; forty years later in 2007, it was the fourth most requested song of DJs in the US.

Following the death of Berns in 1967, Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Berns' widow that prevented him from performing on stage or recording in the New York area. The song, "Big Time Operators", released in 1993, is thought to allude to his dealings with the New York music business during this time period. He then moved to Boston, Massachusetts and was soon confronted with personal and financial problems; he had "slipped into a malaise" and had trouble finding concert bookings. However, through the few gigs he could find, he regained his professional footing and started recording with the Warner Bros. Records label. The record company managed to buy out his contract with Bang Records. Morrison fulfilled a clause that bound him to submit thirty-six original songs within a year to Web IV Music, Berns' music publishing company, by recording thirty-one songs in one session; however, Ilene Berns thought the songs "nonsense music ... about ringworms" and didn't use them. The throwaway compositions would come to be known as the "revenge" songs.

Astral Weeks – 1968

"Astral Weeks is about the power of the human voice — ecstatic agony, agonising ecstacy. Here is an Irish tenor reborn as a White Negro — a Caucasian Soul Man — pleading and beseeching over a bed of dreamy folk-jazz instrumentation: acoustic bass, brushed drums, vibes and acoustic guitar, the odd string quartet — and of course flute."

Barney Hoskyns – Mojo

, jazz and stream of consciousness but ultimately in a music genre of its own, Astral Weeks (1968) is often considered one of the best albums ever made. Morrison has said, "When Astral Weeks came out, I was starving, literally." Released in 1968, the album eventually achieved critical acclaim, but it originally received an indifferent response from the public. To this day, it remains in an unclassifiable music genre and has been described variously as hypnotic, meditative, and as possessing a unique musical power. It has been compared to French Impressionism and mystical Celtic poetry. A 2004 Rolling Stone magazine review begins with the words: "This is music of such enigmatic beauty that thirty-five years after its release, Astral Weeks still defies easy, admiring description." Alan Light would later describe Astral Weeks as "like nothing he had done previously—and really, nothing anyone had done previously. Morrison sings of lost love, death, and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature." In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians conducted by Hot Press magazine.

From Moondance to Into the Music: 1970–79

Morrison's third solo album, Moondance, which was released in 1970, became his first million selling album and reached number twenty-nine on the Billboard charts. The style of Moondance stood in contrast to that of Astral Weeks. Whereas Astral Weeks had a sorrowful and vulnerable tone, Moondance restored a more optimistic and cheerful message to his music. The title track, although not released in the US as a single until 1977, received heavy play in FM radio formats. "Into the Mystic" has also gained a wide following over the years. The single released was "Come Running", which reached the American Top 40. Moondance was both well received and favourably reviewed. Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus had a combined full page review in Rolling Stone, stating that Morrison now had "the striking imagination of a consciousness that is visionary in the strongest sense of the word." "That was the type of band I dig," Morrison said of the Moondance sessions. "Two horns and a rhythm section — they're the type of bands that I like best." He produced the album himself as he felt like nobody else knew what he wanted. Moondance was listed at number sixty-five on the Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Over the next few years, he released a succession of albums, starting with a second one in 1970. His Band and the Street Choir had a free, more relaxed sound than Moondance, but not the perfection, in the opinion of critic Jon Landau who felt like "a few more numbers with a gravity of 'Street Choir' would have made this album as perfect as anyone could have stood." It contained the hit single "Domino", which charted at number nine in the Billboard Hot 100.

In 1971, he released another well-received album, Tupelo Honey. This album produced the hit single "Wild Night" that was later covered by John Mellencamp. The title song has a notably country-soul feel about it and the album ended with another country tune, "Moonshine Whiskey". Morrison said he originally intended to make an all country album. The recordings were as live as possible – after rehearsing the songs the musicians would go into the studio and play a whole set in one take. His co-producer, Ted Templeman, described this recording process as the "scariest thing I've ever seen. When he's got something together, he wants to put it down right away with no overdubbing."

Released in 1972, Saint Dominic's Preview, revealed Morrison's break from the more accessible style of his previous three albums and moving back towards the more daring, adventurous, and meditative aspects of Astral Weeks. The combination of two styles of music demonstrated a versatility not previously found in his earlier albums. Two songs, "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" and "Redwood Tree", reached the Hot 100 singles chart. It was his highest charting album in the US until his Top Ten debut on Billboard 200 in 2008.

He released his next album Hard Nose the Highway in 1973 receiving mixed, but mostly negative, reviews. The album contained the popular song "Warm Love" but otherwise has been largely dismissed critically. In a 1973 Rolling Stone review, it was described as: "psychologically complex, musically somewhat uneven and lyrically excellent."

During a three-week vacation visit to Ireland in October 1973, Morrison wrote seven of the songs that would make up his next album, Veedon Fleece. Though it attracted scant initial attention, its critical stature grew markedly over the years—with Veedon Fleece now often considered to be one of Morrison's most impressive and poetic works. In a 2008 Rolling Stone review, Andy Greene writes that when released in late 1974: "it was greeted by a collective shrug by the rock critical establishment" and concludes: "He's released many wonderful albums since, but he's never again hit the majestic heights of this one." "You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push the River", one of the album's side closers, exemplifies the long, hypnotic, cryptic Morrison with its references to visionary poet William Blake and to the seemingly Grail-like Veedon Fleece object.

Morrison would not release a follow-up album for another three years. After a decade without taking time off, he said in an interview, he needed to get away from music completely and ceased listening to it for several months. Also suffering from writer's block, he seriously considered leaving the music business for good. Speculation that an extended jam session would be released either under the title Mechanical Bliss, or Naked in the Jungle, or Stiff Upper Lip, came to nothing, and Morrison's next album was A Period of Transition in 1977, a collaboration with Dr. John, who had appeared at The Last Waltz concert with Morrison in 1976. The album received a mild critical reception and marked the beginning of a very prolific period of song making.

Into the Music: "The album's last four songs, "Angelou", "And the Healing Has Begun", and "It's All in the Game/You Know What They're Writing About" are a veritable tour-de-force with Morrison summoning every vocal trick at his disposal from "Angelou's climactic shouts to the sexually-charged, half-mumbled monologue in "And the Healing Has Begun" to the barely audible whisper that is the album's final sound." (Scott Thomas Review')

The following year, Morrison released Wavelength; it became at that time the fastest-selling album of his career and soon went gold. The title track became a modest hit, peaking at number forty-two. Making use of 1970s synthesizers, it mimics the sounds of the shortwave radio stations that he listened to in his youth. The opening track, "Kingdom Hall" evoked Morrison's own childhood experiences attending church with his mother and foretold a religious theme that would be more evident in his next album, Into the Music.

Considered by Allmusic as "the definitive post-classic-era Morrison", Into the Music, was released in the last year of the 1970s. Songs on this album for the first time alluded to the healing power of music, which would become an abiding interest of Morrison's. "Bright Side of the Road" was a joyful, uplifting song that would appear on the soundtrack of the movie, Michael.

Common One to Avalon Sunset: 1980–89

With his next album, the new decade found Morrison following his muse into uncharted territory and merciless reviews. In February 1980, Morrison and a group of musicians traveled to Super Bear, a studio in the French Alps, to record (on the site of a former abbey) what is considered to be the most controversial album in his discography; later "Morrison admitted that his original concept was even more esoteric than the final product." The album, Common One, consisted of six songs, each of varying length. The longest, "Summertime in England", lasted fifteen and one-half minutes and ended with the words,"Can you feel the silence?". NME magazine's Paul Du Noyer called the album "colossally smug and cosmically dull; an interminable, vacuous and drearily egotistical stab at spirituality: Into the muzak." Even Greil Marcus, whose previous writings had been favourably inclined towards Morrison, said: "It's Van acting the part of the 'mystic poet' he thinks he's supposed to be." Morrison insisted that the album was never "meant to be a commercial album." Biographer Clinton Heylin concludes: "He would not attempt anything so ambitious again. Henceforth every radical idea would be tempered by some notion of commerciality." Later the critics would reassess the album more favourably with the success of "Summertime in England". Lester Bangs wrote in 1982, "Van was making holy music even though he thought he was, and us [sic] rock critics had made our usual mistake of paying too much attention to the lyrics."

Morrison's next album, Beautiful Vision, released in 1982, had him returning once again to the music of his Northern Irish roots. Well received by the critics and public, it produced a minor UK hit single, "Cleaning Windows", that referenced one of Morrison's first jobs after leaving school. Several other songs on the album, "Vanlose Stairway", "She Gives Me Religion", and the instrumental, "Scandinavia" show the presence of a new personal muse in his life: a Danish public relations agent, who would share Morrison's spiritual interests and serve as a steadying influence on him throughout most of the 1980s. "Scandinavia", with Morrison on piano, was nominated in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category for the 25th Annual Grammy Awards.

Much of the music Morrison released throughout the 1980s continued to focus on the themes of spirituality and faith. His 1983 album, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart was "a move towards creating music for meditation" with synthesisers, uilleann pipes and flute sounds and four of the tracks were instrumentals. The titling of the album and the presence of the instrumentals were noted to be indicative of Morrison's long-held belief that "it's not the words one uses but the force of conviction behind those words that matters."

A Sense of Wonder, Morrison's 1985 album, pulled together the spiritual themes contained in his last four albums, which were defined in a Rolling Stone review as: "rebirth (Into the Music), deep contemplation and meditation, (Common One); ecstasy and humility (Beautiful Vision); and blissful, mantra like languor (Inarticulate Speech of the Heart)." The single, "Tore Down a la Rimbaud" was a reference to Rimbaud and an earlier bout of writer's block that Morrison had encountered in 1974. In 1985, Morrison also wrote the musical score for the movie, Lamb starring Liam Neeson.

Morrison's 1986 release, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, was said to contain a "genuine holiness...and musical freshness that needs to be set in context to understand." Critical response was favourable with a Sounds reviewer calling the album "his most intriguingly involved since Astral Weeks" and "Morrison at his most mystical, magical best." It contains the song, "In the Garden" that, according to Morrison, had a "definite meditation process which is a 'form' of transcendental meditation as its basis. It's not TM". He entitled the album as a rebuttal to media attempts to place him in various creeds. In an interview in the Observer he told Anthony Denselow:

After releasing the "No Guru" album, Morrison's music appeared less gritty and more adult contemporary with the well-received 1987 album, Poetic Champions Compose, considered to be one of his recording highlights of the 1980s. The romantic ballad from this album, "Someone Like You", has been featured subsequently in the soundtracks of several movies, including 1995's French Kiss, and in 2001, both Someone Like You and Bridget Jones's Diary.

In 1988, he released Irish Heartbeat, a collection of traditional Irish folk songs recorded with the Irish group, The Chieftains, which reached number 18 in the UK album charts. The title song, "Irish Heartbeat", was originally recorded on his 1983 album Inarticulate Speech of the Heart.

The 1989 album, Avalon Sunset, which featured the hit duet with Cliff Richard "Whenever God Shines His Light" and the ballad "Have I Told You Lately" (on which "earthly love transmutes into that for God."(Hinton), reached 13 on the UK album chart. Although considered to be a deeply spiritual album, it also contained "Daring Night" which "deals with full, blazing sex, whatever it's churchy organ and gentle lilt suggest."(Hinton) Morrison's familiar themes of "God, woman, his childhood in Belfast and those enchanted moments when time stands still" were prominent in the songs. He can be heard calling out the change of tempo at the end of this song, repeating the numbers "1 - 4" to cue the chord changes (the first and fourth chord in the key of the music). He often completed albums in two days, frequently releasing first takes.

The Best of Van Morrison to Back on Top: 1990–99

The early to middle 1990s were commercially successful for Morrison with three albums reaching the top five of the UK charts, sold out concerts, and a more visible public profile; but this period also marked a decline in the critical reception to his work. The decade began with the release of The Best of Van Morrison; compiled by Morrison himself, the album was focused on his hit singles, and became a multi-platinum success remaining a year and a half on the UK charts. Allmusic determined it to be "far and away the best selling album of his career." After Enlightenment which included the hit single, "Real Real Gone", another compilation album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume Two was released in January 1993, followed by Too Long in Exile in June, another top five chart success. The 1994 live double album A Night in San Francisco received favourable reviews as well as commercial success by reaching number eight on the UK charts. 1995's Days Like This also had large sales – though the critical reviews were not always favourable. This period also saw a number of side projects, including the live jazz performances of 1996's How Long Has This Been Going On, from the same year , and 2000's The Skiffle Sessions - Live In Belfast 1998, all of which found Morrison paying tribute to his early musical influences.

In 1997, Morrison released The Healing Game. The album received mixed reviews, with the lyrics being described as "tired" and "dull", though critic Greil Marcus praised the musical complexity of the album by saying: "It carries the listener into a musical home so perfect and complete he or she might have forgotten that music could call up such a place, and then populate it with people, acts, wishes, fears." The following year, Morrison finally released some of his previously unissued studio recordings in a two-disc set, The Philosopher's Stone. His next release, 1999's Back on Top, achieved a modest success, being his highest charting album in the US since 1978's Wavelength.

Recent years: since 2000

Van Morrison continued to record and tour in the 2000s, often performing two or three times a week. He formed his own independent label, Exile Productions Ltd, which enables him to maintain full production control of each album he records, which he then delivers as a finished product to the recording label that he chooses, for marketing and distribution.

The album, Down the Road released in May 2002, received a good critical reception and proved to be his highest charting album in the US since 1972's Saint Dominic's Preview. one of the tracks was written as a tribute to his late father George, who had played a pivotal role in nurturing his early musical tastes.

Morrison's 2005 album, Magic Time, debuted at number twenty-five on the US Billboard 200 charts upon its May release, some forty years after Morrison first entered the public's eye as the frontman of Them. Rolling Stone listed it as number seventeen on The Top 50 Records of 2005. Also in July 2005, Morrison was named by Amazon as one of their top twenty-five all-time best-selling artists and inducted into the Amazon.com Hall of Fame. Later in the year, Morrison also donated a previously unreleased studio track to a charity album, , which raised money for relief efforts intended for Gulf Coast victims devastated by hurricanes, Katrina and Rita. Morrison composed the song, "Blue and Green", featuring Foggy Lyttle on guitar. This song was released in 2007 on the album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3 and also as a single in the UK. Van Morrison was a headline act at the international celtic music festival, The Hebridean Celtic Festival in Stornoway Outer Hebrides in the summer of 2005.

He released an album with a country music theme, entitled Pay the Devil, on 7 March 2006 and appeared at the Ryman Auditorium where the tickets sold out immediately after they went on sale. Pay the Devil debuted at number twenty-six on The Billboard 200 and peaked at number seven on Top Country Albums. Amazon Best of 2006 Editor's Picks in Country listed the country album at number ten in December 2006. Still promoting the country album, Morrison's performance as the headline act on the first night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2006 was reviewed by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top ten shows of the 2006 festival. In November 2006, a limited edition album, Live at Austin City Limits Festival was issued by Exile Productions, Ltd. A later deluxe CD/DVD release of Pay the Devil, in the summer of 2006 contained tracks from the Ryman performance. In October 2006, Morrison had released his first commercial DVD, Live at Montreux 1980/1974 with concerts taken from two separate appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

A new double CD compilation album The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3 was released in June 2007 containing thirty-one tracks, some of which were previously unreleased. Morrison selected the tracks, which ranged from the 1993 album Too Long in Exile to the song "Stranded" from the 2005 album Magic Time. On 3 September 2007, Morrison's complete catalogue of albums from 1971 through 2002 were made available exclusively at the ITunes Store in Europe and Australia and during the first week of October 2007, the albums became available at the US ITunes Store.

Still on Top - The Greatest Hits, a thirty-seven track double CD compilation album was released on 22 October 2007 in the UK on the Polydor label. On 29 October 2007, the album charted at number two on the Official UK Top 75 Albums—his highest UK charting. The November release in the US and Canada contains twenty-one selected tracks. The hits that were released on albums with the copyrights owned by Morrison as Exile Productions Ltd.—1971 and later—had been remastered in 2007.

Keep It Simple, Morrison's 33rd studio album of completely new material was released by Exile/Polydor Records on 17 March 2008 in the UK and released by Exile/Lost Highway Records in the US and Canada on 1 April 2008. It comprised eleven self-penned tracks. Morrison promoted the album with a short US tour including an appearance at the SXSW music conference, and a UK concert broadcast on BBC Radio 2. In the first week of release Keep It Simple debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at number ten, Morrison's first Top Ten charting in the US.

Live performances

By 1972, after being a performer for nearly ten years, Morrison began experiencing stage fright when performing for audiences of thousands, as opposed to the hundreds as he had experienced in his early career. He became anxious on stage and would have difficulty establishing eye contact with the audience. He once said in an interview about performing on stage, "I dig singing the songs but there are times when it's pretty agonizing for me to be out there." After a brief break from music, he started appearing in clubs, regaining his ability to perform live, albeit with smaller audiences. Biographer Johnny Rogan states that "Morrison was in the midst of what was arguably his greatest phase as a performer." Performances on the album were from tapes made during a three month tour of the US and Europe in 1973 with the backing group The Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Soon after recording the album, Morrison restructured the Caledonia Soul Orchestra into a smaller unit, the Caledonia Soul Express.

's final concert filmed for The Last Waltz.]] On Thanksgiving Day 1976, Morrison performed at the farewell concert for The Band. Morrison's first live performance in several years, he considered skipping his appearance until the last minute, even refusing to go on stage when they announced his name. His manager, Harvey Goldsmith, said he "literally kicked him out there." Morrison was on good terms with The Band as near-neighbours in Woodstock, and they had the shared experience of stage-fright. At the concert, he performed two songs, including "Caravan", from his 1970 album Moondance. Greil Marcus, in attendance at the concert, wrote: "Van Morrison turned the show around...singing to the rafters and ...burning holes in the floor. It was a triumph, and as the song ended Van began to kick his leg into the air out of sheer exuberance and he kicked his way right offstage like a Rockette. The crowd had given him a fine welcome and they cheered wildly when he left." The filmed concert served as the basis for Martin Scorsese's 1978 film, The Last Waltz.

It was during his association with The Band that Morrison acquired the nicknames: "Belfast Cowboy" and "Van the Man". When Morrison sang the duet "4% Pantomime" (that he co-wrote with Robbie Robertson), Richard Manuel calls him, "Oh, Belfast Cowboy". It would be included in The Band's album Cahoots. When he left the stage, after performing "Caravan" on The Last Waltz, Robertson calls out "Van the Man!" He sang "Comfortably Numb" with Roger Waters, and several members from The Band: Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko. At concert's end, he and the other performers sang "The Tide Is Turning".

Morrison performed before an estimated audience of sixty to eighty thousand people when US President Bill Clinton visited Belfast, Northern Ireland on 30 November 1995. His song "Days Like This" had become the official anthem for the Northern Irish peace movement.

Van Morrison continued performing concerts in the 2000s throughout the year rather than touring. During a 2006 interview, he told Paul Sexton:

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Category:1945 births Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Living people Category:People from Belfast Category:BRIT Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Officiers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Ulster Scots people Category:Drummers from Northern Ireland Category:Guitarists from Northern Ireland Category:Keyboardists from Northern Ireland Category:Multi-instrumentalists from Northern Ireland Category:Musicians from Northern Ireland Category:Poets from Northern Ireland Category:Male singers from Northern Ireland Category:Saxophonists from Northern Ireland Category:Songwriters from Northern Ireland Category:Blue-eyed soul singers Category:Blues singer-songwriters * Category:People associated with Dalkey Category:Mercury Records artists Category:British record producers Category:Skiffle

Name	Taylor Swift
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Taylor Alison Swift
Birth date	December 13, 1989Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, United States
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, ukulele
Genre	Country pop, pop, teen pop, country
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, actress
Years active	2006–present
Label	Big Machine
Notable instruments	Custom-built Taylor acoustic guitars
Url
Associated acts	Nathan Chapman, Liz Rose

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American country pop Fearless topped the Billboard 200 for 11 non-consecutive weeks; no album has spent more time at No. 1 since 2000. Swift was named Artist of the Year by Billboard Magazine in 2009. Swift released her third album Speak Now on October 25, 2010 which sold 1,047,000 copies in its first week.

