Name	Academy Award
Caption	An Academy Award statuette
Description	Excellence in cinematic achievements
Presenter	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Country	United States
Year	May 16, 1929
Website	Oscars.org

The Academy Award (informally known as the Oscar) is an accolade by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent award ceremonies in the world and is televised live in more than 200 countries annually. It is also the oldest award ceremony in the media; its equivalents, the Grammy Awards (for music), Emmy Awards (for television), and Tony Awards (for theatre) are modeled after the Academy. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

The first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of the 1927/1928 film season. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. deMille. The 82nd Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best in film for 2009, was held on March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, with actors Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosting the ceremony. Opting for a younger face for the 83rd Academy Awards scheduled for February 27, 2011, younger Oscar-contending actors Anne Hathaway and James Franco were named as hosts in November 2010 by producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer.

History

The first awards were presented on May 16, 1929, at a private brunch at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post Academy Awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel. The cost of guest tickets for that night's ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other personalities of the filmmaking industry of the time for their works during the 1927–1928 period.

Winners had been announced three months earlier of their triumphs; however that was changed in the second ceremony of the Academy Awards in 1930. Since then and during the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11 pm on the night of the awards. A total of 302 actors have won Oscars in competitive acting categories or been awarded Honorary or Juvenile Awards.

The 1939 film Beau Geste is the only movie (non-documentary) that features as many as four Academy Award winners for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Susan Hayward, Broderick Crawford).

At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27, 1957, the Best Foreign Language Film category was introduced; until then, foreign language films were honored with the Special Achievement Award.

Oscar statuette

Design

Although there are seven other types of awards presented by the Academy (the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, the Scientific and Engineering Award, the Technical Achievement Award, the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation, and the Student Academy Award), the best known one is the Academy Award of Merit more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. Made of gold-plated britannium on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg) and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a crusader's sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes each represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.

MGM's art director Cedric Gibbons, one of the original Academy members, supervised the design of the award trophy by printing the design on a scroll. In need of a model for his statuette Gibbons was introduced by his then wife Dolores del Río to Mexican film director and actor Emilio "El Indio" Fernández. Reluctant at first, Fernández was finally convinced to pose nude to create what today is known as the "Oscar". Then, sculptor George Stanley (who also did the Muse Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl) sculpted Gibbons's design in clay and Sachin Smith cast the statuette in 92.5 percent tin and 7.5 percent copper and then gold-plated it. The only addition to the Oscar since it was created is a minor streamlining of the base. The original Oscar mold was cast in 1928 at the C.W. Shumway & Sons Foundry in Batavia, Illinois, which also contributed to casting the molds for the Vince Lombardi Trophy and Emmy Awards statuettes. Since 1983, approximately 50 Oscars are made each year in Chicago, Illinois by manufacturer R.S. Owens & Company.

In support of the American effort in World War II, the statuettes were made of plaster and were traded in for gold ones after the war had ended.

Naming

The root of the name Oscar is contested. One biography of Bette Davis claims that she named the Oscar after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson; one of the earliest mentions in print of the term Oscar dates back to a Time magazine article about the 1934 6th Academy Awards and to Bette Davis's receipt of the award in 1936. Walt Disney is also quoted as thanking the Academy for his Oscar as early as 1932. Another claimed origin is that the Academy's Executive Secretary, Margaret Herrick, first saw the award in 1931 and made reference to the statuette's reminding her of her "Uncle Oscar" (a nickname for her cousin Oscar Pierce). Columnist Sidney Skolsky was present during Herrick's naming and seized the name in his byline, "Employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar'". The trophy was officially dubbed the "Oscar" in 1939 by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Another legend reports that the Norwegian-American Eleanor Lilleberg, executive secretary to Louis B. Mayer, saw the first statuette and exclaimed, "It looks like King Oscar II!". At the end of the day she asked, "What should we do with Oscar, put him in the vault?" and the name stuck.

Ownership of Oscar statuettes

Since 1950, the statuettes have been legally encumbered by the requirement that neither winners nor their heirs may sell the statuettes without first offering to sell them back to the Academy for US$1. If a winner refuses to agree to this stipulation, then the Academy keeps the statuette. Academy Awards not protected by this agreement have been sold in public auctions and private deals for six-figure sums.

While the Oscar is under the ownership of the recipient, it is essentially not on the open market. The case of Michael Todd's grandson trying to sell Todd's Oscar statuette illustrates that there are some who do not agree with this idea. When Todd's grandson attempted to sell Todd's Oscar statuette to a movie prop collector, the Academy won the legal battle by getting a permanent injunction. Although Oscar sales transactions have been successful, some buyers have subsequently returned the statuettes to the Academy, which keeps them in its treasury.

Nomination

Since 2004, Academy Award nomination results have been announced to the public in late January. Prior to 2004, nomination results were announced publicly in early February.

Voters

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), a professional honorary organization, maintains a voting membership of 5,835 as of 2007.

Actors constitute the largest voting bloc, numbering 1,311 members (22 percent) of the Academy's composition. Votes have been certified by the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (and its predecessor Price Waterhouse) for the past 73 annual awards ceremonies.

All AMPAS members must be invited to join by the Board of Governors, on behalf of Academy Branch Executive Committees. Membership eligibility may be achieved by a competitive nomination or a member may submit a name based on other significant contribution to the field of motion pictures.

New membership proposals are considered annually. The Academy does not publicly disclose its membership, although as recently as 2007 press releases have announced the names of those who have been invited to join. The 2007 release also stated that it has just under 6,000 voting members. While the membership had been growing, stricter policies have kept its size steady since then.

Rules

Currently, according to Rules 2 and 3 of the official Academy Awards Rules, a film must open in the previous calendar year, from midnight at the start of January 1 to midnight at the end of December 31, in Los Angeles County, California, to qualify (except for the Best Foreign Language Film). For example, the 2010 Best Picture winner, The Hurt Locker, was actually first released in 2008, but did not qualify for the 2009 awards as it did not play its Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles until mid-2009, thus qualifying for the 2010 awards.

Rule 2 states that a film must be feature-length, defined as a minimum of 40 minutes, except for short subject awards, and it must exist either on a 35 mm or 70 mm film print or in 24 frame/s or 48 frame/s progressive scan digital cinema format with native resolution not less than 1280x720.

Producers must submit an Official Screen Credits online form before the deadline; in case it is not submitted by the defined deadline, the film will be ineligible for Academy Awards in any year. The form includes the production credits for all related categories. Then, each form is checked and put in a Reminder List of Eligible Releases.

In late December ballots and copies of the Reminder List of Eligible Releases are mailed to around 6000 active members. For most categories, members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees only in their respective categories (i.e. only directors vote for directors, writers for writers, actors for actors, etc.); there are some exceptions though in the case of certain categories, like Foreign Film, Documentary and Animated Feature Film in which movies are selected by special screening committees made up of member from all branches. In the special case of Best Picture, all voting members are eligible to select the nominees for that category. Foreign films must include English subtitles, and each country can only submit one film per year.

The members of the various branches nominate those in their respective fields while all members may submit nominees for Best Picture. The winners are then determined by a second round of voting in which all members are then allowed to vote in most categories, including Best Picture.

Ceremony

Telecast

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The major awards are presented at a live televised ceremony, most commonly in February or March following the relevant calendar year, and six weeks after the announcement of the nominees. It is the culmination of the film awards season, which usually begins during November or December of the previous year. This is an elaborate extravaganza, with the invited guests walking up the red carpet in the creations of the most prominent fashion designers of the day. Black tie dress is the most common outfit for men, although fashion may dictate not wearing a bow-tie, and musical performers sometimes do not adhere to this. (The artists who recorded the nominees for Best Original Song quite often perform those songs live at the awards ceremony, and the fact that they are performing is often used to promote the television broadcast).

The Academy Awards is televised live across the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), Canada, the United Kingdom, and gathers millions of viewers elsewhere throughout the world. The 2007 ceremony was watched by more than 40 million Americans. Other awards ceremonies (such as the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Grammys) are broadcast live in the East Coast but are on tape delay in the West Coast and might not air on the same day outside North America (if the awards are even televised). The Academy has for several years claimed that the award show has up to a billion viewers internationally, but this has so far not been confirmed by any independent sources. The Awards show was first televised on NBC in 1953. NBC continued to broadcast the event until 1960 when the ABC Network took over, televising the festivities through 1970, after which NBC resumed the broadcasts. ABC once again took over broadcast duties in 1976; it is under contract to do so through the year 2014.

After more than sixty years of being held in late March or early April, the ceremonies were moved up to late February or early March starting in 2004 to help disrupt and shorten the intense lobbying and ad campaigns associated with Oscar season in the film industry. Another reason was because of the growing TV ratings success of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, which would cut into the Academy Awards audience. The earlier date is also to the advantage of ABC, as it now usually occurs during the highly profitable and important February sweeps period. (Some years, the ceremony is moved into early March in deference to the Winter Olympics.) Advertising is somewhat restricted, however, as traditionally no movie studios or competitors of official Academy Award sponsors may advertise during the telecast. The Awards show holds the distinction of having won the most Emmys in history, with 47 wins and 195 nominations.

After many years of being held on Mondays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern/6:00 p.m Pacific, in 1999 the ceremonies were moved to Sundays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern/5:30 p.m. Pacific. The reasons given for the move were that more viewers would tune in on Sundays, that Los Angeles rush-hour traffic jams could be avoided, and that an earlier start time would allow viewers on the East Coast to go to bed earlier. For many years the film industry had opposed a Sunday broadcast because it would cut into the weekend box office.

On March 30, 1981, the awards ceremony was postponed for one day after the shooting of President Ronald Reagan and others in Washington DC.

In 1993 an In Memoriam section was introduced, honoring those who had made a significant contribution to cinema who had died in the preceding 12 months. This section has led to some criticism for omission of notable persons such as DeForest Kelley in 1999, Chuck Jones in 2002, Johnny Carson, Bob Denver and Don Adams in 2005,Leonard Schrader and Malcolm Arnold in 2007 and Gene Barry, Farrah Fawcett, Henry Gibson, Gale Storm, and Bea Arthur in 2010.

Since 2002, celebrities have been seen arriving at the Academy Awards in hybrid vehicles; during the telecast of the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio and former vice president Al Gore announced that ecologically intelligent practices had been integrated into the planning and execution of the Oscar presentation and several related events.

In 2010, the organizers of the Academy Awards announced that winners' acceptance speeches must not run past 45 seconds. This, according to organizer Bill Mechanic, was to ensure the elimination of what he termed "the single most hated thing on the show" - overly long and embarrassing displays of emotion.

Past ceremonies and ratings

The following is a listing of all Academy Awards ceremonies and ratings since 1929.

{| class="sortable wikitable" style="text-align: center" |- ! style="width:180px;"|Ceremony ! style="width:150px;"|Date ! style="width:280px;"|Best Picture winner ! style="width:180px;"|Length of broadcast ! style="width:150px;"|Number of viewers ! style="width:080px;"|Rating ! style="width:145px;"|Host(s) |- | 1st Academy Awards || May 16, 1929 || Wings || No broadcast || -- || -- || |- | 2nd Academy Awards || April 3, 1930 || The Broadway Melody || -- || -- || -- || William C. deMille |- | 3rd Academy Awards || November 5, 1930 || All Quiet on the || -- || -- || -- || Conrad Nagel |- | 4th Academy Awards || || Cimarron || -- || -- || -- || Lawrence Grant |- | 5th Academy Awards || November 18, 1932 || Grand Hotel || -- || -- || -- || Lionel Barrymore, Conrad Nagel |- | 6th Academy Awards || March 16, 1934 || Cavalcade || -- || -- || -- || Will Rogers |- | 7th Academy Awards || February 27, 1935 || It Happened One Night || -- || -- || -- || Irvin S. Cobb |- | 8th Academy Awards || March 5, 1936 || || -- || -- || -- || Frank Capra |- | 9th Academy Awards || March 4, 1937 || The Great Ziegfeld || -- || -- || -- || George Jessel |- | 10th Academy Awards || March 10, 1938 || The Life of Emile Zola || -- || -- || -- || Bob Burns |- | 11th Academy Awards || February 23, 1939 || || -- || -- || -- || None |- | 12th Academy Awards || February 29, 1940 || Gone with the Wind || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 13th Academy Awards || February 27, 1941 || || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 14th Academy Awards || February 26, 1942 || How Green Was My Valley || -- || -- || -- || None |- | 15th Academy Awards || March 4, 1943 || Mrs. Miniver || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 16th Academy Awards || March 2, 1944 || Casablanca || -- || -- || -- || Jack Benny |- | 17th Academy Awards || March 15, 1945 || Going My Way || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope, |- | 18th Academy Awards || March 7, 1946 || The Lost Weekend || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope, |- | 19th Academy Awards || March 13, 1947 || The Best Years of || -- || -- || -- || Jack Benny |- | 20th Academy Awards || March 20, 1948 || Gentleman's Agreement || -- || -- || -- || Agnes Moorehead, Dick Powell |- | 21st Academy Awards || March 24, 1949 || || -- || -- || -- || Robert Montgomery |- | || March 23, 1950 || || -- || -- || -- || Paul Douglas |- | 23rd Academy Awards || March 29, 1951 || All About Eve || -- || -- || -- || Fred Astaire |- | 24th Academy Awards || March 20, 1952 || An American in Paris || -- || -- || -- || Danny Kaye |- | 25th Academy Awards || March 19, 1953 || The Greatest Show on Earth || -- || 40 million || -- || Bob Hope, |- | 26th Academy Awards || March 25, 1954 || From Here to Eternity || -- || 43 million || -- || Donald O'Connor, Fredric March |- | 27th Academy Awards || March 30, 1955 || On the Waterfront || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope, |- | 28th Academy Awards || March 21, 1956 || Marty || -- || -- || -- || Jerry Lewis, |- | 29th Academy Awards || March 27, 1957 || Around the World in || -- || -- || -- || Jerry Lewis, |- | 30th Academy Awards || March 26, 1958 || The Bridge on the || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope, |- | 31st Academy Awards || April 6, 1959 || Gigi || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope, David Niven, Tony Randall, Mort Sahl, Laurence Olivier, Jerry Lewis |- | 32nd Academy Awards || April 4, 1960 || Ben-Hur || 1 hour, 40 minutes || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 33rd Academy Awards || April 17, 1961 || The Apartment || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 34th Academy Awards || April 9, 1962 || West Side Story || || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 35th Academy Awards || April 8, 1963 || Lawrence of Arabia || -- || -- || -- || Frank Sinatra |- | 36th Academy Awards || April 13, 1964 || Tom Jones || -- || -- || -- || Jack Lemmon |- | 37th Academy Awards || April 5, 1965 || My Fair Lady || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 38th Academy Awards || April 18, 1966 || The Sound of Music || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 39th Academy Awards || April 10, 1967 || A Man for All Seasons || 2 hours, 31 minutes || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 40th Academy Awards || April 10, 1968 || In the Heat of the Night || -- || -- || -- || Bob Hope |- | 41st Academy Awards || April 14, 1969 || Oliver! || -- || -- || -- || None |- | 42nd Academy Awards || April 7, 1970 || Midnight Cowboy || 2 hours, 25 minutes || -- || 43.4% || None |- | 43rd Academy Awards || April 15, 1971 || Patton || -- || -- || -- || None |- | 44th Academy Awards || April 10, 1972 || The French Connection || -- || -- || -- || Helen Hayes, Alan King, Sammy Davis, Jr., Jack Lemmon |- | 45th Academy Awards || March 27, 1973 || The Godfather || 2 hours, 38 minutes || -- || -- || Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson |- | 46th Academy Awards || April 2, 1974 || The Sting || 3 hours, 23 minutes || -- || -- || John Huston, Burt Reynolds, David Niven, Diana Ross |- | 47th Academy Awards || April 8, 1975 || The Godfather Part II || 3 hours, 20 minutes || -- || -- || Sammy Davis, Jr., |- | 48th Academy Awards || March 29, 1976 || One Flew Over the || 3 hours, 12 minutes || -- || -- || Goldie Hawn, Gene Kelly, Walter Matthau, George Segal, |- | 49th Academy Awards || March 28, 1977 || Rocky || 3 hours, 38 minutes || -- || -- || Warren Beatty, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor |- | 50th Academy Awards || April 3, 1978 || Annie Hall || 3 hours, 30 minutes || || 31.1% || Bob Hope |- | 51st Academy Awards || April 9, 1979 || The Deer Hunter || 3 hours, 25 minutes || -- || -- || Johnny Carson |- | 52nd Academy Awards || April 14, 1980 || Kramer vs. Kramer || 3 hours, 12 minutes || -- || -- || Johnny Carson |- | 53rd Academy Awards || March 31, 1981 || Ordinary People || 3 hours, 13 minutes || -- || -- || Johnny Carson |- | 54th Academy Awards || March 29, 1982 || Chariots of Fire || 3 hours, 24 minutes || -- || -- || Johnny Carson |- | 55th Academy Awards || April 11, 1983 || Gandhi || 3 hours, 15 minutes || -- || -- || Liza Minnelli, Dudley Moore, |- | 56th Academy Awards || April 9, 1984 || Terms of Endearment || 3 hours, 42 minutes || -- || 38.0 || Johnny Carson |- | 57th Academy Awards || March 25, 1985 || Amadeus || 3 hours, 10 minutes || -- || -- || Jack Lemmon |- | 58th Academy Awards || March 24, 1986 || Out of Africa || 3 hours, 2 minutes || 38.65 million || 25.71 || Alan Alda, |- | 59th Academy Awards || March 30, 1987 || Platoon || 3 hours, 19 minutes || 39.72 million || 25.94 || Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, |- | 60th Academy Awards || April 11, 1988 || The Last Emperor || 3 hours, 33 minutes || 42.04 million || 27.80 || Chevy Chase |- | 61st Academy Awards || March 27, 1989 || Rain Man || 3 hours, 19 minutes || 42.77 million || 28.41 || None |- | 62nd Academy Awards || March 26, 1990 || Driving Miss Daisy || 3 hours, 37 minutes || 40.22 million || 26.42 || Billy Crystal |- | 63rd Academy Awards || March 25, 1991 || Dances with Wolves || 3 hours, 35 minutes || 42.79 million || 28.06 || Billy Crystal |- | 64th Academy Awards || March 30, 1992 || The Silence of the Lambs || 3 hours, 33 minutes || 44.44 million || 29.84 || Billy Crystal |- | 65th Academy Awards || March 29, 1993 || Unforgiven || 3 hours, 30 minutes || 45.84 million || 32.85 || Billy Crystal |- | 66th Academy Awards || March 21, 1994 || Schindler's List || 3 hours, 18 minutes || 46.26 million || 31.86 || Whoopi Goldberg |- | 67th Academy Awards || March 27, 1995 || Forrest Gump || 3 hours, 35 minutes || 48.87 million || 33.47 || David Letterman |- | 68th Academy Awards || March 25, 1996 || Braveheart || 3 hours, 38 minutes || 44.81 million || 30.48 || Whoopi Goldberg |- | 69th Academy Awards || March 24, 1997 || The English Patient || 3 hours, 34 minutes || 40.83 million || 25.83 || Billy Crystal |- | 70th Academy Awards || March 23, 1998 || Titanic || 3 hours, 47 minutes || 57.25 million || 35.32 || Billy Crystal |- | 71st Academy Awards || March 21, 1999 || Shakespeare in Love || 4 hours, 2 minutes || 45.63 million || 28.51 || Whoopi Goldberg |- | 72nd Academy Awards || March 26, 2000 || American Beauty || 4 hours, 4 minutes || 46.53 million || 29.64 || Billy Crystal |- | 73rd Academy Awards || March 25, 2001 || Gladiator || 3 hours, 23 minutes || 42.93 million || 25.86 || Steve Martin |- | 74th Academy Awards || March 24, 2002 || A Beautiful Mind || 4 hours, 23 minutes || 40.54 million || 25.13 || Whoopi Goldberg |- | 75th Academy Awards || March 23, 2003 || Chicago || 3 hours, 30 minutes || 33.04 million || 20.58 || Steve Martin |- | 76th Academy Awards || February 29, 2004 || || 3 hours, 44 minutes || 43.56 million || 26.68 || Billy Crystal |- | 77th Academy Awards || February 27, 2005 || Million Dollar Baby || 3 hours, 14 minutes || 42.16 million || 25.29 || Chris Rock |- | 78th Academy Awards || March 5, 2006 || Crash || 3 hours, 33 minutes || 38.64 million || 22.91 || Jon Stewart |- | 79th Academy Awards || February 25, 2007 || The Departed || 3 hours, 51 minutes || 39.92 million || 23.65 || Ellen DeGeneres |- | 80th Academy Awards || February 24, 2008 || No Country for Old Men || 3 hours, 21 minutes || 31.76 million || 18.66 || Jon Stewart |- | 81st Academy Awards || February 22, 2009 || Slumdog Millionaire || 3 hours, 30 minutes || 36.94 million || 21.68 || Hugh Jackman |- | 82nd Academy Awards || March 7, 2010 || The Hurt Locker || 3 hours, 37 minutes || 41.62 million || 24.75 || Steve Martin, |- | 83rd Academy Awards || February 27, 2011 || || || || || James Franco, Anne Hathaway |- |}

