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• 
  

• 
  Belize
  Belize ⁱ/bəˈliːz/ (formerly British Honduras) is a country located on the north eastern coast of Central America and it is the only country in the area where English is the official language, although Kriol and Spanish are more commonly spoken. Belize is bordered to the north by Mexico, south and west by Guatemala, and to the east by the Caribbean Sea. Its mainland is about 290 kilometres (180 mi) long and 110 kilometres (68 mi) wide.
  With 22,960 square kilometres (8,860 sq mi) of land and a population of only 333,200 inhabitants (2010 est.), Belize possesses the lowest population density in Central America. The country's population growth rate of 2.21% (2008 est.), however, is the highest in the region and one of the highest in the western hemisphere. Belize's abundance of terrestrial and marine species, and its diversity of ecosystems give it a key place within the globally significant Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.
  Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages and it is the only nation in the region with a British colonial heritage but as a part of the Western Caribbean Zone, it also shares a common heritage with the Caribbean portions of other Central American countries. In general, Belize is considered to be a Central American nation with strong ties to both the Caribbean and Latin America. Belize is a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), and Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA).
  
  wn.com/Belize
• 
  Bradford
  Coordinates: 53°48′00″N 1°45′07″W / 53.8000°N 1.75206°W / 53.8000; -1.75206
  Bradford (ⁱ/ˈbrædfəd/) lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, 8.6 miles (13.8 km) west of Leeds, and 16 miles (25.7 km) northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897. Following local government reform in 1974, city status was bestowed upon the wider metropolitan borough.
  Bradford has a population of 293,717, making it the fourteenth-most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. Bradford forms part of the West Yorkshire Urban Area conurbation which in 2001 had a population of 1.5 million and is part of the Leeds-Bradford Larger Urban Zone (LUZ), the third largest in the UK after London and Manchester, with an estimated population in the 2004 Urban Audit of 2.4 million.
  Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the "wool capital of the world". The area's access to a supply of coal, iron ore and soft water facilitated the growth of Bradford's manufacturing base, which, as textile manufacture grew, led to an explosion in population and was a stimulus to civic investment; Bradford has fine Victorian architecture including the grand Italianate City Hall.
  
  wn.com/Bradford
• 
  Chesterfield
  Chesterfield is a market town and a borough of Derbyshire, England. It lies 24 miles (39 km) north of Derby, on a confluence of the rivers Rother and Hipper. Its population is 70,260 (2001), making it Derbyshire's largest town (the larger Derby being a city). It is located on the A61, 6 miles (9.7 km) from the M1, and forms part of the Sheffield City Region.
  Chesterfield received its market charter in the year 1204, and is currently home to one of the largest open air markets in Britain. The area around the town sits over a large coalfield, which was mined from many surrounding collieries until the 1980s. Little evidence of the mining industry remains today, and the town's economy has moved towards the tertiary sector. The town's most famous landmark, which is visible from many viewpoints outside the town, is the distinctive 'crooked' spire of its predominantly 14th century church.
  The town received its market charter in the year 1204 from King John and around 250 stalls can still be found in the town centre every Monday, Friday and Saturday. The charter constituted the town as a free borough, granting the burgesses of Chesterfield the same privileges as those of Nottingham.
  
  wn.com/Chesterfield
• 
  Cleethorpes
  Coordinates: 53°33′12″N 0°01′18″W / 53.5533°N 0.02155°W / 53.5533; -0.02155
  Cleethorpes is a town and unparished area in North East Lincolnshire, England, situated on the estuary of the Humber. It has a population of 31,853 and is a seaside resort.
  The name "Cleethorpes" is thought to come from joining the words "clee", an old word for clay, and "thorpes", an Old English/Old Norse word for villages, and is of comparatively modern origin. Before becoming a unified town, Cleethorpes was made up of three small villages, or "thorpes": Itterby, Oole and Thrunscoe, which were part of a wider parish called Clee (not to be confused with Old Clee).
  While there are neolithic and Bronze Age remains in the area, permanent occupation appears to date from the 6th century, when the Danes arrived, with substantial communities only appearing in the 9th century.
  The manor of Itterby was purchased in 1616 by the trustees of Peter Blundell's charity for the benefit of scholars and fellows at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge from Blundell's School, Tiverton. This is reflected in many of the street and park names in the area.
  
  wn.com/Cleethorpes
• 
  Derby QUAD
  Derby QUAD also referred to as QUAD Derby or simply The QUAD is an arts centre in Derby, United Kingdom, first opened on 26 September 2008. It has a steel and glass design by Bath architects Feilden Clegg Bradley. When it was chosen over competing designs by Derby council cabinet in 2004 it was considered controversial. QUAD provides an art gallery, two cinemas, artists’ studios, and a cafe bar. The centre also has available spaces for people to create their own artwork.
  QUAD is a cinema, gallery, cafe and workshop space that anyone can use. QUAD connects people and businesses to art and film for entertainment, education and participation. There are artist studios you can hire and a BFI Médiathèque which you can use to watch various videos. QUAD runs creative courses for adults and children. The cinema shows a range of different movies from old subtitle movies to the latest movies.
  Coordinates: 52°55′24″N 1°28′32″W / 52.9232°N 1.4755°W / 52.9232; -1.4755
  
  wn.com/Derby_QUAD
• 
  Derbyshire
  Coordinates: 53°8′N 1°36′W / 53.133°N 1.6°W / 53.133; -1.6
  Derbyshire (ⁱ/ˈdɑrbɨʃə/ DAR-bi-shər or /ˈdɑrbɪʃɪər/ DAR-bi-sheer; abbreviated Derbys. or Derbs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The southern extremity of the Pennine range of hills extends into the north of the county. The county contains within its boundary of approximately 225 miles part of the National Forest. It borders on Greater Manchester to the northwest, West Yorkshire to the north, South Yorkshire to the northeast, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the southeast, Staffordshire to the west and southwest and Cheshire also to the west. In 2003 the Ordnance Survey placed Church Flatts farm, near Coton in the Elms, as the furthest point from the sea in Great Britain.
  The city of Derby is now a unitary authority area, but remains part of the ceremonial county of Derbyshire. The non-metropolitan county contains 30 towns with between 10,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. There is a large amount of sparsely populated agricultural upland: 75% of the population live in 25% of the area.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Derbyshire
• 
  Ethiopia
  Ethiopia ( /ˌiːθiˈoʊpiə/) (Ge'ez: ኢትዮጵያ ʾĪtyōṗṗyā), officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km². Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With its capital at Addis Ababa, it is also the most populous landlocked nation in the world.
  Ethiopia was a monarchy for most of its history, and the Ethiopian dynasty traces its roots to the 2nd century BC. Ethiopia is also one of the oldest sites of human existence known to scientists today, having yielded some of humanity's oldest traces. It may be the region from which Homo sapiens first set out for the Middle East and points beyond. Alongside Rome, Persia, China and India, the Ethiopian Aksum Empire was considered one of the great world powers of the 3rd century. During the Scramble for Africa, Ethiopia was the only African country beside Liberia that retained its sovereignty as a recognized independent country, and was one of only four African members of the League of Nations. After a brief period of Italian occupation, Ethiopia became a charter member of the United Nations. When other African nations received their independence following World War II, many of them adopted the colors of Ethiopia's flag, and Addis Ababa became the location of several international organizations focused on Africa.
  
  wn.com/Ethiopia
• 
  Grimsby
  Coordinates: 53°33′34″N 0°04′05″W / 53.5595°N 0.0680°W / 53.5595; -0.0680
  Grimsby (or archaically Great Grimsby) is a seaport on the Humber Estuary in Lincolnshire, England. It has been the administrative centre of the unitary authority area of North East Lincolnshire since 1996. According to legend, Grimsby was first founded by Grim, a Danish fisherman, 'By' means 'village' in Old Norse and modern Swedish and 'city' or 'town' in modern Danish and Norwegian.
  The town was previously titled "Great Grimsby" to distinguish it from Little Grimsby, a village about 14 miles (22 km) to the south, near Louth. People from Grimsby are called Grimbarians.
  The town itself has a population of 87,574. It is physically linked to the adjoining town of Cleethorpes, and 11,000 of its inhabitants live in the village of Scartho which was absorbed into Grimsby before laws on the green belt were put in place. All three areas come under the jurisdiction of the same council, North East Lincolnshire. It is close to the main terminus of the A180, which ends in Cleethorpes. 22 January is Great Grimsby Day.
  
  wn.com/Grimsby
• 
  Holborn
  Coordinates: 51°31′02″N 0°07′06″W / 51.5172°N 0.1182°W / 51.5172; -0.1182
  Holborn ( /ˈhoʊbərn/ HOH-bərn) is an area of central London and also the name of the area's principal street, known as High Holborn between St. Giles's High Street and Gray's Inn Road (the junction being roughly where Holborn Bar — the entrance to the City of London — once was) and then Holborn Viaduct between Holborn Circus and Newgate Street. The street since boundary changes in 1994 runs along the boundary between the London Borough of Camden and the City of London; previously the boundary was less obvious in the area and crossed the street at Holborn Bar.
  The area's first mention is in a charter of Westminster Abbey, by King Edgar, dated to 959. This mentions "the old wooden church of St Andrew" (St Andrew, Holborn). The name Holborn may be derived from the Middle English "hol" for hollow, and bourne, a brook, referring to the River Fleet as it ran through a steep valley to the east. Historical cartographer William Shepherd in his Plan of London about 1300 labels the Fleet as "Hole Bourn" where it passes to the east of St Andrew's church. However, the 16th century historian John Stow attributes the name to the Old Bourne ("old brook"), a small stream which he believed ran into the Fleet at Holborn Bridge, a structure lost when the river was culverted in 1732. The exact course of the stream is uncertain, but according to Stow it started in one of the many small springs near Holborn Bar, the old City toll gate on the summit of Holborn Hill. This is supported by a map of London and Westminster created during the reign of Henry VIII that clearly marks the street as 'Oldbourne' and 'High Oldbourne'. Other historians, however, find the theory implausible, in view of the slope of the land.
  
  wn.com/Holborn
• 
  Otford
  Coordinates: 51°18′35″N 0°11′12″E / 51.30969°N 0.18657°E / 51.30969; 0.18657
  Otford is a village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent known for its classically English (Kentish) countryside. The village is located on the River Darent, flowing north down its valley from its source on the North Downs. The name is a contraction of Otterford, possibly derived from Offa, the King of Mercia who fought a battle at Otford against the Kentish Saxons in 776 at the Battle of Otford.
  Notable landmarks are the Archbishop's Palace, the duck-pond roundabout, and the scale model of the Solar System which claims to be "the largest scale model in the world".
  The parish church is dedicated to St Bartholomew.
  According to the 2001 Census, the population of the Otford and Shoreham ward was 4,381, Otford's population being 3,528.
  Otford lies on the A225, a main road between Dartford and Sevenoaks. The presence of the site of a Roman villa, in addition to the remains of an ancient trackway, suggests that this road has a long history. The M26 motorway uses the valley here as part of its route.
  