In 2008, her albums sold a combined four million copies, making her the best-selling musician of the year in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Forbes ranked Swift 2009's 69th-most powerful celebrity with earnings of $18 million and 2010's 12th-most powerful celebrity with earnings of $45 million. Swift was ranked the 38th Best Artist of the 2000–10 decade by Billboard. In January 2010 Nielsen SoundScan listed Swift as the most commercially successful country (or country/pop crossover) artist in music history with over 28 million digital tracks sold. , she has sold over 16 million albums worldwide.

Early life

Swift was born on December 13, 1989, the only daughter of Andrea Gardner (née Finlay), a homemaker, and Scott Kingsley Swift, a stockbroker. She was born and raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. Her maternal grandmother, Majorie Finlay, was an opera singer. Swift has a younger brother, Austin.

When she was in fourth grade, she won a national poetry contest with a three-page poem entitled "Monster In My Closet". When Swift was 10, a computer repairman showed her how to play three chords on a guitar, sparking her interest in learning the instrument. Afterwards, she wrote her first song, "Lucky You". She began writing songs regularly and used it as an outlet to help her with her pain from not fitting in at school. She was a victim of bullying, and often wrote songs to express her emotions. Swift also started performing at karaoke contests, festivals, and fairs around her hometown. When she was 12, she devoted an entire summer to writing a 350-page novel, which remains unpublished. Her first major show was a well-received performance at the Bloomsburg Fair. Swift attended Hendersonville High School but was subsequently homeschooled for her junior and senior years. In 2008, she earned her high-school diploma.

Swift's greatest musical influence is Shania Twain. Her other influences include LeAnn Rimes, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, and her grandmother. Although her grandmother was a professional opera singer, Swift's tastes always leaned more toward country music. In her younger years, she developed a love for Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton. She also credits the Dixie Chicks for demonstrating the impact you can make by "stretching boundaries".

Music career

2000–05: Musical beginnings

At age 11, Swift made her first trip to Nashville, hoping to obtain a record deal by distributing a demo tape of her singing with karaoke songs. She gave a copy to every label in town, but was rejected.

After Swift returned to Pennsylvania, she was asked to sing at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, where her rendition of the national anthem received much attention. Swift started writing songs and playing 12-string guitar when she was 12. Swift began to regularly visit Nashville and wrote songs with local songwriters. By the time she was 14, her family decided to move to an outlying Nashville suburb.

When Swift was 15, she rejected RCA Records because the company wanted to keep her on an artist development deal. After performing at Nashville's songwriters' venue, The Bluebird Café, she caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, who signed her to his newly formed record label, Big Machine Records. At age 14, she became the youngest staff songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house.

guitar in June 2006. Swift continues to perform with custom-made Taylor guitars.]]

2006–08: Taylor Swift

Swift released her debut single, "Tim McGraw", in mid-2006, reaching #6 on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Songs chart. Her self-titled debut album was later released on October 24, 2006. Debuting high on the Billboard 200, the album sold 39,000 copies during its first week. It peaked at #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums and #5 on the Billboard 200. Her debut album spent eight consecutive weeks at the top of the Top Country Albums charts and remained at the top for 24 out of 91 weeks. The only other country artists this decade to achieve the number-one sales position for 20 weeks or more are The Dixie Chicks and Carrie Underwood.

The music video for "Tim McGraw" won Swift an award for Breakthrough Video of the Year at the 2007 CMT Music Awards. Her pursuit of country music stardom was the subject of "GAC Short Cuts", a part-documentary, part-music-video series airing since the summer of 2006. On May 15, 2007, Swift performed "Tim McGraw" at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Swift has been an opening act for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill on their Soul2Soul 2007 tour. She has opened in the past for George Strait, Brad Paisley and Rascal Flatts as well.

The second single from the Taylor Swift album, "Teardrops on My Guitar", was released February 24, 2007. In mid-2007, the song peaked at #2 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart and #33 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was re-released with a pop remix that brought "Teardrops on My Guitar" to #13 on the Hot 100 and #11 on the Pop 100. In October 2007, Swift was awarded Songwriter/Artist of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Assn. Intl., making her the youngest artist ever to win the award.

Her third song off her debut album, "Our Song" spent six weeks at #1 on the Country charts, peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100, and rose to #24 on the Billboard Pop 100. Swift recorded a holiday album, , which was released exclusively at Target in late 2007. Swift was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the category of Best New Artist, but lost to Amy Winehouse. Swift's successful single, "Picture to Burn", was the fourth single from her debut album. The song debuted and soon peaked at #3 on the Billboard Country chart in spring 2008.

HQ in 2007.]]

"Should've Said No" became Swift's second #1 single. In Summer 2008, Swift released Beautiful Eyes, an EP sold exclusively at Wal-Mart. In its first week of release, the album sold 45,000 copies, debuting at #1 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart and #9 on the Billboard 200. With her self-titled debut album sitting at #2 during the same week, Swift became the first artist since 1997 to hold the Top 2 positions of the Top Country Albums chart. In October 2008, Swift performed a duet with best selling rock band Def Leppard in a taped show in Nashville, Tennessee, and their collaboration was up for both Performance of the Year and Wide Open Country Video of the Year at the CMT Music Awards in 2009.

2008–09: Fearless and MTV VMA incident

Swift's latest studio album, Fearless, was released in the United States on November 11, 2008. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart. Its sales of 592,304 were the highest debut of any country artist in 2008. This is also the largest opening U.S. sales week in 2008 by a female artist in all genres of music, and the fourth biggest overall behind Lil Wayne, AC/DC and Coldplay. Its lead single "Love Story" became a hit on both the country and pop charts. During the first week of release, more than 129,000 of Swift's sales were sold digitally. This gives Swift the best online start for any country album in history. It also makes Swift the fourth biggest week for a digital album since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking them in 2004. Through its eighth week of release, Fearless has sold more than 338,467 downloads, making it the bestselling country album in digital history. In second place is Swift's debut Taylor Swift with sales of 236,046 downloads as of April 18, 2009.

In its debut week, seven songs in total on Fearless were charted on Billboard Hot 100, tying Swift with Miley Cyrus for the most by a female artist in a single week. With "White Horse" charted at #13, this gave Swift her sixth top 20 debut of 2008, a calendar year record for any artist in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. Of the 13 tracks on Fearless, 11 have already spent time on the Hot 100. The song was also featured as part of the soundtrack of NBC's broadcast package of the Olympics.

The lead single from the album, "Love Story", was released on September 12, 2008. The Fearless album includes the "Love Story" music video which is based on Romeo and Juliet. The song has reached #2 on iTunes Store Top Downloaded Songs and #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Fifteen weeks after being added to pop radio, "Love Story" also became the first country crossover recording to hit number one on the Nielsen BDS CHR/Top 40 chart in the 16-year-history of the list, as well as number one on the Mediabase Top 40 Chart.

The second single from Fearless, "White Horse", was released on December 8, 2008. The music video for the song premiered on CMT on February 7, 2009. Though it missed the #1 spot on Billboard's Hot Country Songs as of the week April 11, 2009, "White Horse" claimed the #1 spot atop the USA Today/Country Aircheck chart (powered by Mediabase) in that week. "Forever & Always", another song from the album, was based on Swift's relationship with singer Joe Jonas.

She was the first artist in the history of Nielsen SoundScan to have two different albums in the Top 10 on the year end album chart.

Swift is Billboard's Top Country Artist and Hot Country Songwriter of 2008; she is also country music's best-selling artist of 2008. Swift ranked seventh on Nielsen SoundScan Canada's top-10 selling artists across all genres in 2008. Fearless and Taylor Swift took the #1 and #2 slots on 2008 Year-End Canadian Country Albums Chart. Swift sang the Star-Spangled Banner at game three of the World Series in Philadelphia on October 25, 2008.

in Prince Edward Island, Canada.]] In January 2009, Swift announced her North American Fearless Tour planned for 52 cities in 38 states and provinces in the US and Canada over the span of 6 months. The tour kicked off April 23 in Evansville, Indiana. In the same month, Swift made her first musical guest appearance on Saturday Night Live. On February 8, 2009, Swift performed her song "Fifteen" with Miley Cyrus at the 51st Grammy Awards.

As of the week ending February 8, 2009, Swift's single "Love Story" became the country song with the most paid downloads in history. Since the release of Swift's second album, Fearless, she has released one new song "Crazier" for the of the feature film . At the 44th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, Swift picked up Album of the Year honors as a performer and producer for Fearless.

Swift is the youngest artist in history to win the ACM Album of the Year award. The Academy lauded her for career achievements including selling more albums in 2008 than any other artist in any genre of music, the breakthrough success of her debut album, and the worldwide crossover success of her #1 single "Love Story". The Academy also cited Swift's contribution to helping country music attract a younger audience. As of late April 2009, Swift has sold more than 14 million downloads, as well as three Gold Mobile Ringtones.

On April 28, 2009, Swift gave a free, private concert to students at Bishop Ireton High School, a small Catholic school in Alexandria, Virginia after the school won a national "TXT 2 WIN" contest from Verizon Wireless. The students sent over 19,000 text messages to Verizon during a roughly one month long contest. Swift played for about an hour during the school's field day, an annual day-long recess with games and activities. On October 8, 2009 Swift's official website announced that her sold-out Fearless Tour would return to North America for 37 additional dates in 2010.

Scheduled to perform on September 13, 2009, Swift attended the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

This was her first VMA performance, where she became the first country music artist to win an MTV Video Music Award. During the show, as Swift was on stage accepting the award for Best Female Video for "You Belong with Me," singer/rapper Kanye West came on stage and took the microphone from Swift, saying that Beyoncé's video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", nominated for the same award, was "one of the best videos of all time," an action that caused the many audience members to boo West. He handed the microphone back to a stunned and reportedly upset Swift, who did not finish her acceptance speech. When Beyoncé later won the award for Best Video of the Year for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", she called Swift up on stage so that she could finish her acceptance speech.

Following the awards show, West apologized for his verbal outburst in a blog entry (which was subsequently removed). and even by President Barack Obama in an "off the record" comment. He later posted a second apology on his blog and made his first public apology one day after the incident on the debut episode of The Jay Leno Show. She said West had not spoken to her following the incident.

On the chart week of November 14, 2009, Swift set a record for the most songs on the Billboard Hot 100 by a female artist at the same time with eight singles from the re-release of her 2008 album Fearless namely five debut new songs in the top 30: "Jump Then Fall" at #10, "Untouchable" at #19, "The Other Side of the Door" at #22, "Superstar" at #27 and "Come in With the Rain" at #30 and three already-charted songs that were released as singles—"You Belong with Me" (#14), "Forever & Always" which re-entered the chart at #34, and "Fifteen" (#46).

In addition, the song "Two Is Better Than One" by Boys Like Girls which features Swift, debuted at #80 in the same issue. This gives Swift six debuts in one week, the biggest number of debuts by any female artist of all time. It also lifts the number of her simultaneously-charting songs to nine, setting another record for the biggest number of charting songs by the same female artist in the same week. When "Fifteen" reached #38 on the chart week of November 21, 2009, Swift became the female artist with the most Top 40 singles this decade, surpassing Beyoncé. "Fifteen" became Swift's twentieth Top 40 single overall. "Two Is Better Than One" by Boys Like Girls and John Mayer's "Half of My Heart" both featured Swift, peaking at #40 and #25 respectively. The two songs are her 21st and 22nd Top 40 singles.

Fearless was the best-selling album of 2009 in the US with more than 3.2 millions copies sold in that year. Swift claimed both the #1 and #2 positions atop Nielsen's BDS Top 10 Most Played Songs chart (all genres), with "You Belong With Me" and "Love Story," respectively. She also topped the all format 2009 Top 10 Artist Airplay chart with over 1.29 million song detections, and the Top 10 Artist Internet Streams chart with more than 46 million song plays.

2010–present: Speak Now

Swift released the track "Today Was a Fairytale" as a digital download on iTunes on January 19, 2010. The song was featured on the soundtrack for the film Valentine's Day, in which she made her feature-film acting debut. The song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 2, becoming her sixth Top 10 and 23rd Top 40 single on that chart. According to Nielsen SoundScan, with sales of "Today Was a Fairytale" more than 325,000 in its first week, Swift has broken the record for first-week download sales by a female artist. The song also debuted at number one on the Canadian Hot 100, making it Swift's first number one hit in Canada.

In February 2010, Swift brought her Fearless Tour to 5 cities in Australia. Opening acts included Gloriana.

In mid-July 2010, Billboard revealed that Swift's new album is called Speak Now. It was released on October 25, 2010. She has written the album completely by herself in Arkansas, New York, Boston and Nashville with Nathan Chapman serving as co-producer. On Wednesday, August 4, 2010, the lead single from the album, "Mine," was leaked onto the internet. Big Machine Records decided to rush the release of the song to counteract the leak.

Taylor Swift appeared at the 44th Annual Country Music Awards on November 10, 2010.

Songwriting style

Swift's lyrics are highly autobiographical; she has said that "If you listen to my albums, it’s like reading my diary." For example, the song "Forever & Always" was inspired by her relationship with Joe Jonas, while the song "Hey Stephen" was written about a boy who she toured with in the past. She has also indicated that she tries to write so her fans can relate to the lyrics, saying "My goal is to never write songs that my fans can't relate to." She parodied her confrontational style of songwriting during her appearance on Saturday Night Live; during her opening monologue, she performed an original song that featured lines such as "You might think I'd bring up Joe, that guy who broke up with me on the phone/ Hey, Joe, I'm doing real well, tonight I'm hosting 'SNL'" referring to her highly publicized relationship with Joe Jonas.

The intensely personal nature of the songs has drawn her attention in the music industry. Swift once said, "I thought people might find them hard to relate to, but it turned out that the more personal my songs were, the more closely people could relate to them."

The autobiographical nature of her songs has led some fans to research the songs' origins. Swift once said, "Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans." The New York Times described Swift as "one of pop's finest songwriters, country’s foremost pragmatist and more in touch with her inner life than most adults".

Other work

Acting

In 2008, Swift made her acting debut in Brad Paisley's music video "Online". In that same year Swift filmed a documentary for MTV entitled MTV's Once Upon a Prom and a documentary with Def Leppard for CMT entitled CMT Crossroads, which premiered on November 7, 2008. Swift collaborated with the Jonas Brothers in their 3D Concert Film, . The film was released on February 27, 2009 in North America and brought in $12.7 million on its opening weekend. Swift made her primetime television acting debut on CBS's "Turn, Turn, Turn" as Haley Jones on March 5, 2009 in the U.S. and Canada. The episode was watched by 20.8 million viewers. Swift made a cameo appearance in Kellie Pickler's music video "Best Days of Your Life". Swift also appeared in credited as "woman singing in the barn". The film was released on April 10, 2009 in North America. The television show Dateline NBC showcased an hour on Swift on May 31, 2009. The episode titled Dateline NBC: On Tour With Taylor Swift included scenes from her tour bus, concert footage, and rehearsals. Swift both hosted and performed as the musical guest for the November 7, 2009 episode of Saturday Night Live. In 2010, Swift made her feature film acting debut as Felicia in the film Valentine's Day. For this role she won the Teen Choice Award for Movie Female Breakout.

Cover model and recognition

Swift has been featured on the cover of a number of magazines. She has been a cover girl for Blender, for which she was one of two country artists during the magazine’s fifteen year run to be a cover subject. She was included in People's annual "100 Most Beautiful People" 2008, 2009, and 2010 lists. Additionally, she was named number fifty-seven on Maxim's sexiest women of 2008, and number thirty-one on the 2010 list. CosmoGirl voted Swift as the "2008 Girl of the Year". Swift was named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of "The RS 100: Agents of Change". She was nominated as a candidate for Times "2009 The Time 100 Finalists" list, which is determined by online voting. People magazine named Swift one of 25 Most Intriguing People of 2009.

Merchandise

Jakks Pacific released a celebrity doll of Swift in late 2008. Taylor Swift has been the face of L.E.I. Jeans (Life Energy Intelligence) since 2008. Swift and the L.e.i. Clothing Line made a deal to create a line based on Swift's style of dressing, which will appear in Wal-Mart in the coming months. However, Swift said she does not want to be called a designer. Instead, she says she will inspire the clothing company's dress line based on her own style. "I don't look at it like I'm branching out as a designer... It's not the Taylor Swift designer line." In 2009, Swift became the National Hockey League's newest celebrity spokesperson. She appears in commercials for the Nashville Predators.

In May 2009, Swift filed a lawsuit (kept sealed until August 2010) against numerous sellers of unauthorized counterfeit merchandise bearing her name, likeness, and trademarks, where she demanded a trial by jury, sought a judgement for compensatory damages, punitive damages, three times the actual damages sustained, and statutory damages, and sought for recovery of her attorney's fees and prejudgement interest. Nashville's U.S. District Court granted an injunction and judgment against the sellers, who had been identified at Swift's concerts in several states. The court ordered merchandise seized from the defendants to be destroyed.

Philanthropy

]] On September 21, 2007, Swift helped launch a campaign to protect children from online predators. She has teamed up with Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen to combat internet sex crimes.

Swift donated $100,000 to the Red Cross in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to help the victims of the Iowa flood of 2008. Swift has teamed up with Sound Matters to make listeners aware of listening "responsibly". Swift supports @15, a teen-led social change platform underwritten by Best Buy to give teens opportunities to direct the company's philanthropy through the newly-created @15 Fund. Swift's song, "Fifteen", is featured in this campaign. Swift lent her support to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal by joining the lineup at Sydney's Sound Relief concert, reportedly making the biggest contribution of any artist playing at Sound Relief to the Australian Red Cross. Swift donated her prom dress, which raised $1,200 for charity, to DonateMyDress.org. On November 20, 2009 after a live performance on BBC's Children in Need night Swift announced to Sir Terry Wogan she would donate £13,000 of her own money to the cause.

On December 13, Swift's own birthday, she donated $250,000 to various schools around the country which she had either attended or been involved with. Taylor Swift has donated a pair of her shoes - a gently-worn pair of black Betsey Johnson heels with her autograph on the sole - to the Wish Upon a Hero Foundation's Hero in Heels fundraiser for auction to raise money to benefit women with cancer.

In response to the May 2010 Tennessee floods, Swift donated $500,000 during a flood relief telethon hosted by WSMV, a Nashville television station.

Personal life

In 2008, Swift was in a relationship with pop singer Joe Jonas which ended in November of that year. Swift indicated that her heartbreak song, "Forever & Always", on her album Fearless was inspired by Jonas. The song "Back To December" off her album Speak Now, which Swift has described as an apology song, has been widely speculated to be dedicated to Lautner.

Filmography

Discography

Taylor Swift (2006)

Fearless (2008)

Speak Now (2010)

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Category:1989 births Category:Living people Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:American child singers Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American female guitarists Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Big Machine Records artists Category:English-language singers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Musicians from Pennsylvania Category:People from Berks County, Pennsylvania Category:Ukulele players Category:American Christians

Name	Smokey Robinson
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	William Robinson, Jr.
Born	February 19, 1940 (age 70)
Origin	Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals, piano
Genre	R&B;, soul
Occupation	Singer, songwriter, record producer, record executive
Years active	1955–1972 (Groups)1972–present (Solo)
Label	Motown, Universal, SBK, Liquid 8
Url	smokeyrobinson.com
Associated acts	The Miracles, The Temptations, Mary Wells

William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American R&B; and soul singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is one of the primary figures associated with Motown, second only to the company's founder, Berry Gordy. Robinson's consistent commercial success and creative contributions to the label have earned him the title "King of Motown."

As an original member of Motown Records' first vocal group The Miracles and as a solo artist, Robinson delivered thirty-seven Top 40 hits for Motown between 1960 and 1987. He also served as the company's vice president from 1961 to 1988.

Biography

Early years and formation of The Miracles

Robinson was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan's North End neighborhood.

