Melanie Lynskey
Lynskey at the TIFF screening of Up in the Air, September 2009
Born	Melanie Jayne Lynskey (1977-05-16) 16 May 1977 (age 35) New Plymouth, New Zealand
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1992–present
Spouse	Jimmi Simpson (2007–present)

Melanie Jayne Lynskey (born 16 May 1977) is a New Zealand actress best known for playing Charlie Harper's neighbor Rose on Two and a Half Men, and a range of characters in films such as Win Win, Up in the Air, The Informant!, Away We Go, Flags of Our Fathers, Shattered Glass, Sweet Home Alabama, Rose Red, Coyote Ugly, Ever After and Heavenly Creatures.

Early life and career[link]

Lynskey was born in New Plymouth, New Zealand. She attended New Plymouth Girls' High School.^{[citation needed]}

In 1993, at the age of 16, Lynskey won her first professional acting role as Pauline Parker in the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures, based on the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder, opposite Kate Winslet. Over 500 young actors auditioned for the role before Lynskey was cast with Jackson recalling "we knew if we cast an intelligent person, then they were going to hit it. Melanie's also very enigmatic. So what we were looking for was an actress who has that kind of aspect to her...where you can film somebody sitting in a room, doing nothing, and they're still fascinating to watch. We found that in Mel."^[1]

The film was released to critical acclaim in 1994 with Richard Corliss of TIME magazine describing her performance as "perfect, fearless in embodying teenage hysteria".^[2] Heavenly Creatures won Jackson and partner Fran Walsh a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and is now considered a cult film.^[3] Lynskey was named Best Actress at the New Zealand Film and TV Awards in 1995 for her performance.^{[citation needed]}

After release of the film, Lynskey completed high school and began studying at the Victoria University of Wellington. During that time she made a brief appearance as a police deputy in Jackson's next film, The Frighteners. Her next major film appearance was as Jacqueline de Ghent in the 20th Century Fox production Ever After, opposite Drew Barrymore and Anjelica Huston, which was quickly followed by roles in Detroit Rock City, But I'm a Cheerleader, The Cherry Orchard (an adaptation of the Anton Chekhov play) and the Jerry Bruckheimer produced Coyote Ugly, where she took on a New Jersey accent.

In 2002, she played her first television role in the Stephen King mini series Rose Red. She then appeared alongside Katie Holmes in Abandon and Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama, and guest starred twice on The Shield.^{[citation needed]}

2003–present[link]

In Shattered Glass, a 2003 drama revolving around political journalism, Lynskey played a writer for The New Republic. Based on a true story, the film depicted the downfall of fraudulent Washington, D.C. journalist Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) and received extremely positive reviews, with A. O. Scott of The New York Times referring to it as "a serious, well-observed examination of the practice of journalism", and "an astute and surprisingly gripping drama".^[4]

Also in 2003, she landed the part of Rose, Charlie Sheen's sweet and zany stalker neighbor on the Emmy Award-winning Two and a Half Men, which frequently appears in the top 10 of the most-watched television shows in America.^[5] Although she left her regular slot on the show in 2005 to appear on "Drive (TV series)," but after the show was cancelled she returned.

In 2006, she had a small but substantial role in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-nominated World War II drama Flags of Our Fathers^[6] and returned to New Zealand in late 2007 to a starring role in Show of Hands, which premiered at the Montreal Film Festival in 2008, and earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the Qantas Television Awards.^{[citation needed]}

More recently, she earned rave reviews for her performance in the Sam Mendes comedy-drama Away We Go, playing a seemingly happy adoptive parent who hides a secret heartache. Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe wrote "Lynskey dramatizes sadness and dysfunction with quiet, moving physicality... It's the best performance in the movie".^[7]

She also played the female lead opposite Matt Damon in the Steven Soderbergh black comedy The Informant!, based on the true story of FBI whistleblower Mark Whitacre. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival with The Independent noting "sterling support comes from Melanie Lynskey as Whitacre's ever-loyal wife".^[8] Soderbergh told the Los Angeles Times, "She is so watchable, you never quite know what you're going to get, you just know it's going to be good. Her rhythms are really unusual, like her cadence and her reaction times to things, and the way she sort of lays out a sentence. It's just really, really interesting".^[9]

Lynskey's 2009 films also included Leaves of Grass, in which she co-starred with Edward Norton and Susan Sarandon, and the Academy Award-nominated Up in the Air, in which she played Julie Bingham, the younger sister of George Clooney's character.