  wn.com/Otford
• 
  Shirebrook
  Coordinates: 53°12′17″N 1°13′11″W / 53.2048°N 1.2197°W / 53.2048; -1.2197
  Shirebrook is a town in the Bolsover district of north-east Derbyshire on the border with Nottinghamshire, England. At the 2001 UK Census it had a population of 9,291 (civil parish), 10,412 (urban area). It is on the B6407, and close to the A632 road, between Mansfield and Bolsover.
  The town is served by Shirebrook railway station.
  Shirebrook is a small market town with a market square (Market days are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays) surrounded by several shops. There is a large Co-operative food, 2 butchers, carpet shops, a photographers, 2 card shops, 4 cake shops, 3 Tattooists, 2 furniture shops, a baby shop, 2 pet shops, 3 cafes, 4 pubs, a lock smith, 1 solicitors, 2 DIY stores, multiple take-aways and 2 pharmacists. Shirebrook is home to many small local businesses. Much of the growth and prosperity of the town was built around coal mining. Shirebrook Colliery opened in 1896 and closed in 1993. Like many former 'pit towns' in the area this led to high unemployment and other social problems. The former site of the colliery is currently being redeveloped. The Kissingate Leisure Centre is on Park Road. It has no swimming pool, but it does have an indoor five-a-side football area and a skate park. The Kissingate Leisure Centre itself was closed after being heavily damaged by fire on Friday 7 November, 2008, but reopened almost 12 months later.
  
  wn.com/Shirebrook

• Adam Susan
  Adam James Susan is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the comic book series (later graphic novel) V for Vendetta, created by writer Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd. He is renamed Adam Sutler in the film adaptation, in which he is portrayed by John Hurt.
  Adam Susan is the leader of the Norsefire party, and the ruler of the dictatorship that holds Britain in an iron grip. A firm adherent of pure fascism, he values order above all else and sees civil liberties as unneeded luxuries which are ultimately threats to a secure society. He states early in the novel that he believes in "the destiny of the Nordic race", and subsequently despises anyone who is not white, Christian or heterosexual. Despite the latter, he disdains all sexual contact as "brutish coupling", and has subsequently remained a virgin his entire life.
  The graphic novel establishes his backstory. A former police chief constable, upon his entrance into politics he gathers a select few like-minded right-wing extremists and corporate executives into his inner circle, and then exploits the poverty, chaos, and panic that follow a worldwide nuclear war to seize power. Once in control, he gives himself the title of "Leader," and bans all art and literature that conflict with the views of the party, criminalizes political dissent, and puts Jews, Arabs, Pakistanis and homosexuals into concentration camps.
  
  wn.com/Adam_Susan
• Alan Badel
  Alan Fernand Badel ( /bəˈdɛl/; 11 September 1923 – 19 March 1982) was a distinguished English stage actor who also appeared frequently in the cinema, radio and television and was noted for his richly textured voice which was once described as "the sound of tears".
  Badel was born in Rusholme, Manchester, Lancashire and was educated at Burnage High School and fought with the French Resistance during the Second World War.
  He played leading parts, including Romeo and Hamlet, with the Old Vic and Stratford companies.
  Badel's most notable early screen role was as John the Baptist in the Rita Hayworth version of Salome (1953), a version in which the story was altered to make Salome a Christian convert who dances for Herod in order to save John rather than have him condemned to death.
  Badel portrayed Richard Wagner in Magic Fire (1955), a biopic about the composer, and Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg in the Paramount film Nijinsky (1980).
  He also played the role of Karl Denny, the impresario, in the 1963 film Bitter Harvest based on the novel 20,000 Streets Under the Sky by the author and playwright Patrick Hamilton. In the film he engages a young Welsh girl called Jennie Jones who, under his control, becomes a high class prostitute who commits suicide. The film starred Janet Munro in the lead part of Jennie Jones.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Badel
• Alan Clark
  Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (13 April 1928 – 5 September 1999) was a British Conservative MP and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Trade, and Defence, and became a privy counsellor in 1991. He was the author of several books of military history, including his controversial work The Donkeys (1961), which is considered to have inspired the musical satire, Oh, What a Lovely War!.
  Clark became known for his flamboyance, wit, and irreverence. Norman Lamont called him "the most politically incorrect, outspoken, iconoclastic and reckless politician of our times". He is particularly remembered for his three-volume diary, a candid account of political life under Thatcher, and a moving description of the weeks preceding his death, when he continued to write until he could no longer focus on the page.
  Clark was a passionate supporter of animal rights, joining activists in demonstrations at Dover against live export, and outside the House of Commons in support of Animal Liberation Front hunger-striker Barry Horne. When he died after radiation therapy for a brain tumour, his family said Clark wanted it to be stated that he had "gone to join Tom and the other dogs."
  
  wn.com/Alan_Clark
• 
  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
• 
  Arthur Lowe
  Arthur Lowe (22 September 1915 – 15 April 1982) was an English actor. He was best known for playing Captain George Mainwaring in the popular British sitcom Dad's Army from 1968 until 1977.
  Arthur Lowe was born in Hayfield, Derbyshire, the only child of Arthur (1888–1971) and his wife Mary Annie (Nan) née Ford (1885–1981). His father worked for a railway company, in charge of moving theatrical touring companies around Northern England and the Midlands in special trains. Young Arthur went to Chapel Street Junior School in Chapel Street, Levenshulme, Manchester. Lowe’s original intention was to join the Merchant Navy but this idea was thwarted because of his poor eyesight. Working at an aircraft factory he joined the British Army on the eve of the Second World War, but not before experiencing his first brush with the acting world by working as a stagehand at the Manchester Palace of Varieties. Lowe served in the Middle East with the Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry, and began to take part in shows put on for the troops, which appears to have sparked his desire to act. He left the Army, in which he served as a radar technician, at the end of the war with the rank of Sergeant Major.
  
  wn.com/Arthur_Lowe
• 
  Ben Kingsley
  Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji;Gujarati:કૃષ્ણા પંડિત ભાનજી; 31 December 1943) is an English actor who has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is also known for his performances in the films Schindler's List (1993), Sexy Beast (2000), House of Sand and Fog (2003), and Hugo (2011).
  Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji in Snainton, North Yorkshire, England, the son of Anna Lyna Mary (née Goodman), an actress and model, and Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a medical doctor.
  Kingsley's father, born in Kenya, is of Gujarati Indian descent; Kingsley's paternal grandfather was a spice trader who had moved from India to Zanzibar, where Kingsley's father lived until moving to England at the age of 14. Kingsley's mother, born out of wedlock, was "loath to speak of her background". Kingsley's maternal grandfather was believed by the family to have been a Russian or German Jew, while Kingsley's maternal grandmother was English and worked in the garment district of East London.
  
  wn.com/Ben_Kingsley
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  Bob Champion
  Robert "Bob" Champion MBE is an English former jump jockey who won the 1981 Grand National on Aldaniti. His triumph was made into a film Champions, with John Hurt portraying Champion. The film is based on Champion's book Champions Story, which he wrote with close friend and racing journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Powell.
  Other major races that Champion won during his career include the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup and the Whitbread Trial Chase. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1982 Queen's Birthday Honours. In 1983 he formed the Bob Champion Cancer Trust, which has raised millions of pounds for cancer research. He retired from training horses in 1999.
  Champion was born in Guisborough, in the north of England, on 4 June 1948.
  On 22 December 2011, Bob Champion was awarded with the Helen Rollason award on the 2011 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
  Champion was diagnosed with testicular cancer in July 1979. He was treated with an orchidectomy and with the chemotherapeutic drugs bleomycin, vinblastine and cisplatin, and also had an exploratory operation to identify cancer in his lymph nodes. His victory on Aldaniti was viewed by many as a great triumph, following his previous adversity. Their victory earned them that year's BBC Sports Personality of the Year Team Award and was chosen as one of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments by Channel 4 viewers in 2002.
  
  wn.com/Bob_Champion
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  Bob Hoskins
  Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. (born 26 October 1942) is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday (1980), and Mona Lisa (1986). He has since played lighter roles in family films, such as Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Smee in both Hook (1991) and Neverland (2011).
  Hoskins was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England, the son of Elsie Lillian (née Hopkins), a cook and nursery-school teacher, and Robert William Hoskins, Sr., a bookkeeper and lorry driver. One of Hoskins's grandmothers was a Romani of the British Romanis. From the age of two weeks old he was raised in Finsbury Park, in north London. His father, a Communist, brought up Hoskins as an atheist, and he now describes himself as an agnostic. In 1967, aged 25, Hoskins spent a short period of time in kibbutz Zikim in Israel. In a recent interview, when asked what he owed his parents, he said, "Confidence. My mum used to say to me, 'If somebody doesn't like you, fuck 'em, they've got bad taste.'"
  
  wn.com/Bob_Hoskins
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  Brad Dourif
  Bradford Claude "Brad" Dourif (pronounced /ˈdɔrɨf/; born March 18, 1950) is an American film and television actor who gained early fame for his portrayal of Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and has since appeared in a number of memorable roles, including the voice of Chucky in the Child's Play franchise, Deputy Clinton Pell in Mississippi Burning, Younger Brother in Ragtime, the mentat Piter De Vries in David Lynch's Dune, Gríma Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings, the homicidal Betazoid Lon Suder in the TV series Star Trek: Voyager, serial killer Charles Dexter/Brother Edward in the TV series Babylon 5, and Doc Cochran in the HBO television series Deadwood. Dourif has also worked with renowned film director Werner Herzog on many occasions, appearing in Scream of Stone, The Wild Blue Yonder, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
  Dourif was born in Huntington, West Virginia, the son of Joan Felton (née Bradford), an actress, and Jean Henri Dourif, an art collector who owned and operated a dye factory. His paternal grandparents immigrated from France, and his paternal grandfather co-founded the Standard Ultramarine and Color Company in Huntington. After Dourif's father died in 1953, his mother remarried champion golfer William C. Campbell, who helped raise Dourif and his five siblings (four sisters and one brother). From 1963 to 1965, Dourif attended the private Aiken Preparatory School in Aiken, South Carolina. There he pursued his interests in art and acting. Although he briefly considered becoming an artist, he was eventually inspired to become an actor by his mother's participation as an actress in a community theater. After Aiken Prep, he attended another private school, Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, graduating in 1969. He attended Marshall University for a time, before quitting college and moving to New York City to study acting, on the advice of actress Conchata Ferrell.
  