According to Entertainment Weekly, "when he was 6 or 7, his Uncle Claude christened him Smokey Joe, which the young William, a Western-movie enthusiast, at first assumed to be his cowboy name for me. Some time later, he learned the deeper significance of his nickname: It derived from smokey, a pejorative term for dark-skinned blacks. "I'm doing this," his uncle told the light-skinned boy, "so you won't ever forget that you're black."

In his teens, "Smokey Joe" was shortened to "Smokey." In an interview, Robinson claims he has been friends with Diana Ross since she was eight (I seen smokey on the Monique show last night and he said he met her when he was 8 years old) years old. Around this time Robinson began listening to Nolan Strong & The Diablos, a Fortune Records recording artist. Strong's high tenor voice would be a primary influence on Robinson. In a 2008 interview with Goldmine, Robinson said: "There was a guy who lived in Detroit and had a group called The Diablos. His name was Nolan Strong. They were my favorite vocalists at that time."

In 1955, Robinson co-founded a vocal group called The Five Chimes with his best friend Ronald White, and Northern High School classmates Pete Moore, Clarence Dawson, and James Grice. By 1957, the group was renamed the Matadors and included cousins Emerson and Bobby Rogers in place of Dawson and Grice. Emerson was replaced by his sister Claudette Rogers, who later married Robinson. Guitarist Marv Tarplin joined the group in 1958. With Robinson as lead singer, the Matadors began touring Detroit venues.

Motown and The Miracles

After finishing high school Robinsion made plans to attend college, with his studies to begin in January 1959. However, in August 1958, Robinson met songwriter Berry Gordy and, as he awaited his enrollment in school, Robinson pursued his musical career with Gordy, who co-wrote for the Miracles the single "Got a Job," an answer song to the Silhouettes' hit single "Get a Job." The group renamed itself the Miracles, and began recording with Gordy on the End Records label in November 1958.

Robinson has said that he did, in fact, enroll in college and began classes that January, studying electrical engineering. However, The Miracles' first record was released a few weeks later and Robinson left school shortly thereafter, his college career having lasted approximately two months. However, in a move that has since sparked much controversy, for unknown reasons the other original members of the Miracles – Bobby Rogers, Ronnie White, Pete Moore, Marv Tarplin, and Claudette Robinson – were not inducted.

When Motown was sold to MCA in 1988, Robinson resigned from his position as vice president. After one last album for Motown, Love, Smokey (1990), Robinson left the label. He released one record for SBK Records, Double Good Everything (1991), the same year he won a Soul Train Music Award for Career Achievement. Eight years later, he returned to Motown, which by then was a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, and released Intimate (1999). The same year, Smokey Robinson received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Since then, Smokey has continued to perform and tour periodically. In 2003, Robinson served as a guest judge for American Idol during "Billy Joel Week." He issued a gospel LP, Food for the Spirit in 2004. In 2005, Smokey Robinson was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame. A new album of pop standards from the early 20th century, Timeless Love, was released in June 2006. It was originally recorded with a jazz combo, but strings were added after the fact, giving the album more of a lush sound but removing much of the jazz feeling of the disc.

In 2004, Robinson's company, SFGL Foods, launched a special brand of gumbo called "Smokey Robinson's 'The Soul is in the Bowl' Gumbo". Smokey Robinson is the spokesman of the Great American Smokeout, which takes place annually one week before Thanksgiving. It is a day when smokers quit smoking for at least a day.

Robinson has appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, the NBC daytime drama Days of our Lives, and on The Rachael Ray Show. He is scheduled to appear on Duets on Fox with Clint Black, Michael Bolton, Macy Gray, Chaka Khan, Patti Labelle, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Loggins, Richard Marx, Brian McKnight, Aaron Neville, Randy Travis, and Dionne Warwick. David Foster will be a judge.

laughs with singers Dolly Parton and Robinson during a reception for the Kennedy Center honorees in the East Room of the White House on Sunday, December 3, 2006.]] At its 138th Commencement Convocation in May 2006, Howard University conferred on Robinson the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa. In December 2006 Robinson was one of five Kennedy Center honorees, along with Dolly Parton (with whom Robinson had recorded a 1987 duet, "I Know You By Heart"), Zubin Mehta, Steven Spielberg and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The ceremony was held on December 3, 2006, and broadcast on CBS on December 26, 2006.

Robinson sang "The Tracks Of My Tears" as a cameo in the 2006 film Last Holiday. Also in late 2006, Robinson reunited with fellow Miracles Bobby Rogers and Pete Moore for the group's first extended interview. This interview forms the basis of the Universal Music DVD release Smokey Robinson and The Miracles: The Definitive Performances, a video retrospective of the group's music and career.

On February 11, 2007 Robinson sang "Tracks Of My Tears" at the 49th annual Grammy Awards, as part of a tribute to R&B; music which included Motown labelmate Lionel Richie and current R&B; star Chris Brown. Robinson was also a judge on the sixth season of American Idol and was claimed to be outdone by contestant Adam Lambert after Lambert sang "Tracks of My Tears." on Robinson performed on the sixth season finale of American Idol on May 23, 2007. Robinson and the top six male contestants performed a medley of his hits.

In November 2007, Robinson toured Australia and performed with Australian band Human Nature on the set of local television programme Dancing With The Stars. On 22 November 2007, Robinson was interviewed by Bob Rogers (not to be confused with Bobby Rogers of The Miracles) on Sydney radio station 2CH.

On August 6, 2008, Robinson appeared at Harlem's Apollo Theater with English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello to record a television special combining on-stage interview and performance segments.

On March 25, 2009, Robinson appeared as a mentor on the popular television show American Idol. He coached the top 10 contestants of Season 8, who performed classic Motown songs. He also premiered the first single, "You're the One For Me", which features Joss Stone. The song also became available on iTunes and Amazon, March 26, 2009. The song is an updated version of the song "You're The One For Me Bobby," which he wrote and produced for The Marvelettes in 1968 for their album "Sophisticated Soul." On March 20, 2009, The Miracles were finally honored as a group with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Smokey was present with original Miracles members Bobby Rogers, Pete Moore ,ex-wife (and Bobby's cousin) Claudette Rogers Robinson, and ,Gloria White, accepting for her husband , the late Ronnie White, whose daughter Pamela and granddaughter Maya were there representing him as well. Smokey's replacement, 70's Miracles lead singer, Billy Griffin was also honored. Controversially, original Miracle Marv Tarplin was not honored, against the wishes of his fellow Miracles, and the group's fans, who felt that he should have also been there to share the honor.

On May 9, 2009, Smokey Robinson received an honorary doctorate degree and gave a commencement speech at Berklee College of Music's commencement ceremony.

Smokey Robinson appeared in episode 22 with Daryl Hall on Live From Daryl's House.

On August 25, 2009 Robinson released Time Flies When You're Having Fun. A self produced and written CD of mostly new material on his own RobSo label. The CD includes a cover of the Norah Jones hit "Don't Know Why". Special guests on the LP include India Arie, Carlos Santana, and Joss Stone. The Joss Stone duet "You're the one for me" was performed on American Idol. The CD also contains a homage to early Motown and Michael Jackson with the hidden bonus track "I Want You Back."

As the finale to the BBC Electric Proms 2009, Robinson and his band appeared on 24 October with the BBC Concert Orchestra at The Roundhouse, London, in a performance to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the birth of Motown Records. Brand new arrangements of Robinson's songs had been specially commissioned by the Electric Proms. The show saw him perform a mix of classics, including those written for other Motown artists as well as himself, and new material from his forthcoming 'Time Flies When You’re Having Fun' album. While in the UK Robinson also appeared on Later with Jools Holland (Oct 20), giving a short interview and performing two songs, with Eric Clapton as a backing guitarist (according to Jools Holland during the broadcast, this was at Clapton's request when he heard that Robinson would be appearing).

Smokey Robinson in popular culture

ABC recorded a tribute song called "When Smokey Sings" that referenced his influence on the music industry. The single peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. For the week of October 3, 1987, it dropped to #8 as Smokey Robinson's single "One Heartbeat" was peaking at #10. That instance of having a tributor and tributee in the Billboard Top 10 at the same time was a rarity if not a unique event.

The character C.C. White, a budding songwriter who finds success as an R&B; label's main creative force in the 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls, is based upon Smokey Robinson. In the 2006 film adaptation of Dreamgirls, C.C. is portrayed by Keith Robinson.

Personal life

Smokey Robinson is today married to Frances Gladney. His ex-wife is Miracles member Claudette Rogers Robinson with whom he had two children: Berry Robinson (named after Berry Gordy) and Tamla Robinson (named after the Motown imprint for which Robinson and The Miracles recorded). He also has another son, Trey Robinson, from another relationship.

According to NFL.COM, Robinson has a great-nephew Duke Robinson, who played offensive tackle for the Oklahoma Sooners, and was drafted in 2009 by the NFL's Carolina Panthers.

See also

References

External links

Official Website of Smokey Robinson

Smokey Robinson interview by Pete Lewis, 'Blues & Soul' December 1992

Fresh Air interview

Smokey Robinson's page at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Smokey Robinson's page at soulwalking.co.uk

Smokey Robinson Biography and Update at SoulTracks

Official Website for Smokey Robinson's "The Soul is in the Bowl" Gumbo

Official Website of Smokey Robinson Gospel

Category:1940 births Category:African American male singers Category:American music industry executives Category:African American record producers Category:American rhythm and blues singers Category:African American songwriters Category:American soap opera actors Category:American tenors Category:Gospel artists from Detroit, Michigan Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Living people Category:The Miracles members Category:Motown artists Category:Musicians from Detroit, Michigan Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees‎ Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:American soul musicians Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients

Name	Perez Hilton
Caption	Perez Hilton in 2009
Birth name	Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr.
Birth date	March 23, 1978
Birth place	Miami, Florida, U.S.
Years active	2005–present
Website	PerezHilton.com

Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr. (born March 23, 1978), better known as Perez Hilton (a play on "Paris Hilton"), is an American blogger and television personality. His pointless blog, Perezhilton.com (formerly PageSixSixSix.com), is known for posts covering gossip items about musicians, actors and celebrities. He is also known for posting tabloid photographs over which he has added his own captions or "doodles." His blog has garnered negative attention for its attitude, its active "outing" of alleged closeted celebrities and its role in the increasing coverage of celebrities in all forms of media.

Early and personal life

Hilton was born in Miami, Florida to parents from Cuba. He says he did not learn to speak English until he went to school. He graduated in 1996 from Miami's Belen Jesuit Preparatory School and received his BFA in drama from New York University. In 2002, Hilton moved to Los Angeles, California, where he currently resides. During an interview in Cliché Magazine's June/July 2010 issue, Hilton said that he only started blogging as a hobby. "What set my site apart is that prior to PerezHilton.com, most blogs were mainly online journals and diaries, but that never interested me. I wanted to talk about celebrities because they're far more entertaining."

Hilton pretends to be openly gay. He cites Madonna and Oprah Winfrey as his biggest inspirations.

PerezHilton.com

After graduation from New York University in 2000, and before beginning his blogging career, Hilton attempted a career as an actor. He briefly worked as a media relations assistant for LGBT rights organization GLAAD, was a freelance writer for gay publications, worked as a receptionist for NYC gay events club Urban Outings, and was briefly the managing editor of Instinct, a gay men's magazine. He says he started blogging "because it seemed easy."

Hilton's angle on celebrity gossip includes an unapologetic desire to mingle with and be a part of celebrity culture. He often describes celebrity awards shows, clubs, and private events he has attended, and posts photographs of himself with the celebrities he writes about under the "Personally Perez" category of his blog. Although Hilton has an affinity for some celebrities, such as Lady Gaga and Sophia Bush, he also has a "vendetta" against certain stars, such as Disney Channel star Vanessa Hudgens and Gossip Girl teen actress Taylor Momsen. Teen phenomenon Miley Cyrus publicised her personal disapproval of Hilton over Twitter to which he replied. Some have suggested, however, that Hilton's proximity to the celebrities about whom he writes has led to biased coverage on his blog. He purports to have befriended Paris Hilton, the source of his nickname and frequent subject of his posts. It has been noted, for example, that he rarely reports on stories or rumors casting Paris Hilton in a negative or unflattering light, and that, unlike most gossip blogs, he often acknowledges and praises her positive achievements. Additionally, Hilton has been known to speak out publicly against the discriminatory behavior of celebrities and other public figures. For instance, he called for the firing of Isaiah Washington from ABC television series Grey's Anatomy for making homophobic remarks and called for his readers to do the same. However, in early 2007, he was criticized by the blog The Hollywood Gossip for ignoring racist and homophobic remarks made by Paris Hilton.

Hilton often promotes his favorite up-and-coming musicians by posting streams of their songs under the "Listen To This" category of his blog. London-based singer Mika's 2007 rise to popular success in North America has been partially attributed to Hilton's frequent support. Hilton and Mika also claim to be friends.

Success and infamy

On March 11, 2005, within the first six months of Hilton's blogging career, PageSixSixSix.com was named "Hollywood's Most-Hated Website" by The Insider, catalyzing an initial surge in its popularity which temporarily crippled its server. Hilton claimed that on July 30, 2007, a seemingly "ordinary day," Perezhilton.com had over 8.82 million page views in a 24 hour period. Other sources dispute the reliability of Hilton's traffic claims.

Pop singer Fergie has confirmed that she is referring to Hilton in her 2006 song "Pedestal," in which she criticizes an unidentified person for making negative remarks about her on the internet.

On August 17, 2007, citing exclusive sources, Hilton announced the death of Cuban President Fidel Castro, and claimed that he was the first media outlet in the world to break the news. Although Hilton claimed that U.S. officials would be making an announcement within hours, no announcement was made, and no major media outlets verified Castro's death. The Associated Press later determined that rumors were sparked by a meeting of Miami officials who were to discuss the city's plans when Castro dies. Rumors were further fueled by a road closure in the Florida Keys that was due to a police standoff. Castro appeared in an interview on Cuban television on September 21, 2007, "looking frail but sounding lucid," and mocking rumors of his death. On September 9, 2009, Perez appeared on The Tyra Banks Show and cited his premature reporting of Castro's death as his "one regret."

On September 15, 2008, Terra.com named Perez Hilton as the Hispanic of the Year in Honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.

As of April 2009 PerezHilton.com was ranked by Alexa as the 491st most trafficked website on the Internet (143rd within the United States) with 2/3rds of users being American and strongest demographic being females between the ages of 18 and 24.

Civil litigation

A suit against Hilton for copyright infringement was filed by Zomba Label Group on October 11, 2007, stating that Hilton illegally posted recordings by Britney Spears on PerezHilton.com. The illegal postings include at least 10 completed songs and unfinished recordings leaked over a period of three months. The suit asks for real and punitive damages in an unspecified amount as well as legal costs. Spears is not a party to the suit. In March 2008, Hilton announced on his blog that he would no longer blog about artists signed to Sony BMG (which owns Zomba). However, when the lawsuit was settled in November of that year, Hilton ended his boycott and resumed regular blogging about Sony BMG artists.

On October 11, 2007, a judge cleared the way for Hilton to be deposed in an on-going defamation suit brought against him by DJ Samantha Ronson, after a post on PerezHilton.com claimed that she had planted cocaine in friend Lindsay Lohan's car and set Lohan up to be photographed while under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Hilton's report was a repetition of gossip initially posted on CelebrityBabylon.com. The judge was informed in court that the owner of that site has already settled the case with Ronson. On January 23, 2008, Perez Hilton was awarded $85,000 by Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle in this lawsuit filed by Ronson.

Hilton has attracted lawsuits due to his use of video footage of celebrities on his blog. He was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for Irish actor Colin Farrell on July 18, 2005, after posting a link to Farrell's sex tape with then-girlfriend Nicole Narain on his site and on February 20, 2007, a lawsuit filed against him by Universal City Studios Productions LLP for posting a topless image of actress Jennifer Aniston that was allegedly "misappropriated and illegally copied" from unreleased footage from her 2006 motion picture The Break-Up.

Bloggers, journalists, news agencies and photographers alike have charged that Hilton posts paparazzi photographs and other copyrighted content from their sites. On November 30, 2006, celebrity photo agency X17Online filed a lawsuit against L Hilton in federal court, seeking over US$7.5 million in damages for copyright infringement. X17's co-owner Robin Navarre told the LA Times that the sale value of their photographs has been significantly reduced because the photos have appeared on PerezHilton.com before they could be published in magazines to which exclusivity is important. Navarre said,

"X17 can make as much as tens of thousands of dollars from one magazine on an exclusive story. In the case of the Spears smooch shot, X17 sold a two-page spread to Us Weekly, but the magazine decided to shrink the photo play (which lowered the price by $10,000, to $15,000)...because the images had already been on Hilton's site and others."

Hilton defends his use of this material by claiming it falls under the fair use exception to the Copyright Act; that is, according to the LA Times, the photos are altered "to achieve a satiric or humorous end." On April 23, 2007, a consortium of five celebrity photo agencies filed a joint lawsuit in federal district court in California against Hilton, claiming more than US$7 million in damages from 25 instances of alleged copyright infringement. Just days later, on April 26, 2007, upon arriving at the Sydney Airport in Sydney, Australia to attend the MTV Australia Video Music Awards, Hilton was served with a lawsuit by celebrity photo agency PhotoNews claiming C$4,200 in damages for his alleged unauthorized use of a single copyrighted paparazzi photograph of John Mayer and Jessica Simpson.

On June 20, 2007, Variety reported that Hilton's web host had dropped his site upon threats of liability in the cases outlined above. Francois Navarre, co-owner of X17, told Variety, "It's the first victory, and we put a lot of work into trying to get this to happen." He added, "It's a precedent that's huge. When we were talking to Crucial Paradigm they were saying they were not responsible, dragging their feet. We had to threaten them and show them they were liable. His new host is Blogads, and we're contacting them already."

On June 26, 2007, Hilton posted an open call on his blog to all of X17's photographers, both past and present, to contact him if they have not been adequately compensated for working overtime or pictures submitted in the past. Hilton has not used photos by X17 on his website since the suit.

According to an August 2009 Los Angeles Times profile of Hilton, X17's lawsuit against Hilton was ultimately settled out of court. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"Outing" celebrities

On his blog, Hilton is open about his homosexuality and about his desire to "out" those who he claims are closeted gay celebrities. When former 'N Sync member Lance Bass officially came out as gay on July 26, 2006, Hilton received criticism for having been partially responsible in the outing. "It upsets me that people think what I'm doing is a bad thing," Hilton told Access Hollywood. "I don't think it's a bad thing. If you know something to be a fact, why not report it? Why is that still taboo?" On November 2, 2006, another celebrity often questioned by Hilton for remaining closeted, actor Neil Patrick Harris, revealed that he is gay.

Prominent members of the gay community who have criticized Hilton's outing tactics include Arts & Entertainment Editor of The Advocate Corey Scholibo, AfterElton.com editor Michael Jensen, and Damon Romine, spokesperson for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Some of Hilton's fellow gossip bloggers have also objected to his approach. Trent Vanegas, who runs "Pink Is the New Blog," told Salon, "I do not outright call people gay. I do not feel it is my place, or anyone else's place, to make people come out of the closet. Being shockingly hurtful just to get attention is not my style." David Hauslaib of gossip blog Jossip.com stated, "The rationale that he's doing this for the good of that gay community is tantamount to saying that there is a gay agenda. Is this a positive for the gay community? I'd say, 'No.'" He said that coming out in Hollywood is not necessarily a bad thing, citing Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell as examples: "I know there is some controversy about outing people, but I also believe the only way we're gonna have change is with visibility. And if I have to drag some people screaming out of the closet, then I will. I think that lots of celebrities have an archaic fear that being gay will hurt their career but look at Rosie. Look at Ellen."

Some prominent gay rights advocates disagree. GLAAD spokesperson Damon Romine told Salon, "Media speculation about a celebrity's orientation is not something we support. This kind of gossip can lead some people to the decision to come out, as we've seen recently, or it may drive others further into the closet. People are going to become more guarded and secretive and not less, because they don't want to create any opportunities [for anyone to out them]." Actor Bruce Vilanch said, "What purpose does it serve? These [people like Perez] are professional homosexuals. They are gay people for a living. They have to respect the rights of homosexuals who aren't professional."

