Bud Cort
Born	Walter Edward Cox (1948-03-29) March 29, 1948 (age 64) New Rochelle, New York, United States
Years active	1967–Present

Bud Cort (born Walter Edward Cox; March 29, 1948) is an American film and stage actor, writer, and director. He is best known for his portrayals of Harold in Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude and the titular hero in Robert Altman's 1970 film Brewster McCloud. Both films have large cult followings today.

Early life[link]

Cort was born in New Rochelle, New York, but eventually grew up in Rye, New York. His father, Joseph Parker Cox, was a bandleader and pianist, as well as a World War II veteran and merchant. His mother, Alma Mary Cox (née Court), was a reporter and a merchant, who also worked in MGM studios. Cort has four siblings—three younger sisters and one older brother. His parents ran a clothing business in downtown Rye from the 1950s until the mid-1980s. Most of Cort's adolescence was spent caring for his sisters and father; his father had multiple sclerosis and died of it in 1971. He also engaged in reading and painting. As a teenager he was a local portrait painting prodigy and began taking acting lessons. He was educated in Catholic schools and graduated from Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle in 1966.

Career[link]

Cox (renamed Cort, since the name Wally Cox was already taken) was discovered in a revue by director Robert Altman, who subsequently cast him in two of his movies, MASH and Brewster McCloud, in which he played the title role.

Cort next went on to his most famous role, as the suicide-obsessed Harold, in Harold and Maude. Though the film was not particularly successful at the time of its release, it later gained international cult status and now is acclaimed as an American film classic.^[1]

On Broadway, Cort appeared in the short-lived 1972 play Wise Child by Simon Gray. Cort was invited to live with the famous comedian Groucho Marx in his Bel-Air mansion, and was present at Marx's death in 1977.

In 1979, Cort nearly died in a car accident on the Hollywood Freeway where he collided with an abandoned car blocking a lane into which he was turning. He broke an arm and a leg and sustained a concussion and a fractured skull. His face was severely lacerated and his lower lip nearly severed. Years of plastic surgery, substantial hospital bills, a lost court case, and the disruption of his career ensued.^[2]

In 1989 he directed an episode Hôtel de Paris for the Second German Television ZDF documentary series Hotels about famous Hotels around the world.

Cort has since appeared in various film, stage and TV roles: Endgame, He Who Gets Slapped, Sledge Hammer!, The Chocolate War, The Big Empty, Theodore Rex, Dogma, But I'm A Cheerleader, Pollock, The Twilight Zone, The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Cort lent his voice to the computer in the movie Electric Dreams.

Cort voiced Toyman, a Superman villain, over the course of various DCAU series including Superman: The Animated Series, Static Shock, and Justice League Unlimited.

He also voiced the character Josiah Wormwood in the animated television series Batman: The Animated Series

He had a cameo in the Arrested Development episode "Fakin' It", as himself hosting a daytime court show called Bud Cort, a competitor to a similar daytime court show in the series called Mock Trial with J. Reinhold.

On the November 8, 2007 original episode of Ugly Betty, he made a guest appearance as the priest officiating at Wilhelmina Slater's ill-fated wedding. He guest-starred on Criminal Minds in the episode "Mosley Lane," playing a predator who, with his wife, was kidnapping young children. In an ironic homage to his most famous role, his character, when faced with imminent capture, was shown hanging in an apparent suicide.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking. (November 2010)

• Venice Magazine article, May 2005. (PDF)
• Salon.com's Bud Cort article, September 4, 1999
• Bud Cort interview, about his role in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, 2005

External links[link]

• Bud Cort at the Internet Movie Database

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (November 2009)

DJ Qualls
Qualls at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
Born	Donald Joseph Qualls (1978-06-10) June 10, 1978 (age 34) Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, film producer
Years active	1995–present

Donald Joseph "DJ" Qualls (born June 10, 1978) is an American actor, known for his work in films such as Road Trip, The New Guy, and Hustle & Flow, and for appearances on television series such as Supernatural, Scrubs, Lost, CSI, Breaking Bad, and The Big Bang Theory.

Early life[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (February 2012)

Qualls was born to Debbie and Donnie Qualls in Nashville, Tennessee and was one of five children. He was raised in Manchester, Tennessee, and attended school nearby. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at age 14, and after two years of treatment, his cancer was said to be in remission. After graduating from Coffee County Central High School, in Manchester, Tennessee, Qualls attended the University of London in England where he studied English and literature. He returned to Tennessee and enrolled in Belmont University in Nashville, where he also began acting in a local theatre company.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

He was an extra in the HBO movie Against the Wall in 1994. He landed the small role of Jason in the television miniseries Mama Flora's Family (1998) while participating for free in Community Theater. After auditioning for a one-liner in Road Trip (2000) he was asked to come from the Atlanta office to meet producer Ivan Reitman in California. Qualls debuted in Road Trip as shy virgin Kyle Edwards.^[1]

After Road Trip, Qualls increasingly worked as a model, working for Prada and with photographers David LaChapelle and Steve Klein.^[2] In Cherry Falls (2000), he played Wally, another virgin. In 2001 he played Neil Lawrence in Chasing Holden.^[3]

In 2002, he appeared as Archie in the film Comic Book Villains, Andrew in Big Trouble, Junior in Lone Star State of Mind, Dizzy Gillespie Harrison in The New Guy, and Rat in the sci-fi film The Core.^[4] Qualls starred in the comedy Delta Farce with Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy.

