Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

• Algebra
• Calculus
• Geometry
• Topology
• Trignometry
• Combinatorics
• Logic
• Number theory

Applied mathematics

• Dynamical systems and differential equations
• Mathematical physics
• Computing
• Information theory and signal processing
• Probability and statistics
• Game theory
• Operations research

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• 
  

• 
  Cannes
  Coordinates: 43°33′05″N 7°00′46″E / 43.5513°N 7.0128°E / 43.5513; 7.0128
  Cannes (French pronunciation: [kan], in Occitan Canas) is a city located in the French Riviera. It is a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a commune of France located in the Alpes-Maritimes department.
  The city is also famous for its various luxury shops, restaurants, and hotels. On 3 November 2011 it played host to the G20 organisation of industrialised nations.
  By the 2nd century BC the Ligurian Oxybii established a settlement here known as Aegitna. Historians are unsure what the name means. The area was a fishing village used as a port of call between the Lérins Islands.
  In 69 AD it became the scene of violent conflict between the troops of Othos and Vitellius.
  In the 10th century the town was known as Canua^{[citation needed]}. The name may derive from "canna", a reed. Canua was probably the site of a small Ligurian port, and later a Roman outpost on Le Suquet hill, suggested by Roman tombs discovered here. Le Suquet housed an 11th-century tower which overlooked swamps where the city now stands. Most of the ancient activity, especially protection, was on the Lérins islands and the history of Cannes is the history of the islands.
  
  wn.com/Cannes
• 
  Cannes Film Festival
  The Cannes International Film Festival (French: Le Festival International du Film de Cannes or just Festival de Cannes), is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is the world's most prestigious and publicized film festival. The invitation-only festival is held annually (usually in May) at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.
  The 2012 Cannes Film Festival took place from May 16 to May 27, 2012. The President of the Jury was the Italian film director Nanni Moretti.
  The Cannes Film Festival has its origins in the late 1930s when Jean Zay, the French Minister of National Education, on the proposal of Philippe Erlanger and with the support of the British and Americans,^{[clarification needed]} set up an international cinematographic festival. In 1947, the festival was held as the "Festival du film de Cannes", where films from sixteen countries were presented. Moreover, the principle of equality was introduced, so that the jury was to be made up only of one representative per country. Also, this year the festival was held at the made-for-the-occasion Palais des Festivals, although the roof was unfinished and blew off during a storm. The festival was not held in 1948 and 1950 on account of budgetary problems. In 1951, owing to better relations between France and Italy, the Cannes Festival was moved to Spring, while the Mostra remained in Autumn.
  
  wn.com/Cannes_Film_Festival
• 
  Cumbria
  Cumbria ( /ˈkʌmbriə/, locally [ˈkʊmbɾiə]) is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle and the only other major urban area is the town of Barrow-in-Furness on the south-western tip of the county. It consists of six districts, and in 2008 had a population of just under half a million. Cumbria is one of the most sparsely populated counties in the United Kingdom, with 73.4 people per km² (190/sq mi). In comparison, the Borough of Barrow-in-Furness, in the south, has a population density over twelve times this at 921/km² (2,385.3/sq mi).
  Cumbria, the third largest ceremonial county in England by area, is bounded to the north by the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders, to the west by the Irish Sea, to the south by Lancashire, to the southeast by North Yorkshire, and to the east by County Durham and Northumberland.
  
  wn.com/Cumbria
• 
  Dordogne
  Dordogne (French pronunciation: [dɔʁ.dɔɲ]; Occitan: Dordonha) is a départment in south-west France. The départment is located in the region of Aquitaine, between the Loire valley and the High Pyrénées named after the great Dordogne River that runs through it. It roughly corresponds with the ancient county of Périgord.
  The county of Périgord dates back to when the area was inhabited by the Gauls, it was home to four tribes, the name for "four tribes" in the Gaulish language was "Petrocore". The area eventually became known as the county of Le Périgord and its inhabitants became known as the Périgordins (or Périgourdins). There are four Périgords in the Dordogne: the "Périgord Vert" (Green Périgord) with its main town of Nontron, consists of verdant valleys in a region crossed by many rivers and streams; the "Périgord Blanc" (White Périgord) situated around the department's capital of Périgueux, is a region of limestone plateaux, wide valleys and meadows; the "Périgord Pourpre" (Purple Périgord) with its capital of Bergerac, is a wine region; and the "Périgord Noir" (Black Périgord) surrounding the administrative center of Sarlat, overlooks the valleys of the Vézère and the Dordogne, where the woods of oak and pine give it its name.
  
  wn.com/Dordogne
• 
  Pinewood Studios
  Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately 20 miles (32 km) west of central London.
  The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows, commercials and pop promos and is well-known as the home of the Carry On..., Superman and James Bond film franchises.
  Pinewood Studios was built on the estate of Heatherden Hall, which was a large, attractive Victorian house with spectacular grounds. It was purchased by Canadian financier and MP for Chiswick and Brentford, Lt. Col. Grant Morden, who spent a fortune transforming the mansion into a show-piece home, adding refinements such as a huge ballroom, a Turkish bath and an indoor squash court. Due to its seclusion, it was used as a discreet meeting place for high-ranking politicians and diplomats and the agreement to create the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed there.
  On Morden's death in 1934, building tycoon Charles Boot bought the land and turned it into a Country Club. The ballroom was converted into a restaurant and many of the bedrooms became furnished suites.
  
  wn.com/Pinewood_Studios
• 
  Royal College of Art
  The Royal College of Art (informally the RCA) is a public research university specialised in art and design located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts (M.A.), Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). It was founded in 1837 and has had university status since 1967.
  The RCA is based in the South Kensington and Battersea areas of Central London.
  The RCA was founded in 1837 as the Government School of Design. In 1853, it became the National Art Training School with the Female School of Art in separate buildings; and, in 1896, it received the name Royal College of Art. During the 19th century, it was often referred to as the South Kensington Schools. See Richard Burchett, an early Headmaster, for more details on this period. After 130 years in operation, the Royal College of Art was granted its Royal Charter in 1967, which gave it the status of an independent university with the power to grant its own degrees.
  
  wn.com/Royal_College_of_Art
• 
  Shaftesbury
  Coordinates: 51°00′24″N 2°11′53″W / 51.0066°N 2.198°W / 51.0066; -2.198
  Shaftesbury is a town in Dorset, England, situated on the A30 road near the Wiltshire border 20 miles west of Salisbury. The town is built 718 feet (219 metres) above sea level on the side of a chalk and greensand hill, which is part of Cranborne Chase, the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset. It is one of the oldest and highest towns in Britain.
  In 2001, the town had a population of 6,665 with 3,112 dwellings, only a small increase from 1991. There are currently 2 primary schools and an enlarged secondary school. Major employers include Pork Farms, Stalbridge Linen (a commercial laundry), Guys Marsh Prison, Wessex Electrical and the Royal Mail.
  In Bimport stands the Westminster Memorial Hospital, a small community hospital which has about 20 beds, an accident and emergency department (not 24 hrs) and a range of out-patient clinics. It was constructed in the mid-19th century with a legacy from the then Duke of Westminster.
  
  wn.com/Shaftesbury
• 
  Shepperton Studios
  Shepperton Studios is a film studio in Shepperton, Surrey, England with a history dating back to 1931 since when many notable films have been made there. It is now part of The Pinewood Studios Group together with Pinewood and Teddington Studios in the UK, and Pinewood Toronto Studios in Canada, Pinewood Indomina Studios in the Dominican Republic, Pinewood Studio Berlin in Germany and Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studios in Malaysia.
  Before there was Shepperton Studios, there was Littleton Park, which was built in the seventeenth century by local nobleman, Thomas Wood. The mansion still stands proudly on the 60-acre site.
  Scottish businessman Norman Loudon purchased Littleton Park in 1931 for use by his new film company, Sound Film Producing & Recording Studios; the facility opened in 1932. The studio, which produced both shorts and features, was quickly successful and rapidly expanded. Proximity to the Vickers-Armstrongs aircraft factory at Brooklands, which attracted German bombers, disrupted filming in World War II, as did the requisitioning of the studio in 1941 by the government, who first used it for sugar storage and later to create decoy aircraft and munitions for positioning in the Middle East. The Ministry of Aircraft Production also took over part of the studios for dispersed production of Vickers Wellington bomber components early in WW2.
  
  wn.com/Shepperton_Studios
• 
  South Shields
  Coordinates: 54°59′31″N 1°25′44″W / 54.992°N 1.429°W / 54.992; -1.429
  South Shields (or locally known just as Shields) is a coastal town in Tyne and Wear, England, located at the mouth of the River Tyne to Tyne Dock, and about 4.84 miles (7.79 km) downstream from Newcastle upon Tyne. The town has a population of 82,854, the second largest population centre in the Tyneside conurbation after Newcastle. It is part of the metropolitan borough of South Tyneside, which includes the riverside towns of Jarrow and Hebburn and the villages of Boldon, Cleadon and Whitburn. South Shields is represented in parliament by Labour MP David Miliband.
  The first settlers of the area were the Brigantes, although there is no evidence they built a settlement within the town of South Shields. Earlier Celtic inscriptions were found as evident in CAER URFA, the original name for south Shields. The Romans built a fort here around AD 160, and expanded it around AD 208 to help supply their soldiers along Hadrian's Wall. Divisions living at the fort included Tigris bargemen (from Persia/modern day Iraq), Spanish/French soldiers, and Syrian archers/spearmen. The fort was abandoned as the Roman Empire declined in the fourth century AD. Many ruins still exist today, and some structures have been rebuilt as part of a modern museum.
  
  wn.com/South_Shields
• Teesside
  Coordinates: 54°35′30″N 1°11′15″W / 54.59167°N 1.1875°W / 54.59167; -1.1875 Teesside is the name given to the conurbation in the north east of England made up of the towns of Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Thornaby, Billingham and surrounding settlements near the River Tees. It was also the name of a local government district between 1968 and 1974—the County Borough of Teesside. Teesside remains an important centre for heavy industry, although the number of people employed has declined. Traditional industries have been replaced by high technology activities, science development and service sector roles.
  In 1974 the County Borough of Teesside was absorbed into the larger non-metropolitan county of Cleveland along with the towns of Hartlepool and Guisborough. The Teesside area was partitioned between the boroughs of Stockton-on-Tees, Middlesbrough and Langbaurgh, with the wards of Billingham East & West, Grangefield, Hartburn, Mile House, North End, Norton, Stockton South, Thornaby East & West going to Stockton; the wards of Coatham, Eston Grange, Kirkleatham, Ormesby, Redcar and South Bank going to Langbaurgh; and the rest going to Middlesbrough.
  
  wn.com/Teesside

• 
  Alan Parker
  Sir Alan William Parker, CBE (born 14 February 1944) is an English film director, producer, writer and actor. He has been active in both the British cinema and American cinema and was a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.
  Parker was born into a working class family in Islington, North London, the son of Elsie Ellen, a dressmaker, and William Leslie Parker, a house painter. He attended Dame Alice Owen's School. Parker started out as a copywriter for advertising agencies in the 1960s and 1970s and later began to write his own television commercial scripts. His most celebrated and enduring advertising work was when he worked for famed London agency Collett Dickenson Pearce where he directed many award winning commercials, including the famous Cinzano vermouth advertisement, starring Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins, shown in the UK.
  His film career began through his association with producer David Puttnam, now Lord Puttnam, when he wrote the screenplay for the feature Melody (1971). Puttnam would later produce a number of Parker's films including Midnight Express (1978). This was a highly controversial film set in a Turkish prison that was lauded by critics and ended up earning a number of Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Parker. He was later nominated for Best Director with Mississippi Burning (1988).
  
  wn.com/Alan_Parker
• 
  Aldous Huxley
  Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, film stories and scripts. Huxley spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death.
  Aldous Huxley was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist, and he was latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. He is also well known for advocating and taking psychedelics.
  By the end of his life Huxley was widely recognized to be one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time and respected as an important researcher into visual communication and sight-related theories as well.
  Aldous Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, UK, in 1894. He was the third son of the writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Prior's Field School. Julia was the niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Aldous was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist, agnostic and controversialist ("Darwin's Bulldog"). His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley also became outstanding biologists. Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevelyan (1891–1914), who committed suicide after a period of clinical depression.
  
