Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 44

Year 44 (XLIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Crispus and Taurus (or, less frequently, year 797 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 44 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

Events[link]

By place[link]

Roman Empire[link]

• Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus and Titus Statilius Taurus become Roman consuls.
• The emperor Claudius returns from his British campaign in triumph, the southeast part of Britannia now held by the Roman Empire, but the war will rage for another decade and a half.
• Boudicca marries Prasutagus, king of the British Celtic tribe the Iceni.
• Mauretania becomes a Roman province.
• The Isle of Rhodes returns to the Roman Empire.
• Judaea is controlled by Roman governors.
• Cuspius Fadus, governor of Judea (44–46), suppress the revolt of Theudas who is decapitated.

By topic[link]

Arts and sciences[link]

• Pomponius Mela writes De situ orbis, a geography of the Earth.

Births[link]

• Jacob (Lost) and Man in Black (Lost) were born on an island in the South Pacific Ocean.

Deaths[link]

• Saint James the Great (martyrdom)
• Agrippa I of Judea
• Claudia Julia, executed niece of Claudius and Messalina (43–45)
• Wu Han, general of Han Dynasty

References[link]

Willem Dafoe
Dafoe in September 2011
Born	William J. Dafoe (1955-07-22) July 22, 1955 (age 56) Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, voice actor
Years active	1980–present
Spouse	Giada Colagrande (2005–present)

Willem Dafoe (born July 22, 1955) is an American film, stage, and voice actor, and a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group. He has had roles in a wide range of films, including Platoon, Affliction, Off Limits, Streets of Fire, To Live and Die in L.A., Born on the Fourth of July, The English Patient, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mississippi Burning, "The Life Aquatic" The Boondock Saints, Spider-Man, and The Aviator, and voice roles in Fantastic Mr. Fox and Finding Nemo.

Dafoe has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice. The first was for his role in Platoon in 1986 and the second time for his performance in Shadow of the Vampire in 2000.

Early life and career[link]

Dafoe was born William J. Dafoe^[1] in Appleton, Wisconsin. One of seven children of Muriel Isabel (née Sprissler)^[2] and Dr. William Alfred Dafoe,^[2][3] he recalled in 2009, "My five sisters raised me because my father was a surgeon, my mother was a nurse and they worked together, so I didn't see either of them much."^[4][5] In high school, he acquired the nickname Willem.^[6] His ancestry includes Irish, Scottish, German, and Canadian.^[2][7]

Dafoe studied drama at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, but left after a year-and-a-half to join the experimental theater company Theatre X in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before moving to New York City in 1976.^[6] There he apprenticed under Richard Schechner, director of the avant-garde theater troupe The Performance Group, and became romantically involved with the group's Elizabeth LeCompte, 11 years his senior and who, with her former romantic partner Spalding Gray and others, edged out Schechner and created the Wooster Group.^[6] Within a year Dafoe was part of the company.^[8]

Theater and film[link]

Hafsat Abiola, Dafoe and Bianca Jagger at the dropping knowledge's Table of Free Voices at Bebelplatz, Berlin, in September 2006

Dafoe, who would continue with the Wooster Group into the 2000s,^[9] began his film career in 1981, when he was cast in Heaven's Gate^[10] only to see his role removed from the film during editing.^[1] As Dafoe recalled of his first film experience, in which he played a cock fighter,

I worked for Jeff Bridges' character in the story. I was there for three months and I worked a lot. It was the kind of thing where you were hired to play an unscripted character and then they developed these smaller characters. I had scenes and everything and was really enjoying it and then one day we were doing a lighting setup for a long time; basically eight hours standing in place, and a woman told me a joke in my ear and I laughed at a moment of silence. Cimino turned around and said, 'Willem step out,' and that was that. I was the lamb for sacrifice."^[11]

In the mid-1980s he was cast by William Friedkin to star in To Live and Die In L.A., in which Dafoe portrays counterfeiter Rick Masters. A year later he starred as the leader of a motorcycle gang in The Loveless, and later played a similar role in Streets of Fire. He became "very conscious" that he might be typecast as a villain, saying in 1998,

