- published: 07 Jun 2011
- views: 136402
- author: SirPsychoFlea
Vimeo results:
Youtube results:
Loading...
..." width="225" height="168" class="playvideo1 gotop" onClick="activateTab('playlist1'); return false" style="display: block;" />
Open Collage in a new Window
Email the Collage
- Loading...
Loading suggestions ...
- 11th Empire Awards
- 12th Empire Awards
- 13th Empire Awards
- 14th Empire Awards
- 15th Empire Awards
- 16th Empire Awards
- 1st Empire Awards
- 2nd Empire Awards
- 3rd Empire Awards
- 4th Empire Awards
- 5th Empire Awards
- 6th Empire Awards
- 71st Academy Awards
- 7th Empire Awards
- 80th Academy Awards
- 8th Empire Awards
- 9th Empire Awards
- Abbie Cornish
- Abigail Breslin
- Academy Award
- Ahmad Zaki (actor)
- Alan Arkin
- Alan Bates
- Albery Theatre
- Amanda Douge
- Amanda Muggleton
- Amy Adams
- Amy Ryan
- Andrew Upton
- Andy Serkis
- Angela Lansbury
- Anil Kapoor
- Anjelica Huston
- Anna Kendrick
- Anne Bancroft
- Anne Heche
- Annette Bening
- Annie Byron
- Anthony Andrews
- August Diehl
- Australia Post
- Babel (film)
- BAFTA
- Bandits
- Bangers (film)
- Barbican Centre
- Bernard Hill
- Billy Boyd (actor)
- Blanche DuBois
- Bob Balaban
- Bob Dylan
- Botho Strauß
- Brad Pitt
- Brenda Blethyn
- Brendan Fraser
- Bruce Beresford
- Carrie-Anne Moss
- Caryl Churchill
- Cate Blanchett
- Catherine O'Hara
- Catherine Zeta-Jones
- Charles Dance
- Charlize Theron
- Chicago (2002 film)
- Christina Ricci
- Christine Baranski
- Christoph Waltz
- Clive Owen
- Cloris Leachman
- Colin Firth
- Colm Feore
- Company B (theatre)
- Connie Nielsen
- Crash (2004 film)
- Crikey
- Dale Dickey
- Daniel Brühl
- Daniel Lapaine
- David Mamet
- David Wenham
- Debbie Reynolds
- Denis Menochet
- Denise Faye
- Derek Jacobi
- Dev Patel
- Diane Keaton
- Diane Kruger
- Dianne Wiest
- Dominic Monaghan
- Dominic West
- Don Cheadle
- Edith Evans
- Egypt
- Eileen Atkins
- Electra
- Elf (Middle-earth)
- Eli Roth
- Elijah Wood
- Elizabeth (film)
- Elle (magazine)
- Emily Barclay
- Emily Mortimer
- Emily Watson
- Emma Thompson
- Empire Award
- Empire Awards
- Ernie Dingo
- Eva Le Gallienne
- Extra (actor)
- Family Guy
- Fine arts
- Fiona Press
- Forbes
- Frances McDormand
- Frances O'Connor
- Freida Pinto
- Galadriel
- Garret Dillahunt
- Geoffrey Rush
- George Clooney
- Geraldine Somerville
- Gillian Armstrong
- Glenn Close
- Golden Globe Award
- Gong Li
- Gosford Park
- GP (TV series)
- Greg Kinnear
- Greta Scacchi
- Guy Pearce
- Gwyneth Paltrow
- Hamlet
- Hanna (film)
- Heaven (2002 film)
- Hedda Gabler
- Helen Mirren
- Helena Bonham Carter
- Hilary Swank
- Holly Hunter
- Horace McCoy
- Hot Fuzz
- Hugo Weaving
- I'm Not There
- Ian Holm
- Ian McKellen
- Inglourious Basterds
- Irina Spalko
- Irrfan Khan
- Ivanhoe, Victoria
- Jacki Weaver
- Jacky Ido
- James Wilby
- Jan Adele
- Javier Bardem
- Jennifer Connelly
- Jennifer Ehle
- Jennifer Esposito
- Jennifer Hudson
- Jeremy Northam
- Jessica Lange
- Jessica Tandy
- Joan Allen
- Joan Blondell
- Joan Chen
- Jodie Foster
- Joe Wright
- Joel Edgerton
- John Bell (actor)
- John C. Reilly
- John Noble
- John Rhys-Davies
- Josh Brolin
- Judi Dench
- Judy Davis
- Julia Blake
- Julia Roberts
- Julianne Moore
- Julie Christie
- Julie Delpy
- Julie Dreyfus
- Julie Forsyth
- Julie Walters
- Juliette Binoche
- Karen Black
- Karl Urban
- Kate Nelligan
- Kate Winslet
- Katharine Hepburn
- Kathy Bates
- Kay Walsh
- Keira Knightley
- Kelly Macdonald
- Kerry Armstrong
- KGB
- Kirsten Dunst
- Kris McQuade
- Kristin Scott Thomas
- Larenz Tate
- Laura Linney
- Lawless (film)
- Leah Purcell
- Linda Hunt
- Lindy Davies
- Little Fish (film)
- Little Miss Sunshine
- Liv Tyler
- Liv Ullmann
- Lucy Liu
- Ludacris
- Lupe Ontiveros
- Madhur Mittal
- Maggie Smith
- Maid Marian
- Margaret Rutherford
- Maria Theodorakis
- Marisa Berenson
- Marjorie Rambeau
- Marjorie Rhodes
- Marlee Matlin
- Martin Crimp
- Martin Scorsese
- Martin Wuttke
- Matt Dillon
- Melanie Griffith
- Melbourne
- Melissa Leo
- Meryl Streep
- Michael Fassbender
- Michael Gambon
- Michael Gow
- Michelle Pfeiffer
- Mike Myers
- Mira Sorvino
- Miranda Otto
- Miranda Richardson
- Miriam Margolyes
- Mo'Nique
- Mona Washbourne
- Monic Hendrickx
- Mr. and Mrs. Stewie
- Mélanie Laurent
- Mýa
- Natalie Portman
- Neil Armfield
- Nicole Kidman
- Nina Foch
- Noomi Rapace
- Norman Corwin
- Octavia Spencer
- Old Vic Theatre
- Oleanna (play)
- Olivia Colman
- Olympia Dukakis
- Ophelia
- Orlando Bloom
- Oscar and Lucinda
- Pamela Franklin
- Pamela Rabe
- Parklands (film)
- Pat Thomson
- Patricia Clarkson
- Patricia Highsmith
- Paul Charlier
- Paul Dano
- Paul Giamatti
- Pauline Collins
- Peggy Ashcroft
- Penélope Cruz
- Peter Jackson
- Petty Officer
- Pia Miranda
- Plenty (play)
- Police Rescue
- Ponyo
- Procter & Gamble
- Pushing Tin
- Queen Latifah
- Rachel Griffiths
- Rachel Weisz
- Ralph Fiennes
- Recklinghausen
- Reese Witherspoon
- Renée Zellweger
- Richard E. Grant
- Richard Gere
- Richard Roxburgh
- Ridley Scott
- Robyn Nevin
- Rod Taylor
- Ronee Blakley
- Rosanna Arquette
- Rosemary Harris
- Rubina Ali
- Ruby Dee
- Ruhrfestspiele
- Russell Crowe
- Ryan Phillippe
- Sabine Azéma
- Sacha Horler
- Sally Field
- Sally Kirkland
- Sandra Bullock
- Sandra Oh
- Screen Actors Guild
- Sean Astin
- Sean Bean
- Sexual harassment
- Shailene Woodley
- Shakespeare in Love
- Sharon Stone
- Shirley Jones
- Shirley MacLaine
- Shohreh Aghdashloo
- Sideways (film)
- Sigourney Weaver
- Sissy Spacek
- SK-II
- Slumdog Millionaire
- SolarAid
- Sophie Thompson
- Stephen Fry
- Steve Carell
- Susan Misner
- Susan Sarandon
- Susan Wooldridge
- Sybil Thorndike
- Sydney Festival
- Sydney Film Festival
- Sylvester Groth
- Sylvia Sidney
- Talia Shire
- Tanay Chheda
- Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar
- Taye Diggs
- Teen Choice Awards
- Terrence Howard
- Terrence Malick
- Tess Harper
- Thandie Newton
- The Gift (2000 film)
- The Good German
- The King's Speech
- The Man Who Cried
- The Missing
- The Price of Salt
- The Seagull
- The Tempest
- Thomas Haden Church
- Théâtre de la Ville
- Til Schweiger
- Tilda Swinton
- Time (magazine)
- Timothy Spall
- Tina Bursill
- Tom Hollander
- Tommy Lee Jones
- Toni Collette
- Top Girls
- Uma Thurman
- Uncle Vanya
- Ursula Yovich
- USS Arneb (AKA-56)
- Valerie Perrine
- Veronica Guerin
- Vienna Festival
- Viggo Mortensen
- Viola Davis
- Virginia Madsen
- Virginia Maskell
- Vivien Merchant
- Volpi Cup
- Warehouse Theatre
- Whoopi Goldberg
- Wikipedia Link rot
- Wikipedia Persondata
- William Fichtner
- Winona Ryder
- Woody Harrelson
- Zhang Ziyi
- Zoe Saldana
-
Egypt
Egypt
i/ˈiːdʒɪpt/ (Arabic: مصر, Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic: [mɑsˤɾ] ; Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, Kīmi ; Sahidic Coptic: ⲕⲏⲙⲉ, Kēme), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: 
جمهوريّة مصر العربيّة (help·info), is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers (390,000 sq mi), Egypt is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.
Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its over 81 million people live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.
wn.com/Egypt -
Melbourne
Melbourne ([ˈmelbən, -bn̩, ˈmæl-],rhotically /ˈmɛlbərn/) is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2010, the greater geographical area had an approximate population of four million. Inhabitants of Melbourne are called Melburnians or Melbournians.
The metropolis is located on the large natural bay known as Port Phillip, with the city centre positioned at the estuary of the Yarra River (at the northernmost point of the bay). The metropolitan area then extends south from the city centre, along the eastern and western shorelines of Port Phillip, and expands into the hinterland. The city centre is situated in the municipality known as the City of Melbourne, and the metropolitan area consists of a further 30 municipalities.
Melbourne was founded in 1835 (47 years after the European settlement of Australia) by settlers from Launceston in Van Diemen's Land. It was named by governor Richard Bourke in 1837, in honour of the British Prime Minister of the day, William Lamb—the 2nd Viscount Melbourne. Melbourne was officially declared a city by Queen Victoria in 1847. In 1851, it became the capital city of the newly created colony of Victoria. During the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, it was transformed into one of the world's largest and wealthiest cities. After the federation of Australia in 1901, it then served as the interim seat of government of the newly created nation of Australia until 1927.
wn.com/Melbourne -
Théâtre de la Ville
The Théâtre de la Ville is one of the two theatres built in the 19th century by Baron Haussmann at Place du Châtelet, Paris; the other being the Théâtre du Châtelet. It is located at 2, place du Châtelet in the 4th arrondissement.
In the past the theatre bore the names Théâtre Lyrique, Théâtre des Nations, and Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt.
The theatre was designed by the architect Gabriel Davioud for Baron Haussmann between 1860 and 1862. It was burnt down in May 1871 during recapturing of Paris by Versailles forces at the end of Paris Commune, but it was rebuilt in 1874 on the same plans.
The theatre has been known at different times under the names Théâtre Lyrique and Théâtre des Nations (since 1874), before taking its name (in 1899) after the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt, who produced there from 1899 for nearly two decades.
Victor Maurel produced a season of Italian opera at the Théâtre des Nations in 1884. It included on 1 February 1884 the first Paris performance of Massenet's Hérodiade, in the Italian version entitled Erodiade. The cast included Mme Fidès-Devriès as Salomé, Guglielmina Tremelli as Hérodiade, Jean de Reszke as Jean, Maurel as Hérode, Édouard de Reszke as Phanuel, and Giuseppe Villani as Vitellius. In the tenth and final performance of Erodiade on 13 March three De Reszkes could be heard, as Josephine sang Salomé.
wn.com/Théâtre_de_la_Ville
-
Abbie Cornish
Abbie Cornish (born 7 August 1982) is an Australian actress known for her film and television roles, particularly her award-winning lead performance in 2004's Somersault, and internationally for her role as Fanny Brawne in Bright Star and her appearance as Sweet Pea in Sucker Punch.
Cornish was born in Lochinvar, New South Wales, as the second of five children. She grew up on a 70 hectare (170-acre) farm, attended Catholic school, and was fascinated by independent and foreign films.
Her name is rather notorious for being linked to actor Ryan Phillipe during his highly publicized divorce from Reese Witherspoon, with whom he has two children. The four-year relationship between Phillipe and Cornish ended in 2010.
Her career began at the age of thirteen, when she began taking jobs as a model after reaching the finals of a Dolly Magazine competition. In 1999, Cornish was awarded the Australian Film Institute Young Actor's Award for her role in the ABC's television show Wildside and was offered her first role in a feature film, The Monkey's Mask.
wn.com/Abbie_Cornish -
Abigail Breslin
Abigail Kathleen Breslin (born April 14, 1996) is an American actress. She is one of the youngest actresses ever to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Breslin appeared in her first commercial when she was only three years old, and in her first film, Signs, at the age of five. Her subsequent films include Little Miss Sunshine, Nim's Island, Definitely, Maybe, My Sister's Keeper, Zombieland and Rango.
Breslin was born in New York City, the daughter of Kim, who manages her career, and Michael, a telecommunications expert, computer programmer, and consultant. Breslin has two older brothers, Ryan and Spencer, who are also actors. Breslin lives in New York with her family, which her maternal grandparents have described as "very close-knit". She is named after First Lady of the United States Abigail Adams.
wn.com/Abigail_Breslin -
Ahmad Zaki (actor)
Ahmed Zaki Metwally Badawi, (Arabic:احمد زكي متولى بدوى) was born on November 18, 1949, and died on March 27, 2005), he was a leading Egyptian film star. He was characterised by his talent, skill and ability in impersonating. He was also famous for his on-screen vehemence, often genuinely hitting co-stars during scenes of violence. He is widely regarded the greatest male star in the history of Arabian cinema.
Ahmed Zaki was born in the city of Zagazig, about 50 miles north of Cairo, Egypt. He graduated from Zagazig's Crafts School in 1967, and then traveled to Cairo to study cinema before he graduated from the Cairo Higher Institute for Drama Studies in 1974.
part as a room service attendant in the comedy play Hello Shalabi; (the original actor didn't show up, and Ahmed who was working as Soft Drinks vendor at the time, managed to get the fill-in on one night) he managed to make an impressive comic sketch, notably impersonating the celebrated villain actor Mahmoud el-Meliguy which managed to let everyone take note of his impressive, natural performance. Such impersonation was Zaki's favourite hobby, and it was a skill he developed over time.
wn.com/Ahmad_Zaki_(actor) -
Amanda Douge
Amanda Douge (born December 1976) is an Australian actress, best known from a range of television and feature film roles.
Douge studied law at Melbourne University (1993) and has been with the Melbourne Theatre Company.
She is currently playing Becky Gallagher, the mentally ill twin sister of Dr. Jack Gallagher on the FOX drama Mental.
wn.com/Amanda_Douge -
Amanda Muggleton
Amanda Lillian Muggleton (born 1951) is an Australian theatre, television and film actress. She is best known for her role on television soap opera Prisoner.
Muggleton was born in Stepney, London in 1951 and emigrated to Australia in 1974. She trained at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Dance.
Perhaps her most famous television role is that of Chrissie Latham in Australian soap opera Prisoner. Other roles include Connie Ryan in Richmond Hill, and guest roles in television series including A Country Practice and Cop Shop, and a role in miniseries Sara Dane. Film credits include Mad Max, Street Hero, Queen of the Road, Mr. Reliable, Feeling Sexy and Idiot Box.
Muggleton has appeared with all the State and commercial theatre companies. On stage, her performances with State theatre companies include Privates on Parade, The Matchmaker, The Seagull, Shirley Valentine (MTC), Master Class, Nicholas Nickleby, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Soulmates (STC), Duet for One, The Winter's Tale, Gigi, We Were Dancing (QTC), Twelfth Night, Blithe Spirit (SATC), Educating Rita, Medea and Shirley Valentine (Hole in the Wall, Perth).
wn.com/Amanda_Muggleton -
Amy Adams
Amy Lou Adams (born August 20, 1974) is an American actress and singer. Adams was born in Vicenza, Italy to American parents, and began her performing career on stage in dinner theaters, before making her screen debut in the 1999 black comedy film Drop Dead Gorgeous. After a series of television guest appearances and roles in B movies, she was cast in the role of Brenda Strong in 2002's Catch Me If You Can, but her breakthrough role was in the 2005 independent film Junebug, playing Ashley Johnsten, for which she received critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Adams subsequently starred in Disney's 2007 film Enchanted, a critical and commercial success, and received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance as Princess Giselle. She received her second Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations the following year for her role as a young nun, Sister James, in Doubt. Though she has appeared in a range of dramatic and comedic roles, Adams has gained a reputation for playing characters with cheerful and sunny dispositions. Adams starred in Sunshine Cleaning with Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin, and the following year appeared as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. She appeared in Julie & Julia in 2009 portraying writer Julie Powell followed by Leap Year in 2010. Her recent role as Charlene Fleming in The Fighter earned Adams her third Academy Award nomination, her third Golden Globe Award, second BAFTA Award, and fifth Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. In 2011, Adams appeared in the critically acclaimed musical film The Muppets alongside Jason Segel. She is scheduled to play Lois Lane in the upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel in 2013.
wn.com/Amy_Adams -
Amy Ryan
Amy Ryan (born November 30, 1969) is an American actress. She has been nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for her performance in Gone Baby Gone (2007) and is also known for her roles in HBO's The Wire, playing Port Authority Officer Beadie Russell; HBO's In Treatment, playing psychiatrist Adele Brousse; and NBC's The Office, playing human resources representative Holly Flax.
Ryan was born in Queens, New York City. Ryan is her mother's maiden name. She is of English, Irish, and Polish descent. Growing up in the 1970s, Ryan and her sister delivered the Daily News by bike. At a young age, Ryan attended the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Center in upstate New York. At 17, she graduated from New York's High School of Performing Arts. Hired for the national tour of Biloxi Blues right out of high school, Ryan worked steadily off-Broadway for the next decade.
Ryan made her off-Broadway debut in the Westside Theatre's 1987 production of A Shayna Maidel, playing the role of Hanna. The following year she was seen in the Second Stage Theatre Company's revival of The Rimers of Eldritch. Additional off-Broadway credits include As Bees In Honey Drown, Crimes of the Heart and Saved. She also worked in regional theater, where she originated roles in new plays by Neil LaBute, Arthur Miller and Neil Simon. On Broadway she has appeared as Tess in The Sisters Rosensweig, Natasha in the 1997 revival of The Three Sisters, and Peggy in the 2001–2002 revival of The Women.
wn.com/Amy_Ryan -
Andrew Upton
Andrew Upton (born c. 1966) is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, and director. He is the husband of the actress Cate Blanchett.
As a playwright, Upton created adaptations of Hedda Gabler, The Cherry Orchard, Cyrano de Bergerac, Don Juan (with Marion Potts) and Uncle Vanya for the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and Maxim Gorky's The Philistines for London's Royal National Theatre.
His original play Riflemind, with Hugo Weaving as an ageing rock star planning a comeback tour, opened at the STC on 5 October 2007 to favourable reviews.Riflemind opened in London in 2008, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman but closed after a short run due to uniformly poor notices and the pressure of the Global Financial Crisis. In 2008, Upton and wife Cate Blanchett became joint artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company for a three-year term.
Upton and Blanchett formed a film production company, Dirty Films, whose projects include the short film Bangers (1999) and the feature film Little Fish (2006). Upton wrote, produced, and directed Bangers, which starred Blanchett. He was the associate producer on Little Fish, which also starred Blanchett. In 2006, he wrote the film Gone which was directed by Ringan Ledwidge. Upton wrote the libretto to Alan John's opera Through the Looking Glass which premiered in May 2008.
wn.com/Andrew_Upton -
Andy Serkis
Andrew Clement "Andy" Serkis (born 20 April 1964) is an English film actor, director and author.
He is popularly known for playing through motion capture to animate and voice computer-generated characters: Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and its upcoming prequel The Hobbit, King Kong in the eponymous 2005 film, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin.
Andrew also earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of Ian Brady in the British television film Longford. Serkis's motion captured work have been critically acclaimed, especially as Gollum for which he earned several award nominations, becoming the first motion captured actor to win a Empire Award, a Saturn Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Serkis, one of five children, was born and brought up in Ruislip Manor in west London. His mother, Lylie (née Weech), was English and taught disabled children; his father, Clement Serkis, was an Iraqi gynaecologist of Armenian ethnicity. His ancestors' original surname had been "Sarkisian".
wn.com/Andy_Serkis -
Anil Kapoor
Anil Kapoor (Hindi: अनिल कपूर; Punjabi: ਅਨਿਲ ਕਪੂਰ; born 24 December 1959) is an Indian actor, producer and director who has appeared in many Bollywood films and more recently international films.
He won his first Filmfare Award, in the Best Supporting Actor category, for his role in Yash Chopra's Mashaal (1984). Kapoor earned his first Filmfare Best Actor Award for his performance in N. Chandra's Tezaab (1988) and later again for his perfornance in Indra Kumar's Beta (1992). He also starred in many other critically and commercially successful films, including Woh Saat Din (1983), Meri Jung (1985), Janbaaz (1986), Karma (1986), Mr. India (1987), Virasat (1997) for which he won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor, Biwi No.1 (1999), Taal (1999) for which he won his second Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award, Pukar (2000) for which he won his first National Film Award for Best Actor, No Entry (2005), and Welcome (2007).
Kapoor's first role in an international film was in Danny Boyle's 2008 Academy Award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, for which he shared the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. His performance in the eighth season of the action series 24 generated rave reviews from the American press. Globally, Anil Kapoor is one of the most recognised Indian actors. He has also appeared in the 2011 film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
wn.com/Anil_Kapoor -
Anjelica Huston
Anjelica Huston /ˈhjuːstən/ (born July 8, 1951) is an American actress. Huston became the third generation of her family to win an Academy Award, for her performance in 1985's Prizzi's Honor, joining her father, director John Huston, and grandfather, actor Walter Huston. She later was nominated in 1989 and 1990 for her acting in Enemies, a Love Story and The Grifters respectively. Among her roles, she starred as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), receiving Golden Globe nominations for both. Huston also played the Grand High Witch in the children's movie Witches, TheThe Witches in 1990 and is, more recently, known for her frequent collaborations with director Wes Anderson. She currently stars on the NBC musical drama, Smash.
Anjelica Huston was born in Santa Monica, California, and is the daughter of director and actor John Huston and Italian–American prima ballerina Enrica 'Ricki' (née Soma), from New York. Huston spent most of her childhood in Ireland and England. She grew up in Saint Clerans House near Craughwell, County Galway. In 1969, she began taking a few small roles in her father's movies. In that same year, her mother, who was 39 years old, died in a car accident, and Huston relocated to the US, where she modeled for several years. While she modeled, she worked with photographers such as Richard Avedon and Bob Richardson.
wn.com/Anjelica_Huston -
Anna Kendrick
Anna Kendrick (born August 9, 1985) is an American actress. She rose to fame after her performance as Natalie Keener in Up in the Air, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her other work includes The Twilight Saga, Camp, Rocket Science, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 50/50, and the Broadway musical High Society.
Kendrick "caught the [acting] bug" at the age of 10, when she caught a bus from Portland, Maine, to New York City so that she could attend auditions. Kendrick's first acting role was as Dinah in the Broadway musical High Society in August 1998 when she was 12 years old, a performance for which she earned Theatre World Award, Drama Desk Award, and Tony Award nominations, making her the third-youngest Tony Award nominee.
Kendrick went on to appear in a number of other theater productions, including the musical A Little Night Music, before making her film debut in the 2003 musical comedy Camp, for which she was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category at the 2004 Chlotrudis Awards and Best Debut Performance Independent Spirit Award for her portrayal of Fritzi Wagner.
wn.com/Anna_Kendrick -
Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft (September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005) was an American actress associated with the method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft was often acknowledged for her work in film, theatre and television. She won one Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards, and several other awards and nominations.
She made her film debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and, following a string of supporting film roles during the 1950s, won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Miracle Worker (1962), receiving subsequent nominations for her roles in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), The Turning Point (1977), and Agnes of God (1985). Bancroft's other acclaimed movies as a lead actress include Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), To Be or Not to Be (1983), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987).
Later in her career, she made the transition back to supporting roles in theatrical films such as Point of No Return (1993), Home for the Holidays (1995), Great Expectations (1998), Antz (1998), Keeping the Faith (2000), and Heartbreakers (2001). She also starred in seven television films, the last of which was The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003) for which she received Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.
wn.com/Anne_Bancroft -
Anne Heche
Anne Celeste Heche ( /ˈheɪʃ/ HAYSH; born May 25, 1969) is an American actress, director, and screenwriter. She started her career on the daytime soap opera Another World, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991. Heche gradually landed supporting roles in feature films, and in 1997 appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer, Wag the Dog, Donnie Brasco and Volcano. Her first leading role in a major Hollywood film was Six Days Seven Nights (1998)—which has remained her highest-profile film role to date. Following a supporting role in the film John Q. (2002), she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her performance in the TV movie Gracie's Choice (2004), and starred in the 2006–2008 TV series Men in Trees. Her most recent film roles include Spread (2009), The Other Guys (2010), and Cedar Rapids (2011); she currently appears in the HBO cable TV series Hung.
Heche was beginning to establish herself in films during the late 1990s, when she began a highly publicized relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. In 2001, a year after her break-up with DeGeneres, Heche married cameraman Coleman Laffoon, with whom she had a son. Since their separation in 2007 (they divorced in 2009), she has lived with actor James Tupper, with whom she also has a son.
wn.com/Anne_Heche -
Annette Bening
Annette Carol Bening (born May 29, 1958) is an American actress. Bening is a four-time Oscar nominee for her roles in The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia and The Kids Are All Right, winning Golden Globe Awards for the latter two films. Bening is married to actor Warren Beatty, with whom she has four children.
Bening was born in Topeka, Kansas, the youngest of four children. Her mother, Shirley (née Ashley), was a church singer and soloist, and her father, Arnett Grant Bening, was a sales training consultant and insurance salesman. Her parents, natives of Iowa, were practicing Episcopalians and conservative Republicans. Her sister and two brothers are Jane, Bradley and Byron. The family moved to Wichita, Kansas, in 1959, where she spent her early childhood. In 1965, her father took a job with a company in San Diego, California, and they moved there. She began acting in junior high school, playing the lead in The Sound of Music. She graduated in 1975, from Patrick Henry High School where she studied drama.
wn.com/Annette_Bening -
August Diehl
August Diehl (born 4 January 1976) is a German actor, primarily known to international audiences for playing SS-Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellstrom in Inglourious Basterds and Michael "Mike" Krause, Evelyn Salt's husband, in the movie Salt, as well as for his leading role in the Academy Award-winning Austrian film The Counterfeiters (2007).
Diehl was born in Berlin. His father is actor Hans Diehl, his mother is a costume designer and his brother is a composer. His family was frequently moving around, while he grew up: the Diehls used to live in Hamburg, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Bavaria and France. Growing up in a family of artists, at the age of 18, he played Franz Mohr in a school theatre production of Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller. After passing the Abitur exams, Diehl studied acting at the renowned Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch in Berlin. In 2000, he was named one of European film's "Shooting Stars" by the European Film Promotion. In 2006, Gala magazine named him "the most important German actor of today." Diehl is married to actress Julia Malik. On 23rd May 2009 the couple had a daughter, Elsa Augusta. Diehl plays the guitar and speaks Spanish, German, French and English.
wn.com/August_Diehl -
Bob Balaban
Robert Elmer "Bob" Balaban (born August 16, 1945) is an American actor, author and director.
Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor (née Pottasch) and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television. His family was a dominant force in the theatre business; his uncles founded the Balaban and Katz Theatre circuit in Chicago, a chain which included the Chicago and Uptown Theatres. Balaban and Katz operated some of the most beautiful movie palaces in the United States beginning in the 1920s. Bob Balaban's father and his uncle Harry founded the H & E Balaban Corporation in Chicago. H & E Balaban Corporation operated their own movie palaces including the Esquire Theatre in Chicago. They later owned a powerful group of television stations and cable television franchises. His uncle Barney Balaban was president of Paramount Pictures for nearly 30 years from 1936 to 1964. His grandmother's second husband, Sam Katz, was a vice president at MGM beginning in 1936. Sam had early partnered with Bob's uncles Abe, Barney, John and Max to form Balaban and Katz. Sam also served as President of the Publix theatre division of Paramount Pictures.
wn.com/Bob_Balaban -
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (
/ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965. However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.
wn.com/Bob_Dylan -
Brad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received four Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one Golden Globe. He has been described as one of the world's most attractive men, a label for which he has received substantial media attention.
Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the road movie Thelma & Louise (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget productions came with A River Runs Through It (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994), and Legends of the Fall (1994). In 1995, he gave critically acclaimed performances in the crime thriller Seven and the science fiction film 12 Monkeys, the latter earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination. Four years later, Pitt starred in the cult hit Fight Club. He then starred in the major international hit Ocean's Eleven (2001) and its sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). His greatest commercial successes have been Troy (2004) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Pitt received his second and third Academy Award nominations for his leading performances in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011). In addition, Pitt owns a production company, Plan B Entertainment, whose productions include The Departed (2006), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Moneyball, which garnered a Best Picture nomination.
wn.com/Brad_Pitt -
Brenda Blethyn
Brenda Anne Blethyn, OBE (born Brenda Anne Bottle; 20 February 1946) is an English actress who has worked in theatre, television and film. Blethyn has received two Academy Award nominations, two SAG Award nominations, two Emmy Award nominations and three Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one. In addition, she has won a BAFTA, an Empire Award and a Golden Lion, and has earned a Theatre World Award and both a Critics' Circle Theatre Award and a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for her theatrical work.
Born into a working class home, Blethyn pursued an administrative career until her early 30s before enrolling in the Guildford School of Acting after the dissolution of her marriage in 1973. She subsequently joined the Royal National Theatre and received credits for her performances in Troilus and Cressida (1976) and Mysteries (1979). In 1981, Blethyn earned her first critical acclaim for Steaming.
In 1980, Blethyn made her television debut in Mike Leigh's film Grown-Ups; then, after a modest number of guest spots in several productions, in the mid-1980s she garnered leading roles in the short-living sitcoms Chance in a Million and The Labours of Erica. Having followed her big screen debut with smaller supporting roles in films such as The Witches (1990) and A River Runs Through It (1992), she made her real cinema breakthrough with her role in the 1996 dramedy Secrets & Lies, for which she received rave reviews.
wn.com/Brenda_Blethyn -
Brendan Fraser
Brendan James Fraser (born December 3, 1968) is a Canadian-American film and stage actor. Fraser portrayed Rick O'Connell in the three-part Mummy film series (1999, 2001, and 2008), and is known for his comedic and fantasy film leading roles in major Hollywood films, including Encino Man (1992), George of the Jungle (1997), Dudley Do-Right (1999), Monkeybone (2001), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), and Inkheart (2009). Has also appeared in numerous dramatic roles, including Crash (2004) and The Quiet American (2002). He is set to star in the upcoming movie Gimme Shelter (2012).