  wn.com/Aldous_Huxley
• 
  Alison Lohman
  Alison Marion Lohman (born September 18, 1979) is an American actress. She has had lead roles in the films White Oleander, Where the Truth Lies, Matchstick Men, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Flicka and Drag Me to Hell as well as smaller parts in Big Fish, Gamer, and Beowulf. She has also been on several television shows including 7th Heaven, Crusade, Tucker, and Pasadena.
  Lohman was born and raised in Palm Springs, California, the daughter of Diane (née Dunham), a patisserie owner, and Gary Lohman, a Minnesota-born architect. She has one younger brother, Robert (born 1982). She has two cats, Monk and Clint. In her first school year, Lohman was diagnosed with combined type attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and put on medicine for it, which she still uses as an adult.^{[citation needed]} Afterwards, she had straights A's in everything, except in drama, because she was too shy. Her family had no industry connections, but at age nine, she played Gretyl in The Sound of Music at the Palm Desert's McCallum Theater. Two years later, she won the Desert Theater League's award for "Most Outstanding Actress in a Musical" for the title role in Annie. By the age of 17, Lohman had appeared in 12 different major productions and had been a backing singer for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and the Desert Symphony.
  
  wn.com/Alison_Lohman
• Andrew Kosove
  Andrew A. Kosove is an American film producer who was nominated for an Academy Award for the hit film "The Blind Side." Alongside his producing partner, Broderick Johnson, he is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Alcon Entertainment, the Los Angeles-based wholly independent production company that develops, finances, produces and markets theatrical motion pictures exclusively for distribution by Warner Bros.
  Kosove ironically became interested in film production while double majoring in economics and politics as a Princeton undergraduate. Although he and college friend Broderick Johnson shared a mutual interest in film and the business of entertainment, neither committed to pursuing a career as filmmakers. Johnson eventually graduated and moved to New York, where he joined a Wall Street brokerage firm. Kosove graduated a couple of years later and intended to enroll in law school when he heard about Richard Kirkland, a basketball player and gangster, and thought his story would make a good movie. Kosove enlisted Johnson and together they spent three years working with a producer on the project. The project was never made, but the experience encouraged them and they moved to Los Angeles, dedicated to producing films for Hollywood, and paving the way to their successful 11-year partnership.
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Kosove
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  Andy García
  Andrés Arturo García Menéndez (born April 12, 1956), professionally known as Andy García, is a Cuban American actor. He became known in the late 1980s and 1990s, having appeared in several successful Hollywood films, including The Godfather: Part III, The Untouchables, Internal Affairs and When a Man Loves a Woman. More recently, he has starred in Ocean's Eleven and its sequels, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, and The Lost City.
  García was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Vincent Mancini in The Godfather Part III.
  García was born Andrés Arturo García Menéndez in Havana, Cuba. His mother, Amelie Menéndez, was an English teacher, and his father, René García Núñez, was an avocado farmer and attorney in Cuba, and later owned a fragrance business in the United States. García has an older brother, René. When García was five years old, the family moved to Miami, Florida, after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Over a period of several years, they built up a million-dollar perfume company. García was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Miami Beach Senior High School, where he played on the basketball team. During his last year in high school, he became ill with mononucleosis, which convinced him to pursue a career in acting. He began his acting career taking a drama class with Jay W. Jensen in his senior year at Miami Beach Senior High School. He graduated from Florida International University in Miami..
  
  wn.com/Andy_García
• 
  Anthony Hopkins
  Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, CBE (born 31 December 1937), best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television, and a composer. Considered to be one of the greatest living actors, Hopkins is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Other prominent film credits include The Lion in Winter, Magic, The Elephant Man, 84 Charing Cross Road, Dracula, Legends of the Fall, The Remains of the Day, Amistad, Nixon, The World's Fastest Indian, and Fracture. Hopkins was born and brought up in Wales. Retaining his British citizenship, he became a U.S. citizen on 12 April 2000. Hopkins' films have spanned a wide variety of genres, from family films to horror. As well as his Academy Award, Hopkins has also won three BAFTA Awards, two Emmys and the Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe Award. Hopkins was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993 for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2008.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Hopkins
• Anthony Minghella
  Anthony Minghella, CBE (6 January 1954 – 18 March 2008) was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007.
  He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The English Patient (1996), which also won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the BAFTA Award for Best Film and Golden Globe Award for Best Director.
  Minghella was born in Ryde, Isle of Wight, the son of Gloria (née Arcari) and Edward Minghella, ice cream factory owners. His father was an Italian immigrant and his mother was born in Leeds to an Italian family; her ancestors originally came from Valvori, a small village in the Lazio region of central Italy.
  Minghella attended Sandown Grammar School and St. John's, Portsmouth. He graduated from the University of Hull, where he completed undergraduate and postgraduate courses, but eventually abandoned his doctoral thesis.^{[citation needed]}
  His first piece of produced work was a 1975 stage adaptation of Gabriel Josipovici's Mobius the Stripper and it was his 1985 piece Whale Music that kickstarted his career. He made his directorial debut with a double bill of Samuel Beckett's Play and Happy Days. His first feature film as a director was A Little Like Drowning in 1978.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Minghella
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  Antoine Fuqua
  Antoine Fuqua (born January 19, 1966) is an American film director. He directed the film Training Day as well as Tears of the Sun, King Arthur, Shooter and Brooklyn's Finest. He is currently slated to direct Southpaw in 2012, a boxing film described as a "metaphorical sequel to 8 Mile", penned by Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter and starring rapper Eminem.
  After going to school for electrical engineering, with the hope of going on to fly jets in the military, Fuqua began his career directing music videos for popular artists like Toni Braxton and Prince, and then went on to become a successful film director. He is perhaps best known for the award-winning film Training Day. Fuqua was scheduled to direct Prisoners, based on a storybook from Aaron Guzikowski, but has left the project.
  CBS Films has hired Antoine Fuqua to direct a new movie based on a Vince Flynn novel, Consent to Kill.
  In March 2011, Fuqua signed on to direct a film featuring the romantic love story between Consort Yang Yuhuan and Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty. The film is currently untitled and is scheduled to release in 2012.
  
  wn.com/Antoine_Fuqua
• Anya Major
  Anya Major (born 1966, in the United Kingdom) is an athlete and actress who starred in Apple Computer's "1984" commercial, and who appeared as Nikita in the video to Elton John's song of the same name.
  In 1983, the Chiat/Day advertising agency held a casting call in London, on behalf of their client, Apple Computer, for what would prove to be a landmark television commercial. The vision of the agency and director Ridley Scott stipulated an actress capable of running up to a large video screen, swinging a sledgehammer in a wide spin, and releasing it at the video screen. Most of the models and actresses tested could not wield the clumsy hammer, much less throw it; in fact, one errant throw nearly struck a passerby at the Hyde Park casting call. The petite Major, an experienced discus thrower who had been discovered at a local health club, won the role with her ability to handle the hammer convincingly.
  The commercial aired only twice on American television, just after half-time of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. as well as a local airing in the wee hours of the morning in Idaho the previous month to qualify for awards only given to ads aired in 1983. Even with this limited appearance, the ad created such a media frenzy that it gained many subsequent free TV airings and print mentions as it was discussed in the media.
  
  wn.com/Anya_Major
• Arnon Milchan
  Arnon Milchan (Hebrew: ארנון מילצ'ן‎; December 6, 1944) is one of the most prolific independent film producers in Hollywood history, having produced over 120 full-length motion pictures . Mr. Milchan is also a former key Israeli intelligence operative from mid 1960's to the mid 1980's. Milchan produced many films such as The War of the Roses, Once Upon a Time in America, Pretty Woman, Natural Born Killers, Under Siege, The Devil's Advocate, The Fountain, Unfaithful, L.A. Confidential and many others. He is an Israeli citizen, and a resident of Israel.
  Milchan was born in Rehovot, British Mandate for Palestine, today's Israel, in 1944, to a father who owned a fertilizer company, which Milchan turned into a successful chemical business. He also earned a degree from the London School of Economics, before being recruited to LAKAM, a top secret Israeli intelligence organization responsible for obtaining technology and material for Israel's nuclear program, and other highly secretive programs.
  
  wn.com/Arnon_Milchan
• 
  Benicio del Toro
  Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez (born February 19, 1967) is a Puerto Rican actor and film producer. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award for his role as Javier Rodríguez in Traffic (2000). He is also known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects (1995), Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Franky Four Fingers in Snatch (2000), Jackie Boy in Sin City (2005), and Che Guevara in Che (2008). He is the third Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award.
  Benicio del Toro was born in San German, on the southwest side of the island of Puerto Rico, and grew up in Santurce, a district of San Juan. He is the son of Gustavo Adolfo del Toro Bermúdez and Fausta Genoveva Sánchez Rivera, who were both lawyers, and deeply respected and beloved in Puerto Rico for their commitment to their community. Gustavo Del Toro was affectionately called the "lawyer of the poor". Many of Del Toro's relatives are involved in the island's legal system. He has an older brother, Gustavo, who was a pediatric oncologist at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. He is of Spanish descent through a Catalan paternal great-grandfather and a Basque maternal great-grandmother, he has Italian and Amerindian ancestry as well. The surname del Toro (Touro) is of Sephardic origin. Benicio del Toro is related to Puerto Rican basketball player Carlos Arroyo, his father Gustavo is a cousin of Arroyo's mother, Gloria Bermudez. Del Toro is also related to Spanish Euro-pop singer Rebeca Pous Del Toro, whose grandfather is Puerto Rican, and Puerto Rican singer Eliseo del Toro.
  
  wn.com/Benicio_del_Toro
• Bob Weinstein
  Robert "Bob" Weinstein (born October 18, 1954) is an American film and theatre producer, the founder and head of Dimension Films, former co-chairman of Miramax Films, and current head, with his brother Harvey Weinstein, of The Weinstein Company.
  Weinstein and his brother, Harvey, are of Jewish heritage.
  After graduating from college, Bob, along with his brother Harvey Weinstein, independently produced rock concerts as Harvey & Corky Productions in Buffalo through most of the 1970s. Both Weinstein brothers had grown up with a passion for movies and they nurtured a desire to enter the film industry. In the late 1970s, using profits from their concert promotion business, the brothers created a small independent film distribution company called Miramax, named after their parents - Miriam and Max. The company's first releases were primarily music-oriented concert films such as Paul McCartney's Rockshow. In the early 1980s Miramax acquired the rights to two British films of benefit shows filmed for human rights organization Amnesty International. Working closely with Martin Lewis the producer of the original films, the Weinstein brothers edited the two films into one movie tailored for the American market. The resulting film was released as The Secret Policeman's Other Ball in May 1982 and it became Miramax's first hit. The movie raised considerable sums for Amnesty International and was credited by Amnesty with having helped to raise its profile in the US.
  
  wn.com/Bob_Weinstein
• Broderick Johnson
  Broderick Johnson is an American film producer, and Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Alcon Entertainment, alongside his producing partner Andrew Kosove. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the hit film "The Blind Side."
  A graduate of Montgomery, Alabama's Sidney Lanier High School, Johnson met partner Andrew Kosove while the two attended Princeton as undergraduates. An economics major, Johnson was headed to Wall Street, but shared with Kosove a love for movies and an interest in filmmaking. Ultimately, the two involved themselves in a low-budget production, which was sufficient to convince them that their passion for films was potentially viable.
  Eventually, Johnson took a position at Salomon Brothers in New York, where he worked as a quantitative analyst in the equity derivatives group. Still, he and Kosove continued to discuss making films, and they ultimately moved to Los Angeles to pursue their dream.
  Soon after, the two were introduced to FedEx chairman and founder Frederick W. Smith. Johnson and Kosove took the opportunity to present Smith with a 221 page proposal suggesting that an independent film company, backed by a capitalized individual or company, and aligned with a major studio for an exclusive distribution arrangement would, applying their reasoned methods, reap profits on copyrighted assets over a set period of time. Smith liked what he read.
  
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  Casey Affleck
  Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt (born August 12, 1975), better known as Casey Affleck, is an American actor and film director. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he played supporting roles in mainstream hits like Good Will Hunting (1997) and Ocean's Eleven (2001) as well as in critically acclaimed independent films such as Chasing Amy (1997). Casey is the younger brother of actor and director Ben Affleck, with whom he has frequently collaborated professionally. In 2007, his breakout year, Affleck gained recognition and critical acclaim for his work in Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
  Affleck was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. He is the younger brother of Ben Affleck, and second son of Christine Anne "Chris" (née Boldt), a school district employee and teacher, and Timothy Byers Affleck, a drug counselor, social worker, janitor, auto mechanic, bartender, and former actor with the Theater Company of Boston. Affleck has Irish, Scottish, German, and English ancestry (the surname "Affleck" is Scottish), and is a distant cousin of actor Matt Damon. He was raised in a mostly Episcopalian family. Affleck is three years younger than his brother Ben. As a child he had numerous pets, including cats, snakes, guinea pigs and turtles. Affleck went to George Washington University and later transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in physics, astronomy, and Western philosophy, but never graduated. Affleck worked sporadically on television while finishing high school and attending college during the early 1990s.
  
