- published: 18 May 2012
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- author: CBS
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Beit HaEmek
Beit HaEmek (Hebrew: בֵּית הָעֵמֶק, lit. House of the Valley) is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the western Galilee, it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Asher Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 439.
The kibbutz was established in 1949. Its name is derived from that of the nearby Yemenite Jewish village of Amqa and the Biblical city of Beth-emek mentioned in the Book of Joshua 19:27, which was located 5 kilometres north-east of the kibbutz. The Kibbutz was built near the village of Kuwaykat.
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Beit Sahour
Beit Sahour (Arabic: بيت ساحور pronounced
Bayt Saahoor (help·info)) (lit. Place of the Night Watch) is a Palestinian town east of Bethlehem under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority. The population of 12,367, is Christian and Muslim.
There are two enclosures in the eastern part of Beit Sahour which are claimed by different Christian denominations to be the actual 'Shepherds Field': one belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church and the other, the Catholic site, to the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land.
The name Beit Sahur belongs to two places in the vicinity: Beit Sahur al-Atiqah ("ancient Beit Sahur") and Beit Sahur an-Nasara ("Beit Sahur of the Christians"). 16th century Arab geographer Mujir al-Din mentions the former in a biography of a Muslim scholar Sha'ban bin Salim bin Sha'ban, who died in the town in 1483 at the age of 105. The former was noted by French geographer Guerin as being 40 minutes away from Jerusalem, a short distance south of the Qidron Valley.
Beit Sahur al-Atiqah surrounded the tomb of Sheikh Ahmad al-Sahuri, a local saint to whom the local Arab tribe of al-Sawahirah attribute their name. The Sawahirah originate from the Hejaz and entered Palestine through al-Karak. The Survey of Western Palestine describes the town as "Ruins of a village with wells and a mukam." The modern Beit Sahur was described by the same survey as "sort of a suburb of Bethlehem, situated on the same ridge, with the broad plateau east of it known as the 'shepherd's plain'".
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Bethlehem
Bethlehem (Arabic: بيت لحم Bayt Laḥm (help·info) or Bēt Laḥm, lit "House of Flesh"; Hebrew: בֵּית לֶחֶם Bēṯ Leḥem, Modern: Bet Leḥem, IPA: [bet ˈleχem], lit "House of Bread;" Greek: Βηθλεὲμ, Vithleém) is a Palestinian city located in the central West Bank and approximately 8 kilometers (5.0 mi) south of Jerusalem, with a population of about 30,000 people. It is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate of the Palestinian National Authority and a hub of Palestinian culture and tourism. The Hebrew Bible identifies Bethlehem as the city David was from and the location where he was crowned as the king of Israel. The New Testament identifies Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. The town is inhabited by one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, although the size of the community has shrunk due to emigration.
The city was sacked by the Samaritans in 529, but rebuilt by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Bethlehem was conquered by the Arab Caliphate of 'Umar ibn al-Khattāb in 637, who guaranteed safety for the city's religious shrines. In 1099, Crusaders captured and fortified Bethlehem and replaced its Greek Orthodox clergy with a Latin one. The Latin clergy were expelled after the city was captured by Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria. With the coming of the Mamluks in 1250, the city's walls were demolished, and were subsequently rebuilt during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
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Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge (informally known as Cambridge University or Cambridge) is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world (after the University of Oxford), and the seventh-oldest in the world. In post-nominals the university's name is abbreviated as Cantab, a shortened form of Cantabrigiensis (an adjective derived from Cantabrigia, the Latinised form of Cambridge).
The university grew out of an association of scholars in the city of Cambridge that was formed in 1209, early records suggest, by scholars leaving Oxford after a dispute with townsfolk. The two "ancient universities" have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to cultural and practical associations as a historic part of British society, they have a long history of rivalry with each other.
Cambridge ranks first in the world in both the 2010 and 2011 QS World University Rankings, sixth in the world in the 2011 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and fifth in the world (and first in Europe) in the 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities. Cambridge regularly contends with Oxford for first place in UK league tables. In the two most recently published rankings of UK universities by The Guardian newspaper, Cambridge was ranked first.
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District of Columbia
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a federal district to become the national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution. The District is therefore not a part of any U.S. state. It was formed from land along the Potomac River donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia; however, the Virginia portion was returned by Congress in 1846.
A new capital city named after George Washington was founded in 1791 to the east of the preexisting port of Georgetown. Congress consolidated the City of Washington, Georgetown, and the remaining unincorporated area within the District under a single municipal government in 1871. The city shares its name with the U.S. state of Washington, located on the country's Pacific coast.
Washington, D.C., had an estimated population of 617,996 in 2011. The city was the 24th most populous place in the United States as of 2010. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's population to over one million during the workweek. The Washington Metropolitan Area, of which the District is a part, has a population of nearly 5.6 million, the seventh-largest metropolitan area in the country.
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DreamWorks
DreamWorks Studios, officially DW II Distribution Co., LLC, also known as DreamWorks, LLC, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses totalling more than $100 million each.
DreamWorks began in 1994 as an ambitious attempt by media moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (forming the SKG present on the bottom of the DreamWorks logo) to create a new Hollywood studio of which they own 72%. In December 2005, the founders agreed to sell the studio to Viacom, parent of Paramount Pictures. The sale was completed in February 2006. In 2008, DreamWorks announced its intention to end its partnership with Paramount and signed a $1.5 billion deal to produce films with India's Reliance ADA Group. Reliance provided $325M of equity to fund recreating Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio as an independent entity. Clark Hallren, former Managing Director of the Entertainment Industries group of J.P. Morgan Securities and Alan J. Levine of J.P. Morgan Entertainment Advisors led the Reliance team in structuring the capital and business plan for the company. The movie studio is 50% owned by Reliance which is led by Anil Ambani.
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Germany
Germany (
i/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] (
listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.
A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.
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Haifa
Haifa (Hebrew: חֵיפָה, Hebrew pronunciation: [χeiˈfä], Ḥefa; Arabic: حيفا Ḥayfā) is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher. Together these areas form a contiguous urban area home to nearly 600,000 residents which makes up the inner core of the Haifa metropolitan area. Haifa is a mixed city: 90% are Jews, more than a quarter of whom are immigrants from the former Soviet Union, while 10% are Arabs, predominantly of the Christian religion. It is also home to the Bahá'í World Centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Built on the slopes of Mount Carmel, the history of settlement at the site spans more than 3,000 years. The earliest known settlement in the vicinity was Tell Abu Hawam, a small port city established in the Late Bronze Age (14th century BCE). In the 3rd century CE, Haifa was known as a dye-making center. Over the centuries, the city has changed hands: It has been conquered and ruled by the Phoenicians, Persians, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, British, and the Israelis. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the city has been governed by the Haifa Municipality.
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Hammersmith
Coordinates: 51°29′34″N 0°13′22″W / 51.4928°N 0.2229°W / 51.4928; -0.2229
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles (eight kilometres) west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames. One of west London's key transport hubs and commercial and employment centres, and home to several multinational company offices, it is focused on the two London Underground stations, bus station and road network node at Hammersmith Broadway.
It is bordered by Shepherds Bush to the north, Kensington to the east, Fulham to the south and Chiswick to the west, and is linked by Hammersmith Bridge to Barnes in the southwest.
It has for some decades been the main centre of London's Polish minority.
See also: List of districts in Hammersmith and Fulham
Acton, Barnes, Chiswick, Fulham, Shepherds Bush, Kensington, West Kensington
House construction and industrial development flourished.[when?] Major industrial sites included the Osram lamp factory at Brook Green, the J. Lyons factory (which at one time employed 30,000 people) and the largest municipal power station in Britain, built near the gasworks in Sands End.
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Harvard University
Harvard University is an American private Ivy League research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country. Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although never formally affiliated with a church, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Harvard's curriculum and students became secular throughout the 18th century and by the 19th century had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's forty year tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a centralized research university, and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. Drew Gilpin Faust was elected the 28th president in 2007 and is the first woman to lead the university. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $32 billion as of September 2011.
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Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire (i/ˈhɑrtfərdʃɪər/ or /ˈhɑrfərdʃər/; abbreviated Herts) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.
Hertfordshire is one of the home counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London (to the south), Buckinghamshire (to the west), Bedfordshire (including the unitary authorities of Luton and Central Bedfordshire to the north), Cambridgeshire (to the north east) and Essex (to the east).
Hertfordshire was originally the area assigned to a fortress constructed at Hertford under the rule of Edward the Elder in 913. The name Hertford is derived from the Anglo-Saxon heort ford, meaning deer crossing (of a watercourse). The name Hertfordshire first appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1011. Deer feature prominently in many county emblems.
There is evidence of human beings living in Hertfordshire since the Middle Stone Age. It was first farmed during the Neolithic period and permanent habitation appeared at the beginning of the Bronze Age. This was followed by tribes settling in the area during the Iron Age.
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Iraq
Iraq (/ɪˈræk/ or
i/ɪˈrɑːk/; Arabic: العراق al-‘Irāq); officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: 
جمهورية العراق (help·info) Jumhūriyyat al-‘Irāq), is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.
Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the southwest and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south. Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country.
Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.
Historically, Iraq was the center of the Abbasid Arabic Islamic Empire. Iraq has been known to the west by the Greek toponym 'Mesopotamia' (Land between the rivers) and has been home to continuous successive civilizations since the 6th millennium BC. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is often referred to as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of writing, law and the wheel. At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Abbasid empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.
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Israel
Coordinates: 31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E / 31; 35
Israel, officially the State of Israel ( /ˈɪzriːəl/ or /ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yisrā'el, IPA: [me̞diˈnät jisʁäˈʔe̞l] ( listen); Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, IPA: [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south, and it contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is defined as a Jewish and Democratic State in its Basic Laws and is the world's only Jewish-majority state.
Following the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.[neutrality is disputed] Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.
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Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan (i/ˌkɑːzəkˈstɑːn/ or /ˌkæzəkˈstæn/) (Kazakh: Қазақстан, Qazaqstan, pronounced [qɑzɑqstɑ́n]; Russian: Казахстан [kəzɐxˈstan]), officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Europe. The ninth largest country in the world by land area, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of 2,727,300 square kilometres (1,053,000 sq mi) is larger than Western Europe. It is neighbored clockwise from the north by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and also borders on a significant part of the Caspian Sea. Although Kazakhstan does not share a border with Mongolia, its most easterly point is only 38 kilometres (24 mi) from Mongolia's western tip. The terrain of Kazakhstan ranges from flatlands, steppes, taigas, rock-canyons, hills, deltas, and snow-capped mountains to deserts. With 16.6 million people (2011 estimate) Kazakhstan has the 62nd largest population in the world, though its population density is less than 6 people per square kilometre (15 per sq. mi.). The capital was moved in 1998 from Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, to Astana.
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Kings Cross, London
Coordinates: 51°31′49″N 0°07′25″W / 51.5303°N 0.1236°W / 51.5303; -0.1236
King's Cross is an area of London divided between the London Borough of Camden and the London Borough of Islington. It is an inner-city district located 2.5 miles (4.8 km) north of Charing Cross. The area formerly had a reputation for being a red light district and run-down. However, rapid regeneration since the mid 1990s has rendered this reputation largely out-of-date. Since November 2007 the area has been the terminus of the Eurostar rail service at St Pancras International, with services to France and Belgium. Regeneration continues under the auspices of King's Cross Central which is a major redevelopment in the north of the area. Many more hotels, restaurants, and cultural venues have made the area a cultural centre in the 2000s, and there is also substantial business activity and residential accommodation.
The area was previously a village known as Battle Bridge or Battlebridge which was an ancient crossing of the River Fleet. The original name of the bridge was Broad Ford Bridge.
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Kuwait
Kuwait, officially the State of Kuwaiti/kuːˈweɪt/ (Arabic: دولة الكويت, Dawlat al-Kuwayt) is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the Arabic أكوات ākwāt, the plural of كوت kūt, meaning a fortress built near water. The country covers an area of 17,820 square kilometers (6,880 sq mi) and has a population of about 3.5 million.
Historically, the region was the site of Characene, a major Parthian port for trade between Mesopotamia and India. The Bani Utbah tribe were the first permanent Arab settlers in the region, and laid the foundation of the modern emirate. By the 19th century, Kuwait came under the influence of the Ottoman Empire, and after World War I, it emerged as an independent sheikhdom under the protection of the British Empire. Kuwait's large oil fields were discovered in the late 1930s.
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Leicester Square
Coordinates: 51°30′37″N 0°7′49″W / 51.51028°N 0.13028°W / 51.51028; -0.13028
Leicester Squarei/ˈlɛstər/ is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. The Square lies within an area bound by Lisle Street , to the north; Charing Cross Road, to the east; Orange Street, to the south; and Whitcomb Street, to the west. The park at the centre of the Square is bound by Cranbourn Street, to the north; Leicester Street, to the east; Irving Street, to the south; and a section of road designated simply as Leicester Square, to the west. It is within the City of Westminster, and about equal distances (about 400 yards / 370 metres) north of Trafalgar Square, east of Piccadilly Circus, west of Covent Garden, and south of Cambridge Circus.
The Square is named after Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, who purchased four acres (1.6 hectares) in St. Martin's Field in 1630; by 1635, he had built himself a large house, Leicester House, at the northern end. The area in front of the house was then enclosed, depriving inhabitants of St Martin in the Fields parish of their right to use the previously common land. The parishioners appealed to King Charles I, and he appointed three members of the Privy Council to arbitrate. Lord Leicester was ordered to keep part of his land (thereafter known as Leicester Field and later as Leicester Square) open for the parishioners.
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Libya
Libya (Arabic: ليبيا Lībyā), Berber: ⵍⵉⴱⵢⴰ) is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the third largest country in Africa by area, and the 17th largest in the world. The largest city, Tripoli, is home to 1.7 million of Libya's 6.4 million people. The three traditional parts of the country are Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica.
In 2009 Libya had the highest HDI in Africa and the fourth highest GDP (PPP) per capita in Africa, behind Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world and the 17th-highest petroleum production.
As a result of the Libyan civil war, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which had at that time been in existence for 34 years, collapsed and Libya entered a period of governance by a transitional administration called the National Transitional Council. The NTC has stated its intention to oversee the first phase of a transition to constitutional democracy, after which it claims it will dissolve in favor of a representative legislature.
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London
Londoni/ˈlʌndən/ is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is the world's leading financial centre alongside New York City and has the fifth-largest city GDP in the world (and the largest in Europe). London has been described as a world cultural capital. It was the world's most visited city during 2011 and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe. In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles (i/lɒs ˈændʒələs/ loss-AN-jə-ləs; Spanish: [los ˈaŋxeles], which is written Los Ángeles; British pronounciation /lɒs ˈændʒəliːz/ loss-AN-jə-leez) with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in the state of California, and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of 468.67 square miles (1,213.8 km2), and is located in Southern California. Often known by its initials L.A., the city is the focal point of the larger Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan statistical area and Greater Los Angeles Area region, which contain 12,828,837 and nearly 18 million people respectively as of 2010, making it one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world and the second largest in the United States. Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated and one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the United States, while the entire Los Angeles area itself has been recognized as the most diverse of the nation's largest cities. The city's inhabitants are referred to as "Angelenos".
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Milan
Milan (Italian: Milano [miˈlaːno] ( listen); Lombard: [miˈlan]; Latin: Mediolanum) is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital of Lombardy as well as of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area is the 5th largest in EU and the largest in Italy with an estimated population of approximately 5 million. The growth of many suburbs and satellite settlements around the city proper, following the Italian economic miracle of 1950s–60s and massive commuting flows, suggest that socioeconomic linkages have expanded well beyond the boundaries of its administrative limits and its agglomeration, creating a region of approximately 9,3 million people. It has been suggested that the Milan metropolitan area is part of the so-called Blue Banana, the area of Europe with the highest population and industrial density. Its health care and education system is considered one of the best of Europe.
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Moroeni
Moroeni is a commune in Dâmboviţa County, southern Romania, with a population of 5,000 people.
The commune is composed of six villages: Dobreşti, Glod, Lunca, Moroeni, Muşcel and Pucheni.
The village name of Glod means "mud" in Romanian. The village is located near the towns of Pucioasa and Fieni.
Glod, a Gypsy village, was a shooting location for the mockumentary film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, representing Borat's home village of Kuzcek, Kazakhstan. The villagers were paid the equivalent of four U.S. dollars a day each for their appearances and were told the film would be a documentary about the hardships of village life. According to 20th Century Fox, the movie’s nature was obvious to everyone since it included blatantly ridiculous scenes like one of a cow inside someone’s house.
Fox claims that the production team and star Sacha Baron Cohen each donated $5,000 to the town, as well as paid a location fee, and bought computers, school and office supplies for the residents. In the film, some of the villagers are depicted as rapists, abortionists, and prostitutes for Baron's comedy movie. Two residents of Glod, Nicolae Tudorache and Spiridon Ciorbea, hired the services of Ed Fagan to sue the producers of the film. The lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in a hearing in early December 2006 on the ground that the charges were too vague to stand up in court. Fagan plans to refile.
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Pontypridd
Coordinates: 51°36′09″N 3°20′32″W / 51.60252°N 3.34215°W / 51.60252; -3.34215
Pontypridd /pɒntəˈpriːð/ is both a community and a principal town of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales and is situated 12 miles/19 km north of the Welsh capital city of Cardiff. Pontypridd is often abbreviated "Ponty" by local residents.
Pontypridd comprises the electoral wards of Cilfynydd, Glyncoch, Graig, Graigwen, Hawthorn, Pontypridd Town, 'Rhondda', Rhydyfelin Central/Ilan (Rhydfelen), Trallwng (Trallwn) and Treforest (Trefforest).
The town sits at the junction of the Rhondda and Taff / Cynon valleys, where the River Rhondda flows into the Taff immediately south of the town at Ynysangharad War Memorial Park. The community of Pontypridd is the second largest in Wales, just behind Barry. Pontypridd community had a population of 29,781 according to census figures gathered in 2001. while Pontypridd town itself was recorded as having a population of 2,919 also as of 2001.
The town lies alongside the dual carriageway north-south A470, between Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil. The A4054 running north and south of the town was the former main road, and like the A470, follows the Taff Valley. South of the town is the A473, for Llantrisant and Pencoed. To the west is the A4058, which follows the River Rhondda to Porth and the Rhondda Valley beyond.
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Romania
Romania (i/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; dated: Roumania; or Rumania;Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a] ( listen)) is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south.
At 238,400 square kilometers (92,000 sq mi), Romania is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with over 19 million people. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the tenth largest city in the EU with about two million people.