...I really made a conscious effort to mix it up, not because in itself it's not the job of an actor to do all different things, but for me that's what I'm interested in. You've got to be careful because you've got to work with what you have, not just for vanity's sake, but I think the best part of being an actor sometimes is the opportunity to transform yourself superficially, and deeply. So, it's true in the beginning I started playing villains and I think that's pretty clear because if you don't conventionally look a certain way and you've got a certain kind of presence when you're young, then what's available to you is character roles and the best character roles when you're young tend to be villains. And, also, it's fun to be bad and the only problem is often villain roles are devices and they lack a certain depth. They're signs, they're signals and after a little while you want something to chew on and if you function in a film it's the same too often. I think what happens is you develop a language that distances you from a certain kind of flashpoint of inspiration and creativity and you may refine that and that may be your work, but I'm not so interested in that. I think the best work comes when you're unsure, when you're terrified, when you're off balance.^[7]

Dafoe would go on to gain his widest exposure to that time playing the compassionate Sergeant Elias in Oliver Stone's Platoon. He enjoyed the opportunity to play a heroic role, and said the film gave him a chance to display his versatility. "I think all characters live in you. You just frame them, give them circumstances, and that character will happen."^[12]

Dafoe at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival

In 1988, Dafoe starred in another film set during the Vietnam War, this time as CID Agent Buck McGriff in Off Limits. He has since become a popular character actor. He is often cast as unstable or villainous characters, such as the Green Goblin in Spider-Man and Barillo in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Before that, he was briefly considered for the role of the Joker by Tim Burton and Sam Hamm for 1989's Batman. Hamm recalls "We thought, 'Well, Willem Dafoe looks just like The Joker.'" The role eventually went to Jack Nicholson.^[13]

He starred in the erotic drama Body of Evidence with Madonna. In 1991, Willem Dafoe portrayed a Manhattan drug dealer in the Paul Schrader film Light Sleeper. Dafoe played an eccentric FBI agent in The Boondock Saints (1999) and a private investigator in American Psycho (2000). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1986 for Platoon and 2000 for Shadow of the Vampire. He played a rare heroic film role when he provided the voice of Gill in the animated film Finding Nemo. Dafoe also played a heroic leading man in Triumph of the Spirit, playing a Greek Jew, Salamo Arouch, who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau through his prowess as a boxer. In 1998 he was the brother of Nick Nolte and son of James Coburn in another Schrader film, Affliction.

He worked briefly as a model in a 1990 Prada campaign.^{[citation needed]} In 2004, Dafoe lent his likeness and voice for the James Bond video game Everything or Nothing as the villain Nikolai Diavolo, and starred as NYPD detective Stan Aubray in the thriller Anamorph (2006).

In 2011, Dafoe began narrating a series of television commercials for the Greek yogurt company Fage.^[14][15] Additionally, the actor is featured in Jim Beam's "Bold Decisions" television ad campaign, which began airing April 2011.^[16]

Dafoe starred alongside Marina Abramović in the 2011 Manchester International Festival premiere of the play The Life and Death of Marina Abramović.^{[citation needed]}

Dafoe since 2010 voices the Birdseye polar bear mascot on UK TV commercials.^[17]

Personal life[link]

Dafoe met director Elizabeth LeCompte at The Performance Group and began a professional and personal relationship there and at its successor company, the Wooster Group. Their son, Jack, was born in 1982.^[18] The pair eventually split in 2004.^{[citation needed]} Dafoe married Italian actress, director and screenwriter Giada Colagrande on March 25, 2005, a year after the two had met in Rome at the premiere of one of her films. Dafoe said in 2010, "We were having lunch and I said: 'Do you want to get married tomorrow?'". They did so the following afternoon at a small ceremony with two friends as witnesses.^[18] The two worked together on the film Before It Had a Name.^[18] The couple divide their time among Colagrande's native Italy,^[9] New York City, and Los Angeles, California.^[18]

Dafoe said in 2008 he is no longer a vegetarian.^[19]

Dafoe's brother, Donald Dafoe, is a transplant surgeon and researcher.^[20]

Filmography[link]

Other awards and nominations[link]

Camerimage

• 2002: Won, "Special Award:For immense contribution to the art of film."

San Sebastian International Film Festival

• 2005: Won, Donostia Award

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Willem Dafoe

• Willem Dafoe at the Internet Movie Database
• Willem Dafoe at AllRovi
• Willem Dafoe Biography
• The Onion A.V. Club interview
• Oney, Steve (December 3, 1989). "FILM; Willem Dafoe, Looking for Characters With Possibility". The New York Times: p. 6. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/03/movies/film-willem-dafoe-looking-for-characters-with-possibility.html?ref=willemdafoe. 