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  Cate Blanchett
  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".
  
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  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.
  
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  Christopher Nolan
  Christopher Jonathan James Nolan (/ˈnoʊlən/; born 30 July 1970), also known as Chris Nolan is a British/Americanfilm director, screenwriter and producer.
  He received serious notice after his second feature Memento (2000), which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him, including the Batman series and The Prestige. He also first collaborated with Wally Pfister, who would photograph all his subsequent films. After directing Insomnia (2002), Nolan pitched an idea for a reboot of the Batman film franchise to Warner Bros., eventually making a successful trilogy consisting of Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
  Inception (2010) was an original screenplay by Nolan, a heist film set in the world of "shared dreaming." Nolan co-founded Syncopy Films with his wife, Emma Thomas, and they have produced all his films since The Prestige (2006).
  Nolan has also worked with screenwriter David S. Goyer, film editor Lee Smith, composers David Julyan and Hans Zimmer, special effects coordinator Chris Corbould, and actors Christian Bale, Cillian Murphy, Jeremy Theobald, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, and Michael Caine.
  
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  Cormac McCarthy
  Cormac McCarthy (born Charles McCarthy; July 20, 1933) is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and Post-apocalyptic genres. He won the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road (2006). His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. For All the Pretty Horses (1992) he won both the U.S. National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. All the Pretty Horses and The Road were also adapted as motion pictures.
  Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time magazine's list of 100 best English-language books published between 1923 and 2005 and placed joint runner-up in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, alongside Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth, and called Blood Meridian "the greatest single book since Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying". In 2010 The Times ranked The Road first on its list of the 100 best fiction and non-fiction books of the past 10 years. McCarthy has been increasingly mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
  
  wn.com/Cormac_McCarthy
• Dan Curtis
  Dan Curtis (August 12, 1927 – March 27, 2006) was an American director and producer of television and film, probably best known for his miniseries The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, his afternoon TV series Dark Shadows, and the made for TV movie, Trilogy of Terror. Dark Shadows originally aired from 1966 to 1971 and has aired in syndication for nearly 40 years. Curtis was responsible for the 1991 remake of Dark Shadows, which was canceled due to low ratings. He was the executive producer for Dark Shadows for The WB Television Network; however, it was canceled before the pilot episode aired.
  His series of macabre films include House of Dark Shadows, Night of Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker (which inspired the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker), Intruders, The Night Strangler, Burnt Offerings, Trilogy of Terror, The Norliss Tapes (a 1973 pilot for an unproduced series starring Roy Thinnes), Curse of the Black Widow, Dead Of Night, Scream of the Wolf and others. He worked frequently with sci-fi/horror writer Richard Matheson. Curtis was producer and/or director of a number of television adaptations of horror-related productions including The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Turn of the Screw, all made between 1968 and 1975.
  
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  Danny Boyle
  Daniel "Danny" Boyle (born 20 October 1956) is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for his work on films such as Slumdog Millionaire, Shallow Grave, 127 Hours, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Trainspotting. For Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle won numerous awards in 2008, including the Academy Award for Best Director. Boyle was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2008 Austin Film Festival, where he also introduced that year's AFF Audience Award Winner Slumdog Millionaire. On 17 June 2010, it was announced that he will be the Artistic Director for the 2012 Olympic games opening ceremony.
  Boyle was born on 20 October 1956 in Radcliffe, Lancashire, (now in the modern day metropolitan borough of Bury, Greater Manchester) into a working-class Irish Catholic family. His mother was from Ballinasloe in County Galway, and his father was born in England to an Irish family.
  It was a very strict, Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years, I was supposed to be a priest and really, it was my mother's fondest wish that I would become one.
  
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  David Yates
  David Yates (born 30 November 1963) is an English filmmaker who began his career by directing various short films and television productions. He rose to mainstream prominence by directing the final four films in the Harry Potter film series: instalments five, six, seven, and eight. This feat notably won him the 2011 BAFTA Britannia Award for Artistic Excellence in Directing and made him the most commercially successful British director in recent years. Yates' following works include A Reliable Wife and the upcoming Al Capone trilogy Cicero.
  Early in his career, Yates received attention for his award-winning short films. He became a prolific television director with credits including the acclaimed political thriller State of Play (2003), for which he won the Directors Guild of Great Britain Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, the BAFTA-lauded two-part drama Sex Traffic (2004), and the Primetime Emmy Award-winning HBO production The Girl in the Café (2005). He has been recognised for his transition to the big screen and is considered to be one of Britain's most celebrated directors of film and television.
  
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  Demi Moore
  Demi Guynes Kutcher ( /dəˈmiː/ də-MEE; born November 11, 1962), known professionally as Demi Moore, is an American actress, film producer, film director, former songwriter and model. Born in Roswell, New Mexico to teenage parents who divorced before she was born, Moore dropped out of high school at age 16 to begin modeling in Europe, and posed for a nude pictorial in Oui magazine in 1980. After making her movie debut in 1981, she appeared on the soap opera General Hospital and established her career with such films as St. Elmo's Fire (1985) and About Last Night... (1986). Following the successes of Ghost (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), and Disclosure (1994), Moore became Hollywood's highest-paid actress, receiving an unprecedented sum of $12.5 million for Striptease (1996).
  Moore took her professional name from her first husband, musician Freddy Moore, and is the mother of three daughters from her second marriage to actor Bruce Willis. She married her third husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, in 2005, and separated from him in November 2011.
  
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  Denzel Washington
  Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr. Philip Chandler for six years. He has received much critical acclaim for his work in film since the 1990s, including for his portrayals of real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Melvin B. Tolson, Frank Lucas and Herman Boone.
  Washington has received two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe awards, and a Tony Award. He is notable for winning the Best Supporting Actor for Glory in 1989; and the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2001 for his role in the film Training Day.
  Denzel Washington was born in Mount Vernon, near New York City, New York on December 28, 1954. His mother, Lennis "Lynne", was a beauty parlor-owner and operator born in Georgia and partly raised in Harlem. His father, Reverend Denzel Hayes Washington, Sr., a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, served as an ordained Pentecostal minister, and also worked for the Water Department and a local department store, S. Klein.
  
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  Don Johnson
  Donnie Wayne "Don" Johnson (born December 15, 1949) is an American actor known for his work in television and film. He played the lead role of James "Sonny" Crockett in the 1980s TV cop series, Miami Vice, which led him to huge success. He also played the lead role in the 1990s cop series, Nash Bridges. More recently, Johnson played Kenny Powers' father on the HBO series, Eastbound and Down. Johnson is a Golden Globe winning actor for his role in Miami Vice, a winner of the APBA Offshore World Cup, and has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is also a singer, songwriter, producer, and director.
  Johnson was born in Flat Creek, Missouri. His father, Wayne, was a farmer, and his mother, Nell, was a beautician; they were 19 and 17 at the time of his birth, respectively. At age six, he moved from Missouri to Wichita, Kansas. A 1967 graduate of South High School, he was involved in the high school's theatre program. As a senior, he played the lead role of Tony in West Side Story. His biography noted that he had previously appeared in "Burnt Cork and Melody" and "The Hullabaloo." He also attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.
  
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  Dustin Hoffman
  Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters.
  He first drew critical praise for the play Eh?, for which he won a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award. This was soon followed by his breakthrough movie role as the good-looking but troubled Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967). Since then Hoffman's career has largely been focused on cinema, with only sporadic returns to television and the stage. Some of his most notable films are Papillon, Marathon Man, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Lenny, All the President's Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man, Wag the Dog, and Meet the Fockers.
  Hoffman has won two Academy Awards (for his performances in Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man), five Golden Globes, four BAFTAs, three Drama Desk Awards, a Genie Award, and an Emmy Award. Dustin Hoffman received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999.
  
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• Ellen Ripley
  Ellen Ripley is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Alien film series played by American actress Sigourney Weaver. The character is often considered as one of the best female protagonists of all time: it was heralded for challenging gender roles, particularly in the science fiction, action and horror genres, gave world recognition to Weaver and remains her most famous role to date.
  The character has been included in many Best Characters lists: In 2011, Total Film ranked her first of their top of the 100 Greatest Female Characters. Ripley has been selected as the eighth greatest hero in American cinema history by the American Film Institute, as 5th coolest hero in pop culture by Entertainment Weekly, the 9th greatest movie character ever by Empire (the highest-placing female of the list), and the eighth best movie character of all time by Premiere, In 2011, John Scalzi called her "Clearly the Best Female Character in Scifi Film".
  Weaver's performances was very praised as well: for Aliens, she earned her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, which is now seen as a landmark in the recognition of science fiction, action, and horror genres, when the Academy gave little recognition to science fiction. For her role in the franchise, Weaver has also been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama, a BAFTA Award for Best Leading Newcomer, and four Saturn Awards for Best Actress, winning one for Aliens.
  
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  Emily Blunt
  Emily Olivia Leah Blunt (born 23 February 1983) is an English actress best known for her roles in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Young Victoria (2009), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). She has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, two London Film Critics' Circle Awards, and one BAFTA Award. She won a Golden Globe Award for her work in the BBC television drama Gideon's Daughter (2007).
  Emily Blunt was born 23 February 1983 in Roehampton, London, England. She is the second of four children born to Joanna, an English teacher and former actress, and barrister Oliver Simon Peter Blunt, QC, one of the highest-profile barristers in the United Kingdom, earning an estimated £1million annually. Her siblings are Felicity, Sebastian, and Suzanna. Her grandfather was Major-General Peter Blunt and one of her paternal uncles is Crispin Blunt, Conservative Member of Parliament for Reigate.
  Blunt attended Ibstock Place School and, at the age of 16, went to Hurtwood House, a private sixth-form college known for its performing arts programme.^{[citation needed]} There, she was discovered by an agent.^{[citation needed]} Blunt made her professional debut in Bliss, a musical written by Paul Sellar, at the 2000 Edinburgh Fringe while she was still an A-level student.^{[citation needed]} She went on to perform at the National Theatre and at Chichester Festival Theatre.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  English people
  The English (from Old English: Englisc) are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, a Germanic people originally from Northern Germany who migrated to Britain.
  Historically, the English population is descended from several genetically similar peoples—the earlier Britons (or Brythons), the Germanic tribes that settled in the area, including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, who founded what was to become England (from the Old English Englaland), and the later Danes, Normans and other groups. Following the Act of Union in 1707, in which the Kingdom of England became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain, English customs and identity became closely aligned with British customs and identity.
  
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• Eric Garcia
  Eric Garcia (born 1972) is an American writer, the author of several humorous novels including Matchstick Men which was made into a movie directed by Ridley Scott and starring Nicolas Cage, and the Anonymous Rex series, which was adapted in 2004 for the SciFi Channel. He is also a screenwriter, with Garrett Lerner, of the 2010 film Repo Men, based on Garcia's novel The Repossession Mambo.
  Garcia attended Cornell University to study English and film, then transferred to the University of Southern California during his junior year. His first novel, Anonymous Rex was published in 1999.
  The second novel in the Rex series, Casual Rex, was published in 2001, and was a prequel to Anonymous Rex, a fact which was not on the book flap. The inclusion of characters in Casual Rex who were dead in Anonymous Rex confused many fans, who assumed that the book was a sequel.^{[citation needed]}
  In 2002, Random House published Matchstick Men, a novel completely different from Garcia's prior work. Warner Brothers had already purchased the film rights and signed Ridley Scott as the director, with Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell and Alison Lohman as the film's stars. The film version, released in September 2003, received good reviews but was an average performer at the box office.
  
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  Geena Davis
  Virginia Elizabeth "Geena" Davis (born January 21, 1956) is an American actress, film producer, writer, former fashion model, and a women's Olympics archery team semi-finalist. She is known for her roles in Stuart Little,The Fly, Beetlejuice, Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own, The Long Kiss Goodnight and The Accidental Tourist, for which she won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2005, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for her role in Commander in Chief.
  Davis was born in Wareham, Massachusetts. Her mother, Lucille (née Cook), was a teacher's assistant, and her father, William F. Davis, was a civil engineer and church deacon; her parents had both been from small towns in Vermont. She has a brother named Danforth ("Dan"). At an early age, she became interested in music. She learned piano and flute and played organ well enough as a teenager to serve as an organist at her Congregationalist church in Wareham. Davis attended Wareham High School and was an exchange student in Sandviken, Sweden, becoming fluent in Swedish. Enrolling at New England College, she eventually graduated with a bachelor's degree in drama from Boston University in 1979. Davis is a member of Mensa, a social organization whose members are in the top 2% of intelligence as measured by an IQ test entrance exam.
  