The Kingdom of Romania emerged when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859. Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared on 9 May 1877, and was internationally recognized the following year. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania. Greater Romania emerged into an era of progression and prosperity that would continue until World War II. By the end of the War, many north-eastern areas of Romania's territories were occupied by the Soviet Union, and Romania forcibly became a socialist republic and a member of the Warsaw Pact.
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Staines
Coordinates: 51°26′00″N 0°29′51″W / 51.433315°N 0.497382°W / 51.433315; -0.497382
Staines-upon-Thames, commonly called Staines (/steɪnz/), is a town on the River Thames in the borough of Spelthorne in Surrey, England. The town changed its official name from Staines to Staines-upon-Thames on 20 May 2012.
The town is within the western bounds of the M25 motorway and located 17 miles west south-west of Charing Cross in London. It is within the London Commuter Belt of South East England and the built-up Greater London Urban Area. It is located on the Thames Path National Trail.
Evidence of neolithoic settlement has been found at Yeoveney, on Staines Moor. There has been a crossing of the River Thames at Staines since Roman times. The emperor Claudius sent the Romans into Britain in 43 A.D and they settled in Staines the same year. Soon after this invasion the first Staines Bridge was constructed to provide an important Thames crossing point on main road from Londinium (London) to Calleva Atrebatum, near the present-day village of Silchester. The name Staines comes from the Old English, meaning "[the place at the] stone[s]". The equivalent Roman name was "ad Pontes" (plural "at the bridges") implying that there was more than one bridge and it is believed that these bridges traversed Church Island.
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Third Reich
The Third Reich, also Nazi Germany, is the common name for Germany when it was a totalitarian state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). On 30 January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany, quickly eliminating all opposition to rule as sole leader. The state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Historians have emphasized the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Kessel writes, "Overwhelmingly...Germans speak with mystification of Hitler's 'hypnotic' appeal..." Under the "leader principle", the Führer's word was above all other laws. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, but they had considerable autonomy. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power and curry favor with the Führer. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazi government restored prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of the Autobahns. The return to prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity; the suppression of all opposition made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged.
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West Bank
The West Bank (Arabic: الضفة الغربية aḍ-Ḍaffah l-Ġarbiyyah, Hebrew: הגדה המערבית, HaGadah HaMa'aravit also known as Hebrew: יהודה והשומרון Yehuda ve-Ha'Shomron (Judea and Samaria)) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The West Bank also contains a significant coastline along the western bank of the Dead Sea. Since 1967, most of the West Bank has been under Israeli military occupation and is referred to as Judea and Samaria Area by Israel. A smaller part of the West Bank is administered by the Israeli civilian authorities as part of Jerusalem District.
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Adam Sandler
Adam Richard Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, musician and film producer. After becoming a Saturday Night Live cast member, Sandler went on to star in several Hollywood feature films that grossed over $100 million at the box office. He is best known for his comedic roles, such as in the films Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), The Waterboy (1998), Big Daddy (1999), and Mr. Deeds (2002), though he has ventured into more dramatic territory. In 1999, Sandler founded Happy Madison, a film and television production company that has produced numerous films and developed the 2007 television series Rules of Engagement.
Adam Sandler was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents, Stanley, an electrical engineer, and Judy Sandler, a nursery school teacher. When he was five, his family moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, where he attended Manchester Central High School. He found he was a natural comic, and nurtured his talent while at New York University by performing regularly in clubs and on campuses. Sandler graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1988.
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Adolfo Pirelli
Signor Adolfo Pirelli, also known as Daniel O'Higgins or Davy Collins, is a fictional character from Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He is a supporting antagonist in the story and a rival to Sweeney Todd.
Pirelli is first introduced as an Italian barber who is "all the rage" in Victorian London. He is very theatrical and dresses in extravagant clothing. Pirelli often abuses his young apprentice, Tobias Ragg, slapping him across the face for the slightest infraction, and often for no reason at all. His real name is actually Daniel O'Higgins, and he was Sweeney Todd's assistant as a boy.
Pirelli claims to have shaved the King of Naples and the Pope, arrogantly referring to himself as "the King of the Barbers and the Barber of Kings."
The main character, Sweeney Todd, and his accomplice Mrs. Lovett are in a square where Pirelli's assistant, Tobias Ragg, is advertising a concoction of his master's entitled Pirelli's Miracle Elixir which is purported to stimulate the growth of hair. Todd takes one sniff of the mixture and denounces the Elixir as "an arrant fraud" concocted of "piss and ink."
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Alessandra Ambrosio
Alessandra Corine Ambrósio (Portuguese pronunciation: [aleˈsɐ̃dɾɐ ɐ̃ˈbɾɔzju]; born April 11, 1981) is a Brazilian model. Ambrosio is best known for her work with Victoria's Secret and was chosen as the first spokesmodel for the company's "PINK" line. Ambrosio is currently one of the Victoria's Secret Angels and has modeled for brands such as Next, Armani Exchange, Christian Dior, and Ralph Lauren.
Aside from modeling work, Ambrosio serves as an ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Ambrosio was also selected by AskMen.com as Number 2 out of the "Top 99 Most Desirable Women of 2008".
Ambrosio was born in Erechim, Brazil on April 11, 1981. Her parents, who are of Italian and Polish Brazilian descent, own a petrol station. Ambrósio was just eight years old when she decided that she wanted to be a model, after seeing a picture of top covergirl Karen Mulder in a magazine: "I wanted to be like her", she recalls.[citation needed] She enrolled at a modelling class at the age of 12 and at the age of 14 she was one of 20 finalists for an elite modelling competition in Brazil. Ambrosio was always insecure about her large ears and at eleven had cosmetic surgery to get her ears pinned back, though two years later she suffered complications. In 2006, she appeared on The Tyra Banks Show, and said that the surgery was a bad experience and has discouraged her from ever getting plastic surgery again.
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Andrew Anthony
Andrew Anthony is a journalist who has written for The Guardian since 1990, and The Observer. He is also the author of On Penalties (2000) and The Fall-Out (2007).
The chapters are entitled Shock, Shame, Anger, Denial and Guilt – as if lifted from a textbook on popular psychology. The word "albeit" crops up throughout. The author's disillusionment with multiculturalism begins well before 9/11, when he reads a report on the future of cultural diversity in Britain compiled by men and women who are liberal in their outlook. It may sit well with Andrew Anthony to pronounce the death of multicultural society, but for those of us who have come here from other countries, multiculturalism cannot and must not fail.
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Andy Rooney
Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011) was an American radio and television writer. He was most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on 60 Minutes aired October 2, 2011. He died one month later, on November 4, 2011, at age 92.
Andrew Rooney was born in Albany, the son of Walter Scott Rooney (1888–1959) and Ellinor (Reynolds) Rooney (1886–1980). He attended The Albany Academy, and later attended Colgate University in Hamilton in Central New York, where he was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity, before he was drafted into the United States Army in August 1941.
Rooney began his career in newspapers while in the Army when, in 1942, he began writing for Stars and Stripes in London during World War II.
In February 1943, flying with the Eighth Air Force, he was one of six correspondents who flew on the second American bombing raid over Germany. Later, he was one of the first American journalists to visit the Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II, and one of the first to write about them. During a segment on Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, Rooney stated that he had been opposed to World War II because he was a pacifist. He recounted that what he saw in those concentration camps made him ashamed that he had opposed the war and permanently changed his opinions about whether "just wars" exist.
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Ben Stiller
Benjamin Edward "Ben" Stiller (born November 30, 1965) is an American comedian, actor, writer, film director, and producer. He is the son of veteran comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.
After beginning his acting career with a play, Stiller wrote several mockumentaries, and was offered two of his own shows, both entitled The Ben Stiller Show. He began acting in films, and made his directorial debut with Reality Bites. Throughout his career he has since written, starred in, directed, and/or produced over 50 films including Heavyweights, There's Something About Mary, Meet the Parents, Zoolander, Dodgeball, Tropic Thunder, Greenberg and Night at the Museum. In addition, he has had multiple cameos in music videos, television shows, and films.
Stiller is a member of the comedic acting brotherhood colloquially known as the Frat Pack. His films have grossed more than $2.1 billion in Canada and the United States, with an average of $73 million per film. Throughout his career, he has received several awards and honors including an Emmy Award, several MTV Movie Awards, and a Teen Choice Award.
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Ben Wallace
Ben Camey Wallace (born September 10, 1974) is an American basketball center for the Detroit Pistons of the NBA. A native of Alabama, Wallace attended Cuyahoga Community College and Virginia Union University and signed with the Washington Bullets (later Wizards) as an undrafted free agent in 1996. In his NBA career, Wallace has also played the power forward position and with the Washington Bullets/Wizards, Orlando Magic, Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls, and Cleveland Cavaliers teams.
He has won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award four times, a record he shares with Dikembe Mutombo. In six seasons with the Pistons (2000–2006), Wallace made two NBA Finals appearances (2004 and 2005) and won a championship with the Pistons in 2004.
Ben Wallace was born in White Hall, Alabama, a small town in Lowndes County, and is the tenth of eleven children. He later attended Central High School in Hayneville where he received all-state honors in basketball, baseball, and football (as a linebacker). Former basketball player Charles Oakley is Wallace's mentor, having discovered Wallace at a 1991 basketball camp, and later recommended Wallace to his previous college, Virginia Union.
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Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor, comedian and golfer. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack (1980), Ghostbusters (1984), and Groundhog Day (1993). Murray gained additional critical acclaim later in his career, starring in Lost in Translation (2003), that earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, and a series of films directed by Wes Anderson, including Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012).
Murray was born and raised in Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, the son of Lucille (née Collins), a mail room clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II, a lumber salesman. Murray's father died in 1967 from complications of diabetes when Bill was 17 years old. Murray, along with his eight siblings, was raised in an Irish American family. Three of his siblings are actors: John Murray, Joel Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray. A sister, Nancy, is an Adrian Dominican nun in Michigan, who has traveled the United States in a one-woman programme, portraying St. Catherine of Siena.
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Billy Crystal
William Edward "Billy" Crystal (born March 14, 1948) is an American actor, writer, producer, comedian, and film director. He gained prominence in the 1970s for playing Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom Soap and became a Hollywood film star during the late 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the critical and box office successes When Harry Met Sally... and City Slickers. He has hosted the Academy Awards nine times, including the 84th Academy Awards in 2012.
Crystal was born in the Doctor's Hospital in Manhattan and raised on Long Island in Long Beach, the son of Helen (née Gabler), a housewife, and Jack Crystal, a record company executive and jazz producer who also owned and operated the Commodore Record store. His babysitter was occasionally Billie Holiday. His uncle was musician and songwriter Milt Gabler, and his brother, Richard "Rip" Crystal, is a television producer. Crystal grew up in a Jewish family that he has described as "large" and "loving".
After graduation from Long Beach High School, Crystal attended Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia on a baseball scholarship, having learned the game from his father, who pitched for St. John's University. Crystal never played a game at Marshall because the program was suspended during his freshman year, and because he was too busy being the Editor in Chief of The BG News from 1969–70. He did not return to Marshall as a sophomore, staying back in New York with his future wife. He instead attended Nassau Community College and later New York University, where he graduated in 1970 with a BFA from its Tisch School of the Arts.
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Borat
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, often referred to simply as Borat, and stylized BORДT! on the poster, is a 2006 mockumentary comedy film directed by Larry Charles and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It was written, produced by, and stars the English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in the title role of a fictitious Kazakh journalist traveling through the United States, recording real-life interactions with Americans. Much of the movie features these unscripted vignettes of Borat interviewing and interacting with Americans, who believe he is a foreigner with little or no understanding of American customs. It is the second film built around one of Baron Cohen's three characters from Da Ali G Show (2002–2004), following Ali G Indahouse (2002), which also featured a cameo by Borat. A third entry, Brüno, was released in 2009.
Despite a limited initial release in the United States, the satire was a critical and commercial success. Baron Cohen won the 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor: Musical or Comedy, as Borat, while the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture in the same category.Borat was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards.
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Borat Sagdiyev
Borat Sagdiyev (Kazakh/Russian: Борат Сагдиев) (born February 27, 1972) is a satirical fictional character invented and performed by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. He is presented as a Kazakhstani journalist and is the main protagonist of the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Borat's humour derives from his mocking of society through outrageous sociocultural viewpoints, his violation of social taboos and his use of vulgar language and behaviour. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "The Kazakhstani journalist gave us some of the most incisive cultural commentary ever filmed. That, and a wrestling match between butt-naked men. Something for everyone."
The character was first developed for short skits on F2F on Granada Television that Baron Cohen presented in 1996–1997, with the character at this time being known as Alexi. The character, now known as Christo was then picked up by Paramount Comedy 1 and then subsequently by BBC Two's Comedy Nation. These early versions of Borat were nearly identical in looks and demeanor to the later incarnation, but the character claimed to be from Moldova rather than Kazakhstan. The character remained dormant while Baron Cohen concentrated on his Ali G persona for Channel 4's The 11 O'Clock Show, but with the subsequent success of Ali G and the creation of Da Ali G Show (also on Channel 4) Baron Cohen revisited his Borat character.
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Brian May
Brian Harold May, CBE (born 19 July 1947) is an English musician and astrophysicist most widely known as the guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer of the rock band Queen. As a guitarist he uses his home-built guitar, "Red Special", and has composed hits such as "Tie Your Mother Down", "I Want It All", "We Will Rock You", "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Who Wants to Live Forever".
He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005 for "services to the music industry and his charity work". May earned a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College in 2007 and is currently the Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University. May currently resides in Surrey.
In 2005, a Planet Rock poll saw May voted the 7th greatest guitarist of all time. He was ranked at No. 26 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Brian May, the only child of Harold and Ruth May, was born in Hampton, London and attended Hampton Grammar School (now Hampton School). During this time he formed his first band with vocalist and bassist Tim Staffell, named Nineteen Eighty-Four after George Orwell's novel of the same name. He left Hampton Grammar School with ten GCE Ordinary Levels and three Advanced Levels in Physics, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. He studied Mathematics and Physics at Imperial College London, graduating with B.Sc. degree with honours.
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Brüno (character)
Brüno Gehard (pronounced "broo-noe gay-hard"), sometimes written as Bruno and Brueno, is a satirical fictional character portrayed by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. The character, a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion reporter, first appeared during short sketches on The Paramount Comedy Channel in 1998, before reappearing on Da Ali G Show with his partner Adrian Chan. Following the success of Ali G Indahouse and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Universal Studios gained rights to produce and release a feature film.
Cohen's character Brüno, alongside his Ali G and Borat characters, has been retired.
In May 2009, Brüno appeared at the MTV Movie Awards dressed as an angel with wings strapped to his buttocks hanging from the ceiling. As part of a prank, after an alleged equipment malfunction, he was lowered onto rapper Eminem who was seated directly beneath him. Brüno landed in Eminem's lap with his exposed rear end in Eminem's face. Members of D12, including Swifty, Kuniva, and Bizarre all helped to remove Brüno after Eminem said "Yo, get this motherfucker off me, man!" Eminem and the rest of the D12 members left the Awards, with Jesski shouting "Is the Real Slim Shady going to stand up?" Eminem appeared surprised, and slightly angry about the prank the whole time, but later claimed to reporters how he "laughed uncontrollably for about three hours" in his hotel afterward. Later Eminem himself claimed that the stunt had been planned and rehearsed beforehand; Cohen had discussed the idea with Eminem, who is a fan of Cohen's work and agreed to do the stunt.
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Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin, Sc.D. (born Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr., January 20, 1930) is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history. On July 20, 1969, he was the second human being to set foot on the moon, following mission commander Neil Armstrong.
Aldrin was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, to Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Sr., a career military man, and his wife Marion (née Moon). He is of Scottish, Swedish, and German ancestry. After graduating from Montclair High School in 1946, Aldrin turned down a full scholarship offer from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The nickname "Buzz" originated in childhood: the younger of his two elder sisters mispronounced "brother" as "buzzer", and this was shortened to Buzz. Aldrin made it his legal first name in 1988.
Aldrin graduated third in his class at West Point in 1951 with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and served as a jet fighter pilot during the Korean War. He flew 66 combat missions in F-86 Sabres and shot down two Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 aircraft. The June 8, 1953, issue of LIFE magazine featured gun camera photos taken by Aldrin of one of the Russian pilots ejecting from his damaged aircraft.
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C. Everett Koop
Charles Everett Koop, MD (born October 14, 1916) is an American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator. He was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and served as thirteenth Surgeon General of the United States under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1989.
Koop was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father John Everett Koop (1883–1972) and his mother Helen (née Apel) Koop (1894–1970) were both German immigrants, and Koop was their only child. He obtained his A.B. degree from Dartmouth College in 1937 and his M.D. degree from Cornell Medical College in 1941. During the 1940s and 1950s he rose in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine to become professor of pediatric surgery and, later, professor of pediatrics. In February 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Koop as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health with the promise, fulfilled a year and nine months later, that he would be nominated as Surgeon General.
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Carol Kirkwood
Carol Kirkwood (born 29 May 1962) is a Scottish weather presenter, employed by the Met Office and best known for forecasting the weather for BBC Breakfast.
Kirkwood was born Carol MacKellaig in Morar, Invernessshire, Scotland. She was one of eight children and her parents ran a hotel in Morar; she was a Girl Guide. After attending Lochaber High School in Fort William, Carol gained a BA in commerce from Napier University in Edinburgh.
After graduation, Kirkwood joined the BBC's Secretarial Reserve in London and after a series of internal moves presented short slots on BBC Radio Scotland, and then BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 4. She subsequently worked as an Associate Director in recruitment and as training consultant for a management consultancy in Cheshire.
Kirkwood rejoined the BBC at Elstree Studios training department in 1993 as a freelance presenter, during which time she presented a bi-monthly programme Talking Issues for HTV West. In 1996 Kirkwood joined the new UK operation of The Weather Channel, but after it closed down in January 1998 she underwent training under the guidance of the BBC at the Met Office, before joining BBC News as a weather presenter. She has appeared regularly on BBC One, BBC News, BBC World News, BBC Red Button and the BBC News at Six, and has been the main weather presenter on BBC Breakfast since 2008.
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Colin Farrell
Colin James Farrell (born 31 May 1976) is an Irish actor, who has appeared in such films as Tigerland, Miami Vice, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Recruit, Alexander and S.W.A.T.. In 2008 he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his role in In Bruges.