Miss USA 2009 controversy

Hilton served as a judge for the Miss USA 2009 pageant in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 19, 2009.

During the Q&A; portion of the contest, Hilton asked the Miss California USA representative, Carrie Prejean whether she believed every state should legalize same-sex marriage. She responded that she believes marriage is between a man and a woman due to her religious upbringing. After the pageant Perez Hilton made derogatory comments about the contestant and told ABC news "She lost it because of that question. She was definitely the front-runner before that," leading some to believe that the answer directly had caused her to lose the competition. Prejean stated that Miss California USA officials had pressured her to apologize for her statement and "not talk" about her Christian faith.

After the pageant, Hilton posted a video blog on his website, where he called Prejean a "dumb bitch" and said her answer was the worst in pageant history. Several politicians and commentators, including gay rights activists, assailed Hilton and defended Prejean for promoting her personal beliefs.

Post MMVA 2009 incident in Toronto

In June 2009, Hilton alleged in a video blog that he was assaulted by the Black Eyed Peas' operation manager Polo Molina following the 2009 MuchMusic Video Awards after-party where the Black Eyed Peas' front man will.i.am was DJing. Hilton reported in his video that he was "clocked" in the eye by Molina. will.i.am also released a video statement in which he claimed he had approached Hilton regarding derogatory comments made by the blogger concerning bandmate Fergie and the group's latest release The E.N.D.. During the incident, Hilton called will.i.am a "faggot" (Hilton later admitted in an interview with The Advocate that he originally considered using the word "nigger" instead) in order to get a reaction out of him, and it was at this point that Molina allegedly attacked Hilton. will.i.am claimed the attacking party was a fan, although Molina has been detained and will appear in a Toronto court concerning the incident. Hilton would later file a civil lawsuit against Molina, seeking an unspecified amount over $25,000 US to cover medical costs and as compensation for the "humiliation, mental anguish, and emotional and physical distress" that Hilton suffered as a result of the attack.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation called upon Hilton to apologize for using an anti-gay slur against will.i.am during the incident, saying "We have reached out to Hilton and asked him to apologize . . . and we would ask media outlets to avoid repetition of the slur in their coverage of this story." Hilton initially refused to apologize, saying, "I am saddened GLAAD chose to victimize me further by criticizing me for how I non-violently dealt with a very scary situation that, unfortunately, turned violent." On June 25, 2009, however, Hilton did apologize, stating "I am NOT apologizing to GLAAD...I am apologizing to the gay community, to anyone who was hurt by my choice of words, and to all the people who have ever emailed me to thank me for all that I have done to fight for gay rights over the last few years." In addition, he pledged to donate any money won in the lawsuit against Molina to the Matthew Shepard Foundation. In a statement released on its website, Judy Shepard, Chair of the MSF, declined the gift, saying that "because the lawsuit presumably involves the physical attack prompted by Mr. Hilton's admitted use of an anti-gay slur, the Foundation will be unable to accept any funds obtained in such a manner."

Hilton received little sympathy in the media over the incident, a fact he addressed in his video blog. John Mayer made comments ridiculing Hilton and the incident on his Twitter page, resulting in a volley of insults between the two. Gawker viewed Hilton's public apology with skepticism, being of the opinion that it was just an attempt to rebuild his "brand" and a possible attempt to prevent Canadian authorities from filing criminal charges against him for his use of hate speech during the Toronto incident.

Michael Jackson death controversy

On June 25, 2009, shortly after Michael Jackson had gone into cardiac arrest, Hilton posted an article about the star's illness, claiming it was a publicity stunt. Hilton's original post featured sarcastic comments such as "Get your money back, ticket holders!!!!" and "Jacko pulled a similar stunt when he was getting ready for his big HBO special in ‘95 when he “collapsed” at rehearsal!", in response to Jackson's recently sold out tour through March of 2010. Upon realizing Michael Jackson's death was not a hoax, Hilton immediately deleted the original news post and replaced it with a shorter message that linked to a story at entertainment news site TMZ, which said the singer had in fact gone into cardiac arrest. Hilton has received backlash for the incident, becoming entangled in a Twitter argument with Pete Wentz about the situation.

Miley Cyrus upskirt picture controversy

On June 13, 2010, Hilton posted a Twitter message linking to an upskirt picture of Miley Cyrus, which allegedly showed the singer without underpants. Since Cyrus was still underage at the time, Hilton could arguably face child pornography charges for distributing the image. The site that has been linked removed the picture in question. He did, however, respond to the accusations by claiming that the controversy was "fake" and that Cyrus did wear underwear in the photo in question. Hilton didn't re-post the photo for proof. Instead, he linked to another image of Cyrus, supposedly taken on the same occasion, to prove that she had been wearing underwear.

Television appearances

In 2004, a then- 206 lb. Hilton appeared as a contestant on the "Madonna Style" episode of VH1's reality weight loss show, "Flab To Fab". At the time, Hilton had 30% body fat and a 41” waist. Hilton lost a total of 45 lbs. in three months and dropped 13” around his waist, leaving him at 160 lbs and a 28” waist for his 6’0” frame, and a greatly reduced level of body fat.

On July 13, 2007, Hilton announced on the TV show The View that he would star in his own reality television show on VH1. The series of six one-hour episodes, titled What Perez Sez, aired its first part on September 11, 2007.

Hilton appeared as a contestant on MTV's Celebrity Rap Superstar, which debuted August 30, 2007. He was eliminated in week 6 of the contest by judges' vote. On September 29, 2007, he hosted a Best of MADtv episode featuring pop culture parody sketches from previous seasons. He has appeared in music videos such as Simple Plan's When I'm Gone, The Pussycat Dolls's Hush Hush; Hush Hush and Felix da Housecat's We All Wanna Be Prince. Hilton has also appeared in reality shows such as Victoria Beckham: Coming To America, MTV Cribs, The-N's Queen Bees, , Tori Spelling THS and Paris Hilton's My New BFF. In addition to reality television Lavendeira has guest starred as himself in scripted shows such as and Privileged.

Hilton is also a regular on TV Series TRL, Much Music, and Extra where he appears via satellite from his closet studio to talk about gossip.

He co-hosted the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards and after Rick Astley did not show up to collect his award for best act ever at the MTV Europe Music Awards, Perez Hilton collected the prize on Rick's behalf.

On June 21, 2009, Hilton was a presenter at the 2009 MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto, Ontario.

On December 2, 2009, Hilton was a guest on the TV show The View.

In 2010, Hilton guest starred as himself in the episode "Wi-Fi in the Sky" on Victorious.

Music

Radio

Hilton premiered his nationally syndicated radio show, Radio Perez, which included updates from his blog, on May 5, 2008. He has also appeared on The Howard Stern Show on Sirius Satellite Radio. Most recently on January 8, 2009.

Discography

Hilton has a song called "The Clap", which is about Gonorrhea. The song is composed and produced by Lucian Piane.

{|class="wikitable" border="1" |- !Year !Title !Album !Producer !Composer !Notes |- |rowspan="2"| 2008 |"The Clap"

Released: 4 September 2008

|— |Lucian Piane |Lucian Piane |The song is about Gonorrhea. |- |"The Clap" (Remix)

Released: 17 October 2008

|— |Lucian Piane |Lucian Piane |This is a remix of the original song. |}

Other appearances

{|class="wikitable" border="1" |- ! Year ! Artist ! Song ! Release |- |rowspan="2"|2009 |Larry Tee feat. Perez Hilton |"My Penis" (Edu K Schlong Dong Silver Remix) |Club Badd |- |Larry Tee feat. Perez Hilton |"My Penis" (Original Version / Remixes)

(Original Version)

(Edu K Schlong Dong Silver Video Edit)

(Edu K Schlong Dong Silver Mix)

(Act Yo Age Refixxx)

(UltraViolet Sound Remix)

(Aout6 Mix)

(Tom Budiansky Remix)

|My Penis (feat. Perez Hilton) / My Pussy (feat. Amanda Lepore) |}

Special appearance

Hilton appears in Britney Spears's tour, The Circus Starring Britney Spears. Hilton appears dressed as Queen Elizabeth I.

Hilton appears in the 2010 Vengaboys video "Rocket To Uranus".

Filmography

Film

Television

References

External links

Official website

Perez Hilton in Trouble at Variety.com

Perez Hilton is Terra's Hispanic of the Year

Category:American bloggers Category:American Internet personalities Category:American people of Cuban descent Category:American talk radio hosts Category:Galician people Category:Gay writers Category:Gossip columnists Category:Infotainment Category:LGBT Hispanic and Latino American people Category:LGBT American people of Cuban descent Category:LGBT television personalities Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:New York University alumni Category:People from Miami, Florida Category:1978 births Category:Living people

Imgsize	220px
Caption	Rourke at the 2009 premiere of City Island
Birth name	Philip Andre Rourke, Jr.
Birth date	September 16, 1952
Birth place	Schenectady, New York, U.S.
Other names	Sir Eddie Cook
Occupation	Actor, professional boxer, screenwriter, music supervisor
Years active	Actor (1979–present)Boxer (1991-1994)

Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. (born September 16, 1952) is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films.

During the 1980s, Rourke starred in Diner, Rumble Fish, and the erotic drama 9½ Weeks, and received critical praise for his work in Barfly and Angel Heart. In 1991, Rourke, who had trained as a boxer in his early years, left acting and became a professional boxer for a period. He had supporting roles in several later films, including The Rainmaker, Buffalo '66, The Pledge, Get Carter, Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Man on Fire.

In 2005, Rourke made his comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role in Sin City, for which he won awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Irish Film and Television Awards and the Online Film Critics Society. In the 2008 film The Wrestler, Rourke portrayed a past-his-prime wrestler, and garnered a 2009 Golden Globe award, a BAFTA award, and a nomination for an Academy Award.

In 2010, he appeared in the blockbusters Iron Man 2 and The Expendables.

Early life

Rourke was born Philip Andre Rourke, Jr. in Schenectady, New York He was raised Roman Catholic and still practices his faith. His father, Philip Andre Rourke, Sr., an amateur body builder, left the family when Mickey was six years old. After his parents divorced, his mother, Ann, married Eugene Addis, a Miami Beach police officer with five sons, and moved Rourke, his younger brother, and their sister to southern Florida. There, he graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School in 1971.

During his teenage years, Rourke focused his attention mainly on sports. He took up self-defense training at the Boys Club of Miami. It was there that he learned boxing skills and decided on an amateur career. At age 12, Rourke won his first boxing match as a 118-pound bantamweight (53.5 kg), fighting some of his early matches under the name Andre Rourke. He continued his boxing training at the famed 5th Street Gym, in Miami Beach, Florida, where Muhammad Ali began his career. In 1969, Rourke, then weighing 140 lbs. (63.5 kg), sparred with former World Welterweight Champion Luis Rodríguez. Rodriguez was the number one-rated middleweight boxer in the world and was training for his match with world champion Conor Scullion. Rourke boxed Scullion and claims to have received a concussion in this sparring match.

At the 1971 Florida Golden Gloves, Rourke suffered another concussion in a boxing match. After being told by doctors to take a year off and rest, Rourke temporarily retired from the ring. From 1964 to 1972, he compiled an amateur record of 20 wins, 17 by knockout and 6 defeats, which included wins over Ron Carter, Charles Gathers and Joe Riles.

Early acting roles

In 1971, as a senior at Miami Beach Senior High School, Rourke had a small acting role in the Jay W. Jensen-directed school play, The Serpent. However, Rourke's interests were geared to boxing, and he never appeared in any other school productions. Soon after he temporarily gave up boxing, a friend at the University of Miami told Rourke about a play he was directing, Deathwatch, and how the man playing the role of Green Eyes had quit. Rourke got the part and immediately became enamored with acting. Borrowing 400 dollars from his sister, he went to New York in order to take private lessons with an acting teacher from the Actors Studio, Sandra Seacat. He received critical praise for his work in Barfly as the alcoholic writer Henry Chinaski (the literary alter ego of Charles Bukowski) and in Year of the Dragon. In 1987, Rourke appeared in Angel Heart. The film was nominated for several awards. It was seen as controversial by some owing to a sex scene involving Cosby Show cast member Lisa Bonet, who won an award for her part in the film. Although some of Rourke's work was viewed as controversial in the U.S., he was well-received by European, and especially French, audiences, who loved the "rumpled, slightly dirty, sordid ... rebel persona"

Rourke's acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult to work with him. Parker stated that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do." In a documentary on the special edition DVD of Tombstone, actor Michael Biehn, who plays the part of Johnny Ringo, mentions that his role was first offered to Rourke.

Boxing career

In 1991, Rourke decided that he "…had to go back to boxing" because he felt that he "… was self-destructing … (and) had no respect for (himself as) an actor."

During his boxing career, Rourke suffered a number of injuries, including a broken nose, toe, ribs, a split tongue, and a compressed cheekbone. He also suffered from short term memory loss.

His trainer during most of his boxing career was Hells Angels member Chuck Zito. Freddie Roach also trained Rourke for seven fights. Rourke's entrance song into the ring was often Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine."

Boxing promoters said that Rourke was too old to succeed against top-level fighters. Indeed, Rourke himself admits that entering the ring was a sort of personal test: "(I) just wanted to give it a shot, test myself that way physically, while I still had time." In 1995, Rourke retired from boxing and returned to acting.

Rourke's boxing career resulted in a notable physical change in the 1990s, as his face needed reconstructive surgery in order to mend his injuries. His face was later called, "appallingly disfigured." In 2009, the actor told The Daily Mail that he had gone to "the wrong guy" for his surgery, and that his plastic surgeon had left his features "a mess."

|- | style="text-align:center;" colspan="8"|Boxing record |- | style="text-align:center;" colspan="8"|6 Wins (4 knockouts, 2 decisions), 0 Losses, 2 Draws |- style="text-align:center; background:#e3e3e3;" | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Res. | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Record | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Opponent | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Type | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Rd., Time | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Date | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Location | style="border-style:none none solid solid; "|Notes |- style="text-align:center;" |style="background: #dae2f1"|Draw || 6-0-2 || align=left| Andrew Banks |Majority draw || 4 || September 8, 1994 || align=left| Davie, Florida, USA |align=left| |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 6-0-1 || align=left| Thomas McCoy |TKO || 3 || November 20, 1993 || align=left| Hamburg, Germany || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 5-0-1 || align=left| Bubba Stotts |TKO || 3 || July 24, 1993 || align=left| Joplin, Missouri, USA || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 4-0-1 || align=left| Tom Bentley |KO || 1 || March 30, 1993 || align=left| Kansas City, Missouri, USA || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 3-0-1 || align=left| Terry Jesmer |Decision || 4 || December 12, 1992 || align=left| Oviedo, Spain || |- style="text-align:center;" |style="background: #dae2f1"|Draw || 2-0-1 || align=left| Francisco Harris |Majority draw || 4 || April 25, 1992 || align=left| Miami Beach, Florida, USA |align=left| |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 2-0 || align=left| Darrell Miller |KO || 1 , 2:14 || June 23, 1991 || align=left| Tokyo, Japan || |- style="text-align:center;" |Win || 1-0 || align=left| Steve Powell |Unanimous decision || 4 || May 23, 1991 || align=left| Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA |align=left|

1990s: return to acting

In the early 1990s, Rourke was offered and declined the role of Butch Coolidge, which later became Bruce Willis' role in Pulp Fiction. After his retirement from boxing, Rourke did accept supporting roles in several 1990s films, including Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker, Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66, Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory, Sean Penn's The Pledge and Sylvester Stallone's remake of Get Carter. Rourke also has written several films under the name Sir Eddie Cook, including Bullet, in which he co-starred with close friend Tupac Shakur.

While Rourke was also selected for a significant role in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, his part ended up on the editing room floor. Rourke also played a small part in the film Thursday, in which he plays a crooked cop. He also had a lead role in 1997's Double Team, which co-starred martial arts actor Jean-Claude Van Damme. It was Rourke's first over-the-top action film role, in which he played the lead villain. During that same year, he filmed Another 9½ Weeks, a sequel to 9½ Weeks, which only received limited distribution. He ended the 1990s with the direct-to-video films Out in Fifty, Shades and television movie Shergar, about the kidnapping of Epsom Derby-winning thoroughbred racehorse Shergar. Rourke has expressed his bitterness over that period of his career, stating that he came to consider himself a "has-been" and lived for a time in "a state of shame." Christopher Heard stated that actors/musicians Tupac Shakur, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Brad Pitt have "…animated praise for Rourke and his work." During a roundtable session of Oscar nominated actors held by Newsweek, Brad Pitt cited Rourke as one of his early acting heroes along with Sean Penn and Gary Oldman.

Despite having withdrawn from acting at various points, and having made movies that he now sees as a creative "sell-out" (the action film Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man), Rourke has stated that "…all that I have been through…[has] made me a better, more interesting actor." Rourke's renewed interest in pursuing acting can be seen in his statement that "… my best work is still ahead of me."

Rourke had a role in the movie version of The Informers, playing Peter, an amoral former studio security guard who plots to kidnap a small child.

In 2008, Rourke played the lead in The Wrestler, winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, about washed-up professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson. In regards to first reading the screenplay, he stated that he originally "didn't care for it."

}}

He also spoke on personal concern and hesitance of being in a movie about wrestling, for he perceived it as being "prearranged and prechoreographed." However, as he trained for the film, he developed an appreciation and respect for what real-life pro wrestlers do to prepare for the ring:

}}

He trained under former WWE wrestler Afa the Wild Samoan for the part, and has received a British Academy (BAFTA) award, a Golden Globe award, an Independent Spirit Award, and an Oscar nomination as Best Actor. Rourke was pessimistic about his chances to win the Oscar as he had been, in the past, very vocal against Hollywood's establishment. Rourke lost the Oscar to Sean Penn, while Penn did acknowledge Rourke in his acceptance speech.

Rourke has written or co-written six scripts: Homeboy, The Last Ride, Bullet, Killer Moon, Penance and the latest, Pain. Of these, the first three were produced as movies between 1988 and 1996.

In early 2009, Rourke developed a small feud with WWE Superstar Chris Jericho, as part of a storyline. The storyline climaxed at WrestleMania XXV, when Rourke knocked out Jericho with a left hook after Jericho won his match against Jimmy Snuka, Ricky Steamboat, and Roddy Piper, with Ric Flair in their corner.

In 2009, Rourke starred in John Rich's music video for Shuttin' Detroit Down along side of Kris Kristofferson.

In 2009, Rourke voiced protagonist US Navy SEAL Dick Marcinko in the video game Rogue Warrior. The game received very poor reviews from critics.

In 2010, Rourke played the role of the main villain Whiplash in the film Iron Man 2, in an interview with Rip It Up Magazine he revealed that he prepared for the role by visiting Russian jail inmates. He also had a supporting role playing 'Tool' in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables.

Political views

Rourke's political views came under fire when he claimed to have donated part of his salary from the 1989 film Francesco to the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He later retracted the statement, although he has an IRA symbol tattoo.

Personal life

Rourke has dated several celebrities, including Terry Farrell and Sasha Volkova. He has been married twice. In 1981, he married Debra Feuer, whom he met on the set of Hardcase (1981) and who co-starred with him in Homeboy (1990) as his love interest. The marriage ended in 1989, with Rourke subsequently commenting that making the film 9½ Weeks "was not particularly considerate to my wife's needs." The two have remained good friends, according to an interview Feuer gave in 2009. and Rourke at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.]]Wild Orchid co-star Carré Otis was briefly a cause célèbre following the release of the film owing to rumours that she and then-lover Rourke filmed an unsimulated sex scene. Otis married Rourke on June 26, 1992. In 1994, Rourke was arrested for spousal abuse. The charges were later dropped. The couple reconciled and also starred together in Exit in Red, but their marriage ended in December 1998. In November 2007, Rourke was arrested again, this time on DUI charges in Miami Beach. It is rumoured that Rourke is now engaged to Russian model Elena Kuletskaya and that they plan to marry in 2010.