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  George Lucas
  George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2011.
  George Lucas was born in Modesto, California, the son of Dorothy Ellinore (née Bomberger) and George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991), who owned a stationery store.
  Lucas grew up in the Central Valley town of Modesto and his early passion for cars and motor racing would eventually serve as inspiration for his USC student film 1:42.08, as well as his Oscar-nominated low-budget phenomenon, American Graffiti. Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks. George Lucas graduated from USC in California.
  
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  George Orwell
  Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.
  Considered perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945), which together have sold more copies than any two books by any other 20th-century author. His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on politics, literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
  Orwell's influence on popular and political culture endures, and several of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian—a byword for totalitarian or manipulative social practices—have entered the vernacular.
  
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• Giannina Facio
  Giannina Facio (born September 10, 1955) is a Costa Rican actress, who has appeared in a number of films by British film director and producer Ridley Scott. She first worked with Scott in Gladiator (2000); as of then, she has been Scott's partner. The film marked the first of two collaborations with Russell Crowe in which she plays wife to his character (the other being Body of Lies, 2008). Overall, she has acted to date in a total of nine films by Ridley Scott, all of them minor roles/cameo appearances.
  
  
  
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  Glenn Frey
  Glenn Lewis Frey (pronounced Fry; born November 6, 1948) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and actor, best known as a founding member of the Eagles. Frey formed the Eagles after he met drummer Don Henley in 1970 and the two eventually joined Linda Ronstadt's backup band for her summer tour. The Eagles formed in 1971 and released their debut album in 1972. Glenn Frey would play guitar with the Eagles as well as piano and keyboards, and shared lead vocals with Don Henley. The Eagles broke up in 1980 after becoming one of the most successful bands of all time. Frey sang lead vocals on many Eagles hits such as "Take It Easy", "Peaceful Easy Feeling", "Tequila Sunrise", "Already Gone", "Lyin' Eyes", "New Kid in Town", and "Heartache Tonight". After the breakup of the Eagles in 1980, Frey embarked on a successful solo career. He released his debut album in 1982 and would go on to record such Top 40 hits like "The One You Love", "Smuggler's Blues", "Sexy Girl", "The Heat Is On", and "You Belong to the City". As a member of the Eagles, Frey has won six Grammys, and five American Music Awards. The Eagles have sold over 120 million albums worldwide and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. As a solo artist and with the Eagles combined, Frey has released 24 Top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
  
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  Hans Zimmer
  Hans Florian Zimmer, German pronunciation: [hans ˈfloːʁi̯aːn ˈtsɪmɐ]; (born 12 September 1957) is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including award winning film scores for The Lion King (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), Gladiator (2000), The Last Samurai (2003),The Dark Knight (2008), and Inception (2010).
  Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He is the head of the film music division at DreamWorks studios, and works with other composers through the company which he founded, Remote Control Productions.
  Zimmer's works are notable for integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. He has received four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, a Classical BRIT Award, and an Academy Award. He was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph.
  Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. As a young child, he lived in Königstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home, but had piano lessons only briefly as he disliked the discipline of formal lessons. He moved to London as a teenager, where he attended Hurtwood House school. In an interview with the German television station ZDF in 2006, he commented: "My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend."
  
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  Harrison Ford
  Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American film actor and producer. He is famous for his performances as Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy and as the title character of the Indiana Jones film series. Ford is also known for his roles as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, John Book in Witness and Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. His career has spanned six decades and includes roles in several Hollywood blockbusters, including Presumed Innocent, The Fugitive, Air Force One, and What Lies Beneath. At one point, four of the top six box-office hits of all time included one of his roles. Five of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry.
  In 1997, Ford was ranked No. 1 in Empire's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. As of July 2008^[update], the United States domestic box office grosses of Ford's films total over US$3.5 billion, with worldwide grosses surpassing $6 billion, making Ford the third highest grossing U.S. domestic box-office star. Ford is the husband of actress Calista Flockhart.
  
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  Harvey Keitel
  Harvey Keitel (born May 13, 1939) is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma & Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and From Dusk Till Dawn, Jane Campion's The Piano, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, James Mangold's Cop Land, Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing, and Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze. He recently played Detective Lieutenant Gene Hunt on the American adaptation of Life on Mars.
  Keitel (/kaɪˈtɛl/ ky-TEL) was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the son of Miriam (née Klein) and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland. His parents owned and ran a luncheonette and his father also worked as a hat maker.
  Keitel grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, with his sister, Renee, and brother, Jerry. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School. At the age of sixteen, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps, a decision that took him to Lebanon, during Operation Blue Bat. After his return to the United States, he was a court reporter for several years and was able to support himself before beginning his acting career.
  
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  Harvey Weinstein
  Harvey Weinstein (born March 19, 1952) is an American film producer and movie studio chairman. He is best known as co-founder of Miramax Films. He and his brother Bob have been co-chairmen of The Weinstein Company, their film production company, since 2005. He won an Academy Award for producing Shakespeare in Love, and garnered seven Tony Awards for producing a variety of winning plays and musicals including The Producers, Billy Elliot the Musical, and August: Osage County.
  Born in Flushing, New York, Weinstein and his younger brother, Bob, grew up in a Jewish family in New York City, residing in a housing co-op named Electchester. He graduated from John Bowne High School, and then the State University of New York at Buffalo.
  Weinstein, along with his brother Bob Weinstein, and Corky Burger independently produced rock concerts as Harvey & Corky Productions in Buffalo through most of the 1970s. Both Weinstein brothers had grown up with a passion for movies and they nurtured a desire to enter the film industry. In the late 1970s, using profits from their concert promotion business, the brothers created a small independent film distribution company called Miramax, named after their parents - Miriam and Max. The company's first releases were primarily music-oriented concert films such as Paul McCartney's Rockshow. In the early 1980s Miramax acquired the rights to two British films of benefit shows filmed for human rights organization Amnesty International. Working closely with Martin Lewis, the producer of the original films, the Weinstein brothers edited the two films into one movie tailored for the American market. The resulting film was released as The Secret Policeman's Other Ball in May 1982 and it became Miramax's first hit. The movie raised considerable sums for Amnesty International and was credited by Amnesty with having helped to raise its profile in the US.
  
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  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.
  
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  Howard Stringer
  Sir Howard Stringer (born February 19, 1942) is a Welsh-born American businessman. He is the chairman and former CEO of Sony Corporation.
  Stringer was born in Cardiff, Wales, the son of Marjorie Mary (née Pook), a Welsh schoolteacher, and Harry Stringer, an English sergeant in the Royal Air Force. He emigrated to the United States in 1965, and drafted into United States Army during the Vietnam War. Stringer became a naturalized citizen in 1985 and now holds dual US-UK citizenship. His younger brother, Rob Stringer, was chairman of Sony Music Label Group^{[citation needed]}. In 1978, Stringer married Jennifer A. Kinmond Patterson. They have two children.
  Stringer attended Oundle School in Northamptonshire and received a Master of Arts from the University of Oxford in Modern History. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on December 31, 1999.
  Stringer had a 30-year career at CBS, where he was a journalist, producer and senior executive. He served as president of CBS from 1988 to 1995, where he was responsible for all the broadcast activities of its entertainment, news, sports, radio and television stations.
  
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  Hugh Grant
  Hugh John Mungo Grant (born 9 September 1960) is an English actor and film producer. He has received a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and an Honorary César. His films have earned more than $2.4 billion from 25 theatrical releases worldwide. Grant achieved international stardom after appearing in Richard Curtis's sleeper hit Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). He used this breakthrough role as a frequent cinematic persona during the 1990s to deliver comic performances in mainstream films like Mickey Blue Eyes (1999) and Notting Hill (1999). By the turn of the 21st century, he had established himself as a leading man skilled with a satirical comic talent. Since the 2000s, Grant has expanded his oeuvre with critically acclaimed turns as a cad in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), About A Boy (2002), Love Actually (2003), and American Dreamz (2006).
  Within the film industry, Grant is cited as an anti-film star who approaches his roles like a character actor, with the ability to make acting look effortless. Hallmarks of his comic skills include a nonchalant touch of irony/sarcasm and studied physical mannerisms as well as his precisely-timed dialogue delivery and facial expressions. The entertainment media's coverage of Grant's life off the big screen has often overshadowed his work as a thespian. He has been vocal about his disrespect for the profession of acting, and in his disdain towards the culture of celebrity and hostility towards the media. In a career spanning 30 years, Grant has repeatedly claimed that acting is not a true calling but just a job he fell into.
  
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• Hugh Hudson
  Hugh Hudson (born 25 August 1936) is an English film director. His best-known international success is the 1981 multiple Academy Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire.
  Hudson was born in London, the only son of Jacynth (Ellerton), the second wife of Michael Donaldson-Hudson from Cheswardine in rural north Shropshire. His great-grandfather was Charles Donaldson-Hudson, a one-time member of Parliament for Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire. His paternal ancestors came from Scotland and Cumberland. He was sent to boarding school at the age of 6, and thereafter was educated at Eton College. He completed his National Service in the Royal Armoured Corps as a second lieutenant from the 28 January 1956, and remained as a lieutenant in the Army Reserve of Officers until he was discharged on January 16, 1960.
  In the 1960s, after three years of editing documentaries in Paris, Hudson headed a documentary film company with partners Robert Brownjohn and David Camell. The company produced, among others, the documentaries A for Apple, which won a Screenwriter's Guild Award, and The Tortoise and the Hare, which was nominated for a BAFTA award. The company emerged with much success in the 1960s, winning many awards and pioneering a new graphic style for documentary and advertising films.
  
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• Irvin Kershner
  Irvin Kershner (April 29, 1923 – November 27, 2010) was an American film director and occasional actor, best known for directing quirky, independent films early in his career, and then Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
  With Jewish roots, Irvin Kershner's artistic and cultural background was a mixture of music and art. The study of music (violin, viola, and composition) was the most important activity of his early years. He attended the Temple University – Tyler School of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Later, he went to New York and Provincetown to study with the famous painting teacher Hans Hofmann. He then moved to Los Angeles where he studied photography at the Art Center College of Design.
  He began his film career at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, teaching photography and taking cinema courses under Slavko Vorkapić, a montage artist and then dean of the School. Kershner then accepted a job as still photographer on a State Department film project in Iran under the Point Four Program, which ultimately led to an assignment as a director and cinematographer of documentaries in Iran, Greece and Turkey with the United States Information Service.
  
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  James Cameron
  James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian film director, film producer, deep-sea explorer, screenwriter, visual artist and editor. His writing and directing work includes Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997), Dark Angel (2000–02), and Avatar (2009). In the time between making Titanic and Avatar, Cameron spent several years creating many documentary films (specifically underwater documentaries) and co-developed the digital 3D Fusion Camera System. Described by a biographer as part-scientist and part-artist, Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies. On March 26, 2012, Cameron reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, in the Deepsea Challenger submersible.
  He has been nominated for six Academy Awards overall and won three for Titanic. In total, Cameron's directorial efforts have grossed approximately US$2 billion in North America and US$6 billion worldwide. Without adjusting for inflation, Cameron's Titanic and Avatar are the two highest-grossing films of all time at $2.16 billion and $2.78 billion respectively. In March 2011 he was named Hollywood's top earner by Vanity Fair, with estimated 2010 earnings of $257 million.
  
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  Jeff Bridges
  Jeffrey Leon Bridges (born December 4, 1949) is an American actor, musician, producer, photographer, cartoonist, storyteller, and occasional vintner. He comes from a well-known acting family and began his first televised acting in 1958 as child with his father, Lloyd Bridges, and brother Beau on television's Sea Hunt. Some of his best-known major motion films include: Tron (and its sequel) , Fearless, Iron Man, Contender, TheThe Contender, Starman, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Jagged Edge, Against All Odds, Fisher King, TheThe Fisher King, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Seabiscuit, and The Big Lebowski. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart and earned his sixth Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in 2010's True Grit.
  Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California on December 4, 1949. He is son of showbiz parents, actor Lloyd Bridges. and actress and writer Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson). His older brother, Beau Bridges, is also an actor. He has a younger sister, Lucinda, and had another brother, Garrett, who died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1948. Growing up, Bridges shared a close relationship with his brother Beau, who acted as a surrogate father when their father was working. Bridges and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. He graduated from University High School (Los Angeles, California) in 1967. At age fourteen, Jeff toured with his father in a stage production of Anniversary Waltz.
  