Farrell was born in Dublin, the son of Rita (née Monaghan), a housewife, and Eamon Farrell, a footballer who played for Shamrock Rovers F.C. and owned a company importing and exporting canned goods in Dublin City. He was raised as a Roman Catholic. His uncle Tommy Farrell also played for Rovers. Farrell has two sisters, Claudine (who is his personal assistant) and Catherine, and a brother, Eamon Jr. When he was ten, the Farrells moved to Castleknock, a Dublin suburb. Farrell was educated at St. Brigid's National School Castleknock followed by Castleknock College and Gormanston College. Farrell unsuccessfully auditioned for the Irish group Boyzone when he was still unknown. Farrell attended The Gaiety School of Acting, but dropped out and was cast in the part of Danny Byrne on Ballykissangel, a BBC television drama. Farrell appeared on the show seven times from 1998 to 1999. He was inspired to try acting after being brought to tears while watching E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
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Curb Your Enthusiasm
Curb Your Enthusiasm is an American comedy television series produced and broadcast by HBO, which premiered on October 15, 2000. As of 2011, it has completed 80 episodes over eight seasons. The series was created by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who stars as a fictionalized version of himself. The series follows David in his life as a semi-retired television writer and producer in Los Angeles and later New York City. Also starring are Cheryl Hines as David's wife Cheryl, Jeff Garlin as David's manager Jeff, and Susie Essman as Jeff's wife Susie. Curb Your Enthusiasm often features guest stars, and many of these appearances are by celebrities playing versions of themselves fictionalized to varying degrees.
The plots and subplots of the episodes are established in an outline written by David and the dialogue is largely improvised by the actors themselves. Much like Seinfeld, the subject matter in Curb Your Enthusiasm often involves the minutiae of daily life, and plots often revolve around Larry David's many faux pas, and his problems with certain social conventions and expectations, as well as his annoyance with other people's behavior. The character has a hard time letting such annoyances go unexpressed, which leads him often into awkward situations.
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Dan Mazer
Dan Mazer (born 1971) is a British screenwriter, TV/film producer, and comedian. He is best known as the long-time writing and production partner of Sacha Baron Cohen and has worked with him on such characters as Ali G and Borat. Mazer co-wrote and co-produced the films Ali G Indahouse (2002), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) and Brüno (2009).
Mazer attended Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, where he met Baron Cohen. He went on to read Law at Peterhouse, Cambridge University, and graduated in 1994. He was an active member of Cambridge Footlights while at university and was vice president from 1993 to 1994.
His early work includes production roles on The Word, The Big Breakfast and The 11 O'Clock Show.
In 2007, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for co-writing the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. He shared his nomination with Sacha Baron Cohen, Ant Hines, Peter Baynham, and Todd Phillips. They ended up losing to The Departed. He is currently co-writing Lost for Words with Jamie Curtis.
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Dariga Nazarbayeva
Dariga Nursultanqyzy Nazarbayeva (Kazakh: Дариға Нұрсұлтанқызы Назарбаева; Russian: Дарига Нурсултановна Назарбаева) (born 7 May 1963 in Temirtau, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union) is a Kazakh lawmaker and daughter of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
At one point she worked as head of the official state-run news agency, Khabar, but she no longer does. She formed the Kazakh political party Asar, Kazakh for "All together." Asar merged with the pro-Nazarbayev party Otan in July 2006.
Many analysts believe President Nazarbayev is preparing his daughter to succeed him upon his retirement or death. Her relationship with her father has deteriorated recently, in part due to the criticism of his administration she sometimes expresses.
She had a long marriage to Kazakh businessman and politician Rakhat Aliyev until their divorce in June 2007. Aliyev claims that the divorce was executed without his consent, and that it was forced by President Nazarbayev. Nazarbayeva has two sons with Aliyev, Nurali and Aisoultan. She also has a daughter Venera. She is also a grandmother. Nurali's wife gave birth to Laura Aliyev in 2003.
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David Beckham
David Robert Joseph Beckham, OBE (born 2 May 1975) is an English association footballer who plays for Los Angeles Galaxy. He has played for Manchester United, Preston North End, Real Madrid, Milan, and the England national team for which he holds the appearance record for an outfield player.
Beckham's career began when he signed a professional contract with Manchester United, making his first-team debut in 1992 aged 17. During his time there, United won the Premier League title six times, the FA Cup twice, and the UEFA Champions League in 1999. He left Manchester United to sign for Real Madrid in 2003, where he remained for four seasons, clinching the La Liga championship in his final season with the club. In January 2007, it was announced that Beckham would leave Real Madrid for the Major League Soccer club Los Angeles Galaxy, signing a five-year contract with them on 1 July 2007. While a Galaxy player, he spent two loan spells in Italy with Milan in 2009 and 2010. On 20 November 2011, he joined an elite group of players to have won three league titles in three different countries, when Los Angeles won their third MLS Cup.
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David Letterman
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. Letterman recently surpassed friend and mentor Johnny Carson for having the longest late-night hosting career in the United States of America.
Letterman is also a television and film producer. His company Worldwide Pants produces his show as well as its network follow-up The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Worldwide Pants has also produced several prime-time comedies, the most successful of which was Everybody Loves Raymond, currently in syndication.
In 1996, David Letterman was ranked #45 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Letterman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Harry Joseph Letterman (April 1915 – February 1973), was a florist of British descent; 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.
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Donald Trump
Donald John Trump, Sr. (born June 14, 1946) is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have made him a well-known celebrity who was No. 17 on the 2011 Forbes Celebrity 100 list. He is well-known as a real-estate developer who amassed vast hotel, casino, and other real-estate properties, in the New York City area and around the world.
Trump is the son of Fred Trump, a wealthy New York City real-estate developer. He worked for his father's firm, Elizabeth Trump & Son, while attending the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1968 officially joined the company. He was given control of the company in 1971 and renamed it The Trump Organization.
In 2010, Trump expressed an interest in becoming a candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 election. In May 2011, he announced he would not be a candidate, but a few weeks later he said he had not completely ruled out the possibility. In December 2011, Trump was suggested as a possible Vice Presidential selection by Michele Bachmann. Bachmann has since suspended her presidential campaign.
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Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters.
He first drew critical praise for the play Eh?, for which he won a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award. This was soon followed by his breakthrough movie role as the good-looking but troubled Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967). Since then Hoffman's career has largely been focused on cinema, with only sporadic returns to television and the stage. Some of his most notable films are Papillon, Marathon Man, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Lenny, All the President's Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man, Wag the Dog, and Meet the Fockers.
Hoffman has won two Academy Awards (for his performances in Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man), five Golden Globes, four BAFTAs, three Drama Desk Awards, a Genie Award, and an Emmy Award. Dustin Hoffman received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999.
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Dwyane Wade
Dwyane Tyrone Wade, Jr. (born January 17, 1982), nicknamed Flash or D-Wade, is an American professional basketball player for the Miami Heat. Awarded 2006 Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated, Wade has established himself as one of the most well-known and popular players in the league. He had the top selling jersey in the NBA for nearly two years, as he led the NBA in jersey sales from the 2005 NBA Playoffs, until the mid-point of the 2006–07 season.
After entering the league as the fifth pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, Wade was named to the All-Rookie team and the All-Star team the following eight seasons. In his third season, Wade helped lead the Miami Heat to their first NBA Championship in franchise history. He was named the 2006 NBA Finals MVP as he helped lead the Heat to a 4–2 series win over the Dallas Mavericks. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Wade led the United States Men's Basketball team, commonly known as the "Redeem Team", in scoring, as they captured gold medal honors in Beijing, China. In the 2008–09 season, Wade led the league in scoring and earned his first NBA scoring title.
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Edward Fagan
Edward Davis "Ed" Fagan (born October 20, 1952) is a controversial former American reparations lawyer who was punished by the Supreme Court for his conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. Edward Fagan was disbarred in New York and New Jersey for failing to pay court fines and fees and for stealing client money and escrow trust funds from Holocaust survivors.
Fagan was born in Harlingen, Texas. He grew up in a Conservative Jewish home in San Antonio, Texas and has two children. Prior to embarking on his legal career, he traveled to Israel to take part in the Yom Kippur War. After returning to the US, he enrolled in Cardozo School of Law and graduated in 1980. He initially worked as a personal injury lawyer, then worked with a large law firm, representing corporate defendants, before he started an exploration club for the wealthy in the 1980s, allowing rich customers to visit exotic locations, entertained and accompanied by scientists and environmentalists. A nonprofit venture of the business, the Odyssoe Foundation, was created in 1991, but collapsed with the entire enterprise.
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Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), better known by his stage name Eminem (often stylized as EMINƎM) and by his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group, D12, to mainstream recognition. As well as being a member of D12, Eminem is also one half of the hip hop duo Bad Meets Evil, with Royce da 5'9". Eminem is one of the best-selling artists in the world and is the best selling artist of the 2000s. He has been listed and ranked as one of the greatest artists of all time by many magazines including the Rolling Stone magazine which has ranked him 82nd on its list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The same magazine has declared him The King of Hip Hop. Including his work with D12 and Bad Meets Evil, Eminem has achieved ten number-one albums on the Billboard 200. He has sold more than 42 million tracks and 41 million albums in the United States, and nearly 90 million albums worldwide.
Eminem quickly gained popularity in 1999 with his major-label debut album, The Slim Shady LP. That first album, The Marshall Mathers LP and his third major album, The Eminem Show, all won Grammy Awards, making Eminem the first artist to win Best Rap Album for three consecutive LPs. The Marshall Mathers LP is also considered one of Eminem's best and most successful albums. Eminem then went on hiatus after touring in 2005. He released his first album since 2004's Encore, titled Relapse, on May 15, 2009. In 2010, Eminem released his seventh studio album Recovery, which was an international success. Recovery was also named the best selling album worldwide of 2010 joining The Eminem Show, which was the best seller of 2002. Eminem won Grammy Awards for both Relapse and Recovery, giving him a total of 13 Grammys in his career. Eminem has named Masta Ace, Big Daddy Kane, Newcleus, the Beastie Boys, Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, AZ, Nas, and Ice-T amongst others as his influences.
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Emma Stone
Emily Jean "Emma" Stone (born November 6, 1988) is an American actress.
Stone was a cast member of the TV series Drive, and made her feature film debut in the comedy Superbad (2007). She appeared in The House Bunny (2008) and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009). She then starred in the horror-comedy Zombieland and the indie comedy Paper Man in 2009. In 2010, Stone voiced the character Mazie in Marmaduke, and starred in the high school comedy Easy A, which earned her a nomination for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. In 2011, she starred in the films Crazy, Stupid, Love. and The Help, both of which were well received by critics and commercial successes. Stone will play Gwen Stacy in the Amazing Spider-Man film, a reboot of the Spider-Man film franchise.
Stone was born in Scottsdale, Arizona, the daughter of Krista (née Yeager), a homemaker, and Jeff Stone, a contractor. She has a brother, who is two years her junior. Stone's paternal grandfather was of Swedish descent, and his family's surname was anglicized to "Stone" when immigrating to the U.S. through Ellis Island; some of her ancestors also lived in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.
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Erran Baron Cohen
Erran Boaz Baron Cohen (born 1968 in Islington) is a British composer and trumpet player, known for collaborations with his younger brother, Sacha Baron Cohen.
Erran is a founding member of "world fusion beat scientists" ZOHAR who are signed to Miles Copeland's Ark 21 label. Their album one.three.seven was released worldwide in 2001 to critical acclaim. As part of the ZOHAR Sound System, Erran has also DJ'd internationally, and at some of London's most trendy night clubs including Momos, China White and Cargo.
Production and writing credits have included collaborations with Grammy award winning producer Narada Michael Walden, legendary Buddha Bar DJ Claude Challe, Martika's Kitchen, and some of the world's greatest Middle Eastern vocalists, including Algerian legend "King of Rai" Khaled, Hakim, Andy, Rachid Taha, and Amina.
Erran Baron Cohen also scored the original music for his brother's films Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Brüno, and his TV series Da Ali G Show. Baron Cohen also created the theme music for the popular CBBC wildlife television show "Serious Jungle" as well as the other programmes in the "Serious..." series.
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Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara (Gujarati: ફારોખ બલ્સારા), 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991) was a British musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the rock band Queen. As a performer, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and powerful vocals over a four-octave range. As a songwriter, Mercury composed many hits for Queen, including "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Killer Queen", "Somebody to Love", "Don't Stop Me Now", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "We Are the Champions". In addition to his work with Queen, he led a solo career, and also occasionally served as a producer and guest musician (piano or vocals) for other artists. He died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS on 24 November 1991, only one day after publicly acknowledging he had the disease.
Mercury was a Parsi born in Zanzibar and grew up there and in India until his mid-teens. He has been referred to as "Britain's first Asian rock star". In 2002, Mercury was placed at number 58 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, in 2006, Time Asia named him one of the most influential Asian heroes of the past 60 years, and he continues to be voted one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music. In 2005, a poll organised by Blender and MTV2 saw Mercury voted the greatest male singer of all time. In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. In 2009, a Classic Rock poll saw him voted the greatest rock singer of all time.Allmusic has characterised Mercury as "one of rock's greatest all-time entertainers", who possessed "one of the greatest voices in all of music".
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Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is a retired American actor and novelist.
Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. His major subsequent films include The French Connection (1971), in which he played Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle; The Poseidon Adventure (1972); The Conversation (1974); Superman (1978), in which he played arch-villain Lex Luthor; Hoosiers (1986); Mississippi Burning (1987); Unforgiven (1992); The Firm (1993); Crimson Tide (1995); Get Shorty (1995); The Birdcage (1996); Enemy of the State (1998); and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Lyda (née Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman. He has a brother, Richard. His family moved frequently, finally settling in Danville, Illinois, where they lived in the house of his English-born maternal grandmother, Beatrice. Hackman's father operated the printing press for the Commercial-News, a local paper. Hackman's parents divorced in 1943 and his father subsequently left the family.
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Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal ( /ˌɡɔr vɨˈdɑːl/; born October 3, 1925) is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality. He also ran for political office twice and has been a longtime political critic.
Vidal was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal in West Point, New York, the only child of 1st Lieutenant Eugene Luther Vidal (1895–1969) and Nina Gore (1903–1978). He was born in the Cadet Hospital of the United States Military Academy, where his father was the first aeronautics instructor, and was christened by the headmaster of St. Albans preparatory school, his future alma mater. According to "West Point and the Third Loyalty", an article Vidal wrote for The New York Review of Books (October 18, 1973), he later decided to be called Gore in honor of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Gore, Democratic senator from Oklahoma.
Vidal's father, a West Point football quarterback and captain, and an all-American basketball player, was director of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce (1933–1937) in the Roosevelt administration, was one of the first Army Air Corps pilots and, according to biographer Susan Butler, was the great love of Amelia Earhart's life. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was a co-founder of three American airlines: the Ludington Line, which merged with others and became Eastern Airlines, Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT, which became TWA), and Northeast Airlines, which he founded with Earhart, as well as the Boston and Maine Railroad. The elder Vidal was also an athlete in the 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics (seventh in the decathlon; U.S. pentathlon team coach).
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Heinz Wolff
Professor Heinz Wolff BSc. FIEE. FIBES FRCP (Hon) FRSA is a German-British scientist, and television and radio presenter who was born in 1928. He is popularly known for his television and radio work, including the TV series The Great Egg Race.
Born in Berlin, 29 April 1928, Wolff's family moved to Britain when he was aged 11. The family arrived on the day World War II broke out. After school at the City of Oxford High School for Boys he worked at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford and at the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit near Cardiff, before going on to University College London, where he gained a first class honours degree in Physiology and Physics.
He spent much of his early career in bioengineering, a term which he himself coined in 1954 to take account of then recent advances in physiology. He became an honorary member of the European Space Agency in 1975, and in 1983 he founded the Brunel Institute for Bioengineering, which is involved in biological research during weightless space-flight. Wolff was the scientific director and co-founder of Project Juno, the private British-Soviet joint venture which sent Helen Sharman to the Mir space station.
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Ian Kershaw
Sir Ian Kershaw, FBA (born 29 April 1943) is a British historian of 20th-century Germany whose work has chiefly focused on the period of the Third Reich. He is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his monumental biography of Hitler, which has been called "soberly objective."
He was the leading disciple of the late West German historian Martin Broszat, and (until his retirement) professor at the University of Sheffield. Kershaw has called Broszat an "inspirational mentor" who did much to shape his understanding of National Socialist Germany. Kershaw served as historical adviser on numerous BBC documentaries, notably The Nazis: A Warning From History and War of the Century. He taught a module entitled 'Germans against Hitler'.
His wife Dame Betty Kershaw was a Dean at Sheffield.
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Isla Fisher
Isla Lang Fisher (pronounced /ˈaɪlə/; born 3 February 1976) is a British actress and author who began her acting career on Australian television. She appeared on the short-lived soap opera Paradise Beach before playing Shannon Reed on the soap opera Home and Away. She has since been known for her comedic roles in Scooby-Doo (2002), Wedding Crashers (2005),Hot Rod (2007), Definitely, Maybe (2008), and Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009).
Fisher was born in Muscat, Oman, to Scottish parents from Bathgate and Stranraer, and was brought up in Perth, Western Australia. They resided in Muscat because her father, Brian, was a banker for the United Nations. She has four brothers. Fisher spent her early years in Bathgate before moving with her family to Perth when she was six years old. Fisher has said that she had a "great" upbringing in Perth with a "very outdoorsy life". She attended Methodist Ladies' College and appeared in lead roles in school productions.
She began appearing in commercials on Australian television at the age of nine, before going on to win roles in popular children's television shows Bay City and Paradise Beach. At the age of 18, with the help of her mother, she published two teen novels, Bewitched and Seduced by Fame. From 1994 to 1997 she played the role of Shannon Reed on the Australian soap opera Home and Away. In 1996, she won a Logie Award nomination for Most Popular Actress for her role. After leaving the soap, Fisher enrolled at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, a theatre and arts training school in Paris and went on to appear in pantomime in the United Kingdom. She also toured with Darren Day in the musical Summer Holiday and appeared in the London theatre production, Così. In 2001, Fisher was cast as Kim in the German horror film Swimming Pool.
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Jack Black
Thomas Jacob "Jack" Black (born August 28, 1969) is an American comedian, actor and musician. He makes up one half of the comedy and satirical rock duo Tenacious D. The group has three albums as well as a television series and a film. His acting career is extensive, starring primarily as bumbling, cocky, but internally self-conscious outsiders in comedy films. He was a member of the Frat Pack, a group of comedians who have appeared together in several Hollywood films, and has been nominated for a Golden Globe award. He has also won an MTV Movie Award, and a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award as well as hosting the 2006, 2008, and 2011 Kids Choice Awards.