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2010)

Abel Ferrara
Abel Ferrara at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival
Born	(1951-07-19) July 19, 1951 (age 60) the Bronx, New York, United States
Other names	Jimmy Laine
Occupation	director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor, cinematographer
Years active	1971–present
Website
www.abelferrara.com

Abel Ferrara (born July 19, 1951) is an American film screenwriter and director. He is best known as an independent filmmaker of such films as The Driller Killer (1979), Ms. 45 (1981), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Funeral (1996).

Early life[link]

Ferrara was born in the Bronx of Italian and Irish descent.^[1] He was raised Catholic, which had a later effect on much of his work.^[2] At 15 he moved to Peekskill in Westchester, New York. where he attended high school with Nicholas St. John, who has written most of his films. He attended the film conservatory at SUNY Purchase, where he directed several movies, which are all available on "The Short Films of Abel Ferrara" collection. Soon finding himself out of work, he directed a pornographic film titled 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy in 1976,^[3] which starred his then-girlfriend. Interviewed by The Guardian in 2010, he recalled having to step in front of the camera: "It's bad enough paying a guy $200 to fuck your girlfriend, then he can't get it up."^[4]

Early career[link]

Ferrarra first drew a cult audience with his grindhouse movie The Driller Killer (1979), an urban slasher in the mold of Taxi Driver (1976), about an artist (played by Ferrara himself under the alias Jimmy Laine) who goes on a killing spree with a drill in hand. He followed it with Ms. 45 (1981), a "rape revenge" film starring Zoë Tamerlis, who later scripted Bad Lieutenant. Ferrara was next hired to direct Fear City (1984), starring Tom Berenger, Melanie Griffith, Billy Dee Williams, Rae Dawn Chong and María Conchita Alonso. True to form, it depicted a seedy Times Square strip club, where a "kung fu slasher" stalks and murders the girls after work. Berenger portrayed a disgraced boxer who has to use his fighting skills to defeat the killer.

Ferrara then worked on two Michael Mann-produced television series, directing the two-hour pilot for Crime Story (aired 18 September 1986), starring Dennis Farina, along with two episodes of the series Miami Vice: "The Home Invaders" (aired 15 March 1985, in season 1) and "The Dutch Oven" (aired 25 October 1985, in season 2).

Following his television work, Ferrara directed several feature films: China Girl (1987), a modern retelling of West Side Story as a gang war between the Chinese tong and the Italian Mafia; the made-for-television vigilante action thriller The Gladiator (1987) with Nancy Allen; and Cat Chaser (1989), starring Peter Weller.

Next, Ferrara created one of his most well-known films, King of New York (1990), starring Christopher Walken as gangster Frank White, who runs a group of black drug dealers, including one played by Laurence Fishburne. The cast included Wesley Snipes and David Caruso. As with most of Ferrara's films, the screenplay was written by Nicholas St. John.

Ferrara next directed Harvey Keitel in an acclaimed performance as the eponymous Bad Lieutenant (1992). Keitel plays a foul-mouthed, sex-addicted drug-using cop who wrestles with guilt and eventually seeks redemption in a Catholic church. The script was written by Ms. 45 star Zoe Tamerlis. Both Ferrara and Keitel were nominated for Spirit Awards and, despite its controversial content, the film was lauded by critics. Director Martin Scorsese also named it one of his top 10 films of the 1990s.^[5]

Ferrara was then hired for two Hollywood studio films: a second remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, titled Body Snatchers (1993), for Warner Bros.; and Dangerous Game (1993), starring Keitel and Madonna, for MGM.

In the mid-90s Ferrara returned to independent filmmaking, directing two well-received^{[citation needed]} movies: The Addiction (1995) and The Funeral (1996). The Addiction, photographed in black-and-white, starred Lili Taylor as a New York University philosophy student who succumbs to a vampire as she studies the problem of evil, represented by the most violent events of the 20th century. The Funeral starred Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Isabella Rossellini, Benicio del Toro, Vincent Gallo and others. In 1996 he produced California for the French singer Mylène Farmer.

Later career[link]

After making The Blackout (1997) with Matthew Modine and Dennis Hopper, he contributed to the omnibus HBO–television movie Subway Stories. Ferrara then made New Rose Hotel (1998), which reunited him with Christopher Walken.

Ferrara in 2008.