Lynskey recently starred in the 2011 films Win Win, opposite Paul Giamatti, Touchback opposite Kurt Russell, and Eye of the Hurricane opposite Campbell Scott. She'll next appear in Focus Features' upcoming comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, alongside Steve Carell and Keira Knightley, and in the film adaptation of Stephen Chbosky's cult novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower.^{[citation needed]}

Lynskey describes herself as a character actress.^[10]

Personal life[link]

In 2001, she met American actor Jimmi Simpson, while co-starring in the Stephen King miniseries Rose Red. They became engaged in 2005 and married on 14 April 2007, in a chapel overlooking a vineyard on Lake Hayes, near Queenstown, New Zealand.^[11] Also in attendance was her best friend and Rose Red co-star Emily Deschanel,^[12] who was one of her bridesmaids.

Filmography[link]

Film[link]

Television[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Melanie Lynskey

• Melanie Lynskey at the Internet Movie Database

Blythe Danner
Danner at the Metropolitan Opera opening, September 22, 2008
Born	Blythe Katherine Danner (1943-02-03) February 3, 1943 (age 69) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1965–present
Spouse	Bruce Paltrow (m. 1969–2002; his death)
Children	Gwyneth Paltrow Jake Paltrow

Blythe Katherine Danner (born February 3, 1943) is an American actress. She is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.

Early life[link]

Danner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Katharine (née Kile) and Harry Earl Danner, a bank executive.^[1][2] She has a brother, opera singer/actor Harry Danner, a sister, former performer turned director Dorothy (Dottie) Danner, and a half brother, violin maker William Moennig. Danner is of part Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, and one of her great-grandmothers was born in Barbados (a White Barbadian).^[3][4]

Career[link]

In 1972, Danner portrayed Martha Jefferson opposite Ken Howard's Thomas Jefferson in the movie version of 1776. Also that same year, she played a jilted wife opposite Peter Falk and John Cassavetes in the Columbo episode "Etude in Black".

Her earliest starring film role was opposite Alan Alda in To Kill a Clown (1972). Danner appeared in the episode of M*A*S*H entitled "The More I See You", playing the love interest of Alda's character Hawkeye. She was lawyer Amanda Bonner in television's "Adam's Rib," also opposite Ken Howard as Adam Bonner. She played the role of Zelda Fitzgerald in The Last of the Belles (1974).^{[citation needed]} She was the eponymous heroine in the film Lovin' Molly (1974) (directed by Sidney Lumet). She appeared in Futureworld, playing Tracy Ballard with co-star Peter Fonda (1976). I n the 1982 TV movie Inside the Third Reich, she played the wife of Albert Speer. In the film version of Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical play Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), she portrayed a middle-aged Jewish mother. She has appeared in two films based on the novels of Pat Conroy, The Great Santini (1979) and The Prince of Tides (1991), as well as two television movies adapted from books by Anne Tyler, Saint Maybe and Back When We Were Grownups, both for the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

Danner appeared opposite Robert De Niro in the 2000 comedy hit Meet the Parents, and its sequels, Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers.

From 2001 to 2006, she regularly appeared on Will & Grace as Will Truman's mother Marilyn. From 2004 to 2006, she starred in the TV series Huff. In 2005, she was nominated for three Emmy Awards: for her work on Will & Grace, Huff and Back When We Were Grownups. Emmy host Ellen DeGeneres poked fun at Blythe Danner during the award ceremony, saying that Danner should not be nervous because she was almost certain to win at least one Emmy, which she did, for Huff. In July 2006, she won a second consecutive Emmy award for Huff. For 25 years, she has been a regular performer at the Williamstown Summer Theater Festival, where she also serves on the Board of Directors.^[5]

In 2006, Danner was awarded an inaugural Katharine Hepburn Medal by Bryn Mawr College's Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center.^[6]

Environmental activism[link]

Danner has been involved in environmental issues such as recycling and conservation for over 30 years.^[7] She has been active with INFORM, Inc., is on the Board of Environmental Advocates of New York and the Board of Directors of the Environmental Media Association,^[8] and won the 2002 EMA Board of Directors Ongoing Commitment Award.^[9] In 2011, Danner joined Moms Clean Air Force,^[10] to help call on parents to join in the fight against toxic air pollution.^{[citation needed]}

Health care activism[link]

After the death of her husband Bruce Paltrow from oral cancer, she became involved with the Oral Cancer Foundation, a national 501(c)3 non profit charity.^[11] In 2005, she filmed a public service announcement that played on TV stations around the country about the risks associated with oral cancer, and through that shared the personal pain associated with the loss of her husband publicly to further awareness of the disease and the need for early detection. She continues to donate her time to the foundation, and has appeared on morning talk shows, and has done interviews in high profile magazines such as People to further public awareness of the disease and its risk factors. Through The Bruce Paltrow Oral Cancer Fund, administered by the Oral Cancer Foundation, she continues to raise awareness and funding for oral cancer issues, particularly those involving communities in which disparities in health care exist.^[12]

Personal life[link]

Danner is the widow of producer/director Bruce Paltrow, who died from complications of pneumonia while battling oral cancer in 2002,^{[citation needed]} and the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow. Danner first co-starred with her daughter in 1992 in the TV movie Cruel Doubt and then again in the 2003 film Sylvia playing Aurelia Plath, mother to Gwyneth Paltrow's title role as Sylvia Plath.