Historically, the "Oscarcast" has pulled in a bigger haul when box-office hits are favored to win the Best Picture trophy. More than 57.25 million viewers tuned to the telecast for the 70th Academy Awards in 1998, the year of Titanic, which generated close to US$600 million at the North American box office pre-Oscars. The 76th Academy Awards ceremony in which (pre-telecast box office earnings of US$368 million) received 11 Awards including Best Picture drew 43.56 million viewers. The most watched ceremony based on Nielsen ratings to date, however, was the 42nd Academy Awards (Best Picture Midnight Cowboy) which drew a 43.4% household rating on April 7, 1970.

By contrast, ceremonies honoring films that have not performed well at the box office tend to show weaker ratings. The 78th Academy Awards which awarded low-budgeted, independent film Crash (with a pre-Oscar gross of US$53.4 million) generated an audience of 38.64 million with a household rating of 22.91%. In 2008, the 80th Academy Awards telecast was watched by 31.76 million viewers on average with an 18.66% household rating, the lowest rated and least watched ceremony to date, in spite of celebrating 80 years of the Academy Awards. The Best Picture winner of that particular ceremony was another low-budget, independently financed film (No Country for Old Men).

Venues

In 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented at a banquet dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. From 1930–1943, the awards were presented first at the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood, and later the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles from 1930 to 1943.

Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood then hosted the awards from 1944 to 1946, followed by the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles from 1947 to 1948. The 21st Academy Awards in 1949 were held at the Academy Award Theater at what was the Academy's headquarters on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood.

From 1950 to 1960, the awards were presented at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre. With the advent of television, the 1953–1957 awards took place simultaneously in Hollywood and New York first at the NBC International Theatre (1953) and then at the NBC Century Theatre (1954–1957), after which the ceremony took place solely in Los Angeles. The Oscars moved to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California in 1961. By 1969, the Academy decided to move the ceremonies back to Los Angeles, this time to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Music Center.

In 2002, Hollywood's Kodak Theatre became the permanent home of the award ceremonies.

Academy Awards of Merit

Current awards

Best Actor in a Leading Role: 1928 to present

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: 1936 to present

Best Actress in a Leading Role: 1928 to present

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: 1936 to present

Best Animated Feature: 2001 to present

Best Animated Short Film: 1931 to present

Best Art Direction: 1928 to present

Best Cinematography: 1928 to present

Best Costume Design: 1948 to present

Best Director: 1928 to present

Best Documentary Feature: 1943 to present

Best Documentary Short Subject: 1941 to present

Best Film Editing: 1935 to present

Best Foreign Language Film: 1947 to present

Best Live Action Short Film: 1931 to present

Best Makeup: 1981 to present

Best Original Score: 1934 to present

Best Original Song: 1934 to present

Best Picture: 1928 to present

Best Sound Editing: 1963 to present

Best Sound Mixing: 1930 to present

Best Visual Effects: 1939 to present

Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay: 1928 to present

Best Writing - Original Screenplay: 1940 to present

In the first year of the awards, the Best Director award was split into two separate categories (Drama and Comedy). At times, the Best Original Score award has also been split into separate categories (Drama and Comedy/Musical). From the 1930s through the 1960s, the Art Direction, Cinematography, and Costume Design awards were likewise split into two separate categories (black-and-white films and color films).

Retired awards

Best Assistant Director: 1933 to 1937

Best Dance Direction: 1935 to 1937

Best Engineering Effects: 1928 only

Best Original Musical or Comedy Score: 1995 to 1999

Best Original Story: 1928 to 1956

Best Score - Adaptation or Treatment: 1962 to 1969; 1973

Best Short Film - Color: 1936 and 1937

Best Short Film - Live Action - 2 Reels: 1936 to 1956

Best Short Film - Novelty: 1932 to 1935

Best Title Writing: 1928 only

Best Unique and Artistic Quality of Production: 1928 only

Proposed awards

The Board of Governors meets each year and considers new awards. To date, the following proposed awards have not been approved:

Best Casting: rejected in 1999 Best Stunt Coordination: rejected in 1999; rejected in 2005 Best Title Design: rejected in 1999

Special Academy Awards

These awards are voted on by special committees, rather than by the Academy membership as a whole, but the individual selected to receive the special award may decline the offer. They are not always presented on a consistent annual basis.

Current special awards

Academy Honorary Award: 1929 to present

Academy Scientific and Technical Award: 1931 to present

Gordon E. Sawyer Award: 1981 to present

Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: 1956 to present

Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award: 1938 to present

Retired special awards

Academy Juvenile Award: 1934 to 1960

Academy Special Achievement Award 1972 to 1995

Criticism

Due to the positive exposure and prestige of the ceremony, studios spend millions of dollars and hire publicists specifically to promote their films for the awards during Oscar season. This has generated accusations of the Academy Awards being influenced more by marketing than quality. Director William Friedkin, an Oscar winner and producer of the Academy Awards, expressed this sentiment at a conference in New York in 2009. He characterized the Academy Awards as "the greatest promotion scheme that any industry ever devised for itself".

In addition, some winners critical of the Academy Awards have boycotted the ceremonies and refused to accept their Oscars. The first to do so was Dudley Nichols (Best Writing in 1935 for The Informer). Nichols boycotted the Eighth Academy Awards ceremony because of conflicts between the Academy and the Writer's Guild. George C. Scott became the second person to refuse his award (Best Actor in 1970 for Patton), at the 43rd Academy Awards ceremony. Scott explained, "The whole thing is a goddamn meat parade. I don't want any part of it." The third winner, Marlon Brando, refused his award (Best Actor in 1972 for The Godfather), citing the film industry's discrimination and mistreatment of Native Americans. At the 45th Academy Awards ceremony, Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to read a 15-page speech detailing Brando's criticisms.}}

Best Picture is not the only category to come under criticism. In his review of The Lives of Others, Nick Davis argued,

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Acting prizes in certain years have been criticized for not recognizing superior performances so much as being awarded for sentimental reasons, personal popularity, atonement for past mistakes, or presented as a "career honor" to recognize a distinguished nominee's entire body of work.

Other major events surrounding the Academy Awards

Major events held annually leading up to the awards show include:

The 25th Independent Spirit Awards (in 2010), usually held in Santa Monica the Saturday before the Oscars, marked the first time it was moved to a Friday and a change of venue to L.A. Live, the newly built entertainment complex developed in Downtown Los Angeles

The 8th annual "Night Before" traditionally held at The Beverly Hills hotel (8 years running in 2010) known as "THE" party of the season, benefits the Motion Picture and Television Fund Foundation which pays for and runs a retirement home for SAG actors in San Fernando valley

Elton John's AIDS fundraiser viewing party airs the awards live at the nearby Pacific Design Center

The Governors' Ball is the official after party put on by the Academy that serves dinner and is held adjacent to the awards

The Vanity Fair after party (historically held at the former Morton's restaurant, now is at the Sunset Towers for the 2nd year)

See also

References

Sources

Brokaw, Lauren (2010) Wanna see an Academy Awards invite? We got it along with all the major annual events surrounding the Oscars The Daily Truffle, Los Angeles. The Daily Truffle

Gail, K. and Piazza, J. (2002) The Academy Awards the Complete History of Oscar. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc. ISBN 1-57912-240-X

Levy, Emanuel (2003) All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards. Continuum, New York. ISBN 0-8264-1452-4

Wright, Jon (2007) The Lunacy of Oscar: The Problems with Hollywood's Biggest Night Thomas Publishing, Inc.

External links

{| class="infobox" style="background:none;" |- | || |- | || |- | || |- | || Media and images from |- | || Look up in |}

Oscars.org official Academy site

Oscar.com official Academy Award ceremony site

"Oscar Greats" at Time magazine

Category:Academy Awards Category:American film awards Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:Awards established in 1929

Name	David Letterman
Caption	Speaking at the opening of the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute (September 2009)
Pseudonym	Earl Hofert
Birth name	David Michael Letterman
Birth date	April 12, 1947
Birth place	Indianapolis, Indiana
Notable work	Host of Late Night with David Letterman (NBC)Host of Late Show with David Letterman (CBS)
Signature	David Letterman Autograph.svg

}} David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. Only Letterman's friend and mentor Johnny Carson has had a longer late-night hosting career. was a florist; his mother Dorothy Letterman (née Hofert, now Dorothy Mengering), a Presbyterian church secretary of German descent, is an occasional figure on the show, usually at holidays and birthdays. He has an older sister Janice and a younger sister Gretchen.

Letterman lived on the north side of Indianapolis (Broad Ripple area), not far from Speedway, IN, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and he enjoyed collecting model cars, including racers. In 2000, he told an interviewer for Esquire that, while growing up, he admired his father's ability to tell jokes and be the life of the party. Harry Joseph Letterman survived a heart attack at age 36, when David was a young boy. The fear of losing his father was constantly with Letterman as he grew up. The elder Letterman died of a second heart attack at age 57.

Letterman attended his hometown's Broad Ripple High School at the same time as Marilyn Tucker Quayle (wife of the former Vice President) who lived nearby, and worked as a stock boy at the local Atlas supermarket. According to the Ball State Daily News, he originally had wanted to attend Indiana University, but his grades weren't good enough, so he decided to attend Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana. He is a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity, and he graduated from what was then the Department of Radio and Television, in 1969. A self-described average student, Letterman endowed a scholarship for what he called "C students" at Ball State.

Though he registered for the draft and passed his physical after graduating from College, he avoided military service in Vietnam due to receiving a draft lottery number of 352 (out of 365).

Letterman began his broadcasting career as an announcer and newscaster at the college's student-run radio station—WBST—a 10-watt campus station which now is part of Indiana public radio. He was fired for treating classical music with irreverence.

Letterman credits Paul Dixon—host of the Paul Dixon Show, a Cincinnati-based talk show also shown in Indianapolis while Letterman was growing up—for inspiring his choice of career: :"I was just out of college [in 1969], and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And then all the sudden I saw him doing it [on TV]. And I thought: That's really what I want to do!"

Weatherman

Letterman began his career as a radio talk show host on WNTS (AM), and on Indianapolis television station WLWI (now called WTHR) as a local anchor and weatherman. He received some recognition for his unpredictable on-air behavior, which included congratulating a tropical storm for being upgraded to a hurricane and predicting hail stones "the size of canned hams." (To this day he occasionally gives out canned hams on his show). He would also occasionally report the weather and the day's very high and low temps for fictitious cities ("Eight inches of snow in Bingree and surrounding areas."). He also starred in a local kiddie show, made wisecracks as host of a late night TV show called "Freeze-Dried Movies" (he once acted out a scene from "Godzilla" using plastic dinosaurs), and hosted a talk show that aired early on Saturday mornings called "Clover Power," in which he interviewed 4-H members about their projects.

In 1971, Letterman appeared as a pit road reporter for ABC Sports' tape-delayed coverage of the Indianapolis 500.

Move to Los Angeles

In 1975, encouraged by his then-wife Michelle and several of his Sigma Chi fraternity brothers, Letterman moved to Los Angeles, California, with hope of becoming a comedy writer. He started off by writing material for comedian Jimmie Walker. He also began performing stand-up comedy at The Comedy Store, a famed comedy club and proving ground for young comics.

Letterman appeared in the summer of 1977 on the short-lived Starland Vocal Band Show. He has since joked about how fortunate he was that nobody would ever see his performance on the program (due to its low ratings).

Letterman had a stint as a cast member on Mary Tyler Moore's variety show, Mary; a guest appearance on Mork & Mindy (as a parody of EST leader Werner Erhard); and appearances on game shows such as The $20,000 Pyramid, The Gong Show, Password Plus and Liar's Club. He also hosted a 1977 pilot for a game show entitled The Riddlers that was never picked up. His dry, sarcastic humor caught the attention of scouts for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Letterman was soon a regular guest on the show. Letterman became a favorite of Carson's and was a regular guest host for the show beginning in 1978. Letterman personally credits Carson as the person who influenced his career the most.

NBC

Morning show

On June 23, 1980, Letterman was given his own morning comedy show on NBC, The David Letterman Show. It was originally 90 minutes long, but was shortened to 60 minutes in August. The show was a critical success, winning two Emmy Awards, but was a ratings disappointment and was canceled in October 1980.

Late Night with David Letterman

NBC kept Letterman under contract to try him in a different time slot. Late Night with David Letterman debuted February 1, 1982; the first guest on the first show was Bill Murray. The show ran weeknights at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time, immediately following The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. It was seen as being edgy and unpredictable, and soon developed a cult following (particularly among college students). Letterman's reputation as an interviewer was borne out in verbal sparring matches with Cher (who even called him an asshole on the show), Shirley MacLaine, Charles Grodin, and Madonna. The show also featured inventive comedy segments and running characters, in a style heavily influenced by the 1950s and '60s programs of Steve Allen. Although Ernie Kovacs is often cited as an influence on the show, Letterman has denied this. In the final months of his first stint as host of The Tonight Show, Leno beat Letterman in the ratings by a 1.3 million viewer margin (5.2 million to 3.9 million), and Nightline and The Late Show were virtually tied. Once O'Brien took over Tonight, however, Letterman closed the gap in the ratings. O'Brien initially drove the median age of Tonight Show viewers from 55 to 45, with most older viewers opting to watch The Late Show instead.

Letterman's shows have garnered both critical and industry praise, receiving 67 Emmy Award nominations, winning twelve times in his first 20 years in late night television. From 1993–2009, Letterman ranked higher than Leno in the annual Harris Poll of Nation's Favorite TV Personality twelve times. Leno was higher than Letterman on that poll three times during the same period, in 1998, 2007, and 2008.

Hosting the Academy Awards

On March 27, 1995, Letterman acted as the host for the 67th Academy Awards ceremony. Critics blasted Letterman for what they deemed a poor hosting of the Oscars, noting that his irreverent style undermined the traditional importance and glamor of the event. In a joke about their unusual names (inspired by a similar joke by Woody Allen), he started off by introducing Uma Thurman to Oprah Winfrey, and then the both of them to Keanu Reeves: "Uma...Oprah! Oprah...Uma! Oprah, Uma...Keanu!" This and many of his other jokes fell flat. Although Letterman attracted the highest ratings to the annual telecast since 1983, many felt that the bad publicity garnered by Letterman's hosting caused a decline in the Late Show's ratings.

Letterman recycled the apparent debacle into a long-running gag. On his first show after the Oscars, he joked, "Looking back, I had no idea that thing was being televised." He lampooned his stint in the following year, during Billy Crystal's opening Oscar skit, which also parodied the plane-crashing scenes from that year's chief nominated film, The English Patient.

For years afterward, Letterman recounted his horrible hosting at the Oscars, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences still holds Letterman in high regard and it has been rumored they have asked him to host the Oscars again. On September 7, 2010, he made an appearance on the premier of the 14th season of The View, and confirmed the rumors.

Heart surgery hiatus

On January 14, 2000, a routine check-up revealed that an artery in Letterman's heart was severely constricted. He was rushed to emergency surgery for a quintuple bypass.

During the initial weeks of his recovery, reruns of the Late Show were shown and introduced by friends of Letterman including Drew Barrymore, including Dr. O. Wayne Isom and physician Louis Aronne, who frequently appears on the show. In a show of emotion, Letterman was nearly in tears as he thanked the health care team with the words "These are the people who saved my life!" The episode earned an Emmy nomination. For a number of episodes, Letterman continued to crack jokes about his bypass, including saying, "Bypass surgery: it's when doctors surgically create new blood flow to your heart. A bypass is what happened to me when I didn't get The Tonight Show! It's a whole different thing." In a later running gag he lobbied his home state of Indiana to rename the freeway circling Indianapolis (I-465) "The David Letterman Bypass." He also featured a montage of faux news coverage of his bypass surgery, which included a clip of Dave's heart for sale on the Home Shopping Network. Letterman became friends with his doctors and nurses. In 2008, a Rolling Stone interview stated "he hosted a doctor and nurse who'd helped perform the emergency quintuple-bypass heart surgery that saved his life in 2000. 'These are people who were complete strangers when they opened my chest,' he says. 'And now, eight years later, they're among my best friends.' "

Additionally, Letterman invited the band Foo Fighters to play "Everlong", introducing them as "my favorite band, playing my favorite song." During a later Foo Fighters appearance, Letterman said that Foo Fighters had been in the middle of a South American tour which they canceled to come play on his comeback episode.