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  Burt Lancaster
  Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile (which he called "The Grin"). After initially building his career on "tough guy" roles Lancaster abandoned his "all-American" image in the late 1950s in favor of more complex and challenging roles, and came to be regarded as one of the best actors of his generation as a result.
  Lancaster was nominated four times for Academy Awards and won once — for his work in Elmer Gantry in 1960. He also won a Golden Globe for that performance and BAFTA Awards for The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Atlantic City (1980). His production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, was the most successful and innovative star-driven independent production company in Hollywood of the 1950s, making movies such as Marty (1955), Trapeze (1956), and Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
  In 1999, the American Film Institute named Lancaster 19th among the greatest male stars of all time.
  
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  Caligula
  Caligula (Latin: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus; 31 August AD 12 – 24 January AD 41), also known as Gaius, was Roman Emperor from 37 AD to 41 AD. Caligula was a member of the house of rulers conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Caligula's father Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius, was a very successful general and one of Rome's most beloved public figures. The young Gaius earned the nickname Caligula (meaning "little soldier's boot", the diminutive form of caliga, n. hob-nailed military boot) from his father's soldiers while accompanying him during his campaigns in Germania.
  When Germanicus died at Antioch in 19 AD, his wife Agrippina the Elder returned to Rome with her six children where she became entangled in an increasingly bitter feud with Tiberius. This conflict eventually led to the destruction of her family, with Caligula as the sole male survivor. Unscathed by the deadly intrigues, Caligula accepted the invitation to join the emperor on the island of Capri in 31, where Tiberius himself had withdrawn five years earlier. At the death of Tiberius in 37, Caligula succeeded his great-uncle and adoptive grandfather.
  
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  Christopher Walken
  Christopher Walken (/ˈwɔːkən/; born March 31, 1943) is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New York, True Romance, Catch Me If You Can, Pulp Fiction, Wedding Crashers, The Rundown, Click, and Hairspray, as well as music videos by recording artists such as Madonna, Journey, Run DMC, The Left Rights and Fatboy Slim.
  Walken's films have grossed more than $1.8 billion in the United States. He has also played the main role in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Coriolanus. He is also a popular guest-host of Saturday Night Live, having hosted 7 times as of April 2008. His most notable roles on the show include record producer Bruce Dickinson (no relation to the singer with the same name) in the "More Cowbell" sketch and his multiple appearances as The Continental.
  
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• Colin Welland
  Colin Welland (born 4 July 1934) is a British actor and screenwriter. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his script for Chariots of Fire (1981),,,.
  Born in Leigh in Lancashire, Welland grew up as a child in Kensington, Liverpool before moving to Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire. His parents were Jack and Nora Williams.
  As an actor, Welland appeared as PC David Graham in the BBC Television series Z-Cars as well as a villain in the 1970's drama The Sweeney. In films, he appeared in Kes (1969), before also concentrating on screenwriting. He also appeared in the film Dancin' Thru the Dark in 1990. He also appeared in the 1980 series 'Cowboys' with Roy Kinnear, a comedy about a dodgy builder.
  Welland's writing credits include the 1979 film Yanks, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Richard Gere, and directed by John Schlesinger. The same year he appeared as an actor in Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills, playing the character of Willie.
  Welland won the award for Best Original Screenplay for Chariots of Fire at the 1982 Academy Awards, and his acceptance speech famously included the phrase: "The British are coming!" (a quotation from Paul Revere). In the film Chariots of Fire, the sign outside the Church of Scotland in Paris shows the preacher for the 9 am worship to be "CM Welland"; he also played a vicar in Straw Dogs (1971). Welland worked with producer David Puttnam twice. They first worked together on the Academy Award winning Chariots of Fire, and again on War of the Buttons.
  
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  Cynthia Nixon
  Cynthia Ellen Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is an American actress, best known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004). She has received two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, a Grammy Award, and a GLAAD Media Award.
  Nixon was born in New York, New York, the daughter of Anne Knoll, an actress from Chicago, and Walter E. Nixon, a Texas-born radio journalist. She graduated from Hunter College High School, and attended Barnard College. During her college years she also studied abroad with Semester at Sea in the spring of 1986.
  From 1988 to 2003, Nixon was in a relationship with photographer Danny Mozes. They have two children together, a daughter born in 1996 and a son born in 2002. Since 2004, Nixon has been in a relationship with education activist Christine Marinoni. Nixon and Marinoni became engaged in April 2009. Marinoni gave birth to a son in 2011. Nixon and Marinoni were married on May 27, 2012. Regarding her sexual orientation, Nixon remarked in 2007: "I don't really feel I've changed. I'd been with men all my life, and I'd never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn't seem so strange. I'm just a woman in love with another woman." She identified herself as bisexual in 2012.
  
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  Daniel Auteuil
  Daniel Auteuil (French pronunciation: [danjɛl otøj]; born 24 January 1950) is a French film, television and theatre actor.
  He was born in Algiers, French Algeria.
  His starring role in the historical drama film Jean de Florette (1986) and its sequel Manon des Sources (1986) brought him international recognition. Auteuil has since become one of the best-known, best-paid and most popular actors in France. Through his appearances in films including the swashbuckler Le bossu (1997), the comedy The Closet (2001), the romantic comedy After You... (2003), the thriller Caché (2005) and the comedy My Best Friend (2006), he has since gained greater international recognition.
  Auteuil has two daughters; Aurore Auteuil with his former partner, Anne Jousset, and Nelly from a ten-year relationship with actress Emmanuelle Béart, his co-star in the films A Heart in Winter and Manon des Sources (1986). He married Aude Ambroggi, a Corsican sculptor, on 22 July 2006 in Porto-Vecchio, Corsica.
  
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• Denholm Elliott
  Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE (31 May 1922 – 6 October 1992) was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits. In the 1980s, he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in three consecutive years.
  He was born in London, England, the son of Nina (née Mitchell) and Myles Laymen Farr Elliott. He attended Malvern College and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
  In World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force, training as a sergeant radio operator and gunner and serving with No. 76 Squadron RAF under the command of Leonard Cheshire. On the night of 23/24 September 1942, his Handley Page Halifax bomber took part in an air raid on the U-boat pens at Flensburg, Germany. The aircraft was hit by flak and subsequently ditched in the North Sea near Sylt, Germany. Elliot and two other crew members survived and he spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp in Silesia, during which time he became involved in amateur dramatics.
  
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  Derek Jacobi
  Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE ( /ˈdʒækəbi/; born 22 October 1938) is an English actor and film director.
  A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet,Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in Much Ado About Nothing. His stage work also included playing Edward II,Octavius Caesar,Richard III, and Cyrano de Bergerac.
  In addition to being a founder member of the Royal National Theatre and winning several prestigious theatre awards, Jacobi has also enjoyed a successful television career, starring in the critically praised adaptation of Roberts Graves' I, Claudius, for which he won a BAFTA; the titular role in the acclaimed medieval drama series Brother Cadfael, and Stanley Baldwin in The Gathering Storm. Though principally a stage actor, Jacobi has appeared in a number of films, such as Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Gladiator (2000), Gosford Park (2001), The Golden Compass (2007), The King's Speech (2010), My Week with Marilyn (2011), and the forthcoming Hippie Hippie Shake. Like Laurence Olivier, he holds two knighthoods, Danish and British.
  
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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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  Eddy Mitchell
  Claude Moine better known by his stage name Eddy Mitchell (born 3 July 1942, Paris) is a French singer and actor. He began his career in the late 1950s, with the group Les Chaussettes Noires (The Black Socks), taking his name from the American expatriate tough-guy actor Eddie Constantine (later the star of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville). The band performed at the Parisian nightclub Le Golf Drouot before signing to Barclay Records and finding almost instant success; in 1961 it sold two million records.
  Heavily influenced by American rock & roll, Mitchell (who went solo in 1963) has often recorded outside France, at first in London, but later in Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee. Guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, Jimmy Page and drummer Bobby Graham were among the British session musicians who regularly supported him in London. For his American recordings he employed session men such as Roger Hawkins, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson, Kenneth Buttrey, Reggie Young, David Briggs^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Charlie McCoy and others.
  
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  Edward Woodward
  Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE (1 June 1930 – 16 November 2009) was an English stage and screen actor and singer. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), Woodward began his career on stage, and throughout his career he appeared in productions in both the West End in London and on Broadway in New York. He came to wider attention from 1967 in the title role of the British television spy drama Callan, earning him the 1970 British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. Among his film credits, Woodward starred as Police Sergeant Howie in the 1973 cult British horror film The Wicker Man, and in the title role of the 1980 Australian biopic Breaker Morant. From 1985 Woodward starred as British ex-secret agent and vigilante Robert McCall in the American television series The Equalizer, earning him the 1986 Golden Globe Award for Best Television Drama Actor.
  Woodward was an only child, born in Croydon, Surrey to working class parents Edward Oliver Woodward, a metalworker, and Violet Edith Woodward (née Smith). As a boy he was bombed out of his home three times during the Blitz. He attended Eccleston Road, Sydenham Road and Elmwood High School in Wallington, as well as Kingston Day Commercial School, all in Surrey. He then attended Kingston College.
  
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• Eric Porter
  Eric Richard Porter (8 April 1928 – 15 May 1995) was an English actor of stage, film and television.
  Porter was born in Shepherd's Bush, London, to Richard John Porter and Phoebe Elizabeth Spall. He was educated at Wimbledon Technical College before making his stage debut in Cambridge in 1945 at the age of 17.
  In 1955, he played the title role in Ben Jonson's Volpone at the Bristol Old Vic. In 1960 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company; that year, he played Ferdinand in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. In 1962, his performed as Iachimo in Cymbeline. Other roles included Ulysses, Macbeth, Leontes, Malvolio, Shylock, King Lear and Henry IV, as well as Barabas in Marlowe's Jew of Malta.
  Porter's was seen as the tortured solicitor Soames Forsyte in the BBC drama The Forsyte Saga (1967). For this role he won a BAFTA Best Actor award.
  He played The Jewel in the Crown; he was also seen as Fagin in the 1985 BBC version of Oliver Twist and as Professor Moriarty opposite Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes in Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes stories The Red-Headed League and The Final Problem (both 1985). He also played Polonius in a 1980 television production of Hamlet, made as part of the BBC Shakespeare series, and starring Derek Jacobi in the title role.
  