Fraser was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Canadian parents. His mother, Carol Mary (née Genereux), was a sales counselor, and his father, Peter Fraser, was a former journalist who worked as a Canadian foreign service officer for the Government Office of Tourism. His maternal uncle, George Genereux, was the only Canadian to win a gold medal in the 1952 Summer Olympics. Fraser has three older brothers: Kevin, Regan, and Sean. His surname is properly pronounced /ˈfreɪzər/, not /ˈfreɪʒər/. The correct pronunciation of his surname is a running gag in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, in which his character's surname is pronounced /frɛrəˈʒʊər/. His ancestry includes Irish, Scottish, German, Czech, and French Canadian.
wn.com/Brendan_Fraser -
Carrie-Anne Moss
Carrie-Anne Moss (born August 21, 1967) is a Canadian actress, best known for her role of Trinity in The Matrix trilogy. She has had other notable roles in Memento, Chocolat, Fido, and Unthinkable.
Carrie-Anne Moss was born in Burnaby, British Columbia to parents Melvyn and Barbara Moss. She has an older brother, Brooke. Moss' mother reportedly named her after The Hollies' 1967 hit song, "Carrie Anne", which had been released in May that year. Moss lived with her mother in Vancouver as a child. At the age of 11, she joined the Vancouver children's musical theatre and later went on to tour Europe with the Magee Secondary School Choir in her senior year.
While in Spain, she landed a role in the drama series Dark Justice, her first television appearance. She moved from Barcelona to Los Angeles, California with the series in 1992. She enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena upon her return. She starred in Fox's short-lived primetime soap opera Models Inc., a spin-off of Melrose Place, as a model.
wn.com/Carrie-Anne_Moss -
Caryl Churchill
Caryl Churchill (born 3 September 1938) is an English dramatist known for her use of non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes, the abuses of power, and sexual politics. She is acknowledged as a major playwright in the English language and a leading female writer. Her early work developed Brecht's modernist dramatic and theatrical techniques of ‘Epic theatre’ to explore issues around gender and sexuality. From A Mouthful of Birds (1986) onwards, she began to experiment with forms of dance-theatre, incorporating techniques developed from the performance tradition initiated by Artaud with his 'Theatre of Cruelty'. This move away from a clear Fabel dramaturgy towards increasingly fragmented and surrealistic narratives characterizes her work as postmodernist.
Churchill was born in London, England, the daughter of Jan, a fashion model, and Robert Churchill, a political cartoonist. After World War II her family emigrated to Montreal, Canada at ten years old, where she attended Trafalgar School for Girls. She returned to England to attend university, and graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, a women’s college of the Oxford University, in 1960 with a B.A. degree in English Literature. She also began her career there. Her four earliest plays, Downstairs (produced 1958),You've No Need to be Frightened, Having a Wonderful Time (1960), and Easy Death (produced 1962) were performed by Oxford-based theatrical ensembles-student drama groups.
wn.com/Caryl_Churchill -
Catherine O'Hara
Catherine Anne O'Hara (born March 4, 1954) is a Canadian-American actress, writer and comedienne. She is well known for her comedy work on SCTV, and her roles in the films After Hours, Beetlejuice, Home Alone, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and also in the mockumentary films written and directed by Christopher Guest including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration.
O'Hara was born in Toronto, Ontario, into a large Irish Catholic family, and was raised Roman Catholic. She attended Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute, where she first met Robin Duke, who went on to her own comedy career.
Catherine started her comedy career in 1974 as a cast member of The Second City in her native Toronto. She was an understudy for Gilda Radner until Radner left for Saturday Night Live. Two years later, this theatre troupe created the sketch comedy show SCTV, for which O'Hara became a regular performer. Her memorable characterizations on the show included Las Vegas scorcher Lola Heatherton, buzzer-happy game show contestant Margaret Meehan, raunchy nightclub comedian Dusty Towne, soap opera seductress Sue Ellen, and stage actress Sue Bopper Simpson.
wn.com/Catherine_O'Hara -
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Catherine Zeta-Jones, CBE, ( /ˈziːtə/; born Catherine Zeta Jones; 25 September 1969) is a Welsh actress. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of United Kingdom and United States television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as the 1998 action film The Mask of Zorro and the 1999 crime thriller film Entrapment. Her breakthrough role was in the 2000 film Traffic, for which she earned her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.
Zeta-Jones subsequently starred as Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of the musical Chicago, a critical and commercial success, and received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Later, she appeared in the 2003 romantic comedy film Intolerable Cruelty and 2004 crime comedy film Ocean's Twelve. Zeta-Jones starred in the 2005 sequel of the 1998 film, The Legend of Zorro. She also starred in the 2008 biopic romantic thriller Death Defying Acts. In 2010, she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Desiree in A Little Night Music.
wn.com/Catherine_Zeta-Jones -
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron (American English pronunciation: /ʃɑrˈliːs ˈθɛrən/; Afrikaans pronunciation: [ʃɐrˈlis tron]; born 7 August 1975) is a South African actress and fashion model. She started her acting career in the United States and rose to fame in the late 1990s following roles in The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999). Theron won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003), becoming the first African to win an Academy Award in a major acting category. She received another Academy Award nomination for her performance in North Country (2005). Theron became a US citizen in 2007, while retaining her South African citizenship.
Theron was born in Benoni, in the then Transvaal Province of South Africa, the only child of Gerda (née Maritz; who has also called herself Gerta) and Charles Theron (born 27 November 1947).Second Boer War figure Danie Theron was her great-great-uncle. Her ancestry includes French, German, and Dutch; her French forebears were early Huguenot settlers in South Africa. "Theron" is an Occitan surname (originally spelled Théron) pronounced in Afrikaans as [tron], although she has said that the way she pronounces it in South Africa is [θron]. She changed the pronunciation when she moved to the U.S. to give it a more "American" sound.
wn.com/Charlize_Theron -
Christina Ricci
Christina Ricci (born February 12, 1980) is an American actress. Ricci received initial recognition and praise as a child star for her performance as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), and her role as Kat Harvey in Casper (1995). Ricci made a transition into more adult-oriented roles with The Ice Storm (1997), followed by an acclaimed performance in Buffalo 66 (1998) and then The Opposite of Sex (1998), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She continued her success with well-received performances in Sleepy Hollow (1999), Monster (2003), Penelope (2006) and Black Snake Moan (2007). In 2006 Ricci was nominated for an Emmy award for her role as a paramedic in the ABC drama Grey's Anatomy. She currently stars as Maggie Ryan in the television show Pan Am.
Ricci was born in Santa Monica, California, the fourth and youngest child of Sarah (née Murdoch), a former Ford Model and real estate agent, and Ralph Ricci, a lawyer and psychiatrist. Regarding her ancestry, Ricci has stated that "the Italian blood has been bred out of me. There's an Italian four or five generations back who married an Irish woman and they all [sic] had sons. So they married more Irish women, there were more sons, and more Irish women. Now I'm basically Scots-Irish."
wn.com/Christina_Ricci -
Christoph Waltz
Christoph Waltz (German pronunciation: [kristɔf valts]; born 4 October 1956) is an Austrian actor, who also holds German citizenship.
He received international acclaim for his portrayal of SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2009.
Christoph Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria. He is the son of German-born Johannes Waltz and Austrian-born Elisabeth Urbancic, set and stage designers. His maternal grandmother was Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was actor Emmerich Reimers. His great-grandparents also worked in the theatre.
Waltz studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. He also attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. He started as a stage actor, performing at venues such as Zurich's Schauspielhaus Zürich, Vienna's Burgtheater, and the Salzburg Festival. He became a prolific television actor. In 2000, he made his directorial debut, with the German-language television production Wenn man sich traut.
wn.com/Christoph_Waltz -
Clive Owen
Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He then garnered critical acclaim for his work in the film Close My Eyes (1991) before getting international notice for his performance as a struggling writer in Croupier (1998). In 2005, Owen won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his appearance in the drama Closer (2004). He has since played leading roles in films such as Sin City (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), and The International (2009).
The fourth of five brothers, Owen was born in Coventry, in the English Midlands, a son of Pamela (née Cotton) and Jess Owen, a country and western singer of Welsh descent. His father left the family when Owen was three years old, and despite a brief reconciliation when Owen was nineteen, the two have remained estranged. Raised by his mother and stepfather, a railway ticket clerk, he has described his childhood as "rough." While initially opposed to drama school, he changed his mind in 1984, after a long and fruitless period of searching for work. Owen graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1987 with a class that included Rebecca Pidgeon, Serena Harragin, Mark Womack, and Liza Tarbuck. After graduation, he won a position at the Young Vic, performing in several Shakespearean plays.
wn.com/Clive_Owen -
Cloris Leachman
Cloris Leachman (born April 30, 1926) is an American actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award. She co-starred in the 1971 film The Last Picture Show. Leachman's longest running role was the nosy, self-centered and manipulative landlady Phyllis Lindstrom on the 1970s TV series Mary Tyler Moore, and later on the spinoff series, Phyllis. She also appeared in three Mel Brooks films, including Young Frankenstein. She had a regular role on the last two seasons of The Facts of Life portraying the character Beverly Ann Stickle. In recent years, she had a recurring role as Lois's mother Ida Gorski on Malcolm in the Middle. She also starred in the roast of Bob Saget in 2008. Leachman was a contestant on Season 7 (2008) of Dancing with the Stars, paired with Corky Ballas. At the age of 82, she was the oldest contestant to dance on the series.
Leachman was the grand marshal for the 2009 New Year's Day Tournament of Roses Parade and Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California. She presided over the 120th parade, the theme being "Hats Off to Entertainment", and the 95th Rose Bowl game. Leachman plays a supporting role in Raising Hope, a sitcom that premiered in the fall of 2010 on Fox. She will star with Tara Reid in The Fields, and with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz in Gambit, a remake of a 1966 film.
wn.com/Cloris_Leachman -
Connie Nielsen
Connie Inge-Lise Nielsen (born 3 July 1965) is a Danish actress. She is known for her roles in the English language films Gladiator, The Devil's Advocate, Basic, and The Ice Harvest. She currently stars as Meredith Kane on the Starz series Boss.
Nielsen was born in Frederikshavn, Denmark. Her father, Bent Nielsen, was a bus driver, and her mother was an insurance clerk who also acted and wrote musical reviews. She was raised a Mormon and grew up in a village named Elling. She began her acting career working alongside her mother on the local revue and variety scene. At 18, she traveled to Paris, France, where she worked as an actress and model, which led to further work and study in Italy—at drama school in Rome and in master classes with Lydia Styx, a teacher at Piccolo Teatro di Milano in Milan. She lived in Italy for many years, before moving to the United States, where she still resides.
Nielsen's feature film debut was the Jerry Lewis French film Par Où T'es Rentré? On T'a Pas Vu Sortir in 1984, followed by a role in the Italian mini-series Colletti Bianchi in 1988. She appeared in the Italian film Vacanze di Natale '91 (1991) and the French film Le Paradis Absolument (1993).
wn.com/Connie_Nielsen -
Daniel Brühl
Daniel César Martín Brühl González Domingo ( listen (help·info); born 16 June 1978) is a Spanish-born German actor. He is best known as Daniel Brühl.
Brühl was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. His father was the late German TV director Hanno Brühl and his mother was a Spanish professor. He also has a brother and a sister. Shortly after his birth his family moved to Cologne, Germany, where he grew up and attended the Dreikönigsgymnasium. Brought up in a fully multilingual home, he speaks Spanish, German, Catalan, French and English. In 2006, Brühl separated from his long-time girlfriend, actress Jessica Schwarz, to whom he was engaged. He is an FC Barcelona fan.
Brühl began acting at a young age and made his first steps in 1995 as street kid Benji in the soap opera Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love). His international breakthrough role came in 2003 as Alex Kerner in the Golden Globe-nominated film Good Bye, Lenin!, which reached an estimated six million cinema-goers worldwide. In 2003, Brühl won the European Film Academy award trophies for Best Actor (Critics/Audience Awards) for the role. Brühl made his English-speaking film debut in the 2004 Ladies in Lavender, starring alongside British acting legends Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. The same year, he won the People's Choice trophy for Best Actor for the film Love in Thoughts while at the same time, he was nominated for Best Actor (critics) for The Edukators. Brühl featured as Lieutenant Horstmayer, a central character in the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, a trilingual World War One film based on the experiences of French, German and Scottish soldiers during the Christmas truce of 1914. The film shows Brühl's linguistic ability as he ably communicates in German, French and English throughout.
wn.com/Daniel_Brühl -
Daniel Lapaine
Daniel Lapaine (born 16 April 1970) is an Australian actor.
Born in Sydney, Australia, Lapaine graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1992. In 1994, he played David Van Arckle in P. J. Hogan's Muriel's Wedding. He also starred in the 2000 television miniseries The 10th Kingdom as Prince Wendell White, ruler of the 4th Kingdom, and played Tim Allerton in the 2004 Agatha Christie's Poirot episode Death on the Nile. In 2009, he portrayed Neil Armstrong in the television film Moon Shot.
In 1998, Lapaine met English actress Fay Ripley at a party hosted by mutual friends. Neither of them thought the other was interested in dating and they drifted apart. After meeting again on a trip in New York, they began dating. They married in October 2001 in a ceremony in Tuscany, Italy. In October 2002, Ripley gave birth to their first child, a daughter called Parker. She gave birth to their second child, a son whom they named Sonny, in October 2006.
Lewis Generation of Vipers Kit Renton season 6 episode 2
wn.com/Daniel_Lapaine -
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet ( /ˈmæmɨt/; born November 30, 1947) is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.
Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984). He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997). Mamet's books include: The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, a commentary on the movie business.
Mamet was born in 1947 in Chicago to Jewish parents, Lenore June (Silver), a teacher, and Bernard Morris Mamet, an attorney. One of his first jobs was as a busboy at Chicago's The Second City. He was educated at the progressive Francis W. Parker School and at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.
wn.com/David_Mamet -
David Wenham
David Wenham (born 21 September 1965) is an Australian actor who has appeared in movies, television series and theatre productions. He is known in Hollywood for his roles as Faramir in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Carl in Van Helsing and Dilios in 300 and Neil Fletcher in Australia. He is also known in his native Australia for his role as Diver Dan in SeaChange.
Wenham was born in Marrickville, Sydney, Australia, the son of Kath and Bill Wenham. He has five older sisters; Helen, Anne, Carmel, Kathryn, and Maree; and one older brother, Peter. David was raised in the Roman Catholic faith and attended Christian Brothers' High School, Lewisham. He worked as a bingo caller and an insurance clerk before becoming successful as an actor.
Wenham started his career as an actor after graduating from Theatre Nepean at the University of Western Sydney in 1987. Wenham's television credits include several telemovies, such as his AFI award winning role in the 1996 telemovie Simone de Beauvoir's Babies; and his role as the outwardly laid back but deeply enigmatic diver Dan Della Bosca in the 1998 and 1999 seasons of the highly successful ABC television series SeaChange. His role as "Diver Dan" has made the actor something of a sex symbol, although he dislikes thinking of himself as such, and he has been voted Australia's "sexiest man alive". A portrait of Wenham by artist Adam Cullen won the Archibald Prize in 2000. Wenham is signed to Storm Model Management in London.
wn.com/David_Wenham -
Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds (born April 1, 1932) is an American actress, singer, and dancer.
Initially signed at age sixteen by Warner Bros., Reynolds' career got off to a slow start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) gave her a small but significant part in the film Three Little Words (1950), then signed her to a seven-year contract. In her next film, Two Weeks with Love (1950), she had a hit with the song "Aba Daba Honeymoon". However, it was her first leading role, in Singin' in the Rain (1952), that set her on the path to fame. By the mid 1950s, she was a major star.
Other notable successes include Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), in which her rendering of the song "Tammy" reached number one on the music charts; and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She continues to perform successfully on stage, television and film to the present day.
Reynolds' first marriage, to popular singer Eddie Fisher, produced a son and a daughter, actress/author Carrie Fisher, but ended in divorce in 1959 when Fisher and her former (and later) friend Elizabeth Taylor fell in love. Her second and third marriages also ended in divorce, each time ruining her financially.
wn.com/Debbie_Reynolds -
Denis Menochet
Denis Menochet (born 1977 in Enghien-les-Bains, Val-d'Oise) is a French film and television actor. Menochet is perhaps best known to an international audience for his role as Perrier LaPadite, a French dairy farmer interrogated by the Nazis for harboring Jews, in the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds.
Elizabeth Weitzman, a film critic for the New York Daily News, praised Menochet's work opposite Christoph Waltz in the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds. Weitzman wrote in August 2009, "The terrific opening, for example, does feature a hailstorm of bullets. What you'll remember best, though, is the haunted silence of actor Denis Menochet, playing a French farmer accused of harboring Jews."
wn.com/Denis_Menochet -
Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton (born Diane Hall; January 5, 1946) is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970. Her first major film role was as Kay Adams-Corleone in The Godfather (1972), but the films that shaped her early career were those with director and co-star Woody Allen beginning with Play It Again, Sam in 1972. Her next two films with Allen, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actor. Her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Keaton subsequently expanded her range to avoid becoming typecast as her Annie Hall persona. She became an accomplished dramatic performer, starring in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and received Academy Award nominations for Reds (1981) and Marvin's Room (1996). Some of her popular later films include Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), The First Wives Club (1996), Something's Gotta Give (2003) and The Family Stone (2005). Keaton's films have earned a cumulative gross of over US$1.1 billion in North America. In addition to acting, she is also a photographer, real estate developer, author, and occasional singer.
wn.com/Diane_Keaton -
Diane Kruger
Diane Kruger (born 15 July 1976) is a German actress and former fashion model. She is known for roles such as Helen in Troy, Dr. Abigail Chase in National Treasure and its sequel, Bridget von Hammersmark in Inglourious Basterds, Anna in Mr. Nobody, and Gina in Unknown.
She was born as Diane Heidkrüger in Algermissen, Germany, near Hildesheim, the daughter of a computer specialist Hans-Heinrich Heidkrüger, and his wife, Maria-Theresa, a bank employee. She was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic school.
She was raised in Germany with her younger brother, Stefan. Her mother sent her to student exchange programs when she was a teenager to improve her English. As a child, Kruger wanted to become a ballerina and successfully auditioned for the Royal Ballet School in London. However, after an injury ended her ballet career prematurely, Kruger moved to Paris and turned her energy toward modeling and learning French.
Kruger soon became interested in acting and took lessons at the Cours Florent. She landed some small appearances in several French films. She made her onscreen debut in 2002, opposite Dennis Hopper and Christopher Lambert in The Piano Player, a TV-movie by Jean-Pierre Roux. Her first major role was the same year when she starred in her then husband's directorial debut Mon Idole.
wn.com/Diane_Kruger -
Dominic Monaghan
Dominic Bernard Patrick Luke Monaghan ( /ˈdɒmɨnɨk ˈmɒnəhæn/; born 8 December 1976) is an English actor. He has received international attention from playing Meriadoc Brandybuck in Peter Jackson's adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and for his role as Charlie Pace on the television show Lost.
Monaghan was born in Berlin, Germany, to British parents: Maureen, a nurse, and Austin Monaghan, a science teacher. Monaghan's family lived in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Münster, moving about every four years. When he was about 11 years old, his family moved from Germany to Heaton Moor in Stockport, Greater Manchester. Monaghan's first language is English, but he also speaks some German and is well known for his ability to impersonate others and replicate accents[citation needed]. Bernard is his maternal grandfather's name, and Patrick his paternal grandfather's name. He chose Luke as his confirmation name after Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, his favourite film, which was also one of his inspirations for becoming an actor. He attended St Anne's Roman Catholic High School (where his uncle taught and later became head teacher) and Aquinas College, where he studied English literature, drama and geography.
wn.com/Dominic_Monaghan -
Edith Evans
Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE (8 February 1888 – 14 October 1976) was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.
Evans was particularly well known at portraying haughty aristocratic ladies, as in two of her most famous roles: Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (both on stage and in the 1952 film), and Miss Western in the 1963 film of Tom Jones. By contrast, she played a poverty-stricken old woman in one of her most acclaimed film roles, in The Whisperers (1967).
Edith Evans was born in London, the daughter of Edward Evans, a civil servant, and his wife, Caroline Ellen Foster. She was educated at St Michael's Church of England School, Pimlico, before being apprenticed at the age of 15 in 1903 as a milliner.
Her first stage appearance was with Miss Massey's Shakespeare Players in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night in October 1910. In 1912 she was discovered by the noted producer William Poel and made her first professional appearance for Poel in August of that year, playing the role of Gautami in a 6th century Hindu classic, Sakuntala. She received much attention with her performance as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida in London and subsequently at Stratford-upon-Avon.
wn.com/Edith_Evans -
Eileen Atkins
Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE (born 16 June 1934) is an English actress and occasional screenwriter. Born in 1934 she has worked in the theatre, film, and television consistently since 1953. She has been nominated for and received many professional awards and was created a CBE in 1990 and later a DBE in 2001.
Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London. Her mother, Annie Ellen (née Elkins), was a barmaid who was 46 when Eileen was born, and her father, Arthur Thomas Atkins, was a gas meter reader who was previously under-chauffeur to the Portuguese Ambassador. She was the third child in the family and when she was born the family moved to a council home in Tottenham. Her father did not, in fact, know how to drive and was responsible, as under-chauffeur, mainly for cleaning the car. At the time Eileen was born, her mother worked in a factory the whole day and then as a barmaid in the Elephant & Castle at night. When Eileen was three, a Gypsy woman came to their door selling lucky heather and clothes pegs. She saw little Eileen and told her mother that her daughter would be a famous dancer. Her mother promptly enrolled her in a dance class. Although she hated it, she studied dancing from age 3 to 15 or 16. From age 7 to 15, which covered the last four years of the Second World War (1941–45), she danced in working men's club circuits for 15 shillings a pop as "Baby Eileen". During the war, she performed as well at London's Stage Door canteen for American troops and sang songs like "Yankee Doodle." At one time she was attending dance class four or five times a week.
wn.com/Eileen_Atkins -
Eli Roth
Eli Raphael Roth (born April 18, 1972) is an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for his role as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds for which he won both a SAG Award (Best Ensemble) and a BFCA Critic's Choice Award (Best Acting Ensemble). He is part of a group of filmmakers dubbed the Splat Pack, because of their dedication to the genre and their relentless horror films.
Roth was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Dr. Sheldon Roth, a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, and Cora Roth, a painter. His grandparents emigrated from Austria, Russia, and Poland; Roth was raised Jewish.
Roth began shooting films at the age of eight after watching Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). He made over 50 short films with his brothers Adam and Gabe before graduating at Newton South High School and attending film school (the Tisch School of the Arts) at New York University, from which he graduated in 1994. By the age of 20, and while still a student at NYU, Roth ran the office of producer Frederick Zollo, eventually leaving to devote himself to writing full-time.
wn.com/Eli_Roth -
Emily Barclay
Emily Barclay (born 24 October 1984, Plymouth, UK) is an English-born, New Zealand AFI award winning actress.
Emily Barclay has performed in a wide variety of film and television roles. However, it wasn't until Diana Rowan (the same casting agent who discovered Anna Paquin, Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Jonathan Taylor Thomas) cast her as "Celia" in 2004's In My Father's Den that she rose to prominence.
Barclay won Most Promising Newcomer at the 2005 British Independent Film Awards for her performance in In My Father's Den, she followed with a role in the critically acclaimed 2006 black comedy Suburban Mayhem directed by Paul Goldman.
Barclay is currently represented by United Agents
Barclay also starred in the music video "Big Jet Plane" by "Angus & Julia Stone" which was directed by Kiku Ohe in 2010.
The actress has had an active involvement in animal rights, working with the organisation Save Animals From Exploitation in anti-cruelty campaigns, including having posters put in her room in In My Fathers Den; she is a vegan.
wn.com/Emily_Barclay -
Emily Mortimer
Emily Kathleen A. Mortimer (born 1 December 1971) is an English actress. She began performing on stage, and has since appeared in several film and television roles, including 30 Rock, Scream 3, Match Point, Lars and the Real Girl, Hugo, Cars 2, and Shutter Island.
Mortimer was born in Finsbury Park, London, England, a daughter of Sir John Mortimer, QC (a lawyer and writer who created Rumpole of the Bailey) and his second wife, Penelope (née Gollop). She has a younger sister, Rosie; two older half-siblings, Sally Silverman and Jeremy, by her father's first marriage, to author Penelope Fletcher; and a half-brother, Ross Bentley, by her father's liaison with actress Wendy Craig. Her maternal grandfather was a pig farmer.
Mortimer studied at St Paul's Girls' School in west London (she was in the year below actress Rachel Weisz), where she appeared in several student productions. She then went on to Oxford University, where she read Russian at Lincoln College and performed in several plays. Before becoming an actress, Mortimer wrote a column for the Daily Telegraph, and was also screenwriter for a screen adaptation of Lorna Sage's memoir, Bad Blood.
wn.com/Emily_Mortimer -
Emily Watson
Emily Watson (born 14 January 1967) is an English actress who gave an acclaimed debut film performance in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves. She has won a number of awards for acting throughout her career, which has encompassed theatre, motion picture and television; most recently a BAFTA award for her role in ITV's Appropriate Adult.
Watson was born in Islington, London, England. Her father was an architect and her mother was an English teacher at St David's Girls' School, West London. She was brought up as an Anglican. Watson describes her childhood self as a "Nice middle class English girl ... I'd love to say I was a rebellious teenager but I wasn't".
Watson was educated at St James Independent Schools, in west London, which she has described as a 'progressive' school. She attended the University of Bristol, where she obtained a B.A. (1988, English).[citation needed] Following university, she trained at Drama Studio London,[citation needed] and later received a M.A. (2003, honorary) from Bristol University.[citation needed]
wn.com/Emily_Watson -
Ernie Dingo
Ernie Dingo AM (born 31 July 1956 at Bullardoo Station) is an Indigenous Australian actor and television presenter originating from the Yamatji people of the Murchison region of Western Australia.
Born Ernest Ashley Dingo on 31 July 1956, at Bullardoo Station, he was the second child of nine. He grew up in Mullewa with his family. He went to Prospect Primary and then Geraldton High School.
He came to acting after moving to Perth and meeting Richard Walley, with whom he played basketball in a local team. Ernie went on to play state league first division for the East Perth Eagles.
Dingo has had a distinguished career as an actor and presenter in film and television. has also promoted the Generation One "Hand Across Australia" which was a promotion for Indigenous equality.
With Richard Walley created a controversial "welcome to country" ceremony after dancers from the Pacific would not perform without one in Perth in 1976.
Dingo's film career commenced in the 1980s and he appeared regularly on screen through the 1990s. He appeared in Bruce Beresford's 1987 drama The Fringe Dwellers and worked on the 1988 docu-drama biopic Tudawali. He had a major supporting role in the international comedy blockbuster Crocodile Dundee II in 1988. He appeared as himself in the 1989 comedy Capuccino had a major role in the 1991 Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World. In 1993 he starred in Blackfellas and he had a lead role in 1996's Dead Heart. In 1998 he starred in Somewhere in the Darkness. In 2010 he returned to the silver screen with a role in the Aboriginal musical Bran Nue Dae along with Jessica Mauboy and Geoffrey Rush.
wn.com/Ernie_Dingo -
Eva Le Gallienne
Eva Le Gallienne (January 11, 1899 – June 3, 1991) was a theatrical actress, producer, and director during the first half of the 20th century.
Le Gallienne was born in London to an English poet of French descent, Richard Le Gallienne, and a Danish journalist, Julie Norregard. After Eva's parents separated when she was three years old, she spent her childhood shuttling back and forth between Paris and England. She made her stage debut at the age of 15 in a 1914 production of Maurice Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna.
The next year Le Gallienne sailed for New York, and then on to Arizona and California where she performed in several theatre productions. After travelling in Europe for a period of time, she returned to New York and became a Broadway star in several plays including Arthur Richman's Not So Long Ago (1920) and Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (1921).
Disillusioned by the state of commercial theatre in the 1920s, Le Gallienne founded the Civic Repertory Theatre in the former Fourteenth Street Theatre in Manhattan, New York. She was backed by the financial support of one of her lovers, Alice DeLamar, a wealthy Colorado gold mine heiress, whose support was instrumental in the success of the repertory theatre movement in the U.S. In 1928 she earned a great success with her performance in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. As head of the Civic Repertory Theatre, she is known to have rejected the admission of Bette Davis, whose attitude she described as "insincere" and "frivolous". The Civic Rep disbanded at the height of the Depression in 1934.
wn.com/Eva_Le_Gallienne -
Frances McDormand
Frances Louise McDormand (born June 23, 1957) is an American film and stage actress. She has starred in a number of films, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, in 1996. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 2011 for her performance in Good People as Margie Walsh, having been nominated for the same category in 1988 for the revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.
McDormand is a three-time nominee of the Academy Award For Best Supporting Actress for her performances in Mississippi Burning, Almost Famous, and North Country, and has also been nominated for four Golden Globes, three BAFTA Awards, and an Emmy Award. She also starred in the Coen Brothers debut, Blood Simple.
McDormand was born in Chicago and was adopted by the McDormands, a Canadian couple – Noreen, a registered nurse and receptionist, and Vernon, a Disciples of Christ pastor. She has said that her biological mother may have been one of the parishioners at Vernon's church. She has a sister, Dorothy A. McDormand, who is an ordained Disciples of Christ minister and chaplain, as well as another sibling, both of whom were adopted by the McDormands, who had no biological children. As her father specialized in restoring congregations, he frequently moved their family, and they lived in several small towns in Illinois, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, before settling in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area town of Monessen, where she graduated from high school in 1976. She attended Bethany College, West Virginia, and earned a B.A. in Theater in 1979.
wn.com/Frances_McDormand -
Freida Pinto
Freida Selena Pinto (born 18 October 1984) is an Indian actress and model best known for her portrayal of Latika in the 2008 Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. After the success of the film she went on to star in the films such as You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Miral—in which she played the title character—and the box-office hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Pinto was born into a Mangalorean Catholic family in Mumbai, which she still refers to as Bombay out of habit. Her surname is of Portuguese origin as the result of her ancestors' conversion to Catholicism by missionaries. Her mother, Sylvia, is the principal of St. John's Universal High School (Goregaon), and her father, Frederick, is a senior branch manager at the Bank of Baroda. She has an elder sister, Sharon, who is an associate producer for the NDTV news channel. Pinto dreamed of becoming an actress since she was five years old. When Freida was ten, Sushmita Sen won Miss Universe 1994, which turned out to be a defining point in Freida's life. She studied at Carmel of St. Joseph School in Malad, Mumbai and completed a degree in arts with a major in English Literature, and minors in Psychology and Economics, from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. She had also acted in plays and amateur theatre while attending St. Xavier's. She later joined Elite Model Management and modelled for two and a half years.
wn.com/Freida_Pinto -
Garret Dillahunt
Garret Dillahunt (born November 24, 1964) is an American actor. He is married to actress Michelle Hurd. He currently plays the role of Burt Chance on the Fox sitcom Raising Hope.
Garret L. Dillahunt was born in Castro Valley, California and grew up in Selah, Washington. One of three siblings, he has a brother, Brett. His other brother, Eric, is deceased. He graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in journalism and went on to receive his M.F.A. in acting from New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts.
After spending years on and off Broadway, Dillahunt began pursuing television and film roles. He appeared as a regular in several short lived series on ABC and Showtime, and landed guest spots on TV shows such as The X Files and NYPD Blue among others, before playing two distinctly different characters on the HBO series Deadwood: Jack McCall in 2004 and Francis Wolcott in 2005. He later had a recurring role on USA Network's The 4400.
Dillahunt portrayed Steve Curtis for three seasons on ER (2005–06). Later roles included Dr. Michael Smith on HBO's John From Cincinnati; Cromartie and John Henry on FOX's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles; Roman Nevikov, a Russian gangster, on NBC's Life; and Mason Turner, a paralyzed serial killer on Criminal Minds. He played Simon Escher in the Burn Notice third season finale airing March 4, 2010 on the USA, later reprising the role in the show's fourth season.
wn.com/Garret_Dillahunt -
Gillian Armstrong
Gillian May Armstrong (born 18 December 1950) is an award-winning Australian director of feature films and documentaries.