Letterman again handed over the reins of the show to several guest hosts (including Bill Cosby, Brad Garrett, Elvis Costello, John McEnroe, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Bonnie Hunt, Luke Wilson and bandleader Paul Shaffer) in February 2003, when he was diagnosed with a severe case of shingles. Later that year, Letterman made regular use of guest hosts—including Tom Arnold and Kelsey Grammer—for new shows broadcast on Fridays. In March 2007, Adam Sandler—who had been scheduled to be the lead guest—served as a guest host while Letterman was ill with a stomach virus.

Re-signing with CBS

In March 2002, as Letterman's contract with CBS neared expiration, ABC offered him the time slot for long-running news program Nightline with Ted Koppel. Letterman was interested as he believed he could never match Leno's ratings at CBS due to weaker lead-ins from the network's late local news programs, but was reluctant to replace Koppel. Letterman addressed his decision to re-sign on the air, stating that he was content at CBS and that he had great respect for Koppel.

On December 4, 2006, CBS revealed that David Letterman signed a new contract to host The Late Show with David Letterman through the fall of 2010. "I'm thrilled to be continuing on at CBS," said Letterman. "At my age you really don't want to have to learn a new commute." Letterman further joked about the subject by pulling up his right pants leg, revealing a tattoo, presumably temporary, of the ABC logo.

"Thirteen years ago, David Letterman put CBS late night on the map and in the process became one of the defining icons of our network," said Leslie Moonves, president and CEO of CBS Corporation. "His presence on our air is an ongoing source of pride, and the creativity and imagination that the Late Show puts forth every night is an ongoing display of the highest quality entertainment. We are truly honored that one of the most revered and talented entertainers of our time will continue to call CBS 'home.'"

According to a 2007 article in Forbes magazine, Letterman earned $40 million a year. A 2009 article in The New York Times, however, said his salary was estimated at $32 million per year.

In June 2009, Letterman and CBS reached agreement to extend his contract to host The Late Show until August 2012. His previous contract had been set to expire in 2010. thus allowing his show to come back on air on January 2, 2008. On his first episode since being off air, he surprised the viewing audience with his newly grown beard, which signified solidarity with the strike. His beard was shaved off during the show on January 7, 2008.

Letterman and Carson

NBC's decision to select Jay Leno and not Letterman to succeed Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show was an embarrassment to Carson, who had all but promised the succession to Letterman. Letterman maintained a close relationship with Carson through his break with NBC. Three years after he left for CBS, HBO produced a made-for-television movie called The Late Shift, based on a book by New York Times reporter Bill Carter, chronicling the battle between Letterman and Leno for the coveted Tonight Show hosting spot. Letterman would mock the film for months afterward, specifically on how the actor playing him, John Michael Higgins, did not resemble him in the least. ("They took a guy who looked nothing like me and with make-up and special camera angles, turned him into a guy who looked nothing like me, with red hair.")

Carson later made a few cameo appearances as a guest on Letterman's show. Carson's final television appearance came May 13, 1994 on a Late Show episode taped in Los Angeles, when he made a surprise appearance during a 'Top 10 list' segment. The audience went wild as Letterman stood up and proudly invited Carson to sit at his desk. The applause was so protracted that Carson was unable to say anything, and he finally returned backstage as the applause continued (it was later explained that Carson had laryngitis, though Carson can be heard talking to Letterman during his appearance).

In early 2005, it was revealed that Carson still kept up with current events and late-night TV right up to his death that year, and that he occasionally sent jokes to Letterman, who used these jokes in his monologue; according to CBS senior vice president Peter Lassally (a onetime producer for both men), Carson got "a big kick out of it." Letterman would do a characteristic Johnny Carson golf swing after delivering one of Carson's jokes. In a tribute to Carson, all of the opening monologue jokes during the first show following Carson's death were written by Carson.

Lassally also claimed that Carson had always believed Letterman, not Leno, to be his "rightful successor." Letterman also frequently employs some of Carson's trademark bits on his show, including "Carnac the Magnificent" (with Paul Shaffer as Carnac), "Stump the Band" and the "Week in Review."

Letterman and Oprah Winfrey

On September 10, 2007, Letterman made his first appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. He shared pictures of his son and live-in girlfriend. The so-called feud between Letterman and Winfrey apparently ended in 2005 when Winfrey appeared on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman on December 2, in an event Letterman jokingly referred to as "the Super Bowl of Love". Oprah had previously appeared on Letterman's show when he was hosting NBC's Late Night on May 2, 1989.

Winfrey and Letterman also appeared together in a Late Show promo that aired during CBS's coverage of Super Bowl XLI in February 2007, with the two sitting next to each other on the couch watching the game. Since the game was played between the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears, the Indianapolis-born Letterman wears a Peyton Manning jersey, while Winfrey—who tapes her show in Chicago—is in a Brian Urlacher jersey. Three years later, during CBS's coverage of Super Bowl XLIV, the two appeared again, this time with Winfrey sitting on a couch between Letterman and Jay Leno. The appearance was Letterman's idea: Leno flew to New York City in an NBC corporate jet, sneaking into the Ed Sullivan Theater during the Late Show's February 4 taping wearing a disguise, meeting Winfrey and Letterman at a living room set created in the theater's balcony where they taped their promo.

Other projects

Worldwide Pants

Letterman started his own production company—Worldwide Pants Incorporated—which produced his show and several others, including Everybody Loves Raymond , The Late Late Show, and several critically-acclaimed, but short-lived television series for Bonnie Hunt. Worldwide Pants also produced the dramedy program Ed, which aired on NBC from 2000–2004. It was Letterman's first association with NBC since he left the network in 1993. During Ed's run, the star, Tom Cavanagh, appeared as a guest on The Late Show several times.

In 2005, Worldwide Pants produced its first feature film, Strangers with Candy, which was a prequel to the Comedy Central TV series of the same title. In 2007, Worldwide Pants produced the ABC comedy series, Knights of Prosperity.

Worldwide Pants made significant news in December 2007 when it was announced that Letterman's company had independently negotiated its own contract with the Writers Guild of America, East, thus allowing Letterman, Craig Ferguson, and their writers to return to work, while the union continued its strike against production companies, networks and studios who had not reached an agreement.

Rahal Letterman Racing

Rahal Letterman Racing (RLR) is an auto racing team that currently races in the American Le Mans Series, and part-time in the Indy Racing League. It is co-owned by 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal and Letterman himself, and is based in Hilliard, Ohio. The team won the 2004 Indianapolis 500 with driver Buddy Rice. Letterman was a pit reporter for ABC in the 1971 Indianapolis 500. The $21 million, David Letterman Communication and Media Building opened for the 2007 Fall semester. It features state-of-the-art recording equipment and facilities. Thousands of Ball State students, faculty, and local residents welcomed Letterman back to Indiana. Letterman's emotional speech touched on his struggles as a college student and his late father, and also included the "top ten good things about having your name on a building."

Letterman received the honor for his dedication to the university throughout his career as a comedian. Letterman finished with, "If reasonable people can put my name on a $21 million building, anything is possible."

Letterman also received a Sagamore of the Wabash from Governor Mitch Daniels.

Record company

In late April 2010, several music industry websites reported that David Letterman started a record label named Clear Entertainment/C.E. Music and signed his first artist, Runner Runner. Lucy Walsh announced on her myspace page that she has been signed by David Letterman and Clear Entertainment/C.E. Music and is working on her album.

Appearances in other media

Letterman appeared in issue 239 of the Marvel comic book The Avengers, in which the title characters are guests on Late Night. A parody of Letterman, called "David Endocrine", is gassed to death along with his bandleader named "Paul" and their audience in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.

Letterman provided vocals for the Warren Zevon song "Hit Somebody" from My Ride's Here, and provided the voice for Butt-head's father in the 1996 animated film, Beavis and Butt-head Do America. He also had a cameo in the feature film Cabin Boy, with Chris Elliott, who worked as a writer on Letterman's show. In this and other appearances, Letterman is listed in the credits as "Earl Hofert", the name of Letterman's maternal grandfather. He also appeared as himself in the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts as well as the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, in a few episodes of Garry Shandling's 1990s TV series The Larry Sanders Show and in "The Abstinence", a 1996 episode of the sitcom Seinfeld. Letterman also appeared in the pilot episode of the short-lived 1986 series "Coach Toast".

Personal life

Marriages and long-term relationships

In 1969, Letterman married Michelle Cook; the marriage ended by divorce in 1977. He also had a long-term relationship with former head writer and producer on Late Night, Merrill Markoe. In fact, Markoe was the mind behind several Late Night staples, such as "Stupid Pet/Human Tricks".

Letterman has a son, Harry Joseph Letterman (born in 2003), with Regina Lasko. Harry is named after Letterman's father. In 2005, police discovered a plot to kidnap Harry Letterman and ransom him for $5 million. Kelly Frank, a house painter who had worked for Letterman, was charged in the conspiracy.

Letterman and Lasko, who had been together since 1986, wed during a quiet courthouse civil ceremony in Choteau, Montana, on March 19, 2009. Letterman announced the marriage during the taping of his March 23 show, shortly after congratulating Bruce Willis for getting married the previous week. Letterman told the audience he nearly missed the ceremony because his truck became stuck in mud two miles from their house. The family resides in North Salem, New York, on a estate.

Stalking incidents

Beginning in May 1988, Letterman was stalked by Margaret Mary Ray, a woman suffering from schizophrenia. Letterman occasionally referenced her in his show, although not by name. She committed suicide in 1998. Letterman publicly expressed sympathy upon her death.

Extortion attempt and revelation of affairs

On his October 1, 2009 show, Letterman announced that he had been the victim of an extortion attempt by someone threatening to reveal that he had had sex with several of his female employees. He confirmed the relationships.

Letterman stated that three weeks earlier (on September 9, 2009) someone had left a package in his car with material he said he would write into a screenplay and a book if Letterman did not pay him $2 million. Letterman said that he contacted the Manhattan District Attorney's office, ultimately cooperating with them to conduct a sting operation involving giving the man a phony check. The extortionist, Robert J. "Joe" Halderman, a producer of the CBS true crime journalism series 48 Hours, was subsequently arrested after trying to deposit the check. He was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury and pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted grand larceny on October 2, 2009. Birkitt had until recently lived with Halderman, who is alleged to have copied Birkitt's personal diary and to have used it, along with private emails, in the blackmail package.

On October 3, 2009, a former CBS employee, Holly Hester, announced that she and Letterman had engaged in a year-long "secret" affair in the early 1990s while she was his intern and a student at New York University.

In the days following the initial announcement of the affairs and the arrest, several prominent women, including Kathie Lee Gifford, co-host of NBC's Today Show, and NBC news anchor Ann Curry questioned whether Letterman's affairs with subordinates created an unfair working environment. A spokesman for Worldwide Pants said that the company's sexual harassment policy did not prohibit sexual relationships between managers and employees. According to business news reporter Eve Tahmincioglu, "CBS suppliers are supposed to follow the company's business conduct policies" and the CBS 2008 Business Conduct Statement states that "If a consenting romantic or sexual relationship between a supervisor and a direct or indirect subordinate should develop, CBS requires the supervisor to disclose this information to his or her Company's Human Resources Department..."

On October 5, 2009, Letterman devoted a segment of his show to a public apology to his wife and staff. Three days later, Worldwide Pants announced that Birkitt had been placed on a "paid leave of absence" from the Late Show. On October 15, CBS News announced that the company's Chief Investigative Correspondent, Armen Keteyian, had been assigned to conduct an "in-depth investigation" into Halderman's blackmail of Letterman.

On March 9, 2010, Halderman pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny and served a 6-month jail sentence, followed by probation and community service.

Awards

In his capacities as either a writer, producer, performer, or as part of a writing team, David Letterman is among the most nominated people in Emmy Award history with 52 nominations, winning two Daytime Emmys and five Primetime Emmys since 1981. His nomination record is second only to producer Jac Venza, who holds the record for the most Emmy nominations for an individual (57). Letterman has been nominated every year since 1984, when he first appeared on late night television as the host of Late Night with David Letterman. Additionally, he has won four American Comedy Awards.

References

External links

David Letterman's Feb. 24, 1978 appearance on 90 Minutes Live

Official Late Show biography

1999 article on Letterman from Salon.com

Tape of Letterman announcing affairs/extortion attempt on Late Show

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:American people of German descent Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Ball State University alumni Category:Daytime Emmy Award winners Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Indianapolis, Indiana television anchors Category:Indy Racing League owners Category:People from Indianapolis, Indiana Category:Weather presenters

Name	Richard Blackwell
Birth name	Richard Sylvan Selzer
Birth date	August 29, 1922
Birth place	Brooklyn Heights, New York, United States
Death date	October 19, 2008
Death place	Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation	Journalist, fashion critic, actor
Years active	1938—1998
Partner	Robert Spencer

Richard Blackwell (August 29, 1922 – October 19, 2008) was an American fashion critic, journalist, television and radio personality, artist, former child actor and former fashion designer, sometimes known just as Mr. Blackwell. He was the creator of the "Ten Worst Dressed Women List", an annual awards presentation he unveiled in January of each year. He published the "Fabulous Fashion Independents" list and an annual Academy Awards fashion review, both of which receive somewhat less media attention. His longtime companion, former Beverly Hills hairdresser, Robert Spencer, managed him. He wrote two books, Mr. Blackwell: 30 Years of Fashion Fiascos and an autobiography, From Rags to Bitches.

Biography

Early years

Blackwell was born Richard Sylvan Selzer and raised in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. He was of Jewish descent and grew up in the tenements that housed the “working-poor” immigrant families of the early 20th century. As a child, he claimed he was severely beaten by his stepfather, often resorting to sleeping in the alley beneath his fire escape with a broken bottle he used for protection rather than face further abuse. He only completed the third grade of elementary school. When he was 11, he was the victim of rape by an older man while attending a boys’ camp. He also worked as a prostitute in his early days.

Career

Acting

He began acting in theater in his teens, appearing in the original 1935 Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End. After relocating to the West Coast in the 1930s (where he went to school with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, among others) he adopted the name “Dick Ellis” and was signed by the studios to play small parts in the motion picture industry. He returned to Broadway in 1944 for Catherine Was Great, which starred Mae West, but eventually left acting for a short stint as a Hollywood agent. He discovered a talent for design while making his client’s stage costumes.

Fashion designer

The name "Mr. Blackwell" came in the late-1950s when he launched his clothing line. As with Valentino, Versace and later Richard Tyler, he and his line became synonymous. He was an important designer and during the 1960s he became the first in history to present his line on a television broadcast; and the first to make his line available for plus-size women. His designer dresses sold for between $800 to $1,000 and were very successful. At the height of his prominence, he openly declared his disdain for Women's Wear Daily and its publisher, John Fairchild. During the 1980s, the emerging drift toward casual wear brought an end to The House of Blackwell.

Fashion critic

In his beginning years as a designer he was asked to do a one-time article for American Weekly magazine of the “10 Best and Worst Dressed” people and developed the franchise from it. His "Fabulous Fashion Independents" often featured celebrities whom in prior years have been listed in his Ten Worst Dressed.

Worst-dressed lists

The first “Ten Worst Dressed Women” list premiered in 1960, to moderate media success, but as the House of Blackwell became more successful, the list took off. By its third year every television and radio network and virtually all news services worldwide began to cover it. Forty-seven years after first release, Blackwell annually spent a week after its publication on telephone interviews to fashion magazines, radio programs and news networks. The list is a conglomeration of techniques from first letter alliteration: Martha Stewart - "dull, dowdy and devastatingly dreary" and consonant: “fabulous fashion independents”, to free verse: Cher – “A million beads/And one overexposed derriere”, and pun: Queen Elizabeth, “Was she the palace Christmas tree, or just a royal clown?” About Wynona Judd - "She looks like Hulk Hogan in sequins." Often, he simply quipped: Martha Stewart – “Dresses like the centerfold for Farmers' Almanac”, and other times combines forms: Dixie Chicks – “They look like a trio of truck stop fashion tragedies/ trapped in a typhoon”. The list’s popularity has waned in some segments of contemporary culture, many feeling that it is mean-spirited. However, Blackwell has displayed personal missives from many celebrities including Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey and country singer Tanya Tucker expressing their thanks for being selected. Other former list alumni like “Hollywood Beat” editor, Marci Weiner – “Why does Marci Weiner always dress like she’s auditioning for a Fellini movie?” – who was initially angered by her inclusion, now considers it an honor. Still, despite its decline in universal acceptance, it was nonetheless published each year.

The list spawned a parade of imitators from TMZ’s In The Zone: Mr. Blackwell vs. TMZ to the UK’s The Sun newspaper’s Sun Women Online: Celebrity Style Watch and the less known such as “The Catwalk Queen”. Not all are lists, but virtually all include jibes and jabs similar to those that Blackwell first used to capture media attention in the early 1960s. Harry Shearer's Le Show radio program has featured "Blackwell on Blackwell." Roger Stone, himself known for his taste in fashion, has taken up Blackwell's tradition of best and worst dressed lists (albeit with a greater emphasis on the best dressed) since Blackwell's death.

Television and radio

Mr. Blackwell was a pioneer in television fashion and had been a fixture in the medium throughout his career as a designer and critic. Most recently, he appeared as himself on an episode of the ABC daytime soap, Port Charles. He hosted a daily program on Los Angeles' talk radio powerhouse KABC from 1972–74, moving to KIEV 1975-1981.

In 1968 he starred in his own KCOP two hour color television special,’’Mr. Blackwell Presents’’, with Anna Maria Alberghetti, Nick Adams and Rose Marie. It was the first telecast in history in which a designer presented his line on television. He continued to be recognized as preeminent during his years in the field.

He often participated in audience critique segments on daytime talk and variety shows. He appeared on The Mike Douglas Show on numerous occasions, and on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, as a guest on the first broadcast after Carson moved the show from New York to Burbank. The May 2, 1972 episode also featured Rob Reiner, George Carlin and Johnny Mathis. He appeared on a total of four additional Tonight Shows between August 1970 and January 1973 and is included in the series “Best Of The Tonight Show” DVD sets.

Personal life

Blackwell lived in the Hancock Park enclave of Los Angeles with his partner of 60 years, Robert Spencer. In 1964, they rented their home to The Beatles for the English band’s first visit to the city. It was leaked to the media, however, and the group made other arrangements. He was also an artist known for his avant-garde and he published several editions of his work, including his "Mother America" series.

In 2001, Blackwell was diagnosed with Bell's palsy which causes limited to severe paralysis of facial muscles and can affect eyesight as well. Although treatable, Bell's palsy is incurable; however, it often clears up on its own. Blackwell was unable to unveil the 2000 list at a live news conference for the first time in its 40-year history and remained out of the public eye for six months. He came back for the 2001 “Worst Dressed” and returned to a full, normal social life.

Blackwell died in Los Angeles on October 19, 2008 of complications from an intestinal infection.