Black was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of two satellite engineers, Judith (née Cohen), who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, and Thomas William Black. His mother is Jewish and his father converted to Judaism (Black attended Hebrew school). On The Tonight Show, he said his surname may have come from the occupational name Blacksmith. Black's parents divorced when he was 10; Black moved to Culver City with his father and frequently visited his mother’s home. As a child, Black appeared in a commercial for the Activision game Pitfall! in 1982, which was later shown during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live and again on The Tonight Show with Conan O' Brien. When Black entered high school, his parents enrolled him at the Poseidon School, a private secondary school engineered specifically for students struggling in the traditional school system. Black also attended the Crossroads School, where he excelled in drama. He later attended UCLA but dropped out during his sophomore year to pursue a career in entertainment, at which point his father discontinued his financial support.[citation needed] Fellow UCLA alumnus Tim Robbins later cast Black in Bob Roberts. He also had recurring roles on the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show.
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James Baker
James Addison Baker, III (born April 28, 1930) is an American attorney, politician and political advisor.
Baker served as the Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan's first administration and in the final year of the administration of President George H. W. Bush. Baker also served as Secretary of the Treasury from 1985–1988 in the second Reagan administration, and Secretary of State in the George H. W. Bush administration. He is also the honorary chair of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
James Addison Baker was born in Houston, Texas at 1216 Bissonnet, to James A. Baker, Jr. (1892–1973) and Ethel Bonner (born Means) Baker (August 6, 1894 – April 26, 1991). His father was a partner of Houston law firm Baker Botts. Baker has a sister, Bonner Baker Moffitt.
Baker attended The Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Princeton University in 1952. Afterwards, he earned a J.D. (1957) from The University of Texas at Austin and began to practice law in Texas.
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James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver; a new novel, written by William Boyd, is planned for release in 2013. Additionally, Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.
The fictional British Secret Service agent has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip and video game formats as well as being used in the longest running and the second-highest grossing film franchise to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2012, there have been twenty two films in the Eon Productions series, with a twenty third, Skyfall, due for release on 26 October 2012. The film will star Daniel Craig in his third portrayal of Bond: he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent productions of Bond films, Casino Royale, a 1967 spoof, and Never Say Never Again, a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, Thunderball.
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Jamie Foxx
Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), professionally known as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer-songwriter, rapper, stand-up comedian, and talk radio host who began playing the piano when he was five years old. As an actor, his work in the film Ray earned him the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a musical/comedy. He is also a Grammy Award winning musician, producing three albums which have charted highly on the Billboard 200: Unpredictable, which topped the chart, Best Night of My Life and Intuition.
Born in Terrell, Texas, Foxx was raised by his mother's adoptive parents. He performed in high school and was awarded with a scholarship to United States International University. In his twenties, Foxx began performing stand-up at comedy clubs, and eventually joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991; this exposure helped him land film roles and star in his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show. He released his debut album, Peep This, in 1994, but he did not gain significant musical success until 2004 when he was featured in Twista's song "Slow Jamz". Also in 2004, Foxx played critically acclaimed roles in the films Collateral and Ray. He released his second album, Unpredictable, in 2005, which was helped by his collaboration on Kanye West's number-one single "Gold Digger". His third album Intuition was released in 2008 and was anchored by the single "Blame It". Foxx released his fourth studio album, Best Night of My Life, in 2010.
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Jean Dujardin
Jean Edmond Dujardin (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ dy.ʒaʁ.dɛ̃]; born 19 June 1972) is a French actor and comedian. He has worked notably with director Michel Hazanavicius, starring in his OSS 117 spy parodies. His starring role in Hazanavicius' silent movie The Artist, playing actor George Valentin, received widespread acclaim. The role won him the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award, and the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is the first French actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Dujardin was born and raised in Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France), a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. After attending high school, he went to work for his parents' construction company. Dujardin began contemplating a career in acting while serving his mandatory military service a few years later.
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Jessica Simpson
Jessica Ann Simpson (born July 10, 1980) is an American recording artist, actress, television personality and fashion designer whose rise to fame began in 1999. Since that time, Simpson has achieved many recording milestones, starred in several television shows, movies and commercials, launched a line of hair and beauty products and designed fragrances, shoes and handbags for women. She has devoted time to philanthropic efforts including Operation Smile and a USO-hosted tour for troops stationed overseas. She started the Jessica Simpson Collection in 2005.
She has achieved seven Billboard Top 40 hits, three gold and two multi-platinum Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified studio albums, four of which have reached the top 10 on the US Billboard 200. She has sold 30 million albums worldwide. Simpson starred with her then-husband Nick Lachey in the MTV reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica. She ventured into the country music market in 2008 and released Do You Know.
During the first part of 2010, Simpson released her second reality show on VH1 "The Price of Beauty." In October 2010 she released her first compilation album and last album under the label of Epic Records , with the name Playlist: The Very Best of Jessica Simpson. A month later she released her second Christmas album Happy Christmas under the label Primary Wave Records, owned by EMI.
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Jim Carrey
James Eugene "Jim" Carrey (born January 17, 1962) is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer. Carrey has received four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning two. Known for his highly energetic, slapstick performances, he has been described as one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood.
Carrey first gained recognition in 1990 after landing a recurring role in the sketch comedy In Living Color. His first leading roles in major productions came with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Dumb and Dumber (1994), The Mask (1994), and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995). In 1997, he gave a critically acclaimed performance in Liar Liar, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor. He then starred in the critically acclaimed hits The Truman Show (1998) and Man on the Moon (1999), both garnering him two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor.
In 2000, he gained further recognition for his portrayal of the The Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Three years later, Carrey starred in the major blockbuster film Bruce Almighty (2003). The following year he starred in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he received another Golden Globe nomination in addition to a BAFTA Award nomination. He then starred in popular productions Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Fun with Dick and Jane (2005), Yes Man (2008), A Christmas Carol (2009), and Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011).
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Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol. Dissatisfied with that status, Depp turned to film for more challenging roles; he played the title character of Edward Scissorhands (1990) and later found box office success in films such as Sleepy Hollow (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Rango (2011) and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (2003–present). He has collaborated with director and friend Tim Burton in eight films, most recently with Dark Shadows (2012).
Depp has gained acclaim for his portrayals of people such as Ed Wood, in Ed Wood, Joseph D. Pistone in Donnie Brasco, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, George Jung in Blow, and the bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.1 billion at the United States box office and over $7.6 billion worldwide. He has been nominated for top awards many times, winning the Best Actor Awards from the Golden Globes for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and from the Screen Actors Guild for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He also has garnered a sex symbol status in American cinema, being twice named as the "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine in 2003 and 2009. He has been listed in the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor, with $75 million.
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Jonas Åkerlund
Jonas Åkerlund (born November 10, 1965) is a Swedish film and music video director, and drummer. He is best known for directing music videos, which are often mock forms of movie trailers and short films. His video for Madonna's song "Ray of Light" won a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form, and a record seven awards at 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, including the Video of the Year.
Åkerlund was a member of the Swedish black metal band Bathory from 1983 through 1984. He first found fame as main video director for Swedish pop act Roxette. In 1997 he directed the acclaimed video for The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up", which sparked controversy due to its depiction of drug use, violence, and nudity. In 1998 he worked with Madonna for the song "Ray of Light", he has since worked with acts such as Lady Gaga, Metallica, Christina Aguilera, U2, Blink-182, P!nk, Rammstein, and Britney Spears. He directed the music video for the Smashing Pumpkins' single "Try, Try, Try", from which a short film Try was spawned. He also turned his hand to designer and photographer for the Roxette album Room Service in 2001. In 2002 his first full length movie, Spun debuted. He directed recent adverts for Swedish clothing retailer MQ and the re-imagining of the Devo song "Watch Us Work It" used in Dell Computers commercials.
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Justin Timberlake
Justin Randall Timberlake (born January 31, 1981) is an American singer, actor, and businessman. He achieved early fame when he appeared as a contestant on Star Search, and went on to star in the Disney Channel television series The New Mickey Mouse Club, where he met future bandmate JC Chasez. Timberlake became famous in the late 1990s as the lead singer and youngest member of the boy band 'N Sync, whose launch was financed by Lou Pearlman.
In 2002, he released his debut solo album, Justified, which sold more than seven million copies worldwide. The album was a commercial success, spawning the hits "Cry Me a River" and "Rock Your Body". Timberlake continued his success with his second solo album, FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006), debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and produced the US number-one hit singles "SexyBack", "My Love", and "What Goes Around... Comes Around".
Timberlake has won six Grammy Awards and four Emmy Awards. His first two albums made him one of the most commercially successful singers in the world, each selling in excess of 7 million copies. He also has an acting career, having starred in films such as The Social Network, Bad Teacher and Friends with Benefits. His other ventures include record label Tennman Records, fashion label William Rast, and the restaurants Destino and Southern Hospitality.
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Kazakhs
The Kazakhs (also spelled Kazaks, Qazaqs; Kazakh: Қазақтар [qɑzɑqtɑ́r]; the English name is transliterated from Russian) are a Turkic people of the northern parts of Central Asia (largely Kazakhstan, but also found in parts of Uzbekistan, China, Russia, and Mongolia).
Kazakhs are descendants of the Turkic tribes - Argyns, Khazars, Qarluqs; and of the Kipchaks and Cumans (the Kipchaks and Cumans being one of their major ancestors) Proto-Tatar groups (Kiyat, Dughlat, Naimans, Kerait, Onggirat, Manghud, Jalayir) and other Proto Turkic tribes such as the Kankalis, origin and Iranian tribes like the Sarmatians, Saka and Scythians. Kazakhs populated the territory between Siberia and the Black Sea and remained in Central Asia when the Turkic and Turko-Tatar groups started to invade and conquer the area between the 5th and 13th centuries AD.
The Kazakhs began using this name during either the 15th or 16th centuries. There are many theories on the origin of the word Kazakh or Qazaq. Some speculate that it comes from the Turkish verb qaz (to wander), because the Kazakhs were wandering steppemen; or that it derives from the prototurk word khasaq (a wheeled cart used by the Kazakhs to transport their yurts and belongings).
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Ken Davitian
Kenneth "Ken" Davitian (born June 19, 1953) is an American actor who is best known for his role as Borat's producer (Azamat Bagatov) in the 2006 comedy film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, in which he speaks the Eastern dialect of Armenian throughout the film.
Davitian, who is of Armenian descent, was born in Los Angeles, California. A graduate of Garfield High School, he briefly attended East Los Angeles Community College.
Early in his career, he appeared in the movies American Raspberry, Bikini Summer, Maximum Force, Frogtown II, and Sexual Intent. In 1994, he appeared in the movie The Silence of the Hams, a spoof of The Silence of the Lambs. Davitian has also appeared in television series such as Chuck, Ghost Whisperer, Becker, ER, Arli$$, The Shield, Gilmore Girls, Six Feet Under, Boston Legal, The Closer, and Mind of Mencia. He has also made appearances in music videos, such as The Smashing Pumpkins' "Stand Inside Your Love". He appeared in the film Meet the Spartans as Xerxes, with the movie's narrator playing on his previous role as "that fat guy from Borat". He also starred in the 2008 film, Stone & Ed, in which he portrays a drug lord named Señor Gordo. Davitian was also an extra in a background scene of the show According to Jim. Upcoming films with Davitian include the family-friendly film The Prankster, Melvin Smarty, and You May Not Kiss The Bride. Davitian also had a cameo in the 2011 film The Artist.
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Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il (born Yuri Irsenovich Kim; 16 February 1941; official biography claims 1942 – 17 December 2011) was the supreme leader of North Korea (DPRK) from 1994 to 2011. He succeeded his father and founder of the DPRK Kim Il-sung following the elder Kim's death in 1994. Kim Jong-il was the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, and the supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth-largest standing army in the world.
In April 2009, North Korea's constitution was amended to refer to him as the "supreme leader". He was also referred to as the "Dear Leader", "our Father", and "the General", among others. His son Kim Jong-un was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Workers' Party and is his successor. In 2010, he was ranked 31st in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People. The North Korean government announced his death on 19 December 2011.
Following his demise, he was succeeded by his third son Kim Jong-un. He was proclaimed the Eternal General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission in 2012. His birthday is a public holiday in the country.
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Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bean Bryant (born August 23, 1978) is an American professional basketball player who plays shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Bryant enjoyed a successful high school basketball career at Lower Merion High School, where he was recognized as the top high school basketball player in the country. He decided to declare his eligibility for the NBA Draft upon graduation, and was selected with the 13th overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft by the Charlotte Hornets, then traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. As a rookie, Bryant earned himself a reputation as a high-flyer and a fan favorite by winning the 1997 Slam Dunk Contest.
Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal led the Lakers to three consecutive NBA championships from 2000 to 2002. A heated feud between the duo and a loss in the 2004 NBA Finals was followed by O'Neal's trade from the Lakers after the 2003–04 season. Following O'Neal's departure Bryant became the cornerstone of the Los Angeles Lakers franchise. He led the NBA in scoring during the 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons, setting numerous scoring records in the process. In 2006, Bryant scored a career-high 81 points against the Toronto Raptors, the second most points scored in a single game in NBA history, second only to Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in 1962. He was awarded the regular season's Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) in 2008. After losing in the 2008 NBA Finals, Bryant led the Lakers to two consecutive championships in 2009 and 2010, earning the NBA Finals MVP Award on both occasions.
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Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( /skɔrˈsɛsɛ/; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Academy Award, Palme d'Or, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,machismo, modern crime, and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated a previous five times.
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Mike Myers
Michael John "Mike" Myers (born May 25, 1963) is a Canadian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film producer of British parentage. He was a long-time cast member on the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s and the early 1990s and starred as the title characters in the films Wayne's World, Austin Powers, and the Shrek film series.
Myers was born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario, the son of British-born parents Eric Myers (1922–1991), an insurance man and World War II veteran of the Royal Engineers, and his wife Alice E. (née Hind; born 1926), an office supervisor and veteran of the Royal Air Force. Both of his parents are from Liverpool, England. He has two older brothers, Peter Myers and Paul Myers, an indie rock singer-songwriter, broadcaster and author. Myers is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry, and was raised Protestant. He holds three citizenships, American, British, and Canadian.
Myers began school at Bishopbriggs Academy then changed to the Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Ontario. He began performing in commercials at age eight, and at ten he made a commercial for British Columbia Hydro Electric, with Gilda Radner playing his mother. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Second City Theatre. He left to tour Britain with comedian Neil Mullarkey.
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Mohamed Al-Fayed
Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al-Fayed (Arabic: محمد عبد المنعم الفايد, Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Munʻim al-Fāyad; born 27 January 1933) is an Egyptian businessman. Amongst his business interests are ownership of the English Premiership football team Fulham Football Club, Hôtel Ritz Paris and formerly Harrods Department Store, Knightsbridge. Fayed has three siblings: Ali, Salah, and Safia; and married Finnish socialite and former model Heini Wathén in 1985, with whom he had four children: Jasmine, Karim, Camilla, and Omar; and three grandchildren. Fayed had been linked to two celebrities, Diana, Princess of Wales and Michael Jackson. Fayed's son, Dodi, from his first marriage to Samira Khashoggi, died in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris along with Diana and driver Henri Paul on 31 August 1997. Fayed's wealth is estimated at $1.2 billion, making him the 993rd richest person in the world.
Born in Bakos (باكوس), Alexandria, Egypt, as the eldest son of an Egyptian primary school teacher, Fayed's first entrepreneurial venture began at school where he sold homemade lemonade. He was married for two years, from 1954 to 1956, to Samira Kashoggi.
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Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (Arabic: معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي) (June 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi /ˈmoʊ.əmɑr ɡəˈdɑːfi/ (Arabic: مُعَمَّر القَذَّافِي Muʿammar al-Qaḏḏāfī audio (help·info)) or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. Gaddafi seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1969 and served as the country's head of state until 1977, when he stepped down from his official executive role as Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of Libya, and claimed subsequently to be merely a symbolic figurehead. He styled himself as "Leader of the Revolution"; in 2008 a meeting of traditional African rulers bestowed on him the title "King of Kings". A leading advocate for a United States of Africa, he served as Chairperson of the African Union (AU) from 2 February 2009 to 31 January 2010.
Gaddafi replaced the Libyan Constitution of 1951 with laws based on the political ideology he had formulated, which he called the Third International Theory and published in The Green Book. After establishing the Jamahiriya (جماهيرية, "state of the masses") system in 1977, he officially stepped down from power and after that time held a largely symbolic role within the country's official governance structure. Rising oil prices and extraction in Libya led to increasing revenues. By exporting as much oil per capita as Saudi Arabia and through various welfare programs, Libya achieved the highest living standards in Africa; Libya remained debt-free.
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Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.
Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.
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Nursultan Nazarbayev
Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev (Kazakh: Нұрсұлтан Әбішұлы Назарбаев [nʊrsʊlˈtɑn æbəʃʊˈlɯ nɑzɑrˈbɑ.jɪf]; Russian: Нурсултан Абишевич Назарбаев [nur.suɫˈtan ɐˈbʲi.ʂɨ.vʲɪt͡ɕ nə.zɐrˈba.jɪf]; born 6 July 1940) has served as the President of Kazakhstan since the nation's independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union. In April 2011, President Nazarbayev was reelected to another five-year term receiving 95.54 percent of the vote with 89.9 percent of registered voters participating (up from 76.8 percent in the 2005 presidential election).
Kazakhstan under Nazarbayev has grown prosperous due to oil revenue, but it is also criticised by international bodies for the high level of corruption and lack of democracy.
In 1984, Nazarbayev became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, working under Dinmukhamed Kunayev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. He served as First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party from 1989 to 1991.
Nazarbayev criticized Askar Kunayev, head of the Academy of Sciences, at the 16th session of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan in January 1986 for not reforming his department. Dinmukhamed Kunayev, Nazarbayev's boss and Askar's brother, felt deeply angered and betrayed. Kunayev went to Moscow and demanded Nazarbayev's dismissal while Nazarbayev's supporters campaigned for Kunayev's dismissal and Nazarbayev's promotion. Mikhail Gorbachev accepted the resignation of a deflated Kunayev, replacing him with Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian, triggering three days of riots known as the Jeltoqsan.
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Pamela Anderson
Pamela Denise Anderson (born July 1, 1967) is a Canadian actress, model, producer, author, activist, and former showgirl, known for her roles on the television series Home Improvement, Baywatch, and V.I.P. She was chosen as a Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine in February 1990. For a time, she was known as Pamela Anderson Lee (or Pamela Lee) after marrying Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. She maintains dual American and Canadian citizenship.
Anderson was born in Ladysmith, British Columbia, the daughter of Barry, a furnace repairman, and Carol (née Grosco) Anderson, a waitress. Her great-grandfather, Juho Hyytiäinen, was Finnish, a native of Saarijärvi, and left the Grand Duchy of Finland (which was a part of the Russian Empire at the time) in 1908, changing his name to Anderson when he arrived as an immigrant. Anderson also has Russian ancestry on her mother's side.