Born in Melbourne, Victoria, Gillian Armstrong grew up in the eastern suburb of Mitcham. She attended Swinburne Technical College with the intention of becoming a theatre costume designer, but it was here she became increasingly interested in film. During this time, she was exposed to a range of artistic films that differentiated from the commercial cinema and Television she was used to.
After graduating from her four years at art school in 1968, Armstrong was set on pursuing a career in film. She began making short films of 2-10 minutes, and started work as an assistant editor in a commercial film house, which lasted a year.
In 1972 she entered, and later graduated from, the Australian Film Television and Radio School. She paid her tuition during this time through waitressing
Following a string of small jobs within the Australian film industry, she achieved her first real directorial recognition through her short film The Singer and the Dancer which won an award at the Sydney Film Festival.
wn.com/Gillian_Armstrong -
Glenn Close
Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American film, television and stage actress. She is best known for her roles as a femme fatale—the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and deranged stalker Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987)—as well as Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians (1996), and its sequel 102 Dalmatians (2000). She has been more recently known for her Emmy and Golden Globe winning role as Patty Hewes in the FX TV series Damages.
Consistently acclaimed for her versatility, she has been nominated six times for an Oscar (five times throughout the 1980's), three times for a Grammy Award and once for a BAFTA Film Award, and has won three Tonys, an Obie, three Emmys, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Close was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, the daughter of Bettine (née Moore) and William Taliaferro Close, a doctor who operated a clinic in the Belgian Congo and served as a personal physician to Congo/Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko. Her parents came from prominent families. Her father was a descendant of the Taliaferros of Virginia; her paternal grandfather, Edward Bennett Close, a stockbroker and director of the American Hospital Association, was first married to Post Cereals' heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Close is also a second cousin once-removed of actress Brooke Shields (Shields's great-grandmother Mary Elsie Moore was a sister of Close's maternal grandfather, Charles Arthur Moore, Jr.).
wn.com/Glenn_Close -
Gong Li
Gong Li (born 31 December 1965) is a Chinese-born Singaporean film actress. Gong first came into international prominence through close collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Yimou and is credited with helping to bring Chinese cinema to Europe and the United States.
She has twice been awarded the Golden Rooster and the Hundred Flowers Awards as well as the Berlinale Camera, Cannes Festival Trophy, National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle Award, and Volpi Cup.
She married Singaporean businessman Ooi Hoe Soeng in 1996, and became a Singaporean citizen in 2008.
Gong Li was born in Shenyang, Liaoning, the youngest in a family of five children. Her father was a professor of economics and her mother, who was 40 when Gong was born, was a teacher. Gong grew up in Jinan, the capital of Shandong.
In 1985, Gong sought to study at China's top music school, but was denied entrance. Later that same year, she was accepted to the prestigious Central Academy of Drama in Beijing and graduated in 1989. While a student at the Central Academy of Drama, she was discovered by Zhang Yimou, who chose her for the lead role in Red Sorghum, his first film as a director.
wn.com/Gong_Li -
Greta Scacchi
Greta Scacchi (born 18 February 1960) is an Italian-Australian actor.
Scacchi was born Greta Gracco in Milan, Italy, on 18 February 1960, the daughter of Luca Scacchi Gracco, an Italian art dealer and painter, and Pamela Carsaniga, an English dancer and antiques dealer. Scacchi's parents divorced when she was four, and her mother returned to her native England with Greta and her two older brothers, first to London, then to Haywards Heath, West Sussex. In 1975 after her mother's remarriage to Giovanni Carsaniga, the family settled in Perth, Australia, where she attended Hollywood Senior High School and the University of Western Australia (UWA). She made her theatrical debut at UWA's New Dolphin Theatre in Edward Bond's play Early Morning.
In 1977 Scacchi left UWA to return to England to pursue an acting career, studying at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, with Miranda Richardson and Amanda Redman. In 1982 she made her film debut in the German movie, Das Zweite Gesicht (The Second Face), and gave versatile performances in films, such as Heat and Dust (1983), The Ebony Tower (1984), The Coca Cola Kid (1985), White Mischief (1987), Presumed Innocent (1990), The Player (1992) and Country Life (1994). She turned down the role of Catherine Trammell in Basic Instinct (1992).
wn.com/Greta_Scacchi -
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Kate Paltrow ( /ˈɡwɪnɨθ ˈpæltroʊ/; born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Seven (1995) and Emma (1996) (in which she played the title role). Following the films Sliding Doors (1998) and A Perfect Murder (1998), Paltrow garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the Outstanding Cast. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011 for her role as Holly Holliday on the Fox hit TV show Glee in the episode "The Substitute".
Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Shallow Hal (2001), and Proof (2005), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. Since 2008, she has portrayed Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring in Iron Man and its sequel, Iron Man 2 (2010), and also appearing in The Avengers (2012). Paltrow has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume since 2005. She is married to Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of Coldplay. They have two children together, Apple and Moses. She is also the face of American fashion brand Coach, owner of the lifestyle company Goop.com and author of the cookbook My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness.
wn.com/Gwyneth_Paltrow -
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.
Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Chiswick, West London. Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913–1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English. Mirren's paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Tsarist Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat, and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain, when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution. The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family.
His son, Helen Mirren's father, changed the family name to the Scottish-sounding Mirren in the 1950s and became known as Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, East London, and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".
wn.com/Helen_Mirren -
Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter, CBE (born 26 May 1966) is an English actress. She made her acting debut in a television adaptation of K. M. Peyton's A Pattern of Roses before winning her first film role as the titular character in Lady Jane. She is known for her roles in films such as A Room with a View, Fight Club, and playing the villainess Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter series, as well as for frequently collaborating with director and domestic partner Tim Burton in films such as Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows.
A two-time Academy Award nominee for her performances in The Wings of the Dove and The King's Speech, Bonham Carter's acting has been further recognised with six Golden Globe nominations, an International Emmy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to drama, and received the award from the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 22 February 2012.
wn.com/Helena_Bonham_Carter -
Hilary Swank
Hilary Ann Swank (born July 30, 1974) is an American film actress. She has won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, as Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry (1999) and as struggling waitress-turned-boxer Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby (2004). She also put in a notable performance in Insomnia, working alongside Al Pacino. Since 2003, Swank has also worked as an executive producer.
Swank was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her mother, Judy Kay (née Clough), was a secretary and dancer, and her father, Stephen Michael Swank, was an officer in the Air National Guard and later a traveling salesman. She has a brother, Daniel, who is eight years her senior. Her surname, originally Schwenk, is of German origin. Many of Swank's family members hail from Ringgold County, Iowa, and her maternal grandmother was of Spanish and Shoshone (Native American) ancestry. After having lived in Spokane, Washington, Swank's family moved to a trailer park near Lake Samish in Bellingham, Washington, when Swank was six.
wn.com/Hilary_Swank -
Holly Hunter
Holly Hunter (born March 20, 1958) is an American actress. Hunter starred in The Piano for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She has also been nominated for Oscars for her roles in Broadcast News, The Firm, and Thirteen. Hunter has also won two Emmy Awards with seven nominations and has won a Golden Globe Award with another six nominations.
Holly Hunter was born in Conyers, Georgia, the daughter of Opal Marguerite (née Catledge), a housewife, and Charles Edwin Hunter, a farmer and sporting-goods manufacturer's representative. Hunter earned a degree in drama from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and for a while performed in the theatre scene there, playing ingenue roles at City Theatre, then named the City Players. She eventually moved to New York City and roomed with fellow actress Frances McDormand. Hunter, in 2008, described living in The Bronx "at the end of the D [subway] train, just off 205th Street, on Bainbridge Avenue and Hull Avenue. It was very Irish, and then you could go just a few blocks away and hit major Italian". A chance encounter with playwright Beth Henley, when the two were trapped alone in an elevator, led to Hunter's being cast in Henley's plays Crimes of the Heart (succeeding Mary Beth Hurt on Broadway), and Off-Broadway's The Miss Firecracker Contest. "It was like the beginning of 1982. It was on 49th Street between Broadway and Eighth [Avenue] [...] on the south side of the street", Hunter recalled in an interview. "[We were trapped] 10 minutes; not long. We actually had a nice conversation. It was just the two of us".
wn.com/Holly_Hunter -
Horace McCoy
Horace McCoy (April 14, 1897 – December 15, 1955) was an American writer whose hardboiled novels took place during the Great Depression. His best-known novel is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935), which was made into a movie of the same name in 1969, fourteen years after McCoy's death.
McCoy was born in Pegram, Tennessee. During World War I McCoy served in the United States Army Air Corps. He flew several missions behind enemy lines as a bombardier and reconnaissance photographer. He was wounded and received the Croix de Guerre for heroism from the government of France.
From 1919 to 1930 he worked as a sports editor for the Dallas Journal in Texas. In 1924, he did the play-by-play of a baseball game for radio broadcast. In the late 1920s he began getting stories published in various pulp mystery magazines.
He performed as an actor with the Dallas Little Theater. He had a prominent role in Philip Barry's The Youngest. He described the acting experience in a Dallas Morning News piece.[clarification needed] His acting was good enough for him to be cast in the leads in Molnár's Liliom (1928), and Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted (1929). A 1928 column in the Morning News described McCoy as "a sort of enfant terrible of journalism and amateur theatricals in Dallas."
wn.com/Horace_McCoy -
Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH CBE (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He has won multiple Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is known for film roles such as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Magneto in the X-Men films, and as Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code.
McKellen was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality, in the 2008 New Year Honours.
McKellen was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, though he spent most of his early life in Wigan. Born shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the experience had some lasting impact on him. In response to an interview question when an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, he said: "Well, darling, you forget — I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old."
wn.com/Ian_McKellen -
Irrfan Khan
Sahabzade Irrfan Ali Khan, previously known as Irrfan Khan and now just Irrfan (Hindi: इरफ़ान ख़ान; born on 7th January 1967 ), is an Indian actor in film, television and theatre. He received recognition for his roles in The Warrior (2001), Maqbool (2003), Haasil (2004), The Namesake (2006), A Mighty Heart (2007), Life in a... Metro (2007), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Billu (2009), New York (2009), New York, I Love You (2009), Paan Singh Tomar (film) (2012), and Vodafone commercials.
He has won two Filmfare Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Independent Spirit Award nomination. He is also the recipient of 2011 Padma Shri award, the fourth highest civilian award in India. He has also been cast in The Amazing Spider-Man as Dr. Ratha. He has appeared in more than 30 films in the Bollywood.
Khan was born in Jaipur to a Muslim family. Khan's mother, Sayeeda Begum, was from the Tonk Hakim family, and his father, the late Jagirdar, was from the Khajuriya village near the Tonk district, and ran a tyre business. Khan was studying for his M.A. degree when he earned a scholarship to study at National School of Drama (NSD) in New Delhi in 1984.
wn.com/Irrfan_Khan -
Jacki Weaver
Jacqueline Ruth "Jacki" Weaver (born 25 May 1947) is an Australian theatre, film, and television actress. She is best known outside Australia for her performance in Animal Kingdom, for which she was nominated for the 2011 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Weaver was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Her father, Arthur, was a Sydney solicitor, and her mother, Edith (née Simpson), a migrant from northern England. She attended Hornsby Girls' High School.
She has had a number of relationships/marriages, including with director Richard Wherrett and media figure Derryn Hinch. She has a son, Dylan, and two grandchildren.
Weaver has been working in Australian film, stage and television since the 1960s.
In 1964 at the Palace Theatre in Sydney, Weaver and a number of other Australian singers such as The Delltones and her then-boyfriend Bryan Davies performed a satire on the Gidget movies, in which Weaver performed as "Gadget."
In the mid-1960s, she appeared on the Australian music show Bandstand. In one appearance, she sang a 1920s-style pastiche, the novelty song "I Love Onions."
wn.com/Jacki_Weaver -
Jacky Ido
Jacky Ido (born May 14, 1977 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) is a Burkina Faso-born French film actor. His first role was as Lemalian in the 2005 German film, The White Masai. He is best known to English-language audiences for his role as Marcel, the film projectionist in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film, Inglourious Basterds. Ido's brother Cedric Ido who is also an actor has directed him in the short Hasaki Ya Suda. Jacky Ido works and resides in Paris, France and is working on a slam potry album.
wn.com/Jacky_Ido -
James Wilby
James Jonathon Wilby (born 20 February 1958) is an English film, television and theatre actor.
He was born in Rangoon, Burma to a corporate executive father. He was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, and from there went on to study for a degree in Mathematics at Grey College, University of Durham, and then at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Wilby's first appearance on screen was in the Oxford Film Company 1982 production Privileged alongside Hugh Grant. He is known to an international audience for roles in Maurice (1987), for which he received Venice Film Festival's Best Actor award with co-star Hugh Grant. Along with Grant, Wilby has always been best known for his regular inclusion in the Merchant/Ivory film 'family' which also boasts Rupert Graves, Helena Bonham-Carter, Emma Thompson, and Anthony Hopkins among its regulars. He then starred in A Handful of Dust (1988), for which he won the Bari Film Festival Best Actor award. Then came A Tale of Two Cities (1989), Howards End (1992), the critically acclaimed Regeneration (1997 film), Ismail Merchant's Cotton Mary (1999), Gosford Park (2001) and Alain Robbe-Grillet's C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006) co-starring Arielle Dombasle which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
wn.com/James_Wilby -
Jennifer Ehle
Jennifer Ehle ( /ˈiːliː/; born December 29, 1969) is an American actress of stage and screen. She is known for her BAFTA winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice.
Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to English actress Rosemary Harris and American author John Ehle, Ehle made her stage debut as a toddler in a 1973 Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which her mother played Blanche Dubois.[citation needed] She spent her childhood between the UK and US, attending 18 different schools including the Interlochen Arts Academy. She was raised largely in Asheville, North Carolina, which was close by her hometown. Her drama training was split between the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.[citation needed]
In 1992, Peter Hall cast her as Calypso in a television adaptation of Mary Wesley's novel The Camomile Lawn, in which she and her mother played the same character at different ages. This story, produced by UK's Channel 4, was a five part miniseries about the lives and loves of a family of cousins from 1939 to the present. The two would later reprise this different age portrayal of a character as Valerie in István Szabó's 1999 movie Sunshine.
wn.com/Jennifer_Ehle -
Jennifer Esposito
Jennifer Esposito (born April 11, 1973) is an American actress, dancer and model, known for her appearances in films such as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Summer of Sam and Crash, and in television series such as Spin City, The Looney Tunes Show, Samantha Who? and Blue Bloods.
Esposito, an Italian-American, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Phyllis, an interior decorator, and Robert Esposito, a computer consultant and music producer. She has one older sister. Esposito grew up and attended St. Teresa School in Staten Island, and graduated from Moore Catholic High School in Staten Island.[citation needed]. In 1989, she won the title of homecoming queen at Msgr. Farrell High School.
Esposito made her first television appearance in Law & Order in 1996, but she is best known as Stacey in the prime time hit Spin City. She also appeared in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer playing Nancy, who is killed when a spear impales her chest. One of her more notable roles was as Ruby in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam in 1999, which was set against the late-1970s backdrop of the Son of Sam murders. She originally had the Mira Sorvino role in Summer of Sam, but had to take a different role due to scheduling conflicts. Esposito's next film was Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000.
wn.com/Jennifer_Esposito -
Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Kate Hudson (born September 12, 1981) is an American recording artist, actress and spokesperson. She came to prominence in 2004 as one of the finalists on the third season of American Idol, coming in seventh place. She made her film debut in the 2006 film Dreamgirls, which won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, an NAACP Image Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
She won a Grammy Award for her eponymous debut album, Jennifer Hudson, which was released in 2008 on Arista Records and was certified gold by the RIAA for selling over 800,000 copies in the US; sales exceeded 1 million copies worldwide. Additionally, it spawned the hit single Spotlight. Her second album, I Remember Me, was released in March 2011, and reached number two on the Billboard 200, selling 165,000 copies in its first week of release. The album was certified gold by the RIAA, for shipping over 500,000 copies in the US.
In late 2008, after Hudson's mother, brother and nephew were killed in a shooting, Hudson stepped out of the limelight for three months. Hudson resumed her public appearances in 2009, and has since performed at the Super Bowl XLIII, the Grammy Awards, American Idol, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Hudson has been described as a friend of President Barack Obama, who invited her to appear with him at a fundraiser in Beverly Hills in May 2009. She also performed at the White House at the "Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement" event. Her vocal range is mezzo-soprano. Hudson has sold 1,280,000 albums and 2,237,000 tracks in the United States as of February 2012.
wn.com/Jennifer_Hudson -
Jeremy Northam
Jeremy Philip Northam (born 1 December 1961) is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Ivor Novello in the 2001 film Gosford Park, as Dean Martin in the 2002 television movie Martin and Lewis, and as Thomas More on the Showtime series The Tudors. Most recently, he starred in the now-canceled CBS drama Miami Medical.
Northam was born in Cambridge, as the youngest of four siblings. His mother, Rachel (née Howard), was a potter and professor of economics, and his father, John Northam, was a professor of literature and theatre, as well as being an Ibsen specialist and teacher (first at Clare College, Cambridge and later at Bristol). Northam was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Bedford College, University of London, and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He married Canadian film/television make-up artist Liz Moro in April 2005, though they later divorced.
Northam performed at the Royal National Theatre – he replaced Daniel Day-Lewis in the role of Hamlet (1989), and won the Olivier Award in 1990 for "most promising newcomer" for his performance in The Voysey Inheritance.
wn.com/Jeremy_Northam -
Jessica Lange
Jessica Phyllis Lange (born April 20, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in film, theatre and television. The recipient of multiple awards, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, one Emmy and one Screen Actors Guild Award, Lange is regarded as one of the première actors of her generation.
Lange was discovered by producer Dino De Laurentiis and made her professional film debut in 1976's King Kong. In 1982, she became the first actor in forty years to receive two Oscar nominations within the same year; she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a soap opera star in Tootsie and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the troubled actress Frances Farmer in Frances. Lange received three more nominations for Country (1984), Sweet Dreams (1985), and Music Box (1989) before being nominated a sixth time and winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as a manic depressive in Blue Sky (1994).
In addition to acting, Lange is a photographer with two published works, and is a humanitarian, holding a position as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, specializing in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Congo and Russia.
wn.com/Jessica_Lange -
Jessica Tandy
Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy (June 7, 1909 - September 11, 1994) was an English-American stage and film actress.
She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among other roles, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films. Following the end of her marriage to the British actor Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen.
She won the Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, sharing the prize with Katherine Cornell (who won for the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea). Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film, The Birds (1963), and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game (1977, playing in the two-hander play opposite Hume Cronyn). Along with Cronyn, she was a member of the original acting company of the Guthrie Theater.
wn.com/Jessica_Tandy -
Joan Allen
Joan Allen (born August 20, 1956) is an American actress. She worked in theater, television and film during her early career, and achieved recognition for her Broadway debut in Burn This, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play in 1989.
She has received three Academy Award nominations; she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Nixon (1995) and The Crucible (1996), and for Best Actress for The Contender (2000).
Her other films include Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid (also known as Zeisters) (1986), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), In Country (1989), The Ice Storm (1996), Face/Off (1997), Pleasantville (1998), The Notebook (2004), The Bourne Supremacy (2004) The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), and Death Race (2008).
Allen, the youngest of four children, was born in Rochelle, Illinois, the daughter of Dorothea Marie (née Wirth), a homemaker, and James Jefferson Allen, a gas station owner. She has an older brother, David, and two older sisters, Mary and Lynn. Allen attended Rochelle Township High School, and was voted most likely to succeed.[citation needed] She first attended Eastern Illinois University, performing in a few plays with John Malkovich, who was also a student, and then Northern Illinois University, where she graduated with a BFA in Theater.
wn.com/Joan_Allen -
Joan Blondell
Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress who performed in movies and on television for five decades as Joan Blondell.
After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy wisecracking blonde, she was a pre-Code staple of Warner Brothers and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold-diggers. Blondell continued acting for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).
Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films released shortly before her death from leukemia, Grease (1978) and the remake of The Champ (1979).
Blondell was born to a vaudeville family in New York City. Her father, known as Eddie Joan Blondell, Jr., was born in Indiana in 1866 to French parents, and was a vaudeville comedian and one of the original Katzenjammer Kids. Blondell's mother was Kathryn ("Katie") Cain, born April 13, 1884, in Brooklyn of Irish American parents. Her younger sister, Gloria, also an actress, was briefly married to film producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli (the future producer of the James Bond film series) and bears a strong resemblance to her older sister, Joan. Blondell also had a brother, the namesake of her father and grandfather. Her cradle was a property trunk as her parents moved from place to place and she made her first appearance on stage at the age of four months when she was carried on in a cradle as the daughter of Peggy Astaire in The Greatest Love.
wn.com/Joan_Blondell -
Joan Chen
Joan Chong Chen (Chinese name: simplified Chinese: 陈冲; traditional Chinese: 陳冲; pinyin: Chén Chōng; born April 26, 1961) is a Chinese actress, film director, screenwriter and film producer. She became famous in China for her performance in the 1979 film Little Flower and came to international attention for her performance in the 1987 Academy Award-winning film The Last Emperor. She is also known for her roles in Twin Peaks, Red Rose, White Rose, Saving Face and The Home Song Stories, and for directing the feature film Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl.
Chen Chong was born in Shanghai, China to a family of pharmacologists. (Her grandparent Changshao Zhang was educated at UCI and was later a visiting student at Harvard). She and her older brother, Chase, were raised during the Cultural Revolution. At the age of 14, Chen was discovered on the school rifle range by Jiang Qing, the wife of leader Mao Zedong and major Chinese Communist Party power figure, as she was excelling at marksmanship. This led to her being selected for the Actors' Training Program by the Shanghai Film Studio in 1975, where she was discovered by veteran director Xie Jin who chose her to star in his 1977 film Youth (Chinese: 青春; pinyin: Qīngchūn) as a deaf mute whose senses are restored by an Army medical team. Chen graduated from high school a year in advance, and at the age of 17 entered the prestigious Shanghai International Studies University, where she majored in English.
wn.com/Joan_Chen -
Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster (born Alicia Christian Foster; November 19, 1962) is an American actress, film director, and producer.
Foster began acting in commercials at three years of age, and her first significant role came at age 13 in the 1976 film Taxi Driver as the preteen prostitute Iris, for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Also that year, she starred in the cult film The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1989, for playing a rape victim in The Accused. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs as Clarice Starling, a gifted FBI trainee, assisting in a hunt for a serial killer. This performance received international acclaim and her second Academy Award for Best Actress. She received her fourth Academy Award nomination for playing a hermit in Nell (1994). Other popular films include Bugsy Malone (1976); Freaky Friday (1976); Candleshoe (1977) Maverick (1994); Contact (1997); Panic Room (2002); Flightplan (2005); Inside Man (2006); The Brave One (2007); Nim's Island (2008) and Carnage (2011), for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.
wn.com/Jodie_Foster -
Joe Wright
Joe Wright (born 25 August 1972) is an English film director best known for Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Hanna.
Wright was born on 25 August 1972 in London, where his parents founded the Little Angel Theatre, a puppet theatre in Islington.
Wright always had an interest in the arts, especially painting. He would also make films on his Super 8 camera as well as spend time in the evenings acting in a drama club. Wright is dyslexic. He left school without any GCSEs.
He began his career working at his parents' puppet theatre. He also took classes at the Anna Scher Theatre School and acted professionally on stage and camera. He spent an art foundation year at Camberwell College of Arts, before taking a degree in fine art and film at Central St Martins. In his last year of studies he received a scholarship to make a short film for the BBC that won some awards. On the success of the short, he was offered the script for the serial Nature Boy. He followed this up with the serials Bodily Harm with Timothy Spall, and the highly acclaimed Charles II: The Power and the Passion with Rufus Sewell which won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama Serial.
wn.com/Joe_Wright -
John Noble
John Noble (born 20 August 1948) is an Australian film and television actor, and theater director of more than 80 plays. He was born in Port Pirie, South Australia, Australia and is currently starring as scientist Walter Bishop in the J. J. Abrams television series Fringe.
He made occasional appearances on the television series All Saints. He is internationally known for his performance as Denethor in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He played Russian Consul Anatoly Markov in the sixth season of the American television series 24. In 2011 he appeared as Real Estate tycoon Leland Monroe in Rockstar's video game L.A. Noire. He is also the voice of Unicron for the television show Transformers: Prime.
John lives in the US with wife Penny Noble. They have three children: Daniel Noble, Jess Noble and Actress Samantha Noble. In 2011, John's hobbies were reported to be "music and painting".
wn.com/John_Noble -
Josh Brolin
Josh James Brolin (pronounced /ˈbroʊlɨn/; born February 12, 1968) is an American actor. He has acted in theater, film and television roles since 1985, and won acting awards for his roles in the films W., No Country for Old Men, Milk and True Grit.
Brolin was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Jane Cameron Agee, a wildlife activist who was a native of Corpus Christi, Texas, and actor James Brolin. Brolin was raised on a California ranch with little exposure to his father's acting career. His parents divorced when he was 16 and his stepmother is singer/actress Barbra Streisand. He became interested in acting after taking an improv acting class in high school.
Brolin started his career in TV movies and guest spots on TV shows before getting a more notable role as Brand Walsh in the Richard Donner-directed movie The Goonies (1985). He was considered for the role of Tom Hanson in the series 21 Jump Street; he and Johnny Depp were the finalists for the role, and at that time the two became close and remained friends even after the role was ultimately awarded to Depp. Brolin guest-starred in an episode of the show in its first season.
wn.com/Josh_Brolin -
Judi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia “Judi” Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA (born 9 December 1934) is an English film, stage and television actress.
Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. She branched into film work, and won a BAFTA Award as Most Promising Newcomer; however, most of her work during this period was in theatre. Not generally known as a singer, she drew strong reviews for her leading role in the musical Cabaret in 1968.
During the next two decades, she established herself as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In television, she achieved success during this period, in the series A Fine Romance from 1981 until 1984 and in 1992 began a continuing role in the television romantic comedy series As Time Goes By.
Her film appearances were infrequent until she was cast as M in GoldenEye (1995), a role she has played in each James Bond film since. She received several notable film awards for her role as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown (1997), and has since been acclaimed for her work in such films as Shakespeare in Love (1998), Chocolat (2000), Iris (2001), Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) and Notes on a Scandal (2006), and the television production The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2001).
wn.com/Judi_Dench -
Judy Davis
Judy Davis (born 23 April 1955) is an Australian actress best known for her roles in Husbands and Wives, Barton Fink, A Passage to India and in the TV miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.
Davis first came to attention for her role as the fiery Sybylla Melvyn in the 1979 film My Brilliant Career. She has won many acting awards, including two Golden Globe Awards, three Emmy Awards, one BAFTA and seven AFI Awards. She has also been nominated twice for an Academy Award.
Davis was born in Perth and had a strict Catholic upbringing. She was educated at Loreto Convent and the Western Australian Institute of Technology, and graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1977. She has been married to actor and fellow NIDA graduate Colin Friels since 1984. They have two children.
First coming to prominence for her role as Sybylla Melvyn in the coming-of-age saga My Brilliant Career (1979), for which she won BAFTA Awards for Best Actress and Best Newcomer, she also played the lead in such Australian New Wave classics as Winter of Our Dreams (1981) (as the waif-like heroin addict) and Heatwave (1982) (as the radical tenant organizer).
wn.com/Judy_Davis -
Julia Blake
Julia Blake (born 1936) is a British-born actress based in Australia.
Blake was born in London, England. She is married to Terry Norris. She is the mother of actresses Sarah and Jane Norris.
She is possibly best known to television audiences for her three roles in the cult series Prisoner – Evelyn Randall in 1981, Alice Dodds in 1983 and Nancy McCormack in 1986.
Blake has also worked extensively in Australian cinema, with appearances in:
wn.com/Julia_Blake -
Julia Roberts
Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990), which grossed $464 million worldwide. After receiving Golden Globe Awards and Academy Award nominations for Steel Magnolias (1989) and Pretty Woman, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Erin Brockovich (2000). Her films My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Mystic Pizza (1988), Notting Hill (1999), Runaway Bride (1999), Valentine's Day (2010), The Pelican Brief (1993), Ocean's Eleven (2001), and Ocean's Twelve (2004) have collectively brought box office receipts of over $2.4 billion, making her one of the most successful actresses in terms of box office receipts.
Roberts had become one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, topping the Hollywood Reporter's annual "power list" of top-earning female stars from 2005 to 2006. Her fee for 1990's Pretty Woman was $300,000; in 2003, she was paid an unprecedented $25 million for her role in Mona Lisa Smile (2003). As of 2010, Roberts's net worth was estimated to be $140 million.
wn.com/Julia_Roberts -
Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore (born Julie Anne Smith on December 3, 1960) is a British-American actress and a children's book author. She has been nominated for four Oscars, six Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and nine Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Moore began her acting career in 1983 in minor roles, before joining the cast of the soap opera As the World Turns, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1988. She began to appear in supporting roles in films during the early 1990s, in films such as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and The Fugitive. Her performance in Short Cuts (1993) won her and the rest of the cast a Golden Globe for their ensemble performance, and her performance in Boogie Nights (1997) brought her widespread attention and nominations for several major acting awards.
Her success continued with films such as The Big Lebowski (1998), The End of the Affair (1999) and Magnolia (1999). She received particular acclaim for her portrayal of a betrayed wife in Far from Heaven (2002), winning several critic awards as best actress of the year, in addition to several other nominations, including the Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award. The same year, she was also nominated for several awards as best supporting actress for her work in The Hours. In 2010, Moore starred in the comedy drama The Kids Are All Right, for which she received a Golden Globe and BAFTA nomination.
wn.com/Julianne_Moore -
Julie Delpy
Julie Delpy (born 21 December 1969) is a French-American actress, director, screenwriter, and singer-songwriter. She studied filmmaking at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, including Europa Europa (1990), The Voyager (1991), Three Colors: White (1993), Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and 2 Days in Paris (2007). She has been nominated for three César Awards, two Online Film Critics Society Awards, and an Academy Award. After moving to the United States in 1990, she became an American citizen in 2001.
Julie Delpy was born 21 December 1969 in Paris, France to Albert Delpy, a theater director, and Marie Pillet, an actress in feature films and the avant-garde theater. She was an only child. On the stages of Paris, Delpy's parents were involved in underground theater. At an early age, Julie was exposed to the arts.
Delpy has said she has been plagued by health problems since childhood and had to wear callipers at age 8. She also experienced migraines and panic attacks.
wn.com/Julie_Delpy -
Julie Dreyfus
Julie Dreyfus (born January 24, 1966 in Paris) is a French actress.
Dreyfus, who's fluent in Japanese and English, is well known in Japan, where she made her TV debut on a French-language lesson program on NHK's educational channel in the late 1980s, and has appeared on the TV show Ryōri no Tetsujin (Iron Chef) as a guest and judge.
She is best known to Western audiences for her apparences in two of her good friend Quentin Tarantino's films: she played Sofie Fatale in Kill Bill Volume 1 and Francesca Mondino in Inglourious Basterds.