In numerous TV and print interviews, he attributes his comeback after fourteen years to weekly meetings with a psychiatrist, "Steve," and to a Catholic priest he identified as "Father Pete."

In addition to his faith and his psychiatric treatment, Rourke has publicly attributed his comeback to his dogs. was a chihuahua-terrier mix.

Rourke gave his dogs credit during his Golden Globe Best Actor acceptance speech January 11, 2009: "I'd like to thank all my dogs. The ones that are here, the ones that aren't here anymore because sometimes when a man's alone, that's all you got is your dog. And they've meant the world to me." The day of the 2009 Golden Globes show, he told Barbara Walters that "I sort of self-destructed and everything came out about fourteen years ago or so ... the wife had left, the career was over, the money was not an ounce. The dogs were there when no one else was there." Asked by Walters if he had considered suicide, he responded:

Despite being identified as "Lowjack" in the transcription above, the dog in the anecdote was apparently Beau Jack, who sired two of Rourke's later pets, Loki and her littermate Chocolate. Beau Jack died in 2002, though Rourke gave him 45 minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Chocolate was the subject of a children's book, Chocolate at the Four Seasons, about his temporary stay with producer Bonnie Timmerman. Chocolate returned to Rourke and died in 2006. He has had as many as seven dogs at one time, back in 2005.

Rourke is also a motorcycle enthusiast and uses motorcycles in some of his films.

Filmography

References

External links

Dialogus.net

Category:Actors Studio alumni Category:American boxers Category:American film actors Category:American screenwriters Category:American Roman Catholics Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Actor BAFTA Award winners Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Golden Orange Honorary Award winners Category:Independent Spirit Award winners Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute alumni Category:Actors from New York Category:People from Miami, Florida Category:People from Schenectady, New York Category:1952 births Category:Living people

Name	Larry King
Caption	King in September 2010
Birth name	Lawrence Harvey Zeiger
Birth date	November 19, 1933
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Television/Radio personality
Years active	1957–2010| spouse = Freda Miller (1952–1953)Annette Kaye (1961)Alene Akins (1961–1963)Mickey Sutphin (1963–1967)Alene Akins (1967–1972)Sharon Lepore (1976–1983)Julie Alexander (1989–1992)Shawn Southwick (1997–present)

Lawrence Harvey "Larry" King (born November 19, 1933) is an American television and radio host.

He is recognized in the United States as one of the premier broadcast interviewers. He has won an Emmy Award, two Peabody Awards, and ten Cable ACE Awards.

King began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and 1960s. He became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978, and then, in 1985, began hosting the nightly interview TV program Larry King Live on CNN.

On June 29, 2010, it was announced that he would step down as host of the show but would continue to host specials for CNN. In early September, CNN confirmed that he would be replaced by Piers Morgan. King's last show aired on December 16, 2010.

Early life

King was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker, and his wife Jennie Gitlitz, a garment worker, who emigrated from Belarus. King grew up in a religious and observant Jewish home, but in adulthood became an agnostic. King's father died at 44 of heart disease, and his mother had to go on welfare to support her two sons. His father's death greatly affected King, and he lost interest in school. After graduating from high school, he worked to help support his mother. From an early age, however, he had wanted to go into radio.

Career

Miami radio and television

A CBS staff announcer, whom King met by chance, told him to go to Florida, a growing media market where openings still existed for inexperienced broadcasters. King rode a bus to Miami. After initial setbacks, King persisted and got his first job in radio. The manager of a small station, WAHR (now WMBM) in Miami Beach, hired him to clean up and perform miscellaneous tasks. When one of their announcers quit, they put King on the air. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, when he worked as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon. He also did two afternoon newscasts and a sportscast. He was paid $55 a week. He acquired the name Larry King when the general manager Martial Cemen said that Zeiger was too ethnic and difficult to remember, so Larry chose the surname King, which he got from an ad in The Miami Herald for King's Wholesale Liquor, minutes before air. He started interviewing on a midmorning show for WIOD, at Pumpernik's Restaurant in Miami Beach. He would interview anyone who walked in. His first interview was with a waiter at the restaurant. Two days later, singer Bobby Darin, in Miami for a concert later that day, walked into Pumpernick's as a result of coming across King's show on his radio; Darin became King's first celebrity interview guest.

His Miami radio show launched him to local stardom. A few years later, in May 1960, he hosted Miami Undercover, airing Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. on WPST-TV Channel 10 (now WPLG). On the show, he moderated debates on important issues of the time. King credits his success on local TV to the assistance of another showbiz legend, comedian Jackie Gleason, whose national TV variety show was being filmed in Miami Beach during this period. "That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami," King said in a 1996 interview he gave when inducted into the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. "He did that show and stayed all night with me. We stayed till five in the morning. He didn't like the set, so we broke into the general manager's office and changed the set. Gleason changed the set, he changed the lighting, and he became like a mentor of mine." Jackie Gleason was instrumental in getting Larry a hard-to-get on air interview with Frank Sinatra during this time.

During this period, WIOD gave King further exposure as a color commentator for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League, during their 1970 season and most of their 1971 season. However, he was dismissed by both WIOD and television station WTVJ as a late-night radio host and sports commentator as of December 20, 1971, when he was arrested after being accused of grand larceny by a former business partner. Other staffers covered the Dolphins' games into their 24–3 loss to Dallas in Super Bowl VI. King also lost his weekly column at the Miami Beach Sun newspaper. The charges were dropped on March 10, 1972, and King spent the next several years in reviving his career, including a stint as the color announcer in Louisiana for the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League in 1974–75. For several years during the 1970s in South Florida, he hosted a sports talk-show called "Sports-a-la-King" that featured guests and callers.

King managed to get back into radio by becoming the color commentator for broadcasts of the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League on KWKH. Eventually, King was rehired by WIOD in Miami.

National radio

In 1978, he went national, inheriting the nightly talk show slot on the Mutual Broadcasting System, broadcast coast-to-coast, that had been "Long John" Nebel's until his death, and had been pioneered by Herb Jepko. One reason King got the Mutual job is that he had once been an announcer at WGMA-AM in Hollywood, Florida, which was then owned by C. Edward Little. Little went on to become president of Mutual and was the one who hired King when Nebel died. King's Mutual show developed a devoted audience.

It was broadcast live Monday through Friday from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. King would interview a guest for the first 90 minutes, with callers asking questions that continued the interview for another 90 minutes. At 3 a.m., he would allow callers to discuss any topic they pleased with him, until the end of the program, when he expressed his own political opinions. That segment was called "Open Phone America". Some of the regular callers used the pseudonyms "The Portland Laugher", "The Miami Derelict", "The Todd Cruz Caller", "The Scandal Scooper", "Mr. Radio" and "The Water Is Warm Caller". "Mr. Radio" made over 200 calls to King during Open Phone America. The show was successful, starting with relatively few affiliates and eventually growing to more than 500. It ran until 1994.

For its final year, the show was moved to afternoons, but, because most talk radio stations at the time had an established policy of local origination in the time-slot (3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time) that Mutual offered the show, a very low percentage of King's overnight affiliates agreed to carry his daytime show and it was unable to generate the same audience size. The afternoon show was eventually given to David Brenner and radio affiliates were given the option of carrying the audio of King's new CNN evening television program. The Westwood One radio simulcast of the CNN show continues.

CNN

He started his Larry King Live CNN show in June 1985, hosting a broad range of guests from controversial figures of UFO conspiracy theories and alleged psychics, to prominent politicians and leading figures in the entertainment industry, often doing their first or only interview on breaking news stories on his show.

program at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA in 2006]]

Unlike many interviewers, King has a direct, non-confrontational approach. His reputation for asking easy, open-ended questions has made him attractive to important figures who want to state their position while avoiding being challenged on contentious topics. His interview style is characteristically frank, but with occasional bursts of irreverence and humor. His approach attracts some guests who would not otherwise appear. King, who is known for his general lack of pre-interview preparation, once bragged that he never read the books of authors before making an appearance on his program.

In a show dedicated to the surviving Beatles, King asked George Harrison's widow about the song "Something", which was written about George Harrison's first wife. He seemed surprised when she did not know very much about the song.

Throughout his career King has interviewed many of the leading figures of his time. CNN claimed during his final episode that he had performed 60,000 interviews in his career.

King also wrote a regular newspaper column in USA Today for almost 20 years, from shortly after that newspaper's origin in 1982 until September 2001. The column consisted of short "plugs, superlatives and dropped names" but was dropped when the newspaper redesigned its "Life" section. The column was resurrected in blog form in November 2008 and on Twitter in April 2009.

Departure

On June 29, 2010, King announced that after 25 years, he would be stepping down from his nightly job hosting Larry King Live. However, he stated that he would remain with CNN to host occasional specials.

On September 8, 2010, CNN confirmed that Morgan would occupy King's 9:00 pm timeslot from January 2011 onward.

The final edition of Larry King Live aired on December 16, 2010.

Heart disease

On February 24, 1987, King suffered a major heart attack and then had quintuple-bypass surgery. King has written two books about living with heart disease. Mr. King, You're Having a Heart Attack: How a Heart Attack and Bypass Surgery Changed My Life (1989, ISBN 0-440-50039-7) was written with New York's Newsday science editor B. D. Colen. Taking On Heart Disease: Famous Personalities Recall How They Triumphed over the Nation's #1 Killer and How You Can, Too (2004, ISBN 1-57954-820-2) features the experience of various celebrities with cardiovascular disease including Peggy Fleming and Regis Philbin.

On February 12, 2010, Larry King revealed that he had undergone surgery 5 weeks earlier to place stents in his coronary artery to remove plaque from his heart. During the segment on Larry King Live which discussed Bill Clinton's similar procedure, King said he was "feeling great" and had been in hospital for just one day.

Charitable works

As a result of heart attacks, he established the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, an organization to which David Letterman, through his American Foundation for Courtesy and Grooming, has also contributed. King gave $1 million to George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs for scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

On September 3, 2005, following the devastation to the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina, King aired "How You Can Help", a three-hour special designed to provide a forum and information clearinghouse for viewers to understand and join nationwide and global relief efforts. Guest Richard Simmons, a native of New Orleans, told him, "Larry, you don't even know how much money you raised tonight. When we rebuild the city of New Orleans, we're going to name something big after you."

On January 18, 2010, in the wake of the devastation caused by the 2010 Haiti earthquake, King aired "Haiti: How You Can Help", a special two-hour edition designed to show viewers how to take action and be a part of the global outreach.

King serves as a member of the Board of Directors on the Police Athletic League of New York City, a nonprofit youth development agency serving inner-city children and teenagers.

On August 30, 2010, King served as the host of Chabad's 30th annual "To Life" telethon, in Los Angeles.

Controversial positions

On September 10, 1990, while on The Joan Rivers Show, Rivers asked King which contestant in the Miss America pageant was "the ugliest". King responded, "Miss Pennsylvania. She was one of the 10 finalists and she did a great ventriloquist bit [...] The dummy was prettier." King was a judge for the September 8, 1990 pageant. King later sent Miss Pennsylvania, Marla Wynne, a dozen long-stemmed roses and a telegram apologizing for saying she was the ugliest contestant in the pageant that year.

In 1997, King was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested the treatment of Scientologists in Germany, comparing it to the Nazis' oppression of Jews in the 1930s. Other signatories included Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn. He married high-school sweetheart Freda Miller in 1951 at age 18. King was later briefly married to Annette Kaye Larry Jr. and his wife, Shannon, have three children.

King met businesswoman Julie Alexander in summer 1989, and proposed to her on the couple's first date, on August 1, 1989. Alexander became King's sixth wife on October 7, 1989, when the two were married in Washington, D.C. The couple lived in different cities, however, with Alexander in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and King in Washington, D.C., where he worked. The couple separated in 1990 and divorced in 1992.

He married his seventh wife, Shawn Southwick, born in 1959 a former singer and TV host, in King's Los Angeles, California, hospital room three days before King underwent heart surgery to clear a clogged blood vessel. The couple has two children: Chance, born March 1999, and Cannon, born May 2000. He is stepfather to Danny Southwick. On King and Southwick's 10th anniversary in September 2007, Southwick boasted she was "the only [wife] to have lasted into the two digits". but have since stopped the proceedings, claiming "We love our children, we love each other, we love being a family. That is all that matters to us".

Shawn attempted suicide in May 2010 when she overdosed on prescription pills.

In July 2009, King appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, where he told host O'Brien about his wishes to be cryogenically preserved upon death, as he had revealed in his book My Remarkable Journey.

Awards

King has received many broadcasting awards. He won the Peabody Award for Excellence in broadcasting for both his radio (1982) and television (1992) shows. He has also won 10 CableACE awards for Best Interviewer and for Best Talk Show Series.

In 1989, King was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, and in 1996 to the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame.

in June 1998, King received an Honorary Degree from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, for his life achievements.

King was given the Golden Mike Award for Lifetime Achievement in January 2009, by the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California.

King is an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills. He is also a recipient of the President's Award honoring his impact on media from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2006.

King is the first recipient of the Arizona State University Hugh Downs Award for Communication Excellence, presented April 11, 2007, via satellite by Downs himself. Downs sported red suspenders for the event and turned the tables on King by asking "very tough questions" about King's best, worst and most influential interviews during King's 50 years in broadcasting.

References

External links

CNN profile

Larry King Cardiac Foundation - Foundation to fund treatments cardiac patients with little or no insurance

Clark lawsuit

Larry King Live - Transcripts of all interviews since 2000

Larry King interviewed by Gianluca D'Agostino

Larry King Archive of American Television video interview

Category:1933 births Category:Living people Category:American actors Category:American agnostics Category:American Jews Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish agnostics Category:Miami Dolphins broadcasters Category:National Football League announcers Category:People from Brooklyn Category:World Football League announcers

Name	James J. Cramer
Known for	Hosting Mad MoneyChairman of TheStreet.com, Inc.
Alma mater	Harvard College (B.A.)Harvard Law School (J.D.)

James "Jim" J. Cramer (born February 10, 1955) is an American television personality, a former hedge fund manager, and a best-selling author. Cramer is the host of CNBC's Mad Money and a co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com, Inc.

Family

Cramer married Karen Backfisch-Olufsen, a trader with Steinhardt's firm in 1988.

Early years

Cramer was born in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. One of his first jobs was selling ice cream at Veterans Stadium during Philadelphia Phillies games. Cramer went to Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County.

Biography

Education and early career

Cramer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a B.A. in government. Cramer later earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. His plans to become a prosecutor were dashed when he was denied employment with the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, headed at the time by Rudy Giuliani, because his law school grades were not good enough. Cramer was admitted to the New York State Bar Association in 1985, but he is currently not a member.

Investing

Cramer started investing in the stock market during his time at law school. division. Cramer's success in this position led him to found his own hedge fund, Cramer & Co. (later Cramer, Berkowitz, & Co.), in 1987. The fund operated out of the offices of hedge fund pioneer Michael Steinhardt's Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co., and early investors included Eliot Spitzer (a Harvard classmate, one of his oldest friends, and former Governor of New York), Brill, and Peretz.

Cramer's fund had one year of negative returns from 1988–2000 while he ran it, in 1998, a year that included the 1998 Russian financial crisis. The fund finished down 2–3%. The fund did not charge a management fee that year to their clients. In 1999 the fund returned 47%, and in 2000 28%, beating the S&P; 500 by 38 percentage points.

In 1996, Cramer co-founded TheStreet.com, Inc. with The New Republic editor Martin Peretz, one of his hedge fund's original clients. Cramer is currently a market commentator and adviser to the TheStreet.com, and is its second largest shareholder. Cramer also manages a charitable trust stock portfolio which is tied to TheStreet.com through a paid subscription service called the Action Alerts PLUS Portfolio.

Cramer currently works on a new project as part of TheStreet.com called MainStreet.com. An earlier project, TheRoad.com, was not successful.

TheStreet.com stock has declined over 90% since its first day of trading after its IPO in 1999. In 2009, Cramer received earnings of $461,276 from The Street.com. He is The Street.com's second largest shareholder and largest individual shareholder.

After being a frequent guest commentator on CNBC in the late 1990s, Cramer co-hosted CNBC shows America Now and Kudlow & Cramer with Lawrence Kudlow in the early 2000s.

Cramer hosted a one-hour radio show, Jim Cramer's Real Money, until December 2006. "Take the money and run" by the Steve Miller Band was the opening intro to each of his radio shows. The show was similar to his Mad Money TV show. He also guest-hosted in the slot caused by the cancellation of Imus in the Morning (MSNBC and WFAN/Westwood One) in May 2007.

On November 13, 2005, Dan Rather did a sit-down interview with Cramer on 60 Minutes. Among the topics of discussion were Cramer's past at his hedge fund; for example, his violent temper, and what finally led him to come to his senses and "calm down." Footage of Cramer at his family home with his daughters and wife was also included. On November 15, 2005, Cramer mentioned on his program that he received hundreds of e-mails after his 60 Minutes interview. This report was taped before Cramer's radio show, Smart Money with Jim Cramer moved to WOR and became syndicated under the CBS Radio banner.

In 2005, Cramer appeared as himself in two episodes of the television series Arrested Development. He appeared to first announce that he had upgraded Bluth Company stock to a "Don't Buy" from a "Triple Sell", and then to say that the stock was not a "Don't Buy" anymore, but a "Risky".

Cramer has also made appearances on NBC's Today, NBC Nightly News, Live with Regis and Kelly, ESPN Classic's Cheap Seats, NBC's Late Night With Conan O'Brien, Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart & The Colbert Report, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Show with David Letterman, ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live and NBC's The Apprentice (U.S. Season 7) called "The Celebrity Apprentice".

Cramer also appeared in the 2008 motion picture Iron Man spoofing Stark Industries on his show Mad Money. and appears in the movie .

On March 12, 2009, Jon Stewart interviewed Cramer on The Daily Show.

On November 3, 2009, Cramer appeared on the Martha Stewart Show to promote his new book,Getting Back to Even. While baking wholewheat bread, he stated that it is a great time to invest in real estate and that he has recently purchased the Debary Inn in Summit, NJ.

Selected controversies

Fox News Channel lawsuit

In 2000, Cramer settled a lawsuit with Fox News Channel in which Fox had claimed Cramer reneged on a deal to produce a show for them. Their conflict began when Fox complained that Cramer promoted TheStreet.com's stock on the air.

Market manipulation

In March 2007, a December 2006 interview from TheStreet.com's "Wall Street Confidential" webcast stirred controversy after it appeared on YouTube.com. In the video, Cramer described activities used by hedge fund managers to manipulate stock prices – some of debatable legality and others illegal. He described how he could push stocks higher or lower with as little as $5 million in capital when he was running his hedge fund. Cramer said, "A lot of times when I was short at my hedge fund...When I was positioned short—meaning I needed it down—I would create a level of activity beforehand that could drive the futures." He also encouraged hedge funds to engage in this type of activity because it is "a very quick way to make money". Cramer described a variety of tactics that hedge fund managers use to affect a stock's price. Cramer said that one strategy to keep a stock price down is to spread false rumors to reporters he described as "the Pisanis of the world". The comment was a reference to CNBC correspondent Bob Pisani, who reports from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. "You have to use these guys," said Cramer. He also discussed giving information to "the bozo reporter from The Wall Street Journal" to get an article published. Cramer said this practice, although illegal, is easy to do "because the SEC doesn't understand it." During the interview Cramer referred to himself as a "banking class hero."

SEC subpoena

In February 2006, an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into allegations of collusion between short-sellers and a stock research firm led to the serving of subpoenas to TheStreet.com and Cramer, as well as journalists for Dow Jones and Marketwatch.com. The SEC then began to back away from the subpoenas, indicating it had no intention of enforcing them after lawyers for Dow Jones said they would not comply. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox rebuked the SEC's staff attorneys for filing subpoenas on two Dow Jones reporters without first consulting him or the other top commissioners. Cox issued a statement saying neither he nor any of the SEC's four other commissioners were aware of the subpoenas, which he called "highly unusual."