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  Frank Finlay
  Francis Finlay, CBE (born 6 August 1926) is an English stage, film and television actor.
  Finlay was born in Farnworth, Lancashire, the son of Margaret and Josiah Finlay, a butcher. A devout Catholic, he belongs to the British Catholic Stage Guild. He was educated at St. Gregory the Great School but left at the age of fourteen and then trained as a butcher himself, gaining a City and Guilds Diploma in the trade. He met his future wife, Doreen Shepherd, when they were both members of the Farnworth Little Theatre. They had three children, Stephen, Cathy and Daniel and they lived in Shepperton, Middlesex and were married until her death in 2005.
  Finlay began his stage career in rep before graduating from RADA. There followed several appearances at the Royal Court Theatre, notably in the Arnold Wesker trilogy. He is particularly associated with the National Theatre, especially during the Olivier years and the Chichester Festival Theatre, where he played a wide variety of roles ranging from the First Gravedigger in Hamlet to Josef Frank in Weapons of Happiness. He also had parts in The Party, Plunder, Saint Joan, Hobson's Choice, "Amadeus", Much Ado About Nothing (as Dogberry), The Dutch Courtesan, The Crucible, Mother Courage, and Juno and the Paycock.
  
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  Fred Astaire
  Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.
  Gene Kelly, another major innovator in filmed dance, said that "the history of dance on film begins with Astaire". Beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers, Rudolf Nureyev, Sammy Davis, Jr., Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins among them, also acknowledged his importance and influence.
  Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus) and Frederic "Fritz" Austerlitz (born September 8, 1868, as Friedrich Emanuel Austerlitz). Astaire's mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace, while Astaire's father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism.
  
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  Geoffrey Rush
  Geoffrey Roy Rush (born 6 July 1951) is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting (from four nominations), three British Academy Film Awards (from five nominations), two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He is the foundation President of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts. He is the 2012 Australian of the Year.
  Rush was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, to Merle (née Kiehne), a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. His parents divorced when he was five and his mother subsequently took him to live with her parents in suburban Brisbane. Before he began his acting career, Rush attended Everton Park State High School. He also has an arts degree from the University of Queensland. While at university, he was talent-spotted by Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) in Brisbane. Rush began his career with QTC in 1971, appearing in 17 productions.
  
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  George Chakiris
  George Chakiris (born September 16, 1934) is a Greek-American dancer, singer and actor.
  Chakiris was born in Norwood, Ohio, to Steven and Zoe (née Anastasiadou) Chakiris, immigrants from Greece. Chakiris studied at the American School of Dance.
  Chakiris made his film debut in 1947, in the chorus of Song of Love. For several years he appeared in small roles, usually as a dancer or a member of the chorus in various musical films. He was one of the dancers in Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and appeared as a dancer alongside Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney in White Christmas (in the "Mandy" and "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me" numbers). He can also be seen in the "Chop Suey" number in the musical film Flower Drum Song and the funeral dance in the MGM musical film Brigadoon.
  His biggest success came with the film West Side Story (1961), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Bernardo, leader of the "Sharks". Prior to the film, he'd appeared as "Riff," leader of the "Jets," in the West End (London) production of the same musical. He starred as a doctor in the film Diamond Head (1963) opposite Charlton Heston and Yvette Mimieux, and appeared alongside Gene Kelly in Jacques Demy's French musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967).
  
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  Gig Young
  Gig Young (November 4, 1913 – October 19, 1978) was an American film, stage, and television actor. Known mainly for second leads and supporting roles, Young won an Academy Award for his performance as a dance-marathon emcee in the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.
  Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota, his parents John and Emma Barr raised him and his older siblings in Washington D.C. He developed a passion for the theatre while appearing in high school plays, and after some amateur experience he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in Pancho, a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he and the leading actor in the play, George Reeves, were spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout. Both actors were signed to supporting player contracts with the studio. His early work was uncredited or as Byron Barr (not to be confused with another actor with the same name, Byron Barr), but after appearing in the 1942 film The Gay Sisters as a character named "Gig Young", the studio decided he should adopt this name professionally.
  
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  Harry Dean Stanton
  Harry Dean Stanton (born July 14, 1926) is an American actor, musician, and singer. Stanton's career has spanned over fifty years, which has seen him star in such films as Paris, Texas, Kelly's Heroes, Dillinger, Alien, Repo Man, Pretty In Pink, The Last Temptation of Christ, Wild at Heart, The Green Mile and The Pledge. In the late 2000s, he played a recurring role in the HBO television series Big Love. In 2012, he had a brief cameo in the superhero blockbuster The Avengers.
  Stanton was born in West Irvine, Kentucky, the son of Ersel (née Moberly), a hair dresser, and Sheridan Harry Stanton, a tobacco farmer and barber. His parents divorced when Stanton was in high school and later remarried.^{[citation needed]} He has two younger brothers, Archie and Ralph, and a younger half-brother, Stan.^{[citation needed]} Stanton attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, where he studied journalism and radio arts.^{[citation needed]} He also studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, where his classmates included his friends Tyler MacDuff and Dana Andrews.^{[citation needed]}
  
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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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  Ian Holm
  Sir Ian Holm, CBE (born 12 September 1931) is an English actor known for his stage work and many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear. He was nominated for the 1981 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as athletics trainer Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire. Other well-known film roles include the android Ash in Alien, Father Vito Cornelius in The Fifth Element, and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the first and third films of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
  
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  Jack Nicholson
  Not to be confused with Nicholas Jackson
  John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. His twelve Oscar nominations make him the second most nominated actor of all time, behind only Meryl Streep, and tied with Katharine Hepburn.
  Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets. He also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. He is tied with Walter Brennan for most acting wins by a male actor (three). Nicholson is well known for playing villainous roles such as Jack Torrance in The Shining, Frank Costello in The Departed, and the Joker in 1989's Batman, among many other roles.
  Nicholson is one of only two actors who have been nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s; the other is Michael Caine. He has won seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In 1994, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. Notable films in which he has starred include Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Passenger, The Shining, Reds, Terms of Endearment, Batman, A Few Good Men, As Good as It Gets, About Schmidt, The Departed and Anger Management .
  
  wn.com/Jack_Nicholson
• 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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  Joel Grey
  Joel Grey (born April 11, 1932) is an American stage and screen actor, singer, and dancer, known for his role as the Master of Ceremonies in both the stage and film adaptation of the Kander & Ebb musical Cabaret. He has won the Academy Award, Tony Award and Golden Globe Award. He also originated the role of the Wizard in the musical Wicked. Grey is featured in the Broadway revival of Anything Goes as Moonface Martin, which opened on April 7, 2011.
  Grey was born as Joel David Katz in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Goldie "Grace" (née Epstein) and Mickey Katz, an actor, comedian and musician. Grey started his career as a child actor in the Cleveland Play House. He attended Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles.
  Grey originated the role of the Master of Ceremonies in the Broadway musical Cabaret in 1966 for which he won the Tony Award. Additional Broadway credits include Come Blow Your Horn (1961), Stop the World - I Want to Get Off (1962), Half a Sixpence (1965), George M! (1968), Goodtime Charley (1975), The Grand Tour (1979), Chicago (1996), Wicked (2003), and Anything Goes (2011). In November 1995, he performed as the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True a staged concert of the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT) in November 1995, and released on CD and video in 1996.
  
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  John Cleese
  John Marwood Cleese (/ˈkliːz/; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s he became a member of Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, The Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
  In the mid 1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as R/Q, two Harry Potter films and three Shrek films.
  With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films.
  
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  John Gielgud
  Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH (/ˈɡiːlɡʊd/; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937. He was known for his beautiful speaking of verse and particularly for his warm and expressive voice, which his colleague Sir Alec Guinness likened to "a silver trumpet muffled in silk". Gielgud is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
  John Gielgud was born in South Kensington in London to Kate Terry and Frank Gielgud. He was of theatrical lineage on his mother's side, being the grandson of actress Kate Terry, whose actor-siblings included Ellen Terry, Marion Terry and Fred Terry.
  Gielgud's Catholic father, Franciszek Giełgud, born in 1880, was a descendant of a Polish noble family residing at a manor in a town called Giełgudyszki (now Gelgaudiškis in Marijampolė County, Lithuania). In his autobiography, Gielgud states repeatedly and clearly that his father was Polish Catholic, and mentions Gelgaudiškis as being his ancestral home whence his family and their surname originated.
  
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  John Houseman
  John Houseman (born Jacques Haussmann; September 22, 1902 – October 31, 1988) was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane. He is perhaps best known for his role as Professor Charles Kingsfield in the 1973 film The Paper Chase, for which he won a best supporting actor Oscar. He reprised his role as Kingsfield in the subsequent TV series adaptation of The Paper Chase. Houseman was also known for his commercials for the brokerage firm Smith Barney. He had a distinctive Mid-Atlantic English accent, in common with many actors of his generation.
  Houseman was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1902, the son of May (née Davies) and Georges Haussmann, who ran a grain business. His mother was British, from a Christian family of Welsh and Irish descent. His father was an Alsatian-born Jew. He was educated in England at Clifton College, became a British citizen and worked in the grain trade in London before emigrating to the United States in 1925, where he took the stage name of John Houseman. He became a U.S. citizen in 1943. Houseman died of spinal cancer in 1988 at his home in Malibu, California, at age 86.
  
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  John Hurt
  John Vincent Hurt, CBE (born 22 January 1940) is an English actor and former voice actor. Among other honours, he has received two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe Award, and four BAFTA Awards, with the fourth being a Lifetime Achievement recognition.
  Hurt is known for his leading roles as Joseph Merrick (billed as John Merrick) in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, and Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York. Recognizable for his distinctive rich voice, he has also enjoyed a successful voice acting career, starring in films such as Watership Down, The Lord of the Rings and Dogville, as well as BBC television series Merlin.
  Hurt initially came to prominence for his role as Richard Rich in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, and has since appeared in such popular motion pictures as: Alien, Midnight Express, Rob Roy, V for Vendetta, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the first, penultimate, and last Harry Potter films, the Hellboy film series, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Hurt is one of England's best-known, most prolific and sought-after actors, and has had a versatile film career spanning six decades. He is also known for his many Shakespearean roles. His character's final scene in Alien is consistently named as one of the most memorable in cinematic history.
  
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  John Huston
  John Marcellus Huston (August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplay for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Misfits (1961), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). During his 46-year career, Huston received 15 Oscar nominations, winning twice, and directed both his father, Walter Huston, and daughter, Anjelica Huston, to Oscar wins in different films.
  Huston was known to direct with the vision of an artist, having studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris in his early years. He continued to explore the visual aspects of his films throughout his career: sketching each scene on paper beforehand, then carefully framing his characters during the shooting. In addition, while most directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot, making his films both more economical and more cerebral, with little editing needed.
  
  wn.com/John_Huston
• John Le Mesurier
  John Le Mesurier (born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley, 5 April 1912 – 15 November 1983) was a BAFTA Award-winning English actor. He is best remembered for his role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the BBC situation comedy Dad's Army (1968-77).
  Le Mesurier was born at No. 35 Chaucer Road, Bedford, Bedfordshire in 1912, the son of a solicitor, Charles Elton Halliley and Amy Michelle Le Mesurier, whose family was from Alderney in the Channel Islands. He was brought up in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk and educated at Sherborne School in Dorset before he began to study acting at the age of 20, using his mother's maiden name (common in the Channel Islands) Le Mesurier (pronounced 'Le Measurer') as his stage name.
  Le Mesurier was at Drama School with Alec Guinness, and later worked with him in a production of Hamlet, directed by John Gielgud, in which the young Le Mesurier understudied Anthony Quayle as Guildenstern.
  He was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment on 28 June 1941. He served in the United Kingdom and British India during the Second World War, reaching the rank of captain.
  