Julie was born and raised in Paris, the only child of French actress Pascale Audret and producer Francis Dreyfus. She is of Romanian descent on her father's maternal lineage, and Alsatian Jewish on the paternal side. Her grandfather was a descendant of the famous Captain Alfred Dreyfus. She spent her summers in the U.K. She started learning Japanese in 1985 at the Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilization at the University of Paris, after studying interior design and becoming interested in Japanese architecture. She moved to Japan to study at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies for a six-month intensive Japanese course, thinking she would eventually land a job in interior design. After finishing the course, she moved to Tokyo working part time in a design studio while continuing her private Japanese lessons. In 1988, she worked as a French language instructor on the NHK morning television educational program. Centering on a mystery drama, chief producer Motoyoshi Sei hired Dreyfus to increase ratings by changing the program into an episode-format. Eventually, she was cast by Japanese network executives as the 20-something beauty in several TV and film roles, leading her to become a gaijin tarento (foreign talent). She was also a judge on the cult-hit cooking show Ryōri no Tetsujin (Iron Chef).
wn.com/Julie_Dreyfus -
Juliette Binoche
Juliette Binoche (French pronunciation: [ʒyljɛt binɔʃ]; born 9 March 1964) is a French actress, artist and dancer. She has appeared in more than 40 feature films, been recipient of numerous international accolades, is a published author and has appeared on stage across the world. Coming from an artistic background, she began taking acting lessons during adolescence. After performing in several stage productions, she was propelled into the world of auteurs Jean-Luc Godard (Hail Mary, 1985), Jacques Doillon (Family Life, 1985) and André Téchiné, who made her a star in France with the leading role in his 1985 drama Rendez-vous. Her sensual performance in her English-language debut The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), directed by Philip Kaufman, launched her international career.
She sparked the interest of Steven Spielberg, who offered her several parts including a role in Jurassic Park which she declined, choosing instead to join Krzysztof Kieślowski on the set of Three Colors: Blue (1993), a performance for which she won the Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actress and a César. Three years later Binoche gained further acclaim in Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996), for which she was awarded an Academy Award and a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress in addition to the Best Actress Award at the 1997 Berlin Film Festival. For her performance in Lasse Hallström's romantic comedy Chocolat (2000) Binoche was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
wn.com/Juliette_Binoche -
Karen Black
Karen Black (born July 1, 1939) is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot. Over the course of her career, she won two Golden Globe Awards (out of three nominations), and an Academy Award nomination in 1970 for Best Supporting Actress, among numerous other honors.
Black was born as Karen Blanche Ziegler in Park Ridge, Illinois, in suburban Chicago, the daughter of Elsie Mary (née Reif), a writer of several prize-winning children's novels, and Norman Arthur Ziegler. Her paternal grandfather was Arthur Charles Ziegler, a classical musician and the first violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her sister is actress Gail Brown. Black is of German, Bohemian (Czech), and Norwegian descent. She attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, for two years, having commenced university studies in 1954, aged 15. She then moved to New York where she appeared in a number of Off-Broadway productions, as well as moonlighting on the female professional wrestling circuit.
wn.com/Karen_Black -
Karl Urban
Karl-Heinz Urban (born 7 June, 1972) is a New Zealand actor.
He is known for playing Éomer in the second and third installments of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in the 2009 film Star Trek and Caesar on Xena: Warrior Princess. He played Vaako in The Chronicles of Riddick, the Russian assassin Kirill in The Bourne Supremacy, and Ghost in Pathfinder and won acclaim for his performances in New Zealand films The Price of Milk and Out of the Blue.
Urban was born in Wellington, New Zealand. His father, a German immigrant, owned a leather goods store, and his mother once worked for Film Facilities in Wellington, through which the young Urban was exposed to classic New Zealand cinema and developed an interest in the film industry. Urban attended St Mark's Church School, where he showed an early love for public performance. His first acting role came at age eight, when he had a single line in one episode of the New Zealand television series 'Pioneer Woman'. Though continuing to take part in school stage productions, he did not act professionally again until after high school.
wn.com/Karl_Urban -
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader (2008). She has won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association among others, and has been nominated twice for an Emmy Award for television acting, winning once for her role as Mildred Pierce in the 2011 mini-series of the same name.
Brought up in Berkshire, Winslet studied drama from childhood, and began her career in British television in 1991. She made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures (1994), for which she received her first notable critical praise. She achieved recognition for her subsequent work in a supporting role in Sense and Sensibility (1995) and for her leading role in Titanic (1997), the highest grossing film at the time, and the highest grossing film of Winslet's career.
Since 2000, Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive comments from film critics, and she has been nominated for various awards for her work in such films as Quills (2000), Iris (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), The Reader (2008) and Revolutionary Road (2008). Her performance in the last of these prompted New York magazine critic David Edelstein to describe her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation". The romantic comedy The Holiday and the animated film Flushed Away (both 2006) are among the biggest commercial successes of her career.
wn.com/Kate_Winslet -
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress of film, stage, and television. Known for her headstrong independence and spirited personality, Hepburn's career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned more than 60 years. Her work came in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. Hepburn's characters were often strong, sophisticated women with a hidden vulnerability.
Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. After four years in the theatre, favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Her early years in the film industry were marked with success, including an Academy Award for her third picture, Morning Glory (1933), but this was followed by a series of commercial failures. In 1938 she was labeled "box office poison". Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the film rights to The Philadelphia Story, which she sold on the condition that she be the star. In the 1940s she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy. The screen-partnership spanned 25 years, and produced nine movies.
wn.com/Katharine_Hepburn -
Kathy Bates
Kathleen Doyle "Kathy" Bates (born June 28, 1948) is an American actress and film director. After appearing in several minor roles in film and television during the 1970s and the 1980s, Bates rose to prominence with her performance in Misery (1990), for which she won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe. She followed this with major roles in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and Dolores Claiborne (1995), before playing a featured role as Margaret "Molly" Brown in Titanic (1997). During this time, she began her directing career, primarily in television.
Bates received a Tony Award nomination for her 1983 performance in the Broadway play 'night, Mother. She won a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in Primary Colors (1998), for which she also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for About Schmidt (2002). Her television work has resulted in nine Emmy Award nominations. Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2003, Bates has stated that she has made a full recovery.
wn.com/Kathy_Bates -
Kay Walsh
Kay Walsh (born Kathleen Walsh, 27 August 1911,Chelsea, London, England, UK – died 16 April 2005, Chelsea, London) was an English actress and dancer. She grew up in Pimlico, brought up by her grandmother.
She began her career as a dancer in West End music halls, making her film debut in How's Chances? (1934) in a small part, and had a larger role in another 1934 film, Get Your Man. She continued to act in "quota quickies" films for several years. Walsh first met David Lean, then a film editor, in 1936, during the filming of Secret Of Stamboul. They began a relationship and Walsh broke off her engagement to Pownell Pellew. Walsh and Lean married on 23 November 1940. She moved on to higher-prestige films with appearances in two Noël Coward-scripted films, In Which We Serve (1942) and This Happy Breed (1944), both directed by Lean. Walsh had campaigned for Lean to receive co-director credit on In Which We Serve.
Walsh contributed dialogue to the 1938 film of Pygmalion, and also devised the scenario for the closing sequence of Lean's film adaptation of Great Expectations (1946), for which she received a writing credit on the latter film. She devised the opening sequence of Lean's adaptation of Oliver Twist (1948), as well as performing the role of Nancy.
wn.com/Kay_Walsh -
Keira Knightley
Keira Christina Knightley ( /ˌkɪərə ˈnaɪtli/; born 26 March 1985) is an English actress and model. She began acting as a child and came to international notice in 2002 after co-starring in the film Bend It Like Beckham. From 2003, her appearances in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series took her to much greater prominence. In 2008, Forbes claimed Knightley to be the second highest paid actress in Hollywood, having reportedly earned $32 million in 2007, making her the only non-American on the list of highest paid actresses.
Knightley has appeared in several Hollywood films and earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. Two years later she again was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, as well as the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in Atonement.
Knightley was born in Teddington, London, England, the daughter of Sharman MacDonald, an award-winning playwright, and Will Knightley, a theatre and television actor. Her father is English and her Scottish mother is of half Welsh ancestry. She has an elder brother, Caleb.[citation needed]
wn.com/Keira_Knightley -
Kerry Armstrong
Kerry Michelle Armstrong (born 12 September 1958 in Melbourne) is an Australian actress on film, television, and stage. She is one of only two actresses to win two Australian Film Institute Awards in the same year. Armstrong's 2001 awards were for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Lantana, and Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Television Drama Series for SeaChange. During 1981–1987, Armstrong was based in the United States, where she performed in stage and television productions, including a 1985–1986 role in soap opera Dynasty.
Armstrong appeared in both acting and presenting roles on Australian television in the 1970s and early 1980. One of her first acting roles was on television series Marion, released in March 1974. She appeared as a GTV-9 weather girl, and then in a dramatic acting role, appearing as Lynne Warner, an original character in Network Ten women's prison drama Prisoner. Initially planned to last 16 episodes, the series was continued and Armstrong appeared in the first 44 episodes. She then switched to another on-going role in drama series Skyways for 49 episodes. In 1981 she co-hosted the Network Ten series Together Tonight with Greg Evans.
wn.com/Kerry_Armstrong -
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst (born April 30, 1982) is an American-German actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories (1989). At the age of 12, Dunst gained widespread recognition playing the role of vampire Claudia in Interview with the Vampire (1994), a performance for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. The same year she appeared in Little Women, to further acclaim.
Dunst achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–07). Since then her films have included the romantic comedy Wimbledon (2004), the romantic science fiction Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Cameron Crowe's tragicomedy Elizabethtown (2005). She played the title role in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006) and starred in the comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008). She won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 for her performance in Lars von Trier's Melancholia.
wn.com/Kirsten_Dunst -
Kris McQuade
Kris McQuade (born 1952) is an Australian actress who has had many film, television and theatre roles.
Her film credits include: The Love Letters from Teralba Road, Kostas, Fighting Back, Lonely Hearts, Goodbye Paradise, The Coca-Cola Kid, Strictly Ballroom, Billy's Holiday and December Boys.
Television credits include: Fields of Flame, Fields of Fire, Scales of Justice, Palace of Dreams, Certain Women, Skyways, A Country Practice, Home and Away, The Flying Doctors, Boys From The Bush, Wildside, Grass Roots, Blue Heelers, Stingers and Supernova.
wn.com/Kris_McQuade -
Kristin Scott Thomas
Kristin A. Scott Thomas,OBE (born 24 May 1960) is an English actress who has also acquired French nationality. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient.
Since the 1980s, she has also worked in French cinema in films such as the thriller Tell No One and Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long. She has lived in France since she was 19, has brought up her three children in Paris, and says she considers herself more French than British. She was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2005.
Scott Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall. Her mother, Deborah (née Hurlbatt), was brought up in Hong Kong and Africa, and studied drama before marrying Scott Thomas's father. Her father, Lieutenant Commander Simon Scott Thomas, was a pilot for the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm who died in a flying accident in 1964. She is the elder sister of actress Serena Scott Thomas, the niece of Admiral Sir Richard Thomas (who was a Black Rod in the House of Lords), and a more distant great-great-niece of Captain Scott, the ill-fated explorer who lost the race to the South Pole.
wn.com/Kristin_Scott_Thomas -
Larenz Tate
Larenz Tate (born September 8, 1975) is an American film and television actor.
Tate was born on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, the son of Peggy and Larry Tate. He is the youngest of three siblings (his two brothers, Larron and Lahmard, are also actors) whose family moved to California when he was nine years old. Convinced by their parents to enter a drama program at the Inner City Cultural Center, the trio did not take the lessons seriously until classmate Malcolm-Jamal Warner's ascent to fame after being cast on the sitcom The Cosby Show. Subsequently realizing that they could parlay their efforts into a tangible form of success, the siblings began to receive small roles and in 1985, Tate made his small-screen debut in an episode of The New Twilight Zone series.
Following appearances in such television series as 21 Jump Street and The Wonder Years, Tate was cast in the television movie The Women of Brewster Place before receiving the recurring role of Steve Urkel's nemesis, Willie Fuffner, in the family comedy series Family Matters (1989). He was also a cast member on the CBS series The Royal Family, starring Redd Foxx and Della Reese, which ended prematurely after Redd Foxx died. In the video game 187 Ride or Die, Tate voices the main character, Buck.
wn.com/Larenz_Tate -
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award. She has garnered three nominations for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.
She received a Golden Globe award for her portrayal of a suburban woman diagnosed with terminal cancer in The Big C.
Linney was born in Manhattan. Her mother, Miriam Anderson "Ann" Perse (née Leggett), is a nurse who worked at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and her father, Romulus Linney, was a well-known playwright and professor (he died on January 15, 2011). Linney's paternal great-great-grandfather was Republican U.S. Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney. Despite her pedigree, Linney grew up under modest circumstances, living with her mother in a small one-bedroom apartment after her parents' divorce. She has a half-sister, Susan, from her father's second marriage.
wn.com/Laura_Linney -
Leah Purcell
Leah Purcell (born 14 August 1970 in Murgon, Queensland) is an Australian actor, director and writer.
She is a film, television and theatre actor, singer, director and playwright. She is the youngest of seven children of Aboriginal and white Australian descent. Her father was a butcher and a boxing trainer. After a difficult adolescence, looking after her sick mother who died while Leah was in her late teens, problems with alcohol and teenage motherhood, Purcell left Murgon and moved to Brisbane and became involved with community theatre.
In 1996 she moved to Sydney to become presenter on a music video cable television station, RED Music Channel. This was followed by roles in the ABC television series Police Rescue and Fallen Angels. She co-wrote and acted in a play called Box the Pony, which played at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre, the Sydney Opera House, the 1999 Edinburgh Festival and in 2000 at the Barbican Theatre in London. She then wrote and directed the documentary Black Chicks Talking, which won a 2002 Inside Film award. She appeared in the acclaimed Australian film Lantana starring Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush and in the theatre in The Vagina Monologues. She went on to feature in 2004 films Somersault, The Proposition (starring Guy Pearce and Emily Watson and written by Nick Cave) and Jindabyne (starring Gabriel Byrne) as well as playing the role of Condoleezza Rice in David Hare's play, Stuff Happens in Sydney and Melbourne.
wn.com/Leah_Purcell -
Linda Hunt
Lydia Susanna Hunter (born April 2, 1945), better known by her stage name Linda Hunt, is an American film, stage and television actress. After making her film debut playing Mrs. Oxheart in Popeye (1980), Hunt portrayed Billy Kwan, her breakthrough performance, in The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). Her role as Billy Kwan earned her an Academy Award, an Australian Film Institute Award, a Golden Globe nomination and various other awards.
She continued success in films such as The Bostonians (1984), Dune (1984), Silverado (1985), Eleni (1985), Waiting for the Moon (1987), She-Devil (1989), Kindergarten Cop (1990), If Looks Could Kill (1991), Rain Without Thunder (1992), Twenty Bucks (1993), Younger and Younger (1993), Prêt-à-Porter (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Relic (1997), Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998), Dragonfly (2002), Yours Mine and Ours (2005) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006).
Hunt has also had a successful television career. She played Rose in the television movie Basements (1987) and narrated in the television movie The New Chimpanzees. She guest starred on Hallmark Hall of Fame in both 1978 and 1987, Space Rangers in 1993, Carnivale in both 2003 and 2005, Without a Trace in 2008, The Unit in 2008 and Nip Tuck in 2009. From 1997-2002 Hunt played the recurring role of Judge Zoey Hiller on The Practice. She currently plays Henrietta 'Hetty' Lange on the CBS television series NCIS Los Angeles, a role she has played since its debut in 2009. The role earned her a Teen Choice Award nomination in 2011. She is also the narrator in the God Of War video game franchise.
wn.com/Linda_Hunt -
Lindy Davies
Lindy Davies (29 August 1946, Victoria) is an Australian actress, director and drama teacher. From 1995–2007 she was the Dean of the School of Drama at the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne.
As far as her acting career is concerned, followers of Australian cinema will recall her role in the film Malcolm alongside Colin Friels and John Hargreaves, but she is probably best remembered to television enthusiasts for her performance as the evil drug baroness Ruth Ballinger in Prisoner.
Lindy Davies has developed a unique Approach to Performance: a process which codifies the art of transformation.
She has worked as a Performance Advisor/Consultant on many films including:
Lindy Davies has written an integrated curriculum for the training of the Autonomous Artist.
She is presently writing a book on her approach to Performance called The Autonomous Actor
wn.com/Lindy_Davies -
Liv Tyler
Liv Rundgren Tyler (born July 1, 1977) is an American actress and model. She is the daughter of Aerosmith's lead singer, Steven Tyler, and Bebe Buell, model and singer. Tyler began a career in modeling at the age of 14, but after less than a year she decided to focus on acting. She made her film debut in the 1994 film Silent Fall. She then appeared in supporting roles in Empire Records (1995), Heavy (1996) and That Thing You Do! (1996). Tyler later achieved critical recognition in the leading role in Stealing Beauty (1996). She followed this by starring in supporting roles including Inventing the Abbotts (1997) and Cookie's Fortune (1999).
Tyler achieved international recognition as a result of her portrayal of Elf maiden Arwen Undómiel in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. She has appeared in an eclectic range of films, including the 2004 comedy Jersey Girl, the indie film Lonesome Jim (2005), the drama Reign Over Me (2007) and big-budget studio films such as Armageddon (1998), The Strangers (2008) and The Incredible Hulk (2008).
wn.com/Liv_Tyler -
Liv Ullmann
Liv Johanne Ullmann (born 16 December 1938) is a Norwegian actress and film director, as well as one of the "muses" of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Nominated five times for a Best Actress Golden Globe, winning once for The Emigrants, Ullmann has also been nominated for the Palme d'Or, two times for the Academy Award, and two times for a BAFTA Film Award.
Ullmann was born in Tokyo, Japan, the daughter of Janna (née Lund) and Viggo Ullmann, an aircraft engineer who was working in Tokyo at the time. At age two, the family moved to Toronto, Canada where her father worked at the Norwegian air force base on Toronto Island during World War II. Four years later, her father died of a brain tumor, an event that affected her deeply. After the war, the rest of the family moved to Trondheim, Norway, where Ullman spent the rest of her youth. She currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts.
Ullmann began her acting career on the Norwegian stage in the mid 1950s. She continued to act in the theatre for most of her career, and became noted for her portrayal of Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, but became wider known once she started to work with eminent Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman. She went on to act to significant acclaim in 10 of his most admired films, including Persona in 1966, The Passion of Anna in 1969, Cries and Whispers in 1972 and Autumn Sonata, in which her co-star, Ingrid Bergman, made her return to Swedish cinema. She co-starred often with Swedish actor and fellow Bergman collaborator, Erland Josephson, with whom she made the 1973 Swedish television drama, Scenes from a Marriage, which was also edited to feature-film length and distributed theatrically. Ullmann appeared with Laurence Olivier in Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far in 1977.
wn.com/Liv_Ullmann -
Lucy Liu
Lucy Alexis Liu (Chinese: 劉玉玲; pinyin: Liú Yùlíng; born December 2, 1968) is an American actress, singer and film producer. She became known for playing the role of the vicious and ill-mannered Ling Woo in the television series Ally McBeal (1998–2002), and has also appeared in several Hollywood films including Payback, Charlie's Angels, Chicago, Kill Bill, and Kung Fu Panda. In 2012, Liu joined the cast of the TNT original series Southland.
Liu was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. In high school, she adopted her middle name "Alexis". She is the youngest of three children born to Cecilia, who worked as a biochemist, and Tom Liu, who was a civil engineer. Both of Liu's parents were immigrants from Taiwan of Chinese descent. Her grandparents were born and raised in China. She has an older brother, John, and an older sister, Jenny. Liu has stated that she grew up in a "diverse" neighborhood. She learned to speak Mandarin Chinese at home and began studying English when she was five years old.
wn.com/Lucy_Liu -
Lupe Ontiveros
Lupe Ontiveros (born September 17, 1942) is an American film and television actress. Ontiveros has acted in numerous films and television shows, most often playing a maid or, more recently, an all-knowing grandmother; she estimates she has played a maid between 150 and 300 times on screen.
Ontiveros was born Guadalupe Moreno in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Luz "Lucita" Castanon and Juan Moreno, middle-class Mexican immigrants who overcame a lack of formal education and were owners of a tortilla factory and two restaurants in El Paso. She graduated from El Paso High School and went on to study at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas, where she received a bachelor's degree in social work. Ontiveros was raised Roman Catholic. After her marriage, she and her husband moved to California to realize his dream of starting an automotive business. During a period of professional dissatisfaction with her social service career, Ontiveros was trying to decide whether to go back to school for a nursing degree when she saw an article about a need for local film "extras". With her husband's encouragement, she began with that simple job and parlayed it into a long stage and screen career.
wn.com/Lupe_Ontiveros -
Maggie Smith
Dame Margaret Natalie "Maggie" Smith, DBE (born 28 December 1934) is an English film, stage and television actress. She has had an extensive career both on screen and in live theatre, and is known as one of Britain's pre-eminent actors. She made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 60 years. She has won numerous awards for acting, both for the stage and for film, including seven BAFTA Awards (five competitive awards and two special awards including the Bafta Fellowship in 1996), two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, two SAG Awards and a Tony Award. Dame Maggie is the only actor ever to win this collective of awards and is one of the most successful and acclaimed actors of the film era.
Her critically acclaimed films include Othello (1965), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), Travels with My Aunt (1972), California Suite (1978), Clash of the Titans (1981), A Room with a View (1985) and Gosford Park (2001). She has also appeared in a number of widely-popular films, including Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992) and as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series. She currently stars in the critically acclaimed drama Downton Abbey as Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, for which she has won an Emmy.
wn.com/Maggie_Smith -
Margaret Rutherford
Dame Margaret Taylor Rutherford, DBE (11 May 1892 – 22 May 1972) was an English character actress, who first came to prominence following World War II in the film adaptations of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1963 she won the best supporting actress Oscar as The Duchess of Brighton in The VIPs.
She is probably best known for her 1960s performances as Miss Marple in several films based loosely on Agatha Christie's novels.
Margaret Rutherford's father, William Rutherford Benn, suffered from mental illness. During his honeymoon he had a nervous breakdown and was confined to an asylum. He was eventually released on holiday and on 4 March 1883, he murdered his father, the Reverend Julius Benn, a Congregational church minister, by bludgeoning him to death with a chamberpot (Worcester Spode). Shortly afterwards, William tried to kill himself as well, by slashing his throat with a pocketknife. After the murder, William Benn was confined to the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Several years later he was released, reportedly cured of his mental affliction. He changed his surname to Rutherford, and returned to his wife, Ann (née Taylor).
wn.com/Margaret_Rutherford -
Maria Theodorakis
Maria Theodorakis is an Australian actress who has many credits in television, movies and theatre. She is best known for her roles in the television series CrashBurn and Marshall Law. She has also had guest roles in many television series including Blue Heelers, Stingers, Halifax f.p., State Coroner and Rush.
Theodorakis has also appeared in a number of films including The Castle, The Eye of the Storm and Walking on Water, her role in which won her the 2002 Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
wn.com/Maria_Theodorakis -
Marjorie Rambeau
Marjorie Rambeau (July 15, 1889 – July 6, 1970) was an American film and stage actress.
Rambeau was born in San Francisco, California to Marcel Rambeau and Lilian Garlinda Kindelberger. Her parents split up when she was a girl. She and her mother went to Nome, Alaska where young Marjorie dressed as a boy, sang and played the banjo in saloons and music halls. Her mother insisted she dress as a boy to thwart amorous attention from drunken grown men in such a wild and woolly outpost as Nome. She began performing on the stage at the age of 12. She attained theatrical experience in a rambling early life as a strolling player. Finally she made her Broadway debut on March 10, 1913 in a tryout of Willard Mack's play Kick In.
In her youth she was a Broadway leading lady. In 1921, Dorothy Parker memorialized her in verse:
If all the tears you shed so lavishly / Were gathered, as they left each brimming eye. / And were collected in a crystal sea, / The envious ocean would curl up and dry— / So awful in its mightiness, that lake, / So fathomless, that clear and salty deep. / For, oh, it seems your gentle heart must break, / To see you weep. ...
wn.com/Marjorie_Rambeau -
Marjorie Rhodes
Marjorie Rhodes (9 April 1897 – 4 July 1979) was a British actress.
One of her best-known roles was as Lucy Fitton, the mother of Bill Naughton's northern comedy All in Good Time. She played the role on Broadway, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award in 1965. She reprised the role in the 1966 film version, The Family Way.
Rhodes was featured singing a track "The World Is For The Young" with Stanley Holloway in the Herman's Hermits 1968 film Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter.
Her television appearances included Dixon of Dock Green (1961-2),For the Girl Who Has Everything episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969), Doctor at Large (1971) and Z-Cars (1974).
wn.com/Marjorie_Rhodes -
Martin Crimp
Martin Andrew Crimp (born 14 February 1956, Dartford, Kent) is a British playwright.
Sometimes described as a practitioner of the "in-yer-face" school of contemporary British drama, Crimp though rejects the label. He is notable for the astringency of his dialogue, a tone of emotional detachment, a bleak view of human relationships – none of his characters experience love or joy – and latterly, a concern for theatrical form and language rather than an interest in narrative.
The son of John Crimp, a British Rail signalling engineer, and his wife Jennie, Crimp's family moved in 1960 to Streatham where he attended a local primary school before winning a scholarship to Dulwich College. But when his father was transferred to York, he went to the nearby Pocklington School, where he showed an aptitude for languages, music, English literature and theatre. He read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge 1975–78, where his first play Clang was staged by fellow student Roger Michell. Before establishing himself as a playwright, he put together An Anatomy, a collection of short stories, and also wrote a novel Still Early Days.
wn.com/Martin_Crimp -
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.
wn.com/Martin_Scorsese -
Martin Wuttke
Martin Wuttke (born February 8, 1962) is a German actor and director who reached international recognition for his portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds.
Wuttke began his actor training at the college theater in Bochum and then changed to the Westphalian Drama School in Bochum (Bochum today drama school). He played in numerous German-speaking stages: Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, Berliner Ensemble, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Schiller Theater in Berlin, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Theater of West Berlin, the Thalia Theater of Hamburg, Stuttgart State Theater, Freie Volksbühne Berlin, Schauspielhaus Frankfurt am Main.
Wuttke lives with actress Margarita Broich with two children.
wn.com/Martin_Wuttke -
Matt Dillon
Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon (born February 18, 1964) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.
Matthew Raymond Dillon was born in New Rochelle, New York, to second-generation Irish American parents Mary Ellen, a homemaker, and Paul Dillon, a portrait painter and sales manager for Union Camp, a packing material manufacturer. He was raised in a close-knit Irish Roman Catholic family as the second of six children. Dillon's paternal grandmother was the sister of comic strip artist Alex Raymond. Dillon has one sister and four brothers, one of whom, Kevin Dillon, is also an actor, and appears on the hit TV series Entourage which has earned him several Emmy nominations in the supporting actor comedy category. Dillon grew up in Mamaroneck, New York, and before dropping out in junior year, he attended Mamaroneck High School.[citation needed]
In 1978, Jane Bernstein and a friend were helping director Jonathan Kaplan cast the violent teen drama Over the Edge when they found Dillon cutting class at Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont. Dillon auditioned for a role and made his debut in the film. The film received a regional, limited theatrical release in May 1979, and grossed only slightly over $200,000. Dillon's performance was well-received, which led to his casting in two films released the following year; the teenage sex comedy Little Darlings, in which Kristy McNichol's character loses her virginity to a boy from the camp across the lake, played by Dillon, and the more serious teen dramedy My Bodyguard, where he played a high-school bully opposite Chris Makepeace. The films, released in March and July 1980, respectively, were box office successes and raised Dillon's profile among teenage audiences.
wn.com/Matt_Dillon -
Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl. She is the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren, and is married to actor Antonio Banderas.
Griffith was born in New York City to actress Tippi Hedren and producer, former actor, and advertising executive Peter Griffith. Her parents divorced when she was four years old, after which her father married model/actress Nanita Greene and had two more children: actress Tracy Griffith and set designer Clay A. Griffith. Her mother married agent and producer Noel Marshall, and Griffith grew up with three stepbrothers. During her childhood and adolescent years, she divided her time between living in New York with her father and in Antelope Valley, California, where her mother formed the animal preserve Shambala. She also skipped a grade and graduated from Hollywood Professional School when she was 16 years old.
Griffith began work at just nine months old in a commercial[citation needed] and later became an extra on Smith! (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973). In 1975, she played her first major roles in Smile, The Drowning Pool, and Night Moves, in which she did racy nude scenes at age 17.
wn.com/Melanie_Griffith -
Melissa Leo
Melissa Chessington Leo (born September 14, 1960) is an American actress. After appearing on several television shows and films in the late '80s, her breakthrough role came in 1993 as Det. Sgt. Kay Howard on the television series Homicide: Life on the Street for the show's first five seasons from 1993 – 1997. She was also previously been a regular on the television shows All My Children and The Young Riders. Her breakthrough film role was in the 2003 film, 21 Grams as Marianne Jordan.
Following several films, Leo received critical acclaim and national attention in the 2008 film, Frozen River earning several nominations and awards, including an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Leo earned several awards for her role as Alice Ward in the critically acclaimed 2010 film, The Fighter. For this role Leo won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Leo currently appears on the HBO television series Treme as Antoinette "Toni" Bernette.
Leo was born in Manhattan, New York City. She is the daughter of Peggy (née Chessington), a California-born teacher, and Arnold Leo, an editor at Grove Press, fisherman, and spokesman for the East Hampton Baymen's Association. Leo was raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and spent summers at her father's house in Springs, a section of East Hampton, N.Y. She is a former resident of Putney, Vermont and now lives in Stone Ridge, New York. She has a son with actor and former boyfriend John Heard named John Matthew Heard (born 1987) and years later adopted Adam (born 1984).[citation needed]
wn.com/Melissa_Leo -
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television, and film. She is widely regarded as one of the most talented actors of all time.
Streep made her professional stage debut in The Playboy of Seville (1971), before her screen debut in the television movie Deadliest Season (1977). In that same year, she made her film debut with Julia (1977). Both critical and commercial success came quickly with roles in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), the former giving Streep her first Academy Award nomination and the latter her first win. She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Sophie's Choice (1982) and The Iron Lady (2011).
Streep has received 17 Academy Award nominations, winning three, and 26 Golden Globe nominations, winning eight, more nominations than any other actor in the history of either award. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, five New York Film Critics Circle Awards, two BAFTA awards, an Australian Film Institute Award, five Grammy Award nominations, and a Tony Award nomination, amongst others. She was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004 and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2009 for her contribution to American culture through performing arts, the youngest actress in each award's history.
wn.com/Meryl_Streep -
Michael Fassbender
Michael Fassbender (born 2 April 1977) is an Irish-German actor. He is perhaps best known for having played Lieutenant Archie Hicox in the war film Inglourious Basterds (2009), Magneto in the superhero film X-Men: First Class (2011), and the android David in the science fiction film Prometheus.
His other credits include the fantasy action film 300 (2007); the drama film Fish Tank (2009); the romantic drama film Jane Eyre (2011); the historical film A Dangerous Method (2011), directed by David Cronenberg, in which he plays psychologist Carl Jung; as well as the biographical film Hunger (2008) and the drama film Shame (2011), both directed by Steve McQueen. For his role in Shame, he won the Volpi Cup best-actor award at the 68th Venice International Film Festival held in August 2011 along with being nominated for a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA.
Fassbender was born in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany (now Germany). His mother is from Larne, County Antrim in Northern Ireland, and his father, Josef Fassbender, is German. According to Fassbender's "family lore", his mother is the great-great-niece of Michael Collins, an Irish leader during the War of Independence. When he was two years old, his parents moved to Killarney, County Kerry, in the Republic of Ireland, where they ran the West End House, a restaurant where his father worked as a chef. Fassbender was brought up as a Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy.
wn.com/Michael_Fassbender -
Michael Gow
Michael Gow is an Australian playwright and director most famed for his 1986 work Away.