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  Jerry Goldsmith
  Jerrald King "Jerry" Goldsmith (February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004) was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring.
  He composed scores for such noteworthy films as The Sand Pebbles, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, The Boys from Brazil, Alien, Poltergeist, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, The Mummy, three Rambo films, and five Star Trek films. He was nominated for six Grammy Awards, nine Golden Globes, four BAFTAs, and seventeen Academy Awards. In 1977 he was awarded an Oscar for The Omen.
  He collaborated with some of the most prolific directors in film history, including Robert Wise (The Sand Pebbles, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), Howard Hawks (Rio Lobo), Otto Preminger (In Harm's Way), Joe Dante (Gremlins, The 'Burbs, Small Soldiers), Roman Polanski (Chinatown), Ridley Scott (Alien, Legend), Steven Spielberg (Poltergeist, Twilight Zone: The Movie), and Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Basic Instinct). However, his most notable collaboration was arguably that with Franklin J. Schaffner, for whom Goldsmith scored such films as Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, and The Boys from Brazil.
  
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• Jim Sheridan
  Jim Sheridan (born 6 February 1949) is an Irish film director. A six-time Academy Award nominee, Sheridan is perhaps best known for his films My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, The Field and In America.
  Sheridan was born in Dublin, the son of Anna and Peter Sheridan, an actor and railroad worker. Sheridan was initially educated by the Irish Christian Brothers and later graduated from University College Dublin. He emigrated to Canada and then New York City in 1981.
  In 1979 Jim, or Shay Sheridan wrote two plays. The first, an Irish beggar's opera called "The Ha'penny Place", was staged in the Project Arts Centre, and the second, a piece of agitprop theatre called "The Last Post", was staged nearby in Connolly Hall. Interestingly, an actor called Jer O'Leary, a long time friend and political associate of Jim's, appeared in both these plays, and went on to appear in small parts in almost all of Sheridan's pictures. In 1989, he directed My Left Foot, which became a critical and commercial success and won Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker Academy Awards. He followed that with The Field (with Richard Harris) in 1990; then with In the Name of the Father in 1993, a fictionalized re-telling of the case of the Guildford Four. The film won the Golden Bear at the 44th Berlin International Film Festival.
  
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• Joe Carnahan
  Joseph Aaron "Joe" Carnahan (born May 9, 1969) is an American independent film director, screenwriter, producer and actor best known for his films Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane,Narc, Smokin' Aces, The A-Team, and The Grey. He is the brother of screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan.
  Raised in Michigan and Northern California, Carnahan became employed in the promotional department of Sacramento's KMAX-TV, producing short films and television spots.
  In 1998 he won some cult and critical acclaim for his film Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane which premiered in September 1997 at the New York's Independent Feature Film Market and later at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.
  He directed the 2002 Detroit set thriller Narc, starring Ray Liotta and Jason Patric. Following Narc, he directed an entry in the BMW Films titled Ticker starring Clive Owen and Don Cheadle. At one point he was solicited to direct Mission: Impossible III, produced by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner (who also executive produced Narc), however he subsequently left the production due to conflicting views on the tone of the film. It was also announced in October 2005 Carnahan would be directing a film based on the life of convicted drug dealer Will Wright, but the project seems to be abandoned.
  
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  Joe Dante
  Joseph "Joe" Dante, Jr. (born November 28, 1946) is an American film director, producer and actor of films generally with comedy and science fiction content.
  His films include Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981), both from scripts by John Sayles; Segment 3 of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983); Gremlins (1984), his first major hit, and its sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990); Explorers (1985), Innerspace (1987), Amazon Women on the Moon (1987); The 'Burbs (1989), Matinee (1993), Runaway Daughters (1994), The Second Civil War (1997), The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy (1998), Small Soldiers (1998), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), and Homecoming (2005). In 1995–1996, Dante worked on The Phantom, and when he was removed from the film, he chose screen credit (as executive producer) rather than pay. He was creative consultant on Eerie, Indiana (1991–1992) and directed five episodes. He played himself in the series finale.
  Dante was born in Morristown, New Jersey. His father was a professional golf player. Dante began his movie career working for Roger Corman, similar to Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron. He worked as an editor on films such as Grand Theft Auto before codirecting Hollywood Boulevard with Allan Arkush. His first full feature film, Piranha, was released in 1978. After the release of The Howling, he was noticed by Steven Spielberg for whom he directed the third segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, wherein a woman is 'adopted' by an omnipotent child. His first really big hit, Gremlins, which was also produced by Steven Spielberg, was released in 1984. He would work with Spielberg again on Innerspace and Gremlins 2. His films are well known for their movie in-jokes and their special visual effects.
  
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  Joe Haldeman
  Joe William Haldeman (born 1943) is an American science fiction author.
  Haldeman was born June 9, 1943 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His family traveled and he lived in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Maryland and Anchorage, Alaska as a child. Haldeman married Mary Gay Potter, known as "Gay", in 1965. He received a BS degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1967. That same year he was drafted into the Army and served as a combat engineer in Vietnam. He was wounded in combat and his wartime experience was the inspiration for War Year, his first novel. In 1975, he received an MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He resides in Gainesville, Florida and Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches writing at MIT. In addition to being an award-winning writer, Haldeman is a painter. In 2009 and 2010, he was hospitalized for pancreatitis.
  Haldeman's most famous novel is The Forever War (1974), inspired by his Vietnam experiences, which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He later turned it into a series. Haldeman also wrote two of the earliest original novels based on the 1960s Star Trek TV series universe, Planet of Judgment (August 1977) and World Without End (February 1979). In October 2008 it was announced that Ridley Scott will direct a feature film based on The Forever War for Fox.
  
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• John Badham
  John MacDonald Badham (born August 25, 1939) is an English film director, best known for films Saturday Night Fever (1977), Blue Thunder (1983), WarGames (1983), Short Circuit (1986), Stakeout (1987), Bird on a Wire (1990) and others.
  Badham was born in Luton, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom, the son of Mary Iola (née Hewitt), an actress. Badham's website states that his father "was a U S Army general" who "moved the family back to...Alabama". Henry Lee Badham Jr married Mary Hewitt secondly, his first wife Lottie (née Austin) is buried beside Henry and Mary at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, Alabama. Henry Lee Badham Jr was an aviator in both world wars and was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame in 2007. After retirement from the US Air Force as a Brigadier General, Henry L Badham Jr became a businessman, involved with the development of the Ensley and Bessemer regions near Birmingham, Alabama. This same line of business had brought his father, Henry Lee Badham Sr, into association with Walker Percy, grandfather of writer Walker Percy.
  
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  John Lasseter
  John Alan Lasseter (born January 12, 1957) is an American animator, film director and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
  Lasseter's first job was with The Walt Disney Company, where he became an animator. Next, he joined Lucasfilm, where he worked on the then-groundbreaking use of CGI animation. After the Graphics Group of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm was sold to Steve Jobs and became Pixar in 1986, Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer and he directed Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Cars, and Cars 2. Lasseter is also the creator of Cars.
  He has won two Academy Awards, for Animated Short Film (for Tin Toy), as well as a Special Achievement Award (for Toy Story).
  Lasseter was born in Hollywood, California. His mother, Jewell Mae (née Risley), was an art teacher at Bell Gardens High School, and his father, Paul Eual Lasseter, was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership. Lasseter grew up in Whittier, California. His mother's profession contributed to his growing preoccupation with animation. He often drew cartoons during church services at the Church of Christ his family attended. As a child, Lasseter would race home from school to watch Chuck Jones cartoons on television. While in high school, he read The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas. The book covered the history of Disney animation and the making of a book about Sleeping Beauty, which made Lasseter realize he wanted to do animation himself. When he saw Disney's 1963 film The Sword in the Stone, he finally made the decision that he should become an animator.
  
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  John Travolta
  John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, dancer, and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Travolta's acting career declined in the early 1980s and continued to deteriorate for the rest of the decade. His career enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction, and he has since continued starring in Hollywood films, including Face/Off, Ladder 49, and Wild Hogs. Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty.
  Travolta, the youngest of six children, was born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City. His father, Salvatore Travolta (November 1912 – May 1995), was a semi-professional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Cecilia (née Burke, January 1912 – December 1978), was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher. His siblings, Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta, have all acted. His father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American; he grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture. He was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Scientology in 1975.
  
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  Jonathan Demme
  Robert Jonathan Demme (born February 22, 1944) is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop Making Sense and a trilogy of Neil Young documentary/concert movies.
  Demme broke into feature film working for exploitation film producer Roger Corman from 1971 to 1976, co-writing and producing Angels Hard as They Come and The Hot Box. He then moved on to directing, with three films (Caged Heat, Crazy Mama, Fighting Mad) for Corman's studio New World Pictures. After Fighting Mad, Demme directed the comedy film Handle with Care for Paramount Pictures in 1977. The film was well-reviewed by critics, but received little promotion, and performed poorly at the box office.
  Demme's next film, 1980's Melvin and Howard, did not get a wide release, but received a groundswell of critical acclaim, and led to the signing of Demme to direct the Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell star vehicle Swing Shift. Intended as a prestige picture for Warner Bros. as well as a major commercial vehicle for Demme, it instead became a troubled production due to the conflicting visions of Demme and star Hawn. Demme ended up renouncing the finished product, and when the film was released in May 1984, it was generally panned by critics and neglected by moviegoers. After Swing Shift, Demme stepped back from Hollywood to make the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense; the eclectic screwball action-romantic comedy Something Wild; a film-version of the stage production Swimming to Cambodia, by monologist Spaulding Gray; and the New York Mafia-by-way-of Downtown comedy Married to the Mob.
  
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• Jordan Scott
  Jordan Scott (born 1978) is a British photographer, filmmaker and actress. She is the daughter of director Ridley Scott and advertising executive Sandy Watson. She is the niece of director Tony Scott and half-sister of directors Luke and Jake Scott.
  Scott directed the feature film Cracks, an adaptation of a novel by Sheila Kohler. Other feature films directed by her include All the Invisible Children (Segment Jonathan), Portrait, and Never Never. She has also directed commercials for Prada, Nike, Amazon.com and Land Rover.
  
  
  
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  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.
  
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  Keith Carradine
  Keith Ian Carradine (born August 8, 1949) is an American actor who has had success on stage, film and television. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Wild Bill Hickok in the HBO series Deadwood and FBI agent Frank Lundy in Dexter. In addition, he is a Golden Globe and Academy Award winning songwriter. As a member of the Carradine family, he is part of an acting "dynasty" that began with his father, John Carradine.
  Keith Carradine was born in San Mateo, California. He is the son of actress and artist Sonia Sorel (née Henius) and actor John Carradine. His paternal half-brothers are Bruce and David Carradine. His maternal half-brother is Michael Bowen, and his full brothers are Christopher and Robert Carradine. His maternal great-grandfather was biochemist Max Henius, and his maternal great-grandmother was the sister of historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg.
  Carradine's childhood was difficult. He said that his father drank and his mother “was a manic depressive paranoid schizophrenic catatonic — she had it all.” His parents were divorced in 1957, when he was eight years old. A bitter custody battle led to his father gaining custody of him and his brothers, Christopher and Robert, after the children had spent three months in a home for abused children as wards of the court. Keith said of the experience, "It was like being in jail. There were bars on the windows, and we were only allowed to see our parents through glass doors. It was very sad. We would stand there on either side of the glass door crying." He was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, and he rarely saw either of his parents. His mother was not permitted to see him for eight years following the custody settlement.
  
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  Kirk Douglas
  Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Russian: И́сер Даниело́вич; December 9, 1916) is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past (1947), Champion (1949), Ace in the Hole (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Lust for Life (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Spartacus (1960), and Lonely Are the Brave (1962).
  He is No.17 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time, making him the highest-ranked living person on the list. In 1996, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."
  Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, the son of Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch, a businessman. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel, Belarus. His father's brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States. In addition to their surname, his parents also changed their given names to Harry and Bertha. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering the Navy during World War II.
  