In pop culture

In the Seinfeld television series episode (No. 87), “The Chaperone” originally aired on September 22, 1994, the Kramer character becomes a chaperone for a Miss Rhode Island contestant in a national beauty pageant. In an exchange with Kramer (played by Michael Richards), Seinfeld exclaims, “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Blackwell,” as Kramer slides into the room. Kramer responds, “Oh, come on! … You’re pooh-poohing!” to which Seinfeld responds, “Yes, I pooh-pooh.” He was played by Harry Shearer on the May 20, 1995 episode of SCTV’s, The Show Formerly Known as The Martin Short Show. In 2006, CBS picked up an AP story about US figure skater Johnny Weir’s costume at the Olympics in Turin under the Headline: “Figure Skating Gets Ugly: Mr. Blackwell, You’re Wanted At The Olympics”.

The Kiss concept album Music from "The Elder", includes a song about a villain named "Mr. Blackwell". The pre choruses include the refrain, "You're cold and mean, and in between / You're rotten to the core", which seems to describe various celebrities' opinions of the real Blackwell.

The animated television show The Simpsons had a parody version of Mr. Blackwell named "Mr. Boswell." A sample quote from "A Streetcar Named Marge": "Memo to Goldie Hawn: Cheerleading tryouts were 30 years ago — let's grow up, shall we?" Bart Simpson, watching him on TV, chuckled and said, "He's such a bitch!"

In the sitcom Two and a Half Men, Season 5, Episode 14: Winky Dink Time, Charlie Harpers exclaims to his nephew Jake, "Please, Mr. Blackwell, I want your opinion!"

In the 2001 film "Shallow Hal", Hal (played by Jack Black) tries to cheer up his best friend Mauricio (played by Jason Alexander) by telling him that he has "more style than Mr. Blackwell."

Filmography

Juvenile Court (film) (1938) as “Ears” (Dick Selzer)

Little Tough Guy (film) (1938) as “Bud” (un-credited)

Promises! Promises (film) (1963) as Jayne Mansfield's wardrobe designer

The Mike Douglas Show (1967) – Guest appearance

Mr. Blackwell Presents (1968) TV special (Host, designer and producer)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1970–1973) – Five guest appearances

The Virginia Graham Show (1971) – Guest appearance

The Mike Douglas Show (1972) – Guest appearance

The Mike Douglas Show (1975) – Guest appearance

The Brady Brides (TV series) (1981) "A Pretty Boy Is Like A Melody" (as himself)

Matt Houston (TV series) (1982) "Deadly Fashion" as “Valentine St. Clair”

Matlock (1990, two-part episode) as the Art dealer

Civil Wars (1992) "The Triumph of DeVille" as himself

Blossom (TV series) (1991) "Blossom: A Rockumentary" as himself

Hollywood Women (miniseries) (1994) as himself (interviewee) in Segment 4 ("Fear and Violence")

Howard Stern (TV series) (1995, two episodes) as himself

Port Charles (soap opera) (1997, 1999) as himself (13 episodes)

Intimate Portrait of Marilyn Monroe (Lifetime TV documentary) (1998) as himself (interviewee)

Elvis Is Alive! I Swear I Saw Him Eating Ding Dongs Outside The Piggly Wiggly’s (film) (1998) as himself

Stage

Dead End (1935) - billed as Richard Seltzer

Catherine Was Great (1944) - billed as Dick Ellis

Bibliography

References

External links

Interview with Mr. Blackwell

Interview at salon.com

Book review at Movie Magazine International

Category:1922 births Category:2008 deaths Category:American child actors Category:American fashion designers Category:American Jews Category:American journalists Category:American stage actors Category:Fashion awards Category:Fashion journalists Category:Infectious disease deaths in California Category:Jewish fashion designers Category:LGBT fashion designers Category:LGBT Jews Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:People from Brooklyn Category:People from the Greater Los Angeles Area

Caption	Hanks in April 2009
Birth name	Thomas Jeffrey Hanks
Birth date	July 09, 1956
Birth place	Concord, California, U.S.
Years active	1979–present
Occupation	Actor, producer, director, voice over artist, writer, speaker
Spouse	Samantha Lewes (1978–1987)Rita Wilson (1988–present)

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title role in Forrest Gump, Commander James A. Lovell in Apollo 13, Captain John H. Miller in Saving Private Ryan, Joe Fox in You've Got Mail and Chuck Noland in Cast Away. Hanks won consecutive Best Actor Academy Awards, in 1993 for Philadelphia and in 1994 for Forrest Gump. U.S. domestic box office totals for his films exceed $3.9 billion. He is the father of actor Colin Hanks.

Early life

Hanks was born in Concord, California. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks (born in Glenn County, California, on March 9, 1924 – died in Alameda, California, on January 31, 1992), was a distant relative of President Abraham Lincoln, through Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks. His mother, Portuguese-American Janet Marylyn (née Frager; born in Alameda County, California, on January 18, 1932), was a hospital worker. Hanks's parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer), Larry (now Lawrence M. Hanks, Ph.D., an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California. Afterwards, both parents remarried. Hanks's first stepmother came to the marriage with five children of her own. Hanks once told Rolling Stone: "Everybody in my family likes each other. But there were always about 50 people at the house. I didn't exactly feel like an outsider, but I was sort of outside it." That marriage ended in divorce after two years.

Amos Hanks became a single parent, working long hours and often leaving the children to fend for themselves, an exercise in self-reliance that served the siblings well. In addition to having a family history of Catholicism and Mormonism, Hanks was a "Bible-toting evangelical teenager" for several years. In school, Hanks was unpopular with students and teachers alike, later telling Rolling Stone magazine: "I was a geek, a spaz. I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy who'd yell out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn't get into trouble. I was always a real good kid and pretty responsible." In 1965, Amos Hanks married Frances Wong, a San Francisco native of Chinese descent. Frances had three children, two of whom lived with Tom during his high school years. Tom acted in school plays, including South Pacific, while attending Skyline High School in Oakland, California.

Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and after two years, transferred to California State University, Sacramento. Hanks told The New York Times: "Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant. I spent a lot of time going to plays. I wouldn't take dates with me. I'd just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat, and read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that, seeing Bertolt Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen, and all that, and now look at me, acting is my job. I wouldn't have it any other way."

During his years studying theater, Hanks met Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. At Dowling's suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the Festival. His internship stretched into a three-year experience that covered most aspects of theater production, including lighting, set design, and stage management, all of which caused Hanks to drop out of college. During the same time, Hanks won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his 1978 performance as Proteus in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of the few times he played a villain.

Early career

In 1979, Hanks packed his bags for New York City, where he made his film debut in the low-budget slasher film He Knows You're Alone and got a part in the television movie Mazes and Monsters. Early in 1979, Hanks was cast in the lead role of Callimaco in the Riverside Shakespeare Company's production of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Mandrake, directed by Daniel Southern. This remains Hanks's only New York stage performance to date; as a high profile Off Off Broadway showcase, the production helped Tom land an agent, Joe Ohla with the J. Michael Bloom Agency. The next year Hanks landed a lead role on the ABC television pilot of Bosom Buddies, playing the role of Kip Wilson. Hanks moved to Los Angeles, where he and Peter Scolari played a pair of young advertising men forced to dress as women so they could live in an inexpensive all-female hotel. Hanks had previously partnered with Scolari in the 1970s game show Make Me Laugh. Bosom Buddies ran for two seasons, and, although the ratings were never strong, television critics gave the program high marks. "The first day I saw him on the set," co-producer Ian Praiser told Rolling Stone, "I thought, 'Too bad he won't be in television for long.' I knew he'd be a movie star in two years." But if Praiser knew it, he was not able to convince Hanks. "The television show had come out of nowhere," best friend Tom Lizzio told Rolling Stone. "Then out of nowhere it got canceled. He figured he'd be back to pulling ropes and hanging lights in a theater."

Bosom Buddies and a guest appearance on a 1982 episode of Happy Days ("A Case of Revenge," where he played a disgruntled former classmate of The Fonz) prompted director Ron Howard to contact Hanks. Howard was working on Splash (1984), a romantic comedy fantasy about a mermaid who falls in love with a human. At first, Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, a role that eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks got the lead role and a career boost from Splash, which went on to become a box office hit, grossing more than US$69 million. He also had a sizable hit with the sex comedy Bachelor Party, also in 1984.

In 1983–84, Hanks made three guest appearances on Family Ties as Elyse Keaton's alcoholic brother, Ned Donnelly.

Period of successes and failures

, March 29, 1989]] With Nothing in Common (1986) – about a young man alienated from his parents who must re-establish a relationship with his father, played by Jackie Gleason – Hanks began to establish the credentials of not only a comic actor but of someone who could carry a serious role. "It changed my desires about working in movies," Hanks told Rolling Stone. "Part of it was the nature of the material, what we were trying to say. But besides that, it focused on people's relationships. The story was about a guy and his father, unlike, say, The Money Pit, where the story is really about a guy and his house."

After a few more flops and a moderate success with Dragnet, Hanks succeeded with the film Big (1988), both at the box office and within the industry. The film established Hanks as a major Hollywood talent. It was followed later that year by Punchline, in which he and Sally Field co-star as struggling stand-up comedians. Hanks's character, Steven Gold, a failing medical student trying to break into stand-up, was somewhat edgy and complex. Hanks' portrayal of Gold offered a glimpse of the far more dramatic roles Hanks would master in films to come. Hanks then suffered a pile of box-office failures: The 'Burbs (1989), Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), and The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), as a greedy Wall Street type who gets enmeshed in a hit-and-run accident. Only the 1989 movie Turner & Hooch brought success for Hanks during this time. In a 1993 issue of Disney Adventures, Hanks said, "I saw Turner & Hooch the other day in the SAC store and couldn't help but be reminiscent. I cried like a baby." He did admit to making a couple of "bum tickers," however, and blamed his "...deductive reasoning and decision making skills."

Progression into dramatic roles

Hanks climbed back to the top again with his portrayal of a washed-up baseball star turned manager in A League of Their Own (1992). Hanks admits that his acting in earlier roles was not great and that he has improved. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hanks noted his "modern era of moviemaking ... because enough self-discovery has gone on.... My work has become less pretentiously fake and over the top". This "modern era" began in 1993 for Hanks, first with Sleepless in Seattle and then with Philadelphia. The former was a blockbuster success about a widower who finds true love over the airwaves. Richard Schickel of Time called his performance "charming," and most critics agreed that Hanks' portrayal ensured him a place among the premiere romantic-comedy stars of his generation.

In Philadelphia, he played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination. Hanks lost thirty-five pounds and thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role. In a review for People, Leah Rozen stated "Above all, credit for Philadelphia's success belongs to Hanks, who makes sure that he plays a character, not a saint. He is flat-out terrific, giving a deeply felt, carefully nuanced performance that deserves an Oscar." Hanks won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia. During his acceptance speech he revealed that his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth and former classmate John Gilkerson, two people with whom he was close, were gay. The revelation inspired the 1997 film In & Out, starring Kevin Kline as an English Literature teacher who is outed by a former student in a similar way.

in 1994]] Hanks followed Philadelphia with the 1994 summer hit Forrest Gump. Of the film, Hanks has remarked: "When I read the script for Gump, I saw it as one of those kind of grand, hopeful movies that the audience can go to and feel ... some hope for their lot and their position in life... I got that from the movies a hundred million times when I was a kid. I still do." Hanks won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Forrest Gump, becoming only the second actor to have accomplished the feat of winning consecutive Best Actor Oscars. (Spencer Tracy was the first, winning in 1937–38. Hanks and Tracy were the same age at the time they received their Academy Awards: 37 for the first and 38 for the second.)

Hanks' next role--astronaut and commander Jim Lovell, in the 1995 movie Apollo 13--reunited him with Ron Howard. Critics generally applauded the film and the performances of the entire cast, which included actors Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Kathleen Quinlan. The movie also earned nine Academy Award nominations, winning two. The same year, Hanks starred in the animated blockbuster Toy Story as the voice of the toy Sheriff Woody.

1996 - present: Directing, producing and acting

Hanks turned to directing with his 1996 film That Thing You Do! about a 1960s pop group, also playing the role of a music producer. Hanks and producer Gary Goetzman went on to create Playtone, a record and film production company named for the record company in the film.

Hanks executive produced, co-wrote, and co-directed the HBO docudrama From the Earth to the Moon. The twelve-part series chronicles the space program from its inception, through the familiar flights of Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell, to the personal feelings surrounding the reality of moon landings. The Emmy Award-winning project was, at US$68 million, one of the most expensive ventures taken for television.

Hanks's next project was no less expensive. For Saving Private Ryan he teamed up with Steven Spielberg to make a film about a search through war-torn France after D-Day to bring back a soldier who has a ticket home. It earned the praise and respect of the film community, critics, and the general public. It was labeled one of the finest war films ever made and earned Spielberg his second Academy Award for direction, and Hanks another Best Actor nomination. Later in 1998, Hanks re-teamed with his Sleepless in Seattle co-star Meg Ryan for You've Got Mail, a remake of 1940's The Shop Around the Corner.

In 1999, Hanks starred in an adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Green Mile. He also returned as the voice of Woody in Toy Story 2. The following year he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor and an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of a marooned FedEx systems analyst in Robert Zemeckis's Cast Away. In 2001, Hanks helped direct and produce the acclaimed HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. He also appeared in the September 11 television special and the documentary Rescued From the Closet.

Next he teamed up with American Beauty director Sam Mendes for the adaptation of Max Allan Collins's and Richard Piers Rayner's graphic novel Road to Perdition, in which he played an anti-hero role as a hitman on the run with his son. That same year, Hanks collaborated with director Spielberg again, starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the hit crime comedy Catch Me if You Can, based on the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. The same year, Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson produced the hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. In August 2007, he along with co-producers Rita Wilson and Gary Goetzman, and writer and star Nia Vardalos, initiated a legal action against the production company Gold Circle Films for their share of profits from the movie. At the age of 45, he became the youngest ever recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award on June 12, 2002.

In 2004, he appeared in three films: The Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers, another Spielberg film, The Terminal, and The Polar Express, a family film from Robert Zemeckis. In a USA Weekend interview, Hanks talked about how he chooses projects: "[Since] A League of Their Own, it can't be just another movie for me. It has to get me going somehow.... There has to be some all-encompassing desire or feeling about wanting to do that particular movie. I'd like to assume that I'm willing to go down any avenue in order to do it right". In August 2005, Hanks was voted in as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Hanks next starred in the highly anticipated film The Da Vinci Code, based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown. The film was released May 19, 2006 in the US and grossed over US$750 million worldwide. He followed the film with Ken Burns's 2007 documentary The War. For the documentary, Hanks did voice work, reading excerpts from World War II-era columns by Al McIntosh. In 2006, Hanks topped a 1,500-strong list of 'most trusted celebrities' compiled by Forbes magazine. Hanks next appeared in a cameo role as himself in The Simpsons Movie, in which he appeared in an advertisement claiming that the US government has lost its credibility and is hence buying some of his. He also made an appearance in the credits, expressing a desire to be left alone when he is out in public. Later in 2006, Hanks produced the British film Starter for Ten, a comedy based on working class students attempting to win University Challenge.

In 2007, Hanks starred in Mike Nichols's film Charlie Wilson's War (written by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin) in which he plays Democratic Texas Congressman Charles Wilson. The film opened on December 21, 2007 and Hanks received a Golden Globe nomination.

In 2008's The Great Buck Howard, Hanks played the on-screen father of a young man (Hanks' real-life son, Colin Hanks) who chooses to follow in the footsteps of a fading magician (John Malkovich). Tom Hanks's character was less than thrilled about his son's career decision.

Hanks's next endeavor, released on May 15, 2009, was a film adaptation of Angels & Demons, based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown. Its April 11, 2007 announcement revealed that Hanks would reprise his role as Robert Langdon, and that he would reportedly receive the highest salary ever for an actor. The following day he made his 10th appearance on NBC's Saturday Night Live, impersonating himself for the Celebrity Jeopardy'' sketch.

Hanks is producer of the Spike Jonze film Where The Wild Things Are, based on the children's book by Maurice Sendak.

In 2010, Hanks reprised his role as Sheriff Woody in the third film in the Toy Story franchise, Toy Story 3, after he, Tim Allen, and John Ratzenberger were invited to a movie theater to see a complete story reel of the movie.

Top worldwide film grosses

Hanks is ranked the highest all time box office star with over $3.639 billion total box office gross, an average of $107 million per film. He has been involved with seventeen films that grossed over $100 million at the worldwide box office. The highest grossing film he has starred in is 2010's Toy Story 3.

Personal life

Hanks was married to American actress Samantha Lewes (née Susan Jane Dillingham) from 1978 to 1987. The couple had two children, son Colin Hanks (also an actor) and daughter Elizabeth Ann. In 1988, Hanks married actress Rita Wilson. The two first met on the set of Hanks's television show Bosom Buddies but later developed a romantic interest while working on the film Volunteers. They have two sons: Chester, or "Chet" (who has a small part as a student in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), and Truman. As of January 2011, Chet, a sophomore at Northwestern University, has been receiving media attention for his recent release of a rap single, "White and Purple (Northwestern Remix)".

Regarding his religious views, Hanks has said, "I must say that when I go to church – and I do go to church – I ponder the mystery. I meditate on the 'why?' of 'Why people are as they are' and 'Why bad things happen to good people,' and 'Why good things happen to bad people'… The mystery is what I think it is, almost, the grand unifying theory of mankind."

Politics

Hanks has made donations to many Democratic politicians and has been open about his support for same-sex marriage, environmental causes and alternative fuels. Hanks made public his presidential candidate choice in the 2008 election when he uploaded a video to his MySpace account in which he announced his endorsement of Barack Obama.

A proponent of environmentalism, Hanks is an investor in electric vehicles and owns both a Toyota RAV4 EV and the first production AC Propulsion eBox. Hanks was a lessee of an EV1 before it was recalled, as chronicled in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? He is on the waiting list for an Aptera 2 Series.

Hanks was extremely outspoken about his opposition to Proposition 8, an amendment to the California constitution that defined marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. Hanks and others who were in opposition to the proposition raised over USD$44 million in contrast to the supporters' $39 million, but Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.

While premiering a TV series in January of 2009, Hanks called supporters of Proposition 8 "un-American" and attacked the LDS (Mormon) church members, who were major proponents of the bill, for their views on marriage and their role in supporting the bill. About a week later, Hanks apologized for the remark, saying that nothing is more American than voting one's conscience.

Other activities

(left) at the National World War II Memorial in March 2010]] A supporter of NASA's manned space program, Hanks has said that he originally wanted to be an astronaut but "didn't have the math." Hanks is a member of the National Space Society, serving on the Board of Governors of the nonprofit educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher Von Braun. He also produced the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon about the Apollo program to send astronauts to the moon. In addition, Hanks co-wrote and co-produced , an IMAX film about the moon landings. Hanks also provided the voice over for the premiere of the show Passport to the Universe at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

In 2006, the Space Foundation awarded Hanks the Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award. The award is given annually to an individual or organization that has made significant contributions to public awareness of space programs.