As a student at Sydney University, Gow acted and directed with the Dramatic Society from 1973-1976. After graduation, Gow went on to act with Nimrod, Thalia and Sydney theatre companies.
He has been the Artist Director for Queensland Theatre Company since 1999. Productions he has directed for the company include: Private Fears in Public Places, John Gabriel Borkman, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2007); The Importance of Being Earnest, Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome: A Shakespeare Commentary, I Am My Own Wife, (2008); The School of Arts and The Crucible (2009).
Away is the story of three Australian families who go on holiday "up the coast" for Christmas 1967 as a remedy to personal crises, whose story threads eventually interconnect. The families cross the class and social divides: one is in a smart hotel, another is at the local caravan park; another is in the throes of possible divorce. These factors are woven into a story of love and loss that allows a young boy and girl to taste first love and the pain of death while their parents cope, more or less, with the consequences. It remains a landmark of Australian contemporary drama and the best of Gow's earlier work.
wn.com/Michael_Gow -
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer ( /ˈfaɪfər/; born April 29, 1958) is an American actress. She made her film debut in 1980 in The Hollywood Knights, but first garnered mainstream attention with her performance in Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983). Pfeiffer has won numerous awards for her work. She received six consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations, winning the Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama award in 1990 for The Fabulous Baker Boys. She also won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Dangerous Liaisons, and the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Love Field, and has been nominated for three Academy Awards for the same films.
Pfeiffer rose to prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s with critically acclaimed performances in the films Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Married to the Mob (1988), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), The Russia House (1990), Frankie and Johnny (1991), Love Field (1992), Batman Returns (1992), and The Age of Innocence (1993).
She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 6, 2007. The star is located at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard and is recognised as STAR 2,345.
wn.com/Michelle_Pfeiffer -
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.
wn.com/Mike_Myers -
Mira Sorvino
Mira Katherine Sorvino (born September 28, 1967) is an American actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and is also known for her role as Romy White in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.
Sorvino was born in Tenafly, New Jersey. Her mother, Lorraine Ruth Davis, is a drama therapist for Alzheimer's disease patients and a former actress, and her father, Paul Sorvino, is a character actor and director. She has two siblings, Michael and Amanda. Sorvino is of Italian descent on her father's side.
At a young age, Sorvino wrote and acted in backyard plays with her childhood friend Hope Davis, in theater productions at Dwight-Englewood School, and at Harvard University, where she graduated magna cum laude in East Asian Studies in 1989. She also helped found the Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones, one of Harvard's co-ed a cappella groups in 1985. Her solo piece was Yazoo's "Only You".[citation needed]
Sorvino spent the next three years in New York City, trying to make a name for herself as an actress.[citation needed] When the 1993 film Amongst Friends entered pre-production, she was hired as third assistant director, then was promoted to casting director, then to assistant producer, and was finally offered a lead role. Positive reviews opened doors for her.[citation needed]
wn.com/Mira_Sorvino -
Miranda Otto
Miranda Otto (born 16 December 1967) is an Australian actress. The daughter of actors Lindsay and Barry Otto and the sister of actress Gracie Otto, she began acting at age eighteen, and has performed in a variety of independent and major studio films.
Her first major film appearance was in the 1986 film Emma's War, in which she played a teenager who moves to Australia's bush country during World War II. After a decade of critically acclaimed roles in Australian films, she gained Hollywood's attention after appearing in supporting roles in The Thin Red Line (1998) and What Lies Beneath (2000). Her breakthrough role came in 2002, when she portrayed Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. More recent work includes a starring role in the 2008 now-cancelled American television series Cashmere Mafia, and Australian films such as In Her Skin and Blessed (2009).
Otto was born in Brisbane to stage and film actor Barry Otto and former actress Lindsay Otto (who retired from acting upon Miranda Otto's birth). Gracie Otto, Miranda's half-sister, is also an actress. Otto was raised in Newcastle and Brisbane, and briefly resided in Hong Kong following her parents' separation in 1973. She spent weekends and holidays with her father in Sydney and developed an interest in acting through him.
wn.com/Miranda_Otto -
Miranda Richardson
Miranda Jane Richardson (born 3 March 1958) is an English stage, film and television actor. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and has won two Golden Globes (with seven nominations) and a BAFTA (with seven nominations) during her career.
Richardson was born in Southport, Lancashire, to Marian Georgina (née Townsend), a housewife, and William Alan Richardson, a marketing executive. The second daughter of a middle class family, she revealed a talent for acting as a girl.
Richardson enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where she studied alongside Daniel Day-Lewis, having started out with juvenile performances in Cinderella and Lord Arthur Savile's Crime at the Southport Dramatic Club. Richardson enjoyed a successful and extensive theatre career, making her stage debut in Moving at the Queen's Theatre in 1981. Soon afterwards, she appeared in repertory theatre, until she found recognition in the West End for a series of stage performances, ultimately receiving an Olivier Award nomination for her performance in A Lie of the Mind, and in 1996, she is cited as "the greatest actress of our time in any medium" by one critic after she appeared in Orlando at the Edinburgh Festival. She returned to the London stage in May 2009 to play the lead role in Wallace Shawn's new play, Grasses of a Thousand Colours at the Royal Court Theatre.
wn.com/Miranda_Richardson -
Miriam Margolyes
Miriam Margolyes, OBE (born 18 May 1941) is an English actress and voice artist. Her earliest roles were in theatre and after several supporting roles in film and television she won a BAFTA Award for her role in The Age of Innocence (1993).
Margolyes was born in Oxford, England, the daughter of Ruth (née Walters), a property investor, and Joseph Margolyes, a physician from Glasgow. She grew up in a Jewish family, a descendant of immigrants from Belarus. She attended the local Oxford High School, at which she also opened the new buildings in March 2011, and later Newnham College, Cambridge where she read English. There, she began acting in her twenties, and also appeared in productions of the comedy troupe Cambridge Footlights.
With her distinctive voice, Margolyes first gained recognition for her work as a voice artist. She recorded a soft-porn audio called Sexy Sonia: Leaves from my Schoolgirl Notebook. She performed most of the supporting female characters in the dubbed Japanese action TV series, Monkey. She also worked with the theatre company Gay Sweatshop and provided voiceovers in the Japanese TV series The Water Margin.
wn.com/Miriam_Margolyes -
Mo'Nique
Monique Angela Hicks (née Imes) (born December 11, 1967), known professionally as Mo'Nique, is an American comedienne and actress. Mo'Nique rose to fame in the UPN series The Parkers while making a name as a stand-up comedian hosting a variety of venues, including Showtime at the Apollo. Mo'Nique transitioned to film with roles in such films as Phat Girlz, and Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins.
In 2009, she received critical praise for her villainous role in the film Precious. For this performance, she has won numerous awards including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award. She won almost 30 awards for her performance. She is the sixteenth African American actress to receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the fourth to win. Overall, Mo'Nique is the twelfth individual African-American to win an Oscar for acting; and the seventh winner during the decade of the 2000s. She hosted The Mo'Nique Show, a late-night talk show that premiered in 2009 on BET. On July 28, 2011, BET announced that The Mo'Nique Show would not be picked up for another season.
wn.com/Mo'Nique -
Mona Washbourne
Mona Washbourne (born 27 November 1903, Birmingham, Warwickshire - died 15 November 1988, London) was an English actress of stage, film and television.
Mona Washbourne began her entertaining career training as a concert pianist. While performing on stage in the early 1920s, she found that she liked acting and became an actress.[citation needed] In 1948, after numerous stage musical performances, Washbourne began appearing in films. Her film credits include Billy Liar (1963) and The Collector (1965). She played Mrs. Pearce in 1964's My Fair Lady, the stern and caustic Mrs. Bramson in the remake of Night Must Fall, and the Matron in the 1968 film, If.....
She appeared at both the Royal Court Theatre in London and on Broadway in 1970 in David Storey's Home. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play. She won the 1981 New York Film Critics' Circle Awards for Best Supporting Actress in Stevie.
In 1981, Mona Washbourne appeared in Granada Television's adaptation of Brideshead Revisited in the role of Nanny Hawkins.
wn.com/Mona_Washbourne -
Monic Hendrickx
Monic Hendrickx (born Stevensbeek, December 3, 1966) is a Dutch actress. She has won several awards during her career including three Golden Calf awards for Best Actress at the Nederlands Film Festival, the Jury Award at the 2001 Newport Beach Film Festival and the Best Actress Award at the 1999 Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema.
wn.com/Monic_Hendrickx -
Mélanie Laurent
Mélanie Laurent (born 21 February 1983) is a French actress, director, singer and writer. She is best known to international audiences for her role as Shosanna Dreyfus in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, for which she won Best Actress from the Online Film Critics Society and the Austin Film Critics Association.
Mélanie Laurent was born in Paris, the daughter of Annick, a ballerina, and Pierre Laurent, a voiceover actor (who dubs the character Ned Flanders in the French version of The Simpsons). Laurent is Jewish, and has both Ashkenazi and Tunisian Sephardic ancestry. A grandfather survived deportation by the Nazis. Her maternal grandparents were film poster editors. She grew up in the 9th arrondissement of Paris and was immersed from birth in the arts.
Her career began when Gérard Depardieu, seeing her while she watched her best friend's father working on the set of Asterix and Obelix, asked her if she wanted to be in movies. Laurent replied 'Why not?' and next week his assistant called her. Depardieu gave Laurent a part when she was 16 in The Bridge, a drama he starred in and co-directed with Fréderic Auburtin.
wn.com/Mélanie_Laurent -
Mýa
Mýa Marie Harrison (born October 10, 1979), professionally referred to as Mýa, is an American R&B and pop recording artist, entertainer, philanthropist, and occasional actress. A Washington, D.C. native, as a young child, Harrison took ballet lessons from the age of two and added jazz and tap dancing lessons to her schedule two years later. As she entered her teens, Harrison began to shift her focus to music. Gifted and musically-inclined, with the help of her father she put together a demo tape when she was 15 and begin to scout around for a record deal while still attending high school. At the age of 16, she signed a recording contract with Interscope Records.
Harrison's eponymous debut album with (through) Interscope Records was released in the spring of April 1998. It sold over one million copies in the United States, producing the gold-certified top ten single "It's All About Me" featuring Sisqó. Her second studio album, platinum-plus selling Fear of Flying was released in 2000 and became a worldwide success, with single "Case of the Ex" becoming Mýa's breakthrough hit; topping the Australian Singles Chart for two consecutive weeks.
wn.com/Mýa -
Natalie Portman
Natalie Hershlag (Hebrew: נטלי הרשלג; born June 9, 1981), better known by her stage name Natalie Portman, is an actress with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon, but mainstream success came when she was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (released in 1999, 2002 and 2005). In 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology while still working as an actress. She completed her bachelor's degree in 2003.
In 2001, Portman opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. In 2005, Portman received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture for the drama Closer. She won a Constellation Award for Best Female Performance, and a Saturn Award for Best Actress for her starring role in V for Vendetta (2006). She played leading roles in the historical dramas Goya's Ghosts (2006) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). In May 2008, she served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury. Portman's directorial debut, Eve, opened the 65th Venice International Film Festival's shorts competition in 2008. Portman directed a segment of the collective film New York, I Love You.
wn.com/Natalie_Portman -
Neil Armfield
Neil Geoffrey Armfield AO (born 22 April 1955) is an Australian director of theatre, film and opera.
Born in Sydney, Armfield was the youngest of three boys. The son of a factory worker at the nearby Arnott's Biscuits factory, he was brought up in the suburb of Concord adjacent to Exile Bay. He was educated at the (then) selective publicly funded Homebush Boys High School and the University of Sydney, graduating in 1977, and became Co-Artistic Director of the Nimrod Theatre Company in 1979. He joined South Australia's Lighthouse Theatre before returning to Sydney in 1985, where he was involved in the purchase of Belvoir St Theatre and the formation of Company B, becoming its first Artistic Director in 1994.
In April 2008 he was selected as a participant in the Towards a creative Australia strand of the Australia 2020 Summit. Armfield announced in 2009 that the 2010 season would be his last as Belvoir Artistic Director, but he has subsequently directed under the new Artistic Director Ralph Myers.
wn.com/Neil_Armfield -
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC (born 20 June 1967) is an Australian actress, singer, film producer, and humanitarian. Kidman began her career in 1983, starring in various Australian film and television productions until her breakthrough in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Following several films over the early 1990s, she came to worldwide recognition for her performances in Days of Thunder (1990), Far and Away (1992), and Batman Forever (1995). Kidman followed this with other successful films in the late 1990s. It was her performance in the musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001) which earned Kidman her second Golden Globe Award and first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her performance as Virginia Woolf the following year in the drama film The Hours (2002) received critical acclaim and earned Kidman the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Kidman's other notable films include To Die For (1995), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Cold Mountain (2003), The Interpreter (2005), and Australia (2008). Her performance in 2010's Rabbit Hole (which she also produced) earned Kidman further accolades including a subsequent Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Kidman has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 1994 and for UNIFEM since 2006. Kidman's work has earned her a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three Golden Globe Awards, one BAFTA, and an Academy Award. In 2006, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia's highest civilian honor, and was also the highest-paid actress in the motion picture industry. As a result of being born to Australian parents in Hawaii, Kidman has dual citizenship in Australia and the United States.
wn.com/Nicole_Kidman -
Nina Foch
Nina Foch (April 20, 1924 – December 5, 2008) was a Dutch-born American actress and leading lady in many 1940s and 1950s films.
Nina Foch was born Nina Consuelo Maud Fock in Leiden, Holland. Her mother was the American actress and singer Consuelo Flowerton, who returned to the U.S. after her marriage to Foch's father, Dutch classical music conductor Dirk Fock ended. They divorced when Nina was a toddler. As Foch grew up in New York, her mother encouraged her artistic talents. She played the piano and enjoyed art but was more interested in acting.
Foch lived in Beverly Hills, California for 40 years. She married three times. Her first marriage was to James Lipton, the future host of Inside the Actors Studio. She later married Dennis de Brito in 1959. The couple had one child before divorcing in 1963. Her final marriage, to Michael Dewell, began in 1967 but ended in divorce in 1993.
Foch died December 5, 2008, of complications from the blood disorder myelodysplasia at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Her only son, Dr. Dirk de Brito, told the Los Angeles Times that "She had become ill while teaching at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts."
wn.com/Nina_Foch -
Noomi Rapace
Noomi Rapace ( /ˈnoʊmi rəˈpɑːs/ NOH-mee rə-PAHSS),née Norén (born 28 December 1979), is a Swedish actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish/Danish film adaptations of the Millennium series: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. She recently played Madame Simza Heron in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and will star as Elizabeth Shaw in the upcoming Ridley Scott science fiction film Prometheus. As of March, 2012, she is shooting Brian De Palma's thriller Passion in Berlin.
Rapace was born in Hudiksvall. Her mother, Nina Norén (b. 1954), is a Swedish actress, and her father, Rogelio Durán (1953–2006), was a Spanish cantaor (Flamenco singer) from Badajoz. She has said that her father may have been of part Roma descent, and though she is "not sure if it is true," she has "always been interested in the culture." Rapace's sister, Særún Norén, is a photographer. Rapace has said that she saw her father only occasionally before his death. At the age of five, she moved from Sweden to Flúðir, Iceland, with her mother and stepfather. At the age of seven she made her film debut in the Icelandic film In the Shadow of the Raven playing a minor role.
wn.com/Noomi_Rapace -
Norman Corwin
Norman Lewis Corwin (May 3, 1910 – October 18, 2011) was an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing. His earliest and biggest successes were in the writing and directing of radio drama during the 1930s and 1940s.
Corwin was among the first producers to regularly use entertainment—even light entertainment—to tackle serious social issues. In this area he was a peer of Orson Welles and William N. Robson, and an inspiration to other later radio/TV writers such as Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, Norman Lear, J. Michael Straczynski and Yuri Rasovsky.
He was the son of Samuel and Rose Corwin and was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Corwin was a major figure during the Golden Age of Radio. During the 1930s and 1940s he was a writer and producer of many radio programs in many genres: history, biography, fantasy, fiction, poetry and drama. He was the writer and creator of series such as The Columbia Workshop, 13 By Corwin, 26 By Corwin and others. He recently was a lecturer at the University of Southern California.
wn.com/Norman_Corwin -
Octavia Spencer
Octavia Lenora Spencer (born May 25, 1970) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Minny, the outspoken maid in the 2011 film, The Help, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, among other accolades including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
Born in Montgomery, Alabama, she is the sixth of seven children. Her mother worked as a maid. Spencer graduated from Jefferson Davis High School in 1988, spent two years at Auburn Montgomery studying drama (1988–89), and received a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts from Auburn University.
At 16, she worked as an intern on the set of The Long Walk Home, a film starring Whoopi Goldberg.
Spencer made her film debut as a nurse in Joel Schumacher's A Time to Kill based on the book by John Grisham. She was originally hired to work on casting, but asked Schumacher if she could audition for a small part. Other film credits include: Never Been Kissed, Big Momma's House, Bad Santa, Spider-Man, Coach Carter, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! and Pretty Ugly People. She has made a number of guest appearances on a myriad of hit series including: Raising the Bar, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Big Bang Theory, Wizards of Waverly Place, NYPD Blue, Grounded for Life, ER, Titus, Becker and Dharma & Greg. However, she is best known for her starring roles as Serenity Johnson on Comedy Central's Halfway Home, and Constance Grady, the amorous INS caseworker on Ugly Betty.
wn.com/Octavia_Spencer -
Olympia Dukakis
Olympia Dukakis (born June 20, 1931) is an American actress. In 1987, she won an Academy Award, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for her performance in Moonstruck. She received another Golden Globe nomination for Sinatra, and Emmy nominations for Lucky Day, More Tales of the City and Joan of Arc.
Dukakis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Alexandra (née Christos) and Constantine S. Dukakis. Her parents were Greek immigrants to the United States, her father from Anatolia and her mother from the Peloponnese. She has a brother, Apollo, and is a cousin of Michael Dukakis, a former governor of Massachusetts and the Democratic nominee for president in 1988, for whom she was a delegate from New Jersey at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. She is an alumna of Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts, and was educated at Boston University.
Dukakis has been married to actor Louis Zorich since 1962. They have three children.
Dukakis has held a lengthy career in a diverse range of films, including Steel Magnolias, Mr. Holland's Opus, Jane Austen's Mafia!, The Thing About My Folks, and Moonstruck, for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She also played the role of Anna Madrigal in the Tales of the City television mini-series, which garnered her an Emmy Award nomination, and appeared on Search for Tomorrow as Dr. Barbara Moreno, who romanced Stu Bergman. She appears as Dolly Sinatra (Frank's mother) in the mini-series of Frank Sinatra's life (1992). Her Broadway theatre credits include Who's Who in Hell, Social Security, and the one-woman play Rose. Her theater, film, and television work has also won her an Obie Award, a Drama Desk Award, a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, and a Golden Globe.
wn.com/Olympia_Dukakis -
Orlando Bloom
Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom (born 13 January 1977) is an English actor. He had his break-through roles in 2001 as the elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and in 2003 as blacksmith Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. He subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood films, including Elizabethtown and Kingdom of Heaven. He appeared in the ensemble films New York, I Love You, Sympathy for Delicious, and Main Street. Bloom made his professional stage debut in West End's In Celebration at the Duke of York's Theatre, St. Martin's Lane, which ended its run on 15 September 2007. On 12 October 2009, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
Orlando Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, England, and has one sister, Samantha Bloom, who was born in 1975.
His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine (née Copeland), was born in the British section of Kolkata, India, the daughter of Betty Constance Josephine Walker and Francis John Copeland, who was a physician and surgeon. Through her, Bloom is a cousin of photographer Sebastian Copeland. Bloom's maternal grandmother's family lived in Tasmania, Australia, Japan, and India, and were of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent. During his childhood, Bloom was told that his father was his mother's husband, Jewish South African-born anti-Apartheid novelist Harry Saul Bloom; however, when he was thirteen (nine years after Harry's death), Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, his mother's partner and family friend. Stone, the principal of the Concorde International language school, was made Orlando Bloom's legal guardian after Harry Bloom's death. Bloom is named after the 16th century composer Orlando Gibbons.[citation needed]
wn.com/Orlando_Bloom -
Pamela Franklin
Pamela Franklin (born 3 February 1950) is a British actress who appeared in feature films from 1961 until 1976, and on American television throughout the 1970s.
Franklin, who had three brothers, was born in Yokohama, Japan, and grew up in the Far East, where her father was an importer/exporter. The family lived in Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and Ceylon before returning to England. At the age of eight she was sent to the Elmhurst School of Ballet in England. She made her film debut at the age of 11 in The Innocents (1961), and her television debut in the Wonderful World of Disney's, The Horse Without a Head. In 1962 she played opposite William Holden, Trevor Howard and Capucine in the British film The Lion. She was only fourteen years old when she made The Third Secret in 1964, in which she played the doctor's daughter, Katherine. When she was interviewed about the film in 1979, she said that "she and Stephen Boyd had become friends and the warmth on screen was genuine." In 1966 she had a lead role in the BBC TV series Quick Before They Catch Us.
wn.com/Pamela_Franklin -
Pamela Rabe
Pamela Rabe (born April 30, 1959) is a Canadian / Australian stage, television and film actor and theatre director. A graduate from the Playhouse Acting School, in Vancouver, Pamela Rabe is one of Australia’s most highly regarded and awarded actors. She is best known for her appearances in the films Cosi, Sirens and Paradise Road. She was born in Ontario, Canada, though she has long resided and worked in Australia.
Rabe is a prolific contributor to theatrical life in her adopted country. Some of her high-profile roles include Nora Boyle in Patrick White's The Season At Sarsaparilla, for which she won a Green Room Award for Best Actress, and Richard III in the Sydney Theatre Company production of The War Of The Roses, which also starred Cate Blanchett as Richard II.
Rabe also starred with Miranda Otto in the 1997 film adaptation of Elizabeth Jolley's novel The Well, for which she received an AFI Award for Best Actress.
In 2005 she performed a challenging, Croatian play called Woman-Bomb.
In 2010 she starred in the Melbourne stage production of David Mamet's play Boston Marriage.
wn.com/Pamela_Rabe -
Patricia Clarkson
Patricia Davies Clarkson (born December 29, 1959) is an American actress. After studying drama on the East Coast, Clarkson launched her acting career in 1985 (a guest spot on Spenser: for Hire being one of her first acting jobs), and has worked steadily in both film and television. She twice won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in Six Feet Under. Film roles included The Green Mile, Far From Heaven, Shutter Island and The Station Agent, and she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Pieces of April (2003).
Clarkson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Jacquelyn (née Brechtel), a local New Orleans politician and councilwoman, and Arthur, a school administrator who worked at the Department of Medicine of Louisiana State University.
Clarkson studied drama at Fordham University, where she graduated summa cum laude, and earned her MFA at the Yale School of Drama before making her film debut in The Untouchables in 1987.
Clarkson's Broadway theatre credits include The House of Blue Leaves and Eastern Standard.
wn.com/Patricia_Clarkson -
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. In addition to her acclaimed series about murderer Tom Ripley, she wrote many short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humor. Although she wrote specifically in the genre of crime fiction, her books have been lauded by various writers and critics as being artistic and thoughtful enough to rival mainstream literature. Michael Dirda observed, "Europeans honored her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favorite writers, in particular Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."
wn.com/Patricia_Highsmith -
Paul Charlier
Paul Charlier is an Australian composer and sound designer who works primarily in theatre and film. He has also worked in radio and was a founding member of the Sydney post-punk band SoliPsiK. His recent theatre work includes the Sydney Theatre Company productions of A Streetcar Named Desire (Sound Designer) and Uncle Vanya (Composer and Sound Designer), as well as the Company B production of The Diary of a Madman (Sound Designer). His film credits include Looking for Alibrandi (Sound Designer), Candy (Composer and Sound Designer) and Last Ride (Composer).
wn.com/Paul_Charlier -
Paul Dano
Paul Franklin Dano (born June 19, 1984) is an American actor and producer. He has appeared in films such as L.I.E. (2001), Too Young to Be a Dad (2002), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Gigantic (2008).
Dano was born in New York City, the son of Gladys (née Pipp) and Paul Dano. He spent the first few years of his childhood in New York City and initially attended the Browning School, while his father worked as a businessman in New York.
While he was still a child, Dano's family moved from New York to New Canaan, Connecticut, finally settling in Wilton, Connecticut, where Dano continued his education at Wilton High School, graduating in 2002 to further attend Eugene Lang College in New York, NY.
As a child he was involved in community theatre, and while performing in New Canaan his parents were encouraged to take him to New York City. At age 10, he was quickly scouted for roles in plays on Broadway, making his debut at age 12 in a revival of Inherit the Wind along with George C. Scott and Charles Durning. At age 17, Dano acted in his first major film role as Howie in L.I.E.
wn.com/Paul_Dano -
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.
wn.com/Paul_Giamatti -
Peggy Ashcroft
Dame Peggy Ashcroft, DBE (22 December 1907 – 14 June 1991) was an English actress.
Born as Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft in Croydon, Surrey, Ashcroft attended the Woodford School, Croydon and the Central School of Speech and Drama. A prolific stage actress from a young age, she first gained notoriety playing Naemi in Jew Suss in 1929, and Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson's Othello two years later, during which time the two had a brief affair.
Stardom came in 1934 when she played Juliet in a legendary production of Romeo and Juliet, at the New Theatre, in which Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud alternated in the roles of Romeo and Mercutio. She and Gielgud would later be acclaimed as Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, which they played together a number of times, including a London engagement and European tour for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1955 (she also played Cordelia to his King Lear during that tour). When she first played Beatrice with him in 1950, Gielgud found her performance "a revelation - an impish, rather tactless girl with a curious resemblance to Bea Lillie," while a teenage Peter Hall observed in her "English containment and decency, contrasted with a wild passion." She stayed at the top of the British theatrical profession throughout her career, with some of the highlights Three Sisters (1937) in which she played Irina, The Heiress (1949), Antony and Cleopatra (1953), As You Like It and Cymbeline (as Imogen) (1957), The Taming of the Shrew (1960), and The War of the Roses, the Royal Shakespeare Company's massive landmark compendium of the three Henry VI plays and Richard III, directed by Peter Hall for the RSC in 1963. Her last appearances for the RSC were as the Countess of Rousillon in Trevor Nunn's 1981 All's Well That Ends Well, a "perfect…performance" according to Financial Times critic Bertram Young, and in a revival of The Hollow Crown for a gala performance at The Swan on 22 June 1986.
wn.com/Peggy_Ashcroft -
Penélope Cruz
Penélope Cruz Sánchez (Spanish pronunciation: [peˈnelope kruθ ˈsantʃeθ]) (born April 28, 1974) is a Spanish actress. Signed by an agent at age 15, she made her acting debut at 16 on television and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón, jamón (1992), to critical acclaim. Her subsequent roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Open Your Eyes (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000) and Woman on Top (2000). Cruz achieved recognition for her lead roles in Vanilla Sky and Blow. Both films were released in 2001 and were commercially successful worldwide.
In the 2000s she has appeared in films from a wide range of genres, including the comedy Waking Up in Reno (2002), the thriller Gothika (2003), the Christmas movie Noel (2004), the action adventure Sahara (2005), the animated G-Force and the musical drama Nine. Her most notable films to date are Volver (2006), for which she earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), for which she received an Academy Award. She was the first Spanish actress in history to receive an Academy Award and the first Spanish actress to receive a star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
wn.com/Penélope_Cruz -
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, who is well known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001 to 2003), adapted from the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien.
He won international attention early in his career with his "splatstick" horror comedies beginning with Bad Taste (1987) before coming to mainstream prominence with Heavenly Creatures (1994), for which he shared an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay nomination with his wife, Fran Walsh. Jackson has been awarded three Academy Awards in his career, including the award for Best Director in 2003; he also won the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Saturn Award for Best Direction the same year.
His films also include Meet the Feebles (1989), Braindead (1992), Forgotten Silver (1995), The Frighteners (1996), King Kong (2005),The Lovely Bones (2009), and the upcoming The Lord of the Rings prequels The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Hobbit: There and Back Again (2013). He is also the producer of District 9 (2009) and The Adventures of Tintin (2011).
wn.com/Peter_Jackson -
Pia Miranda
Pia Miranda (born 15 June 1973) is an Australian, multi-award-winning actress whose career was launched with her successful 1999 role in the feature film Looking for Alibrandi, an Australian film based on the novel by Melina Marchetta.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Pia Miranda is of Italian descent and spent the majority of her early life travelling throughout Australia with her family, attending a large number of schools. After completing her high school certificate, Miranda enrolled at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Victoria, studying Drama, majoring in acting.
After the completion of her Degree in Drama, Miranda began a Bachelor of Arts degree at Victoria University, Australia, majoring in theatre, chosen because of its strong content in the subject. Soon after this, Miranda found herself playing Karen Oldman on the Australian soap Neighbours, from 1998 to 1999. At this time, Miranda was also starring in the ABC television series Bondi Banquet, playing Jo Tognetti. This was the starting point for Miranda's future success within the Australian film and television industry, quickly being chosen for the role of Josephine Alibrandi in the hugely successful Australian movie Looking for Alibrandi, directed by Kate Woods in 1999.
wn.com/Pia_Miranda -
Queen Latifah
Dana Elaine Owens (born March 18, 1970), better known by her stage name Queen Latifah, is an American singer, rapper, and actress. Her work in music, film and television has earned her a Golden Globe award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Image Awards, a Grammy Award, six additional Grammy nominations, an Emmy Award nomination and an Academy Award nomination.
Latifah was born, and primarily raised, in East Orange, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Rita (née Bray), a teacher at Irvington High School (her daughter's alma mater), and Lancelot Owens, Sr., a police officer, her parents divorced when Latifah was ten. Latifah was raised in the Baptist church and attended Catholic school in Newark, New Jersey. Her stage name, Latifah (لطيفة laţīfa), meaning "delicate" and "very kind" in Arabic, she found in an Islamic book of names when she was eight. Always a tall girl, the 5'10" Latifah was a power forward on her high school basketball team. She performed the number "Home" from the musical The Wiz in a high school play. She is of African American and Native American ancestry.
wn.com/Queen_Latifah -
Rachel Griffiths
Rachel Anne Griffiths (born 18 December 1968) is an Australian film and television actress. She came to prominence with the 1994 film Muriel's Wedding and her Academy Award nominated performance in Hilary and Jackie (1997). She is best known for her portrayals of Brenda Chenowith in the HBO series Six Feet Under and Sarah Walker on the ABC primetime drama Brothers & Sisters. Her work in film and television has earned her a Golden Globe Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and three Australian Film Institute Awards.
Griffiths was born in Melbourne, but spent her early childhood on the Gold Coast. She is the daughter of Anna, an art teacher and arts/education consultant, and Edward Griffiths. She moved to Melbourne at the age of 5, with her mother and two older brothers (when she was 11, her father left home with an 18 year old woman). After earning a Bachelor of Education degree in drama and dance at Victoria College, Rusden, she began her career as a member of Woolly Jumpers, a Geelong based community theatre group. She had her first success as the creator and performer of Barbie Gets Hip, which played at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 1991.
wn.com/Rachel_Griffiths -
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.
wn.com/Reese_Witherspoon -
Renée Zellweger
Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire (1996), and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) (which she reprised in its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)), and as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Cold Mountain (2003).
She has won an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and a BAFTA Award, was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2009, and established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses as of 2007.