Awards[link]

Emmy Awards

• Supporting Actress – Drama Series
  2005 Huff
  2006 Huff

Tony Awards

• Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play
  1970 Butterflies Are Free
• Theatre World Award
  1968The Miser

Other Awards

• Women in Film Lucy Award
  2004^[13]

Filmography[link]

• To Kill a Clown (1972)
• 1776 (1972)
• Lovin' Molly (1974)
• Hearts of the West (1975)
• Futureworld (1976)
• The Great Santini (1979)
• Man, Woman and Child (1983)
• { {Guilty Conscience (1984) film
• Starring... the Actors (1984) (documentary)
• Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986)
• Another Woman (1988)
• Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990)
• Alice (1990)
• The Prince of Tides (1991)
• Husbands and Wives (1992)
• Napoleon (1995) (voice)
• Homage (1995)
• To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
• The Myth of Fingerprints (1997)
• Mad City (1997)
• The Farmhouse (video title: Eye of the Storm) (1998)
• The Proposition (1998)
• No Looking Back (1998)
• The X-Files (1998)
• Forces of Nature (1999)
• The Love Letter (1999)
• Things I Forgot to Remember (1999)
• Meet the Parents (2000)
• The Invisible Circus (2001)
• The Quality of Light (2003)
• Three Days of Rain (2003)
• Sylvia (2003)
• Howl's Moving Castle (2004) (voice in English dubbed version)
• Meet the Fockers (2004)
• Stolen (2006) (documentary)^{[disambiguation needed ]}
• The Last Kiss (2006)
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008)
• Side by Each (2008)
• Waiting for Forever (2009)
• The Lightkeepers (2009)
• Little Fockers (2010)
• Paul (2011)
• What's Your Number? (2011)
• Detachment (2011)
• The Lucky One (2012)

Television work[link]

• George M! (1970)
• Dr. Cook's Garden (1971)
• Columbo: Etude in Black (1972)
• Adam's Rib (1973)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Last of the Belles (1974)
• Sidekicks (1974)
• M*A*S*H (1976)
• Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1976)
• A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story (1978)
• Are You in the House Alone? (1978)
• Too Far to Go (1979)
• You Can't Take It with You (1979)
• Inside the Third Reich (1982) (miniseries)
• In Defense of Kids (1983)
• Helen Keller: The Miracle Continues (1984)
• Guilty Conscience (1985)
• Tattingers (1988 – 1989)
• Money, Power, Murder (1989)
• Judgment (1990)
• Never Forget (1991)
• Getting Up and Going Home (1992)
• Cruel Doubt (1992) (miniseries)
• Lincoln (1992) (miniseries) (voice only)
• Tracey Ullman Takes On New York (1993)
• Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994) (miniseries)
• Leave of Absence (1994)
• The West (1996) (miniseries) (voice only)
• Thomas Jefferson (documentary) (voice only)
• A Call to Remember (1997)
• From the Earth to the Moon (1998) (narrator in episode 12)
• Saint Maybe (1998)
• Murder She Purred: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (1998) (voice only)
• Mark Twain (2001) (documentary) (voice only)
• Will & Grace (recurring cast member from 2001 – 2006)
• We Were the Mulvaneys (2002)
• Presidio Med (2002 – 2003)
• Huff (2004–2006)
• Pretty/Handsome (2008) (unsold pilot)
• Medium episode "A Taste of Her Own Medicine" (2 March 2009)
• Nurse Jackie (2009)
• Up All Night (2011)

Theater work[link]