In June 2006 Hanks was inducted as an honorary member of the United States Army Rangers Hall of Fame for his accurate portrayal of a Captain in the movie Saving Private Ryan; Hanks, who was unable to attend the induction ceremony, was the first actor to receive such an honor. In addition to his role in Saving Private Ryan, Hanks was cited for serving as the national spokesperson for the World War II Memorial Campaign, for being the honorary chairperson of the D-Day Museum Capital Campaign, and for his role in writing and helping to produce the Emmy Award-winning miniseries, Band of Brothers.

Hanks is one of several celebrities who frequently participates in planned comedy bits on Conan O'Brien's talk shows, including Late Night, The Tonight Show, and Conan while a guest. On one visit, Hanks asked Conan to join his run for president on the "Bad Haircut Party" ticket, with confetti and balloons and a hand held sign with the slogan "You'd be stupid to vote for us". On another episode, O'Brien, noting that Hanks was missing Christmas on his promotional tour, brought the season to him, including a gift (the skeleton of Hooch), and a mass of snow burying them both. On yet another episode, Conan gave Hanks a painting he had commissioned reflecting two of his interests: Astronauts landing on the beach at Normandy. On March 10, 2008, Hanks was on hand at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to induct sixties sensation The Dave Clark Five. He praised the group for both the joy of their music and for never signing away their publishing rights.

Hanks is a known fan of English Premier League Football club Aston Villa and was presented with a shirt on a TV show with the print 'Hanks 1' on the back. Hanks confirmed his affiliation with the club in an interview with Jonathan Ross in May 2009, citing his public like for the name as the reason why the media portray him as an Aston Villa fan.

Filmography

Television

Other accolades

Eponym

Asteroid 12818 Tomhanks has been named after him.

References

Further reading

Gardner, David, Tom Hanks: The Unauthorized Biography, London, England 1999

Gardner, David, Tom Hanks: Enigma 2007

Pfeiffer, Lee, The Films of Tom Hanks, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1996

Salamon, Julie, The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood, Boston, 1991

Trakin, Roy, Tom Hanks: Journey to Stardom, 1987; rev. ed.1995

Wallner, Rosemary, Tom Hanks: Academy Award-Winning Actor, Edina, Minnesota, 1994

External links

Official YouTube

Tom Hanks's thoughts on Earth Day 2006

Tom Hanks interview

Interview from 1989 issue of Film Comment

Tom Hanks's films of the 1980s

Category:Living people Category:1956 births Category:Actors from California Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American people of Portuguese descent Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:California Democrats Category:California State University, Sacramento alumni Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from Concord, California Category:People from Contra Costa County, California Category:People from Oakland, California Category:Space advocacy

Name	Steve Martin
Caption	at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
Birth name	Stephen Glenn Martin
Birth date	August 14, 1945
Birth place	Waco, Texas, United States
Medium	Stand-up, television, film, music, publishing
Nationality	American
Active	1967–present
Genre	Improvisational, sketch, slapstick
Influences	British television, Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Laurel and Hardy, Wally Boag
Influenced	Eddie Izzard, Chris Rock, Judd Apatow, Patton Oswalt, Dane Cook, Brian Posehn, Bo Burnham, Will Forte, David Walliams, Sarah Silverman, Will Arnett, Jon Stewart, Harry Hill, Vic Reeves, Stephen Colbert, Louis C.K., Tina Fey, Russell Peters, Howie Mandel, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader, Artie Lange
Spouse	Victoria Tennant (November 20, 1986–1994) Martin was raised in Inglewood, California, and then later in Garden Grove, California, in a Baptist family. One of his earliest memories is of seeing his father, as an extra, serving drinks onstage at the Call Board Theatre on Melrose Place. During World War II, in England, Martin's father had appeared in a production of Our Town with Raymond Massey. Years later, he would write to Massey for help in Steve's fledgling career, but would receive no reply. Expressing his affection through gifts of cars, bikes, etc., Martin's father was stern, not emotionally open to his son. Martin's first job was at Disneyland, selling guidebooks on weekends and full-time during the summer school break. That lasted for three years (1955–1958). During his free time he frequented the Main Street Magic shop, where tricks were demonstrated to potential customers. In his authorized biography, close friend Morris Walker suggests that Martin could "be described most accurately as an agnostic [...] he rarely went to church and was never involved in organized religion of his own volition".
|rowspan	2| Cameo
Colspan	"5" style="font-size:90%"|"—" denotes a title that did not chart.
Name	Martin, Steve
Alternative names	Martin, Stephen Glen
Short description	Comedian, writer, and entertainer
Date of birth	August 14, 1945
Place of birth	Waco, Texas, United States

Category:1945 births Category:Actors from California Category:Actors from Texas Category:American banjoists Category:American buskers Category:American comedy musicians Category:American dramatists and playwrights Category:American film actors Category:American memoirists Category:American screenwriters Category:American stand-up comedians Category:California State University, Long Beach alumni Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Living people Category:Mark Twain Prize recipients Category:People from Waco, Texas Category:People from Garden Grove, California Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners Category:People from Inglewood, California

Name	Robin Williams
Caption	At "Stand Up for Heroes", a benefit organized by the Bob Woodruff Family Fund to raise money for injured U.S. servicemen (2007)
Birth name	Robin McLaurim Williams
Birth date	July 21, 1951
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Medium	Stand-up, Film, Television
Nationality	American
Active	1972–present
Genre	Character comedy, Physical comedy, Improvisational comedy, Satire/Political Satire, Observational comedy, Blue Comedy
Influences	Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters
Influenced	Conan O'Brien, Frank Caliendo, Dat Phan, Jo Koy
Spouse	Valerie Velardi (1978–1988) 1 child Marsha Garces Williams (1989–2008) 2 children
Website	RobinWilliams.com

Robin McLaurim Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.

Early life

Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987) was a senior executive at Ford Motorship in charge of the Midwest area. He is of English, Welsh and Irish descent on his father's side, and of French descent on his mother's side. Williams was raised in the Episcopal Church, though his mother practiced Christian Science. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams also attended Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd (who died August 14, 2007) and McLaurin.

Williams has described himself as a quiet child whose first imitation was of his grandmother to his mother. He did not overcome his shyness until he became involved with his high-school drama department.

In 1973, Williams was one of only 20 students accepted into the freshman class at the Juilliard School, and one of only two students to be accepted by John Houseman into the Advanced Program at the school that year, the other being Christopher Reeve. As Mork, Williams improvised much of his dialogue and devised plenty of rapid-fire verbal and physical comedy, speaking in a high, nasal voice. Mork's appearance was so popular with viewers that it led to a spin-off hit television sitcom, Mork and Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982. Although playing the same character as in his appearance in Happy Days, the show was set in the present day, in Boulder, Colorado, instead of the late '50s in Milwaukee. Mork was an extremely popular character, featured on posters, coloring books, lunchboxes, and other merchandise.

Starting in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Williams began to reach a wider audience with his standup comedy, including three HBO comedy specials, Off The Wall (1978), An Evening with Robin Williams (1982), and Robin Williams: Live at the Met (1986). Also in 1986, Williams reached an ever wider audience to exhibit his style at the 58th Academy Awards show.

His stand-up work has been a consistent thread through his career, as is seen by the success of his one-man show (and subsequent DVD) Robin Williams Live on Broadway (2002). He was voted 13th on Comedy Central's list "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time" in 2004.

After some encouragement from his friend Whoopi Goldberg, he was set to make a guest appearance in the 1991 episode, "A Matter of Time", but he had to cancel due to a scheduling conflict; Matt Frewer took his place as a time-traveling con man, Professor Berlingoff Rasmussen.

Williams also appeared on an episode of the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (Season 3, Episode 9: November 16, 2000). During a game of "Scenes from a Hat", the scene "What Robin Williams is thinking right now" was drawn, and Williams stated "I have a career. What the hell am I doing here?"

On December 4, 2010, he appeared with Robert De Niro on SNL in the sketch What Up with That.

Cinema career

Most of Williams' acting career has been in film, although he has given some performances on stage as well (notably as Estragon in a production of Waiting for Godot with Steve Martin). His performance in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) got Williams nominated for an Academy Award. Many of his roles have been comedies tinged with pathos.

His role as the Genie in the animated film Aladdin (1992) was instrumental in establishing the importance of star power in voice actor casting. Williams also used his voice talents in , as the holographic Dr. Know in the 2001 feature A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the 2005 animated feature Robots, the 2006 Academy Award winning Happy Feet, and an uncredited vocal performance in 2006's Everyone's Hero. Furthermore, he was the voice of The Timekeeper, a former attraction at the Walt Disney World Resort about a time-traveling robot who encounters Jules Verne and brings him to the future.

In 1998, he won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role as a psychologist in Good Will Hunting. although the part of the Joker was played by Heath Ledger, who went on to win, posthumously, the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He was portrayed by Chris Diamantopoulos in the made-for-TV biopic Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy (2005), documenting the actor's arrival in Hollywood as a struggling comedian.

Disputes with Disney

In gratitude for his success with the Disney/Touchstone film Good Morning, Vietnam, Robin Williams voiced the Genie in the Disney animated film Aladdin for SAG scale pay ($75,000), on condition that his name or image not be used for marketing, and his (supporting) character not take more than 25% of space on advertising artwork, since Toys was scheduled for release one month after Aladdin's debut. The studio went back on the deal on both counts, especially in poster art by having the Genie in 25% of the image, but having other major and supporting characters portrayed considerably smaller. Disney's Hyperion book, Aladdin: The Making Of An Animated Film, listed both of Williams' characters "The Peddler" and "The Genie" ahead of main characters, but was forced to refer to him only as "the actor signed to play the Genie".

Williams and Disney had a bitter falling-out, and as a result Dan Castellaneta voiced the Genie in The Return of Jafar, the Aladdin animated television series, and had recorded his voice for Aladdin and the King of Thieves. When Jeffrey Katzenberg was fired from Disney and replaced by former 20th Century Fox production head Joe Roth (whose last act for Fox was greenlighting Williams' film Mrs. Doubtfire), Roth arranged for a public apology to Williams by Disney. Williams agreed to perform in Hollywood Pictures' Jack, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and even agreed to voice the Genie again for the King Of Thieves sequel (for considerably more than scale), replacing all of Castellaneta's dialogue.

When Williams re-teamed with Doubtfire director Chris Columbus for 1999's Bicentennial Man, Disney asked that the budget be cut by approximately $20 million, and when the film was released on Christmas Day, it flopped at the box office. Williams blamed Disney's marketing and the loss of content the film had suffered due to the budget cuts. As a result, Williams was again on bad terms with Disney, and Castellaneta was once again recruited to replace him as Genie in the Kingdom Hearts video game series and the House of Mouse TV series. The DVD release for Aladdin has no involvement whatsoever from Williams in the bonus materials, although some of his original recording sessions can be seen.

Robin Williams has recently made peace with the Walt Disney Company and in 2009 agreed to be inducted into the Disney hall of fame, designated as a Disney Legend.

Stand-up career

Robin Williams has done a number of stand-up comedy tours since the early 1970s. Some of his most notable tours include An Evening With Robin Williams (1982), Robin Williams: At The Met (1986) and Robin Williams LIVE on Broadway (2002). The latter broke many long-held records for a comedy show. In some cases, tickets were sold out within thirty minutes of going on sale.

After a six-year break, in August 2008 Williams announced a brand new 26-city tour titled "Weapons of Self Destruction". He was quoted as saying that this was his last chance to make cracks at the expense of the current Bush Administration, but by the time the show was staged only a few minutes covered that subject. The tour started at the end of September 2009, finishing in New York on December 3, and was the subject of an HBO special on December 8, 2009.

Controversy

Williams was accused of stealing material from other comics to the extent that David Brenner claims that he confronted Williams personally and threatened him with bodily harm if he heard Williams utter another one of his jokes.

Theatre career

In theatre, Williams has headed his own one-man show, Robin Williams: Live on Broadway, that played at The Broadway Theatre in July 2002. He will make his acting debut in Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, to open on Broadway on March 31, 2011.

Personal life

Robin Williams' first marriage was to Valerie Velardi on June 4, 1978, with whom he has one child, Zachary Pym (Zak) (born April 11, 1983). During Williams' first marriage, he was involved in an extramarital relationship with Michelle Tish Carter, a cocktail waitress whom he met in 1984. She sued him in 1986, claiming that he did not tell her he was infected with the herpes simplex virus before he embarked on a sexual relationship with her in the mid-1980s, during which, she said, he transmitted the virus to her. The case was settled out of court.

On April 30, 1989, he married Marsha Garces, his son's nanny who was already several months pregnant with his child. They have two children, Zelda Rae (born July 31, 1989) and Cody Alan (born November 25, 1991). However, in March 2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, citing irreconcilable differences.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams had an addiction to cocaine; he has since quit. Williams was a close friend and frequent partier alongside John Belushi. He says the death of his friend and the birth of his son prompted him to quit drugs: "Was it a wake-up call? Oh yeah, on a huge level. The grand jury helped too."

On August 9, 2006, Williams checked himself in to a substance-abuse rehabilitation center (located in Newberg, Oregon), later admitting that he was an alcoholic. His publicist delivered the announcement:

"After 20 years of sobriety, Robin Williams found himself drinking again and has decided to take proactive measures to deal with this for his own well-being and the well-being of his family. He asks that you respect his and his family's privacy during this time. He looks forward to returning to work this fall to support his upcoming film releases."

On August 20, 2007, Williams' elder brother, Robert Todd Williams, died of complications from heart surgery performed a month earlier.

Williams is a member of the Episcopal Church. He has described his denomination in a comedy routine as "Catholic Lite — same rituals, half the guilt."

While studying at Juilliard, Williams befriended Christopher Reeve. They had several classes together in which they were the only students, and they remained good friends for the rest of Reeve's life. Williams visited Reeve after the horse riding accident that rendered him a quadriplegic, and cheered him up by pretending to be an eccentric Russian doctor (similar to his role in Nine Months). Williams claimed that he was there to perform a colonoscopy. Reeve stated that he laughed for the first time since the accident and knew that life was going to be okay.

Williams lives in San Francisco.

Health

Williams was hospitalized in March 2009 due to heart problems. He postponed his one-man tour in order to undergo surgery to replace his aortic valve. The surgery was successfully completed on March 13, 2009, at the Cleveland Clinic.

Other interests

Williams is an avid enthusiast of games (even naming his daughter after Princess Zelda from The Legend of Zelda video game series), enjoying pen-and-paper role-playing games and online video games, recently playing Warcraft 3, Day of Defeat, Half-Life, and the first-person shooter Battlefield 2 as a sniper. On January 6, 2006, he performed live at Consumer Electronics Show during Google's keynote. In the 2006 E3, on the invitation of Will Wright, he demonstrated the creature editor of Spore while simultaneously commenting on the creature's look: "This will actually make a platypus look good." He also complimented the game's versatility, comparing it to Populous and Black & White. Later that year, he was one of several celebrities to participate in the Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day.

A fan of professional road cycling, he was a regular on the US Postal and Discovery Channel Pro Cycling team bus and hotels during the years Lance Armstrong dominated the Tour de France. He owns over 50 bicycles.

He also enjoys rugby union and is a big fan of former All Black, Jonah Lomu.

Williams is a supporter of eco-friendly vehicles. He currently drives a Toyota Prius, and is on the waiting list for an Aptera 2 Series electric vehicle. Williams has recently announced that he would love to play the role of "The Riddler" in the next installment to the "Batman" films by director Christopher Nolan, though Nolan has stated "The Riddler" will not be in the next and final installment.

Charity work

for the USO on December 13, 2010]] Williams and his former wife, Marsha, founded the Windfall Foundation, a philanthropic organization to raise money for many different charities. Williams devotes much of his energy to charity work, including the Comic Relief fundraising efforts. In December 1999, he sang in French on the BBC-inspired music video of international celebrities doing a cover of the Rolling Stones' "It's Only Rock & Roll" for the charity Children's Promise.

Williams has performed with the USO for U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In response to the 2010 Canterbury Earthquake, Robin Williams donated all proceeds of his "Weapons of Self Destruction" Christchurch performance to helping rebuild the New Zealand city. Half the proceeds were donated to the Red Cross and half to the mayoral building fund with the words "I hope this donation will go some way to helping the extensive rebuilding effort in the city."

Filmography

Television

Discography

Williams sings a version of "Come Together" with Bobby McFerrin on In My Life, a Beatles tribute album produced by George Martin. He also sings "A Mi Manera (My Way)", on the Happy Feet soundtrack. For the 1992 soundtrack of Aladdin he sang the songs "Friend Like Me" and "Prince Ali". For the 1993 soundtrack of Mrs. Doubtfire, and the film, he sings a rendition of a fragment of Gioachino Rossini's "Largo al factotum" from The Barber of Seville.

Williams appeared in the music video of Bobby McFerrin's hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy".

Reality...What a Concept (1979)

Throbbing Python of Love (1983)

A Night at the Met (1986)

Pecos Bill (1988)

Live 2002 (2002)

Weapons of Self-Destruction (2010)

References

"Road Trip with Robin"

"Robin Williams mimic ends 'fraud'" (BBC News)

"Robin Williams' impersonator stopped" (AskMen.com)

"Robin Williams Enters Rehab", August 9, 2006 (Access Hollywood)

Lovece, Frank, New York Newsday (April 27, 2006)

Bibliography

External links

Robin Williams - official website

Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from California Category:Actors from Chicago, Illinois Category:American actors of English descent Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of French descent Category:American comedians of Irish descent Category:American Episcopalians Category:American film actors Category:American impressionists (entertainers) Category:American stand-up comedians Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (television) winners Category:Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners Category:California Democrats Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Juilliard School alumni

Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from Marin County, California Category:People self-identifying as alcoholics Category:Comedians

Name	Rex Reed
Birthname	Rex Taylor Reed
Birth date	October 02, 1938
Birth place	Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.
Occupation	Film critic
Years active	1967–present

Rex Taylor Reed (born October 2, 1938) is an American film critic and former co-host of the syndicated television show At the Movies. He currently writes the column "On the Town with Rex Reed" for The New York Observer.

Life and career

Reed was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of Jewell (née Smith) and James M. Reed, an oil company supervisor.

He has also acted occasionally, as in the movie version of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge. Reed has also appeared in the films Inchon! and Superman (as himself). Reed was also a regular on the TV show The Gong Show in the late '70s. Reed also served on the jury at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971. He has also guest voiced as himself on the animated series The Critic.

Reed is also good friends with gossip columnist Liz Smith. He is a member of New York Film Critics Circle and, because his reviews appear on the 'net, he is a member of New York Film Critics Online.