After graduating from Highland Secondary School in 1985, Anderson moved to Vancouver and worked as a fitness instructor. During the summer of 1989, Anderson went with her friends to a BC Lions game at BC Place, and during the game she was shown on the stadium screen wearing a Labatt's t-shirt, causing the crowd to cheer for the 21-year-old Anderson. She was taken down to the field to receive an ovation from the crowd. Her photographer boyfriend Dan Ilicic produced the Blue Zone Girl poster on his own. In October 1989 she appeared as the cover girl on Playboy magazine. At this stage in her modelling career, she had decided to live in Los Angeles to further pursue her career ambitions. She became a centrefold for Playboy when the magazine chose her to be their Playmate of the Month for their February 1990 issue. She then chose to get breast implants. Anderson has since appeared in Playboy several times in the 1990s and 2000s.
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Paul Giamatti
Brawl Edward Valentine Giamatti (/dʒiəˈmɑːti/; born June 6, 1967) is an American actor. An acclaimed character actor, Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon before earning lead roles in several projects in the 2000s including American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, The Illusionist, John Adams, Cold Souls, Barney's Version, and Win Win.
Giamatti, the youngest of three children, was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Angelo Bartlett Giamatti, was a Yale University professor who later became president of the university and commissioner of Major League Baseball. His mother, Toni Marilyn (née Smith), was a homemaker and English teacher who taught at Hopkins School and had also previously acted. Giamatti is of Italian, Irish, and English descent. Giamatti's paternal grandmother was from a family with deep roots in New England, and his paternal grandfather was the son of Italian immigrants from Telese. His brother, Marcus, is also an actor, and his sister, Elena, is a jewelry designer. Giamatti was educated at The Foote School and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in 1985. He attended Yale University, where he was elected to the Skull and Bones secret society. Giamatti was active in the undergraduate theater scene, working alongside actors Ron Livingston and Edward Norton, who were also Yale students. He graduated from Yale in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in English. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama where he studied with Earle R. Gister. He performed in numerous theatrical productions (including Broadway) before appearing in some small television and film roles in the early 1990s.
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Pauly Shore
Paul Montgomery "Pauly" Shore (born February 1, 1968) is an American comedian and actor who starred in several comedy films in the 1990s and hosted a video show on MTV in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Shore is still performing stand-up comedy and is touring in 2012.
Shore was born Paul Montgomery Shore, the son of Mitzi Shore (née Saidel), who founded The Comedy Store, and Sammy Shore, a comedian. Shore was raised Jewish in Beverly Hills, California. He graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1986.
Inspired by his parents' work in comedy and show business, a 17-year-old Shore made his stand-up debut at the Alley Cat Bistro in Culver City. "Everyone else in school was filling out their SAT applications, but I just passed mine back. I knew I wasn't going to go to college." Shore was mentored by Sam Kinison and opened several of his sets. While touring the comedy club circuit, Shore cultivated an alter ego persona, "The Weasel".
"The Weasel" involved Shore speaking in a Jeff Spicoli-esque surfer parlance, heavily peppered with dudespeak slang such as "edged", "melons" and "grinding" as well as his catchphrase, "Hey, BU-DDY."
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Peter Baynham
Peter Baynham (born 28 June 1963 in Cardiff, Wales) is a screenwriter and a British comedian, writer, and performer. He often collaborates with Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris and Steve Coogan and has worked with Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. He is first heard on Morris' early radio DJ slots, often going out to places. Other works not involving the above 'big names' were the "comic book in radio format" series The Harpoon, and animated sitcom I Am Not an Animal. The former was co-written with Julian Dutton and featured the vocal talents of impressionist Alistair McGowan. The latter was written with the help of Sarah Smith (producer of The Harpoon) and had an all-star cast including Steve Coogan, Kevin Eldon, Amelia Bullmore, Julia Davis and Simon Pegg. He has also appeared on the stand-up circuit as Mr Buckstead, the psychotic poet.
In 2006 Peter co-wrote the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan together with star Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines and Dan Mazer. In 2007 they received an Oscar Nomination for this.
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Peter Morgan
Peter Morgan (born 10 April 1963) is an English film writer and playwright best known for writing the films and plays The Deal, The Queen, Frost/Nixon, and The Special Relationship.
Morgan was born in London, the son of refugees; his mother, Inga (née Bojcek), was a Catholic Pole who fled the Soviets, and his father, Arthur Morgenthau, was a German Jew who fled the Nazis, arriving in London in 1933. His father, a businessman, died when Morgan was aged 9. Morgan attended boarding school at Downside School, Somerset, and gained a degree in Fine Art from the University of Leeds.
Morgan wrote television scripts throughout the 1990s, including an episode of Rik Mayall Presents... and the Comedy Premiere The Chest. He wrote the screenplay to the romantic comedy Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence (1998) and had some success with the TV series The Jury (2002). He broke through with The Deal, a 2003 television drama about the power-sharing deal between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that was struck in the Granita restaurant in London. He received his Academy Award-nomination for The Deal's follow-up, The Queen (2006) that showed how the death of Princess Diana impacted Blair and the Royal Family. His work on the film awarded him a Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press, and Helen Mirren won numerous awards for playing the title role.
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Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE (8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980), known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr. Strangelove, as Clare Quilty in Lolita, and as the TV-addicted man-child Chance the gardener in his penultimate film, Being There. Actress Bette Davis once remarked of him, "He isn't an actor—he's a chameleon."
Sellers rose to fame on the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show. His ability to speak in different accents (e.g., French, Indian, Italian, American, German, as well as British regional accents), along with his talent to portray a range of characters to comic effect, contributed to his success as a radio personality and screen actor and earned him national and international nominations and awards. Many of his characters became ingrained in public perception of his work. Sellers' private life was characterised by turmoil and crises, and included emotional problems and substance abuse. Sellers was married four times, and had three children from the first two marriages.
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Philippe Gaulier
Philippe Gaulier (born in Paris, 4 March 1943) is a French master clown, pedagogue, and professor of theatre. He is the founder of École Philippe Gaulier, a prestigious French clown school in Etampes, outside Paris. He studied under Jacques Lecoq in the mid 1960s and was an instructor at École Jacques Lecoq in the late 1970s. As well as performing as a clown, he is also a playwright and director. He has published The Tormentor (Le Gégèneur), a book discussing his thoughts on the theatre and containing exercises designed to develop an actor's skill.
Gaulier is known for performing both clown and bouffon comic genres and is thought by some to be the world's leading authority on the Bouffon, a comic genre he holds as a sort of inverted Clown, where a balance is struck between grotesqueness and charm.
Gaulier's methology of teaching is designed to allow the student to discover his own beauty and the pleasure of being on stage. For example, with clown, he helps students uncover their own clown. There are philosophical principles involved, but his training is not mired in technicalities. "I don't teach a special style; what I teach more is a wonderful spirit. People have to find a way of being beautiful and surprising." By beauty he means "anyone in the grip of pleasure or freedom".
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Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader ( /ˈneɪdər/; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.
Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, an NYU panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.
Nader is a six-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. Some people claim that Nader acted as a spoiler in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, while others, including Nader, dispute this claim.
Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose (née Bouziane) Nader, were immigrants from Lebanon and members of the Maronite Church. His family's native language is Arabic, and he has spoken it along with English since childhood. His sister, Laura Nader, is an anthropologist. His father worked in a textile mill and later owned a bakery and restaurant where he talked politics with his customers.
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Reese Witherspoon
Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon (born March 22, 1976), better known as Reese Witherspoon, is an American actress and film producer. Witherspoon landed her first feature role as the female lead in the film The Man in the Moon in 1991; later that year she made her television acting debut, in the cable movie Wildflower. In 1996, Witherspoon appeared in Freeway and followed that appearance with roles in three major 1998 films: Overnight Delivery, Pleasantville and Twilight. The following year, Witherspoon appeared in the critically acclaimed Election, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination.
2001 marked her career's turning point with the breakout role as Elle Woods in the box office hit Legally Blonde, and in 2002 she starred in Sweet Home Alabama, which became her biggest commercial film success to date. 2003 saw her return as lead actress and executive producer of Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. In 2005, Witherspoon received worldwide attention and praise for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, which earned her an Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
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Richard Gere
Richard Tiffany Gere ( /ˈɡɪər/ GEER; born August 31, 1949) is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol. He went on to star in several hit films including An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman, Primal Fear, and Chicago, for which he won a Golden Globe Award as Best Actor, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the Best Cast.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Gere is a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims Francis Eaton, John Billington, George Soule, Richard Warren, Degory Priest, William Brewster, and Francis Cooke. His paternal great-grandfather had changed the spelling of the surname from "Geer". Gere's mother, Doris Ann (née Tiffany, born 1924), was a homemaker, and his father, Homer George Gere (born 1922), was an insurance agent for the Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company and had originally intended to become a minister. Gere is their eldest son and second child. In 1967, he graduated from North Syracuse Central High School, where he excelled at gymnastics and music, playing the trumpet. He attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst on a gymnastics scholarship, majoring in philosophy, but did not graduate, leaving after two years.
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Richard Jefferson
Richard Allen Jefferson (born June 21, 1980 in Los Angeles, California) is a 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m) American professional basketball player who currently plays for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association. He was also a member of the USA men's national basketball team at the 2003 Tournament of the Americas and the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics.
Jefferson was born in Los Angeles and was raised in Phoenix, Arizona. His parents were both Christian missionaries, and he moved around frequently growing up.
Jefferson attended Moon Valley High School in west Phoenix, Arizona, where he was an integral part of the varsity basketball team that won the 4A State Championship in 1998.
He played college basketball at the University of Arizona, under Hall of Fame coach Lute Olson from 1998-2001. During his 84-game career (77 starts), Jefferson averaged 11.2 points, 5.0 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. He capped his career by leading Arizona to the 2001 national championship game. Along the way, Jefferson was an all-Midwest Regional and all-Final Four selection. He was inducted into the Pac-12 Basketball Hall of Honor during the 2012 Pacific-12 Conference Men's Basketball Tournament, March 10, 2012.
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Robert Horry
Robert Keith Horry Jr. ( /ˈɒri/; born August 25, 1970) is a retired American basketball player and current sports commentator. He played 16 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA), winning seven championships, the most of any player not to have played on the 1960s Boston Celtics. He is one of only two players (the other is John Salley) to have won NBA championships with three different teams: two with the Houston Rockets, three with the Los Angeles Lakers and two with the San Antonio Spurs. He earned the nickname Big Shot Rob because of his clutch shooting in important games. Horry now works as a commentator on ESPN.
Born in Harford County, Maryland to Staff Sergeant Robert Horry Sr. and mother Leila, Horry grew up in Andalusia, Alabama. Although Horry's father moved to South Carolina after divorcing his mother soon after his birth, the father and son would meet weekly when Robert Sr. was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.
As a senior at Andalusia High School, Horry won the Naismith Alabama High School Player of the Year award. He attended the University of Alabama on a basketball scholarship, where he was a teammate of fellow future NBA player Latrell Sprewell.
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Robert Siegel
Robert Siegel is an American radio journalist best known as host of the National Public Radio evening news broadcast All Things Considered.
Siegel's first professional broadcasting job was at WBLI in Babylon, New York where he "did morning newscasts and a show that was part phone-ins, part Top Forty, all under the pseudonym Bob Charles." After a year at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Siegel left academia for good and worked for WRVR in New York from 1971 to 1976.
Siegel was hired as a newscaster for NPR in Washington, D.C., in 1976, and he has held various news and production jobs at NPR since then. Since 1987, he has been a host of All Things Considered. He took a short break in 1992 to host Talk of the Nation, NPR's call-in talk show.
In 2009, Siegel appeared in director James Kerwin's scifi noir film Yesterday Was a Lie.
On Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010, Siegel was presented with Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism by the Journalism School of Columbia University.
Siegel grew up in New York City, the son of Joseph, a commercial education teacher, and Edith, a secretary at Stuyvesant High School. After graduating in 1964 from Stuyvesant, Siegel studied at Columbia University, graduating in 1968. During this time he was an anchor for the reporting of the 1968 Columbia demonstrations at the college radio station, WKCR-FM.
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Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin 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 & 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.
Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (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 Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was senator and Mississippi governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams is of English, Welsh, Irish, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and later moved to Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams studied at 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.
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Romani people
The Romani are an ethnic group living mostly in Europe, who trace their origins to the Indian Subcontinent. Romani are widely known in the English-speaking world by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies).
They are known collectively in the Romani language as Romane or Rromane (depending on the dialect concerned) and also as Romany, Romanies, Romanis, Roma or Roms.
Romani are widely dispersed, with their largest concentrated populations in Europe, especially the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe and Anatolia, followed by the Kale of Iberia and Southern France.
The Americas are also home to large numbers of Romani. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States; 800,000 in Brazil, to which Kale were deported by the government of Portugal during the colonial era; and in more recent migrations, Romani have also moved to other parts of the New World.
The Romani language is divided into several dialects, which add up to an estimated number of speakers larger than two million. The total number of Romani people is at least twice as large (several times as large according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the language current in their country of residence, or of mixed languages combining the two.
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Ryan Seacrest
Ryan John Seacrest (born December 24, 1974) is an American radio personality, television host and producer. He is known internationally as host of the top-rated primetime talent showcase American Idol. He has been nominated for an Emmy award in the "Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program" category for his work on American Idol. He won a Daytime Emmy Award for co-hosting the 2005 Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade with Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa. As a television producer, Seacrest has won an Emmy for the ABC show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. On radio, Seacrest is host of On Air with Ryan Seacrest, his market-topping #1 nationally syndicated LA morning drive-time radio show for Clear Channel’s 102.7 KIIS-FM. , as well as a nationally-syndicated Top 40 radio show. Seacrest hosted the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 16, 2007. Seacrest has extensive deals with brand heavyweights Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Microsoft, and has a strategic marketing and technology alliance with Eventful, Inc.
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Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (born 13 October 1971) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor. A graduate of Cambridge University, Baron Cohen is most widely known for writing and playing four unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, Brüno, and Admiral General Aladeen. In his routines, Baron Cohen's characters interact with unsuspecting people who do not realise they are being set up for comic situations and self-revealing ridicule.
Baron Cohen was named Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards for The 11 O'Clock Show, and since then, his work has been further recognised with two BAFTA Awards for Da Ali G Show, several Emmy nominations, a nomination for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work in the feature film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. After the release of Borat, Baron Cohen stated that because the public had become too familiar with the characters, he would retire Borat and Ali G. Similarly, after the release of Brüno, Baron Cohen has stated he would also retire the title character.
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Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.
As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.
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Sasha Cohen
Alexandra Pauline "Sasha" Cohen (born October 26, 1984) is a U.S. figure skater. She is the 2006 Olympic silver medalist, a three-time World Championship medalist, the 2003 Grand Prix Final Champion, and the 2006 U.S. Champion.
Cohen was born in Westwood, California, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. Her full name is Alexandra Pauline Cohen. Her nickname "Sasha" is a Russian diminutive of "Alexandra". As a university student, she has used the name Alex, rather than Sasha.
Her mother, Galina (née Feldman), is a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine and a former ballet dancer.
Her father, Roger Cohen, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law. Roger Cohen was formerly a law partner at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, and Of Counsel at Dorsey and Whitney. He is Founder and CEO of VerticalPoint Solutions, a company that simplifies and automates compliance for document intensive industries. VerticalPoint is based in Orange County, California.[1]
Sasha Cohen graduated from Futures High School in Mission Viejo, California in 2002. As of 2011, she was enrolled as an undergraduate student at Columbia University. Her sister, Natalia ("Natasha"), began college at Barnard College in August 2006.
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Sean Combs
Sean John Combs (born November 4, 1969), also known by his stage names Diddy and P. Diddy, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur. He was originally known as Puff Daddy and then as P. Diddy (Puff and Puffy have been used as nicknames, but never as recording names). In August 2005, he changed his stage name to simply "Diddy", but continues to use the name P. Diddy in the UK as the result of a lawsuit. He has won three Grammy Awards and two MTV Video Music Awards, and his clothing line earned a Council of Fashion Designers of America award. He formed and recorded with the group Diddy – Dirty Money.
Combs was born in Harlem and grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. He worked as a talent director at Uptown Records and then founded Bad Boy Records in 1993. His business interests—under the umbrella of Bad Boy Entertainment Worldwide—include Bad Boy Records, the clothing lines Sean John and "Sean by Sean Combs", a movie production company, and two restaurants. He has taken the roles of recording executive, performer, producer of MTV's Making the Band, writer, arranger, clothing designer, and Broadway actor. In 2011, Forbes estimated his net worth at $500 million, making him the richest figure in hip hop.
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Shaquille O'Neal
Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal ( /ʃəˈkiːl/ shə-KEEL; born March 6, 1972), nicknamed "Shaq" ( /ˈʃæk/ SHAK), is a retired American basketball player and current analyst on the television program Inside the NBA. Standing 7 ft 1 in (2.16 m) tall and weighing 325 pounds (147 kg), he was one of the heaviest players ever to play in the NBA. Throughout his 19-year career, O'Neal used his size and strength to overpower opponents for points and rebounds.
Following his career at Louisiana State University, O'Neal was drafted by the Orlando Magic with the first overall pick in the 1992 NBA Draft. He quickly became one of the top centers in the league, winning Rookie of the Year in 1992–93 and later leading his team to the 1995 NBA Finals. After four years with the Magic, O'Neal signed as a free agent with the Los Angeles Lakers. He won three consecutive championships in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Amid tension between O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, O'Neal was traded to the Miami Heat in 2004, and his fourth NBA championship followed in 2006. Midway through the 2007–2008 season he was traded to the Phoenix Suns. After a season-and-a-half with the Suns, O'Neal was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2009–10 season. O'Neal played for the Boston Celtics in the 2010–11 season before retiring.
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Simon Baron-Cohen
Simon Baron-Cohen FBA (born 15 August 1958) is professor of Developmental Psychopathology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He is the Director of the University's Autism Research Centre, and a Fellow of Trinity College. He is best known for his work on autism, including his early theory that autism involves degrees of "mind-blindness" (or delays in the development of theory of mind); and his later theory that autism is an extreme form of the "male brain", which involved a re-conceptualisation of typical psychological sex differences in terms of empathizing–systemizing theory.
Baron-Cohen completed an MA in Human Sciences at New College, Oxford, and an MPhil in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. He did his PhD in Psychology at University College London under the supervision of Uta Frith.
Baron-Cohen was a co-author of the first study to show that children with autism have delays in the development of a theory of mind (ToM) (Cognition, 1985).