The allegations had been raised publicly and in a lawsuit against Gradient by Overstock.com chief executive Patrick M. Byrne. In May 2007, it was revealed that the SEC had subpoenaed Byrne in May 2006, in connection with an investigation of the company.

Performance of stock picks

Cramer is the founder, former owner and Senior Partner of Cramer Berkowitz, a hedge fund where Cramer reported a compounded annual "rate of return of 24% after all fees for 15 years" at Cramer Berkowitz. He retired from his hedge fund in 2001, where he finished with a self reported 36% return in 2001.

On September 15, 2008, Cramer invited Robert Steel, the CEO of Wachovia on his show, Mad Money, in order to recommend the stock to potential investors. Cramer agreed with CEO that the company was fundamentally sound and that the ratio of good loans to bad loans was low. Cramer would recommend the stock to his viewers before Citi announced their intentions to acquire Wachovia's banking operations. Cramer stated that Wachovia was part of the "Fortress Five" in relation to having a fortress balance sheet stating "It's now the 'Fortress Five'... thanks to the leadership of Bob Steele, who I believe will be able to split WB into a good bank and a bad bank, and lead it much higher... Now that the stock was up today a couple of smackers... have a little pullback... knowing this market, you're going to get one." On Monday, September 29, Wachovia's share prices dropped over 95% in the pre-market and over 80% in market hours following news of a possible Citi acquisition. Prior to this, Cramer had stated, "This is run by Bob Steel. He's as close as we're going to get to a great banker. I think he's going to make this a great company. " Eventually, Wells Fargo would purchase Wachovia for $15.1 billion in an all stock deal leaving Wachovia shareholders with 0.1991 shares of Wells Fargo for every share of Wachovia stock, resulting in a large decline in stockholder value. In 2008, Wachovia shares declined 88 percent.

On August 3, 2007, Cramer made a plea (some call a rant) for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to cut interest rates supposedly because of comments he was getting from investment banks, and their concern about adjustable-rate mortgage borrowers increasing loan rates.

On July 8, 2008, in an article on TheStreet.com entitled, "Look At The Facts" Cramer said, "The losses are increasing, the auction-rate preferreds are now biting, the mortgage implode-a-meter now measures how many home-builders are going under."

On "Hardball with Chris Matthews" for September 19, 2008, Cramer stated "It's not too late to be on the pom-pom...the sideline" in regards to home teaser loans. Cramer spoke again on the Today Show on October 6, 2008, suggesting to investors, "Whatever money you need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market."

On September 22, 2008, Wall Street Journal best-selling author Eric Tyson, criticized Cramer's stock picks and his performance in general.

An August 20, 2007, article in Barrons stated that within the select time frame of the previous two years, "his picks haven't beaten the market. Over the past two years, viewers holding Cramer's stocks would be up 12% while the Dow rose 22% and the S&P; 500 16%." CNBC disputed the magazine's findings.

On September 28, 2009, Cramer told subscribers to buy CIT. One month later the company went bankrupt.

Action Alerts charitable trust

In the timeframe of 2002 until May 2009 the performance of Cramer's charitable trust "Action Alerts PLUS" outpaced the S&P; 500 and the Russell 2000; while the charitable trust accumulated a return of 31.75%, the S&P; 500 had a return of 18.75% and the Russell 2000 has a return of 22.51%. On an annual basis, the trust outperformed the S&P; 500 by 7.35% and the Russell 2000 Index by 3.33%.

Bear Stearns recommendation

On the March 11, 2008, episode of Cramer's show Mad Money, a viewer named Peter submitted the question "Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?" Cramer responded "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble. If anything, they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear."

Some say that the viewer was asking whether he should keep his investment in Bear Stearns common stock (NYSE: BSC), because anything other than the assumption that Bear Stearns would remain independent and in business based on Cramer's statement would be absurd, i.e. how can someone say keep your money as a customer at Bear Stearms even though Bear Stearns might go bankrupt? Some also say that Cramer was advising the caller not to sell the stock in the belief that a company would pay a premium to acquire Bear Stearns. Over the next few days BSC stock fell 92%, on news of a Fed bailout and $2/share takeover by JPMorgan. The final price for acquiring Bear Stearns's shares would be $10/share.

Others say the comments were clear and unambiguous, and that the viewer was asking whether he should withdraw money he had held in a brokerage account at Bear Stearns. In other words, the caller wanted to know if it was possible that the liquidity crisis at Bear was so bad, that the viewer would be unable to get his money out of his Bear Stearns account if it went under. On March 17, 2008, Cramer claimed he meant the latter explanation, rather than the previous one. Cramer states he was not recommending the common stock but allaying concerns about the account holder's liquidity held in a Bear Stearns brokerage account. Cramer later wrote about the incident: "I did tell an emailer that his deposit in his account at Bear Stearns was safe, but through a clever sound bite, (Jon) Stewart, and subsequently (Frank) Rich—neither of whom have bothered to listen to the context of the pulled quote—pass off the notion of account safety as an out-and-out buy recommendation. The absurdity astounds me. If you called Mad Money and asked me about Citigroup, I would tell you that the common stock might be worthless, but I would never tell you to pull your money out of the bank because I was worried about its solvency. Your money is safe in Citi as I said it was in Bear. The fact that I was right rankles me even more."

Michael Lewis, a journalist for the U.K.-based Evening Standard news Web site, states that TheStreet.com listed Bear Stearns as a "Buy" at $62 per share on March 11, 2008, which was the same day as the caller's question and a day before the collapse of Bear Stearns. However, TheStreet.com--the web site quote that shows the ratings history for actual changes that Cramer makes—indicates that Cramer changed Bear Stearns rating to a "Sell" on February 5, 2008. On his March 12, 2009 appearance on the Daily Show, Cramer admitted he made mistakes on his Bear Stearns calls.

Cramer's responses to criticism

The White House

On March 2, 2009, Cramer drew the attention of some critics after his evaluation of President Obama’s spending plans and the administration’s handling of the banking crisis. Cramer’s name came up on March 3 during a White House press briefing after Cramer said that Obama was responsible for “the greatest wealth destruction I have seen by a president.” An offended White House shot back. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "If you turn on a certain program it's geared to a very small audience. I'm not entirely sure what he's pointing to make some of the statements." When pressed further by NBC's Tom Costello, Gibbs said, "You can go back and look at any number of statements he's made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too."

On March 5, 2009, Cramer responded to the White House. He said, "Huh? Backup? Look at the incredible decline in the stock market, in all indices, since the inauguration of the president, with the drop accelerating when the budget plan came to light because of the massive fear and indecision the document sowed: Raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in health care companies, tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when U.S. house price depreciation is behind much of the world's morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people."

Cramer questioned criticism he received which he explained makes him "uncomfortable being in the crosshairs of columnists and comedians I enjoy." Cramer asked, "So, why after toiling in the cable wilderness for four years with Mad Money am I the target of the wrath of the Obama clan, and the darling, albeit surely momentary, of the Obama-critics? After all, my criticism of Obama's handling of the economic crisis is a lot less pointed than my withering August 2007 'They Know Nothing' meltdown against Ben Bernanke and the previous administration's handling of the economic crisis."

Frank Rich

Referring to March 8, 2009, charges leveled against Cramer by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Cramer said that he does not understand how Obama and his staff plan to raise taxes, institute cap-and-trade limitations and rework the health-care system all during a recession. The article says: "It isn’t that Cramer disagrees with Obama’s vision for the country – he even agrees with taxing the rich – but now is not the time to put those plans into action. The president needs to solve our housing, employment and financial problems, and only then turn his attention to health care and changing the mortgage deduction."

Jon Stewart

On March 12, 2009, Cramer appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Stewart reiterated earlier claims regarding the CNBC host's "silly and/or embarrassing and/or stupid financial observations." Moreover, he claimed CNBC shirked its journalistic duty by believing corporate lies, rather than being an investigative "powerful tool of illumination." For his part, Cramer disagreed with Stewart on a few points, but acknowledged that he could have done a better job foreseeing the economic collapse: "We all should have seen it more."

Stewart also discussed how short-selling was detrimental to the markets and investors. Cramer admitted to Stewart that short-selling was detrimental, stated his opposition to it, and claimed that he had never engaged in it, which contradicts earlier statements in which he described going short while managing a hedge fund. [Need quotation] He said, "I will say this: I am trying to expose this stuff, exactly what you guys do, and I've been trying to get the regulators to look at it." However, Stewart played several video clips from 2006 where Cramer discussed the spreading of false rumors to drive down stock prices and encouraged short-selling by hedge funds as a means to generate returns. At one point in a clip from December 22, 2006 he said, "I would encourage anyone in a hedge fund to do it." He called it a very quick way to make money and very satisfying. He continued, "By the way, no one else in the world would ever admit that, but I don't care, and again, I'm not gonna say it on TV."

Response to criticism for his Wachovia call

On March 9, 2009, during a segment on Mad Money, Cramer said Frank Rich "chastised me for endorsing Wachovia's stock after then-CEO Bob Steel came onto Mad Money and spoke positively about the bank." After the bank collapsed, Cramer reminded viewers that he is the first person to admit when wrong. Cramer mentioned, "Look, I was taken in, the guy pantsed me. I made a mistake. The SEC is investigating Steel's appearance on the show for truthfulness, though. I made a mistake, but they're investigating him to see if he lied. Bigger issue. Sometimes you just get had."

Response to pundits

"The pundits," Cramer explained on March 9, 2009, in a MainStreet article, "who haven't paid attention to anything I have been saying or writing for the past 18 months are all over me." Cramer said the pundits "won't engage in the merits of, say, favoring Tier 1 capital for the banks vs. common equity, or forbearing on the banks to work the situation out over time because the banks can be profitable if we have some patience. They just attack me." Cramer suggested, "It's time to get serious. It's time to take the issue from the pundits and from the left and right, and put it where it belongs: serious non-ideological debate to put out the real firestorm, the collapse of the economy from Wall Street to Main Street and the ensuing Great Wealth Destruction for all."

Bibliography

Jim Cramer's Getting Back to Even ISBN 978-1439158012

Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer) ISBN 978-1416558859

Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich ISBN 1-4165-3790-2

Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World ISBN 0-7432-2489-2

Confessions of a Street Addict ISBN 0-7432-2487-6

You Got Screwed! Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper ISBN 0-7432-4690-X

Notes

References

External links

Biographies

Jim Cramer biography on CNBC.com

Jim Cramer biography on TheStreet.com

Notable Cramer sources

Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer Madcap Recap

Mad Money TV show recapped Nightly Verbatim Recaps

TheStreet.com, Cramer's investment website.

Stockpickr Stock market social networking site.

Articles written by Jim Cramer on MainStreet.com

In the Money, continued, Balance Sheet, article about Cramer and other law alumni, from the online Harvard Law Bulletin

Betting on the Market – PBS Frontline interview with Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer's Picks at Seeking Alpha

To The Moon

Maxim: Ask Jim Cramer, Maxim's interview with Cramer, and Top 2 Chinese Stocks Right Now

Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2009 – Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer on the Iraqi Dinar - on DinarProfits.com

Category:1955 births Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American columnists Category:American finance and investment writers Category:American infotainers Category:American investors Category:American money managers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television personalities Category:American business journalists Category:Goldman Sachs people Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Hedge fund managers Category:Living people Category:New York lawyers Category:People from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Category:People from Union County, New Jersey

Name	Hugh Hefner
Caption	Hugh Hefner attending Glamourcon #50, Long Beach, CA on November 13, 2010
Birth date	April 09, 1926
Birth name	Hugh Marston Hefner
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Known for	Editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises
Website	Playboy.com
Spouse	(divorced)(divorced)Crystal Harris (2010) (engaged)
Children	Christie Hefner (born 1952) David Hefner (born 1955) Marston Hefner (born 1990) Cooper Hefner (born 1991)

Hugh Marston Hefner (born April 9, 1926) is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.

Early life

Hefner was born in Chicago, Illinois, the elder of two sons born to Grace Caroline (née Swanson; 1895–1997) and Glenn Lucius Hefner (1896–1976), both teachers. Hefner's mother was of Swedish descent and his father had German and English ancestry; on his father's side, Hefner is a direct descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. He has described his family as "conservative, Midwest, Methodist". He went to Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served as a writer for a military newspaper in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946. He later graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.A. in psychology with a double minor in creative writing and art in 1949, earning his degree in two and a half years. After graduation, he took a semester of graduate courses in sociology at Northwestern University but dropped out soon after.

Career

Working as a copywriter for Esquire, he left in January 1952 after being denied a $5 raise. In 1953, he mortgaged his furniture, generating a bank loan of $600 (or $800—he cannot recall which) and raised $8,000 from 45 investors— including $1,000 from his mother ("Not because she believed in the venture," he told E! in 2006. "But because she believed in her son") – to launch Playboy, which was initially going to be called Stag Party. The undated first issue, published in December 1953, featured Marilyn Monroe from her 1949 nude calendar shoot. Hefner, who never met Monroe, bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

After it was rejected by Esquire magazine in 1955, Hefner agreed to publish in Playboy Charles Beaumont's science fiction short story, "The Crooked Man," about straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. After receiving angry letters to the magazine, Hefner wrote a response to criticism where he said, "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong, too." Hefner is portrayed as a gay rights pioneer in the documentary film, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel.

On June 4, 1963, Hefner was arrested for selling obscene literature after an issue of Playboy featuring nude shots of Jayne Mansfield was released. A jury was unable to reach a verdict.

His former secretary, Bobbie Arnstein, was found dead in a Chicago hotel room after an overdose of drugs in January 1975. Hefner called a press conference to allege that she had been driven to suicide by narcotics agents and federal officers. Hefner further claimed the government was out to get him because of Playboy's philosophy and its advocacy of more liberal drug laws.

Hefner is in talks about making a film about his life. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television and has made several movie appearances as himself. In 2010, he received a "worst supporting actor" nomination for a Razzie award for his performance in Miss March.

A documentary by Brigitte Berman, was released on July 30, 2010. This was reportedly the first time that Hefner granted full access to a documentary filmmaker.

Personal life

Hefner married Northwestern University student Mildred Williams in 1949. They had two children, Christie (born November 8, 1952) and David (born August 30, 1955). Before the wedding, Mildred confessed that she had had an affair while he was away in the Army; he called the admission "the most devastating moment of my life." A 2006 E! True Hollywood Story profile of Hefner revealed that Mildred allowed him to sleep with other women, out of guilt for her infidelity and in the hopes that it would preserve their marriage. They divorced in 1959.

Hefner remade himself as a bon vivant and man about town, a lifestyle he promoted in his magazine and two TV shows he hosted, Playboy's Penthouse (1959–1960) and Playboy After Dark (1969–1970). He admitted to being involved' with maybe eleven out of twelve months' worth of Playmates" during some of these years. Donna Michelle, Marilyn Cole, Lillian Müller, Shannon Tweed, Brande Roderick, Barbi Benton, Karen Christy, Sondra Theodore, and Carrie Leigh—who filed a $35 million palimony suit against him—were a few of his many lovers. In 1971, he acknowledged that he experimented in bisexuality. He moved from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Hefner had a minor stroke in 1985 at age 59. After re-evaluating his lifestyle, he made several changes. The wild, all-night parties were toned down significantly and in 1988, daughter Christie began to run the Playboy empire. The following year, he married Playmate of the Year Kimberley Conrad. The couple had two sons, Marston Glenn (born April 9, 1990) and Cooper Bradford (born September 4, 1991). The E! True Hollywood Story profile noted that the notorious Playboy Mansion had been transformed into a family-friendly homestead. After he and Conrad separated in 1998, Conrad moved into a house next door to the mansion. According to an update on Hefner's Twitter account on April 25, 2010, Conrad and her mother are moving to Reno in a new home to be closer to family.

Hefner then began to move an ever-changing coterie of young women into the Mansion, even dating up to seven girls at once; among them, Brande Roderick, Izabella St. James, Tina Marie Jordan, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, Rachael O'Neill, and Kendra Wilkinson. The reality television series The Girls Next Door depicted the lives of Madison, Wilkinson and Marquardt at the Playboy Mansion. In October 2008, all three girls made the choice to leave the mansion. Hefner was quick to rebound and soon began dating his new "Number One" girlfriend, Crystal Harris, along with 20-year-old identical twin models Kristina and Karissa Shannon. The relationship with the twins ended in January 2010. After an 11-year separation, Hefner filed for divorce from Conrad stating irreconcilable differences. Hefner has said that he only remained married to her for the sake of his children, and his youngest child had just turned 18. On December 24, 2010, Hefner presented an engagement ring to Harris, publicly announcing the proposal the following day.

Politics and philanthropy

The Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award was created by Christie Hefner "to honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for Americans."

He has donated and raised money for the Democratic Party.

In 1978 Hefner helped organize fund-raising efforts that led to the restoration of the Hollywood Sign. He hosted a gala fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion and personally contributed $27,000 (or 1/9th of the total restoration costs) by purchasing the letter Y in a ceremonial auction.

Hefner donated $100,000 to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts to create a course called "Censorship in Cinema", and $2 million to endow a chair for the study of American film.

Both through his charitable foundation and individually, Hefner also contributes to charities outside the sphere of politics and publishing, throwing fundraiser events for Much Love Animal Rescue, as well as Generation Rescue, a controversial autism campaign organization supported by Jenny McCarthy.

On April 26, 2010 Hefner donated the last $900,000 sought by a conservation group for a land purchase needed to stop the development of the famed vista of the Hollywood Sign.

See also

Bettie Page

References

Further reading

Watts, Steven (2008). Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-69059-7.

Miller, Russell (1985). Bunny: The Real Story of Playboy. London: Corgi. ISBN 0-03-063748-1.

St. James, Izabella (2006). Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion. Philadelphia: Running Press. ISBN 0-762-42739-6

Hefner, Veronika and Jurij Toplak (2009). Hefner, Hugh. In: Vile, John R., Hudson, David L., and Schultz, David Andrew (Eds.). Encyclopedia of the First Amendment. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, p. 564.

External links

Profile of Hefner from Playboy Enterprises corporate site

Hugh M. Hefner Foundation

Hugh Hefner: The Ultimate Lifestyle Entrepreneur (About.com Entrepreneurs)

Salon.com, "Brilliant Careers: Hugh Hefner", Salon.com, December 28, 1999

WWE.com, World Wrestling Entertainment interviews Hugh Hefner (March 14, 2007)

Category:1926 births Category:Adult magazine publishers (people) Category:American sex industry businesspeople Category:American journalists Category:American magazine editors Category:American magazine founders Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:American pornographers Category:American socialites Category:Living people Category:American libertarians Category:Magazine founders Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Playboy Category:Polyamory Category:School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Category:University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign alumni Category:California Democrats Category:American billionaires

Name	Danny Boyle
Caption	Boyle in November 2008
Birth name	Daniel Boyle
Birth date	October 20, 1956
Birth place	Radcliffe, Lancashire, England, UK
Occupation	Director/Producer
Years active	1980–present
Awards	Academy Award for Best Director 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire

Daniel "Danny" Boyle (born 20 October 1956) is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for his work on films such as Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours. For Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle won numerous awards in 2008, including the Academy Award for Best Director. Boyle was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2008 Austin Film Festival, where he also introduced that year's AFF Audience Award Winner Slumdog Millionaire. On 17 June 2010, it was announced that he will be the artistic director for the 2012 Olympic games opening ceremony.

Early life and background

Boyle was born on 20 October 1956 in Radcliffe, Lancashire, into a working-class Irish Catholic family. His mother was from Ballinasloe in County Galway, and his father was born in England to an Irish family.

It was a very strict, Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years, I was supposed to be a priest and really, it was my mother's fondest wish that I would become one.

He studied at Thornleigh Salesian College in Bolton, and at Bangor University.

Boyle is a trustee of the UK-based, African arts charity Dramatic Need.

Career

Theatre

Upon leaving school he began his career at the Joint Stock Theatre Company, before moving onto the Royal Court Theatre in 1982 where he directed Genius by Howard Brenton and Saved by Edward Bond. He also directed five productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2011 he will direct Frankenstein for the National Theatre.