In 2005, Qualls in the movie Hustle & Flow in a supporting role as Shelby.^[5]

His television work includes appearances on Supernatural, Monk, Scrubs, Criminal Minds, Lost, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, CSI, Numb3rs, My Name Is Earl, Breaking Bad, The Big Bang Theory, and Memphis Beat.

Qualls appeared in a cameo in Britney Spears' music video "Boys" and was also in the "I'm Just a Kid" music video by Simple Plan. He stars in the Paramount Pictures web series Circle of Eight.^[6]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• DJ Qualls at the Internet Movie Database

Shelley Alexis Duvall (born July 7, 1949)^[1] is an American film and television actress best known for her roles in Thieves Like Us, 3 Women, The Shining and Popeye.

She began her career in the 1970s films of Robert Altman, followed by roles in movies by Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. She is also an Emmy-nominated producer, responsible for Faerie Tale Theatre and other kid-friendly programming.

Background and education[link]

Duvall was born in Houston, Texas on July 7, 1949,^[2] the daughter of real estate broker Bobbie Ruth Crawford (née Massengale) and defense attorney Robert Richardson Duvall. She has three brothers, Scott, Shane and Stewart. She was a student of Sinclair Elementary School (HISD). A graduate of Houston's Waltrip High School, she was working as a cosmetics salesperson at Foley's in Houston when she was discovered at a party by production scouts for Altman's Brewster McCloud (1970). She is not related to actor Robert Duvall.

Early career[link]

Duvall's debut was portraying the free-spirited love interest to Bud Cort's reclusive Brewster in Brewster McCloud. Altman was so impressed with Duvall that he cast her in his next films, including McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Thieves Like Us (1974) and Nashville (1975). In 1977, Duvall was awarded a Best Actress Award by the Cannes Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for her portrayal of the delusional Millie Lammoreaux in Altman's 3 Women. That same year, she appeared in Annie Hall as Woody Allen's one-night stand, and she hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live.

Duvall's next role was Wendy Torrance opposite Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Nicholson states in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures that Kubrick was great to work with but that he was "a different director" with Duvall. Due to Kubrick's highly methodical nature, principal photography took a year to complete. Perhaps the most notorious example of this was Kubrick's insistence that she and Nicholson perform 127 takes of the baseball bat scene, which broke a world record for the most retakes of a single movie scene with spoken dialogue.^[3] Kubrick and Duvall had frequent arguments although Duvall later said she learned more from working with Kubrick on The Shining than she did on all her previous films.^[4]

In January 1979, Altman offered her the role he believed she was born to play: Olive Oyl in the big-screen adaptation of Popeye. Duvall was initially reluctant to accept the role due to negative memories of being called "Olive Oyl" as a child but went on to accept it in stride. Her version of "He Needs Me" from Popeye was featured in Punch-Drunk Love.

Following the success of The Shining and Popeye, Duvall had supporting roles in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981), Tim Burton's Frankenweenie (1984) and the Steve Martin comedy Roxanne (1987).

Duvall as producer[link]

During the making of Popeye, Duvall showed Robin Williams some of the antique illustrated fairy tale books that she had been collecting since she was 17. One of these was an old copy of The Frog Prince. Envisioning Williams as the perfect "Frog Prince", she formed her own production company, Platypus Productions, and approached Showtime with an idea for a cable television series based on classic fairy tales. Showtime embraced the project and began airing episodes of Faerie Tale Theatre in 1982. The one-hour anthology series featured live-action adaptations of well-known fairy tales and starred many of Duvall's celebrity friends. Duvall played characters in four episodes and hosted all 26 until the end of the series' run in 1987. In 1985, she created Tall Tales & Legends, another one-hour anthology series for Showtime, this one featuring adaptations of American folk tales. As with Faerie Tale Theatre, the series starred well-known Hollywood actors, with Duvall serving as host, executive producer, and occasional guest star. The series ran for only nine episodes but brought an Emmy nomination for Duvall.

After Tall Tales and Legends ended in 1988, Duvall founded a new production company called Think Entertainment to develop programs and made-for-TV movies for cable channels. Under the banner of Think Entertainment and Platypus Productions, she created Nightmare Classics, a third Showtime anthology series. It featured adaptations of well-known horror stories by such authors as Edgar Allan Poe. Unlike the previous two series, Nightmare Classics was aimed at a teenage and adult audience. It was the least successful series that Duvall produced for Showtime, running for only four episodes. In 1992, Think Entertainment joined forces with the newly-formed Universal Family Entertainment to create Duvall's fourth Showtime original series, Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories, which featured animated adaptations of children's storybooks with celebrity narrators. It earned her a second Emmy nomination.

Duvall produced a fifth series for Showtime, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, before selling Think Entertainment in 1993 and retiring as a producer.

Later career[link]

Duvall continued to make film and television appearances throughout the 1990s. In 1998, she played Drew Barrymore's mother in the comedy Home Fries and Hilary Duff's aunt in the direct-to-video children's film Casper Meets Wendy. She returned to the horror genre with Tale of the Mummy (1998), The 4th Floor (1999) and the horror-comedy Boltneck (2000).