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Steve Carell
Steven John "Steve" Carell ( /kəˈrɛl/; born August 16, 1962) is an American comedian, actor, voice artist, producer, writer, and director. Although Carell is notable for his role on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he found greater fame in the late 2000s for playing Michael Scott on The Office. He has also starred in lead roles in the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine, Evan Almighty, Dan in Real Life, Get Smart, Date Night, Dinner for Schmucks, and Crazy, Stupid, Love.; and voiced characters in the animated films Over the Hedge, Horton Hears a Who!, and Despicable Me. Carell was nominated as "America's funniest man" in Life magazine, and received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Comedy Series for playing the lead role of Michael Scott for The Office in 2006.
Carell, the youngest of four brothers, was born at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts, and was raised in nearby Acton by his parents, Harriet T. (née Koch), a psychiatric nurse, and Edwin A. Carell, an electrical engineer. His maternal uncle, Stanley Koch, worked with Allen B. DuMont to create cathode ray tubes. Carell's paternal grandfather was Italian; his father was born with the surname "Caroselli", later shortening it to "Carell". Carell was raised Roman Catholic, and was educated at The Fenn School and Middlesex School. Carell also played ice hockey as a teenager for his high school.[citation needed] He played the fife, performing with other members of his family, and later joined a reenacting group portraying the 10th (North Lincoln) Regiment of Foot. Carell attributed his interest in history to this, in which he earned his degree from Denison University in Granville, Ohio in 1984. While at Denison, Carell was a member of Burpee's Seedy Theatrical Company, a student-run improvisational comedy troupe.
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Steve Nash
Stephen John "Steve" Nash, OC, OBC (born 7 February 1974) is a South African-born Canadian professional basketball player who plays point guard for the Phoenix Suns of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nash enjoyed a successful high-school basketball career, and he was eventually given a scholarship by Santa Clara University. In his four seasons with the Broncos, the team made three NCAA Tournament appearances, and Nash was twice named the West Coast Conference Player of the Year.
After graduating from Santa Clara as the team's all-time leader in assists, Nash entered the 1996 NBA Draft and was selected as the 15th pick by the Phoenix Suns. He made a minimal impact, and was traded to the Dallas Mavericks in 1998. By his third season with the Mavericks, he was voted into his first NBA All-Star Game and had earned his first All-NBA selection. Together with Dirk Nowitzki and Michael Finley, Nash led the Mavericks to the Western Conference Finals the following season. However, he became a free agent after the 2003–04 season and returned to the Phoenix Suns.
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Terry Gross
Terry Gross (born February 14, 1951 ) is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air, an interview format radio show produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and distributed throughout the United States by National Public Radio.
Gross has won praise over the years for her low-key and friendly yet often probing interview style and for the diversity of her guests. She has a reputation for researching her guests' work largely the night before an interview, often asking them unexpected questions about their early career.
Gross grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York in a Jewish family. She earned a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in communications from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. She began a teaching career, but said that she was "totally unequipped" for the job, and was fired after only six weeks.
Gross began her radio career in 1973 at WBFO, a public radio station in Buffalo, New York, where she had been volunteering. In 1975, she moved to WHYY-FM in Philadelphia to host and produce Fresh Air, which was a local interview program at the time. In 1985, Fresh Air with Terry Gross went national, being distributed weekly by NPR. It became a daily program two years later.
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Thénardiers
The Thénardiers, commonly known as Thénardier (born 1773;/təˈnɑrdi.eɪ/; French pronunciation: [tenaʁdje]) and Madame Thénardier (1788-1832),[citation needed] are two of the primary villains in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables and the stage musical of the same name. It can be argued that they are the only "villains" of the tale, as the more heavily featured Javert is commonly considered a misguided antagonist, rather than a true "evil villain". They are ordinary working class people who blame society for their sufferings. They care nothing for the lives of others and only care about themselves and acquiring money, whether by cheating customers at their inn or robbing people.
The Thénardiers have two daughters named Éponine and Azelma, whom they spoil and pamper as children, and three sons, one called Gavroche whom they have left to the streets, and the two youngest sons of whom they send away to a woman named Magnon and abandon. When they first appear in the book (and musical) they run an inn in the town of Montfermeil. It is here where a working class girl named Fantine asks them to look after her daughter Cosette, providing that she pays them regularly. However, they treat Cosette very badly, dressing her in rags, forcing her to work, and beating her often. They spend all the money Fantine sends them on their daughters. Then Jean Valjean buys Cosette off them at the dying Fantine's request and they leave to Paris. Within the next eight years the Thénardiers lose their inn and they too move to Paris, where they live in poverty. They re-encounter Valjean and Cosette and with the help of Patron-Minette try to rob Valjean.
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Tim Duncan
Timothy Theodore "Tim" Duncan (born April 25, 1976) is an American professional basketball player for the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The 6-foot 11-inch (2.11 m), 255-pound (116 kg)power forward/center is a four-time NBA champion, two-time NBA MVP, three-time NBA Finals MVP, and NBA Rookie of the Year. The Spurs' team captain, he is a 13 time NBA All-Star and the only player in NBA history to be selected to both All-NBA and All-Defensive Teams during each of his first 13 seasons.
Duncan started out as a swimmer and only began playing basketball in ninth grade after Hurricane Hugo destroyed the only Olympic-sized pool on his home of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. He soon became a standout for St. Dunstan's Episcopal High School, and had an illustrious college career with the Wake Forest University Demon Deacons, winning the Naismith College Player of the Year, USBWA College Player of the Year and John Wooden awards in his final year. Duncan graduated from college before entering the 1997 NBA Draft as the number one pick. His list of accomplishments, remarkable consistency, and leadership in the Spurs' NBA championship runs in 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2007 have led basketball experts to consider him to be one of the greatest power forwards in NBA history.
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Time 100
Time 100 is an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, as assembled by Time. First published in 1999 as a result of a debate among several academics, the list has become an annual event.
The list was started with a debate at a symposium in Washington, D.C., on February 1, 1998, with panel participants CBS news anchor Dan Rather, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, then–political science professor Condoleezza Rice, neoconservative publisher Irving Kristol and Time managing editor Walter Isaacson.
The list was first published in 1999, when Time magazine named the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Based on the popularity of the installment, in 2004 Time magazine decided to make it an annual issue, listing the 100 people most influencing the world. Making the list is frequently mistaken as an honor; however, Time makes it very clear that people are recognized for changing the world, for better or for worse. Those recognized fall in one of five categories: Leaders & Revolutionaries, Builders & Titans, Artists & Entertainers, Scientists & Thinkers, and Heroes & Icons. Within each category, the 20 most influential people (sometimes pairs or small groups) are selected, for a grand total of 100 each year.
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Todd Phillips
Todd Bunzl (born December 20, 1970) best known as Todd Phillips, is an American actor, film director, screenwriter, producer. He is best known for directing the comedy films Road Trip, Old School, The Hangover, Due Date & The Hangover Part II. He also produced Project X.
Phillips was born and raised in New York, and attended New York University Film School, but dropped out in order to focus on completing his first film, the feature-length documentary Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, about the life and death of punk rocker GG Allin. Around this time, he worked at Kim's Video and Music. He also appeared as one of the drivers in the first seasons of Taxicab Confessions on HBO. In a NY Times profile, Phillips claims to have gotten in trouble for shoplifting as a young man.
His first film was the feature-length documentary Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, about the life and death of punk rocker GG Allin. Phillips made the film while a junior at NYU and it went on to become one of the biggest grossing student films at the time, even getting a limited theatrical release. Phillips followed up Junkies with Frat House, a documentary about college fraternities that he produced and directed with then-partner Andrew Gurland. Frat House premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary features. It was produced by HBO, but never aired on its channel because many of the film's participants claimed they were paid to re-enact their activities. It was never proven either way.
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Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC (born 3 April 1925), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, is a British Labour Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for fifty years, and was also a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.
His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. In the Labour Government of 1964–1970 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology. In the period when the Labour Party was in Opposition, Benn served for a year as the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979, he returned to the Cabinet, initially serving as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in Opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical left-wing position.
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Victoria Beckham
Victoria Caroline Beckham (née Adams; born 17 April 1974) is an English fashion designer, businesswoman and former singer. In the late 1990s, Beckham rose to fame with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice by the July 1996 issue of the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops. Since the Spice Girls split, she has had a solo pop music career, scoring four UK Top 10 singles. Her first single to be released, "Out of Your Mind", reached Number 2 in the UK Singles Chart and is her highest chart entry to date. During her solo career, she has been signed to Virgin Records and Telstar Records.
Beckham has found more success as an internationally recognised and photographed style icon. Her career in fashion includes designing a line of jeans for Rock & Republic and later designing her own denim brand, dVb Style. Beckham has brought out her own range of sunglasses and fragrance, entitled Intimately Beckham, which has been released in the UK and the US. In association with the Japanese store Samantha Thavasa and Shiatzy Chen, she has produced a range of handbags and jewellery. In addition, Beckham has released two best-selling books; one her autobiography, the other a fashion guide.
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Wyclef Jean
Wyclef Jeanelle Jean (/ˈwaɪklɪf ˈʒɑːn/; Haitian Creole pronunciation: [wajklɛf ʒã]; born October 17, 1969) is a Haitian American musician, record producer, and politician. At age nine, Jean moved to the United States with his family and has spent much of his life in the country. He first received fame as a member of the acclaimed New Jersey hip hop group the Fugees.
On August 5, 2010, Jean filed for candidacy in the 2010 Haitian presidential election, although the Electoral Commission subsequently ruled him ineligible to stand as he had not met the requirement to have been resident in Haiti for five years.
Although his birth date was widely given as October 17, 1972, papers filed for his run as a candidate for the presidency of Haiti, disclosed that he was, in fact, born in 1969. Born in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, the son of a Nazarene pastor, Wyclef moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York, when he was nine before moving again to northern New Jersey. Jean has cited reggae artist Bigga Haitian as one of his early influences, as well as neighborhood heroes MC Tiger Paw Raw and producer Lobster v. Crab. Jean graduated from Vailsburg High School in Newark, briefly attended Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts, and finished one semester at Five Towns College in New York. Jean has been a resident of Saddle River, South Orange, and North Caldwell, New Jersey. In 2009, Jean enrolled in the Berklee College of Music.
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Zac Efron
Zachary David Alexander "Zac" Efron (born October 18, 1987) is an American actor and singer. He began acting professionally in the early 2000s and became known with his lead roles in the Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical, the WB series Summerland, and the 2007 film version of the Broadway musical Hairspray. Efron has since starred in the films 17 Again, Me and Orson Welles, Charlie St. Cloud, New Year's Eve, and The Lucky One.
In 2007, Rolling Stone declared him the "poster boy for tweenyboppers" and featured him in their late August 2007 issue.
Efron was born in San Luis Obispo, California, and later moved to Arroyo Grande, California. His father, David Efron, is an electrical engineer at a power station, and his mother, Starla Baskett, is a former secretary who worked at the same power plant. Efron has a younger brother, Dylan, and had, as he has described it, a "normal childhood" in a middle class family. He is an agnostic, having never been religious. His surname, "Efron", means "lark" in Hebrew (his paternal grandfather was Jewish).
wn.com/Zac_Efron
Baron Cohen, Sacha Filmography
- Untitled Freddie Mercury Biopic (2014)
- Torrente (2013)
- Sacha Baron Cohen: Role of a Lifetime (2012)
- The Dictator (2012)
- Shoot the Moon (The Making of 'Hugo') (2012)
- Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012)
- The Dictator (2012)
- The Dictator (2012)
- The Dictator (2012)
- The Big Fat Quiz of the 00s (2012)
- Shoot the Moon: The Making of 'Hugo' (2012)
- Shoot the Moon: The Making of 'Hugo' (2012)
- Les Misérables (2012)
- Sacha Baron Cohen: Role of a Lifetime (2012)
- Comedy Summit: The World's Ultimate Prankster (2011)
- Hugo (2011)
- Comedy Summit: The World's Ultimate Prankster (2011)
- Comedy Summit: The World's Ultimate Prankster (2011)
- The 36th Annual People's Choice Awards (2010)
- Almost Famous III (2010)
- Accidentes (2010)
- Accidentes (2010)
- Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief (2010)
- Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
- Almost Famous II (2009)
- Brüno (2009)
- 2009 MTV Movie Awards (2009)
- 2009 MTV Movie Awards (2009)
- The 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards (2009)
- Brüno (2009)
- Brüno (2009)
- Spike's Guys Choice (2009)
- Brüno (2009)
- Brüno (2009)
- Comedy Songs: The Pop Years (2008)
- 50 Greatest Comedy Catchphrases (2008)
- Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
- The Big Fat Anniversary Quiz (2007)
- Channel 4 at 25 (2007)
- Comic Relief 2007: The Big One (2007)
- Guys Choice (2007)
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
- The 64th Annual Golden Globe Awards (2007)
- The World Awaits: De La Hoya vs. Mayweather (2007)
- Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
- Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
- Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Event for Autism Education (2006)
- Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
- MTV Europe Music Awards 2006 (2006)
- The Big Fat Quiz of the Year (2006)
- The British Comedy Awards 2006 Live (2006)
- Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
- Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
- The Fame Review 2006 (2006)
- Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
- MTV Europe Music Awards 2005 (2005)
- Greatest Before They Were Stars TV Moments (2005)
- Madagascar (2005)
- Spyz (2003)
- Spyz (2003)
- Comic Relief 2003: The Big Hair Do (2003)
- Spyz (2003)
- Spyz (2003)
- Comic Relief 2003: The Big Hair Do (2003)
- Ali G Indahouse (2002)
- Brit Awards 2002 (2002)
- Ali G Indahouse (2002)
- Ali G Indahouse (2002)
- Ali G Before He Was Massiv (2002)
- Ali G Indahouse (2002)
- Ali G: Bling Bling (2001)
- Comic Relief: Say Pants to Poverty (2001)
- Comic Relief: Say Pants to Poverty (2001)
- The Best of Borat (2001)
- Ali G: Bling Bling (2001)
- The Best of Borat (2001)
- MTV Europe Music Awards 2001 (2001)
- The Jolly Boys' Last Stand (2000)
- Brit Awards 2000 (2000)
- Ali G, Aiii (2000)
- Ali G, Aiii (2000)
- Music (2000)
- Ali G, Aiii (2000)
- Da Ali G Show (2000)
- Ali G, Aiii (2000)
- MTV Europe Music Awards 2000 (2000)
- Brit Awards 2000 (2000)
- Ali G, Innit (1999)
- Ali G, Innit (1999)
- Ali G's Alternative Christmas Message (1999)
- The 11 O'Clock Show (1998)
- The 11 O'Clock Show (1998)
- Live from the Lighthouse (1998)
- Yatzati L'Hapes Ahavah - Techef Ashuv (1997)
- Punch (1996)
- F2F (1996)
- F2F (1996)
- Jack and Jeremy's Police 4 (1995)
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Sacha Baron Cohen as Sacha Baron Cohen
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:47
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
Sacha Baron Cohen talks to Charlie Rose and Gayle King about his latest film, "The Dictator," in which he plays a dangerous and delusional tyrant starting a new life in America.
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen_as_Sacha_Baron_Cohen
"The Dictator" Sacha Baron Cohen threatens Matt Lauer's family, promotes film on Today Show 5/7/2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:08
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen had no qualms about being interviewed by TODAY's Matt Lauer on Monday. He made sure that Lauer's family was being taken care of, just in case things didn't go the way he liked. "By the way, how are your family? ... How is your wife Annette?" he asked at the top of the interview. "What is she doing now?" "She's probably watching this interview," said Lauer. "Incorrect!" said Aladeen, pulling a swatch of brown locks from his pocket. "Is this her hair?"
http://wn.com/The_Dictator_Sacha_Baron_Cohen_threatens_Matt_Lauer's_family,_promotes_film_on_Today_Show_5_7_2012
Sacha Baron Cohen Spills Ashes on Ryan Seacrest - 2012 Oscars
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:02
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
See what happens when Ryan Seacrest interviews the Sacha Baron Cohen as "The Dictator"--and gets "ashes" spilled on him on live TV! www.eonline.com
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen_Spills_Ashes_on_Ryan_Seacrest_2012_Oscars
Sacha Baron Cohen BBC Interview: 'The Dictator' Talks Comedy And Religion
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- Duration: 4:56
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
In this BBC interview with Sacha Baron Cohen (The Dictator) the film maker gives a rare interview as himself and not as one of his characters. Cohen also talks about why he never does interviews as himself and the inception of his new film 'The Dictator'. For the full story read Movieline.com www.movieline.com
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen_BBC_Interview_'The_Dictator'_Talks_Comedy_And_Religion
Borat Interview on (American) CNN
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:41
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
Copyright owned by CNN.
http://wn.com/Borat_Interview_on_American_CNN
Sacha Baron Cohen Interview(1/5)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:01
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
Sacha Baron Cohen gives Howard a rare out-of-character interview.
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen_Interview1_5
Sacha Baron Cohen al David Letterman
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:03
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
puntata del 18-05-2012- sub ita
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen_al_David_Letterman
Isla Fisher Is Embarrassed To Go Out With Sacha Baron Cohen - CONAN on TBS
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:57
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
Who would have ever guessed that "Borat" is a regular faux pas factory? More CONAN @ teamcoco.com
http://wn.com/Isla_Fisher_Is_Embarrassed_To_Go_Out_With_Sacha_Baron_Cohen_CONAN_on_TBS
'The Dictator' Sacha Baron Cohen On Strombo: Full Interview
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:11
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
www.strombo.com In a Canadian exclusive, George sat down with the Dictator, Supreme Leader Admiral-General Aladeen. The Dictator was name-dropping throughout the interview - Gadhafi, Ahmadinejad, Celine Dion, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, Assad, Obama, Kim Jong-il, Ban Ki Moon, Ronald Reagan, Osama Bin Laden and - wait for it - Justin Bieber.
http://wn.com/'The_Dictator'_Sacha_Baron_Cohen_On_Strombo_Full_Interview
THE DICTATOR - Larry King Interview
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:49
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
The Dictator starring Sacha Baron Cohen www.RepublicofWadiya.com http www.Twitter.com
http://wn.com/THE_DICTATOR_Larry_King_Interview
Sacha Baron Cohen Working On 'The Lesbian'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:48
- Updated: 10 Nov 2012
bit.ly - Click to Subscribe! Facebook.com - Become a Fan! Twitter.com - Follow Us! Guess what! A Hong Kong billionaire wants to make you a multi-millionaire. There's only one catch...you have to marry his lesbian daughter. It's been said that truth is stranger than fiction and in this case, we totally agree. Sacha Baron Cohen's next project is based on a true story so outrageous, it could be...well, a Sacha Baron Cohen movie. Deadline reports that Sacha Baron Cohen will develop a feature titled "The Lesbian" for Paramount through his company, Four By Two Films. "The Lesbian" will be based on the true story of an eccentric Hong Kong billionaire who offers $65 million dollars to any man who is able to successfully marry his lesbian daughter. That's one hell of a dowry. She's beautiful, she's smart, she's cultured, and she's not into men. After finding out that his daughter's relationship with her longtime girlfriend was blessed by a French church, this story made international headlines, and reportedly there's also been about 200 marriage proposals from some very ambitious suitors. A writer has not been attached to "The Lesbian," and we're expecting to see Sacha Baron Cohen play the father, but no official announcements have been made. What do you think? Would you try to marry a woman if her father paid you $65 mil? Even if she was already in a committed relationship...with another woman? Tell us how you'd use your powers of persuasion in the comments section below. I'm ...