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  John Mills
  Sir John Mills CBE (22 February 1908 – 23 April 2005), born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.
  Mills was born at the Watts Naval School in North Elmham, Norfolk, England, and grew up in Belton, where his father was the headmaster of the village school and in Felixstowe, Suffolk, where he lived in a modest house in Ham's Road. He was educated at Norwich High School for Boys, where it is said that his initials can still be seen carved into the brickwork on the side of the building in Upper St. Giles Street. He made his acting debut on the stage of the Sir John Leman School in Beccles in a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream when he played the part of Puck.^{[citation needed]} Upon leaving school he worked as a clerk at a corn merchants in Ipswich.
  Mills took an early interest in acting, making his professional debut at the London Hippodrome in The Five O'Clock Girl in 1929. He also starred in the Noël Coward revue Words and Music. He made his film debut in The Midshipmaid (1932), and appeared as Colley in the 1939 film version of Goodbye, Mr Chips, opposite Robert Donat.
  
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  Joseph Merrick
  Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 – 11 April 1890), sometimes incorrectly referred to as John Merrick, was an English man with severe deformities who was exhibited as a human curiosity named the Elephant Man. He became well known in London society after he went to live at the London Hospital. Merrick was born in Leicester and began to develop abnormally during the first few years of his life. His skin appeared thick and lumpy, he developed an enlargement of his lips, and a bony lump grew on his forehead. One of his arms and both feet became enlarged and at some point during his childhood he fell and damaged his hip, resulting in permanent lameness. When he was 11, his mother died and his father soon remarried. Merrick left school at 12, and had difficulty finding employment. Rejected by his father and stepmother, he left home. In late 1879, aged 17, Merrick entered the Leicester Union workhouse.
  In 1884, after four years in the workhouse, Merrick contacted a showman named Sam Torr and proposed that Torr should exhibit him. Torr agreed, and arranged for a group of men to manage Merrick, whom they named the Elephant Man. After touring the East Midlands, Merrick travelled to London to be exhibited in a penny gaff shop on Whitechapel Road which was rented by showman Tom Norman. Norman's shop, directly across the street from the London Hospital, was visited by a surgeon named Frederick Treves, who invited Merrick to be examined and photographed. Soon after Merrick's visits to the hospital, Tom Norman's shop was closed by the police and Merrick's managers sent him to tour in Europe.
  
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  Keith Michell
  Keith Michell (born 1 December 1928) is an Australian actor, particularly noted for his television and film performances as King Henry VIII of England.
  He was born in Adelaide and brought up in Warnertown, near Port Pirie. The theatre in Port Pirie is named after him.
  Michell taught art until he made his theatre debut in Adelaide in 1947 and he first appeared in London in 1951. He has starred in several musicals, including the first London production of Man of La Mancha, in which he played the dual role of Miguel de Cervantes and his fictional creation, Don Quixote. (An album set was also made of this performance.) In 1964 he starred as Robert Browning in the musical Robert And Elizabeth, opposite Australian soprano June Bronhill.
  Michell has acted with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company, as well as appearing extensively in film and television, notably as King Henry VIII in The Six Wives of Henry VIII in 1970, and as Heathcliff in BBC Television's 1962 adaptation of Wuthering Heights. He was the artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre from 1974 to 1977.
  
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  Kevin Spacey
  Kevin Spacey, CBE (born Kevin Spacey Fowler; July 26, 1959) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s, culminating in his first Academy Award for The Usual Suspects (Best Supporting Actor), followed by a Best Actor Academy Award win for American Beauty (1999). His other starring roles in Hollywood include Seven, L.A. Confidential, Pay It Forward, K-PAX, and Superman Returns in a career which has earned him several Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Since 2003, he has been artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London.
  Spacey was born in South Orange, New Jersey, the son of Kathleen Ann (née Knutson; December 5, 1931 – March 19, 2003), a secretary, and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler (June 4, 1924 – December 24, 1992), a technical writer and data consultant. He has two older siblings: a sister, Julie, and a brother, Randy. He attended Northridge Military Academy, Canoga Park High School (in tenth and eleventh grades), and then Chatsworth High School in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, where he graduated valedictorian of his class. At Chatsworth High, he starred in the school's senior production of The Sound of Music, playing the part of Captain Georg von Trapp, opposite Mare Winningham's character, Maria.
  
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  Laurence Olivier
  Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM ( /ˈlɒrəns ɵˈlɪvi.eɪ/; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer. One of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, he was the youngest actor to be knighted and the first to be elevated to the peerage. He married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Actor Spencer Tracy said that Olivier was 'the greatest actor in the English-speaking world'.
  Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is regarded by some to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries. Olivier's AMPAS acknowledgments are considerable: twelve Oscar nominations, with two awards (for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet), plus two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.
  
  wn.com/Laurence_Olivier
• Lee Montague
  Lee Montague (born 16 October 1927 in London) is an English actor noted for his roles on film and television, usually playing tough guys.
  Film credits include: Moulin Rouge, The Camp on Blood Island, The Savage Innocents, Billy Budd, The Secret of Blood Island, Deadlier Than the Male, The Legacy and Brother Sun, Sister Moon.
  Television credits include: Danger Man, The Baron, The Troubleshooters, Department S, Dixon of Dock Green, The Sweeney, Holocaust, Space: 1999, Minder, The Chinese Detective, Bergerac, Bird of Prey, Dempsey & Makepeace, Casualty and Waking the Dead. In the sitcom Seconds Out he had a regular part as the manager of a boxer played by Robert Lindsay.
  He also holds the distinction of being the first storyteller on the BBC children's programme Jackanory in 1965.
  
  
  
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  Maurice Maeterlinck
  Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte (Count) Maeterlinck from 1932, (French pronunciation: [mo.ʁis ma.tɛʁ.lɛ̃ːk] in Belgium, mɛ.teʁ.lɛ̃ːk in France; 29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.
  Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium, to a wealthy, French-speaking family. His father, Polydore, was a notary who enjoyed tending the greenhouses on their property. His mother, Mathilde, came from a wealthy family.
  In September 1874 he was sent to the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe, where works of the French Romantics were scorned and only plays on religious subjects were permitted. His experiences at this school influenced his distaste for the Catholic Church and organized religion.
  He had written poems and short novels during his studies, but his father wanted him to go into law. After finishing his law studies at the University of Ghent in 1885, he spent a few months in Paris, France. He met some members of the new Symbolism movement, Villiers de l'Isle Adam in particular, who would have a great influence on Maeterlinck's subsequent work.
  
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  Melvyn Douglas
  Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg (April 5, 1901 – August 4, 1981), better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.
  Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man (perhaps best typified by his performance in the 1939 romantic comedy Ninotchka), Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud (1963) and Being There (1979).
  Douglas was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Lena Priscilla (née Shackelford) and Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a concert pianist and composer. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Riga, Latvia, then part of Russia. His mother, a native of Tennessee, was Protestant and a Mayflower descendant. His maternal grandfather, George Shackelford, was a General and Civil War veteran.
  Douglas, in his autobiography, See You at the Movies (1987), writes that he was unaware of his Jewish background until later in his youth: "I did not learn about the non-Christian part of my heritage until my early teens," as his parents preferred to hide his Jewish heritage. It was his aunts, on his father's side, who told him "the truth" when he was 14. He writes that he "admired them unstintingly and modeled" himself on them; they in turn treated him like a son.
  
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  Mercutio
  Mercutio is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's 1597 tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. He is a close friend of Romeo and Benvolio, and also a blood relative to Prince Escalus and Count Paris. As such, being neither a Montague nor a Capulet, Mercutio is one of the few in Verona with the ability to freely float around both houses. The invitation to Capulet's party states that he has a brother named Valentine.
  Though often fun-loving and witty, the latter of which shows through in his Queen Mab speech in the first act, Mercutio's sense of humour can at times be facetious or even coarse, much to his friends' annoyance. Moreover, he is very moody and can be given to sudden outbursts of temper, one of which sets a key plot development in motion.
  One of Romeo's closest friends, Benvolio entreats him to forget about his unrequited love for a girl named Rosaline and come with him to a masked ball at Lord Capulet's estate. There, Mercutio and his friends become the life of the party, but Romeo steals away to Juliet, Capulet's daughter, with whom he has fallen in love, and fell out of love with Rosaline. When Mercutio sees Romeo the next day, he is glad to see that his friend is his old self again, and encourages Romeo to meet again with Juliet, all the while making bawdy jokes at her Nurse's expense.
  
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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 Palin
  Michael Edward Palin, CBE, PRGS (born 5 May 1943) is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries. Palin wrote most of his comedic material with Terry Jones. Before Monty Python, they had worked on other shows such as the Ken Dodd Show, The Frost Report and Do Not Adjust Your Set. Palin appeared in some of the most famous Python sketches, including "Argument Clinic," "Dead Parrot," "The Lumberjack Song," "The Spanish Inquisition," and "The Fish-Slapping Dance."
  Palin continued to work with Jones after Python, co-writing Ripping Yarns. He has also appeared in several films directed by fellow Python Terry Gilliam and made notable appearances in other films such as A Fish Called Wanda, for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedians' Comedian, he was voted the 30th favourite by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
  
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  Neil Jordan
  Neil Patrick Jordan (born 25 February 1950) is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay) for The Crying Game. He also won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival for The Butcher Boy.
  Jordan was born in County Sligo, the son of Angela (née O'Brien), a painter, and Michael Jordan, a professor. He was educated at St. Paul's College, Raheny. Of his religious background, Jordan said in a 1999 Salon interview: "I was brought up a Catholic and was quite religious at one stage in my life, when I was young. But it left me with no scars whatever; it just sort of vanished." He said about his current beliefs that "God is the greatest imaginary being of all time. Along with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, the invention of God is probably the greatest creation of human thought." Later, Jordan attended University College Dublin, where he studied Irish history and English literature.
  When John Boorman was filming Excalibur in Ireland, he recruited Jordan as a script consultant, which led to his doing second unit work. His first feature Angel, a tale of a musician caught up in the Troubles, starred Stephen Rea who has subsequently appeared in almost all of Jordan's films to date.
  