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• Lee Clow
  Lee Clow is currently the Chairman and Global Director of TBWA\Worldwide, and was formerly its Chief Creative Officer.Advertising Age referred to him as "advertising's art director guru".
  Clow is best known for co-creating — along with Steve Hayden — Apple Computer's 1984 commercial which launched the Apple Macintosh and the "Think Different" slogan. The 60-second TV spot was made for a budget of $900,000 and is considered to be a masterpiece in advertising.
  He's also known for his work on the Energizer Bunny, Taco Bell chihuahua, and California Cooler campaigns. More recently, Clow has helmed campaigns for Nissan and Pedigree Petfoods. He is a member of numerous advertising and creative Halls of Fame.
  He was a personal friend of Steve Jobs.
  
  
  
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  Leonardo DiCaprio
  Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (/dɨˈkæpri.oʊ/; born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and film producer. He has been nominated for the Golden Globe Award eight times as an actor, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator (2004). He has also been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite Awards, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
  Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, DiCaprio started his career by appearing in television commercials prior to landing recurring roles in TV series such as the soap opera Santa Barbara and the sitcom Growing Pains in the early 1990s. He made his film debut in the comedic sci-fi horror film Critters 3 (1991) and received first notable critical praise for his performance in This Boy's Life (1993). DiCaprio obtained recognition for his subsequent work in supporting roles in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and Marvin's Room (1996), as well as leading roles in The Basketball Diaries (1995) and Romeo + Juliet (1996), before achieving international fame in James Cameron's Titanic (1997).
  
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  Lorraine Bracco
  Lorraine Bracco (born October 2, 1954) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Dr. Jennifer Melfi on the HBO series The Sopranos and as Karen Hill in the 1990 Martin Scorsese film, Goodfellas.
  Bracco was born in the Brooklyn, New York City neighborhood of Bay Ridge and grew up in Westbury, on Maxwell Drive on Long Island. She graduated from Hicksville High School in 1972. Her father is Italian American and her mother is English; Bracco is fluent in English, French, and Italian.
  In 1974 Bracco moved to France, where she became a fashion model for Jean-Paul Gaultier. While there, she was introduced to the director and novelist Lina Wertmuller. In the early 1970s, Wertmuller recruited Bracco in a new film production titled Camorra. "She dressed me up like an Italian woman of no means. A street woman clad in disheveled clothes, hair unkempt and all that, and threw me on the set. She was so creative. I mean, Lina accentuated my eyes with dark make-up, the way Sophia Loren used to appear in those epic roles in the '60s. And talk about talent. She's so bright and perceptive. I mean, she's just fantastic. And yes, I learned a lot from her. She's a master of her profession, and I've been blessed not only with her, but also with so many masters," recounted Bracco to Daniel Simone during an interview, which was published in the December 14, 2007 issue of Dan's Papers.
  
  wn.com/Lorraine_Bracco
• Marc Streitenfeld
  Marc Streitenfeld is a German film score composer, known for his collaborations with director Ridley Scott.
  Born in Munich, Germany, Streitenfeld relocated to Los Angeles at the age of 19, first working briefly as a musical assistant for composer Hans Zimmer, then independently as a music editor and supervisor on several blockbusters.
  At the request of Ridley Scott, Streitenfeld composed for A Good Year (2006), after acting as music supervisor on Scott's 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven (scored by Harry Gregson-Williams). He then went on to score all of Scott's subsequent films to date. He was nominated for a BAFTA award for Scott's American Gangster (2007). Regarding working with Scott, Streitenfeld said "I've done quite a few films with him now and every experience has been really good".
  Prior to his work as a composer, Streitenfeld had collaborated with Scott as music editor, music supervisor and technical score advisor on several projects, including Matchstick Men, Black Hawk Down and Gladiator.
  
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  Mark Strong
  Mark Strong (born 30 August 1963) is an English actor, with a body of work in both films and television. He has performed in films as varied as Body of Lies, Syriana, The Young Victoria, Sherlock Holmes, RocknRolla, Stardust, Kick-Ass, and Green Lantern. He often depicts villains or antagonists, such as Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes, Prince Septimus in Stardust, Frank D'Amico in Kick-Ass, and Sir Godfrey in Robin Hood. Most recently, he has appeared in the 2012 film John Carter, playing yet another villain, Matai Shang.
  Strong was born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia in London, to an Austrian mother, Waltraud D. (née Schrempf), and an Italian father, Giuseppe A. Salussolia. His father left the family soon after his birth, and he was raised by his mother, who worked as an au pair. He attended Wymondham College, where he sang in a punk band called Private Party. His English name is not a stage name; it was changed by deed poll by his mother when he was a boy to help him fit in with his peers. He was baptized a Catholic. He speaks fluent German and some Italian. Strong attended Wymondham College in Norfolk. His original ambition was to become a lawyer, but after studying at university in Munich, Germany, for 1 year he decided to change his direction in life and returned home to London. In London, he studied English and Drama at Royal Holloway, and later attended Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
  
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  Martin Campbell
  Martin Campbell (born 24 October 1943) is a New Zealand TV and film director.
  Campbell was born in Hastings, New Zealand. He directed two James Bond films, 1995's GoldenEye, starring Pierce Brosnan, and 2006's Casino Royale, starring Daniel Craig, and was the first Bond director since John Glen to direct more than one film, as well as the oldest director in the series' history, at the age of 62 (beating the previous record set by Lewis Gilbert, who directed Moonraker at the age of 59). He also directed the two recent Zorro films, The Mask of Zorro (1998) and The Legend of Zorro (2005), both starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Campbell also directed the 2011 film adaptation of the DC Comics superhero Green Lantern.
  On television Campbell had overseen some of the more action-oriented episodes from the TV series The Professionals (1977–1983), however his best known work is the 1985 BBC Television drama serial Edge of Darkness, for which he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Director in 1986. Campbell has also directed a movie remake of Edge of Darkness, starring Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone, and released in 2010.
  
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  Martin Scorsese
  Martin Charles Scorsese ( /skɔrˈsɛsɛ/; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Academy Award, Palme d'Or, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
  Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,machismo, modern crime, and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated a previous five times.
  
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  Max von Sydow
  Max von Sydow ( /vɒn ˈsiːdoʊ/;Swedish: [fɔn ˈsyːdɔv]; born 10 April 1929) is a Swedish-French actor, born in Sweden and now holds dual Swedish/French citizenship. He has starred in many films and had supporting roles in dozens more. He has performed in films filmed in many languages, including Swedish, Norwegian, English, Italian, German, Danish, French, and Spanish. Von Sydow received the Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award in 1954, the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 2005 and the Légion d'honneur in 2010.
  Some of his most memorable film roles include knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (the first of his eleven films with Bergman, and the film that includes the iconic scene in which he plays chess with Death), Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told, Father Merrin in The Exorcist, Karl Oskar in The Emigrants, Joubert the assassin in Three Days of the Condor, Ming the Merciless in the 1980 version of Flash Gordon, the villain Blofeld in Never Say Never Again, Frederick in Hannah and Her Sisters, and Lassefar in Pelle the Conqueror, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. In 2012, he was nominated a second time, for his supporting role in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
  
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  Mel Brooks
  Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner, The 2000 Year Old Man. In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released. His most well known films include The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I and Spaceballs. More recently he has had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers. He was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005.
  Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.
  
  wn.com/Mel_Brooks
• Mia Sara
  Mia Sara (born June 19, 1967) is an American actress best known for her roles in films such as Legend (1985), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), and Timecop (1994).
  Born Mia Sarapocciello in Brooklyn Heights, New York City, to Jerome Sarapocciello,^{[citation needed]} a photographer and artist, and Diana Sarapociello, a stylist and also a photographer, she attended St. Ann's School, in Brooklyn, New York City.
  Sara's breakthrough roles came in the mid-1980's as Princess Lily, playing opposite Tom Cruise in Legend and as Ferris Bueller's girlfriend, Sloane in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. She also appeared in the miniseries Queenie, a roman à clef on actress Merle Oberon, as well as 1992's A Stranger Among Us, directed by Sidney Lumet. In 1994 she starred opposite Jean Claude Van Damme in the blockbuster Timecop, for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.
  Her television roles have included playing Annie Knox in the science fiction series Time Trax and Dr. Harleen Quinzel in the short-lived WB Network superhero show Birds of Prey.
  
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  Michael Caine
  Sir Michael Caine, CBE (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933) is an English actor.
  Caine is one of two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s, the other one being Jack Nicholson. In 2000, Caine was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to cinema.
  Caine was born in St Olave's Hospital, Rotherhithe, Southwark in South East London, the son of Ellen Frances Marie (née Burchell; 1900-1989), a cook and charwoman, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, a fish market porter. His father was of English, Irish, and, reportedly, Irish Traveller ancestry. Caine was brought up in his mother's Protestant religion (his father was Catholic).
  Caine grew up in Southwark, South London, and during the Second World War he was evacuated to North Runcton near King's Lynn in Norfolk. After the war, when his father was demobilised, the family was rehoused by the council in Marshall Gardens at the Elephant and Castle in a pre-fabricated house made in Canada, as much of London's housing stock had been damaged during the Blitz in 1940-41.
  
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  Michael Douglas
  Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2009. He is the eldest of actor Kirk Douglas's four sons.
  Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian-born actress Diana Dill. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus (at that time a part of the Russian Empire). His mother was from Devonshire Parish, Bermuda; Douglas's maternal grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, served as Attorney General of Bermuda and was commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas (born 1947), and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas (born 1955) and Eric Douglas (1958–2004), from stepmother Anne Buydens.
  
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  Michael Sheen
  Michael Christopher Sheen, OBE (born 5 February 1969), is a Welsh stage and screen actor. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Sheen made his professional debut in 1991, starring opposite Vanessa Redgrave in When She Danced at the Globe Theatre. He worked mainly in theatre throughout the 1990s and made notable stage appearances in Romeo and Juliet (1992), Don’t Fool With Love (1993), Peer Gynt (1994), The Seagull (1995), The Homecoming (1997) and Henry V (1997). His performances in Amadeus at the Old Vic and Look Back in Anger at the National Theatre were nominated for Olivier Awards in 1998 and 1999, respectively.
  In the 2000s, while continuing to make sporadic stage appearances, Sheen became known primarily as a screen actor. In 2003, he was nominated for a third Olivier Award for his performance in Caligula at the Donmar Warehouse and had a breakthrough performance as the British politician Tony Blair in the television film The Deal. He received a BAFTA Award nomination in 2004 for his work in the ITV drama Dirty Filthy Love. In 2006, Sheen starred as the troubled comic actor Kenneth Williams in BBC Four's Fantabulosa! and came to the attention of an international audience when he reprised his role as Blair in The Queen. Both performances were BAFTA Award-nominated. Sheen received a fourth Olivier Award nomination in 2006 for portraying the broadcaster David Frost in Frost/Nixon at the Donmar Warehouse and he later revisited the role of Frost in the 2008 film adaptation of the play. In 2009, Sheen appeared in two fantasy films, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and starred as the outspoken football manager Brian Clough in The Damned United.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Sheen
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  Mimi Rogers
  Miriam "Mimi" Rogers (née Spickler; born January 27, 1956) is an American movie actress and competitive poker player.
  Rogers was born Miriam Spickler in Coral Gables, Florida, the daughter of Philip C. Spickler, a civil engineer.^{[citation needed]}
  Her early roles included a 1981 appearance in Hill Street Blues as a love interest for officer Andy Renko (Charles Haid), Blue Skies Again with Harry Hamlin in 1983, and playing the daughter of Hoyt Axton in the TV series The Rousters (1983–1984) starring Chad Everett and Jim Varney. Rogers' breakthrough role was opposite Tom Berenger in Someone to Watch Over Me (1987). She starred in a religious drama The Rapture (1991) as well as Full Body Massage (1995). She appeared in sci-fi films such as Lost in Space (1998) as well as the television series The X-Files (1998–1999) as Diana Fowley. She appeared as the mother of Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley) in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), and in the final season of Dawson's Creek (1998) she played the mother of Jen Lindley (Michelle Williams). In 2006 she starred in a Fox sitcom, The Loop, and in 2010 guest starred in long-running animated sitcom King of the Hill. Also made an appearance as the mother of a child smitten with Alan's son, Jake, on one episode of "Two and a Half Men".
  