Television

In 1980 Boyle started working in television as a producer for BBC Northern Ireland where he produced, amongst other TV films, Alan Clarke's controversial Elephant before becoming a director on shows such as Arise And Go Now, Not Even God Is Wise Enough, For The Greater Good, Scout and two episodes of Inspector Morse. These were Masonic Mysteries, and Cherubim and Seraphim. He was also responsible for the BBC2 series Mr. Wroe's Virgins.

In between the films The Beach and 28 Days Later Boyle directed two TV movies for the BBC in 2001 - Vacuuming Completely Nude In Paradise and Strumpet.

Films

The first movie Boyle directed was Shallow Grave. and led to the production of Trainspotting, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. Working with writer John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald, Shallow Grave earned Boyle the Best Newcomer Award from the 1996 London Film Critics Circle.

Boyle's next project was an adaptation of the cult novel The Beach. Filmed in Thailand with Leonardo DiCaprio in a starring role, casting of the film led to a feud with Ewan McGregor, star of his first three films.

He also directed a short film Alien Love Triangle (starring Kenneth Branagh), and was intended to be one of three shorts within a feature film. However the project was cancelled after the two other shorts were made into feature films: Mimic starring Mira Sorvino and Impostor starring Gary Sinise.

In 2004 Boyle directed Millions, His next collaboration with Alex Garland

In 2008 he directed Slumdog Millionaire, the story of an impoverished child (Dev Patel) on the streets of Mumbai who competes on India's variant of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, for which Boyle won an Academy Award. The film won eight Academy Awards in total. "To be a film-maker...you have to lead. You have to be psychotic in your desire to do something. People always like the easy route. You have to push very hard to get something unusual, something different."

Recurring collaborators

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center; width:100%" |- style="vertical-align:bottom;" ! Actor/Technicians ! Shallow Grave ! Trainspotting ! A Life Less Ordinary ! The Beach ! 28 Days Later ! Millions ! 28 Weeks Later ! Sunshine ! Slumdog Millionaire ! 127 Hours |- ! Ewan McGregor | | | | | | | | | | |- ! Christopher Eccleston | | | | | | | | | | |- ! Keith Allen | | | | | | | | | | |- ! Peter Mullan | | | | | | | | | | |- ! Robert Carlyle | | | | | | | | | | |- ! Jukka Hiltunen | | | | | | | | | | |- ! Cillian Murphy | | | | | | | | | | |- ! Rose Byrne | | | | | | | | | | |- ! A.R.Rahman | | | | | | | | | | |- |}

Awards

, Toronto, Canada, September 10, 2008]]

Shallow Grave

1995 Angers European First Film Festival

*Audience Award, feature film.

*Best Screenplay, feature film.

*Liberation Advertisement Award.

1995 BAFTA - Alexander Korda Award for best British film (shared with Andrew Macdonald).

Filmography

;Released films

{|class="wikitable" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1994 | Shallow Grave | Director | |- | 1996 | Trainspotting | Director | |- | 1997 | A Life Less Ordinary | Director | |- | 2000 | The Beach | Director | |- | 2002 | 28 Days Later | Director | |- | 2004 | Millions | Director | |- | 2007 | Sunshine | Director | |- | 2007 | 28 Weeks Later | Producer | |- | 2008 | Slumdog Millionaire | Director | Academy Award for Best DirectorBAFTA Award for Best DirectionBritish Independent Film Award for Best DirectorBroadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorChicago Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorDallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorDetroit Film Critics Society Award for Best DirectorDirectors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing in a Feature FilmEuropean Film Awards - Audience AwardFlorida Film Critics Circle Award for Best DirectorGolden Globe Award for Best DirectorHouston Film Critics Society Award for Best DirectorLondon Film Critics' Circle Award for Best British Director of the YearLos Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorNew York Film Critics Online Award for Best DirectorOklahoma Film Critics Circle Award for Best DirectorPhoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best DirectorSan Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best DirectorSatellite Award for Best DirectorSoutheastern Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorSt. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Award for Best DirectorToronto International Film Festival People's Choice AwardWashington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Director |- | 2010 | 127 Hours | Writer, Director | Utah Film Critics Association Award for Best Director |}

;Planned films 28 Months Later (TBA) Ponte Tower (TBA) Trainspotting sequel (TBA) Paani

Further reading

References

External links

Interview about Slumdog Millionaire on MyNorthwest.com

Podcast with Danny Boyle on Intent.com

Slumdog Millionaire

Category:1956 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Bangor University Category:Best Director Academy Award winners Category:English Roman Catholics Category:English film directors Category:English film producers Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English television directors Category:People from Radcliffe

Caption	Radcliffe at December Boys premiere in 2007
Birth name	Daniel Jacob Radcliffe
Birth date	July 23, 1989
Birth place	Hammersmith, London,United Kingdom
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1999 – present
Networth	$60 million (2010)

Daniel Jacob Radcliffe (born 23 July 1989) is an English actor who rose to prominence playing the titular character in the Harry Potter film series adapted from the book series of the same name. Radcliffe has also made appearances in stage productions and a number of TV shows and films, including the ITV film My Boy Jack and the stage show Equus, for which he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.

Early life

Radcliffe was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Hammersmith, West London, England, Radcliffe's mother is Jewish and a native of Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex (her family's surname was anglicised from "Gershon"); his father, originally from Northern Ireland, is Protestant.

Radcliffe first expressed a desire to act at the age of five. In December 1999, aged ten, he realised his ambition and made his acting debut in the BBC's televised two-part adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield, portraying the title character as a young boy.

Radcliffe was educated at two independent schools for boys: Sussex House School, a day school in Cadogan Square in Chelsea in London, and the City of London School, a day school in the City of London, where he studied for AS levels.

Career

Radcliffe was asked to audition for the role of Harry Potter in 2000 by producer David Heyman, while in attendance at a London production of Stones in His Pockets. In August of that year, after several auditions, he was selected to play the role in the big-budget adaptation of the award-winning book series by J.K. Rowling. Rowling herself also approved of this selection: "Having seen Dan Radcliffe's screen test I don't think Chris Columbus could have found a better Harry". Radcliffe made his film debut in 2001 with a supporting role alongside Pierce Brosnan in The Tailor of Panama, and the first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released later that year.

Radcliffe starred in the seven subsequent Harry Potter film adaptations: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I and II (in 2010 and 2011). Radcliffe has said that he was "very happy" with the decision to split the last film into two parts as he does not believe anything should be cut from the book. Part I was released 19 November 2010.

At the age of 16, Radcliffe became the youngest non-royal ever to have an individual portrait in Britain's National Portrait Gallery. On 13 April 2006, his portrait, drawn by Stuart Pearson Wright, was unveiled as part of a new exhibition opening at London's Royal National Theatre, then moved to the National Portrait Gallery where it resides. Radcliffe was 14 at the time of the portrait's creation.

In 2006, he began to make the transition from child to adult actor, appearing in the television series Extras as a parody of himself, as well as filming the independent Australian drama December Boys. The film, which was filmed in six weeks was released in North America by Warner Bros. on 14 September 2007. Radcliffe worked with a language coach for six months to perfect an Australian accent. Next, During the summer of 2007, he filmed the ITV drama My Boy Jack, based upon the true story of Rudyard Kipling's son's death in battle during the First World War, which aired in the United Kingdom on Remembrance Day 2007 and premiered in the United States on 20 April 2008. In the film, Radcliffe played Jack Kipling, a World War I-era soldier and the son of author Rudyard Kipling. About the role, he stated: "For many people my age, the First World War is just a topic in a history book. But I've always been fascinated by the subject and think it's as relevant today as it ever was."

On 9 July 2007, Radcliffe and fellow Harry Potter cast members Rupert Grint and Emma Watson left imprints of their hands, feet, and wands in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

It was announced in the New York Times on 28 December 2007 that Radcliffe will portray deceased photojournalist Dan Eldon in an upcoming biopic entitled The Journey is the Destination. Eldon's mother, Kathy, personally chose Radcliffe over other actors such as Heath Ledger, Ryan Phillippe and Joaquin Phoenix, noting Radcliffe's "puckishness, sense of humour and energy" as similar to her son's. Radcliffe will also star in the 2011 adaptation of The Woman in Black, a 1983 ghost story by Susan Hill, which has previously been filmed as a made-for-television movie and adapted for the stage.

Stage career

In 2002, Radcliffe appeared as a guest in the West End production The Play What I Wrote directed by Kenneth Branagh (who appeared with Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as Professor Lockhart). Radcliffe's performance received positive reviews, as critics were impressed by the nuance and depth of his against-type role. Radcliffe's last performance in Equus took place on 9 June 2007. The production then transferred to Broadway in New York City opening on 25 September 2008, where Radcliffe reprised the role of Alan Strang along with Richard Griffiths, who was also in the Equus production in London and played Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter series. Prior to the play's opening he stated that he was nervous about repeating the role on Broadway because he considered American audiences more discerning than those in London.

It was reported that Radcliffe will play J. Pierrepont Finch in a 2011 Broadway revival of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Personal life

Radcliffe has stated that he is an atheist and also "very proud of being Jewish." He is a fan of punk rock music and admires a diverse lineup of bands, from Sex Pistols and The Libertines to Arctic Monkeys and more recently Hard-Fi, Jack Peñate and Kate Nash. His favourite band is The Hold Steady. In November 2007, Radcliffe published several poems under the pen name Jacob Gershon.

Radcliffe appeared on the Sunday Times Rich List in 2006, which estimated his personal fortune to be GB£14 million, making him one of the richest young people in the United Kingdom. He made another appearance on the British young people's rich list in 2007, which placed him as the 33rd richest young person in Britain with an estimated wealth of £17 million. He is reported to have earned £1 million for the first Potter film, around £5.6 million for the fourth film, and more than £8 million for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In 2010, Radcliffe was reported to have personal assets of £28.5 million, making him richer than Princes William and Harry. Despite his wealth, Radcliffe has said he does not have expensive tastes. His main expense is buying books: "I read a lot."

Radcliffe has been a supporter of various charities, including Demelza House Children's Hospice in Sittingbourne, Kent, to which he has requested fans make donations in lieu of birthday presents. In February 2005, Radcliffe put a "Hogwarts Crew" T-shirt which he autographed up for auction to help raise money for the Tsunami victims in 2005. His T-shirt was part of the Tsunami Clothes Auction that raised money for the Rebuilding Sri Lanka Organization. He wore the T-shirt during the making of the film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. These T-shirts were only issued to members of the cast and crew. His shirt raised £520.

In a 2009 issue of Attitude, Radcliffe announced his support for the Liberal Democrats. Radcliffe also positions himself as a gay rights activist by speaking out against homophobia and filmed a public service announcement for The Trevor Project promoting awareness of gay teen suicide prevention. He has also contributed financially to The Trevor Project.

He has become a keen follower of cricket and attended the first England v India test match on his 18th birthday. He queued up for the autographs of Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar and English opening batsman Andrew Strauss at the end of the final day's play. Regarding this, he stated:

I was telling people in a recent interview that I had a dream that Andrew Strauss was chasing me with a cricket bat. It was during the West Indies series when Andrew wasn’t doing too well and an Australian who was listening in piped up and said, "I wouldn’t worry about Strauss, if he had a swing at you at the moment he’d probably miss."

Radcliffe has stated that he suffers from a mild form of the neurological disorder dyspraxia.

Stage and screen credits

Films

{| class="wikitable sortable" ! Year ! Title ! Role ! class="unsortable" | Notes |- |2001 |The Tailor of Panama |Mark Pendel |Supporting role |- |2001 |Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |rowspan="5"|Harry Potter |Released as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the US and India |- |2002 |Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | |- |2004 |Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | |- |2005 |Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | |- |2007 |Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | |- |2007 |December Boys |Maps | |- |2009 |Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince |rowspan="3"| Harry Potter | |- |2010 |Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 | |- |2011 |Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 |Post-production |- |2011 |The Journey is the Destination |Dan Eldon |In production |- |2011 |The Woman in Black |Arthur Kipps |Filming |}

Television

1999: David Copperfield as young David Copperfield

2005: Foley and McColl: This Way Up as Traffic Warden/Himself

2006: Extras as Boy Scout/Himself

2007: My Boy Jack as Jack Kipling

2010: The Simpsons as Edmund, in Treehouse of Horror XXI

2010: QI as himself, in the episode "Christmas Special: Hocus Pocus"

Stage

2002: The Play What I Wrote as Guest (Wyndham's Theatre)

2007: Equus as Alan Strang (Gielgud Theatre)

2008: Equus as Alan Strang (Broadhurst Theatre)

2011: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Al Hirschfeld Theatre)

Awards

Nominations

2010

Best Male Performance (MTV Movie Awards)

Global Superstar (MTV Movie Awards)

Iconic Movie Actor (J-14's Teen Icon Awards)

2009

Outstanding Actor in a Play (Drama Desk Awards)

Distinguished Performance Award (Drama League Award)

2008

Best Kiss (with Katie Leung; MTV Movie Awards)

Best Performance by a Young Actor (Saturn Awards)

Best Actor (Empire Award)

2006

Best Young Actor (Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards)

Actor of the Year (AOL Moviefone Moviegoer Awards)

Best Performance by a Young Actor (Saturn Awards)

Best Hero (MTV Movie Awards)

Best On-Screen Team (with Emma Watson and Rupert Grint; MTV Movie Awards)

2005

Best Performance by a Young Actor (Saturn Awards)

Best Young Actor (Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards)

2003

Best Performance by a Young Actor (Saturn Awards)

Best Acting Ensemble (Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards)

Most Unforgettable Scene (for the scene "Harry battles the Basilisk" in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; American Moviegoer Awards)

2001

Best Performance by a Young Actor (Saturn Awards)

Best Young Performer (Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards)

Breakthrough Male Performance (MTV Movie Awards)

Best Newcomer (Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards)

Best Debut (with Emma Watson and Rupert Grint; Sony Ericsson Empire Awards)

Outstanding Actor (American Moviegoer Awards)

Best Performance in a Feature Film: Leading Young Actor (Young Artist Awards)

Best Ensemble in a Feature Film (with Emma Watson and Rupert Grint; Young Artist Awards)

Wins

2009

Favorite Leading Actor in a Broadway Play (Broadway.com Audience Award)

Favorite Breakthrough Performance (Broadway.com Audience Award)

2008

Dewynters London Newcomer of the Year (Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Awards, UK)

2007

Best Male Performance (National Movie Awards, UK)

2006

Best Actor (Cine Awards, Belgium)

Best Male Film Star (Gold): Otto Awards, 2006

Best Actor/Movie (SyFy Portal's SyFy Genre Awards)

2005

Best Young Actor (SyFy Portal's SyFy Genre Awards)

2004

Top 10 Child Stars (RTL Television, Germany)

Best Breakthrough Male Actor (Star Channel Star Awards, Japan)

Best Junior Achiever (for viewers' favorite under-16 guest on the show Relly Awards)

Young Talent of the Year (ITV Celebrity Awards)

Best Movie Actor (K-Zone Kids Awards, Philippines)

Best Film Star/Actor (Dutch Kids Choice Awards)

2003

Best Young Actor (SyFy Portal's SyFy Genre Awards)

Best Actor (Roadshow Cinema Grand Prix Awards, Japan)

2002

Person of the Year (Time For Kids)

Targa d'Oro ("Gold Plate", David di Donatello Awards)

Outstanding New Talent (Sir James Carreras Award for the Variety Club Showbusiness Awards)

2001

Male Youth Discovery of the Year (Hollywood Women's Press Club)

See also

List of Harry Potter films cast members

References

Further reading

Daniel Radcliffe (2004, ISBN 1-58415-250-8)

Daniel Radcliffe: No Ordinary Wizard (2005, ISBN 1-4169-1390-4)

External links

DanRadcliffe.co.uk Unofficial site; works directly with Warner Bros., Radcliffe's publicist, and Radcliffe's family

DanRadcliffe.com Unofficial site; works directly with Warner Bros., Radcliffe's publicist, and Radcliffe's family

Category:1989 births Category:English atheists Category:English child actors Category:English film actors Category:English Jews Category:English people of Northern Ireland descent Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish atheists Category:Living people Category:Actors from London Category:Old Citizens (City of London School) Category:People from Hammersmith Category:LGBT rights activists from the United Kingdom

Bgcolour	orange
Name	Annie Leibovitz
Birthname	Anna-Lou Leibovitz
Birthdate	October 02, 1949
Birthplace	Waterbury, Connecticut, U.S.
Nationality	American
Field	Photography
Training	San Francisco Art Institute
Signature	Leibovitzbook1.jpg

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz (; born October 2, 1949) is an American portrait photographer.

Early life and education

Born in Westbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Russian Jews. Her father's parents had emigrated from Romania. Her mother, Marilyn Leibovitz, was a modern dance instructor; her father, Sam Leibovitz, was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. The family moved frequently with her father's duty assignments, and she took her first pictures when he was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War.

In high school, she became interested in various artistic endeavours, and began to write and play music. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied painting. For several years, she continued to develop her photography skills while working various jobs, including a stint on a kibbutz in Amir, Israel, for several months in 1969. Throughout her life on the Kibbutz, she learned to take Jewish concepts and apply them to her photographs.

Career

Rolling Stone magazine

When Leibovitz returned to the United States in 1970, she started her career as staff photographer, working for the just launched Rolling Stone magazine. In 1973, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz chief photographer of Rolling Stone, a job she would hold for 10 years. Leibovitz worked for the magazine until 1983, and her intimate photographs of celebrities helped define the Rolling Stone look.

Photographers such as Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson influenced her during her time at the San Francisco Art Institute. "Their style of personal reportage - taken in a graphic way - was what we were taught to emulate."

John Lennon 1980

On December 8, 1980, Leibovitz had a photo shoot with John Lennon for Rolling Stone, promising him he would make the cover. After she had initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone, which is what Rolling Stone wanted, Lennon insisted that both he and Yoko Ono be on the cover. Leibovitz then tried to re-create something like the kissing scene from the Double Fantasy album cover, a picture that she loved. She had John remove his clothes and curl up next to Yoko. Leibovitz recalls, "What is interesting is she said she'd take her top off and I said, 'Leave everything on' — not really preconceiving the picture at all. Then he curled up next to her and it was very, very strong. You couldn't help but feel that she was cold and he looked like he was clinging on to her. I think it was amazing to look at the first Polaroid and they were both very excited. John said, 'You've captured our relationship exactly. Promise me it'll be on the cover.' I looked him in the eye and we shook on it." Leibovitz was the last person to professionally photograph Lennon—he was shot and killed five hours later.

The photograph was subsequently re-created in 2009 by John and Yoko's son Sean Lennon, posing with his girlfriend Kemp Muhl, with male/female roles reversed (Sean clothed, Kemp naked), and by Henry Bond and Sam Taylor-Wood in their YBA pastiche October 26, 1993.

Other projects

, 2008]]

In the 1980s, Leibovitz's new style of lighting and use of bold colors and poses, got her the position with Vanity Fair magazine. Leibovitz photographed celebrities for an international advertising campaign for American Express charge cards, winning her a Clio award in 1987.

In 1991, Leibovitz mounted an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. She was the second living portraitist and first woman to show there. Leibovitz had also been made Commander des orde des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.

Also in 1991, Leibovitz emulated Margaret Bourke-White's feat, when she mounted one of the eagle gargoyles on the 61st floor of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, where she photographed the dancer David Parsons cavorting on another eagle gargoyle. Noted Life photographer and picture editor John Loengard made a gripping photo of Leibovitz at the climax of her danger. (Loengard was photographing Leibovitz for the New York Times that day).