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  Nigel Hawthorne
  Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne, CBE (5 April 1929 – 26 December 2001) was an English actor, perhaps best remembered for his role as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary in the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister and the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. For this role he won four BAFTA Awards during the 1980s in the 'Best Light Entertainment Performance' Category. In the 1990s he won two more BAFTAs, one as Best TV Actor for The Fragile Heart, and one as Best Film Actor for The Madness of King George. His role in the latter also garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
  Hawthorne was born in Coventry, England, the son of Agnes Rosemary (née Rice) and Charles Barnard Hawthorne, a physician. He grew up in South Africa, where he was educated at St George's Grammar School, Cape Town and Christian Brothers College. He enrolled at the University of Cape Town but withdrew and returned to the United Kingdom in the 1950s to pursue a career in acting.
  Hawthorne made his professional stage debut in 1950, playing Archie Fellows in a Cape Town production of The Shop at Sly Corner.
  
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  Omar Sharif
  Omar Sharif (Arabic: عمر الشريف‎, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [ˈʕomɑɾˤ eʃʃɪˈɾiːf]; born Michel Demitri Shalhoub, [ˈmɑjkel dɪˈmitɾi ʃælˈhuːb]; April 10, 1932) is an Egyptian actor who has starred in Hollywood films including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Funny Girl. He has been nominated for an Academy Award and has won two Golden Globe Awards.
  Omar Sharif was born Michel Dimitri Shalhoub in Alexandria into a Catholic Lebanese family. Sharif graduated from Victoria College, where he was classmates with Edward W. Said. Sharif later graduated from Cairo University with degrees in both mathematics and physics.
  In 1953, Sharif began his acting career with a role in Sira` Fi al-Wadi. He quickly rose to stardom, appearing in over 20 Egyptian productions including Ayyamna el helwa with singer Abdel Halim Hafez, La anam in 1958, Sayedat el kasr in 1959 and the Anna Karenina adaptation Nahr el hub in 1961. He also starred with his wife, Egyptian actress Faten Hamama, in several movies as romantic leads.
  
  wn.com/Omar_Sharif
• Oskar Werner
  Oskar Werner (13 November 1922 – 23 October 1984) was an Austrian actor. He is best known for his film performances in Jules and Jim (1962), Ship of Fools (1965), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), and The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968). Werner received an Academy Award nomination in 1966, two BAFTA award nominations in 1966 and 1967, and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1966.
  Born Oskar Josef Bschließmayer on 13 November 1922 in Vienna, Werner spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandmother, who entertained him with stories about the Burgtheater, the Austrian state theatre, where he was accepted at the age of eighteen by Lothar Müthel. He was the youngest person ever to receive this recognition. He made his theatre debut using the stage name Oskar Werner in October 1941.
  In December 1941, Werner was drafted into the Wehrmacht. As a pacifist and staunch opponent of Nazism, he was determined to avoid advancement in the military.
  He was assigned to peeling potatoes and cleaning latrines instead of being sent to the Eastern Front. In 1944, he secretly married actress Elisabeth Kallina, who was half-Jewish.^{[citation needed]} They immediately had a daughter, Eleanore. That December, he deserted the Wehrmacht and fled with his wife and daughter to the Wienerwald, where they remained in hiding until the end of the war. He would later remember, "The artillery fire was constant for two and a half days. The shells hit all around our little hut and it was shaking like a leaf ... We knew that to go out there would be suicide, but it was better than to have to wait for execution."
  
  wn.com/Oskar_Werner
• Patrick McGoohan
  Patrick Joseph McGoohan (March 19, 1928 – January 13, 2009) was an American-born actor, brought up in Ireland and England, where he established an extensive stage and film career, with his most notable roles in the 1960s television series Danger Man (renamed Secret Agent when exported to the US), and The Prisoner, which he co-created. McGoohan wrote and directed several episodes of The Prisoner himself, occasionally using the pseudonyms Joseph Serf and Paddy Fitz. Later in his career he moved to America and subsequently appeared as the killer in four Columbo episodes, twice winning an Emmy. He was featured in David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981), and played King Edward I aka Longshanks in Mel Gibson's Braveheart (1995).
  McGoohan was born in Astoria, Queens, New York City, to Thomas McGoohan and Rose Fitzpatrick, who were living in the United States after emigrating from Ireland to look for work. He was brought up Roman Catholic. Shortly after he was born, McGoohan's parents moved back to Mullaghmore, County Leitrim, Ireland, and, seven years later, they moved to Sheffield, England. McGoohan attended St Vincent's school in Sheffield, but following the outbreak of World War II he was evacuated to Loughborough, Leicestershire. There he attended Ratcliffe College, where he excelled in mathematics and boxing.
  
  wn.com/Patrick_McGoohan
• Patrick Wymark
  Patrick Wymark (11 July 1926 – 20 October 1970), was a British, stage, film and television actor.
  Born Patrick Carl Cheeseman in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, England. He was brought up in neighbouring Grimsby and frequently re-visited the area during the height of his career.
  He attended University College, London, before training at the Old Vic Theatre School and making his first stage appearance in a walk-on part in Othello in 1951. He toured South Africa the following year and then directed plays for the drama department at Stanford University, California.
  Moving to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Wymark played a wide range of traditional roles, including Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing and Stephano in The Tempest. He also played the parts of Marullus in Julius Caesar and Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other stage parts included the title role in Danton's Death and, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Ephihodov in The Cherry Orchard. His theatre roles also included playing the part of Bosola in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi in 1960. His film roles included: Children of the Damned (1964), Operation Crossbow (1965), Battle of Britain (1969), Where Eagles Dare (1968), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and Cromwell (1970).
  
  wn.com/Patrick_Wymark
• Peter Barkworth
  Peter Wynn Barkworth (14 January 1929 – 21 October 2006) was an English actor.
  Peter Barkworth was born at Margate, Kent. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Bramhall in Cheshire and Barkworth was educated at Stockport School. His headmaster wanted him to go to university but Barkworth had set his heart on a career in acting. In 1946 he won a scholarship to RADA. He spent the next few years in repertory in Folkestone, with the Arthur Brough company, and also in Sheffield. From the mid 1950s to the early 1960s he taught acting technique at RADA.
  Television and film appearances followed over four decades. He is perhaps best remembered for playing Mark Telford in the TV series Telford's Change (1979), watched every week by seven million viewers. This series followed the life of a senior banking executive as he downsized to Dover to start his life over again, leaving his wife in London. Barkworth co-starred with Hannah Gordon, with Keith Barron as her seducer.
  
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  Peter Firth
  Peter Firth (born 27 October 1953) is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Sir Harry Pearce in the BBC show Spooks, of which he is the only actor to have starred in every episode of the show's 10 series lifespan. He is also known for playing a variety of starring roles in film and on television from the 1970s to the 2000s.
  Firth was a leading child actor by mid-1970, starring in The Flaxton Boys as Archie Weekes and the Here Come the Double Deckers series, which featured child actors in the leading roles. Firth played Scooper, the leader of the gang.
  In July 1973, he appeared at Laurence Olivier's National Theatre, starring in the stage version of Peter Shaffer's play Equus, playing a teenager being treated by a psychiatrist, and in October 1974 repeated the role in the Broadway production, receiving a Tony Award nomination for his performance as Alan Strang.
  His first major role as an adult was in the title role in a 1976 BBC Television Play of the Month adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The adaptation was based on a stage adaptation by John Osborne and also starred Jeremy Brett and John Gielgud. That same year saw the release of the World War I film Aces High which featured Firth as the inexperienced RFC pilot Lt. Stephen Croft.
  
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  Philippe Noiret
  Philippe Noiret (born 1 October 1930, Lille, France – died 23 November 2006, Paris, France) was a French film actor.
  Noiret's father was in the clothes trade. Philippe was an indifferent scholar and attended several prestigious Paris schools, including the Lycée Janson de Sailly. He failed several times to pass his baccalauréat exams, so he decided to study theater. He trained at the Centre Dramatique de l'Ouest and toured with the Théâtre National Populaire for seven years, where he met Monique Chaumette, whom he married in 1962. During that time he developed a career as a nightclub comedian in a duo act with Jean-Pierre Darras, in which he played Louis XIV in an extravagant wig opposite Darras as the dramatist Jean Racine. In these roles they satirized the politics of Charles de Gaulle, Michel Debré and André Malraux.
  Noiret's screen debut (1949) was an uncredited role in Gigi. In 1955 he appeared in La Pointe Courte directed by Agnès Varda. She said later - "I discovered in him a breadth of talent rare in a young actor." Sporting a pudding-basin haircut, Noiret played a lovelorn youth in the southern fishing port of Sète. He later admitted : "I was scared stiff, and fumbled my way through the part - I am totally absent in the film." He was not cast again until 1960 in Zazie dans le métro. After playing second leads in Georges Franju's Thérèse Desqueyroux in 1962, and in Le Capitaine Fracasse, from Théophile Gautier's romantic adventure, he became a regular on the French screen, without being cast in major roles until La Vie de château directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau in 1966. He became a star in France with Yves Robert's Alexandre le Bienheureux in 1967. After that he devoted himself entirely to movie roles.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Quentin Crisp
  Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt, (1908-12-25)25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999(1999-11-21)), was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.
  Denis Charles Pratt was born in Sutton, Surrey, the fourth child of solicitor Spencer Charles Pratt (1871–1931) and former governess Frances Marion Pratt (née Phillips) (1873–1960); he changed his name to Quentin Crisp in his third decade after leaving home and cultivating his outlandishly effeminate appearance to a standard that both shocked contemporary Londoners and provoked homophobic attacks.
  By his own account, Crisp was effeminate in behaviour from an early age and found himself the object of teasing at Kingswood House School in Epsom, from where he won a scholarship to Denstone College, Uttoxeter, in 1922. After leaving school in 1926, Crisp studied journalism at King's College London, but failed to graduate in 1928, going on to take art classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic.
  
  wn.com/Quentin_Crisp
• Ray McAnally
  Ray McAnally (30 March 1926 – 15 June 1989) was an Irish actor famous for his performances in films such as The Mission, My Left Foot, and A Very British Coup.
  Ray McAnally was born in Buncrana, a seaside town located on the Inishowen Peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland. The son of a bank manager, he was educated at St. Eunan's College in Letterkenny where he wrote, produced and staged a musical called 'Madame Screwball' at the age of 16. He entered a seminary at the age of 18. However, he left the seminary after a short time having decided that the priesthood was not his vocation. He joined the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he met and married actress Ronnie Masterson. He was bilingual in English and Irish, and performed on stage in both languages.
  The couple would later form Old Quay Productions and present an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s and 1970s. He made his theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gave a well-received performance as George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre.
  