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen_Working_On_'The_Lesbian'
David Letterman - Sacha Baron Cohen in Hollywood
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- Duration: 2:08
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
Find out why Sacha Baron Cohen is better off staying at home than attending star-studded Hollywood parties.
http://wn.com/David_Letterman_Sacha_Baron_Cohen_in_Hollywood
The Dictator imparts his wisdom
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:09
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
One of the world's most controversial leaders, General Aladeen...
http://wn.com/The_Dictator_imparts_his_wisdom
The Dictator - Larry King Interview - Sacha Baron Cohen Movie HD
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- Duration: 2:45
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
Subscribe to TRAILERS: bit.ly Subscribe to COMING SOON: bit.ly The Dictator - Larry King Interview - Sacha Baron Cohen Movie HD The heroic story of a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed. "The Dictator movie" "THE DICTATOR HD" the dictator trailer" "Larry Charles" "Megan Fox" "Anna Faris" "John C. Reilly" "Ben Kingsley" "BJ Novak" "Kevin Corrrigan" "Alec Berg" "Borat" "Bruno" movieclips movie clips movieclipsDOTcom movieclips.com movieclipstrailers popuptrailer scene clip "larry king"
http://wn.com/The_Dictator_Larry_King_Interview_Sacha_Baron_Cohen_Movie_HD
Sacha Baron Cohen Appears Shy When Arriving For David Letterman 21st May 2012 15 29
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:30
- Updated: 03 Nov 2012
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen_Appears_Shy_When_Arriving_For_David_Letterman_21st_May_2012_15_29
![THE DICTATOR Trailer 2012 - Sacha Baron Cohen Movie - Official [HD]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121122034808im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PY4XGUus07A/default.jpg "THE DICTATOR Trailer 2012 - Sacha Baron Cohen Movie - Official [HD]")
THE DICTATOR Trailer 2012 - Sacha Baron Cohen Movie - Official [HD]
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- Duration: 1:50
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
The Dictator Trailer 2012 - Official movie trailer in HD - starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Megan Fox, Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley, Jason Mantzoukas - inspired by the best selling novel Zabibah and The King believed to be written by Saddam Hussein. "The Dictator" movie hits theaters on May 11,...
http://wn.com/THE_DICTATOR_Trailer_2012_Sacha_Baron_Cohen_Movie_Official_HD_
sacha baron cohen 5 8 12 p5
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- Duration: 10:08
- Updated: 17 Sep 2012
5 of 5
http://wn.com/sacha_baron_cohen_5_8_12_p5
The Dictator: Larry King Interview with Sacha Baron Cohen
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- Duration: 3:04
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
http://wn.com/The_Dictator_Larry_King_Interview_with_Sacha_Baron_Cohen
'Extra' Raw! Scorsese and Sacha Baron Cohen Talk 'Hugo'
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- Duration: 5:27
- Updated: 04 Nov 2012
Acclaimed "Hugo" director Martin Scorsese and actor Sacha Baron Cohen -- who voices the film's Station Inspector -- sat down with "Extra's" Jerry Penacoli to talk about the adventure movie's 11 Oscar nods.
http://wn.com/'Extra'_Raw!_Scorsese_and_Sacha_Baron_Cohen_Talk_'Hugo'
Da Ali G Show - Season 1 │ Episode 1
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- Duration: 25:18
- Updated: 13 Nov 2012
Da Ali G Show - Season 1 Episode 1 Watch all the FULL EPISODES of "Da Ali G Show" with Sacha Baron Cohen including "Ali G in da USAiii" on our channel. SUBSCRIBE to West Staines Massif - www.youtube.com Please LIKE our videos! Thank You! www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/Da_Ali_G_Show_Season_1_│_Episode_1
Sacha Baron Cohen Interview(3/5)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:01
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
Sacha Baron Cohen gives Howard a rare out-of-character interview.
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen_Interview3_5
Sacha Baron Cohen's "THE DICTATOR" FUNNY interviews
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:35
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
We have a treat in store for you people. Get ready to witness one the most hilarious series of interviews for comedy king Sacha Baron Cohen. Once again making an appearance as General Aladeen, be prepared to have a belly ache by the end of this video. And if you like what you see here then give this video a thumbs up. For more Hollywood news and gossip: www.youtube.com Subscribe at: www.youtube.com Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen's_THE_DICTATOR_FUNNY_interviews
Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Dictator' holds press conference in NY
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:32
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
Sacha Baron Cohen, as the 'Dictator', held a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan for his up coming movie.
http://wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen's_'Dictator'_holds_press_conference_in_NY
Photo: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
20 Nov 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling President Barack Obama's whirlwind tour of southeast Asia and meetings with dignitaries will have to walk a tightrope between either appearing to endorse...
Photo: AP / Hatem Moussa
19 Nov 2012
Gaza/Jerusalem - Israel bombed dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday and said that while it was prepared to step up its offensive by sending in troops, it preferred a diplomatic solution that...
Photo: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
19 Nov 2012
Yangon, November 19: Newly re-elected US President Barack Obama arrived here Monday to kick off his visit to Myanmar, becoming the first sitting US president to visit the Southeast Asian nation. As...
Photo: AP / Sebastian D'souza
21 Nov 2012
MUMBAI, India - India executed the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 terror attack on Mumbai early Wednesday, India's home ministry said. Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani citizen, was one of 10 gunmen who...
Photo: UN / Logan Abassi
21 Nov 2012
A report by the UN says global attempts to curb emissions of CO2 are falling well short of what is needed to stem dangerous climate change. The UN's Environment Programme says greenhouse gases are 14%...
The New York Times
You furnish the pictures, the American press baron boasted a century ago, as the story goes, and I’ll furnish the war. Enlarge This Image Andrea Bruce for The New York Times Young men at the graves of two brothers, members of Hamas killed by Israeli bombs Tuesday. Multimedia Photographs...(size: 12.5Kb)
The Times of India
NEW DELHI: Liquor baron Ponty Chadha had pushed and kicked younger brother Hardeep to the ground, prompting the junior sibling to whip out two pistols and pump seven bullets into him, police sources said after recreating the November 17 murder scene with the help of postmortem reports and eyewitness...(size: 3.6Kb)
IMDb
Shamelessly shallow, Sacha Gervasi's brisk romantic trifle Hitchcock starts with a kernel of truth and blows it up into a...(size: 0.8Kb)
CBI prejudiced, says Gali counsel
22 Nov 2012
Deccan Chronicle
Gali Janardhan Reddy’s counsel has accused the CBI of prejudice against his client. During the hearing for bail moved by the mining baron on Wednesday, his counsel asked why charges against the Bellary...(size: 1.3Kb)
Ha'aretz
The success of the Iron Dome system in intercepting rockets shot from Gaza this month has attracted positive attention to Israel's military industries. Several days into the recent fighting, the system was reported to have at least an 85% success rate in knocking out incoming rockets. But favorable...(size: 5.8Kb)
New Hendrix Songs to be Released and More
22 Nov 2012
The Examiner
Related topics Rock News Advertisement Twelve previously unreleased Jimi Hendrix songs will be released as the album People, Hell, and Angels on March 5, 2013, according to Rolling Stone. The songs were recorded between 1968 and 1969, and were intended to be included on The First Days of The New...(size: 6.5Kb)
The Times of India
SURAT: Not wanting to show its cards till opposition candidates are announced, the declaration for BJP's official candidates is likely to be made only by Thursday evening. However, this has only exacerbated fears of an imported candidate, like present cabinet minister in the Modi government,...(size: 2.3Kb)
The Examiner
Related topics Sacha Boutrosjazz Advertisement Sacha Boutros and her Moonshine Men Orchestra transform San Diego’s White Box Contemporary art gallery into a swanky 1920s Speakeasy for the second annual Christmas benefit to aid the homeless children of St. Vincent de Paul Village. Promised to be more...(size: 10.6Kb)
Business briefs: Number of unemployment applicants falls, rates for fixed-rate mortgages hit record lows
22 Nov 2012
Star Telegram
Number of jobless applicants drops The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell sharply last week to a seasonally adjusted 410,000, though the figure was elevated for the second straight week by Superstorm Sandy. The...(size: 1.5Kb)
Israel dominates the new Middle East
22 Nov 2012
The Washington Post
As missiles and rockets exploded in Israel and Gaza, television news was dominated by the tragic violence, and we were warned that the battle between Israel and the Palestinians might spread because we are in a new and much more dangerous Middle East. Islamists are in power, democracies will listen...(size: 6.1Kb)
U-M reviews prof's alleged scheme link
22 Nov 2012
Detroit news
By From staff and wire reports Comments The University of Michigan says it is "carefully reviewing" the involvement of Sid Gilman, professor of neurology, in what prosecutors are calling one of the most lucrative insider trading schemes ever. Gilman's lawyer, Marc Mukasey, said his client is...(size: 11.7Kb)
Hitchcock - Movie Review
22 Nov 2012
IMDb
More thoroughly enjoyable performances than would fit into the Oscar slate. Sacha Gervasi smacks it over the...(size: 0.7Kb)
For the figure skater of a similar name, see Sasha Cohen.
| Sacha Baron Cohen | |
|---|---|
 Baron Cohen at the New York City premiere of Hugo on 21 November 2011 |
|
| Born | Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (1971-10-13) 13 October 1971 (age 40) Hammersmith, London, England |
| Alma mater | Cambridge University |
| Occupation | Stand-up comedian, writer, actor, voice actor |
| Years active | 1995–present |
| Notable work(s) | Ali G Borat Brüno Admiral General Aladeen |
| Spouse | Isla Fisher (m. 2010) «start: (2010-03-15)»"Marriage: Isla Fisher to Sacha Baron Cohen" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Sacha_Baron_Cohen)[1] |
| Children | 2 daughters |
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen[2] (born 13 October 1971) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor. A graduate of Cambridge University,[3] Baron Cohen is most widely known for writing and playing four unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, Brüno, and Admiral General Aladeen. In his routines, Baron Cohen's characters interact with unsuspecting people who do not realise they are being set up for comic situations and self-revealing ridicule.
Baron Cohen was named Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards for The 11 O'Clock Show, and since then, his work has been further recognised with two BAFTA Awards for Da Ali G Show, several Emmy nominations, a nomination for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work in the feature film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. After the release of Borat, Baron Cohen stated that because the public had become too familiar with the characters, he would retire Borat and Ali G. Similarly, after the release of Brüno, Baron Cohen has stated he would also retire the title character.[4]
Contents |
Early life[link]
Baron Cohen, the middle of three brothers, was born in Hammersmith, West London. His mother, Daniella Naomi (née Weiser), was born in Israel, and his father, Gerald Baron Cohen, an accountant, is a native of London.[5][6] Baron Cohen has two brothers: Erran and Amnon.[7] His family is Jewish.[8] His paternal grandfather, Morris Cohen, who was from Pontypridd, Wales, had added "Baron" to his surname.[6][9] His maternal grandmother, who lives in Haifa, Israel, trained as a ballet dancer in Germany.[5][10][11][12] Erran is a composer and has worked on several of his films. Internationally renowned autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen is his cousin.[13] Baron Cohen attended Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, a private school in Elstree, Hertfordshire, north of London.[14] He went on to the University of Cambridge, entering Christ's College, Cambridge, where he read history.[15] While attending the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, Baron Cohen acted in the plays Fiddler on the Roof and Cyrano de Bergerac, and performed in Habonim Dror Jewish theatre performances.[16]
Early roles[link]
After leaving university, Baron Cohen worked for a time as a fashion model, appearing in many fashion magazines.[16] By the early 1990s, he was hosting a weekly programme on Windsor cable television's local broadcasts with Carol Kirkwood, who later became a BBC weather forecaster. In 1995, Channel 4 was planning a replacement for its series The Word, and disseminated an open call for new television presenters. Baron Cohen sent in a tape of himself in the character of Kristo, a fictional television reporter (who developed into the Kazakh Borat Sagdiyev), which caught the attention of a producer. Baron Cohen hosted Pump TV from 1995–1996. In 1996, he began presenting the youth chat programme F2F for Granada Talk TV. He took clown training in Paris, at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier, studying under master-clown Philippe Gaulier. Of his former pupil, Gaulier says: "He was a good clown, full of spirit".[17] In the late 1990s, Baron Cohen made his first feature film appearance in the British comedy The Jolly Boys' Last Stand. In 2000, Baron Cohen played the part of Super Greg for a series of TV advertisements for Lee Jeans; the advertisements never aired but the website for Super Greg created an internet sensation.[18]
Characters[link]
Ali G[link]
Main article: Ali G
Baron Cohen appeared during two-minute sketches as his fashion reporter Brüno on the Paramount Comedy Channel during 1998. He shot to fame when his comic character Ali G, an uneducated, boorish junglist, hailing from Staines (a suburban town in Middlesex, to the west of London), started appearing on the British television show The 11 O'Clock Show on Channel 4, which first went to air 8 September 1998. A year after the premiere of the show, GQ named him comedian of the year.[19] He won Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards, and was nominated for Best British Entertainment Performance at the British Academy Television Awards.[19]
Da Ali G Show began in 2000, and won the BAFTA for Best Comedy in the following year.[20] Also in 2000, Baron Cohen as Ali G appeared as the limousine driver in Madonna's 2000 video "Music", directed by Jonas Åkerlund, who was also responsible for directing the titles for Da Ali G Show.
In 2002, Ali G was the central character in the feature film Ali G Indahouse, in which he is elected to the British Parliament and foils a plot to bulldoze a community centre in his hometown, Staines.[21] His television show was exported to the United States in 2003, with new episodes set there, for HBO.
Ali G's interviews with celebrities (often politicians) gained notoriety partly because the subjects were not privy to the joke that Ali G, rather than being a real interviewer, was a comic character played by Baron Cohen. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Baron Cohen would always enter the interview area in character as Ali G, carrying equipment and appearing to be an insignificant crew member. He would arrive with a suited man, whom the interviewee naturally thought was the interviewer. Baron Cohen, as Ali G, would sit down to begin conducting the interview by asking the interviewee some preliminary questions. The interviewee, however, would remain under the impression that the smartly-dressed director would be conducting the interview until short notice prior to cameras rolling: this would grant an advantage of surprise, whereby the interviewee would be less likely to opt out of the Ali interview prior to its start.[22]
The resulting willingness of Baron Cohen's targets to answer his frequently risqué questions often created surprising conversations. Interviewees have included:
- astronaut Buzz Aldrin
- politician and consumer advocate Ralph Nader
- writer Gore Vidal
- real estate mogul Donald Trump
- former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop
- basketball players Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O'Neal, Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant, Richard Jefferson, Tim Duncan, Ben Wallace and Robert Horry
- former US Secretary of State James Baker III
- former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh
- businessman and billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed
- Professor Heinz Wolff
- former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
- political commentator Pat Buchanan
- Professor Noam Chomsky
- footballer David Beckham and his wife, ex-Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, for the UK's Comic Relief
- former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (whom Baron Cohen, in his Ali G character, referred to as 'Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali')
- former Conservative Party MP Neil Hamilton
- journalist Andy Rooney
- Labour politician Tony Benn
- DUP politician Sammy Wilson
Baron Cohen is a supporter of Comic Relief and as Ali G has hosted some interviews for the benefit of the charity.[23]
Borat[link]
Main article: Borat Sagdiyev
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, a feature film with Borat at the centre, was screened at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and released in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2006, in the United States on 3 November 2006 and Australia 23 November 2006. The film is about a journey across the United States in an ice cream truck, in which the main character is obsessed with the idea of marrying Pamela Anderson. The film is a mockumentary which includes interviews with various American citizens that poke fun at American culture, as well as sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, jingoism and Baywatch.
It debuted at the #1 spot in the US, taking in an estimated $26.4 million in just 837 theatres averaging $31,600 per theatre, the fourth highest per-theatre average of all time for movies opening wide (500 screens or more), behind Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Spider-Man.
Baron Cohen won the 2007 Golden Globe in the "Best Actor – Musical or Comedy" category, his sixth such award. Although Borat was up for "Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy", the film lost to Dreamgirls. On 23 January 2007, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He shared his nomination with the film's co-writers, Ant Hines, Peter Baynham, Sy Mordecai Finesto, Dan Mazer, and Todd Phillips.
Aside from the comic elements of his characters, Baron Cohen's performances are interpreted by some as reflecting uncomfortable truths about his audience. He juxtaposes his own Jewish lineage with the anti-Semitism of his character Borat.[24]
In 2007, Baron Cohen published a travel guide as Borat, with dual titles: Borat: Touristic Guidings To Minor Nation of U.S. and A. and Borat: Touristic Guidings To Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.[25]
On 21 December 2007, Baron Cohen announced he was retiring the character of Borat.[26]
Brüno[link]
Main article: Brüno (character)
Another alter ego Sacha Baron Cohen performed as is 'Brüno', a flamboyantly gay, allegedly-19-year-old, Austrian fashion show presenter who often lures his unwitting subjects into making provocative statements and engaging in embarrassing behaviour, as well as leading them to contradict themselves, often in the same interview. Brüno asks the subjects to answer 'yes or no' questions with either "Vassup" (whats up) or "Ich don't think so" (No); these are occasionally substituted with "Ach, ja!" (Ah yes!) or "Nicht, nicht" ("Nicht" means "not" in German). In one segment on Da Ali G Show, he encouraged his guest to answer questions with either "Keep them in the ghetto" or "Train to Auschwitz". Brüno's main comedic satire pertains to the vacuity and inanity of the fashion and clubbing world. In May 2009, at the MTV Movie Awards, Baron Cohen appeared as 'Brüno' wearing a white angel costume, a white jock strap, white go-go boots, and white wings; and did an aerial stunt where he dropped from a height (using wires) onto Eminem. Baron Cohen landed on Eminem's lap, with his rear in Eminem's face, prompting Eminem to exit the venue with fellow rappers D12. Eminem later admitted to staging the stunt with Baron Cohen.[27]
Film[link]
Main article: Brüno
After an intense bidding war that included such Hollywood powerhouses as DreamWorks, Sony, and 20th Century Fox; Universal Pictures paid a reported $42.5 million for the film rights.[28] A number of shill companies and websites were created in order to draw potential interviewees into interviews by creating an illusion of legitimacy.[29] The film was released in July 2009.