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  Nicholas Meyer
  Nicholas Meyer (born December 24, 1945 in New York City, New York) is an American screenwriter, producer, author, and director, most known for his best-selling novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, and for directing the films Time After Time, two of the Star Trek feature film series, and the 1983 television movie The Day After.
  For adapting a screenplay from his own novel for The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), Meyer was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He has also been nominated for a Satellite Award, three Emmy Awards, and has won three Saturn Awards.
  Meyer graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in theater and filmmaking.
  Meyer first gained public attention for his best selling 1974 Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a story of Holmes confronting his cocaine addiction with the help of Sigmund Freud. Meyer followed this with two additional Holmes novels: The West End Horror (1976), and then The Canary Trainer (1993).
  The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was later made into a 1976 film of the same name, for which Meyer wrote the screenplay. The film was directed by Herbert Ross and starred Nicol Williamson, Robert Duvall, Alan Arkin, and Laurence Olivier. For his work adapting the novel, Meyer was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 49th Academy Awards.
  
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  Nicolas Cage
  Nicolas Cage (born Nicolas Kim Coppola; January 7, 1964) is an Academy Award–winning American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona (1987), The Rock (1996), Face/Off (1997), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Adaptation (2002), National Treasure (2004), Lord of War (2005), Ghost Rider (2007), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), Kick-Ass (2010), and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012).
  Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola on January 7, 1964 in Long Beach, California. His father, August Coppola, a professor of literature, and his mother, Joy Vogelsang, a dancer and choreographer, divorced in 1976. He was raised in a Catholic family. Cage's mother is of German descent and his father was of Italian descent. His paternal grandparents were composer Carmine Coppola and actress Italia Pennino, and his paternal great-grandparents were immigrants from Bernalda, Basilicata. Through his father, Cage is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, and the cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, film producer Gian-Carlo Coppola, and actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman. Cage's two brothers are New York radio personality Marc "The Cope" Coppola and director Christopher Coppola. He attended Beverly Hills High School, which is known for its many alumni who became entertainers. He aspired to act from an early age and also attended UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television. His first non-cinematic acting experience was in a school production of Golden Boy.
  
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  Pablo Picasso
  Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso], 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
  Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are commonly regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.
  
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  Paul Verhoeven
  Paul Verhoeven (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpʌu̯l vərˈɦuvə(n)]; born 18 July 1938) is a Dutch film director, screenwriter, and producer who has made movies in both the Netherlands and the United States. Explicitly violent and/or sexual content and social satire are trademarks of both his drama and science fiction films. He is best known for directing the American feature films RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), Starship Troopers (1997), and Hollow Man (2000).
  Turkish Delight (1973) received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century at the Netherlands Film Festival. His films altogether received a total of nine Academy Award nominations, mainly for editing and effects. Both RoboCop and Total Recall won an Special Achievement Academy Award. In contrast, his film Showgirls (1995) was poorly received and won seven Golden Raspberry Awards, but has become a cult film over time.
  Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the son of school teacher Wim Verhoeven and hat maker Nel van Schaardenburg. Although born in Amsterdam, the family lived in the village of Slikkerveer.
  
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  Peter Ustinov
  Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov CBE ( /ˈjuːstɪnɒf/ or /ˈuːstɪnɒf/; 16 April 1921 – 28 March 2004) was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter. A noted wit and raconteur, he was a fixture on television talk shows and lecture circuits for much of his career. He was also a respected intellectual and diplomat who, in addition to his various academic posts, served as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF and President of the World Federalist Movement.
  Ustinov was the winner of numerous awards over his life, including two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor, Emmy Awards, Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards for acting, a Grammy Award for best recording for children, as well the recipient of governmental honours from, amongst others, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. He displayed a unique cultural versatility that has frequently earned him the accolade of a Renaissance man. Miklós Rózsa, composer of the music for Quo Vadis and of numerous concert works, dedicated his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 22 (1950) to Ustinov.
  
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  Peter Weir
  Peter Lindsay Weir, AM (born 21 August 1944) is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office hits—including the Academy Award nominees Witness, Dead Poets Society, Green Card, The Truman Show and Master and Commander.
  Weir was born in Sydney, the son of Peggy (née Barnsley) and Lindsay Weir, a real estate agent. Weir attended The Scots College and Vaucluse Boys' High School before studying art and law at the University of Sydney. His interest in film was sparked by his meeting with fellow students, including Phillip Noyce and the future members of the Sydney filmmaking collective Ubu Films.
  After leaving university in the mid-1960s he joined Sydney television station ATN-7, where he worked as a production assistant on the groundbreaking satirical comedy program The Mavis Bramston Show. During this period, using station facilities, he made his first two experimental short films, Count Vim's Last Exercise and The Life and Flight of Reverend Buckshotte.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Weir
• Philip Kaufman
  Philip Kaufman (born October 23, 1936) is an American film director and screenwriter. His movies have adapted novels of widely different types – from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being to Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun; from Tom Wolfe’s heroic epic The Right Stuff to the erotic writings of Anaïs Nin’s Henry & June. His greatest success has been the film The Right Stuff which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.
  Kaufman was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Elizabeth (Brandau) and Nathan Kaufman. He attended the University of Chicago and later Harvard Law School. After spending some time backpacking in Europe with his wife Rose, Kaufman relocated back to the United States. His time in Europe heavily influenced Kaufman's decision to become a filmmaker, when he and his wife would wander into small movie theaters showcasing the works of John Cassavetes among others. He held some odd jobs including mailman. During his frequent travels he met Anaïs Nin, lover of writer Henry Miller. The relationship between Miller and Nin was the inspiration for Kaufman's film Henry and June.
  
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  Rachel Weisz
  Rachel Hannah Weisz ( /ˈvaɪs/ / vice /; born 7 March 1970) is an English film and theatre actress and former fashion model. She started her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the theatrical group Cambridge Talking Tongues. The group was awarded the Student Drama Award for the improvised piece Slight Possession during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by The Guardian.
  Weisz started working in television, appearing in Inspector Morse, the British mini-series Scarlet and Black, and the television film Advocates II. She made her film début in the 1994 film Death Machine, but her breakthrough role came in the 1996 film Chain Reaction, leading to a high-profile role as Evelyn Carnahan-O'Connell in the films The Mummy, in 1999, and The Mummy Returns in 2001. Other notable films featuring Weisz are Enemy at the Gates, About a Boy, Constantine, The Fountain and The Constant Gardener, for which she received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors' Guild award for her supporting role as Tessa Quayle.
  
  wn.com/Rachel_Weisz
• Raymond Cusick
  Raymond P. "Ray" Cusick was a designer for the British Broadcasting Corporation. He is best known for designing the Daleks, a race of mutants who move around in tank-like travel machines, for the science fiction television series Doctor Who.
  Born in London, Cusick became interested in engineering while still at art school, and began attending evening classes. However, his father wanted him to follow a more regular career, so Cusick took a course in Mathematics and Science, intending to become a civil engineer. Not finding this to his liking, he enlisted instead in the British Army and found himself stationed in Palestine, but did not enjoy that experience either. On his return to England he completed a teacher training course, but then obtained a nine-month position in repertory theatre at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Cardiff.
  In the late 1950s Cusick took a position teaching art but then noticed an advertisement placed by Granada Television for designers on a show, Chelsea at Nine, which was recorded at the Chelsea Palace Theatre. Cusick then joined the BBC as a staff designer responsible for set design on a large number of Doctor Who stories, designing not just futuristic settings but also historical sets and diorama. Cusick worked on a large variety of television programmes for the BBC including comedy, variety, drama, single plays, and films.
  
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  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.
  
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  Robert De Niro
  Robert De Niro (pronounced /dəˈnɪəroʊ/; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973. In 1974, he played the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, a role that won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  His critically acclaimed, longtime collaborations with Martin Scorsese began with 1973's Mean Streets, and earned De Niro an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in the 1980 film Raging Bull. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his roles in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Cape Fear (1991). In addition, he received nominations for his acting in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) and Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990). Also in 1990, his portrayal as Jimmy Conway in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas earned him a BAFTA nomination.
  He has earned four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: New York, New York (1977), Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). De Niro directed A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). He has received accolades for his esteemed career, including the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.
  
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  Robert Zemeckis
  Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1951) is a Lithuanian American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994's Forrest Gump, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.
  His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the early use of match moving in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007) and A Christmas Carol (2009). Though Zemeckis has often been pigeonholed as a director interested only in effects, his work has been defended by several critics, including David Thomson, who wrote that "No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."
  
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  Robin Hood
  Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes. The origin of the legend is claimed by some to have stemmed from actual outlaws, or from ballads or tales of outlaws.
  Robin Hood became a popular folk figure in the medieval period continuing through to modern literature, films and television. In the earliest sources, Robin Hood is a yeoman, but he was often later portrayed as an aristocrat wrongfully dispossessed of his lands and made into an outlaw by an unscrupulous sheriff.
  In popular culture, Robin Hood and his band of "merry men" are usually portrayed as living in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, where much of the action in the early ballads takes place. So does the very first recorded Robin Hood rhyme, four lines from the early 15th century, beginning: "Robyn hode in scherewode stod." However, the overall picture from the surviving early ballads and other early references suggest that Robin Hood may have been based in the Barnsdale area of what is now South Yorkshire (which borders Nottinghamshire).
  
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  Ron Howard
  Ronald William "Ron" Howard (born March 1, 1954) is an American film director, producer and former child actor. He came to prominence playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years. He appeared in the films American Graffiti in 1973 and The Shootist in 1976, the latter during his run on Happy Days. Howard made his directorial debut with the 1977 comedy Grand Theft Auto, and left Happy Days in 1980 to focus on directing. His films include the Academy Award-winning Cocoon, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Beautiful Mind. In 2003, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Asteroid 12561 Howard is named after him.
  Howard was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, the son of Jean Speegle Howard, an actress, and Rance Howard, a director, writer and actor. His father was born with the surname "Beckenholdt", and had taken the stage name "Howard" by 1948, for his acting career. Rance Howard was serving three years in the United States Air Force at the time of Ron's birth. The family moved to Hollywood in 1958, the year before the birth of his younger brother, Clint Howard. They rented a house on the block south of the Desilu Studios, where The Andy Griffith Show would later be filmed. They lived in Hollywood for at least three years, before moving to Burbank.
  
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  Rupert Murdoch
  Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian American media mogul. Murdoch became managing director of Australia's News Limited, inherited from his father, in 1952. He is the founder, Chairman and CEO of global media holding company the News Corporation, the world's second-largest media conglomerate.
  In the 1950s and '60s, he acquired various newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World followed closely by The Sun. He moved to New York in 1974 to expand into the US market and became a naturalised US citizen in 1985. In 1981, he bought The Times, his first British broadsheet.
  In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his UK printing operations in Wapping, causing bitter industrial disputes. His News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989) and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed BSkyB in 1990 and during the 1990s expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000 Murdoch's News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.
  
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  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.
  
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  Sam Rockwell
  Sam Rockwell (born November 5, 1968) is an American actor known for his leading roles in Lawn Dogs, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Choke and Moon, as well as for his supporting roles in The Green Mile, Iron Man 2, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Frost/Nixon, Galaxy Quest, Matchstick Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Conviction and Cowboys & Aliens.
  He was born in Daly City, California, the son of actors who divorced when he was five years old. He was raised by his father, Pete Rockwell, in San Francisco, while his mother, Penny Hess, stayed behind in New York (he spent his summer vacations with her). Rockwell had what The New York Times described in 1998 as a "footloose upbringing" and, at age 10, made his brief stage debut playing Humphrey Bogart in an East Village improv comedy sketch starring his mother. His mother had an unconventional lifestyle – she was involved with hippies, sex, and drugs.
  He attended San Francisco School of the Arts with Margaret Cho and dropped out before graduation. He later received his high school diploma after his parents enrolled him in an Outward Bound-style alternative high school called Urban Pioneers because, as Rockwell explained, "I just wanted to get stoned, flirt with girls, go to parties." The school, the actor said, "had a reputation as a place stoners went because it was easy to graduate," but the program ended up helping him regain an interest in performing. After appearing in an independent film during his senior year, he graduated and moved to New York to pursue an acting career.
  
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  Sean Penn
  Sean Justin Penn (born August 17, 1960) is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his left-wing political and social activism (including humanitarian work). He is a two-time Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008), as well as the recipient of a Golden Globe Award for the former and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter.
  Penn began his acting career in television with a brief appearance in a 1974 episode of Little House on the Prairie, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in 1981's Taps and a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, Penn emerged as a prominent leading actor with the 1995 drama film Dead Man Walking, for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination and the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Penn received another two Oscar nominations for Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and I Am Sam (2001), before winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and a second one in 2008 for Milk. He has also won a Best Actor Award of the Cannes Film Festival for She's So Lovely (1997), and two Best Actor Awards at the Venice Film Festival for Hurlyburly (1998) and 21 Grams (2003).
  
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  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".
  