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  Richard Attenborough
  Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough ( /ˈætənbərə/), CBE (born 29 August 1923) is an English actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. He is the current President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
  As a film director and producer, he won two Academy Awards for Gandhi in 1982. He has also won four BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. As an actor he is perhaps best known for his roles in Brighton Rock, The Great Escape, 10 Rillington Place, Miracle on 34th Street and Jurassic Park.
  He is the elder brother of naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough.
  Attenborough was born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, the eldest of three sons of Mary Attenborough (née Clegg) a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and wrote a standard text on Anglo-Saxon law. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and at RADA. During the Second World War Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force.
  
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  Richard Benjamin
  Richard Benjamin (born May 22, 1938) is an American actor and film director. He has starred in a number of productions, including Goodbye, Columbus (1969), based on the novella by Philip Roth, and Westworld (1973), and directed, among other films, the 1982 film My Favorite Year.
  Benjamin was born in New York City, New York, the son of a garment industry worker. He attended the High School of Performing Arts and graduated from Northwestern University, where he was involved in many plays and studied in the Northwestern theater school.
  He married actress Paula Prentiss on October 26, 1961; and they have two children. They appeared together in the short-lived television series He & She (1967–68) and the film Catch-22 (1970). In 1978, he starred in the ambitious, but short-lived, television series Quark.
  Benjamin starred in Goodbye, Columbus (1969), based on the novella by Philip Roth. After appearing with a star-studded cast in the Mike Nichols film (1970) version of another best-seller, Catch-22, he starred in Diary of a Mad Housewife, The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker, and yet another film based on a famous Roth novel, Portnoy's Complaint (1972), in the title role.
  
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  Richard Burton
  Richard Burton, CBE (10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role (without ever winning), and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. He remains closely associated in the public consciousness with his second wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor; the couple's turbulent relationship was rarely out of the news.
  Richard Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in the village of Pontrhydyfen, Neath Port Talbot, Wales. He grew up in a working class, Welsh-speaking household, the twelfth of thirteen children. His father, Richard Walter Jenkins, was a short, robust coal miner, a "twelve-pints-a-day man" who sometimes went off on drinking and gambling sprees for weeks. Burton later claimed, by family telling, that "He looked very much like me...That is, he was pockmarked, devious, and smiled a great deal when he was in trouble. He was, also, a man of extraordinary eloquence, tremendous passion, great violence."
  
  wn.com/Richard_Burton
• Richard Kwietniowski
  Richard Kwietniowski (born 17 March 1957) is an English film director and screenwriter of Polish descent. During the 1980s he was a film lecturer at Bulmershe College of Higher Education (now Bulmershe Court in Reading, Berkshire. He has directed eleven films since 1987. His film Love and Death on Long Island was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
  
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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 Carlyle
  Robert Carlyle, OBE (born 14 April 1961) is a Scottish actor. He is known for a variety of roles in films such as Trainspotting, The Full Monty, The World Is Not Enough, Angela's Ashes, The 51st State, and 28 Weeks Later. In addition to his film work, he is also known for his roles in the television shows Hamish Macbeth and Once Upon A Time.
  Carlyle was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, the son of Elizabeth, a bus company employee, and Joseph Carlyle, a painter and decorator. He was brought up by his father after his mother left when Carlyle was four years old. He left school at the age of 16 without any qualifications and worked for his father as a painter and decorator; however, he continued his education by attending night classes at Cardonald College in Glasgow.
  Carlyle became involved in drama at the Glasgow Arts Centre at the age of 21 (having been inspired by reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible), and subsequently graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In 1991, he and four friends founded a theatre company, Raindog (which is now primarily involved in television and film work), and guest starred in The Bill. The same year he starred in his first movie, Riff-Raff, directed by Ken Loach.
  
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  Robert Duvall
  Robert Selden Duvall (born January 5, 1931) is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the course of his career.
  A veteran character actor, Duvall has starred in some of the most acclaimed and popular films and TV shows of all time, among them The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, To Kill a Mockingbird, THX 1138, Joe Kidd, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, MASH, Network, True Grit, Bullitt, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Tender Mercies, The Natural and Lonesome Dove.
  He began appearing in theater during the late 1950s, moving into television and film roles during the early 1960s in such works as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) (as Boo Radley) and Captain Newman, M.D. (1963). He started to land much larger roles during the early 1970s with films like the blockbuster comedy MASH (1970) (as Major Frank Burns) and the lead in George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971). This was followed by a series of critically lauded performances in films which were also commercial successes: The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), Network (1976), The Great Santini (1979), Apocalypse Now (1979), and True Confessions (1981).
  
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  Roberto Benigni
  Roberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [roˈbɛrto beˈniɲi]; born 27 October 1952) is an Academy Award winning Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film, theatre and television.
  Benigni was born in Manciano La Misericordia (a frazione of Castiglion Fiorentino), Italy, the son of Isolina Papini, a fabric inspector, and Remigio Benigni, a bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer. He was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy. His first experiences as a theatre actor took place in 1971, in Prato. During that autumn he moved to Rome where he took part in some experimental theatre shows, some of which he also directed. In 1975, Benigni had his first theatrical success with Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia, written by Giuseppe Bertolucci.
  Benigni became famous in Italy in the 1970s for a shocking TV series called Onda Libera, on RAI2, by Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted the satirical piece "anthem of the nimble body" (L'inno del corpo sciolto, a hymn to defecation).^{[citation needed]} A great scandal for the time, the series was suspended due to censorship. His first film was 1977's Berlinguer ti voglio bene, also by Bertolucci.
  
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• Ronald Shusett
  Ronald Shusett is a motion picture screenwriter and producer, usually in the science fiction genre.
  He wrote the original story for Alien (1979) with Dan O'Bannon.
  In 1974, he was the first to option the short story, "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", that became the basis of the film Total Recall.
  Shusett is sometimes credited as Thilo T. Newman.
  
  
  
  
  
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• Roy Dotrice
  Roy Dotrice, OBE (born 26 May 1923) is a British actor known for his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance in the revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten.
  Dotrice was born in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, the son of Neva (née Wilton) and Louis Dotrice. He served with the Royal Air Force from 1940 to 1945 during World War II, and was imprisoned in a German POW camp from 1942 to 1945.
  He was married to Kay Newman from 1947 until her death in 2007, and they had three children together: Michele, Yvette and Karen, all of whom acted at various points in their careers. He was also the father-in-law of the late Edward Woodward, a contemporary of his and husband of his daughter Michele.
  Dotrice notably played the part of John Aubrey in Brief Lives, a one-man tour de force where he was on stage for more than two and a half hours, including the interval when he pretended to sleep. The play premiered in 1967 at the Hampstead Theatre in London. It subsequently had two Broadway engagements and transferred in 1968 to the West End’s Criterion Theatre where it played 400 performances before moving to the Mayfair Theatre. Those runs combined with extensive international touring earned Dotrice a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the greatest number of solo performances (1,782). In 1984 he starred opposite Rosemary Harris in an acclaimed all-star cast production of Noël Coward's Hay Fever.
  
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  Rupert Davies
  Rupert Davies (22 May 1916 – 22 November 1976) was a British actor best remembered for playing the title role in the BBC's 1960s television adaptation of Maigret, based on Georges Simenon's Maigret novels.
  Davies was born in Liverpool. After service in the British Merchant Navy he was a Sub-Lieutenant Observer with the Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War. In 1940 the Swordfish aircraft in which he was flying ditched in the sea off the Dutch Coast. Davies was captured and interned in the famous Stalag Luft III POW camp. He made three attempts to escape but all failed. During his captivity he began to take part in theatre performances, entertaining his fellow prisoners.
  On his release Davies resumed his career in acting almost immediately, starring in an ex-prisoner of war show, Back Home, which was hosted at the Stoll Theatre, London. He became a staple of British television appearing in numerous plays and series, including Quatermass II, Ivanhoe, Emergency - Ward 10, Danger Man, The Champions, Doctor at Large (1971), Arthur of the Britons and War and Peace (1972). He also provided the voice of Professor Ian McClaine in the Gerry Anderson series Joe 90. In 1964, having released a 45rpm single "Smoking My Pipe" late the previous year that capitalised upon the iconic Maigret opening sequence, he became the first person to win the Pipe Smoker of the Year award.
  
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• Sam Peckinpah
  David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah (February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch (1969). He was known for the innovative and explicit depiction of action and violence, as well as his revisionist approach to the Western genre.
  Peckinpah's films generally deal with the conflict between values and ideals, and the corruption of violence in human society. He was given the nickname "Bloody Sam" owing to the violence in his films. His characters are often loners or losers who desire to be honorable, but are forced to compromise in order to survive in a world of nihilism and brutality.
  Peckinpah's combative personality, marked by years of alcohol and drug abuse, affected his professional legacy. Many of his films were noted for behind-the-scenes battles with producers and crew members, damaging his reputation and career during his lifetime. Many of his films, such as Straw Dogs (1971), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), remain controversial.
  
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  Sean Connery
  Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930) is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award).
  Connery is best known for portraying the character James Bond, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983 (six Eon Productions films and the non-canonical Thunderball remake, Never Say Never Again). In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His film career also includes such films as Marnie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Murder on the Orient Express, Dragonheart, and The Rock. He was knighted in July 2000. Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine and in 1999, at age 69, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century".
  
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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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• Stephen Ward
  Stephen Thomas Ward (19 October 1912 – 3 August 1963) was an osteopath and artist who became notorious as one of the central figures in the 1963 Profumo affair, a British public scandal which profoundly affected the ruling Conservative Party government. Ward introduced the married British cabinet minister and MP John Profumo to a showgirl named Christine Keeler at a house party hosted at Lord Astor's country home, Cliveden, in the summer of 1961. Profumo's subsequent sexual relationship with Keeler and his false statement to the House of Commons regarding its nature led to Profumo's resignation.
  Following the Profumo scandal, Ward was charged with living off the profits of prostitution ("immoral earnings"). Ward committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping tablets on the last day of the trial.
  Ward was the son of Arthur Evelyn Ward, Canon of Rochester Cathedral. He was educated at Highgate School in London. In 1920 the family moved to Torquay when Ward's father became Vicar of St. Matthias.
  
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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.
  
