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• 
  

• 
  Argentina
  Argentina ⁱ/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.
  Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.
  A recognised middle power, Argentina is Latin America's third-largest economy, with a "very high" rating on the Human development index. Within Latin America, Argentina has the fifth highest nominal GDP per capita and the highest in purchasing power terms. Analysts have argued that the country has a "foundation for future growth due to its market size, levels of foreign direct investment, and percentage of high-tech exports as share of total manufactured goods", and it is classed by investors as middle emerging economy. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.
  
  wn.com/Argentina
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  Boston
  Boston (pronounced /ˈbɒstən/ or locally /ˈbɔstən/ ( listen)) is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper, covering only 48.43 square miles, had a population of 617,594 according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Boston is also the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Greater Boston as a commuting region is home to 7.6 million people, making it the fifth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States.
  In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded the city on the Shawmut Peninsula. During the late 18th century, Boston was the location of several major events during the American Revolution, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Several early battles of the American Revolution, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, occurred within the city and surrounding areas. Through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the peninsula. After American independence was attained Boston became a major shipping port and manufacturing center, and its rich history now helps attract many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone attracting over 20 million every year. The city was the site of several firsts, including America's first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), and the first subway system in the United States (1897).
  
  wn.com/Boston
• 
  Cannes Film Festival
  The Cannes International Film Festival (French: Le Festival International du Film de Cannes or just Festival de Cannes), is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is the world's most prestigious and publicized film festival. The invitation-only festival is held annually (usually in May) at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.
  The 2012 Cannes Film Festival took place from May 16 to May 27, 2012. The President of the Jury was the Italian film director Nanni Moretti.
  The Cannes Film Festival has its origins in the late 1930s when Jean Zay, the French Minister of National Education, on the proposal of Philippe Erlanger and with the support of the British and Americans,^{[clarification needed]} set up an international cinematographic festival. In 1947, the festival was held as the "Festival du film de Cannes", where films from sixteen countries were presented. Moreover, the principle of equality was introduced, so that the jury was to be made up only of one representative per country. Also, this year the festival was held at the made-for-the-occasion Palais des Festivals, although the roof was unfinished and blew off during a storm. The festival was not held in 1948 and 1950 on account of budgetary problems. In 1951, owing to better relations between France and Italy, the Cannes Festival was moved to Spring, while the Mostra remained in Autumn.
  
  wn.com/Cannes_Film_Festival
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  Caracas
  Caracas (Spanish pronunciation: [kaˈɾakas]), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English (Spanish: Caraqueños).
  Caracas is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range (Cordillera de la Costa). Terrain suitable for building lies between 760 and 910 m (2,493.44 and 2,985.56 ft) above sea level. The valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the coast by a steep 2200 m (7400 ft) high mountain range, Cerro Ávila; to the south there are more hills and mountains.
  El Distrito Metropolitano de Caracas (Metropolitan District of Caracas) includes the Distrito Capital (the capital city proper) and four other municipalities in Miranda State: Chacao, Baruta, Sucre, and El Hatillo. The Distrito Capital had a population of 2,097,350 as of 2009, while that of Distrito Metropolitano was estimated at 4,196,514 as of (2008).
  
  wn.com/Caracas
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  Castro Theatre
  The Castro Theatre is a popular San Francisco movie palace which became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, in the Castro district, it was built in 1922 with a Spanish Colonial Baroque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window surmounted by a scrolling pediment framing a niche—to the recently rebuilt basilica of Mission Dolores nearby. Its designer, Timothy L. Pflueger, also designed Oakland's Paramount Theater and other movie theaters in California in that period. The theater has 1407 seats.
  The Castro Theatre originally opened at 479 Castro Street in 1910. It was subsequently remodeled into a retail store (currently occupied by Cliff's Variety, since 1971) in the mid 1920s after the larger Castro Theater was built at 429 Castro Street, its current location, only a few doors up from the original theatre.
  The New Castro Theatre opened on June 22, 1922 for an invitation-only screening, with local luminaries such as Mayor James "Sunny Jim" Rolph in attendance, of the Paramount Pictures release Across the Continent (1922), starring Wallace Reid. The new Castro Theater opened the following day to the general public.
  
  wn.com/Castro_Theatre
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  Cuba
  Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, (ⁱ/ˈkjuːbə/; Spanish: República de Cuba, pronounced: [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈkuβa] ( listen)) is an island country in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. To the north of Cuba lies the United States (140 km or 90 mi away) and the Bahamas, Mexico is to the west, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica are to the south, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are to the southeast.
  In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on and claimed the island now occupied by Cuba, for the Kingdom of Spain. Cuba remained a territory of Spain until the Spanish–American War ended in 1898, and gained formal independence from the U.S. in 1902. A fragile democracy, increasingly dominated by radical politics eventually evolved, solidified by the Cuban Constitution of 1940, but was definitely quashed in 1952 by former president Fulgencio Batista, and an authoritarian regime was set up, intensifying and catalyzing already rampant corruption, political repression and crippling economic regulations.Batista was ousted in January 1959 by the July 26 movement, and a new administration under Fidel Castro established, which had by 1965 evolved into a single-party state under the revived Communist Party of Cuba, which holds power to date.
  