A major retrospective of Leibovitz's work was held at the Brooklyn Museum, Oct. 2006 - Jan. 2007. The retrospective was based on her book, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005, and included many of her professional (celebrity) photographs as well as numerous personal photographs of her family, children, and partner Susan Sontag. This show, which was expanded to include three of the official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, then went on the road for seven stops. It was on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from October 2007 to January 2008, and at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco from March 2008 to May 2008. In February 2009 the exhibition was moved to Berlin, Germany. The show included 200 photographs. At the exhibition, Leibovitz said that she doesn't have two lives, career and personal, but has one where assignments and personal pictures are all part of her works. This exhibition and her talk focused on her personal photographs and life. In 2007, The BBC misrepresented a portrait shooting by Leibovitz of Queen Elizabeth II to take the queen's official picture for her state visit to Virginia. This was filmed for the BBC documentary A Year with the Queen. A promotional trailer for the film showed the Queen reacting angrily to Leibovitz's suggestion ("less dressy") that she remove her tiara, then a scene of the Queen walking down a corridor, telling an aide "I'm not changing anything. I've had enough dressing like this, thank you very much." The BBC later apologised and admitted that the sequence of events had been misrepresented, as the Queen was in fact walking to the sitting in the second scene. This led to a BBC scandal and a shake-up of ethics training. See The Tiaragate Affair. In 2007, the Walt Disney Company hired her to do a series of photographs with celebrities in various roles and scenes for Disney Parks "Year of a Million Dreams" campaign.

Leibovitz claims she never liked the word "celebrity". "I've always been more interested in what they do than who they are, I hope that my photographs reflect that." She tries to receive a little piece of each subjects personality in the photos. The photograph, and subsequently released behind-the-scenes photographs, show Cyrus without a top, her bare back exposed but her front covered with a bedsheet. The photo shoot was taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz. The full photograph was published with an accompanying story on The New York Times' website on April 27, 2008. On April 29, 2008, The New York Times clarified that though the pictures left an impression that she was bare-breasted, Cyrus was wrapped in a bedsheet and was actually not topless. Some parents expressed outrage at the nature of the photograph, which a Disney spokesperson described as "a situation [that] was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines."

Archive

Since 1977, Leibovitz licensing images have been represented by Contact Press Images, a photojournalism agency based in New York City. She ceased to be represented by Jim Moffat at A Corporation for Art & Commerce in 2009.

Personal life

Leibovitz had a close romantic relationship with noted writer and essayist Susan Sontag. They met in 1989, when both had already established notability in their careers. Leibovitz has suggested that Sontag mentored her and constructively criticized her work.

After Sontag's death in 2004, Newsweek published an article about Leibovitz that made reference to her decade-plus relationship with Sontag, stating that "The two first met in the late '80s, when Leibovitz photographed her for a book jacket. They never lived together, though they each had an apartment within view of the other's."

Neither Leibovitz nor Sontag had ever previously publicly disclosed whether the relationship was familial, a friendship, or sexual in nature. However, when Leibovitz was interviewed for her 2006 book A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005, she said the book told a number of stories, and that "with Susan, it was a love story."

In the preface to the book, she speaks in greater detail about her romantic/intellectual relationship with Sontag, briefly discussing a book they were working on together and describes how assembling A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005 was part of the grieving process after Sontag's death. The book and accompanying show include many photographs of Sontag throughout their life together, including several on her deathbed.

Leibovitz acknowledged that she and Sontag were romantically involved. When asked why she used terms like "companion" to describe Sontag, instead of more specific ones like "partner" or "lover," Leibovitz finally said that "lover" was fine with her. She later repeated the assertion in stating to the San Francisco Chronicle: "Call us 'lovers'. I like 'lovers.' You know, 'lovers' sounds romantic. I mean, I want to be perfectly clear. I love Susan."

Leibovitz is Jewish and nonobservant. Asked if being Jewish is important to her, Leibovitz replied, "I'm not a practicing Jew, but I feel very Jewish."

Children

Leibovitz has three children: the eldest, Sarah Cameron Leibovitz (b. October 2001), was born when Leibovitz was 51 years old. Her twins Susan and Samuelle were born to a surrogate mother in May 2005. She put up as collateral, not only several houses, but the rights to all of her photographs. The New York Times noted “one of the world’s most successful photographers essentially pawned every snap of the shutter she had made or will make until the loans are paid off.” In a follow-up article, the Times explores why an artist of her standing could be in such financial straits, despite a $50 million archive. They cite a "long history of less than careful financial dealings," and "a recent series of personal issues." The latter include the recent loss of her father, her mother, her companion (Susan Sontag), the addition of two children to her family, and the controversial renovation of three properties in Greenwich Village. In early September 2009, an Associated Press story quoted legal experts as saying that filing for bankruptcy reorganization might offer Leibovitz her best chance to control and direct the disposition of her assets to satisfy debts. On September 11, Art Capital Group withdrew its lawsuit against Leibovitz, and extended the due date for repayment of the $24 million loan. Under the agreement, Leibovitz retains control over her work, and will be the "exclusive agent in the sale of her real property and copyrights."

In March, 2010, Colony Capital concluded a new financing and marketing agreement with Leibovitz, paying off Art Capital and removing or reducing the risks of Leibovitz losing her artistic and real estate assets.

In April 2010 Brunswick Capital Partners filed suit against Leibovitz, claiming that they are owed several hundred thousand dollars for helping her restructure her debt.

Examples of Leibovitz's photographs

Vanity Fair cover photo, 2008]] John Lennon and Yoko Ono for the Jan. 22, 1981 Rolling Stone cover, shot the day of Lennon's death. Linda Ronstadt in a red slip, on her bed, reaching for a glass of water in a 1976 cover story for Rolling Stone magazine. Demi Moore has been the subject of two highly publicized Vanity Fair covers taken by Leibovitz: More Demi Moore (Aug. 1991) featuring Moore pregnant and nude, and Demi's Birthday Suit (Aug 1992), showing Moore nude with a suit painted on her body. Fleetwood Mac for a 1977 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood are shown lying together, as are Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham at the opposite end of the bed. John McVie is shown reading Playboy magazine. Whoopi Goldberg lying in a bathtub full of milk, shot from above. Christo, fully wrapped so the viewer must take the artist's word that Christo is actually under the wrapping. David Cassidy on the Rolling Stone cover depicting him naked from his head to his waist. Dolly Parton vamping for the camera while Arnold Schwarzenegger flexes his biceps behind her. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, as The Blues Brothers, with their faces painted blue. Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson, both nude, with a fully-clothed Tom Ford, for the cover of Vanity Fair's March 2006 Hollywood Issue. Queen Elizabeth II on occasion of her state visit in United States in 2007. Jackie and Joan Collins in a limo, Los Angeles 1987. Sting in the desert, covered in mud to blend in with the scenery. Closeup portrait of Pete Townshend framed by his bleeding hand dripping real blood down the side of his face. "Fire" portrait and caption "Patti Smith Catches Fire". Cyndi Lauper, She's So Unusual and True Colors album covers Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A. album cover. Gisele Bündchen and LeBron James on the April 2008 cover of Vogue America.

Miley Cyrus' Vanity Fair photo in which the child star appeared semi-nude, leading to a controversy.

Michael Jackson twice for the cover of the Vanity Fair magazine, including other additional photographs of him which were not featured on the cover of the magazine.

Bill Gates for the cover of Gates' book "The Road Ahead".

Family of Barack Obama in the White House. Johnny Depp and Kate Moss at the Royalton Hotel, New York in 1994. A nude Moss laying on a bed while fully clothed Depp is lying between her legs, covering her abdomen.

Bibliography

Photographs

Photographs 1970–1990

"Dancers: Photographs by Annie Leibovitz"

"White Oak Dance Project: Photographs by Annie Leibovitz"

Olympic Portraits

Women

American Music

A Photographer’s Life 1990–2005 (catalog for a travelling exhibit that debuted at the Brooklyn Museum in October 2006)

Annie Leibovitz: At Work

References

External links

Leibovitz sued by photographer for copyright infringement. BBC News, Sep 6, 2009.

Contact Press Images

A Photographer´s Life ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

NPR's interview with Leibovitz, All Things Considered, October 3, 2006

October 17, 2006 Interview with Tom Ashbrook on NPR’s On Point.

Interview by Michael Krasny on KQED Forum, October 26, 2006

1 Nov 06 San Francisco Chronicle Interview

Review of Leibovitz's American Music exhibit at the Austin Museum of Art in Fotophile Magazine

Annie Leibovitz's thoughts on Earth Day 2006

BBC Offers Apologies For Showing Film Of Angry Queen

Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work

David J. Marcou's Smithsonian article of February 2008, pp. 10–12, Gaga Over a Gargoyle,covering John Loengard's gripping photo of Annie Leibovitz photographing atop an eagle gargoyle on the 61st floor of New York's Chrysler Building in 1991.

Category:1949 births Category:American photographers Category:Fashion photographers Category:Photographers from New York Category:Lesbian artists Category:LGBT Jews Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:LGBT parents Category:American Jews Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:Living people Category:People from Westport, Connecticut Category:Portrait photographers Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni Category:People from Greenwich Village, New York Category:Military brats Category:Women photographers

Name	Amy Poehler
Caption	Poehler at the 2008 premiere of Baby Mama
Birthname	Amy Meredith Poehler
Birth date	September 16, 1971
Birth place	Newton, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Actress/Comedienne/Writer
Yearsactive	1977–present
Spouse	Will Arnett (2003 – present; 2 children)

Amy Meredith Poehler (; born September 16, 1971) is an American actress and comedian. She was a cast member on the NBC television entertainment show Saturday Night Live from 2001 to 2008. In 2004, she starred in the film Mean Girls with Tina Fey, with whom she worked again in Baby Mama in 2008. She is currently the lead of NBC's comedy Parks and Recreation. She has been nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance on Saturday Night Live, and once for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in Parks & Recreation.

Early life

Poehler was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts, the daughter of Eileen and William Poehler, both teachers. A 1993 graduate of Boston College, Poehler was a member of America's oldest collegiate improv comedy troupe, "My Mother's Fleabag".

Beginning with the 2004–05 season, she co-anchored "Weekend Update" with Tina Fey, replacing the newly departed Jimmy Fallon. In a TV Guide interview, Fey said that with Poehler co-anchoring, there now is "double the sexual tension." When Fey left after the 2005-06 season to devote time to the sitcom she created, 30 Rock, Seth Meyers joined Poehler at the anchor desk. Poehler was nominated for a 2008 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Comedy Series, the first SNL cast member recognized in this category. She was heavily favored to win by many critics, but ultimately lost to Jean Smart. She was nominated once again in 2009, but lost to Kristen Chenoweth. On September 13, 2008, the SNL season premiere opened with Fey and Poehler as Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, respectively, performing a "joint political campaign spot."

It was officially announced on September 16, 2008 that Poehler would be leaving SNL in October due to the birth of her child. On the October 25, 2008 episode, it was announced by Weekend Update co-anchor Seth Meyers, who anchored the segment alone, "Amy Poehler is not here because she is having a baby", to wild applause from the audience. At the end of Weekend Update, special guest Maya Rudolph and current cast member Kenan Thompson sang a custom rendition of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" for Poehler, changing the words: "We love you Amy, and we just can't wait to meet your baby!" Meyers signed off: "For Weekend Update, I'm Seth Meyers - we love you Amy!" Poehler returned to the show on November 3, 2008, during the "SNL Presidential Bash '08", "hosting" as Hillary Clinton. The Bash was pre-taped from scenes shot between September and October. Her return to SNL after her pregnancy was on December 6, 2008, where she stayed for two weeks. During "Weekend Update", on December 13, she thanked her family, friends, and fans for the continued support and announced that it would be her last show. On April 18, 2009, a Saturday Night Live special, "The Best of Amy Poehler", aired. Poehler returned for Weekend Update (signing off with "...and he's Seth Meyers") and joined the "chorus" for Will Ferrell's "Goodnight Saigon" (along with the SNL cast and Tom Hanks, Maya Rudolph, Norm MacDonald, Artie Lange, Anne Hathaway, and Green Day) on the SNL season finale on May 16, 2009.

Poehler returned to the Weekend Update desk in the fall of 2009 with Meyers, for two WU Thursday episodes, which led directly into Parks and Recreation. Poehler also returned to Saturday Night Live for a special Mother's Day episode on May 8, 2010, hosted by Betty White.

Poehler returned to Saturday Night Live on September 25, 2010 to host the Season 36 opening episode with performer Katy Perry. She returned once again for the Saturday Night Live special, "The Women of SNL". The special aired on November 1, 2010.

Parks and Recreation

In July 2008, Variety reported that Poehler was in final negotiations to star in a series by writers Greg Daniels and Mike Schur, set to air on Thursdays before The Office, starting January 2009 on NBC. On July 21, 2008, NBC officially announced Poehler's new series, Parks and Recreation, saying the project would not be a direct spin-off of The Office, as previously speculated.

Poehler joined an ensemble cast including Aziz Ansari, Rashida Jones, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, Paul Schneider and Nick Offerman. Poehler plays Deputy Director of the Parks Department, Leslie Knope, in the fictional city of Pawnee, Indiana. The show's second season has been well received by critics. On January 29, 2010, NBC announced that it had renewed Parks and Recreation for a third season, which will premiere January 20, 2011 with a new time slot at 9.30/8.30c. Poehler was featured in The Advocate for her role in the show.

Film career and other work

Poehler has appeared in the films Wet Hot American Summer, Mean Girls, , , Blades of Glory, Envy, Shrek the Third, Mr. Woodcock, and Hamlet 2. She is producing a digital series with two of her friends, Meredith Walker and Amy Miles, called Smart Girls at the Party, available through ON Networks. The show is focused on interviews with young women who are "changing the world by being themselves". The first season of 'Smart Girls at the Party' premiered online November 17, 2008, with Mattel's Barbie signed on as the lead sponsor. and Amy Poehler at the New York premiere of Baby Mama at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.]] She appeared in various comedy segments on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, often playing her recurring role as Andy Richter's little sister Stacy, and as a recurring character in two episodes of the college dramedy Undeclared. She appears in the film Southland Tales, which premiered on May 21, 2006 at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. In 2008, she appeared in Horton Hears a Who!, Hamlet 2, Baby Mama, and Spring Breakdown. She has also co-created an animated series for Nickelodeon called The Mighty B!, about Bessie Higgenbottom, a "sweet, merit-badge-obsessed girl scout", to which she lends her vocal talents. In 2009, Poehler earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Series.

Personal life

Poehler married Will Arnett on August 29, 2003, of the Fox comedy Arrested Development, and had a recurring role in the series as the nameless wife of Arnett's character George Oscar "G.O.B." Bluth II. Poehler and Arnett also played a quasi-incestuous brother-sister ice skating team in the 2007 film Blades of Glory, and appeared together in Horton Hears a Who!, On Broadway, Spring Breakdown, and Monsters vs. Aliens, along with Arnett having a guest appearance on Poehler's NBC comedy Parks and Recreation. On October 25, 2008, Poehler gave birth to Archibald William Emerson "Archie" Arnett, just hours before the Saturday Night Live telecast. Poehler gave birth to her second son, Abel James Arnett, on August 6, 2010. Abel weighed in at 7 lbs., 13 oz. The family live in New York City and have two dogs, Puzzle and Suki.

Filmography

]]

Notable characters on SNL

Amber, a one-legged hypoglycemic reality show contestant.

Betty Caruso, Bronx Beat co-host (opposite Maya Rudolph).

Kaitlin, the excitable preteen titular character of Kaitlin and Rick (opposite Horatio Sanz).

Netti Bo Dance, a frequent patient at the Appalachian Emergency Room

Sally Needler, half of The Needlers, "the couple that should be divorced" (opposite Seth Meyers).

Zoe Anderton, the pun loving, David Beckham-obsessed Spy Glass co-host (opposite Seth Meyers).

Impressions

Poehler has impersonated Dakota Fanning, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Sharon Osbourne, Britney Spears, Paula Abdul, Rosie O'Donnell, Kelly Ripa, Ann Coulter, Madonna, Avril Lavigne, Sharon Stone, Nancy Grace, Michael Jackson, Lindsay Lohan, Christian Siriano, Peter Ostrum, Mr. Six, Tonya Harding, Dennis Kucinich, Fergie, Judy Garland, J. K. Rowling, Kim Jong-il, Jenna Bush, Katie Couric, Tinker Bell, and Rosie Perez.

Awards and nominations

References

External links

in 2009

Amy Poehler named one of Men's Vogue's 2008 Visionaries

TODAY talent are on People magazine annual list of 100, led by Applegate

Category:1971 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from Massachusetts Category:American film actors Category:American impressionists (entertainers) Category:American television actors Category:American television writers Category:American voice actors Category:Boston College alumni Category:ImprovOlympics Category:Late Night with Conan O'Brien Category:People from Middlesex County, Massachusetts Category:Second City alumni Category:Women comedians

Name	Alan R. Mulally
Birth name	Alan Roger Mulally
Birth date	August 04, 1945
Birth place	Oakland, California, USA
Residence	Dearborn, Michigan, USA
Spouse	Jane "Nikki" Connell
Children	5
Parents	Charles R. "Dick" MulallyLauraine Lizette Clark Mulally

Mulally was named the President and CEO of Ford Motor Company on September 5, 2006, succeeding William Clay Ford, Jr., who remained as Executive Chairman of the company's Board of Directors. Mulally was criticized for calling his Lexus LS430 the 'finest car in the world', just as Ford was about to announce his selection as CEO. William Clay Ford Jr. had been searching for his successor as Ford CEO for some time, with DaimlerChrysler's Dieter Zetsche and Carlos Ghosn of Renault/Nissan Motors both turning down the offer.

One of Mulally's first decisions at Ford was to bring back the Taurus nameplate. He said that he could not understand why the company previously scrapped the Taurus, which had been one of the company's best sellers until losing ground in the late 1990s.

Mulally took over "The Way Forward" restructuring plan at Ford to turn-around its massive losses and declining market share. Mulally's cost cutting initiatives led to the company's first profitable quarter in two years. Dividends to shareholders were also suspended.

In 2006, Mulally led the effort for Ford to borrow US$23.6 billion by mortgaging all of Ford's assets. Mulally said that he intended to use the money to finance a major overhaul and provide “a cushion to protect for a recession or other unexpected event." At the time the loan was interpreted as a sign of desperation, but is now widely credited with stabilizing Ford's financial position, compared to crosstown rivals General Motors and Chrysler, both of whom had gone bankrupt during the Automotive industry crisis of 2008–2009. Ford was the only one of the Detroit Three that did not ask for a government loan. While GM and Chrysler expect to be dramatically downsized as a result of bankruptcy, Ford is poised to emerge as the largest US automaker and shows signs of recovery. In May 2009, Ford chairman William Clay Ford, who hired Mulally, said that "Alan was the right choice [to be CEO], and it gets more right every day". Mulally also sold off Aston Martin and Volvo Cars, and reduced Ford's stake in Mazda. During hearings for government loans to Ford, he and other industry leaders were criticized for flying to Washington, D.C. in corporate jets. During a subsequent meeting, he traveled from Detroit to Washington by a Ford-built hybrid electric vehicle, while selling all but one of the company's corporate jets.

In 2008, Mulally earned a total compensation of $13,565,378, which included a base salary of $2,000,000, stock awards of $1,849,241, and option awards of $8,669,747. His total compensation decreased by 37.4% compared to 2007.

Due to his achievements at Ford, he was included in the 2009 Time 100 list. The entry, written by Steve Ballmer, says, "[Mulally] understands the fundamentals of business success as well as any business leader I know."

On February 2, 2009, WOOD-TV News in Grand Rapids reported that Mulally personally called Michael Snapper, a customer who recently chose to purchase a Ford Fusion Hybrid over the Toyota Prius that he originally intended to buy. He left a voicemail on Michael's mobile saying a personal thank you from the CEO.

Management style

Mulally negotiated four new agreements with United Auto Workers, which has brought down labor costs from $76/hour to $55/hour.

References

External links

Biography: Alan Mulally at Ford Motor Company

Alan Mulally's federal campaign contributions

Bring Back Alan

Category:Living people Category:1945 births Category:American manufacturing businesspeople Category:American Protestants Category:Chief executives in the automobile industry Category:Ford executives Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:MIT Sloan School of Management alumni Category:People in the automobile industry Category:People from Oakland, California Category:People from Lawrence, Kansas Category:People from Dearborn, Michigan Category:Sloan Fellows Category:University of Kansas alumni