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  Swoosie Kurtz
  Swoosie Kurtz ( /ˌswuːsi ˈkɜrts/, SWOO-si) (born September 6, 1944) is an American actress. She began her career in theater during the 1970s and shortly thereafter began a career in television, garnering ten nominations and winning one Emmy Award. Her most famous television project was her role on the 1990s NBC drama Sisters. She has also appeared somewhat sporadically in films from the late 1970s up until today, including prominent roles in such films as Dangerous Liaisons, Citizen Ruth, and Liar Liar among others. Throughout her career she has remained active in theater, earning five Tony Award nominations and winning two over the last three decades. Kurtz currently portrays Joyce Flynn on the hit CBS sitcom Mike & Molly.
  Kurtz was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the only child of author Margo (née Rogers) and Air Force Colonel Frank Kurtz, Jr., a much-decorated WWII American bomber pilot. She got her unique first name "Swoosie" (which rhymes with Lucy, rather than woozy) from her father. It is derived from the sole surviving example, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, of the B-17D Flying Fortress airplane, named "The Swoose" or simply "Swoose"—half swan, half goose—which her father piloted during World War II. As a military brat, Kurtz moved frequently. Kurtz attended the University of Southern California where she majored in drama. She then attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
  
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  Terence Stamp
  Terence Henry Stamp (born 22 July 1938) is an English actor. Since starting his career in 1962 he has appeared in over 60 films. His title role as Billy Budd in his film debut earned Stamp an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer.
  His other major roles include butterfly collector Freddie Clegg in The Collector, arch-villain General Zod in Superman and Superman II, trans woman Bernadette in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, tough guy Wilson in The Limey, Supreme Chancellor Valorum in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, ghost antagonist Ramsley in The Haunted Mansion, Elektra's master Stick in Elektra, Pekwarsky in Wanted, Maxwell Smart's arch-villain Siegfried in Get Smart, council of high help Terrence Bundley in Yes Man and General Ludwig Beck in Valkyrie.
  Stamp has won a Golden Globe, a Cannes Film Festival Award, a Seattle International Film Festival Award, a Satellite Award and a Silver Bear.
  Stamp, the eldest of five children, was born in Stepney, London in 1938, the son of Ethel Esther (née Perrott) and Thomas Stamp, who was a tugboat captain. His early years were spent in Canal Road, Bow, in the East End of London, but later in his childhood the family moved to Plaistow, West Ham, London. His brother, Chris, is a rock 'n roll impresario credited with helping to bring the Who to prominence during the 1960s. As his father was away for long periods with his job in the Merchant Navy, the young Stamp was mostly brought up by his mother, grandmother and aunts. He grew up idolising the film actor Gary Cooper after his mother had taken him to see Beau Geste at the age of three. He was also inspired by the 1950s avant-garde Method actor James Dean.
  
  wn.com/Terence_Stamp
• Terry Rawlings
  Terry Rawlings (born 1933 in London, England) is a British film editor and sound editor with several BAFTA nominations and one Academy Award nomination. His credits as a sound editor date from 1962 – 1977, after which he is credited primarily as a film editor.
  A founding member of the Guild of British Film and Television Editors, Rawlings has also been elected to membership in the American Cinema Editors, and received the organization's 2006 Career Achievement Award. He was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Chariots of Fire and for BAFTAs for both Alien and Blade Runner .
  
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  Tim Roth
  Simon Timothy "Tim" Roth (born 14 May 1961) is an English film actor and director. He is best known for his roles in the films Made in Britain, Legend of 1900, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, Skellig, Planet of the Apes, The Incredible Hulk and Rob Roy, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the latter. He most recently starred as Cal Lightman in the TV series Lie to Me.
  Roth was born in London, England, the son of Ann, a painter and teacher, and Ernie, a Fleet Street journalist, painter and, until the 1970s, a member of the British Communist Party. Roth's father was born under the surname "Smith" in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, to a British immigrant family of Irish descent; he changed his surname to "Roth" in the 1940s, "partly through solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust, partly because the British were far from welcome in some of the countries to which his job took him".
  Roth attended the Strand School in Tulse Hill. As a young man, he wanted to be a sculptor and studied at London's Camberwell College of Art.
  
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• Timothy Evans
  Timothy John Evans (20 November 1924 – 9 March 1950) was a Welshman accused of murdering his wife and daughter at their residence in Notting Hill, London in November 1949. In January 1950 Evans was tried and convicted of the murder of his daughter, and he was sentenced to death by hanging. During his trial, Evans had accused his neighbour, John Christie, of being responsible for the murders. Three years after Evans's trial, Christie was found to be a serial killer who had murdered a number of women at his property, including his wife, and this cast serious doubt on the safety of Evans's conviction. An official inquiry conducted 16 years after Evans's hanging confirmed that Evans's daughter had been murdered by Christie, and Evans was subsequently granted a posthumous pardon. Christie admitted that he had also murdered Beryl Evans.
  The case generated much controversy and is acknowledged as a major miscarriage of justice. It played a large part in the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom.
  
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  Timothy Hutton
  Timothy Tarquin Hutton (born August 16, 1960) is an American actor and director.
  He is the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which he won at the age of 20 for his performance as Conrad Jarrett in Ordinary People (1980). Hutton has since appeared regularly in feature films and on television, with featured roles in Taps, The Falcon and the Snowman, and The Dark Half, among others.
  Since 2008 he has starred as Nathan "Nate" Ford on the TNT drama series Leverage.
  Timothy Hutton was born in Malibu, California. His father was actor Jim Hutton; his mother, Maryline Adams (née Poole), was a teacher. His parents' marriage dissolved when Hutton was three years old, and his mother took him and his older sister with her to Boston. The family returned to California when Hutton was 12.
  "A lot of people think that because my father was an actor, I come from this big show-business background," Hutton told Bruce Cook of American Film magazine in 1981. "But that's not how I grew up at all. My mother took us to Cambridge because she wanted to get her M.A. She wound up teaching in Connecticut, but the way she saw it, after a while, if we all stayed there, my sister and I would just wind up as the proprietors of the local drugstore or something, so that was why she took us to Berkeley – to get us into the world, I guess. Now she's given up teaching and she's into printing miniature books."
  
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  Tom Skerritt
  Thomas Roy "Tom" Skerritt (born August 25, 1933) is an American actor who has appeared in over 40 films and more than 200 television episodes since 1962. He is best known for his roles in MASH, Alien, Top Gun, A River Runs Through It, and the TV series Picket Fences.
  Skerritt was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Helen, a homemaker, and Roy Skerritt, a businessman. A 1951 graduate of Detroit's Mackenzie High School, Skerritt attended Wayne State University and the University of California at Los Angeles.
  Skerritt made his film debut in War Hunt, produced by Terry Sanders and released in 1962. Skerritt's notable film appearances include MASH (1970), Harold and Maude (credited as "M. Borman", 1971), Big Bad Mama, Cheech & Chong's Up In Smoke (1978), Ice Castles (1978), as Captain A. J. Dallas in Alien (1979), as a would-be astronaut in Contact (1997) and SpaceCamp (1986), and in Top Gun (1986) as Commander Mike "Viper" Metcalf. In 1988, he starred with Nancy Allen and Lara Flynn Boyle in Poltergeist III.
  
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  Veronica Cartwright
  Veronica A. Cartwright (born 20 April 1949) is an English-born American actress who has worked mainly in American film and television. As a child actress she appeared in supporting roles in The Children's Hour and The Birds. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the science fiction films Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien, for which she won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.
  Cartwright was born in Bristol and grew up in Toronto and Los Angeles. Her career as a child actress began in 1958, with a role in In Love and War. Among her early appearances was a semi-regular part in the television series Leave It to Beaver (as Beaver's classmate Violet Rutherford) and an episode of The Twilight Zone "I Sing the Body Electric" (1962). She guest starred twice in 1963 in NBC's medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour, in the episodes "The Silence of Good Men" and "My Name is Judith, I'm Lost, You See". Cartwright appeared in the films, The Children's Hour (1961) and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) which were both highly successful. She was cast as daughter Jemima Boone in the first two seasons of NBC's Daniel Boone from 1964 until 1966, with co-stars Fess Parker, Patricia Blair, Darby Hinton and Ed Ames.
  
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  Warren Christopher
  Warren Minor Christopher (October 27, 1925 – March 18, 2011) was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician. During Bill Clinton's first term as President, Christopher served as the 63rd Secretary of State. He also served as Deputy Attorney General in the Lyndon Johnson Administration, and as Deputy Secretary of State in the Carter Administration. At the time of his death, he was a Senior Partner at O'Melveny & Myers in the firm's Century City, California, office. He also served as a professor in the College Honors Program at the University of California at Los Angeles. At the behest of Al Gore, Christopher oversaw the Vice President's Florida recount effort in the aftermath of the disputed United States Presidential election, 2000.
  Born in Scranton, North Dakota, the son of Ernest Christopher, a bank manager, and his wife Catherine, Christopher graduated from Hollywood High School, and attended the University of Redlands, before transferring to the University of Southern California. He was a member of the college fraternity Kappa Sigma Sigma. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California in February 1945. From July 1943 to September 1946, he served in the United States Naval Reserve, with active duty as an ensign in the Pacific Theater. He attended Stanford Law School from 1946–1949, where he was the founder and President of the Stanford Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif.
  
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  Warren Mitchell
  Warren Mitchell (born Warren Misell; 14 January 1926) is an English actor who rose to initial prominence in the role of bigoted cockney Alf Garnett in the BBC television sitcom Till Death Us Do Part (1965–75), and its sequels Till Death... (ATV, 1981) and In Sickness and in Health (BBC, 1985–92), all of which were written by Johnny Speight. He holds both British and Australian citizenship and has enjoyed considerable success in stage performances in both countries.
  Mitchell was born in Stoke Newington, London. His father was a glass and china merchant. He is of Russian Jewish descent, but describes himself in interviews as an atheist who sometimes believes in God. He was interested in acting from an early age, and attended the Gladys Gordon's Academy of Dramatic Arts in Walthamstow from the age of seven. He did well at school and read physical chemistry at University College, Oxford, for six months. There he met his contemporary Richard Burton, and together they joined the RAF in 1944. He completed his navigator training in Canada just as the war ended.
  
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• Wikipedia Persondata
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  William Hurt
  William McChord Hurt (born March 20, 1950) is an American stage and film actor. He received his acting training at the Juilliard School, and began acting on stage in the 1970s. Hurt made his film debut as a troubled scientist in the science-fiction feature Altered States (1980), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year. He subsequently played a leading role, as a lawyer who succumbs to the temptations of Kathleen Turner, in the well-received neo noir Body Heat (1981).
  In 1985, Hurt garnered substantial critical acclaim and multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor, for portraying an effeminate gay man in Kiss of the Spider Woman. He received another two Academy Award nominations for his lead performances in Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Broadcast News (1987). Hurt remained an active stage actor throughout the 1980s, appearing in Off-Broadway productions, including Henry V, Fifth of July, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hurt received his first Tony Award nomination in 1985 for the Broadway production of Hurlyburly.
  
  wn.com/William_Hurt