  wn.com/Cuba
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  Falkland Islands
  The Falkland Islands (English pronunciation: /ˈfɒlklənd/ or English pronunciation: /ˈfɔːlklənd/; Spanish: Islas Malvinas) are an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, located more than 250 nautical miles (460 km; 290 mi) east of the coast of mainland South America. The archipelago comprises East Falkland, West Falkland, and 776 lesser islands. Stanley, the capital and only city, is on East Falkland. The islands are a self-governing British Overseas Territory, with the United Kingdom responsible for their defence and foreign affairs.
  Controversy exists over the Falklands' original discovery and subsequent colonisation by Europeans. At various times there have been French, British, Spanish, and Argentine settlements. Britain re-established its rule in 1833, yet the islands continue to be claimed by Argentina. In 1982, following Argentina's invasion of the islands, the two-month-long undeclared Falklands War between both countries resulted in the withdrawal of all Argentine forces. Despite its defeat, Argentina still pursues its claim; however, UK policy supports the islanders' self-determination to remain British citizens.
  
  wn.com/Falkland_Islands
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  Iran
  Coordinates: 32°N 53°E / 32°N 53°E / 32; 53
  Iran (ⁱ/ɪˈrɑːn/ or /aɪˈræn/;Persian: ایران‎ [ʔiˈɾɒn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: جمهوری اسلامی ایران‎ Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān), is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in use natively since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia ( /ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/). Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.
  The 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km² (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 79 million. It is a country of particular geopolitical significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Iran has the second largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest proven petroleum reserves.
  
  wn.com/Iran
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  Karachi
  Karachi ( Karācī (help·info), Urdu: کراچی; Sindhi: ڪراچي) is the largest city, main seaport and financial centre of Pakistan, as well as the capital of the province of Sindh. The city has an estimated population of 13 to 15 million, while the total metropolitan area has a population of over 13 million. Results in April 2012 of Pakistan's latest census initial tabulations show that the district is home to over 21 million people, at a density of nearly 6,000 people per square kilometer (15,500 per square mile). Karachi is the most populous city in the country, one of the world's largest cities in terms of population and also the 10th largest urban agglomeration in the world. It is Pakistan's premier centre of banking, industry, economic activity and trade and is home to Pakistan's largest corporations, including those involved in textiles, shipping, automotive industry, entertainment, the arts, fashion, advertising, publishing, software development and medical research. The city is a major hub of higher education in South Asia and the wider Muslim world.
  
  wn.com/Karachi
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  Lithuania
  Lithuania (ⁱ/ˌlɪθuːˈeɪniə/ or /ˌlɪθjuːˈeɪniə/; Lithuanian: Lietuva), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika) is a country in Northern Europe, the largest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark. It borders Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and a Russian exclave (Kaliningrad Oblast) to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 3.2 million as of 2011, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. The Lithuanians are a Baltic people, and the official language, Lithuanian, is one of only two living languages (together with Latvian) in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.
  For centuries, the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea was inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, who was crowned as King of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the first Lithuanian state, on 6 July 1253. During the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe: present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772 to 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory.
  
  wn.com/Lithuania
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  Louisiana
  Louisiana (ⁱ/luːˌiːziˈænə/ or ⁱ/ˌluːziˈænə/; French: État de Louisiane, [lwizjan] ( listen); Louisiana Creole: Léta de la Lwizyàn) is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Louisiana is the 31st most extensive and the 25th most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties. The largest parish by population is East Baton Rouge Parish, and the largest by land area is Cameron Parish.
  Much of the state was formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp. These contain a rich southern biota; typical examples include birds such as ibis and egrets. There are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated areas, fire is a natural process in the landscape, and has produced extensive areas of longleaf pine forest and wet savannas. These support an exceptionally large number of plant species including many species of orchids and carnivorus plants.
  
  wn.com/Louisiana
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  Mickey Cohen
  Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen (September 4, 1913 – July 29, 1976) was a gangster based in Los Angeles and part of the Jewish Mafia, and also had strong ties to the American Mafia from the 1930s through 1960s.
  Mickey Cohen was born on September 4, 1913, of a Jewish family. His mother Fanny had immigrated to the U.S. from Kiev, Ukraine. At age six, Cohen was selling newspapers on the street; his brothers Louie or Harry would drop him off at his regular corner, Soto and Brooklyn Streets. Soon Cohen and his brothers became involved in crime (Cohen's brother Sam, an Orthodox Jew, was an exception). In 1923, at age nine, Cohen was delivering alcohol to customers from a gin mill operated by his older brother in the drug store. Cohen was arrested that same year for this activity, but avoided prosecution due to his brother's connections.
  