The Dictator[link]
Baron Cohen's 2012 film, The Dictator, was described by its press as "the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed".[30] Baron Cohen played Admiral General Aladeen, a dictator from a fictional country called the Republic of Wadiya.[31][32] Borat and Bruno film director Larry Charles directed the film.[33] The main target of the film's satire was Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was still alive when the film was written.[34] The producers of the film were concerned it would anger Gaddafi, possibly even resulting in a terrorist attack, so they released deliberate misinformation saying that the film was loosely based on a romance novel written by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.[34][35]
On 26 February 2012, Baron Cohen was allegedly banned from attending the 84th Academy Awards in his role as Admiral General Aladeen but the rumour was denied by the Academy, saying "we haven't banned him. We're just waiting to hear what he's going to do" but made it clear that "Cohen is not welcome to use the red carpet as a platform for a promotional stunt".[36] Cohen eventually appeared at the awards' red carpet with a pair of uniformed female bodyguards, holding an urn which he claimed was filled with the ashes of Kim Jong-il. The "ashes", which Baron Cohen admitted to Howard Stern on the Tuesday, May 8, 2012 episode of The Howard Stern Show was flour, were "accidentally" spilled onto Ryan Seacrest.
Performer versus characters[link]
Baron Cohen has often been confused with the identity of one of his characters. When he posed as Borat to host the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon, the central Hungarian news wire agency MTI reported that the host was 'Borat Sagdiyev'.[37] As most Hungarian newspapers and television networks take MTI as their official source, the misinterpretation of the character spread rapidly in Hungary, with some sources (such as TV2) emphasising that a Kazakh news reporter hosted the awards, while others (such as Index.hu) noticed and pointed out the error.[38]
Controversies and criticism[link]
Baron Cohen has encountered many controversies regarding some of his comic characters:
In an interview with former British MP Neil Hamilton in 2000, Ali G offered Hamilton what was allegedly cannabis, which Hamilton accepted and smoked, creating some minor controversy in the British media.[39]
At the 2006 MTV Movie Awards, Borat introduced Gnarls Barkley's performance of "Crazy", where he made a comment about Jessica Simpson, saying that he liked her mouth and that he could see it clearly through her denim pants.
At the 2006 UK premiere of Borat, he arrived in Leicester Square in a cart pulled by a mule and a number of "Kazakh women", announcing: "Good evening, gentleman and prostitutes. After this I stay in a hotel in Kings Cross. We will all drink, wrestle with no clothes on and shoot dogs from the window."[40]
Baron Cohen has had some trouble because of racist or prejudiced comments his characters have made (see Da Ali G Show). HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer has replied to criticism concerning Baron Cohen's characters, "Through his alter-egos, he delivers an obvious satire that exposes people's ignorance and prejudice in much the same way All in the Family did years ago."[41] Regarding his portrayal as the anti-Semitic Borat, Baron Cohen says the segments are a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry", rather than a display of racism by Baron Cohen himself.[42] "Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice", Baron Cohen explains.[11] Addressing the same topic in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, Baron Cohen says "...and I think that's quite an interesting thing with Borat, which is people really let down their guard with him because they're in a room with somebody who seems to have these outrageous opinions. They sometimes feel much more relaxed about letting their own outrageous, politically incorrect, prejudiced opinions come out."[43]
Baron Cohen, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, says he also wishes in particular to expose the role of indifference in that genocide. "When I was in university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who said, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic."[11] Regarding the enthusiastic response to his song, "In My Country There Is Problem" (also known as "Throw the Jew Down the Well"), he says, "Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism."[11]
Baron Cohen walked onto the runway during the Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada fashion show in Milan on 26 September 2008. In the character of one of his alter-egos Brüno, he was wearing a costume made out of velcro. He appeared on the stage with a blanket and items of clothing stuck to his velcro suit. Lights were turned off while security intervened and escorted him off the stage, and the fashion show resumed normally shortly thereafter. Baron Cohen and his team allegedly accessed the fashion show using fake IDs.[44]
During an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman,[when?] Baron Cohen stated he was restricted from answering David Letterman's question as to how he managed to get an interview with Pat Buchanan while in character as Ali G due to pending "legal reasons".[45]
While introducing an award at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Baron Cohen was lowered upside-down from the rafters dressed as an angel right into rapper Eminem's lap after an apparently staged problem with his wire harness. Baron Cohen had only a jockstrap on underneath and fully exposed his buttocks in Eminem's face. Eminem swore repeatedly, demanding that his friends, members of D12, each of whom were sitting next to Eminem, remove Baron Cohen, then left the auditorium.[46] Baron Cohen then announced the winner (Zac Efron) while still hanging from the wires above the stage. It was later revealed that Eminem and Baron Cohen had planned and rehearsed the gag together.[47]
Pauly Shore claimed, in 2009, that Baron Cohen's film, Brüno, was "stolen from Shore's 'mockumentary'", as the film Brüno had started production after the start of production for Adopted and also featured the main character adopting a child from a Third World nation.[48]
In March 2012, the organizers of a tournament in Kuwait caused some embarrassment after Baron Cohen's parody of the Kazakhstan national anthem from the film Borat, was played instead of the actual anthem at a medal ceremony.[49][50] The Kazakhstan shooting team demanded an apology from the organizers, who had mistakenly downloaded Baron Cohen's parody from the Internet.[51]
Future projects[link]
Baron Cohen will star as Freddie Mercury of the rock band Queen in Mercury, an upcoming film about the period in the band's history from 1971 to the Live Aid concert in 1985.[52] It was Baron Cohen himself who contacted screenwriter Peter Morgan with the idea of portraying the flamboyant lead singer.[53] Time commented with approval on his singing ability and physical resemblance to Mercury.[54]
Other work[link]
Baron Cohen guest-starred in the fifth season Curb Your Enthusiasm, with Dustin Hoffman as a guide to Heaven. He also provided the voice of the ring-tailed lemur king, King Julien, in DreamWorks Animation's film series, Madagascar, and appeared as Will Ferrell's arch rival the French Formula One speed demon Jean Girard in the 2006 hit Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. He also appeared alongside Johnny Depp in the 2007 film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street as Signor Adolfo Pirelli, and co-starred in Martin Scorsese's 2011 adventure film Hugo.
Baron Cohen tends to avoid doing interviews out of character. However, in 2004, he did the talk show circuit appearing as himself on Late Show with David Letterman, The Opie and Anthony Show, The Howard Stern Show,[55] and others in order to promote the upcoming season of his show on HBO. He was also interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered.[43] He also did an interview with Rolling Stone, published in November 2006, that the magazine labelled as "his only interview as himself".[11] He also appeared in an interview out of character with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air on 4 January 2007.[56]
Baron Cohen has twice presented the MTV Europe Music Awards, first as Ali G on 8 November 2001, in Frankfurt, Germany, and then as Borat on 3 November 2005 in Lisbon, Portugal. Baron Cohen appeared out of character to accept an award at the British Comedy Awards in December 2006. He said at the time that Borat could not make it to the awards as "he's guest of honour at the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran",[57] referring to the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust.
Borat director Larry Charles explains that Baron Cohen generally appears in character partly to "protect his weakness", by focusing public interest on his characters rather than himself.[58] His other reason, Newsweek claims, is that Baron Cohen is fiercely private: "...according to the UK press, his publicists denied not only that he attended a party for the London premiere of Borat, but also that a party even occurred."[58]
It was reported online that Baron Cohen might play Freddie Mercury in a biographical film,[59] but his publicist later declared that Baron Cohen would not do so.[60] However, on 16 September 2010, representatives for Cohen confirmed that he would indeed be playing the role in an as-of-yet untitled biopic about Mercury.[61][62]
Baron Cohen shot a spread with supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio for Marie Claire magazine to promote the film Brüno.[63]
Sports Illustrated's 6 November 2006 issue contains a column called "Skater vs. Instigator", which illustrates various amusing "parallels" between Baron Cohen and figure skater Sasha Cohen, ranging from their mutually held personal significance of the number 4,[64] to their mutual romantic interests in redheads.
Baron Cohen was featured on Australian talk show Rove as Brüno on 28 June 2009.[citation needed]
Baron Cohen was featured in the Time 100 list for 2007.[65]
In 2010, Cohen guest-starred on The Simpsons in the episode "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed" as Jakob, an angry Israeli tour guide.
Personal life[link]
Marriage and family[link]
Baron Cohen married Australian actress Isla Fisher on 15 March 2010.[66] After three years of study, Fisher converted to Judaism in early 2007.[67] She received the approval of Baron Cohen's observant Jewish parents.[68] Baron Cohen and Fisher have two daughters: Olive, born on 19 October 2007 in Los Angeles,[69] and Elula, born in August 2010.[70]
Legal issues[link]
Two residents of Glod, Romania, the Gypsy village in which the opening scenes of Borat were filmed, hired attorney Edward Fagan to sue the makers of Borat for $30 million. They alleged that the intent of the film was misrepresented to them, that the poorest members of their village were made to look like "savages", and that they were underpaid, particularly when their minute salaries were compared to the millions earned by the completed film. During several segments, children were filmed with guns and other weapons and in another scene, an amputee who lost his arm was told to wear a rubber fist sex toy.[71] The lawsuit was dismissed in New York hearing on the grounds that the allegations were too vague to stand up in court.[72]
The government of Kazakhstan threatened Baron Cohen with legal action following the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards ceremony in Lisbon, and the authority in charge of the country's country-code top-level domain name removed the website that he had created for his character Borat (previously: http://www.borat.kz) for alleged violation of the law—specifically, registering for the domain under a false name. The New York Times, (among others), has reported that Baron Cohen, (in character as Borat), replied: "I'd like to state that I have no connection with Mr Cohen and fully support my government decision to sue this Jew".[73] He was, however, defended by Dariga Nazarbayeva, a politician and the daughter of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stated, "We should not be afraid of humour and we shouldn't try to control everything, I think."[74] The deputy foreign minister of Kazakhstan later invited Baron Cohen to visit the country, stating that he could learn that "women drive cars, wine is made of grapes, and Jews are free to go to synagogues".[75] After the worldwide success of the Borat film, the Kazakh government, including the president, altered their stance on Baron Cohen's parody, tacitly recognising the invaluable press the controversy created for their country.[76]
Baron Cohen encountered another problem around his Borat character. Two of the three University of South Carolina students who appear in Borat sued the filmmakers, alleging that they were duped into signing release forms while drunk, and that false promises were made that the footage was for a documentary that would never be screened in the US. On 11 December 2006, a Los Angeles judge denied the pair a restraining order to remove them from the film. The lawsuit was dismissed in February 2007.[77]
On 22 May 2009, a charity worker at a seniors' bingo game sued Baron Cohen, claiming an incident shot for Brüno at a charity bingo tournament left her disabled.[78] However, the worker later retracted her statement, saying the "actor never struck her", but that he "beat her down emotionally to the point she's now confined to a wheelchair".[79] The scene did not make the final cut for the film. The case was dismissed in late November 2009 on Anti-SLAPP grounds with all attorney's fees to be paid by the charity worker. The dismissal was appealed and upheld on 12 September 2011.[80]
A lawsuit was filed on 30 April 2010 in the District of Columbia by Palestinian Christian Ayman Abu Aita of Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, West Bank, against Baron Cohen relating to his interview which was used in Brüno. Aita alleges that he has been defamed by false accusations that he is a terrorist. Aita included David Letterman in the suit based on comments made during the 7 July 2009 appearance by Baron Cohen on the Late Show with David Letterman.[81] On 4 November 2010, the D.C. case was dismissed with Aita given 120 days to file in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York or have the case permanently dismissed.[82] The case was re-filed in the Supreme Court of New York.[83]
Israel and Judaism[link]
Baron Cohen first acted in theatrical productions featuring the Socialist-Zionist youth movement Habonim Dror.[84]
He spent a year in Israel at Kibbutz Rosh HaNikra and Kibbutz Beit HaEmek as part of the Shnat Habonim Dror, as well as taking part in the programme Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz for Jewish youth movement leaders.
According to Baron Cohen, "I wouldn't say I am a religious Jew. I am proud of my Jewish identity and there are certain things I do and customs I keep." He tries to keep kosher and attends synagogue about twice a year.[85]
Baron Cohen frequently spoke in Hebrew while playing the anti-Semitic character Borat. He also sang the lyrics from an old kibbutz song (pretending that it was the Kazakh national anthem) in an episode of Da Ali G Show. In one of the deleted scenes of his film, after being asked by the host-pastor to lead the table in a pre-meal prayer service, Baron Cohen, in his character role of Borat, sings a lengthy hymn (not Hebrew)[86] that has clear similarities to the Mussaf prayer service of the Jewish High Holidays.[original research?] He actually repeatedly sings two Polish phrases "Satan does not speak English" (Szatan nie mówi po angielsku)[87] and "Could you speak slowly please?"[original research?]
Awards and nominations[link]
 |
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2010) |
- 1999 – Won British Comedy Award, Best Male Comedy Newcomer for The 11 O'Clock Show (1998)[88]
- 2000 – Nominated BAFTA TV Award, Best Entertainment Performance for The 11 O'Clock Show (1998)[19]
- 2000 – Nominated National Television Awards, UK, Most Popular Comedy Performer for Da Ali G Show (2000)
- 2000 – Won TV Quick Award, TV Personality of the Year for Da Ali G Show (2000)
- 2001 – Won BAFTA TV Award, Best Comedy (Programme or Series) for Da Ali G Show (2000) (shared)
- 2001 – Won BAFTA TV Award, Best Comedy Performance for Da Ali G Show (2000)
- 2003 – Nominated Emmy Award, Outstanding Non-Fiction Program (Alternative) for Da Ali G Show (2003) (shared)
- 2003 – Nominated Emmy Award, Outstanding Writing for Non-Fiction Programming for Da Ali G Show (2003) (shared)
- 2004 – Nominated Golden Satellite Award, Best Performance by an Actor in a Series, Comedy or Musical for Da Ali G Show (2003)
- 2005 – Nominated Emmy Award, Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series for Da Ali G Show (2003) (shared)
- 2005 – Nominated Emmy Award, Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program for Da Ali G Show (2003) (shared)
- 2006 – Won Ronnie Barker Award[89]
- 2007 – Won MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss alongside Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
[edit] Borat awards and nominations
- 2006 – Won: Los Angeles Films Critics Association Award for Best Actor.
- 2006 – Won: San Francisco Films Critics Circle Award for Best Actor.
- 2006 – Winner: Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor.
- 2006 – Won: Deutscher Comedypreis (German comedy award) for Best International Comedy.
- 2007 – Won: Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical
- 2007 – Nominated: Golden Globe for Best Picture Comedy/Musical.
- 2007 – Nominated: London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actor of the Year.
- 2007 – Nominated: Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (shared).
- 2007 – Nominated: Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (shared).
- 2007 – Won: MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance and Nominated for Best Movie as well and Best Fight with Ken Davitian.
- 2007 – Won: The Evening Standard British Film Awards: Peter Sellers award for Best Comedy.
Filmography[link]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Jack and Jeremy's Police 4 | Execution victim | TV special |
| Pump TV | TV Presenter, UK regional cable channel | TV special | |
| 1996 | Punch | Unnamed | Short film |
| 1998 | Live from the Lighthouse | Ali G | TV special |
| 1998–99 | The 11 O'Clock Show | Ali G | TV series Also writer |
| 2000 | The Jolly Boys' Last Stand | Vinnie | |
| Da Ali G Show (UK) | Ali G/Borat Sagdiyev/Brüno | TV Series: 6 episodes Also writer |
|
| 2002 | Ali G Indahouse | Ali G/Borat Sagdiyev | Also executive producer/writer |
| 2003 | Spyz | James Bond (Ali G) | Short film Also executive producer/writer |
| 2003–04 | Da Ali G Show (US) | Ali G/Borat Sagdiyev/Brüno | TV Series: 12 episodes Also executive producer/writer |
| 2005 | Curb Your Enthusiasm | Larry's Guide #2 | Season 5, Episode 10 "The End" |
| Madagascar | King Julien XIII | Voice only | |
| 2006 | Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby | Jean Girard | |
| Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Event for Autism Education | Borat Sagdiyev | TV special | |
| Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan | Borat Sagdiyev | Also producer/writer | |
| 2007 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Signor Adolfo Pirelli | |
| 2008 | Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa | King Julien XIII | Voice only |
| 2009 | Brüno | Brüno | Also producer/writer |
| 2010 | The Simpsons | Jakob | Season 21, Episode 16 "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed"[90] Voice only |
| 2011 | Hugo | Inspector Gustav | |
| 2012 | The Dictator | Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen | Also producer/writer |
| Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted | King Julien XIII | Voice only | |
| Les Misérables | Thénardier | Filming[91][92] | |
| 2014 | Mercury[93] | Freddie Mercury | Pre-production |
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- ^ http://kulturaonline.pl/dlaczego,borat,mowi,po,polsku,tytul,artykul,271.html
- ^ Royles clean up at comedy awards BBC News. Retrieved 27 February 2012
- ^ "Sacha leaves Borat behind as he steps out with Isla". Hello!. 14 December 2006. http://www.hellomagazine.com/celebrities/2006/12/14/borat-comedy-awards/. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
- ^ The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed (#21.16). IMDB.
- ^ Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter to Star in Film Version of Les Miserables , John Logan to Write Jersey Boys Film and William Shatner is Back on Broadway.
- ^ Sacha Baron Cohen, Daniel Evans, Linzi Hateley and More Confirmed for "Les Miz" Film
- ^ "Sacha Baron Cohen's Queen biopic given title" December 2, 2011, NME
External links[link]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sacha Baron Cohen |
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Sacha Baron Cohen |
- Sacha Baron Cohen on National Public Radio in 2007
- Sacha Baron Cohen at the Internet Movie Database
- Sacha Baron Cohen at the British Film Institute's Screenonline – biography and credits
- Sacha Baron Cohen discography at Discogs
- Sacha Baron Cohen audio interview with NPR's Robert Siegel
- And Now for the World According to Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen, Authors Den, 24 March 2007
- Sacha Baron Cohen: Killing off Borat, article at The Daily Telegraph, 21 December 2007
| Preceded by Wyclef Jean Xzibit |
MTV Europe Music Awards host 2001 (as Ali G) 2005 (as Borat) |
Succeeded by Sean Combs Justin Timberlake |
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| Persondata | |
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| Name | Baron Cohen, Sacha |
| Alternative names | Sacha Noam Baron Cohen |
| Short description | English comedian and actor |
| Date of birth | 13 October 1971 |
| Place of birth | Hammersmith, London, England |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