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  Stanley Kubrick
  Stanley Kubrick (/ˈkuːbrɪk/; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor. He is regarded as having been one of America's greatest filmmakers. His films, typically adaptations of novels or short stories, were noted for their "dazzling" and unique cinematography, attention to details to achieve realism and an inspired use of music scores. Kubrick's films covered a variety of genres, including war, black comedy, horror and science fiction. Kubrick was also noted for being a perfectionist, using painstaking care with scene staging and working closely with his actors.
  Starting out as a photographer in New York City, he taught himself all aspects of film production and directing after graduating high school. His earliest films were made on a shoestring budget, followed by one Hollywood blockbuster, after which he spent most of the rest of his career living and filming in England. His home became his workplace where he did his writing, research, editing and management of production details. This allowed him to have almost complete artistic control, but with the rare advantage of having financial support from major Hollywood studios.
  
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  Stephen Frears
  Stephen Arthur Frears (born 20 June 1941) is an English film director.
  Frears was born in Leicester, England, to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr. Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s. Frears was educated at Gresham's School, Norfolk, from 1954 to 1959, and later went on to study law at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1960 to 1963.
  After graduating from Cambridge, Frears worked as an assistant director on the films Morgan! (1966) and if.... (1968), but most of his early directing career was spent in television mainly for the BBC, but also for the commercial sector. Frears contributed to several high-profile anthology series such as the BBC's Play for Today, and produced a series of Alan Bennett's plays for LWT, taking responsibility for working in the gallery on The Old Crowd while Lindsay Anderson worked with the actors.
  In the mid-1980s, Frears came to international attention as an important director of British and American films. His first film was Gumshoe (1971), but it was his production of the Hanif Kureishi screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette for Channel 4 in 1985 that unexpectedly led to his wider notice. The production, shot on 16 mm film, was released theatrically to great acclaim, and received a nomination for an Academy Award and two nominations for BAFTA Awards. In 1987, he worked with comedian Adrian Edmondson for Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, also starring Peter Cook for a 45-minute programme from the cult series The Comic Strip Presents. In 1985 he had also directed a Comic Strip parody of Rebecca with the usual Comic Strip ensemble.
  
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  Steven Spielberg
  Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio.
  Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes puts Spielberg's wealth at $3.0 billion.
  
  wn.com/Steven_Spielberg
• Steven Zaillian
  Steven Ernest Bernard Zaillian (born January 30, 1953) is an American screenwriter, director, editor, producer, and founder of Film Rites, a film production company. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Schindler's List and he has been nominated for Awakenings, Gangs of New York and Moneyball. The Times called him "the most artful and subtle screenwriter Hollywood has had since Robert Towne."^{[citation needed]}
  Zaillian was born in Fresno, California, the son of Jim Zaillian, a radio news reporter. He attended Sonoma State University, graduated from San Francisco State University and lives in Los Angeles. He is of Armenian descent.
  
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  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.
  
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• Terry George
  Terry George (born December 20, 1952) is an Northern Irish screenwriter and director. Born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland, much of his film work (e.g. The Boxer, Some Mother's Son, and In the Name of the Father) involves "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland.
  He was nominated for two Oscars: Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (1993; In the Name of the Father), and Best Writing, Original Screenplay (2004; Hotel Rwanda). On 26 February 2012, he received an Oscar in the live action short film category for The Shore.
  George was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1981, he moved to New York City. He faced deportation proceedings but was allowed to remain in the United States following a lobbying campaign by Irish-American supporters and was granted an "O" visa.
  In 1985, he made his debut as playwright of The Tunnel, a stage drama based on a prison escape from Long Kesh prison camp.In 1986 he researched the non-fiction book The Pizza Connection with American journalist Shana Alexander. In 1993, he made his debut as screenwriter and assistant director with In the Name of the Father, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and directed and co-written by Jim Sheridan. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including best adapted screenplay for George and Sheridan. He directed and scripted the film Some Mother's Son, starring Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan, for which he was named Young European Director of the Year, in 1996.
  
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  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.
  
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  Tim Curry
  Timothy James "Tim" Curry (born 19 April 1946) is a British actor, singer, composer and voice actor, known for his work in a diverse range of theatre, film and television productions. Curry first became known to film audiences with his breakthrough role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, reprising the role he played in the 1973 London and 1974 Los Angeles stage productions of The Rocky Horror Show, then later for his supporting roles as Rooster in the film adaption of Annie (1982), Lord of Darkness in the film Legend (1985), Wadsworth in the film Clue (1985), as well as a starring role portraying Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the horror film It (1990).
  He voiced Nigel Thornberry, the father in the Nickelodeon children's TV show The Wild Thornberrys. He originated the role of King Arthur in the Broadway hit Monty Python's Spamalot. He is notable for often playing or voicing villainous characters in film. Curry resides in Beverly Hills, California and London.
  
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• Tom Berenger
  Tom Berenger (born May 31, 1949) is an American actor known mainly for his roles in action films.
  Berenger's father was a printer for the Chicago Sun-Times. Berenger has a sister, Susan. He picked "Berenger" as his professional name, after a school friend, because there was already a "Tom Moore" in the Actors' Equity Association. He graduated from Rich East High School in Park Forest, Illinois, in 1967. Berenger studied journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, but decided to seek an acting career following his graduation. The Tom Berenger Acting Scholarship Fund was established in 1988 by Tom Berenger to award Theatre students for excellence in performance. He worked first in regional theatre and moved to New York City in the 1970s.Is of Irish heritage.
  Berenger worked in soap operas and had a starring role on One Life to Live. His feature film debut was the lead in Rush It (1976), an independent film now mostly forgotten except for those of its cast members who went on to greater renown. In 1977, Berenger had a small but noticeable role as a murderer in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. In 1978, he had a starring role in In Praise of Older Women for Avco-Embassy Pictures. In 1979, he played Butch Cassidy in Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, a role he got in part because of his resemblance to Paul Newman, who played the character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). These early roles highlighted Berenger's ability to play both villains and heroes.
  
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  Tom Cruise
  Thomas Cruise Mapother IV ( /ˈtɒməs ˈkruːz ˈmeɪpɒθər/; born July 3, 1962), widely known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has won three Golden Globe Awards for the same movies: Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jerry Maguire (1996), Magnolia (1999). He started his career with the movie Endless Love. Cruise's first appearance in a major film was in 1981's Taps. His first leading role was in the film Risky Business, released in August 1983. Cruise played the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and successful 1986 film Top Gun, and also secret agent Ethan Hunt in the series of Mission: Impossible action films.
  He has starred in a variety of other successful films, including: Rain Man (1988), Days of Thunder (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), and War of the Worlds (2005).
  Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the United Artists film studio, with Cruise as producer and star and Wagner as the chief executive. Cruise is also known for his support of and adherence to the Church of Scientology.
  
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• Tom Epperson
  Tom Epperson is an American screenwriter et writer known for his collaborations with Billy Bob Thornton.
  
  
  
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  Tom Hanks
  Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks is known for his roles in Philadelphia and as the title character in Forrest Gump, roles which won him two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor. Hanks is also known for his Oscar nominated roles in Big, Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away.
  Hanks' other acting roles include Apollo 13 as Jim Lovell, The Green Mile as Paul Edgecomb, Toy Story as Woody and Charlie Wilson's War as Charlie Wilson.
  Hanks was born in Concord, California. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks (born in Glenn County, California, on March 9, 1924 – died in Alameda, California, on January 31, 1992), was an itinerant cook. His mother, Janet Marylyn (née Frager; born in Alameda County, California, on January 18, 1932), was a hospital worker. Hanks' mother is of Portuguese ancestry, while two of his paternal great-grandparents immigrated from Britain. Hanks's parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer)^{[citation needed]}, Larry (now Lawrence M. Hanks, PhD, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California.^{[citation needed]}
  
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• Tony Scott
  Anthony D. L. "Tony" Scott (born 21 June 1944) is an English film director. His films include Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Spy Game, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 123 and Unstoppable. He is the younger brother of fellow film director Ridley Scott.
  Scott was born in North Shields, the son of Elizabeth and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. His first foray into filmmaking was not from behind the camera, but in front of it. At the age of 16, Tony appeared in Boy and Bicycle, a short film marking the directorial debut of his then 23 year-old brother Ridley. He followed in his elder brother's footsteps, studying at Grangefield School, West Hartlepool College of Art and Sunderland Art School, the last for a fine arts degree. He subsequently graduated from the Royal College of Art, fully intending to become a painter. It was only the success of his elder brother's fledging television commercial production outfit, Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), that turned his attentions towards film.
  
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  Vangelis
  Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (Greek: Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου [evˈaɲɟelos oðiˈseas papaθanaˈsiu]; born 29 March 1943) is a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock and orchestral music, under the artist name Vangelis /væŋˈɡɛlɨs/. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning score for the film Chariots of Fire, composing scores for the films Blade Runner, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander, and the use of his music in the PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.
  Vangelis began his professional musical career working with several popular bands of the 1960s such as The Forminx and Aphrodite's Child, with the latter's album 666 going on to be recognized as a psychedelic "classic". Throughout the 1970s, Vangelis composed music scores for several animal documentaries, including L'Apocalypse Des Animaux, La Fête sauvage and Opéra sauvage; the success of these scores brought him into the film scoring mainstream. In the early 1980s, Vangelis formed a musical partnership with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of progressive rock band Yes, and the duo went on to release several albums together as Jon & Vangelis. In 1981, he composed the score for the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire. The soundtrack's single, "Titles", won Vangelis the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score and also reached the top of the American Billboard.
  
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  Viggo Mortensen
  Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. (born October 20, 1958) is an American actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He made his film debut in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness, and subsequently appeared in many notable films of the 1990s, including The Indian Runner (1991), Carlito's Way (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Daylight (1996), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), G.I. Jane (1997), A Perfect Murder (1998), and A Walk on the Moon (1999).
  Mortensen made his major breakthrough in 2001 with his role as Aragorn in the epic film trilogy The Lord of the Rings. In 2005, Mortensen won critical acclaim for David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence. Two years later, another Cronenberg film Eastern Promises (2007) earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Other well-received films in recent years have included Appaloosa (2008) and the 2009 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road.
  Aside from acting, his other artistic pursuits include fine arts, photography, poetry, and music. In 2002, he founded the Perceval Press to publish the works of little-known artists and authors. Mortensen is politically active. He campaigned for Dennis Kucinich in the 2008 United States presidential election, and later endorsed Barack Obama for President.
  
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  Warren Beatty
  Warren Beatty ( /ˈbeɪti/ BAY-tee; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including winning the Best Director Award and its highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. He has been nominated for 16 Golden Globe Awards and won six, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he received in 2007. Only Beatty and Orson Welles have been nominated for producer, director, writer and actor in the same film. Welles did it once (for Citizen Kane), Beatty did it twice (for Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
  Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Nova Scotia-born teacher, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a Ph.D. of educational psychology, a public school administrator, and dealt in real estate. Beatty's grandparents were also educators. The family was Baptist. In 1945, the family moved from Richmond to Arlington, Virginia. Beatty's sister is the multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine.
  
  wn.com/Warren_Beatty
• Wikipedia Persondata
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  Will Rogers
  William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers (November 4, 1879 - August 15, 1935) was an American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor. He was one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s.
  Known as Oklahoma's favorite son, Rogers was born to a prominent Cherokee Nation family in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). He traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), wrote more than 4,000 nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, and became a world-famous figure. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was adored by the American people. He was the leading political wit of the Progressive Era, and was the top-paid Hollywood movie star at the time. Rogers died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed in Alaska.
  His vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion, and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that was readily appreciated by a national audience, with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."
  
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  William Gibson
  William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982) and later popularized the concept in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984). In envisaging cyberspace, Gibson created an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. He is also credited with predicting the rise of reality television and with establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as video games and the World Wide Web.
  Having changed residence frequently with his family as a child, Gibson became a shy, ungainly teenager who often read science fiction. After spending his adolescence at a private boarding school in Arizona, Gibson evaded the draft during the Vietnam War by emigrating to Canada in 1968, where he became immersed in the counterculture and after settling in Vancouver eventually became a full-time writer. He retains dual citizenship. Gibson's early works are bleak, noir near-future stories about the effect of cybernetics and computer networks on humans—a "combination of lowlife and high tech". The short stories were published in popular science fiction magazines. The themes, settings and characters developed in these stories culminated in his first novel, Neuromancer, which garnered critical and commercial success, virtually initiating the cyberpunk literary genre.
  
  wn.com/William_Gibson