Zellweger was born in Katy, Texas. Her father, Emil Erich Zellweger, is from Au in the canton of St. Gallen,Switzerland, and is a mechanical and electrical engineer who worked in the oil refining business. Her mother, Kjellfrid Irene (née Andreassen), is Norwegian; of part Sámi and Kven (Finnish) descent, Kjellfrid grew up in Kirkenes and Ekkerøy, and is a nurse and midwife who moved to the United States to work as a governess for a Norwegian family in Texas. Zellweger has described herself as being raised in a family of "lazy Catholics and Episcopalians".
wn.com/Renée_Zellweger -
Richard E. Grant
Richard E. Grant (born Richard Esterhuysen; 5 May 1957) is a Swaziland-born British actor, screenwriter and director. Grant came to public attention for playing Withnail in the film Withnail and I. He holds dual British and Swazi citizenship.
Grant was born Richard Esterhuysen in Mbabane, Swaziland. He adopted the stage name Grant when he moved to England as an adult and registered with the British Actors' Equity Association. His father, Henrik Esterhuysen, was head of education for the British government administration in the British Protectorate of Swaziland. His South African mother, Leonne, was a local ballet teacher. His father had Dutch/Afrikaner and Hungarian ancestry and his mother was of German descent.
As a young child, Grant went to primary school at St Mark's, a local government school in Mbabane that had only recently become racially integrated. At the age of nine, he witnessed an adulterous relationship between his mother and another man that subsequently led to the break-up of his parents' marriage. This event inspired him to keep a daily diary, which he has continued to do ever since. He wears a watch on each wrist, one given to him by his dying father, permanently set on Swaziland time.
wn.com/Richard_E._Grant -
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.
wn.com/Richard_Gere -
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November, 1937) is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Legend (1985), Black Rain (1989), Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), Kingdom of Heaven (2005) American Gangster (2007), Body of Lies (2008), and Prometheus (2012).
Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing, as well as Golden Globe and Emmy Awards. He was knighted in the 2003 New Year Honours. In 2011, Scott received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is the older brother of film director Tony Scott.
Scott was born in South Shields, England, the son of Elizabeth and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. He was raised in an Army family, meaning that for most of his early life, his father — an officer in the Royal Engineers — was absent. Ridley's older brother, Frank, joined the Merchant Navy when he was still young and the pair had little contact. During this time the family moved around, living in (among other areas) Cumbria, Wales and Germany. He has a younger brother, Tony, also a film director. After the Second World War, the Scott family moved back to their native north-east England, eventually settling in Teesside (whose industrial landscape would later inspire similar scenes in Blade Runner). He enjoyed watching films, and his favourites include Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai. Scott studied in Teesside from 1954 to 1958, at Grangefield Grammar School and later in West Hartlepool College of Art, graduating with a Diploma in Design.
wn.com/Ridley_Scott -
Robyn Nevin
Robyn Anne Nevin AM (25 September 1942), is an Australian stage and screen actress, and is considered by some as a doyenne of Australian theatre.
Robyn Nevin was born 25 September 1942, in Melbourne, to William George Nevin and Josephine Pauline Casey. She was educated at Genazzano Convent until the age of 11, when she moved with her family moved to Hobart, Tasmania, and was enrolled at the The Fahan School, a non-denominational school for girls'. While there, she played the lead in the school's production of Snow White at the Theatre Royal. Her parents were conservative and conventional, her father the managing director of Dunlop Australia, her mother a housewife, so to enter the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) at the age of 16 in the very first intake in 1959 was a brave step, in which she was fully supported by her parents.
At the outset of her career, she had a variety of roles in radio and television, working mainly at the Australian Broadcasting Commission, including current affairs, music, chat shows and children's shows throughout the early 1960s. With the Old Tote Theatre Company she acted in The Legend of King O'Malley by Bob Ellis and Michael Boddy in 1970. She gravitated back to theatre, where she has been a constant presence for the last 40 years.
wn.com/Robyn_Nevin -
Rod Taylor
Rodney Sturt "Rod" Taylor (born 11 January 1930) is an Australian actor of film and television. He has appeared in over 50 films, and is well known for his roles in the science fiction film The Time Machine (1960), and in the Alfred Hitchcock horror movie The Birds (1963).
Taylor was Born on 11 January 1930 in Lidcombe, a suburb of Sydney, the only child of William Sturt Taylor, a steel construction contractor and commercial artist, and the former Mona Thompson, a writer of more than a hundred short stories and children's books. His middle name comes from his great-great grand uncle, Captain Charles Sturt, a British explorer of the Australian Outback in the 19th century.
Taylor attended Parramatta High School and later studied at the East Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College. For a time he worked as a commercial artist, but decided to become an actor after seeing Laurence Olivier in an Old Vic touring production in Australia.
Taylor acquired extensive radio and stage experience in Australia where his radio work included a period on Blue Hills and a role as Tarzan. Earlier in his career he had to support himself by working at Sydney's Mark Foys department store designing and painting window and other displays during the day. In 1951 he took part in a re-enactment of Charles Sturt's voyage down the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers, playing Sturt's offsider, George Macleay. A short documentary, Inland with Sturt (1951), was based on it. Taylor also appeared in a number of theatre productions for Australia's Mercury Theatre.
wn.com/Rod_Taylor -
Ronee Blakley
Ronee Blakley (born August 24, 1945) is an American entertainer. Although an accomplished singer, songwriter, composer, producer and director, she is perhaps best known as an actress. Her most famous role was as the fictional country superstar Barbara Jean in Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville, for which she won a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award. She also had a notable role in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
Blakley was born in Nampa, Idaho, daughter of civil engineer Ronald Blakley and his wife Carol. Blakley’s early years were spent in the Pacific Northwest where she was selected as Idaho's representative to Girl's Nation while in high school. She studied at Mills College, Stanford University, and went to New York to attend Juilliard for post-graduate work.
Blakley began in New York improvising vocally with Moog synthesizers in Carnegie Hall to music by Gershon Kingsley. Her first soundtrack was composed for the 20th Century Fox film Welcome Home Soldier Boys and earned her a spot in Who's Who in America.
wn.com/Ronee_Blakley -
Rosanna Arquette
Rosanna Lauren Arquette (born August 10, 1959) is an American actress, film director, and producer.
Arquette was born in New York City, the daughter of Brenda Olivia "Mardi" (née Nowak), an actress, poet, theater operator, activist, acting teacher, and therapist, and Lewis Arquette, an actor and director. Her paternal grandfather was comedian Cliff Arquette. Her mother was Jewish, the daughter of a Holocaust refugee from Poland. Her father was a convert to Islam and a descendant of explorer Meriwether Lewis. Her siblings Patricia, Alexis, Richmond, and David Arquette are also actors.
In 1963, Arquette's family moved to Chicago, where her father managed The Second City theater for several years. When she was eleven years old, her parents moved to a commune in Front Royal, Virginia. Arquette did not do well at school.[citation needed] In 1974, she hitchhiked across the country with three older teenagers, eventually going to San Francisco, where she worked at renaissance and Dickens fairs. Her professional theater debut was May 27, 1977, appearing in the Story Theatre Musical production of Ovid's The Metamorphoses at the Callboard Theatre on Melrose Place in Los Angeles.[citation needed]
wn.com/Rosanna_Arquette -
Rosemary Harris
Rosemary Ann Harris (born 19 September 1927) is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.
Harris was born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, England, the daughter of Enid Maude Frances (née Campion) and Stafford Berkley Harris. Her grandmother was Romanian. Her father was in the Royal Air Force and as a result, Harris' family lived in India during her childhood. She attended convent schools, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1951 to 1952.[citation needed]
Early in her acting career, she gained experience in English repertory theatre (in 1948, she acted in Kiss and Tell at Eastbourne with Tilsa Page and John Clark) before training at RADA.[citation needed] She first appeared in New York in 1951 in Moss Hart's Climate of Eden, and then returned to England for her West End debut in The Seven Year Itch which ran for a year at the Aldwich. She then entered a classical acting period in productions with the Bristol Old Vic and then the Old Vic.[citation needed]
wn.com/Rosemary_Harris -
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee (born October 27, 1924) is an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist. She is perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and the film American Gangster (2007) for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has won a Grammy, Emmy, Obie, Drama Desk, Screen Actors Guild Award, Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors, among scores of others awards.
Dee was born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Gladys Hightower and Marshall Edward Nathaniel Wallace, a cook, waiter, and porter. After her mother left the family, Dee's father married Emma Amelia Benson, a schoolteacher. Dee grew up in Harlem, New York. She attended Hunter College High School and went on to graduate from Hunter College with degrees in French and Spanish in 1944. Dee is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Dee made several appearances on Broadway before receiving national recognition for her role in the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story. Her career in acting has crossed all major forms of media over a span of eight decades, including the films A Raisin in the Sun, in which she recreated her stage role as a suffering housewife in the projects, and Edge of the City. She played both roles opposite Sidney Poitier. During the 1960s, Dee appeared in such politically charged films as Gone Are the Days and The Incident, which is recognized as helping pave the way for young African-American actors and filmmakers.
wn.com/Ruby_Dee -
Russell Crowe
Russell Ira Crowe (born 7 April 1964) is a New Zealand born Australian actor, film producer and musician. He came to international attention for his role as Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 historical epic film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, an Empire Award for Best Actor and a London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and ten further nominations for Best Actor. Crowe appeared as the tobacco firm whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand in the 1999 film The Insider, for which he received five awards as Best Actor and seven nominations in the same category. In 2001, Crowe's portrayal of mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John F. Nash in the biopic A Beautiful Mind brought him numerous awards, including an BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor category Motion Picture Drama and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.
wn.com/Russell_Crowe -
Ryan Phillippe
Matthew Ryan Phillippe ( /ˈfɪlɨpiː/; born September 10, 1974), better known as Ryan Phillippe, is an American actor. After appearing on the soap opera One Life to Live, he came to fame in the late 1990s starring in a string of films, including I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, and 54. In the 2000s, he appeared in several films, including 2001's Academy Award Best Picture nominee Gosford Park, 2005's Academy Award-winning ensemble film Crash, and the 2006 war drama Flags of Our Fathers. In 2007 he starred in Breach, a movie based on the true story of FBI operative Eric O'Neill, while in 2008 he headlined Kimberly Peirce's Iraq war film Stop-Loss. In 2010, he starred as Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer Greg Marinovich in The Bang-Bang Club.
Phillippe was born in New Castle, Delaware. His mother, Susan (née Thomas), ran a day care center in the family's house, and his father, Richard Phillippe, worked for DuPont. Phillippe is of part French descent. He has three sisters. He attended New Castle Baptist Academy, where he played basketball and soccer, as well as earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do; he was also the Yearbook Editor in his senior year.
wn.com/Ryan_Phillippe -
Sabine Azéma
Sabine Azéma (born 20 September 1949) is a French stage and film actress and director. Born in Paris, she graduated from the Paris Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and began her film career in 1975. Azéma appeared in A Sunday in the Country (1984), for which she won a César Award for Best Actress, and numerous films of Alain Resnais, including Life Is a Bed of Roses (1983), L'Amour à mort (1984), Mélo (which won her a second César Award for Best Actress), Smoking/No Smoking (1993), On connaît la chanson (1997), Pas sur la bouche (2003), and Cœurs (2006). She has been nominated a further five times.
wn.com/Sabine_Azéma -
Sacha Horler
Sacha Horler (born 12 February 1970, Sydney) is an Australian actress. Her parents were lawyers, but co-founded Sydney's Nimrod Theatre Company in the early 1970s.
In 1993, Sacha Horler graduated from Sydney's prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Arts and made her film debut two years later with a role in the music-themed comedy Billy's Holiday. In 1997, Horler was featured in the Australian produced drama Blackrock, and even appeared in the international hit Babe: Pig in the City the following year. Among her notable Sydney stage credits were featured roles in the one-act play collection Playgrounds (1996) and Harold Pinter's theater classic The Birthday Party (1997).
Next up for the actress was her breakthrough role in the gritty drama Praise, which featured several sobering sex scenes and a great deal of unromanticized nudity.
Horler's follow-up supporting role in Soft Fruit was a more difficult role for the actress, as it required her to considerably gain weight for the role. That year, she also had a supporting turn in the drama My Mother Frank, starring as the married daughter of a widow (Sinéad Cusack) who returns to school after her children have grown. She also appeared in the TV series CrashBurn playing "Abby".
wn.com/Sacha_Horler -
Sally Field
Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946) is an American actress, singer, producer, director, and screenwriter. In each decade of her career, she has been known for major roles in American TV/film culture, including: in the 1960s, for Gidget (1965–66) or Sister Bertrille on The Flying Nun (1967–70); in the 1970s, for Sybil (1976), Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Norma Rae (1979); in the 1980s, for Absence of Malice (1981), Places in the Heart (1984) and Steel Magnolias (1989); in the 1990s, for Not Without My Daughter (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Forrest Gump (1994) and Eye for an Eye (1996); and in the 2000s, on the TV shows ER and Brothers & Sisters (2006–11). She has also performed in numerous other roles.
Field won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a leading role on two occasions, Norma Rae (1979) and Places in the Heart (1984). Field's professional achievements also include winning three Emmy Awards: for her role in the TV film Sybil (1976); her guest-starring role on ER in 2000; and for her starring role as Nora Holden Walker on ABC's series Brothers & Sisters in 2007. She has also won two Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. She also won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, for Norma Rae (1979).
wn.com/Sally_Field -
Sally Kirkland
Sally Kirkland (born October 31, 1941) is an American film and television actress.
Kirkland was named after her mother, fashion editor Sally Kirkland, who was a fashion editor at Vogue and LIFE magazines, and was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father, Frederic McMichael Kirkland, worked in the scrap metal business.
Kirkland began acting Off-Broadway in 1962.[citation needed] Then in 1969, she gave a widely acclaimed performance in the classic underground film Coming Apart. In the 1970s, she had small roles in popular films such as The Sting, The Way We Were, A Star Is Born and Private Benjamin. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1987 for Anna, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama. Kirkland currently (as of 2010) hosts a show on the syndicated HealthyLife Radio Network.[citation needed]
Kirkland has had frequent television roles, including The Simple Life 5: Goes to Camp and the soap operas Valley of the Dolls and Days of Our Lives and Three's Company. Films in which she has appeared include: EDtv, JFK, Adam and Steve and Coffee Date.
wn.com/Sally_Kirkland -
Sandra Bullock
Sandra Annette Bullock ( /ˈbʊlək/; born July 26, 1964) is an American actress and producer who rose to fame in the 1990s after roles in successful films such as Demolition Man, Speed, The Net, A Time to Kill, and While You Were Sleeping. In the new millennium she appeared in such films as Miss Congeniality, The Lake House, and Crash, the third of which received critical acclaim. In 2007, she was ranked as the 14th richest female celebrity with an estimated fortune of US$85 million. In 2009, Bullock starred in two of the more financially successful films of her career, The Proposal and The Blind Side. Bullock was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, and the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side. She is listed in the 2012 edition of the Guinness Book Of World Records as the highest-paid actress, with $56 million.
Sandra Annette Bullock was born in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Her father, John W. Bullock (born 1925), was a United States Army employee and part-time voice coach from Birmingham, Alabama, and her mother, Helga D. Meyer (1942–2000), was a German opera singer and voice teacher. Bullock's maternal grandfather was a rocket scientist from Nuremberg, Germany. John Bullock, then in charge of the Army's Military Postal Service in Europe, was stationed in Nuremberg when he met his wife. They married in Germany, soon moving to Arlington, where John Bullock worked with the Army Materiel Command, before becoming a contractor for The Pentagon.
wn.com/Sandra_Bullock -
Sandra Oh
Sandra Oh (born July 20, 1971) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for the role of Dr. Cristina Yang on ABC's Grey's Anatomy, for which she has won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards. She has also played notable roles in the feature films Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways, and had a supporting role on the HBO original series Arli$$. Other films she has appeared in include The Night Listener, Blindness and Rabbit Hole.
Oh was born in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, to middle-class Korean immigrant parents Joon-Soo (John) and Young-Nam, who had come to Canada in the early 1960s. Her father is a businessman and her mother a biochemist. Oh has a brother, Ray, and a sister, Grace. She grew up living on Camwood Crescent in Nepean, where she began acting and ballet at an early age. At the age of 10, she played The Wizard of Woe in a class musical, The Canada Goose.[citation needed]
wn.com/Sandra_Oh -
Sean Astin
Sean Astin (born February 25, 1971) is an American film actor, director, voice artist, and producer best known for his film roles as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies, the title character of Rudy, and Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In television, he appeared as Lynn McGill in the fifth season of 24. Most recently, he provided the voice for the title character in Disney's Special Agent Oso. Astin also served as campaign manager for his friend, Democratic entertainment industry businessman Dan Adler in California's 36th congressional district special election, 2011.
Astin was born Sean Patrick Duke in Santa Monica, California, the son of actress Patty Duke. At the time, it was reported that Desi Arnaz, Jr., was his biological father. In 1994, Astin discovered his father was Michael Tell, a music promoter and writer, and publisher of the newspaper The Las Vegas Israelite.
Tell's marriage to Patty Duke was annulled shortly before her marriage in 1972 to actor John Astin, who adopted Sean. In 1973, Duke gave birth to Astin's half-brother Mackenzie Astin, who also became an actor. Although Patty Duke and John Astin divorced in 1985, Sean Astin has written that he has always considered John his "real" father.
wn.com/Sean_Astin -
Sean Bean
Shaun Mark "Sean" Bean (born 17 April 1959) is an English actor of stage and screen. Bean is known for playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and, previously, British Colonel Richard Sharpe in the ITV television series Sharpe. He is also known for his film work playing such roles as Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye, Jason Locke in Essex Boys, Odysseus in Troy, Ian Howe in National Treasure and Andy McNab in Bravo Two Zero. Bean has also acted in a number of television productions and character roles such as playing Robert Aske in Henry VIII and Eddard Stark in HBO's Game of Thrones. He has also performed voice work for computer games, including Martin Septim in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
Bean was born Shaun Mark Bean in the Handsworth district of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, the son of Rita (née Tuckwood) and Brian Bean. Bean's father owned a fabrication shop, which he had set up with a colleague. The business employed 50 people, including Bean's mother, who worked as a secretary. He has a younger sister named Lorraine. Despite becoming relatively wealthy (his father owned a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow), the family never moved away from the council estate, because they preferred to remain close to friends and family.
wn.com/Sean_Bean -
Shailene Woodley
Shailene Diann Woodley (born November 15, 1991) is an American actress. Woodley is known for portraying Amy Juergens in the ABC Family series The Secret Life of the American Teenager and for co-starring alongside George Clooney in the critically acclaimed 2011 film The Descendants. For her performance in The Descendants she won an Independent Spirit Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Woodley was born in Simi Valley, California. Her mother, Lori (née Victor), is a middle school counselor, and her father, Lonnie Woodley, is a school principal. She has a younger brother, Tanner. When she was 15 and a freshman, her parents divorced and she was also diagnosed with scoliosis. She was put in a chest-to-hips plastic brace to straighten her spine.
wn.com/Shailene_Woodley -
Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American romantic comedy-drama film directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard. The film depicts a love affair involving playwright William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) at the time that he was writing the play Romeo and Juliet. The story is fiction, though several of the characters are based on real people. In addition, many of the characters, lines, and plot devices are references to Shakespeare's plays.
Shakespeare in Love won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench).
William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is a poor playwright for Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), owner of The Rose Theatre, in 1593 London. After learning that his love was cheating on him with his patron, Shakespeare burns his new comedy, Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter, rewriting it as the tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Suffering from writer's block, he is unable to complete the play, but begins auditions for Romeo. A young man named Thomas Kent is cast in the role after impressing Shakespeare with his performance and his love of Shakespeare's previous work. Kent is actually Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), the daughter of a wealthy merchant who desires to act but, since women are banned from the stage, she must disguise herself.
wn.com/Shakespeare_in_Love -
Sharon Stone
Sharon Vonne Stone (born March 10, 1958) is an American actress, film producer, and former fashion model. She achieved international recognition for her role in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her performance in Casino.
Stone was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania. The second of four children, she is the daughter of Dorothy (née Lawson), an accountant and homemaker, and Joseph William Stone II, a tool and die manufacturer and factory worker. Stone graduated in 1975 from Saegertown High School in Saegertown, Pennsylvania.
Stone won the title of Miss Crawford County in Meadville, and was a candidate for Miss Pennsylvania. One of the pageant judges said she should quit school and move to New York City to become a fashion model. In 1977, Stone left Meadville, moving in with an aunt in New Jersey. Within four days of her arrival in New Jersey, she was signed by Ford Modeling Agency in New York.
wn.com/Sharon_Stone -
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLean Beaty (born April 24, 1934), known professionally as Shirley MacLaine, is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well known for her beliefs in New Age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career. She was nominated for an Academy Award five times before winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1983 for her role in Terms of Endearment. Her younger brother is Warren Beatty.
Named after Shirley Temple, MacLaine was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada; MacLaine's grandparents were also teachers.The family was devoutly Baptist. Her uncle (her mother's brother-in-law) was A.A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s.
wn.com/Shirley_MacLaine -
Shohreh Aghdashloo
Shohreh Aghdashloo ( listen (help·info) Persian: شهره آغداشلو, IPA: [ʃohˈɾe ɒɢdɒːʃˈluː]; born May 11, 1952) is an Iranian American actress.
After establishing a theatre and film career in Iran, Aghdashloo moved to England during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and subsequently became a citizen of the United States. After several years playing supporting roles in television and film, her performance in House of Sand and Fog (2003) brought her several film critics' awards and a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has continued to play supporting and character roles in film and television and won an Emmy Award for her work in the television drama House of Saddam (2008).
Aghdashloo was born in Tehran, Iran as Shohreh Pari Vaziri-Tabar ("Aghdashloo" is the family name of her former husband, Iranian painter Aydin Aghdashloo), to a wealthy Muslim family. Aghdashloo started acting at the age of 18. Following numerous starring roles on the stage, she was offered her first film role in Gozāresh (The Report) directed by director Abbas Kiarostami, which won the Critics Award at the Moscow Film Festival. Her next film was Shatranje Bad (loosely translated: Chess With the Wind), directed by Mohammad Reza Aslani which screened at several film festivals. Both films were banned in her home country, but in 1978, Aghdashloo won acclaim for her performance in Sooteh Delan (Broken Hearts), directed by the late Iranian filmmaker Ali Hatami which established her as one of Iran's leading actresses.
wn.com/Shohreh_Aghdashloo -
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver (born Susan Alexandra Weaver; October 8, 1949) is an American actress. She is known for her role of Ellen Ripley in the four Alien films: Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection, for which she has received worldwide recognition.
Other notable roles include Dana Barrett in Ghostbusters and its sequel Ghostbusters II, Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey, Working Girl, Death and the Maiden, The Ice Storm, Galaxy Quest, Snow Cake, Prayers for Bobby and Grace Augustine in Avatar.
Weaver has been nominated for three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards (one win), two Emmy Awards, six Saturn Awards (two wins) and six Golden Globe Awards, winning two in 1988 for Gorillas in the Mist and Working Girl, becoming the first person ever to have won two acting Golden Globe Awards in the same year. She was also nominated for a Drama Desk Award and a Tony Award.
Her 1986 Academy Award nomination for Aliens is considered as a landmark in the recognition of science fiction, action, and horror genres, as well as a major step in challenging the gender role in cinema. Weaver progressively received notoriety for her numerous contributions to the science fiction film history (including minor roles in successful works such as Futurama, WALL-E and Paul) and gained the nickname of "The Sci-Fi Queen".
wn.com/Sigourney_Weaver -
Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek (born Mary Elizabeth Spacek; December 25, 1949) is an American actress and singer. She came to international prominence for her role as Carrie White in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie (based on the first novel by Stephen King) for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as country star Loretta Lynn in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter. She has been nominated for an Oscar a total of six times, and is also known for her role as Holly Sargis in Terrence Malick's 1973 film Badlands.
Spacek is mainly a dramatic actress, but also has made comedies. The films that Spacek has starred in have earned more than $1 billion worldwide.
Spacek was born on Christmas Day, 1949, in Quitman, Texas. She is the daughter of Virginia Frances (née Spilman) and Edwin Arnold Spacek, Sr., a county agricultural agent. Spacek's paternal grandparents, Mary Červenka and Arnold A. Špaček (who served as Mayor of Granger, Texas in Williamson County), were of Czech (Moravian) and German ancestry. Her mother, of English and Irish descent, was from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
wn.com/Sissy_Spacek -
Sophie Thompson
Sophie Thompson (born 20 January 1962) is an English actress, best known for playing evil Stella Crawford in EastEnders.
The second daughter born in 1962, to actress Phyllida Law and actor Eric Thompson, Sophie is the younger sister of twice Academy Award-winning actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson.
Sophie Thompson has worked in film, television, theatre and radio, and has narrated a number of audiobooks. She made her debut in 1978, at the age of 16, starring in A Traveller in Time, before going on to study at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.[citation needed]
Big-screen roles include Four Weddings and a Funeral, "Eat, Pray, Love", Emma, Dancing at Lughnasa, Gosford Park, Fat Slags, Relative Values and Morris: A Life with Bells On. Thompson appeared in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2010, as Mafalda Hopkirk and Hermione Granger disguised as Hopkirk.
Thompson starred alongside popular British comedians Alan Davies, in Jonathan Creek, and Lee Evans in So What Now? She has also appeared in Persuasion, Midsomer Murders, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A Harlot's Progress and Magnolia. She played Miss Bartlett in Andrew Davies' 2007 adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View and also appeared in the last episode of series 4 of Doc Martin.
wn.com/Sophie_Thompson -
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.
After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.
He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.
As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.
wn.com/Stephen_Fry -
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.
wn.com/Steve_Carell -
Susan Misner
Susan Misner (born February 8, 1971) is an American dancer, television and film actress.
Misner portrayed the doomed Grace Davidson on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live from 12 March 1999 to 17 November 1999. In 2002, Misner appeared in the film Chicago, performing the renowned "Cell Block Tango" as Liz with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Denise Faye, Deidre Goodwin, Ekaterina Chtchelkanova and Mýa Harrison.
Misner has guest-starred on many TV series, including three of the series in the Law & Order franchise — Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001/2005), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2002) and Law & Order (2006) — as well as both CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2002) and CSI: Miami (2004). She had dancing role in the 2002 film Chicago. Misner appeared as Theresa on Rescue Me in 2006 and 2007, and later as Gretchen Martin in the 2007 miniseries The Bronx Is Burning. She appeared in two episodes of the hit CBS procedural Without a Trace during the 2004-2005 television season. She portrayed Alison Humphrey in several 2007 episodes of The CW series Gossip Girl and Sergeant Burnett in New Amsterdam (2008). In 2010, she played the girlfriend of therapist Paul Weston in the series In Treatment. Currently she has the role of "Jessica" in Person of Interest.
wn.com/Susan_Misner -
Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon (born Susan Abigail Tomalin; October 4, 1946) is an American actress. She has worked in movies and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her work. She is also noted for her social and political activism for a variety of liberal causes.
Sarandon was born Susan Abigail Tomalin in New York City to a Roman Catholic family. She is the eldest of nine children of Lenora Marie (née Criscione) and Phillip Leslie Tomalin, who worked as an advertising executive, television producer, and nightclub singer during the big band era. Her father was of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry, his English ancestors being from Hackney in London. On her mother's side, she is of Italian descent, with ancestors from the regions of Tuscany and Sicily. Sarandon attended Roman Catholic schools.[citation needed] She grew up in Edison, New Jersey, where she graduated from Edison High School in 1964. She then attended The Catholic University of America, from 1964 to 1968, where she began dating actor Chris Sarandon whom she married in 1967.
wn.com/Susan_Sarandon -
Susan Wooldridge
Susan Wooldridge (born July 31, 1952), is the daughter of British actress Margaretta Scott and composer John Wooldridge. She is also the sister of Hugh Wooldridge.
She was born in London, England, and educated at convent schools.
Wooldridge has been acting since 1972. Her big break came in 1984 with The Jewel in the Crown, in which she played the pivotal character of Daphne Manners whose affection for the handsome Hari Kumar doomed him. For this role she received a BAFTA nomination and the ALVA Award for Best Actress. She has appeared in many British film productions, including Hope and Glory for which she won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress 1987.
She also appeared in many US/British TV productions, such as Dame Agatha Christie's mystery, Dead Man's Folly (1986) which starred Sir Peter Ustinov, Jean Stapleton, Tim Pigott-Smith, and Constance Cummings.
She has appeared on such British TV series as Preston Front, 20,000 Streets Under the Sky, Underworld, Poirot: Cat Among the Pigeons, Bad Company, Pinochet’s Progress, Underworld, Mrs Bradley Mysteries.
wn.com/Susan_Wooldridge -
Sybil Thorndike
Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike CH DBE (24 October 1882 – 9 June 1976) was a British actress.
She was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire to Arthur Thorndike and Agnes Macdonald. Her father was a Canon of Rochester Cathedral. She was educated at Rochester Grammar School for Girls, and first trained as a classical pianist, making weekly visits to London for music lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
She gave her first public performance as a pianist at the age of 11, but in 1899 was forced to give up playing owing to piano cramp. At the instigation of her brother, the author Russell Thorndike, she then trained as an actress.
At the age of 21 she was offered her first professional contract: a tour of the United States with the actor-manager Ben Greet's company. She made her first stage appearance in Greet's 1904 production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. She went on to tour the U.S. in Shakespearean repertory for four years, playing some 112 roles.
In 1908 Sybil was spotted by the playwright George Bernard Shaw when she understudied the leading role of Candida in a tour directed by Shaw himself. There she also met her future husband, Lewis Casson. They were married in December 1908, and had four children - John (1909–1999), Christopher (1912–1996), Mary (1914–2009) and Ann (1915–1990).
wn.com/Sybil_Thorndike -
Sylvester Groth
Sylvester Groth (born 31 March 1958) is a German film actor and tenor.
He is best known to English-language audiences for appearing in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, in which he portrayed Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.
Groth portrayed Goebbels in the 2007 German film Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler, directed by Dani Levy. His first major film role was in 1993's Stalingrad.
wn.com/Sylvester_Groth -
Sylvia Sidney
Sylvia Sidney, born Sophia Kosow, (August 8, 1910 – July 1, 1999) was an American character actress of stage, screen and film, who rose to prominence in the 1930s appearing in numerous crime dramas.
Sidney, born Sophia Kosow in The Bronx, was the daughter of Rebecca (née Saperstein), a Romanian Jew, and Victor Kosow, a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked as a clothing salesman. The area from which Victor Kosow came from is today in Belarus. Her parents divorced by 1915 and she was adopted by her stepfather, Sigmund Sidney, a dentist. Her mother became a dressmaker and renamed herself Beatrice Sidney. Now using the surname Sidney, she became an actress at the age of fifteen as a way of overcoming shyness. As a student of the Theater Guild's School for Acting, Sidney appeared in several of their productions during the 1920s and earned praise from theater critics. In 1926, she was seen by a Hollywood talent scout and made her first film appearance later that year.
During the Depression, Sidney appeared in a string of films, often playing the girlfriend or the sister of a gangster. She appeared opposite such heavyweight screen idols as Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Joel McCrea, Fredric March, George Raft (a frequent screen partner), and Cary Grant. Among her films from this period were: An American Tragedy, City Streets and Street Scene (all 1931), Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage and Fritz Lang's Fury (both 1936), You Only Live Once, Dead End (both 1937) and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine an early three-strip Technicolor film.
wn.com/Sylvia_Sidney -
Talia Shire
Talia Shire (born April 25, 1946) is an American actress most known for her roles as Connie Corleone in The Godfather films and Adrianna Balboa (née Pennino) in the Rocky series.