He lives at the famed Dakota apartment building, in New York City.

Controversies

Marisa Tomei Academy Awards rumor

After Jack Palance presented the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress to Marisa Tomei in 1993, Reed started a rumour that Palance had erroneously called out the wrong name because he was unable to read the printing on the card inside the envelope, became confused or was too "drunk" or "stoned" to announce the winner properly. By 1997 Reed was espousing on television his claim that a "massive cover-up" was underway to prevent the public from finding out about the mistake.

Critic Roger Ebert commented on his website that "Not only is the rumor untrue, it is unfair to Marisa Tomei, and Rex Reed owes her an apology." The Academy has stated that if such a mistake had occurred, representatives from Price Waterhouse would have stepped onto stage to correct it. Tomei has refused to comment on the rumor.

Arrest

In February 2000, Reed was arrested for shoplifting after leaving a Tower Records, in Manhattan, with CDs by Mel Tormé, Peggy Lee, and Carmen McRae in his jacket pockets. Reed, who had just purchased two other CDs, says he forgot about the other 3 CDs and his offer to pay for them was refused. The charges were later dropped. According to Reed, several days after the arrest Peggy Lee sent him her entire catalog of CDs, because "she was so thrilled I wanted one of her CDs enough to put myself through so much hell."

Oldboy review

In a 2005 review of the South Korean movie Oldboy, Reed wrote: "What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs?" The Village Voice, which stated that "online forums erupted in protest" at the review, then mocked Reed by imagining him applying similar logic to films from other countries.

Bibliography

References

External links

Rex Reed's New York Observer movie review archive

New York Film Critics Circle biography

Category:1938 births Category:American film critics Category:Film theorists Category:Living people Category:Louisiana State University alumni Category:People from Fort Worth, Texas

Caption	Portman at the premiere of Black Swan during the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.
Birth name	Natalie Hershlag()
Birth date	June 09, 1981
Birth place	Jerusalem, Israel
Years active	1994–present
Occupation	Actress
Partner	Benjamin Millepied (2010-present)

Natalie Hershlag (; born 9 June 1981), better known by her stage name Natalie Portman, is an Israeli-American actress. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon (known in the United States as The Professional). During the 1990s, Portman had major roles in films like Beautiful Girls and Anywhere but Here, before being cast for the role as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. She completed her bachelor's degree in 2003.

In 2001, Portman opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Portman's directorial debut, Eve, opened the 65th Venice International Film Festival's shorts competition in 2008.

In 2011, Portman was nominated for her third Golden Globe award for her performance in Black Swan. She is engaged to ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied. Her father, Avner Hershlag, is a fertility specialist. Her mother, Shelley Hershlag,

Portman's parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University, where her mother was selling tickets. They corresponded after her father returned to Israel, and were married when her mother visited a few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the United States, where her father received his medical training. The family first lived in Washington, D.C., where Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, but relocated to Connecticut in 1988, and then settled on Long Island, New York, in 1990. She attended Syosset High School in Syosset, Long Island. Portman has said that although she "really love[s] the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home." She is an only child and very close to her parents, Portman learned to speak Hebrew in addition to English and attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove, New York. She graduated from the public Syosset High School in 1999.

On June 5, 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in psychology. "I don't care if [college] ruins my career," she told the New York Post, according to a Fox News article. "I'd rather be smart than a movie star." At Harvard, Portman was Alan Dershowitz's research assistant in a psychology lab. While attending Harvard, she was a resident of Lowell House and wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson in response to an anti-Israeli essay.

Portman took graduate courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004.

Portman has professed an interest in foreign languages since childhood and has studied French, Japanese, and Arabic.

As a student, Portman co-authored two research papers that were published in professional scientific journals. Her 1998 high school paper, "A Simple Method To Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar," was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search, in which she was named a semifinalist. In 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called "Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence" during her psychology studies at Harvard.

Due to her scientific publications, Portman is among a very small number of professional actors with a defined Erdős–Bacon number, a concept which reflects the "small world phenomenon" in academia and entertainment by measuring the "collaborative distance" between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and the number of links, through roles in films, by which the individual is separated from American actor Kevin Bacon.

Career

Early work

Portman started dancing lessons at age four but she turned down the offer to focus on acting. In a magazine interview, Portman said that she was "different from the other kids. I was more ambitious, I knew what I liked and what I wanted, and I worked very hard. I was a very serious kid."

Portman spent her school holidays attending theater camps. When she was 10, she auditioned for the off-Broadway show Ruthless!, a musical about a girl who is prepared to commit murder to get the lead in a school play. Portman and future pop star Britney Spears were chosen as the understudies for star Laura Bell Bundy. Léon opened on November 18, 1994, marking her feature film debut at age 13. That same year she appeared in the short film Developing, which aired on television.

1995–1999

During the mid-1990s, Portman had roles in the films Heat, Everyone Says I Love You, and Mars Attacks!, as well as a major role in Beautiful Girls. Critic Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon called Portman "astonishing" and said that "[u]nlike any number of actresses her age, she's neither too maudlin nor too plucky." In the late 1990s, Portman was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The first part, , opened in early 1999. During the summer break from June to September 2000, Portman filmed in Sydney, along with additional production in London.

In July 2001, Portman opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Mike Nichols; she played the role of Nina alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. That same year, she was one of many celebrities who made cameo appearances in the 2001 comedy Zoolander. Portman was cast in a small role in the film Cold Mountain alongside Jude Law and Nicole Kidman.

The final Star Wars prequel, , was released on May 19, 2005. The film was the highest grossing domestic film of the year, and was voted Favorite Motion Picture at the People's Choice Awards. Also in 2005, Portman filmed Free Zone and director Miloš Forman's Goya's Ghosts. Forman had not seen any of her work but thought she looked like a Goya painting, so he requested a meeting.

2006–2009

Portman appeared on Saturday Night Live on March 4, 2006, hosting the show with musical guest Fall Out Boy and special guest star Dennis Haysbert. In a SNL Digital Short, she portrays herself as an angry gangsta rapper (with Andy Samberg as her Flavor Flav-esque partner in Viking garb) during a faux-interview with Chris Parnell, saying she cheated at Harvard University while high on marijuana and cocaine. The song, titled "Natalie's Rap," was released – alongside other sketches from the show – in 2009 on Incredibad, an album by the Lonely Island. In another sketch, she portrays a student named Rebecca Hershlag (her actual surname) attending a Bar Mitzvah, and in an installment of the recurring sketch The Needlers (also known as Sally and Dan, The Couple That Should Be Divorced), plays a fertility specialist (her father's profession).

V for Vendetta opened in early 2006. Portman portrayed Evey Hammond, a young woman who is saved from the secret police by the main character, V. Portman worked with a voice coach for the role, learning to speak with an English accent, and she famously had her head shaved.

Portman has commented on V for Vendetta's political relevance and mentioned that her character, who joins an underground anti-government group, is "often bad and does things that you don't like" and that "being from Israel was a reason I wanted to do this because terrorism and violence are such a daily part of my conversations since I was little." She said the film "doesn't make clear good or bad statements. It respects the audience enough to take away their own opinion".

Both Goya's Ghosts and Free Zone received limited releases in 2006. Portman starred in the children's film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which began filming in April 2006 and was released in November 2007; she has said that she was "excited to do a kids' movie."

In 2006, she filmed Wong Kar-wai's road movie My Blueberry Nights. She won acclaim for her role as gambler Leslie, because "[f]or once she's not playing a waif or a child princess but a mature, full-bodied woman... but she's not coasting on her looks... She uses her appeal to simultaneously flirt with and taunt the gambler across the table." Portman voiced Bart Simpson's girlfriend Darcy in the episode "Little Big Girl" of The Simpsons' 18th season.

She appeared in Paul McCartney's music video "Dance Tonight" from his 2007 album Memory Almost Full, directed by Michel Gondry. Portman co-starred in the Wes Anderson short film Hotel Chevalier, opposite Jason Schwartzman, in which she performed her second nude scene (her first being Goya's Ghosts). In May 2008, Portman served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury,

In 2008, Portman at age 27 made her directorial debut at the Venice Film Festival. "Eve", a short movie about a young woman who is dragged along on her grandmother's romantic date, was screened out of competition. Portman said she had always had a fascination with the older generation, and drew inspiration for the character from her own grandmother.

2010–present

Portman played a veteran ballerina in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, a role of which critic Kurt Loder wrote: "Portman gives one of her most compelling performances in this film, which is saying something." To prepare for the role, she went through five to eight hours of dance training each day for six months and lost 20 lb.

Portman's next film is No Strings Attached, which will be released on January 21, 2011. She has also been cast in the role of Jane Foster in Kenneth Branagh's upcoming film adaptation of Thor. Portman dropped out of the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet in the 2010 novel adaptation Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but she continues as producer.

Social and political causes

, presenting Black Swan]] Portman, who is an advocate for animal rights, has been a vegetarian since childhood. She became a vegan in 2009 after reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. She does not eat animal products or wear fur, feathers, or leather. "All of my shoes are from Target and Stella McCartney," she has said. In 2007, she launched her own brand of vegan footwear.

In 2007, Portman traveled to Rwanda with Jack Hanna, to film the documentary Gorillas on the Brink. Later, at a naming ceremony, Portman christened a baby gorilla Gukina, which means "to play." Portman has been an advocate of environmental causes since childhood, when she joined an environmental song and dance troupe known as World Patrol Kids. She is also a member of the One Voice movement.

Portman has also supported antipoverty activities. In 2004 and 2005, she traveled to Uganda, Guatemala, and Ecuador as the Ambassador of Hope for FINCA International, an organization that promotes micro-lending to help finance women-owned businesses in developing countries. In an interview conducted backstage at the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia and appearing on the PBS program Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, she discussed microfinance. Host Fareed Zakaria said that he was "generally wary of celebrities with fashionable causes," but included the segment with Portman because "she really knew her stuff."

In the "Voices" segment of the April 29, 2007, episode of the ABC Sunday morning program This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Portman discussed her work with FINCA and how it can benefit women and children in Third World countries. In fall 2007, she visited several university campuses, including Harvard, USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, New York University, and Columbia, to inspire students with the power of microfinance and to encourage them to join the Village Banking Campaign to help families and communities lift themselves out of poverty.

In 2010, Portman's activist work and popularity with young people earned her a nomination for VH1's Do Something Awards, which is dedicated to honoring individuals who do good.

Portman is a supporter of the Democratic Party, and in the 2004 presidential race she campaigned for the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry. In the 2008 presidential election, Portman supported Senator Hillary Clinton of New York in the Democratic primaries. She later campaigned for the eventual Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, during the general election. However, in a 2008 interview, she also said: "I even like John McCain. I disagree with his war stance — which is a really big deal — but I think he's a very moral person."

Personal life

In the May 2002 issue of Vogue, Portman called actor/musician Lukas Haas and musician Moby her close friends. After starring in the video for his song "Carmensita," she began a relationship with American folk singer Devendra Banhart, which ended in September 2008. She met ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied on the set of her film Black Swan, for which Millepied acted as choreographer. By at least New Year's Eve 2009, the two had begun dating. On December 27, 2010, a Portman representative told the press that Portman and Millepied were engaged and expecting a child.

On the concept of the afterlife, Portman has said, "I don't believe in that. I believe this is it, and I believe it's the best way to live."

Filmography

Film and television

{| class="wikitable" |- ! Year ! Title ! Role ! Notes |- | rowspan="2" | 1994 | Léon | Mathilda | (aka The Professional) |- | "Developing" | Nina | 23-minute short film |- | 1995 | Heat | Lauren Gustafson | |- | rowspan="3" | 1996 | Beautiful Girls | Marty | |- | Everyone Says I Love You | Laura Dandridge | |- | Mars Attacks! | Taffy Dale | |- | rowspan="2" | 1999 | | Padmé Amidala | |- | Anywhere but Here | Ann August | |- | 2000 | Where the Heart Is | Novalee Nation | |- | 2001 | Zoolander | Herself | cameo |- | 2002 | | Padmé Amidala | |- | 2003 | Cold Mountain | Sara | |- | rowspan="2" | 2004 | Garden State | Samantha | |- | Closer | Alice Ayres | |- | rowspan="2" | 2005 | | Padmé Amidala | |- | Free Zone | Rebecca | received a limited US theatrical release in April 2006 |- | rowspan="3" | 2006 | V for Vendetta | Evey Hammond | |- | Paris, je t'aime | Francine |Ensemble film with 22 segments. She appears in the segment directed by German writer-director Tom Tykwer. |- | Goya's Ghosts | Ines Bilbatua & Alicia | |- | rowspan="4" | 2007 | My Blueberry Nights | Leslie | |- | The Darjeeling Limited | Jack's Ex-Girlfriend | |- | "Hotel Chevalier" | Jack's Ex-Girlfriend | 13-minute short companion piece to The Darjeeling Limited |- | Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium | Molly Mahoney | |- | 2008 | The Other Boleyn Girl | Anne Boleyn | |- | rowspan="3" | 2009 | Love and Other Impossible Pursuits | Emilia Greenleaf | |- | New York, I Love You | Rifka | |- | Brothers | Grace Cahill | |- | rowspan="2" | 2010 | Hesher | Nicole | |- | Black Swan | Nina Sayers | |- | rowspan="3" | 2011 | No Strings Attached | Emma Kurtzman | Completed |- | Your Highness | Isabel | Completed |- | Thor 2004 – National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, Best Acting by an Ensemble: Closer (shared with Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Julia Roberts) 2004 – San Diego Film Critics Society, Best Supporting Actress: Closer 2005 – Golden Globe Awards, Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture: Closer 2007 – Saturn Awards, Best Actress: V for Vendetta 2010 – Boston Society of Film Critics, Best Actress: Black Swan 2010 – New York Film Critics Online, Best Actress: Black Swan 2010 – Online Film Critics Society, Best Actress: Black Swan 2011 – Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, Best Actress: Black Swan

Nominations

1996 – Chicago Film Critics Association, Best Supporting Actress: Beautiful Girls; Most Promising Actress: Beautiful Girls

1999 – Golden Raspberry Award, Worst Screen Couple: (shared with Jake Lloyd)

2000 – Golden Globe Awards, Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture: Anywhere but Here

2000 – Saturn Awards, Best Young Actress: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

2000 – Teen Choice Awards, Choice Movie Actress: Where the Heart Is

2000 – Young Artist Awards, Best Young Actress: Anywhere but Here

2001 – Young Artist Awards, Best Young Actress: Where the Heart Is

2002 – Teen Choice Awards, Choice Chemistry: (shared with Hayden Christensen)

2003 – Golden Raspberry Awards, Worst Supporting Actress: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones; Worst Screen Couple: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (shared with Hayden Christensen)

2003 – Saturn Awards, Best Actress: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

2005 – Academy Awards, Best Supporting Actress: Closer

2005 – BAFTA Awards, Best Supporting Actress: Closer

2005 – Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, Best Supporting Actress: Closer; Best Acting Ensemble: Closer (shared with Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Julia Roberts)

2005 – Irish Film and Television Awards, Best International Actress: Garden State

2005 – London Film Critics' Circle, Actress of the Year: Closer

2005 – MTV Movie Awards, Best Female Performance: Garden State; Best Kiss: Garden State (shared with Zach Braff)

2005 – Online Film Critics Society, Best Supporting Actress: Closer

2005 - People's Choice Awards, Favorite Leading Lady

2005 – Satellite Awards, Best Supporting Actress in a Drama: Closer; Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical: Garden State

2005 – Teen Choice Awards, Choice Movie Actress: Drama: Closer, Garden State; Choice Movie Actress: Action/Adventure: ; Choice Movie Liar, Garden State; Choice Movie Liplock: Garden State; Choice Movie Love Scene: Garden State

2005 – Vancouver Film Critics Circle, Best Supporting Actress: Closer, Garden State

2006 – Saturn Awards, Best Actress: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

2006 – Teen Choice Awards, Choice Movie Actress: Drama/Action Adventure: V for Vendetta

2009 – Chicago Film Critics Association, Best Supporting Actress: Brothers

2010 – Saturn Awards, Best Actress: Brothers

2010 – Satellite Awards, Best Actress in a Drama: Black Swan

2010 – Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association, Best Actress: Black Swan

2011 – Alliance of Women Film Journalists, Best Actress: Black Swan

2011 – Golden Globe Awards, Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama: Black Swan

2011 – Independent Spirit Awards, Best Female Lead: Black Swan

2011 – London Film Critics' Circle, Actress of the Year: Black Swan

2011 – Screen Actors Guild Awards, Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role: Black Swan, Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture: Black Swan

2011 – Toronto Film Critics Association, Best Actress: Black Swan

2011 – Vancouver Film Critics Circle, Best Actress: Black Swan

References

External links

Category:1981 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Actors from Connecticut Category:Actors from New York Category:Actors from Washington, D.C. Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American Jews Category:American people of Austrian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Israeli descent Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American vegans Category:Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Israeli film actors Category:Israeli immigrants to the United States Category:Israeli Jews Category:Israeli people of Austrian origin Category:Israeli people of Polish origin Category:Israeli people of Romanian origin Category:Israeli people of Russian origin Category:Israeli vegetarians Category:Jewish actors Category:People from Connecticut Category:People from Jerusalem Category:People from Long Island Category:People from Nassau County, New York Category:People from New York City Category:People from Washington, D.C. Category:Saturn Award winners

Caption	Stewart at Photocall at the Crillon Hotel in Paris, France
Birthname	Kristen Jaymes Stewart
Birthdate	April 09, 1990
Birthplace	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Yearsactive	1999–present
Website	kristenstewart.com
Signature	Kristen Stewart signature.svg90px

Kristen Jaymes Stewart (born April 9, 1990) is an American actress. She is best known for playing Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga. She has also starred in films such as Panic Room (2002), Zathura (2005), In the Land of Women (2007), The Messengers (2007), Adventureland (2009) and The Runaways (2010). She has won various awards in three consecutive years.

Early life

Kristen Stewart was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her father, John Stewart, is a stage manager and television producer who has worked for Fox. Her mother, Jules Mann-Stewart, is a script supervisor originally from Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia. She has an older brother, Cameron Stewart. Stewart attended school until the seventh grade, and then continued her education by correspondence.

Career

Her whole family all worked behind the camera, and Stewart thought she would become a writer/director, but never considered being an actor. "I never wanted to be the center of attention — I wasn't that 'I want to be famous, I want to be an actor' kid. I never sought out acting, but I always practiced my autograph because I love pens. I'd write my name on everything." Stewart's acting career began at the age of eight, after an agent saw her perform in her elementary school's Christmas play. After a year of auditioning, Stewart's first role was a nonspeaking part in the film The Thirteenth Year.