• The Glass Menagerie (1965) (Boston)
• The Service of Joseph Axminster (1965–1966) (Boston)
• The Way Out of the Way In (1965–1966) (Boston)
• The Knack (1965–1966) (Boston)
• The Infantry (1966) (Off-Broadway)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1967) (Providence, Rhode Island)
• Three Sisters (1967) (Providence)
• Mata Hari (1967) (Washington DC, closed out of town before Broadway opening)
• Summertree (1968) (Off-Broadway)
• Cyrano de Bergerac (April 25 – June 8, 1968) (Broadway)
• Up Eden (1968) (Off-Broadway)
• Lovers (July 25 – November 30, 1968) (Broadway) (standby for Fionnuala Flanagan)
• Someone's Comin' Hungry (1969) (Off-Broadway)
• The Miser (May 8 – June 21, 1969) (Broadway)
• Butterflies Are Free (October 21, 1969 – July 2, 1972) (Broadway)
• Major Barbara (1971) (Los Angeles)
• Twelfth Night (March 2 – April 8, 1972) (Broadway)
• The Seagull (1974) (Williamstown Theatre Festival)
• Ring Round the Moon (1975) (Williamstown Theatre Festival)
• The New York Idea (1977) (Brooklyn Academy of Music)
• Children of the Sun (1979) (Williamstown Theatre Festival)
• Betrayal (January 5 – May 31, 1980) (Broadway)
• The Philadelphia Story (November 14, 1980 – January 4, 1981) (Broadway)
• Blithe Spirit (March 31 – June 28, 1987) (Broadway)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (March 20 – May 22, 1988) (Broadway)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1988) (New York Shakespeare Festival)
• Love Letters (1989) (Off-Broadway)
• Picnic (1991) (Williamstown Theatre Festival)
• The Seagull (1994) (Williamstown Theatre Festival)
• Sylvia (1995) (Off-Broadway)
• Moonlight (1995–1996) (Off-Broadway)
• The Deep Blue Sea (March 26 – May 10, 1998) (Broadway)
• Ancestral Voices (1999) (staged reading) (Off-Broadway)
• Tonight (2000) (Williamstown Theatre Festival)
• Follies (April 5 – July 14, 2001) (Broadway)
• Little Murders (2001) (staged reading) (Off-Broadway)
• Carousel (2002) (concert performance) (Carnegie Hall)
• The Chekhov Cycle (2002) (Williamstown Theatre Festival)
• All About Eve (2003) (staged reading) (Los Angeles)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Blythe Danner

• Blythe Danner at the Internet Broadway Database
• Blythe Danner at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Blythe Danner at the Internet Movie Database
• Stage biography from Playbill website
• 2003 article from the Environmental Media Association

Interviews[link]

• Blythe Danner interview: Leading Ladies Working in the Theatre video from American Theatre Wing, December 2006
• Working in the Theatre: Performance video seminar at American Theatre Wing, April 1998
• Working in the Theatre: Performance video seminar at American Theatre Wing, April 1988

Jason Isaacs
Isaacs in July 2011
Born	(1963-06-06) 6 June 1963 (age 49) Liverpool, Merseyside, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	Since 1988
Partner	Emma Hewitt (since 1988)
Children	Lily (b. 2002) Ruby (b. 2005)

Jason Isaacs (born 6 June 1963) is an English^[1] actor born in Liverpool, known for his performance as the villain Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, the brutal Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot and as lifelong criminal Michael Caffee in the American television series Brotherhood.^[2][3] Though most of his work has been in film and television, it also includes stage performances; most notably as Louis Ironson in Declan Donnellan's 1992 and 1993 Royal National Theatre London premières of Parts One (Millennium Approaches) and Two (Perestroika) of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,^[4][5] and as Ben, one of two hitmen, playing opposite Lee Evans as Gus, in Harry Burton's 2007 critically acclaimed 50th-anniversary revival of Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter's 1957 two-hander The Dumb Waiter at Trafalgar Studios.^[6][7][8] He recently starred in the NBC drama, Awake as detective Michael Britten.

Early life and education[link]

Jason Isaacs was born on 6 June 1963, in Liverpool, Merseyside, to Jewish parents. He spent his earliest childhood years in an "insular" and "closely knit" Jewish community of Liverpudlians, of which his Eastern European great-grandparents were founder-members.^[9] The third of four sons,^[2] Isaacs attended a Jewish school and a cheder twice a week as a young adult.^[10][11] When he was 11, he moved with his family to Northwest London, attending the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, in Elstree, Hertsmere, Hertfordshire, where he was in the same year as film reviewer Mark Kermode.^[10] He describes his childhood as "preparation" for portraying the "unattractive", villainous characters whom he has most often played.^[12] National Front members frequently harassed Isaacs and his friends throughout the 1960s and 1970s.^[12][13]

Following his more traditionally inclined brothers, who became respectively a doctor, a lawyer, and an accountant,^[2] Isaacs studied law at Bristol University (1982–85), but he became more actively involved in the drama society, eventually performing in over 30 plays and performing each summer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, first with Bristol University and then, twice, with the National Student Drama Company. After graduating from Bristol he went immediately to train at London's Central School of Speech and Drama (1985–88).^[1][2][14]

Isaacs' parents eventually emigrated to Israel.^[10]