Shire was born Talia Rose Coppola in Lake Success, New York, the daughter of Italia (née Pennino) and arranger/composer Carmine Coppola. Talia is the sister of director and producer Francis Ford Coppola and academic August Coppola, the aunt of actor Nicolas Cage and director Sofia Coppola, and the niece of composer and conductor Anton Coppola. She was married to composer David Shire, with whom she had a son, Matthew Orlando Shire. She has two other sons, actors/musicians Robert Schwartzman and Jason Schwartzman, from her second marriage to the late producer Jack Schwartzman.
Shire first became famous for her role of Connie Corleone in The Godfather and its sequels. Later, she portrayed Adrianna Pennino Balboa, the girlfriend (and later wife) of Rocky Balboa in the Rocky movies. She also starred in such films as I ♥ Huckabees, Kiss the Bride and 2007's Homo Erectus.
wn.com/Talia_Shire -
Taye Diggs
Scott Leo "Taye" Diggs (born January 2, 1971) is an American theatre, film and television actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the Broadway musical Rent, the motion picture How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and the television series Private Practice. His nickname, Taye, comes from the playful pronunciation of Scotty as "Scottay".
Diggs was born in Newark, New Jersey but grew up in Rochester, New York, the son of Marcia (née Berry), a teacher and actress, and Jeffries Diggs. He attended Allendale Columbia School in Rochester and later transferred to School of the Arts. He starred in the first production of "It All Adds Up", an original musical by the piano teacher and musician John Gabriele and math teacher Jack Donovan. He is the oldest of five children; he has two brothers, Gabriel and Michael, and two sisters, Shalom and Christian. Diggs received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theater from Syracuse University. He performed many times at the popular Lakes Region Summer Theatre in Meredith, New Hampshire. Diggs's Broadway debut was in the ensemble cast of the 1994 Tony Award-winning revival of the musical Carousel. In 1995, he also performed as a dancer in Sebastian's Caribbean Carnival at Tokyo Disneyland.
wn.com/Taye_Diggs -
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning over four decades, Malick has directed five feature films.
Malick has received consistent regard for his work. Malick was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director for The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life and Best Adapted Screenplay for The Thin Red Line, as well as winning the Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival for The Thin Red Line and the Palme d'Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival for The Tree of Life.
Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois or Waco, Texas, the son of Irene (née Thompson) and Emil A. Malick, a geologist. His paternal grandparents were Assyrian Christian Lebanese immigrants. Waco is one of the settings of his film The Tree of Life. Malick attended St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, Texas while his family lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Malick had two younger brothers: Chris and Larry. Larry Malick was a guitarist who went to study in Spain with Segovia in the late 1960s. In 1968, Larry intentionally broke his own hands due to pressure over his musical studies. Emil went to Spain to help Larry, but Larry died shortly after, apparently committing suicide.
wn.com/Terrence_Malick -
Tess Harper
Tess Harper (born August 15, 1950) is an American actress.
Born Tessie Jean Washam on August 15, 1950 in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. Her parents' names are Ed and Rosemary Washam. She grew up around lots of quilts and quilt makers. On her own time, she liked to sit on the porch-swing and read. She graduated from high school in 1968.
Tess Harper began acting in theater production and appearances in theme parks, dinner theatres and children's theatre. She was performing theater in Texas when she attended a casting call for a minor female role in the film Tender Mercies. Director Bruce Beresford was impressed with Harper and cast her instead in the lead female role of Rosa Lee, the young widow and mother who marries country singer Mac Sledge. Beresford said the previous actress who auditioned for the role brought to it a sophistication and worldliness inappropriate for the part, whereas Harper brought a kind of rural quality without coming across as simple or foolish. Beresford said of Harper, "She walked into the room and even before she spoke, I thought, 'That's the girl to play the lead.'"
wn.com/Tess_Harper -
Thandie Newton
Thandiwe Nashita "Thandie" Newton (born 6 November 1972) is a British actress. She has appeared in a number of British and American films, including The Pursuit of Happyness, Mission: Impossible II, Crash, Run, Fatboy, Run and W.
Newton was born in London, the daughter of Nyasha, a Zimbabwean health-care worker and Nick Newton, a laboratory technician and artist. Her birthplace has been incorrectly reported to be Zambia in some biographies, but she has confirmed in interviews that she was born in London, during a two-week trip by her parents. The name "Thandiwe" means "beloved" in Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa or Swazi, and "Thandie" is pronounced /ˈtændi/ TAN-dee in English. According to Newton, her mother is a Shona princess. Regarding her childhood, Newton remarked at a TED conference: "From about the age of 5, I was aware that I didn't fit. I was the black, atheist kid in the all-white, Catholic school run by nuns. I was an anomaly." Raised in London and Penzance, Cornwall, she studied dance at the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts and at sixteen, while recovering from a back injury, she successfully auditioned for her first film role. She then went on to study social anthropology at Downing College, Cambridge, from 1992 to 1995, where she achieved a 2:1.
wn.com/Thandie_Newton -
Thomas Haden Church
Thomas Haden Church (born June 17, 1960) is an American actor. After co-starring in the 1990s sitcom Wings, Church became well known for his film roles, including his Academy Award-nominated performance in Sideways and his role as the Sandman in Spider-Man 3.
Church, the fourth of six children, was born Thomas Richard McMillen in Yolo, California, to an Army officer/health care worker father and a telephone company sales rep mother. He was raised under his stepfather's surname, "Quesada", and later changed his surname to "Haden Church" (both names are in his family tree). He was raised in Laredo, Texas, and graduated from Harlingen High School, Harlingen, Texas, in 1979, going on to attend the University of North Texas.
Church started in the entertainment business as a radio personality and doing voice over work. A part in an independent film convinced him to move to California to pursue an acting career. He played the part of slow-witted airport mechanic Lowell Mather for six seasons (1990–1995) on the NBC sitcom Wings. He worked in television for two more seasons with a lead role on Ned and Stacey opposite Debra Messing. He has had supporting roles in films such as Tombstone, George of the Jungle, and The Specials. Church often plays villains or comic relief in films, most evident by turns in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight and Over the Hedge.
wn.com/Thomas_Haden_Church -
Til Schweiger
Tilman Valentin "Til" Schweiger (German pronunciation: [ˈtɪlman ˈvaləntiːn ˈʃvaɪɡɐ]; born 19 December 1963) is a German actor, director, and producer. He is one of Germany’s most successful filmmakers. Since 1968, when the FFA started counting, no other German actor has drawn more people to the cinemas. He runs his own production company, Barefoot Films, in Berlin.
Schweiger was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. He married American model Dana Carlson on June 19, 1995. The couple has four children: Valentin Florian (b. 1995), Luna Marie (b. 1997), Lilli Camille (b. 1998), and Emma Tiger (b. October 2002). They separated in 2005, but have not divorced.
wn.com/Til_Schweiger -
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton (born 5 November 1960) is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, The Chronicles of Narnia, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performances in The Deep End and We Need to Talk About Kevin. She won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Michael Clayton.
Swinton was born in London, England. Her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, KCVO, OBE, DL, who was Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire (1989–2000), is Scottish, and her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton (née Killen), was Australian. Her paternal great-grandfather was Scottish politician and officer-of-arms George Swinton, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour. The Swinton family is an ancient Anglo-Scots family that can trace its lineage to the High Middle Ages.
Swinton attended three independent schools, Queen's Gate School in London, the West Heath Girls' School, and also Fettes College for a brief period.[citation needed] In 1983, she graduated from New Hall (now known as Murray Edwards College) at Cambridge University with a degree in Social and Political Sciences. While at Cambridge, she joined the Communist Party.
wn.com/Tilda_Swinton -
Timothy Spall
Timothy Leonard Spall, OBE (born 27 February 1957) is an English character actor and occasional presenter.
Spall, the third of four sons, was born in Battersea, South London. His mother, Sylvia R. (née Leonard), was a hairdresser, and his father, Joseph L. Spall, was a postal worker. He trained at the National Youth Theatre and RADA, where he was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor in his year. His brother, Matthew, is studio director of the computer games company Morpheme. Another brother, Richard, is the landlord tenant of the Astolat public house in Guildford.
Spall initially made his mark in theatre performing in productions for Birmingham Rep and, later, The Royal Shakespeare Company including The Merry Wives of Windsor, Three Sisters, Nicholas Nickleby and The Knight of the Burning Pestle.
Following a film debut in Quadrophenia and wider TV exposure playing the gormless Radish Barry Taylor in all five series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Kevin in Outside Edge and as Aubrey the appalling chef in Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet, Spall has since appeared in films such as Crusoe, Secrets & Lies, Shooting the Past, Topsy-Turvy, Vanilla Sky, Rock Star, The Last Samurai, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and The King's Speech. He gained international recognition as Peter Pettigrew ("Wormtail") in the Harry Potter film series. In 1991 he guest-starred in the series 5 Red Dwarf episode Back to Reality. In 1993, Spall was in Rab C. Nesbitt.
wn.com/Timothy_Spall -
Tina Bursill
Tina Bursill (born 1951 in Sydney) is an Australian actress usually seen on television playing sophisticated and coolly self-reliant women such as Louise Carter in Skyways. Det. Sgt. Anne Burke in Hey Dad! and Sonia Stevens in Prisoner.
Other TV credits include: Matlock Police, The Unisexers, A Country Practice, The Flying Doctors, Heartbreak High, Murder Call, Farscape, All Saints, Always Greener, MDA and White Collar Blue. In Home and Away she played schoolteacher Lois Crawford in 1992, then played Stella Patterson in 2001–2002.
In 1988, Tina won the Australian Film Institute award for Best Supporting Actress in Jilted.
wn.com/Tina_Bursill -
Tom Hollander
Thomas Anthony "Tom" Hollander (born 25 August 1967) is a British actor who has appeared in films Enigma, Gosford Park, Cambridge Spies, Pride and Prejudice, Pirates of the Caribbean, In the Loop, Valkyrie and Hanna.
Tom Hollander was born in Bristol and raised in Oxford, the son of teachers. His parents are English, though his father is descended from Czech Jews who converted to Catholicism; Hollander was chief chorister at school. He attended the Dragon School and then Abingdon School. As a youngster, he was a member of the National Youth Theatre and the National Youth Music Theatre (then known as the Children's Music Theatre). In 1981, at fourteen years of age, he was awarded the lead role in a BBC dramatization of Leon Garfield's John Diamond. He read English at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He was actively involved in stage productions as a member of the Footlights and president of the Marlowe Society. Friend and fellow student Sam Mendes directed him in several plays while they were at Cambridge, including a critically acclaimed production of Cyrano de Bergerac (which also featured future Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg). After finishing university and failing to secure a place at a drama school, he found work in theatre nevertheless.
wn.com/Tom_Hollander -
Tommy Lee Jones
Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive.
His notable film roles include federal marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals, Agent K in Men in Black and its sequels, Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men, the villain "Two-Face" in Batman Forever, terrorist William Strannix in Under Siege, former Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call in Lonesome Dove, a Texas Ranger in Man of the House and rancher Pete Perkins in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Colonel Chester Phillips in Captain America: The First Avenger. Jones has also portrayed real-life figures such as businessman Howard Hughes, executed murderer Gary Gilmore, Oliver Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter and baseball great Ty Cobb.
Jones was born in San Saba, Texas. His mother, Lucille Marie (née Scott), was a police officer, school teacher, and beauty shop owner, and his father, Clyde C. Jones, was an oil field worker. The two were married and divorced twice. Jones has stated that his grandmother was of Cherokee ancestry. He was a resident of Midland, Texas, and attended Robert E. Lee High School.
wn.com/Tommy_Lee_Jones -
Toni Collette
Antonia "Toni" Collette (born 1 November 1972) is an Australian actress and musician, known for her acting work on stage, television and film as well as a secondary career as the lead singer of the band Toni Collette & the Finish.
Collette's acting career began in the early 1990s with comedic roles in films such as Spotswood (1992) and Muriel's Wedding (1994), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Following her performances in Emma (1996) and The Boys (1998), Collette achieved international recognition as a result of her Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Lynn Sear in The Sixth Sense (1999). She has appeared in thrillers such as Shaft (2000) and Changing Lanes (2002) and independent comedy films like About a Boy (2002), Connie and Carla (2004), In Her Shoes (2005) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
In 2009, she began playing the lead role in the television series United States of Tara, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2010.
wn.com/Toni_Collette -
Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. She received an Academy Award nomination for the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction (1994) and she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Hysterical Blindness (2002).
Thurman was born in Boston to Nena von Schlebrügge and Robert Thurman, and grew up mostly in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she went to Amherst Regional Middle School, and then moved to Woodstock, New York. Her father gave his children a Buddhist upbringing, and she is named after an Dbuma Chenpo (in Tibetan, the "db" is silent; from Mahamadhyamaka in Sanskrit, meaning "Great Middle Way"). Regarding religion, she now calls herself agnostic. She has three brothers, Ganden (b. 1968), Dechen (b. 1973), and Mipam (b. 1978), and a half-sister named Taya (b. 1960), from her father's previous marriage. She and her siblings spent time in Almora, Uttarakhand, India, during childhood, and the Dalai Lama sometimes visited their home. She is described as having been an awkward and introverted girl who was teased for her tall frame, angular bone structure, enormous feet and unusual name (sometimes using the name “Uma Karen” instead of her birth name). When she was 10 years old, a friend's mother suggested a nose job. As a child, she suffered bouts of body dysmorphic disorder, which she discussed in an interview with Talk magazine in 2001. She attended Amherst Public Schools. In the 8th grade she discovered her love for acting. Talent scouts noticed her performance as Abigail in a production of The Crucible, and offered her the chance to act professionally. Thurman attended Northfield Mount Hermon School, an elite preparatory school in Massachusetts, before dropping out to pursue a career in acting.
wn.com/Uma_Thurman -
Valerie Perrine
Valerie Ritchie Perrine (born September 3, 1943) is an American actress and model.
Perrine was born in Galveston, Texas, the daughter of Winifred (née McGinley), a dancer who appeared in Earl Carroll's Vanities, and Kenneth Perrine, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army. Owing to her father's career, Perrine lived in many locations as the family moved to different posts.
Perrine began her career as a Las Vegas showgirl. Some believe she made her motion picture debut with an uncredited part in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) but this is not true. She played soft-core porn actress Montana Wildhack in the film of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1972).
Perrine was photographed as a model for a pictorial layout in the May 1972 issue of Playboy magazine, later appearing on the cover in August 1981. She then became the first actress to purposely display herself nude on American television by completely baring her breasts during the May 4, 1973, Public Broadcasting Service broadcast of Bruce Jay Friedman's Steambath on Hollywood Television Theater. (She was seen taking a shower from the side totally undressed.) Only a few PBS stations nationwide were adventurous enough to carry the program.
wn.com/Valerie_Perrine -
Veronica Guerin
Veronica Guerin (5 July 1958 – 26 June 1996) was an Irish crime reporter who was murdered on 26 June 1996 by drug lords, an event which helped establish the Criminal Assets Bureau.
The daughter of accountant Christopher and his wife Bernadette, Veronica was nicknamed "Ronnie." She and her four siblings were born and brought up in Artane, Dublin, and attended Catholic school where she excelled in athletics. Besides basketball and camogie, aged 15 she played in the all-Ireland football finals with a slipped disc. Guerin studied accountancy at Trinity College, Dublin.
Guerin married Graham Turley, and the couple had a son Cathal. A big fan of Manchester United football team, her prized possession was a photo of her and Eric Cantona taken on a visit to Old Trafford.
After graduation, her father hired her at his company. But after his death three years later, she changed professions and started a public relations firm in 1983, which she ran for seven years.
In 1983–84, she served as secretary to the Fianna Fáil group at the New Ireland Forum. She served as Charles Haughey's personal assistant, and became a family friend, taking holidays with his children. In 1987 she served as election agent and party treasurer in Dublin North for Seán Haughey.
wn.com/Veronica_Guerin -
Viola Davis
Viola Davis (born August 11, 1965) is an American actress.
Beginning her career on the stage, Davis won a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for her role in King Hedley II (2001). She won a second Drama Desk Award for Intimate Apparel (2004). She won a second Tony and a third Drama Desk Award for her role in Fences (2010).
Some of her notable films include Traffic (2000), Antwone Fisher (2002), Solaris (2002) and The Help (2011). Her eleven-minute-long performance in the film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt (2008) earned several honors, including an Academy Award nomination. Her role in the film The Help has garnered two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a BAFTA Award nomination, another Academy Award nomination, and a Golden Globe nomination. In addition to her success, she was listed in Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Davis was born on her grandmother's farm, at the former Singleton Plantation, in St. Matthews, South Carolina. She is the second youngest of six children. Her mother, Mary Alice, was a maid, factory worker, and homemaker, and her father, Dan Davis, was a horse trainer. Her family moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island a few months after she was born. Davis has described herself as having "lived in abject poverty and dysfunction" during her childhood.
wn.com/Viola_Davis -
Virginia Madsen
Virginia G. Madsen (born September 11, 1961) is an American actress and documentary film producer. She came to fame during the 1980s, having appeared in several films aimed at a teenage audience. Two decades later, she had an Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated role in the 2004 film Sideways.
Madsen was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Elaine (née Melson), an Emmy-winning poet, producer and playwright who often works for PBS, and Calvin Madsen, a fireman. Madsen's mother left a career in corporate business to pursue a writing career. Madsen's brother is actor Michael Madsen. Her paternal grandparents were Danish and her mother has Irish and distant Native American ancestry. Madsen is a graduate of New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois.
Her first effort as an actor was as her brother’s assistant in magic shows the two would concoct for their family. She later attended the Ted Liss Acting Studio in Chicago and Harand Camp Adult Theater Seminar in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Of her experience with Liss, she said: "I had wanted to join his class since I was 12. It was well worth the wait because I don't think I could have got that sort of training anywhere else especially in the United States...I always wanted to make a real career out of acting."
wn.com/Virginia_Madsen -
Virginia Maskell
Virginia Elizabeth Maskell (27 February 1936 in Shepherd's Bush – 25 January 1968 at Stoke Mandeville Hospital), was an English actress.
After the outbreak of World War II, Maskell's family were evacuated to South Africa. After the war she returned to London and entered a convent school where she developed an interest in acting.
After attending drama school, she starred in TV parts mainly playing demure young lasses in action series such as The Buccaneers and The Adventures of Robin Hood.
She made a minor film debut for director Roy Boulting with Happy is the Bride (1957), and then began hopscotching between the theatre and the screen in 1958, her next major film was Director Pat Jackson's comedy Virgin Island (1958). She resultantly won a British Lion contract and went on to appear in The Man Upstairs (1958) with Richard Attenborough, and as an air-hostess in Jet Storm (1959).
She also made an impact on the stage - in "The Catalyst" - and in live TV drama. She later starred in Doctor in Love (1960), and as Peter Sellers's wife in Only Two Can Play (1962); Sellers was unconvinced she could manage a credible Welsh accent and asked for her dismissal, though it was suspected that his ulterior motive was to replace Maskell with Welsh born actress Siân Phillips.
wn.com/Virginia_Maskell -
Vivien Merchant
Vivien Merchant (born Ada Thompson; 22 July 1929 – 3 October 1982) was a British actress.
Merchant performed in many stage productions and several films, including Alfie (1966) Accident (1967) Frenzy (1972) and The Offence (also 1972). Her performance in Alfie gained Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress, and the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Merchant was the first wife of the playwright Harold Pinter, whom she met when working as a repertory actress and married in 1956. Their son, Daniel, was born in 1958.
Having performed the role of Rose in a production of his first play, The Room (1957) at the Hampstead Theatre in 1960, she appeared in many of Pinter's subsequent works, including as Ruth in The Homecoming (1964) on stage (1965) and screen (The Homecoming, 1973). The last of his plays in which she performed on stage was Old Times (1971) as Anna.
Their marriage began disintegrating in the mid-1960s. From 1962 to 1969, Harold Pinter had a clandestine affair with Joan Bakewell, which informs Pinter's play Betrayal. In 1975 Pinter began a serious affair with the historian Lady Antonia Fraser, the wife of Sir Hugh Fraser, which he confessed to his wife that March. At first, Merchant took it very well, saying positive things about Fraser, according to her friend artist Guy Vaesen (as cited by Michael Billington); but, Vaesen recalled, after "a female friend of Vivien's trotted round to her house and poisoned her mind against Antonia ... [L]ife in Hanover Terrace [where the Pinters then lived] gradually became impossible". Pinter left, and Vivien Merchant filed for divorce and gave interviews to the tabloid press, expressing her distress. The Frasers' divorce became final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980. In 1980 Pinter and Fraser married.
wn.com/Vivien_Merchant -
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg ( /ˈhwʊpi/, born Caryn Elaine Johnson; November 13, 1955) is an American comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.
Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple (1985) playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe Award for her role in the film. In 1990, she starred as Oda Mae Brown, a psychic helping a slain man (Patrick Swayze) find his killer in the blockbuster film Ghost. This performance won her a second Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Notable later films include Sister Act and Sister Act 2, The Lion King, Made in America, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Girl, Interrupted and Rat Race. She is also acclaimed for her roles as the bartender Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Terry Doolittle in Jumpin' Jack Flash. More recently, she had performed the voice of Stretch in Toy Story 3 and made an appearance in Glee as Carmen Tibideaux.
wn.com/Whoopi_Goldberg -
William Fichtner
William Edward Fichtner (November 27, 1956) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Sheriff Tom Underlay on Invasion, as Alexander Mahone on Prison Break, as William Sharp in Armageddon, and as Ken Rosenberg in the video games Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Fichtner was born at Mitchel Air Force Base in East Meadow, New York, and was raised in Cheektowaga, New York, the son of Patricia A. (née Steitz) and William E. Fichtner. He is of German descent.
Fichtner graduated from Maryvale High School (Cheektowaga, New York) in 1974. After graduating from Farmingdale State College in 1976 with an associate degree in criminal justice, he attended SUNY Brockport and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in criminal justice in 1978. Fichtner decided to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Fichtner credits his Farmingdale State College admissions counselor, Don Harvey, with his decision to study acting. Harvey, who became a lifelong friend, took Fichtner to his first Broadway show. On 18 May 2008, Fichtner was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Farmingdale State College.
wn.com/William_Fichtner -
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder (born Winona Laura Horowitz; October 29, 1971) is an American actress. She made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder's first significant role came in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988) as Lydia Deetz, a goth teenager, which won her critical and commercial recognition. After various appearances in film and television, Ryder continued her career with the cult film Heathers (1989), a controversial satire of teenage suicide and high school life, which drew Ryder further critical and commercial attention.
Having played diverse roles in many well-received films, Ryder won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination in the same category for her role in The Age of Innocence in 1993, as well as another Academy Award nomination for Little Women the following year for Best Actress. In 2000, Ryder received a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.
Ryder's personal life has been widely reported by the media. Her relationship with actor Johnny Depp in the early 1990s was highly publicized and received much scrutiny by the media and tabloid press. A much talked-about 2001 shoplifting incident led to a four-year hiatus from acting. She has also revealed her personal struggle with anxiety and depression, briefly checking into a clinic.
wn.com/Winona_Ryder -
Zhang Ziyi
Zhang Ziyi (born 9 February 1979), sometimes credited as Ziyi Zhang, is a Chinese film actress. Chinese media have called her one of the Four Young Dan Actresses (四小花旦) in China's film industry, along with Zhao Wei, Xu Jinglei and Zhou Xun.
Her first major role was in The Road Home (1999). She achieved fame in the West after leading roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Rush Hour 2 (2001), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). She has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards and a Golden Globe Award.
Zhang was born and raised in Beijing to Zhang Yuanxiao, an accountant and later economist, and Li Zhousheng, a kindergarten teacher. She is very close to her older brother, Zhang Zinan (Chinese: 章子男; pinyin: Zhāng Zǐnán; born 1973). Zhang began studying dance when she was 8 years old; subsequently, she joined the Beijing Dance Academy by her parents' suggestion at the age of 11. While at this boarding school, she noticed how mean the other girls were to each other while competing for status amongst the teachers. Zhang disliked the attitudes of her peers and teachers so much that, on one occasion, she ran away from the school. At the age of 15, Zhang won the national youth dance championship and began appearing in television commercials in Hong Kong.
wn.com/Zhang_Ziyi -
Zoe Saldana
Zoe Saldana ( /sælˈdænə/ sal-DAN-ə; born June 19, 1978), sometimes stylized Zoë Saldaña, is an American actress. She had her breakthrough role in the 2000 film Center Stage and later gained prominence for her roles as Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Uhura in the 2009 film Star Trek, and a starring role as Neytiri in James Cameron's Avatar. She also had a lead role in the action film Colombiana and the 2002 film Crossroads.
Saldana was born Zoe Yadira Saldaña Nazario or Zoe Yadira Saldana Nazario in Passaic, New Jersey. Her father, Aridio Saldaña, was Dominican, and her mother, Asalia Nazario, is a Dominican of half Dominican and half Puerto Rican descent. Her first languages are Spanish and English. She spent the majority of her early childhood growing up in Queens, New York. After her father died in a car accident when she was only nine years old, Saldaña moved to the Dominican Republic with her mother. There, Saldana discovered her love of dance and soon enrolled in the ECOS Espacio de Danza Academy; she studied ballet, jazz, and modern Latin dance. The family returned to Queens after her sophomore year in high school.
wn.com/Zoe_Saldana
Famous quotes by Cate Blanchett:
"You can't be trying to make a film that pleases all people, you know, so it's not a concern of mine,"
"Thank you to Martin Scorsese - I hope my son will marry your daughter."
"I don't have a sense of entitlement or that I deserve this. You'd be surprised at the lack of competition between nominees - I think a lot of it's imposed from the outside. Can I have my champagne now?"
"Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it."
"I certainly think that when I flick through all the magazines at the hairdresser's I like to see and am drawn to images that have an intelligence and mind at work behind them. [On models]"
"I had never done anything with blue screen before, or prosthetics, or anything like that. Lord of the Rings was like stepping into a videogame for me. It was another world completely. But, to be honest, I basically did it so that I could have the ears. I thought they would really work with my bare head."
"You know you've made it when you've been moulded in miniature plastic. But you know what children do with Barbie dolls - it's a bit scary, actually."
"Look, it's one of the great mysteries of the world, I cannot answer that question. I think I'm vaguely blonde. To be perfectly frank, I don't know. [When asked what colour her hair is]"
"If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously."
"If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life— that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment— that would be the perfect state."
Send this Playlist by SMS
Email this Page
Inside the Actors Studio - Cate Blanchett
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 40:49
- Updated: 25 Nov 2012
Cate Blanchett on Inside the Actors Studio hosted by James Lipton season 10, episode 4 original airdate 2003-12-14 i had to cut out all the movie bits because otherwise youtube would have blocked the video This video does not belong to me and no copyright infringement is intended. This video has been uploaded for educational end entertaining purposes only. The video is owned by Bravo.
http://wn.com/Inside_the_Actors_Studio_Cate_Blanchett
Cate Blanchett Premieres "Uncle Vanya" in NYC
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 12:04
- Updated: 14 Nov 2012
Academy Award winning actress Cate Blanchett and playwright husband Andrew Upton are joint Artistic Directors at the Sydney Theater Company. They are in New York City to open their adaptation of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya." In an interview with WSJ's Lee Hawkins they two discuss the complexity of being married and running a theater company.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_Premieres_Uncle_Vanya_in_NYC
Cate Blanchett Explains her 'Bottom Double' - The Graham Norton Show - S11 E1 - BBC One
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:07
- Updated: 13 Nov 2012
More about this programme: www.bbc.co.uk Cate talks about her bottom double on Elizabeth I and Ewan talks about revealing his.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_Explains_her_'Bottom_Double'_The_Graham_Norton_Show_S11_E1_BBC_One
Cate Blanchett winning an Oscar® for "The Aviator"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:08
- Updated: 05 Nov 2012
Tim Robbins presenting Cate Blanchett with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for her performance in "The Aviator" at the 77th Annual Academy Awards® in 2005.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_winning_an_Oscar®_for_The_Aviator
The Graham Norton Show 2012 - S11x01 Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Michael Sheen Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 14:30
- Updated: 25 Nov 2012
The Graham Norton Show 2012 - S11x01 Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Michael Sheen Part 1
http://wn.com/The_Graham_Norton_Show_2012_S11x01_Ewan_McGregor,_Cate_Blanchett,_Michael_Sheen_Part_1
Cate Blanchett's (Almost) Bald Head
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:32
- Updated: 31 Aug 2012
Worth seeing; in my opinion she looks good but not great. Clipper shaved onscreen for a film.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett's_Almost_Bald_Head
Cate Blanchett's next step
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:29
- Updated: 08 Oct 2012
Cate Blanchett talks about balancing work with family; MTV VMA nominations; Gangnam Style success and The Sapphires becomes the highest grossing Aussie film of the year.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett's_next_step
Cate Blanchett interview - Big and Small
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 12:34
- Updated: 13 Oct 2012
source: www.france24.com After raging successes in Hollywood with Aviator, the Lord of the Rings and Elizabeth, the Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett takes to the stage. Eve Jackson catches up with her in Paris.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_interview_Big_and_Small
Portrait of Cate Blanchett, interview with David Rosetzky at ACCA 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:20
- Updated: 23 Nov 2012
David Rosetzky's acclaimed video portrait of Academy Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett was commissioned by The National Portrait Gallery in Canberra in 2008. It is showing 11 October - 25 November 2012 as part of OURSELVES, a major international survey exhibition at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. Filmed within the set design workshop of the Sydney Theatre Company, the actress slowly moves in to focus in a choreographed sequence, beginning with deft hand gestures and concluding with a lighthearted dance routine. Meanwhile, in a voice-over she muses about her performance roles, public personas and self-identity. Rosetzky initially interviewed the actress and created an edited script that she read and recorded, however the artist does not attempt to reveal the true identity of the actress. Instead, consistent with the more anonymous subjects in his other works, he suggests that identity is fluid and constructed, always dependent on others. "I knew I didn't want to present the portrait as a definitive representation of Cate Blanchett - but rather an exploration of shifting identities and inter-changeability. The location of the Sydney Theatre Company workshop where they make all of their sets -- added to this idea as it represents a site of construction and potential." DAVID ROSETZKY Portrait of Cate Blanchett, 2008 high definition digital video, 9:56 min choreography by Lucy Guerin, sound design and composition by J David Franzke National Portrait Gallery ...
http://wn.com/Portrait_of_Cate_Blanchett,_interview_with_David_Rosetzky_at_ACCA_2012
Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush review Margaret & David
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:48
- Updated: 25 Nov 2012
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_and_Geoffrey_Rush_review_Margaret_David
Who Inspires Cate Blanchett?
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:58
- Updated: 23 Nov 2012
Oscar winner and all-around classy dame Cate Blanchett dazzles on the red carpet at the Elle Women in Hollywood event, and Young Hollywood catches up with her to find out just who inspires an already inspiration person such as herself! Hosted by Nikki Novak (@nikkinovak)..
http://wn.com/Who_Inspires_Cate_Blanchett?