After Panic Rooms success, Stewart was cast in another thriller, Cold Creek Manor, playing the daughter of Dennis Quaid's and Sharon Stone's characters; the film generally failed at the box office. She was again nominated for a Young Artist Award for her performance. The following year, she played the character Maya in Fierce People, directed by Griffin Dunne. After that film, she received the lead role of Jess Solomon in the supernatural thriller film The Messengers.

In 2007, Stewart appeared as teenager Lucy Hardwicke in In the Land of Women, a romantic drama starring Meg Ryan and Adam Brody. The film, as well as Stewart's performance, received mixed reviews. That same year, Stewart appeared in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed adaptation film Into the Wild. For her portrayal of Tracy — a teenage singer who has a crush on young adventurer Christopher McCandless — Stewart received generally positive reviews. Salon.com considered her work a "sturdy, sensitive performance", and the Chicago Tribune noted that she did "vividly well with a sketch of a role." Her performance was not without detractors, however; Variety's critic Dennis Harvey wrote, "It's unclear whether Stewart means to be playing hippie-chick Tracy as vapid, or whether it just comes off that way." After Into the Wild, Stewart had a cameo appearance in Jumper and also appeared in What Just Happened, which was released in October 2008. She also co-stars in The Cake Eaters an independent film that has only been screened at film festivals.

On November 16, 2007, Summit Entertainment announced that Stewart would play Isabella "Bella" Swan in the film Twilight, based on Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire romance novel of the same name. Stewart was on the set of Adventureland when director Catherine Hardwicke visited her for an informal screen test which "captivated" the director. She stars alongside Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen, her character's vampire boyfriend. The film began production in February 2008 and finished filming in May 2008. Twilight was released domestically on November 21, 2008. After the release of Twilight, Kristen Stewart was awarded the MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance for her portrayal as Bella Swan. Stewart reappeared as Bella in the sequel, , and reprised this role in .

Stewart has been nominated and presented with the BAFTA Rising Star award. At the 2010 82nd Annual Academy Awards, Stewart and Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner presented a tribute in honour of the horror movie genre.

In 2009, Stewart starred in The Yellow Handkerchief, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and was released into theaters in 2010 by Samuel Goldwyn Films. She also starred alongside James Gandolfini in Welcome to the Rileys, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010.

Stewart most recently portrayed rock star Joan Jett in The Runaways, a biopic of the titular band from writer-director Floria Sigismondi. Stewart met with Jett over the 2008–2009 New Year to prepare for the role, and ended up prerecording songs in a studio for the film. She received nearly unanimous praise for her performance. Josh Tyler of Cinema Blend pronounced her to be "a modern day James Dean. She gives the kind of performance in The Runaways that hasn’t been seen on screen since his death. The Runaways is her Rebel Without a Cause ... she’s absolutely brilliant as Joan Jett." The Metro Times wrote, "It turns out that Stewart is actually really good at capturing Jett's icy, tough-but-cool girl swagger, adding the needed touches of vulnerability that transform it into a pretty terrific performance... Stewart is a genuine rock star here." Also, A.O. Scott of The New York Times noted "Ms. Stewart, watchful and unassuming, gives the movie its spine and soul."

Stewart will star in a film called K-11 with Jason Mewes. She has also been cast in the role of Mary Lou in an upcoming film adaptation of Jack Kerouac's cult classic novel On the Road. Shooting began in August 2010.

Personal life

Stewart currently lives in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Stewart has expressed a desire to live and work in Australia, saying, "I want to go to Sydney University in Australia. My mom's from there." Apart from acting, she is also interested in attending college in the near future, saying, "I want to go to college for literature. I want to be a writer. I mean, I love what I do, but it's not all I want to do — be a professional liar for the rest of my life." In an interview with Vanity Fair, Stewart stated that she dated Michael Angarano, her co-star from Speak.

Filmography

|- | 1999 || The Thirteenth Year || Girl waiting for drink || Uncredited (film debut) |- | 2000 || ''The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas || Ring toss girl || Uncredited |- | 2001 || The Safety of Objects || Sam Jennings ||Limited release |- | 2002 || Panic Room || Sarah Altman || |- | 2003 || Cold Creek Manor || Kristen Tilson || |- | rowspan="3" | 2004 || Speak || Melinda Sordino || |- | Catch That Kid || Maddy || |- | Undertow || Lila || |- | rowspan="2" | 2005 || Fierce People || Maya Osbourne || Limited release |- | Zathura || Lisa || |- | rowspan="5" | 2007 || The Messengers || Jessica "Jess" Solomon || |- | In the Land of Women || Lucy Hardwicke || |- | The Cake Eaters || Georgia || Limited release |- | Into the Wild || Tracy Tatro || |- | Cutlass || Young Robin || Short film |- | rowspan="3" | 2008 || Jumper || Sophie || Cameo |- | What Just Happened|| Zoe || |- | Twilight|| Bella Swan || |- | rowspan="2" | 2009 || Adventureland || Emily "Em" Lewin || |- | || Bella Swan || |- | rowspan="4" | 2010 || The Yellow Handkerchief || Martine || Limited Release |- | The Runaways || Joan Jett || |- | Welcome to the Rileys || Mallory || |- | || rowspan="1" | Bella Swan || |- | rowspan="2" |2011 || On the Road || Marylou || Post-production |- | | Bella Swan | Filming |- | 2012 | | Bella Swan | Filming

Awards and nominations

|- |2002 || Panic Room || rowspan="4" | Young Artist Awards || Best performance in a feature film- Leading Young Actress || || |- |2003 || Cold Creek Manor || rowspan="3" | Best performance in a feature film- Supporting Young Actress || || |- |2004 || Undertow || || |- |rowspan="2" | 2007 || rowspan="2" | Into the Wild || || |- |Screen Actors Guild Awards || Outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture || || Entire Cast |- |rowspan="8" | 2008 || rowspan="8" | Twilight || rowspan="2" | MTV Movie Awards || Best Female Performance || || |- |Best Kiss || || Shared with Robert Pattinson |- |rowspan="2" | Teen Choice Awards || Choice Movie Actress Drama || || |- |Choice Movie Liplock || || Shared with Robert Pattinson |- |rowspan="2" | Scream Awards || Best Fantasy Actress || || |- |Best Ensemble Cast || || |- |rowspan="2" | People's Choice Awards || Favourite On-Screen Team || || Shared with Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner |- |Favourite Movie Actress || || |- |rowspan="9" | 2009 || Adventureland || Gotham Awards || Best Ensemble cast || || Entire cast |- |rowspan="8" | || BAFTA Awards || Rising Star Award || || |- |rowspan="2" | Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards || rowspan="2" | Cutest Couple || || Shared with Taylor Lautner |- | || Shared with Robert Pattinson |- |rowspan="2" | MTV Movie Awards || Best Female Performance || || |- |Best Kiss || || rowspan="2" | Shared with Robert Pattinson |- |rowspan="2" | Golden Raspberry Awards || rowspan="2" | Worst Screen Couple || |- | || Shared with Taylor Lautner |- |rowspan="2" | Teen Choice Award || Choice Movie Actress Fantasy || || |- |rowspan="5" | 2010 || rowspan="2" | The Runaways || Choice Movie Actress Drama || || |- |MTV Movie Awards || Best Kiss || || Shared with Dakota Fanning |- |rowspan="3" | || rowspan="3" | People's Choice Awards || Favorite Movie Actress || || |- | People's Choice Award for Favourite On-Screen-Team || || Shared with Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson |- | People's Choice Award for Favorite Movie Star Under 25 || || |-

References

External links

Kristen Stewart's Changing Style – slideshow by Life magazine

Category:1990 births Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American people of Australian descent Category:American television actors Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Living people

Caption	Franco at the Spider-Man 3 premiere, April 2007
Birthname	James Edward Franco
Birth date	April 19, 1978
Birth place	Palo Alto, California, United States
Occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter, producer, painter
Yearsactive	1997–present

James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor, film director, screenwriter, film producer, author, and painter. He began acting during the late 1990s, appearing on the short-lived television series Freaks and Geeks and starring in several teen films. In 2001 he played the title role in Mark Rydell's television biographical film James Dean, which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film.

Franco achieved international fame with his portrayal of Harry Osborn in the Spider-Man trilogy. Since then, his films have included the war film The Great Raid (2005), the 2006 romantic drama Tristan & Isolde, and Justin Lin's drama Annapolis (2006). In 2008, Franco starred in the comedy stoner film Pineapple Express and received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He played a prominent role in the 2008 biographical film Milk. In 2010, he played the lead role in Howl as Allen Ginsberg, and 127 Hours, a film about Aron Ralston, an American mountaineer who cut off his own arm to free himself after he was trapped beneath a boulder. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance.

Early life and family

Franco was born in Palo Alto, California. His mother, Betsy Lou (née Verne), is a poet, author, and editor, and his father, Douglas Eugene Franco, runs a non-profit agency and a shipping container company; the two met as students at Stanford University. Franco's father is of Portuguese and Swedish descent and Franco's mother is Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Russia. his maternal grandmother, Mitzi Levine Verne, owns the Verne Art Gallery, a prominent art gallery in Cleveland, and was an active member in the National Council of Jewish Women.

Franco grew up in California with his two younger brothers, Tom and Dave, who is also an actor. Talented at mathematics, he interned at Lockheed Martin. Franco graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1996, where he acted in plays. He enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as an English major, but dropped out after his freshman year against his parents' wishes to pursue a career as an actor, taking acting lessons with Robert Carnegie at Playhouse West. Franco has since described the series as "one of the most fun" work experiences that he has had. In another interview, Franco said: "When we were doing Freaks and Geeks, I didn’t quite understand how movies and TV worked, and I would improvise even if the camera wasn’t on me ... So I was improvising a little bit back then, but not in a productive way."

His first major film was the romantic comedy Whatever It Takes (2000), in which he co-starred with his then-girlfriend, Marla Sokoloff. He was subsequently cast as the title role in director Mark Rydell's 2001 TV biopic James Dean. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Franco could have walked through the role and done a passable Dean, but instead gets under the skin of this insecure, rootless young man." He received a Golden Globe Award and nominations for an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

2002 - present

and Franco discuss their roles in the 2008 Gus Van Sant film Milk, and its subject, Harvey Milk.]] In the 2002 superhero film Spider-Man, the most successful film of his career to date, Franco played Harry Osborn, the son of the villainous Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and best friend of the title character (Tobey Maguire). Originally, Franco was considered for the lead role of Spider-Man/Peter Parker in the film, though the lead went to Tobey Maguire. Todd McCarthy of Variety noted that there are "good moments" between Maguire and Franco in the film. Spider-Man was a commercial and critical success. The movie grossed $114 million during its opening weekend in North America and went on to earn $822 million worldwide. In this same year, Franco was cast in the drama City by the Sea (2002) alongside Robert De Niro. The following year he co-starred alongside Neve Campbell in Robert Altman's The Company (2003).

The success of the first Spider-Man film led Franco to reprise the role in the 2004 sequel, Spider-Man 2. The movie was well received by critics, and it proved to be a big financial success, setting a new opening weekend box office record for North America. With revenue of $783 million worldwide, it became the second highest grossing film in 2004.

In 2006, Franco co-starred with Tyrese Gibson in Annapolis and played legendary hero Tristan in Tristan & Isolde, a dramatization of the Tristan and Iseult story also starring English actress Sophia Myles. He then rode with the Navy's precision flying team, the Blue Angels, and completed training for his Private Pilot License in preparation for his role in Flyboys, which was released in September 2006; the same month, Franco appeared briefly in The Wicker Man, the remake of the seminal horror film. He appeared in the film alongside Nicolas Cage, who directed him in Sonny. Also in 2006, he made a cameo appearance in the romantic comedy The Holiday.

In 2007 he again played Harry Osborn in Spider-Man 3. In contrast to the previous two films' positive reviews, Nonetheless, with a total worldwide gross of $891 million, it stands as the most successful film in the series, and Franco's highest grossing film to the end of 2008.

He starred in the film Pineapple Express (2008), a comedy co-starring and co-written by Seth Rogen and produced by Judd Apatow, both of whom worked with Franco on Freaks and Geeks. In the New York Times review of the film, critic Manohla Dargis wrote: "He’s delightful as Saul, loosey-goosey and goofy yet irrepressibly sexy, despite that greasy curtain of hair and a crash pad with a zero WAF (Woman Acceptance Factor). It’s an unshowy, generous performance and it greatly humanizes a movie that, as it shifts genre gears and cranks up the noise, becomes disappointingly sober and self-serious." Franco's performance in the film earned him a Golden Globe nomination in the category for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy In 2008 he also appeared in two films by American artist Carter exhibited at the Yvon Lambert gallery in Paris. On September 20, 2008, James hosted the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL), and a second time on December 19, 2009.

Franco starred opposite Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, and Emile Hirsch in Gus Van Sant's Milk (2008). In the film, he played Scott Smith, the boyfriend of Harvey Milk (Penn). Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, in review of the film, wrote: "Franco is a nice match for him [Penn] as the lover who finally has enough of political life." For his performance in the film, Franco won the 2008 Independent Spirit Award in the category for Best Supporting Actor.

In late 2009, Franco joined the cast of the daytime soap opera General Hospital on a recurring basis. He plays Franco, Franco calls his General Hospital role performance art; in summer 2010 the fictional Franco held an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, while the real Franco held an exhibit at the museum based on his experiences on the soap opera.

Franco made an appearance on the situation comedy show 30 Rock where he played himself and carried on a fake romance with Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) in a scheme concocted by their respective agents. In May 2010, he was cast to star in Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Apes. Franco produced and directed a documentary titled Saturday Night documenting a week in the production of an episode of SNL. The film began as a short for an NYU class but grew due to his two episodes as host, while short stories he wrote for other classes appeared in Esquire and McSweeney's.

In 2010, Franco played poet Allen Ginsberg in the drama Howl, and has received acclaim for portraying mountain climber Aron Ralston in 127 Hours. His 2011 roles include the comedy Your Highness, opposite Natalie Portman, and Rise of the Apes, a science fiction film co-starring Freida Pinto.

On November 29, 2010, it was announced that Franco and Anne Hathaway will host the 83rd Academy Awards.

In 2011, Franco will direct a film version of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and appear in two episodes of ABC's General Hospital.

Writing

In 2010, Franco published a collection of short stories called Palo Alto. The book is named after the California city where Franco grew up and is dedicated to many of the writers he worked with at Brooklyn College. The book has received mixed reviews; Los Angeles Times called it "the work of an ambitious young man who clearly loves to read, who has a good eye for detail, but who has spent way too much time on style and virtually none on substance".

Personal life

Franco reportedly has "an unusually high metabolism for productivity...a superhuman ability to focus". Dissatisfied with his career's direction, Franco reenrolled at UCLA in the fall of 2006 as an English major with a creative writing concentration. Having received permission to take as many as 62 course credits per quarter compared to the normal limit of 19 while continuing to act, he received his undergraduate degree in June 2008 with a GPA over 3.5. For his degree, Franco prepared his departmental honors thesis as a novel under the supervision of Mona Simpson. He moved to New York to simultaneously attend graduate school at Columbia University's MFA writing program, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts for filmmaking, and Brooklyn College for fiction writing, while occasionally commuting to North Carolina's Warren Wilson College for poetry. As of 2010, Franco is a PhD student in English at Yale University and will also attend the Rhode Island School of Design.

Art—painting in particular—is a talent Franco developed during his high school years while attending the California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA). His paintings were displayed publicly for the first time at the Glü Gallery in Los Angeles, California from January 7, 2006 through to February 11, 2006. Franco can also be seen painting in a scene in Spider-Man 3.

Franco enjoys reading on the set of his films. Pineapple Express producer Judd Apatow has said of him: "He's a very education-minded person. We used to laugh because in between takes he'd be reading The Iliad on set. We still haven't read The Iliad. It was a very difficult book. With him, it was always James Joyce or something."

Since April 2006, Franco has been in a relationship with actress Ahna O'Reilly. In 2008, Franco was named as the new face of Gucci's men's fragrance line. Viewed as a sex symbol, Franco was named the Sexiest Man Living in 2009 by Salon.com.

In response to questions regarding his sexuality now that he has portrayed three gay characters during his acting career, he insists he finds plenty more dimensions to the characters than their bedroom proclivities. "Or, you know what," he concluded, "maybe I’m just gay."

He was selected as the commencement speaker, the youngest, at his alma mater, UCLA, on Friday, June 12, 2009. On June 3, 2009, a press release announced Franco's cancellation as UCLA's commencement speaker due to a scheduling conflict, making it the second year in a row, after Bill Clinton, that the commencement speaker had canceled the appearance. On July 8, 2009, Franco and the Harvard Lampoon released a satirical video on prominent comedy website Funny or Die mocking his last-minute cancellation.

In the December 27, 2010 issue of Time Magazine, Franco was named by Joel Stein as "The Coolest Person of the Year."

Filmography

{| class="wikitable sortable" ! Year ! Title ! Role ! class="unsortable" | Notes |- | 1998 | 1973 | Greg | TV Film |- | 1999 | To Serve and Protect | Matt Carr | TV Film |- | 1999 | Never Been Kissed | Jason Way | |- | 1999-2000 | Freaks and Geeks | Daniel Desario | TV Series: 18 Episodes |- | 2000 | Whatever It Takes | Chris Campbell | |- | 2001 | James Dean | James Dean | TV FilmBroadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor in Television FilmGolden Globe Award for Best Actor - Miniseries or TV FilmNominated — Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a MovieNominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie |- | 2002 | Sonny | Sonny Phillips | limited release |- | 2002 | City by the Sea | Joey |Nominated — Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actor |- | 2002 | Spider-Man | Harry Osborn | |- | 2002 | Deuces Wild | Tino | |- | 2003 | The Company | Josh | |- | 2004 | Spider-Man 2 | Harry Osborn | |- | 2005 | The Ape | Harry Walker | Direct-to-Video |- | 2005 | The Great Raid | Captain Prince | |- | 2005 | Fool's Gold | Brent | Also Writer/Director |- | 2006 | Tristan & Isolde | Tristan | |- | 2006 | Annapolis | Jake Huard | |- | 2006 | The Wicker Man | Bar guy #1 | |- | 2006 | Flyboys | Blaine Rawlings | |- | 2006 | The Dead Girl | Derek | |- | 2006 | The Holiday | Himself | Uncredited |- | 2007 | Spider-Man 3 | Harry Osborn / New Goblin |Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Supporting ActorNominated — MTV Movie Award for Best Fight |- | 2007 | Knocked Up | Himself | Uncredited |- | 2007 | In the Valley of Elah | Sergeant Dan Carnelli | |- | 2007 | Finishing the Game | Dean Silo/"Rob Force" | |- | 2007 | An American Crime | Andy | |- | 2007 | Camille | Silias | |- | 2007 | Good Time Max | Max Verbinski | Also Writer/Director |- | 2008 | Pineapple Express | Saul Silver | Nominated — Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting ActorNominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyNominated — MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic PerformanceNominated — MTV Movie Award for Best Fight |- | 2008 | Nights in Rodanthe | Dr. Mark Flanner | Uncredited |- | 2008 | Milk | Scott Smith |Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best CastIndependent Spirit Award for Best Supporting MaleNominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting ActorNominated — MTV Movie Award for Best KissNominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion PictureNominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture |- | 2009 | General Hospital | Franco | scheduled to appear in more than 10 episodes November 19, 2009 - June 30, 2011; Feb. 25, 2011 |- | 2010 | 30 Rock | Himself | TV SeriesEpisode: "Klaus and Greta" |- | 2010 | Date Night | Thomas Felton | |- | 2010 | Eat Pray Love | David | |- | 2010 | Howl | Allen Ginsberg | |- | 2010 | 127 Hours | Aron Ralston | Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorIndiana Film Journalists Association Award for Best ActorLas Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorNew York Film Critics Online Award for Best ActorSanta Barbara International Film Festival Award for Outstanding PerformanceUtah Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNominated — Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNominated — Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorPending — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture DramaNominated — Houston Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorPending — Independent Spirit Award for Best Male LeadNominated — Online Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorNominated — Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorNominated — San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorNominated — Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture DramaPending — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading RoleNominated — St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNominated — Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNominated — Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor |- | 2011 | Your Highness | Fabious | post-production |- | 2011 | Rise of the Apes | | post-production |- | 2011 | In Praise of Shadows | William Vincent | post-production |}

Selected works

Franco, James. "A Star, a Soap and the Meaning of Art." Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2009.