Ferrara returned three years later with 'R Xmas (2001), which starred Drea de Matteo and Ice-T. After recording two commentaries for Driller Killer and King of New York, he made Mary (2005), the religious-themed film starring Forrest Whitaker, Marion Cotillard, Juliette Binoche, Heather Graham, Stefania Rocca and Matthew Modine. The multi-plot film concerns an actress (Binoche) who stars in a Passion of the Christ-like movie about Jesus, where she plays Mary Magdalene, with whom she subsequently becomes obsessed. Mary premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2005. It swept the awards ceremony, garnering the Grand Jury Prize, SIGNIS Award and two others. It was also seen at the Toronto Film Festival.^{[citation needed]} In 2007, he directed a comedy with Modine, Bob Hoskins and Willem Dafoe, Go Go Tales. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was either highly acclaimed or vehemently disliked. Ferrara began preparations for Jekyll and Hyde in 2009, which was to star Forrest Whitaker and 50 Cent. After disagreements with Warner Bros. the film was indefinitely shelved in 2010.

A Ferrara film, the docudrama called Napoli Napoli Napoli, is scheduled to premiere at the Rome Film Festival. Ferrara plays a small role as a mugger in the independent film Daddy Longlegs (2010). Also in 2010, Ferrara teamed up with Film Annex, an online film distribution platform and Web Television Network, to launch www.abelferrara.com. In a press release about the new web channel, Ferrara said, “We have been looking for a place, a home to express what we are doing and to avoid the misinformation found when we are not active on a website. With Francesco Rulli, the Founder of Film Annex, we hope to create a distribution platform for the work, both past and present, while actively interacting with our audience, collaborators and other filmmakers."^[6]

In April 2011, Ferrara began shooting his first feature in four years, 4:44 - Last Day on Earth, starring Willem Dafoe and Ferrara's long time companion Shanyn Leigh. This is Dafoe's third collaboration with Ferrara after 1998's New Rose Hotel and his last feature film, 2007's Go Go Tales. The film was shot in one location, an apartment, set during the course of the last 24 hours before the biblical apocalypse. Ferrara's longtime cinematographer Ken Kelsch shot the film. 4:44 - Last Day on Earth competed at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in September 2011 and released in theatres in March 2012.^[7] Ferrara's next project will be a fictionalized version of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case. It will star Gerard Depardieu in the role of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Isabelle Adjani as Anne Sinclair.^[8]

Filmography[link]

• 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976)
• The Driller Killer (1979)
• Ms. 45 (1981)
• Fear City (1984)
• Crime Story (1986) TV series pilot
• China Girl (1987)
• Cat Chaser (1989)
• King of New York (1990)
• Bad Lieutenant (1992)
• Body Snatchers (1993)
• Dangerous Game (1993)
• The Addiction (1995)
• California (1996) (videoclip for Mylène Farmer)
• The Funeral (1996)
• The Blackout (1997)
• New Rose Hotel (1998)
• 'R Xmas (2001)
• Mary (2005)
• Go Go Tales (2007)
• Chelsea on the Rocks (2008)
• Napoli Napoli Napoli (2009)
• Mulberry St. (2009)
• 4:44 - Last Day on Earth (2011)

Recurring collaborators[link]

Actor	Ms. 45 (1981)	Fear City (1984)	Crime Story (1986)	China Girl (1987)	Cat Chaser (1989)	King of New York (1990)	Bad Lieutenant (1992)	Body Snatchers (1993)	Dangerous Game (1993)	The Addiction (1995)	The Funeral (1996)	The Blackout (1997)	New Rose Hotel (1998)	'R Xmas (2001)	Mary (2005)	Go Go Tales (2007)	Chelsea on the Rocks (2008)	Napoli Napoli Napoli (2009)	4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011)
Asia Argento													N			N
Victor Argo						N	N		N		N		N	N
Paul Calderón						N	N			N
David Caruso			N	N		N
Willem Dafoe													N			N			N
Giancarlo Esposito						N											N
Paul Hipp				N			N				N								N
Dennis Hopper												N					N
Harvey Keitel							N		N
Shanyn Leigh																N	N	N	N
Zoë Lund	N						N
Matthew Modine												N			N	N
Gretchen Mol											N		N
Annabella Sciorra										N	N		N
Christopher Walken						N				N	N		N
Forest Whitaker								N							N

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Abel Ferrara

• Abel Ferrara at the Internet Movie Database
• Guardian interview, 5 August 2010
• Nicky's Film sound design and remix contest