Hanna - Cate Blanchett Featurette
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:21
- Updated: 12 Nov 2012
LIKE Hanna on Facebook: facebook.com
http://wn.com/Hanna_Cate_Blanchett_Featurette
Cate Blanchett - Academy Awards 2005
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:01
- Updated: 15 Nov 2012
Academy Awards 2005 / Press Room
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_Academy_Awards_2005
Cate Blanchett Extended Interview
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 16:35
- Updated: 17 Nov 2012
TEN's Angela Bishop chats to Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton about some of the up and coming projects at STC.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_Extended_Interview
Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Richard Roxburgh & Jacki Weaver speak to Nelson Aspen for Sunrise
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:28
- Updated: 08 Oct 2012
Australia's acting A-list met with our Showbiz editor to discuss their latest project. yahoo7.com.au/sunrise @sunriseon7
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett,_Hugo_Weaving,_Richard_Roxburgh_Jacki_Weaver_speak_to_Nelson_Aspen_for_Sunrise
SPEED PAINTING: "The Hobbit" ~ Galadriel (Cate Blanchett)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:08
- Updated: 25 Nov 2012
www.deviantart.com Hello ^.^ I wanted to paint another "The Hobbit" wallpaper. Galadriel was the only female character I could find, so I decided to draw her. Pls take your time to comment and rate my video, if you want to support me. And enjoy the speed painting =D ☺ original time: 4;30h ☺ program: Paint tool SAI ☺ music: "The Pyre" by Kevin MacLeod
http://wn.com/SPEED_PAINTING_The_Hobbit_~_Galadriel_Cate_Blanchett
Cate Blanchett talks with Charlie Rose
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:50
- Updated: 16 Nov 2012
Actress Cate Blanchett discusses her views on acting.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_talks_with_Charlie_Rose
Decode the Scene GAME - Cate Blanchett Edward Hardwicke Jamie Foreman MOVIE CLIPS
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:52
- Updated: 02 Nov 2012
Cate Blanchett Edward Hardwicke Jamie Foreman MOVIE CLIPS click to subscribe j.mp Elizabeth's (Cate Blanchett) faith is questioned along with her loyalty to England. TM & © Universal (2012) Cast: Jamie Foreman, Edward Hardwicke, Cate Blanchett Director: Shekhar Kapur MOVIECLIPS YouTube Channel: j.mp Join our Facebook page: j.mp Follow us on Twitter: j.mp Buy Movie: amzn.to Producer: Eric Fellner, Liza Chasin, Debra Hayward Screenwriter: Michael Hirst Film Description: This British-made historical drama depicts the rise of young Elizabeth Tudor to Queen of England, a reign of intrigue and betrayals. In 1554, Queen Mary I (Kathy Burke) tries to restore Catholicism as England's single faith. With no heir to the crown, she maneuvers to keep her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) from succeeding her, but her efforts fail. With Mary dead, Elizabeth is proclaimed Queen of England in November 1558. Elizabeth relishes the return from exile of her childhood sweetheart, Lord Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes). Chief adviser Sir William Cecil (Richard Attenborough) urges the young Queen to forget personal matters and instead address the country's pressing problems. England is bankrupt, has no army, and is under serious threat from abroad. Elizabeth even has enemies within her own court, the most dangerous being the Duke of Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston). Hoping for an heir, Cecil suggests marriage candidates -- King Philip II of Spain or the French Duc d'Anjou (Vincent ...
http://wn.com/Decode_the_Scene_GAME_Cate_Blanchett_Edward_Hardwicke_Jamie_Foreman_MOVIE_CLIPS
Cate Blanchett wins Helpmann Award
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:39
- Updated: 21 Oct 2012
The best of Australia's performing arts industry has turned out in style at the Sydney Opera House for the annual Helpmann Awards.
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett_wins_Helpmann_Award
Women in Hollywood Celebrated by Elle
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:09
- Updated: 21 Oct 2012
Cate Blanchett and Octavia Spencer talk about the opportunities they get in the movie business as women, while Uma Thurman and Emma Watson react to the awards given to them at Elle magazine's 19th annual Women in Hollywood event. (Oct. 16)
http://wn.com/Women_in_Hollywood_Celebrated_by_Elle
Decode the Scene GAME - Cate Blanchett Dustin Nguyen Sam Neill MOVIE CLIPS
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:29
- Updated: 02 Nov 2012
Cate Blanchett Dustin Nguyen Sam Neill MOVIE CLIPS click to subscribe j.mp Tracy (Cate Blanchett) finds out that Jonny (Dustin Nguyen) lied about being a stock broker, so she confronts him at a restaurant. TM & © Millennium Entertainment (2012) Cast: Dustin Nguyen, Cate Blanchett Director: Rowan Woods MOVIECLIPS YouTube Channel: j.mp Join our Facebook page: j.mp Follow us on Twitter: j.mp Buy Movie: amzn.to Producer: Kirk D'Amico, Richard Keddie, Barrie M. Osborne, Marion Pilowsky, Vincent Sheehan Screenwriter: Jacquelin Perske Film Description: A former drug-addict in her early thirties attempts to put her shady past to rest while paving the way for a brighter future in director Rowan Woods' tale of love, trust, and redemption in modern-day Australia. Tracy Heart (Cate Blanchett) hasn't lived her 32 years so much as she has simply survived them. Ravaged by the drug-addiction and determined to redeem herself in the eyes of her overworked single-mother Janelle (Noni Hazelhurst), Tracy makes a personal vow to open her own business and turn her life around before it's too late and life has passed her by. Tracy's plan is complicated, however, when three men from her past reappear with their own plans for the future. In addition to the troubling re-appearance of her ex-boyfriend Jonny (Dustin Nguyen), her criminal-minded brother Ray (Martin Henderson) seems hell-bent on making a name for himself in the underworld, and the emotional demands of troubled family friend and ex ...
http://wn.com/Decode_the_Scene_GAME_Cate_Blanchett_Dustin_Nguyen_Sam_Neill_MOVIE_CLIPS
Decode the Scene GAME - Richard Attenborough Cate Blanchett Emily Mortimer MOVIE CLIPS
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:52
- Updated: 07 Nov 2012
Richard Attenborough Cate Blanchett Emily Mortimer MOVIE CLIPS click to subscribe j.mp Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) is uneasy about being crowned. TM & © Universal (2012) Cast: Richard Attenborough, Christopher Eccleston, Jamie Foreman, Cate Blanchett, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Mortimer Director: Shekhar Kapur MOVIECLIPS YouTube Channel: j.mp Join our Facebook page: j.mp Follow us on Twitter: j.mp Buy Movie: amzn.to Producer: Eric Fellner, Liza Chasin, Debra Hayward Screenwriter: Michael Hirst Film Description: This British-made historical drama depicts the rise of young Elizabeth Tudor to Queen of England, a reign of intrigue and betrayals. In 1554, Queen Mary I (Kathy Burke) tries to restore Catholicism as England's single faith. With no heir to the crown, she maneuvers to keep her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) from succeeding her, but her efforts fail. With Mary dead, Elizabeth is proclaimed Queen of England in November 1558. Elizabeth relishes the return from exile of her childhood sweetheart, Lord Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes). Chief adviser Sir William Cecil (Richard Attenborough) urges the young Queen to forget personal matters and instead address the country's pressing problems. England is bankrupt, has no army, and is under serious threat from abroad. Elizabeth even has enemies within her own court, the most dangerous being the Duke of Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston). Hoping for an heir, Cecil suggests marriage candidates -- King Philip II of ...
http://wn.com/Decode_the_Scene_GAME_Richard_Attenborough_Cate_Blanchett_Emily_Mortimer_MOVIE_CLIPS
Decode the Scene GAME - Cate Blanchett Leonardo DiCaprio Alec Baldwin MOVIE CLIPS
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:00
- Updated: 07 Nov 2012
Cate Blanchett Leonardo DiCaprio Alec Baldwin MOVIE CLIPS click to subscribe j.mp Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) makes the acquaintance of Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), movie star and athlete. TM & © Warner Bros. (2012) Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett Director: Martin Scorsese MOVIECLIPS YouTube Channel: j.mp Join our Facebook page: j.mp Follow us on Twitter: j.mp Buy Movie: j.mp Producer: Chris Brigham, Sandy Climan, Colin Cotter, Matthias Deyle, Leonardo DiCaprio, Charles Evans Jr., Graham King, Dan Maag, Michael Mann, Aslan Nadery, Joseph P. Reidy, Volker Schauz, Philip Schulz-Deyle, Rick Schwartz, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Rick Yorn, Martin Scorsese Screenwriter: John Logan Film Description: Martin Scorsese directed this fast-moving, epic-scale biopic documenting the life and loves one of the most colorful Americans of the 20th century, Howard Hughes. The Aviator follows Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) as the twentysomething millionaire, having already made a fortune improving the design of oil-drilling bits, comes to Hollywood with an interest in getting into the picture business. It doesn't take long for Hughes, with his passion for airplanes, to jump from producer to director of his first major film project, a World War I air epic called Hell's Angels, which took three years to complete thanks to the shift from silent to sound filming and Hughes' relentless perfectionism. However, the film was a massive hit, and the eccentric inventor became a ...
http://wn.com/Decode_the_Scene_GAME_Cate_Blanchett_Leonardo_DiCaprio_Alec_Baldwin_MOVIE_CLIPS
photo: AP
23 Nov 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. I was fortunate to have been raised near an American Indian archaeological spot located on the Great Plains. In elementary school, a fellow classmate would periodically bring and show grinding stones, arrow- and spearheads, stone farming implements, and pictures of what the excavated site may have...(size: 7.1Kb)
photo: AP / Mohammed Asad
24 Nov 2012
Cairo. President Mohamed Morsi insisted on Friday that Egypt is on the path to “freedom and democracy” after granting himself sweeping powers, which sparked clashes between his supporters and foes and raised concerns abroad. “Political stability, social stability and economic stability are what I want and that is what I am working for,” he told a...(size: 4.8Kb)
photo: AP / Egyptian Presidency
23 Nov 2012
Opposition groups in Egypt have called for mass protests on Friday against President Mohammed Mursi's decree that gives him sweeping powers. They have described his move as a "coup against legitimacy" and accused the president of appointing himself Egypt's "new pharaoh". The decree states that the president's decisions cannot be revoked by any...(size: 4.6Kb)
photo: WN / Ahmed Deeb
23 Nov 2012
Israel and Hamas are seeking to solidify an Egyptian and US-brokered cease-fire halting eight days of aerial assaults that ravaged the Gaza Strip and made Tel Aviv a missile target. Announcing the truce in Cairo last night alongside Egypt's foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised U.S. assistance in seeking to "improve...(size: 5.4Kb)
photo: AP / Jerome Delay
25 Nov 2012
Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has held direct talks with the leader of the M23 rebels in Uganda, hours after a regional summit called on them to end their offensive in the east of the country. Jean-Marie Runiga Lugerero, the political leader of the eastern DR Congo rebel group, said on Sunday he had an initial...(size: 20.0Kb)
The Hollywood Reporter
26 Nov 2012
share The items range from a $95 vintage record player to a $1,040 24-karat gold plated iPhone horn; plus, the actress reveals her dream gift. Is Gwyneth Paltrow trying to send husband Chris Martin a message?our editor recommends Victoria and Albert Museum's 'Hollywood Costume' Exhibit: Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett Gowns on Display...(size: 5.1Kb)
The Australian
26 Nov 2012
UP to 100,000 people are expected to line the streets of Wellington on Wednesday for the world premiere of director Peter Jackson's long-awaited Middle Earth epic The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Stars including Cate Blanchett, Barry Humphries, Hugo Weaving and Elijah Wood will tread the red carpet for the opening, the first instalment in a...(size: 4.6Kb)
BBC News
26 Nov 2012
Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony has been honoured at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards. The Oscar-winning director and his team got huge cheers when they picked up the Beyond Theatre award from gold medal-winning Team GB cyclist Victoria Pendleton. "We hoped to prove that culture runs through all of us and binds us all together,"...(size: 4.9Kb)
NZ Herald
26 Nov 2012
25 years after a crew of amateurs made the now cult classic Bad Taste, they remember its creator, Sir Peter Jackson, not always fondly, as he prepares for the premiere of the prequel to his record-breaking Rings trilogy. Ken Hammon was in the sixth form at Kapiti College when he met a shy kid who spoke with a stutter and wasn't into sports. It was...(size: 13.3Kb)
Canberra Times
26 Nov 2012
Click to play video Return to video Video settings Please Log in to update your video settings Video will begin in 5 seconds. Don't play Play now More video Recommended Replay video Return to video Video settings Please Log in to update your video settings The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Trailer A curious Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, journeys to the...(size: 5.3Kb)
STL Today
26 Nov 2012
Join Linda Wilson Horn of the Missouri Department of Transportation, Todd Waelterman of the St. Louis Streets Division and David Wrone of the St. Louis County Department of Highways and Traffic each Wednesday at 1 p.m. for the Road Crew, an online chat about area traffic and transportation issues. Last week, Deanna Venker, MoDOT’s area engineer for...(size: 3.0Kb)
NZ Herald
26 Nov 2012
Eighty-three-year-old Eileen Marie Farquer fleeced the system for quarter of a century, pocketing almost $215,000 in benefit payments. The frail-looking Te Puke pensioner managed to hide her offending for more than 25 years but her dark secret was finally uncovered after she drove into the path of a fully laden fuel tanker in March and ended up in...(size: 3.4Kb)
Buffalo News
26 Nov 2012
ALDEN ⢠55 Two Rod Road, Paul Marzec; Anna Marzec to James J. Hoerner; Teri L. Hoerner, $289,900. ⢠1579 Baxter Ave., Karen L. Eddy; Carl W. Eddy to Jennifer L. Baran; Michael J. Baran, $135,000. ⢠13138 Genesee St., Wendy C. Say; Laurie A. Giel; Richard J. Gibbs; Leonard H. Ruhlman to Marie Van Iderstine, $132,000. ⢠170 Exchange St.,...(size: 28.7Kb)
NME
25 Nov 2012
Peter Jackson has said The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be completed just two days before the New Zealand premiere. Speaking in his ninth production diary on the making of An Unexpected Journey, the director nervously...(size: 1.5Kb)
Sydney Morning Herald
25 Nov 2012
To discuss why Cate Blanchett should play The Ultimate Evil, go to...(size: 0.5Kb)
Belfast Telegraph
25 Nov 2012
Danny Boyle's spectacular Olympic opening ceremony has received special recognition at the 58th London Evening Standard Theatre Awards. The Oscar-winning director and his team were presented with the Beyond Theatre award by TeamGB's cycling champion Victoria...(size: 1.7Kb)
Taipei Times
25 Nov 2012
Up to 100,000 people are expected to line the streets of Wellington on Wednesday for the world premiere of director Peter Jacksonâs long-awaited Middle Earth epic The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Stars including Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Barry Humphries and Hugo Weaving will tread the red carpet for the opening, the first installment in a...(size: 3.4Kb)
Hong Kong Standard
25 Nov 2012
Up to 100,000 people are expected to line the streets of Wellington on Wednesday for the world premiere of director Peter Jackson's long-awaited Middle Earth epic The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. //--> Monday, November 26, 2012 Up to 100,000 people are expected to line the streets of Wellington on Wednesday for the world premiere of director...(size: 3.9Kb)
| Cate Blanchett | |
|---|---|
 Blanchett at the 2011 Sydney Film Festival |
|
| Born | Catherine Élise Blanchett (1969-05-14) 14 May 1969 (age 43) Melbourne, Australia |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1993–present |
| Spouse | Andrew Upton (1997–present; 3 children) |
| Parents | Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr. June Gamble |
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett (/ˈblɑːntʃ.ət/; born 14 May 1969) is an Academy Award–winning Australian actress. She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 biopic film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and Golden Globe Awards, and earned her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Blanchett appeared as the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy from 2001 to 2003. In 2004, Blanchett's portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator brought her numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Blanchett's other films include Babel (2006), Notes on a Scandal (2006), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
Blanchett's work has earned her several accolades, including a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTAs, and an Academy Award. Due to her success and character variety, critics have often called her "the new Meryl Streep" or "the Meryl Streep of the next generation".[1][2][3]
Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton, are currently artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.[4][5]
Contents |
Early life and education[link]
Blanchett was born in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe.[citation needed] Her mother, June (née Gamble), was an Australian property developer and teacher, and her father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., was a Texas native who was a US Navy Petty Officer and later worked as an advertising executive.[6][7] The two met while Blanchett's father's ship, USS Arneb, was in Melbourne. When Blanchett was ten, she lost her father to a heart attack.[8] She has two siblings; her older brother, Bob, is a computer systems engineer, and her younger sister, Genevieve, worked as a theatrical designer and received her Bachelor of Design in Architecture in April 2008.[9]
Blanchett has described herself as being "part extrovert, part wallflower" during childhood.[9] She attended a primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School. For her secondary education, she attended Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School and then Methodist Ladies' College, from which she graduated, where she explored her passion for acting.[10] She studied economics and fine arts at the University of Melbourne before leaving Australia to travel overseas.
When she was eighteen, Blanchett went on a vacation to Egypt. A fellow guest at a hotel in Cairo asked if she wanted to be an extra in a movie, and the next day she found herself in a crowd scene cheering for an American boxer losing to an Egyptian in the film Kaboria, starring the Egyptian actor Ahmad Zaki. Blanchett returned to Australia and later moved to Sydney to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1992 and beginning her career in the theatre.[8]
Career[link]
Her first major stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the 1993 David Mamet play Oleanna, for which she won the Sydney Theatre Critics' Best Newcomer Award.[11] She also appeared as Ophelia in an acclaimed 1994–95 Company B production of Hamlet, directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh.
Blanchett appeared in the TV miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the miniseries Bordertown, with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode of Police Rescue entitled "The Loaded Boy". She also appeared in the 1994 telemovie of Police Rescue as a teacher taken hostage by armed bandits, and in the 50-minute drama Parklands (1996), which received a limited release in Australian cinemas. Also in 1994, she played a non-reoccurring role in an episode of the long-running Australian TV series GP, as Janie Morris, a woman living with her brother (Daniel Lapaine as Sean Morris) in a consensual incestuous relationship. Their relationship is torn apart when their mother comes to visit, and notices that only one bed appears to be slept in regularly.[12]
Blanchett made her international film debut with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II, in Bruce Beresford's 1997 film Paradise Road, which co-starred Glenn Close and Frances McDormand.[8] Her first leading role, also in 1997, was as Lucinda Leplastrier, in Gillian Armstrong's production of Oscar and Lucinda, opposite Ralph Fiennes.[8] Blanchett was nominated for her first Australian Film Institute Award as Best Leading Actress for this role, and lost out to Pamela Rabe in The Well. She did, however, win an AFI Award as Supporting Actress in the same year for her role as Lizzie in the romantic-comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie, co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O'Connor.
Her first high-profile international role was as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 movie Elizabeth, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.[8] Blanchett lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow for her role in Shakespeare in Love, but won a British Academy Award (BAFTA) and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama. The following year, Blanchett was nominated for another BAFTA Award, for her supporting role in The Talented Mr. Ripley.[8]
Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. She played the role of Galadriel in all three films.[8] The trilogy holds the record as the highest grossing film trilogy of all time.[13] In 2005, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. This made Blanchett the first person to garner an Academy Award for playing a previous Oscar-winning actor/actress.[citation needed] That same year, Blanchett won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress for her role as Tracy Heart, a recovering heroin addict in the Australian film Little Fish. Though lesser known globally than some of her other films, Little Fish received tremendous critical acclaim in Blanchett's native Australia.
In 2006, she starred in Babel opposite Brad Pitt, The Good German with George Clooney and Notes on a Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench. Blanchett received her third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film.[14]
In 2007, Blanchett was named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People In The World and also one of the most successful actresses by Forbes magazine.[15]
In 2007, she won the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe Award for portraying one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' feature film I'm Not There and reprised her role as Elizabeth I in the sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age.[16] At the 80th Academy Awards Blanchett received two Academy Award nominations; Best Actress for Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There, becoming the eleventh actor to receive two acting nominations in the same year and the first female actor to receive another nomination for the reprisal of a role.[17]
She next starred in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko, and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, appearing on screen with Brad Pitt for a second time.
On 5 December 2008, Blanchett was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in front of Grauman's Egyptian Theatre.[18]
As of 2011, Blanchett has been featured in seven films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: Elizabeth (1998), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002 and 2003), The Aviator (2004), Babel (2006), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
Blanchett provided a voice for the film Ponyo,[19] and appeared opposite Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, released on 14 May 2010. She attended the premiere of her film Hanna directed by Joe Wright at the Sydney Film Festival.[20]
It was announced that Blanchett will reprise her role as Galadriel in Jackson's upcoming films of The Hobbit in 2012 and 2013, filmed in New Zealand.[21]
Blanchett is set to appear in two films directed by Terrence Malick, Lawless and Knight of Cups. Both are scheduled to be filmed in 2012.[22] She is also confirmed to star in Carol, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, set to shoot in February 2013 in London and New York.[23]
In 2012, Blanchett voiced the role of "Penelope" in the Family Guy episode, "Mr. and Mrs. Stewie".
Personal life[link]
Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 while she was performing in a production of The Seagull. They were married on 29 December 1997 and have three sons: Dashiell John (born 3 December 2001), Roman Robert (born 23 April 2004), and Ignatius Martin (born 13 April 2008).[citation needed]
After making Brighton, England, their main family home for much of the early 2000s, she and her husband returned to their native Australia. In November 2006, Blanchett stated that this was due to a desire to decide on a permanent home for her children, and to be closer to her family as well as a sense of belonging to the Australian (theatrical) community.[24] She and her family live in "Bulwarra", an 1877 sandstone mansion in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill. It was purchased for A$10.2 million in 2004 and underwent extensive renovations in 2007 in order to be made more "eco-friendly".[25][26]
In 2006, a portrait of Cate Blanchett and family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist in the Archibald Prize.[27]
Blanchett is a Patron of the Sydney Film Festival.[citation needed] She works as the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble.[citation needed] In 2007, Blanchett became the ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation's online campaign – trying to persuade Australians to express their concerns about climate change.[citation needed] She is also the Patron of the development charity SolarAid.[citation needed] Opening the 2008 9th World Congress of Metropolis in Sydney, Blanchett said: "The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different."[28]
In early 2009, Blanchett appeared in a series of special edition postage stamps called "Australian Legends of the Screen", featuring Australian actors acknowledged for the "outstanding contribution they have made to Australian entertainment and culture".[29] She, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, and Nicole Kidman each appear twice in the series: once as themselves and once in character; Blanchett is depicted in character from Elizabeth: The Golden Age.[29]
At the beginning of 2011, Blanchett lent her support for a Carbon Tax.[30] She received some criticism for this, especially from conservatives.[31]
Filmography[link]
Theatre credits[link]
| Year | Production | Location | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pre-1992 | Odyssey of Runyon Jones, TheThe Odyssey of Runyon Jones | Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne | Unknown | Adaption of play by Norman Corwin |
| pre-1992 | They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? | Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne | Director | Directed fellow students in a production of an adaptation of the novel by Horace McCoy |
| 1992 | Electra | National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney | Electra | Lead |
| 1992/1993 | Top Girls | Sydney Theatre Company | Unknown | This play by Caryl Churchill was her first starring role there |
| 1993 | Oleanna | Sydney Theatre Company | Carol | Lead opposite Geoffrey Rush in David Mamet's play about a university professor who is accused of sexual harassment by a student. Won Rosemont Best Actress Award. |
| 1994 | Hamlet | Belvoir Street Theatre Company | Ophelia | Played opposite Geoffrey Rush. It was a Company B Production, directed by Neil Armfield. |
| 1995 | Sweet Phoebe | Sydney Theatre Company and Warehouse Theatre, Croydon | Helen | Played lead in the Belvoir Street Theatre/Playbox Theatre co-production, written and directed by Michael Gow. The Sydney production was the first ever, then transferred to the West End |
| 1995 | Tempest, TheThe Tempest | Belvoir Street Theatre Company | Miranda | A Company B Production, directed by Neil Armfield. Played alongside Duxton Chevalier. |
| 1995 | Blind Giant is Dancing, TheThe Blind Giant is Dancing | Belvoir Street Theatre Company | Rose Draper | Played alongside Hugo Weaving. A Stephen Sewell play. It opened on 15 August 1995, and closed on 10 September 1995. It was a Company B production, directed by Neil Armfield, with music composed by Paul Charlier. |
| 1997 | Seagull, TheThe Seagull a.k.a. The Seagull in Harry Hills | Belvoir Street Theatre Company | Nina | Lead in the Anton Checkov play. It opened on 4 March 1997, and closed on 13 April. It was a Company B Production, directed by Neil Armfield, music composed by Paul Charlier. |
| 1999 | Plenty | The Alemida Season at the Albery Theatre, London | Susan Traherne | Lead in play by David Hare, directed by Jonathan Kent. It opened on 27 April 1999, and closed on 27 July. |
| 1999 | Vagina Monologues, TheThe Vagina Monologues | Old Vic Theatre, London | Unknown | Ensemble; Took part in the show in February 1999, alongside other actors including Melanie Griffith. |
| 2004 | Hedda Gabler | Sydney Theatre Company | Hedda Gabler | Opened on 22 July 2004, and closed on 26 September 2004. She reprised her performance as Hedda in New York in March 2006, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre. |
| 2009 | War of the Roses, The. CycleThe War of the Roses Cycle | Sydney Theatre Company | Richard II, Lady Anne | Previewed from 5 January 2009; performed in two parts as part of the Sydney Festival 2009, 10–31 January; through 14 February 2009. |
| 2009 | Streetcar Named Desire, AA Streetcar Named Desire | Sydney Theatre Company | Blanche DuBois | The play was directed by actress Liv Ullmann and co-starred Joel Edgerton. 2009 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Non-Resident Production, Washington, DC |
| 2010 | Uncle Vanya | Sydney Theatre Company | Yelena | Adaptation by A. Upton; with Richard Roxburgh (Vanya), John Bell (Professor Serebryakov), Hugo Weaving (Astrov) |
| 2011 | Big and Small | Sydney Theatre Company | Lotte | New translation by Martin Crimp of Botho Strauß's 1978 play Groß und klein; co-commissioned by the Barbican Centre, London 2012 Festival, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, Vienna Festival and Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen |
References[link]
- ^ Do Golden Globe and SAG Noms = Automatic Oscars bids? Timecode: 05:17, YouTube video
- ^ Moira MacDonald (22 December 2006). "Cate Blanchett : Is she the new Meryl Streep?". Philadelphia Daily News. http://www.allbusiness.com/humanities-social-science/visual-performing-arts/14634718-1.html. Retrieved 3 August 2011.
- ^ "Is Cate the new Meryl Streep?". stuff.co.nz. 27 August 2007. http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/42921/Is-Cate-the-new-Meryl-Streep. Retrieved 3 August 2011.
- ^ "Australia falls out of love with 'Carbon Cate' over starring role in tax advert". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/australia-falls-out-of-love-with-carbon-cate-over-starring-role-in-tax-advert-2290809.html. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
- ^ Damien Murphy and Aaron Cook (3 June 2011). "Cate takes stage for all the world". The Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-diary/cate-takes-stage-for-all-the-world-20110602-1fiz0.html. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
- ^ "Cate Blanchett's biography". Elle. December 2003. http://www.rachelscateblanchett.com/elle_2003.htm. Retrieved 17 October 2007.
- ^ "Cate Blanchett Biography (1969–)". FilmReference.com. http://www.filmreference.com/film/14/Cate-Blanchett.html. Retrieved 15 August 2010.
- ^ a b c d e f g Stated on Inside the Actors Studio, 2003
- ^ a b "Cate Blanchett's biography". The biography channel. http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_story/847:1985/1/Cate_Blanchett.htm. Retrieved 17 October 2007.
- ^ "Famous alumni on Latham's hit list" at Crikey; (accessed: 15 January 2010)
- ^ "Cate Blanchett". biogs.com. http://www.biogs.com/actresses/blanchett.html. Retrieved 23 February 2008.
- ^ GP episode "Natural Selection" at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ "Top Trilogies worldwide". Box Office Mojo. 21 September 2004. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/trilogyww.htm. Retrieved 17 October 2007.
- ^ "Oscars 2007: full list of winners and nominees". 26 February, 2007. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2007/feb/26/awardsandprizes.oscars2007. Retrieved 1 April, 2012.
- ^ Corliss, Richard (May 03, 2007). "Cate Blanchett - The TIME 100". http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/0,28804,1595326_1595332_1616643,00.html. Retrieved April 1, 2012.
- ^ Goodwin, Christopher (14 October 2007). "Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I is no surprise". The Times (UK). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article2640454.ece. Retrieved 14 October 2007.
- ^ Hellard, Peta (23 January 2008). "Cate's double Oscar nod". The Daily Telegraph. http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23095306-5001026,00.html. Retrieved 23 January 2008.
- ^ "Blanchett gets star on Walk of Fame". The Age (Melbourne). 6 December 2008. http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2008/12/06/1228257368395.html. Retrieved 21 December 2008. [dead link]
- ^ Child, Ben (27 November 2008). "English-language cast announced for Miyazaki's Ponyo on the Cliff". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/nov/27/hayaomiyazaki. Retrieved 30 November 2008.
- ^ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/08/cate-blanchett-sydney-film-festival_n_873254.html
- ^ "Torn Exclusive: Cate Blanchett, Ken Stott, Sylvester Mccoy, Mikael Persbrandt join cast of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit". TheOneRing.net (Los Angeles, CA). 7 December 2010. http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2010/12/07/41135-torn-exclusive-cate-blanchett-ken-stott-sylvester-mccoy-mikael-persbrandt-join-cast-of-peter-jackson%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cthe-hobbit%E2%80%9D/. Retrieved 11 December 2010.
- ^ "FilmNation continues relationship with Terrence Malick on two new films". FilmNation Entertainment. 1 November 2011. http://www.wearefilmnation.com/news/2011/11/1/filmnation-continues-relationship-with-terrence-malick-on-tw.html. Retrieved 3 November 2011.
- ^ Kemp, Stuart (May 18, 2012). "Cannes 2012: Cate Blanchett, Mia Wasikowska to Star in 'Carol'". The Hollywood Reporter. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-cate-blanchett-mia-wasikowska-control-326576. Retrieved May 18, 2012.
- ^ Michael Specter (November 2006). "Head First". Vogue. http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/110806VFEA/. Retrieved 17 October 2007. [dead link]
- ^ Hannah Edwards (12 December 2004). "Cate buys mansion for $10m". The Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/12/12/1102786948082.html. Retrieved 17 October 2007.
- ^ Hannah Edwards (8 July 2007). "Welcome to Cate Blanchett's dream eco-home". The Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/people/cates-green-house/2007/07/07/1183351513267.html. Retrieved 17 October 2007.
- ^ "Archibald Prize 06". Art Gallery NSW. Archived from the original on 16 October 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071016211102/http://thearchibaldprize.com.au/06/finalists/archibald. Retrieved 26 February 2008.
- ^ "Cities under spotlight at conference". The Age. AAP (Australia). 23 October 2008. http://news.theage.com.au/national/cities-under-spotlight-at-conference-20081023-570i.html. Retrieved 23 October 2008.
- ^ a b "Academy winners are stamped as 2009 Legends". Australia Post. http://www.auspost.com.au/BCP/0,1467,CH4661%257EMO19,00.html. Retrieved 5 January 2009.
- ^ Clean Energy Australia
- ^ "Blanchett support for Carbon Tax", The Sydney Morning Herald
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cate Blanchett |
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Cate Blanchett |
- Cate Blanchett at the Internet Movie Database
- Sydney Theatre Company – The Sydney Theatre Company
- Cate Blanchett: A Life in Pictures, BAFTA webcast
- Blanchett, Cate (1969–) National Library of Australia, Trove, People and Organisation record for Cate Blanchett
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Blanchett, Cate |
| Alternative names | Blanchett, Catherine Élise |
| Short description | Actress |
| Date of birth | 14 May 1969 |
| Place of birth | Melbourne, Australia |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Cate_Blanchett
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Cate Blanchett
http://cs.wn.com/Cate Blanchettová
http://id.wn.com/Cate Blanchett
http://es.wn.com/Cate Blanchett
http://ru.wn.com/Бланшетт, Кейт
http://nl.wn.com/Cate Blanchett
http://pt.wn.com/Cate Blanchett
http://pl.wn.com/Cate Blanchett
http://fr.wn.com/Cate Blanchett
http://de.wn.com/Cate Blanchett
http://hi.wn.com/केट ब्लैंचेट
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cate_Blanchett
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.
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.