Franco, James. "Just Before the Black." Esquire, March 24, 2010.

References

External links

Category:1978 births Category:Actors from California Category:American actors of Russian descent Category:American actors of Swedish descent Category:American film actors Category:American Jews Category:American people of Portuguese descent Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American soap opera actors Category:American television actors Category:Best Miniseries or Television Movie Actor Golden Globe winners Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Independent Spirit Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Living people Category:Palo Alto High School alumni Category:People from Palo Alto, California Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni

Name	Heidi Klum
Birthname	Heidi Klum
Caption	Klum at The Heart Truth Fashion Show, 2008
Birthdate	June 01, 1973
Birth place	Bergisch Gladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany
Height
Hair color	Blonde (colored; naturally brunette)
Eye color	Hazel
Size	4-6 (US) 34-36 (EU)
Homepage	http://www.heidiklum.com

Heidi Samuel (née Klum; better known by her birth name Heidi Klum, is a German model, actress, television host, business woman, fashion designer, television producer, and occasional singer. She is married to British singer Seal. Since 2008, she has also American citizenship.

Early life and discovery

Klum was raised in Bergisch Gladbach, a city outside Cologne, by her German parents Günther, a cosmetics-company executive, and Erna, a hairdresser. A friend persuaded her to enroll in a national modeling contest called "Model 92". Out of 25,000 contestants, Klum was voted the winner on April 29, 1992 and offered a modeling contract worth US$300,000 by Thomas Zeumer, CEO of Metropolitan Models New York. As the winner, she appeared on the Gottschalk Late Night Show, a top German television show with host Thomas Gottschalk. She accepted the contract a few months later after graduating from school and decided not to try for an apprentice position at a fashion design school.

Career

Acting and modeling

Klum has been on the cover of fashion magazines, including Vogue, ELLE, and Marie Claire. She became widely known after appearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and for her work with Victoria's Secret as an "Angel". Klum has hosted the 2002, 2006, 2007 and 2009 Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows. On October 1, 2010, the New York Post reported on its six page gossip collumn that Heidi Klum would be leaving Victoria's Secret. The supermodel has told bosses she's hanging up her wings and will not be walking in the November show. Klum, 37, told us".

In addition to working with well known photographers on her Sports Illustrated shoots, she was the object and subject of Joanne Gair body painting works in several editions from 1999 to 2006. She wrote the foreword to Gair's book of body paint work. She was a spokesmodel for McDonald's, Braun, Dannon, H & M, and Liz Claiborne, among others. She is currently a celebrity spokesmodel for Jordache and Volkswagen. In addition to modeling, she has appeared in several TV shows, including Spin City, Sex and the City, Yes, Dear, and How I Met Your Mother. She had a role as an ill-tempered hair model in the movie Blow Dry, played a giantess in the movie Ella Enchanted and was cast as Ursula Andress in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. She had cameo appearances in The Devil Wears Prada and Perfect Stranger.

Klum's other projects include music and video games. She is featured in the 2004 James Bond video game , where she plays the villain Dr. Katya Nadanova. She has appeared in several music videos, including Jamiroquai's video "Love Foolosophy" from their album A Funk Odyssey, Kelis's "Young, Fresh n' New", off her second 2001 album Wanderland and, most recently, the second video for her husband Seal's song "Secret" off his 2010 album Seal 6: Commitment. The latter video depicts the married couple sharing intimate moments while naked in bed; the concept was Klum's idea.

In July 2007, having earned $8 million in the previous 12 months, Klum was named by Forbes as third on the list of the World's 15 Top-Earning Supermodels. In 2008, Forbes estimated her income at $14 million, putting Klum in second place. For 2009, Forbes estimated her income at $16 million. Klum is signed to IMG Models in New York City.

In 2008, Klum was a featured guest on an American Volkswagen commercial, where she was interviewed by a black Beetle. When she commented that German engineering is so sexy, she caused the Beetle to blush and turn red. She has been a part of several commercials for Volkswagen and McDonald's on German television.

In November 2008, Klum appeared in two versions of a Guitar Hero World Tour commercial, where she did a take on a Tom Cruise scene in Risky Business. In both versions, she lip-synced to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" while dancing around the living room with the wireless guitar controller.

In early 2009, Klum ventured into web-based videos, starring in "SPIKED HEEL: Supermodels Battle the Forces of Evil". The web-series starred model Coco Rocha and was directed by fashion documentarian Doug Keeve. In the story, Klum aka 'The Kluminator,' and her stylish sidekick Coco “The Sassy Superhero” Rocha battle the evil Dr. Faux Pas who is plotting to destroy Fashion Week. The heroines employ everything from blow-dryer guns to fist fights, in order to thwart Dr. Faux Pas' dastardly plans. The Kluminator and Girl Wonder avoid a chain of fashion disasters to neutralize a death ray that threatens to vaporize the community of fashionistas gathered in Bryant Park.

In 2010, Klum became the new face and creative advisor for European cosmetics brand Astor, where she sets artistic direction and designs new products and fashion forward color collections.

In October 2010, Klum parted ways with Victoria's Secret after 13 years of working with the brand. She provided a simple explanation in her official statement, stating "All good things have to come to an end. I will always love Victoria and never tell her secret. It’s been an absolute amazing time!"

Producing

interviews Klum and Seal at the 59th Emmy Awards.]] In December 2004, Klum became the host, judge and executive producer of the reality show Project Runway on the U.S. cable television channel Bravo, (airing on Lifetime television beginning in 2009) in which fashion designers compete for the opportunity to show their line at New York Fashion Week and receive money to launch their own fashion line. She received an Emmy Award nomination for the show for each of the first four seasons. In 2008, Klum and Project Runway received a Peabody Award, the first time a reality show won the award. Klum was nominated for an Emmy in 2008 for "outstanding host of a reality or reality-competition show" for Project Runway, the first year that category was recognized by the Emmys. Her Mouawad jewelry collection debuted on the cable shopping network QVC on September 14, 2006, and 14 of the 16 styles sold out after 36 minutes. Klum's clothing line for Jordache launched on April 30, 2008.

Klum has two fragrances, called "Heidi Klum" and "Me". She designed makeup for Victoria's Secret as part of their "Very Sexy Makeup Collection", titled "The Heidi Klum Collection". The first run debuted in Fall 2007. A second run was released in Fall 2008.

Klum was involved in the development of a namesake rose, the Heidi Klum rose, which is available in Germany.

For the 2008 US Open, Klum designed a screen print t-shirt which was sold at the US Open shop. It featured child-like butterfly pictures. Proceeds will go to a non-profit organization maintaining the park which is home to the US Open.

Heidi became Barbie's official ambassador for the doll's 50th anniversary in 2009, even having made a Barbie doll out of herself. On April 1 that same year, she appeared on the CBS television special, I Get That a Lot, as a girl working at a pizza shop. That same year, she appeared in advertising for Dannon's Light & Fit brand.

Klum and husband Seal announced in June 2010 that whey will be making a reality series on Lifetime entitled Love's Divine (after Seal's song of the same name.)

In January 2010, Klum launched 2 lines of maternity wear: Lavish by Heidi Klum for A Pea in the Pod, and Loved by Heidi Klum for Motherhood Maternity. Klum stated, "I experienced fashion challenges during my four pregnancies and combined my knowledge of what works in terms of style, comfort and practicality to create these lines".

In October 2010, Klum with New Balance, HKNB, launched a line of active woman's wear fashion clothing on Amazon.com.

Klum is a "Real Celebrity" on the website Stardoll, where she has a line of virtual jewelry, and a virtual clothing line called Jordache. Users can go to Klum's suite and interact with her by doing interviews, sending pending requests or dressing Klum's doll.

Other work

Klum is an artist, and had several of her paintings appear in various art magazines in the U.S. On September 27, 2002 she dedicated a sculpture she painted called "Dog with Butterflies" to commemorate the role of rescue dogs in the aftermath of September 11.

In 2004, Klum co-authored Heidi Klum's Body of Knowledge with Elle magazine editor Alexandra Postman. The book gives Klum's biography as well as her advice on becoming successful. Prior to that, Klum had been an occasional guest columnist for the German television network RTL's website. She wrote an essay for the German newspaper Die Zeit.

In November 2006, Klum released her debut single "Wonderland", written for a series of television advertisements for the German retailer "Douglas". Proceeds were given to a children's charity in her hometown of Bergisch Gladbach. She contributed to her husband Seal's 2007 album System, singing the duet "Wedding Day", a song that Seal wrote for their wedding.

Personal life

Klum married stylist Ric Pipino in 1997; the couple divorced in 2002.

Klum gave birth to her first child, Helena (Leni) Klum in May 2004 in New York City. According to Klum, Leni's biological father Flavio Briatore, is not involved in the child's life; she has stated emphatically that "Seal is Leni's father" .

In early 2004, while still pregnant, Klum began a relationship with musician Seal, he was present for her birth. Klum and Seal married on May 10, 2005, on a beach in Mexico. They have three biological children together: sons Henry Gunther Ademola Dashtu Samuel (born September 15, 2005) and Johan Riley Fyodor Taiwo Samuel (born November 22, 2006), and daughter Lou Sulola Samuel (born October 9, 2009). In December 2009, Seal officially adopted Leni, and her last name was changed to Samuel.

Klum and Seal renew their vows to one another each year on their anniversary.

On hearing her family referred to as a "patchwork family" in a German newspaper, Klum said, "I was, like, Hmm, is this an insult or is this positive? I talked to Seal about it, and we’re, like, it’s actually kind of great—we’re all different shades and we came together and we all love each other. They may call it black and white, but I’m not white, I’m a shade of brown and so is our daughter, Leni. She’s the lightest, then it’s me, then it’s our son, and then it’s Seal. So I think, Hey, it’s actually kind of nice to have a 'patchwork family.'"

In 2008, Klum became a naturalized American citizen officially taking the oath to become an American citizen in order to cast her vote for then presidential candidate Barack Obama.

On November 21, 2009, she officially adopted the surname of her husband, Seal, and is now legally known as Heidi Samuel.

Legal issues

An unemployed Chemnitz butcher who used Klum's picture in advertising for a local dance on a flyer and a web page, contested her subsequent takedown notice in court and lost, forcing him to pay court costs of €2,300. A German actress has pledged to pay on his behalf.

Recognitions

2010 Peoplestar.co.uk Celebrity Magazine, The World's Most Beautiful Women (ranked 4th)

Filmography

Heidi Klum appeared in episodes of TV shows like Malcolm in the Middle (as a toothless hockey player) and Cursed. She has also guest-starred as herself in I Get That a Lot, Spin City, Sex and the City, , How I Met Your Mother, Yes, Dear, Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives. Further, the character of Katya Nadanova in the video game features her voice.

References

External links

Official Website

Interview with Der Spiegel, February 12, 2006

AOL Books Interview about the book Body of Knowledge

Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:People from Bergisch Gladbach Category:American people of German descent Category:German female models Category:German film actors Category:German immigrants to the United States Category:German television actors Category:Models of the Runway Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Project Runway

Caption	Blanchett at the press conference for The Good German in Berlin, February 2007.
Birth name	Catherine Élise Blanchett
Birth date	May 14, 1969
Birth place	Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Spouse	Andrew Upton (m. 1997-present; 3 children)
Occupation	Actress Theatre director
Years active	1993–present

Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett (born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actress and theatre director. She has won multiple acting awards, most notably two SAGs, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTAs, and an Academy Award, as well as the Volpi Cup at the 64th Venice International Film Festival. Blanchett earned five Academy Award nominations between 1998 and 2010.

Blanchett came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 film Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur. She is also well-known for her portrayals of the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the upcoming The Hobbit, Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a role which brought her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She and her husband Andrew Upton are currently artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.

Early life and education

Blanchett was born in Ivanhoe, a suburb of Melbourne, the daughter of June, an Australian property developer and teacher, and Robert "Bob" Blanchett, a Texas-born US Navy Petty Officer who later worked as an advertising executive.

Blanchett has described herself during childhood as "part extrovert, part wallflower". She studied Economics and Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne before leaving Australia to travel overseas.

When she was 18, Blanchett went on a vacation to Egypt. A fellow guest at a hotel in Cairo asked if she wanted to be an extra in a movie, and the next day she found herself in a crowd scene cheering for an American boxer losing to an Egyptian in the film Kaboria, starring the Egyptian actor Ahmad Zaki. Blanchett returned to Australia and later moved to Sydney to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1992 and beginning her career in the theatre.

Career

Her first major stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the 1993 David Mamet play Oleanna, for which she won the Sydney Theatre Critics' Best Newcomer Award. She also appeared as Ophelia in an acclaimed 1994–95 Company B production of Hamlet, directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh.

Blanchett appeared in the TV miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the miniseries Bordertown, with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode of Police Rescue entitled "The Loaded Boy". She also appeared in the 1994 telemovie of Police Rescue as a teacher taken hostage by armed bandits, and in the 50-minute drama Parklands (1996), which received a limited release in Australian cinemas.

Blanchett made her international film debut with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II in Bruce Beresford's 1997 film Paradise Road, which co-starred Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. Her first leading role, also in 1997, was as Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong's production of Oscar and Lucinda opposite Ralph Fiennes. Coincidentally, Peter Carey, the Booker Prize-winning Australian author of Oscar and Lucinda, had known Blanchett's father, Bob, when both worked in the advertising industry in Melbourne. Blanchett was nominated for her first Australian Film Institute Award as Best Leading Actress for this role but lost out to Pamela Rabe in The Well. She did, however, win an AFI Award as Supporting Actress in the same year for her role as Lizzie in the romantic-comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie, co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O'Connor.

Her first high-profile international role was as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 movie Elizabeth, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Blanchett lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow for her role in Shakespeare in Love, but won a British Academy Award (BAFTA) and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama. The following year, Blanchett was nominated for another BAFTA Award for her supporting role in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. She played the role of Galadriel in all three films. The trilogy holds the record as the highest grossing film trilogy of all time.

In 2005, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. This made Blanchett the first person to garner an Academy Award for playing a previous Oscar-winning actor/actress.

, 2007.]] In 2006, she starred in Babel opposite Brad Pitt, The Good German with George Clooney and Notes on a Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench. Blanchett received her third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film (Dench was also Oscar nominated).

In 2007, Blanchett was named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People In The World and also one of the most successful actresses by Forbes magazine.

In 2007, she won the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe Award for portraying one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' feature film I'm Not There and reprised her role as Elizabeth I in the sequel, . At the 80th Academy Awards Blanchett received two Academy Award nominations; Best Actress for Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There, becoming the eleventh actor to receive two acting nominations in the same year and the first female actor to receive another nomination for the reprisal of a role.

Blanchett and her husband started three-year contracts as artistic co-directors of the Sydney Theatre Company in January 2008, with Giorgio Armani as its patron.

She next starred in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko, and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, appearing on screen with Brad Pitt for a second time.

On 5 December 2008 Blanchett was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in front of Grauman's Egyptian Theatre.

As of 2010, Blanchett has featured in eight films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: Elizabeth (1998), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002 and 2003), The Aviator (2004), Babel (2006), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).

Blanchett provided a voice for the film Ponyo , and appeared opposite Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, released on 14 May 2010.

It was announced that Blanchett will reprise her role as Galadriel in the Jackson's upcoming films of The Hobbit in 2012 and 2013.

Personal life

, 2005]]

Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 while she was performing in a production of The Seagull. It was not love at first sight, however; "He thought I was aloof and I thought he was arrogant", Blanchett later remarked. "It just shows you how wrong you can be, but once he kissed me that was that." They were married on 29 December 1997 and have three sons: Dashiell John (born 3 December 2001), Roman Robert (born 23 April 2004), and Ignatius Martin (born 13 April 2008).

After making Brighton, England, their main family home for much of the early 2000s, she and her husband returned to their native Australia. In November 2006, Blanchett stated that this was due to a desire to decide on a permanent home for her children, and to be closer to her family as well as a sense of belonging to the Australian (theatrical) community. She and her family live in "Bulwarra", an 1877 sandstone mansion in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill. It was purchased for $10.2 million Australian dollars in 2004 and underwent extensive renovations in 2007 in order to be made more "eco-friendly".

In 2006, a portrait of Cate Blanchett and family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist in the Archibald Prize, which is awarded the "best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics".

Blanchett is a Patron of the Sydney Film Festival. She works as the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble. In 2007, Blanchett became the ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation's online campaign www.whoonearthcares.com – trying to persuade Australians to express their concerns about climate change. She is also the Patron of the development charity SolarAid. Opening the 2008 9th World Congress of Metropolis in Sydney, Blanchett said: "The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different."

In early 2009, Blanchett appeared in a series of special edition postage stamps called "Australian Legends of the Screen", featuring Australian actors acknowledged for the "outstanding contribution they have made to Australian entertainment and culture". She, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, and Nicole Kidman each appear twice in the series: once as themselves and once in character; Blanchett is depicted in character from .

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External links

Sydney Theatre Company – The Sydney Theatre Company

Cate Blanchett – Australian Film Commission

Cate Blanchett: A Life in Pictures, BAFTA webcast

Blanchett, Cate (1969-) National Library of Australia, Trove, People and Organisation record for Cate Blanchett

Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:Australian film actors Category:Australian stage actors Category:Australian television actors Category:Australian people of American descent Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners Category:Actors from Melbourne Category:Independent Spirit Award winners Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:Former students of the National Institute of Dramatic Art