  wn.com/Mickey_Cohen
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  Pakistan
  Pakistan (ⁱ/ˈpækɨstæn/ or ⁱ/pɑːkiˈstɑːn/; Urdu: پاکستان) (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪˈst̪aːn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاکستان), is a sovereign country in South Asia. It sits at the crossroads of the strategically important regions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west and north, Iran to the southwest and China in the far northeast. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and it shares a marine border with Oman.
  The territory of modern Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures, including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and has undergone invasions or settlements by Hindu, Persian, Indo-Greek, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Afghan and Sikh cultures. Thus the area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Indian Mauryan Empire, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and the British Empire. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and India's struggle for independence, Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims from the regions in the east and west of India where there was a Muslim majority. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a new constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. A civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh.
  
  wn.com/Pakistan
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  Russia
  Russia ⁱ/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
  
  wn.com/Russia
• 
  Santa Monica College
  Coordinates: 34°01′00″N 118°28′15″W / 34.0168°N 118.4707°W / 34.0168; -118.4707
  Santa Monica College is a two-year, public, junior college located in Santa Monica, California, United States.
  Santa Monica College was first opened in 1929 as Santa Monica Junior College. Current enrollment is over 30,000 students in more than 90 fields of study. The college also has the largest international student population of any junior college in the US, with approximately 3,000 students from more than 100 countries, Japan and Sweden contributing heavily.
  Santa Monica College is ranked number one among California's junior colleges in transfers to the University of California,University of Southern California, and Loyola Marymount University. Transfer courses are offered in such fields as business administration, journalism, fine arts, health sciences, computer science, engineering, and the liberal arts.
  The Santa Monica College Arts Mentor Program provides certain students in the fine and applied arts with graduate-level training by professionals in their specialized fields. The program was designed for select individuals whose talents exceed the scope of the traditional curriculum at the College.
  
  wn.com/Santa_Monica_College
• 
  September 11 attacks
  The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/11) were a series of four suicide attacks that were committed in the United States on September 11, 2001, coordinated to strike the areas of New York City and Washington, D.C. On that Tuesday morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets. The hijackers intentionally piloted two of those planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City; both towers collapsed within two hours. The hijackers also intentionally crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and intended to pilot the fourth hijacked jet, United Airlines Flight 93, into a target in Washington, D.C.; however, the plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers attempted to take control of the jet from the hijackers. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks including the 227 civilians and 19 hijackers aboard the four planes, none of whom survived.
  
  wn.com/September_11_attacks
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  Soviet Union
  The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
  The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
  The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
  
  wn.com/Soviet_Union
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  Syria
  Syria (/ˈsɪriə/ ( listen) SIRR-ee-ə; Arabic: سورية‎ Sūriyya or سوريا Sūryā; Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܐ; Kurdish: Sûrî), officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية السورية‎ al-Jumhūriyyah al-‘Arabīyah as-Sūriyyah  Arabic pronunciation (help·info)), is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest.
  In English, the name Syria was formerly synonymous with the Levant, known in Arabic as Sham, while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the third millennium BC. In the Islamic era, its capital city, Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
  The population of Syria is 74% Sunni, 12% Alawi, 10% Christian, and 3% Druze. Combined, 87% of the Syrian population is Muslim, while the other 10% is Christian, which includes mainly Arab Christians but also Assyrians and Armenians. Major ethnic minorities in Syria include Kurds (9%), Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmens and Circassians. The majority of the population is Arab (90%).
  
  wn.com/Syria
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  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
  The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
  
  wn.com/United_Kingdom
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  Venezuela
  Venezuela (ⁱ/ˌvɛnɨˈzweɪlə/ VEN-ə-ZWAY-lə), officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela [repuˈβlika βoliβaˈɾjana ðe βeneˈswela]), is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Its northern coastline of roughly 2,800 kilometres (1,700 mi) includes numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea, and in the north east borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela's territory covers around 916,445 square kilometres (353,841 sq mi) with an estimated population of 29,105,632. Venezuela is considered a state with extremely high biodiversity, with habitats ranging from the Andes mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east.
  
  wn.com/Venezuela

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  Abdul Sattar Edhi
  Abdul Sattar Edhi, NI (Urdu: عبد الستار ایدھی, Gujarati: અબ્દુલ સત્તાર ઇદી), or Maulana Edhi, is a Pakistani philanthropist known for international humanitarian work. He is the founder and head of Edhi Foundation, a non-profit social welfare program in Pakistan. Together with his wife, Bilquis Edhi, he received the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. He is also the recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize and the Balzan Prize. In 2006, Institute of Business Administration Pakistan conferred a honoris causa degree of Doctor of Social Service Management for his services. In September 2010, Edhi was also awarded an honorary degree of Doctorate by the University of Bedfordshire.
  Edhi was born in 1928 in Bantva in the Gujarat, British India.
  When he was eleven, his mother became paralyzed and later grew mentally ill and died when he was 19. His personal experiences caused him to develop a system of services for old, mentally ill and challenged people.
  Edhi and his family migrated to Pakistan in 1947. He initially started as a pedlar, later became a commission agent selling cloth in the wholesale market in Karachi. After a few years, he established a free dispensary with the help from his community. He later established a welfare trust, "Edhi Trust".
  
  wn.com/Abdul_Sattar_Edhi
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  Abdullah Shah Ghazi
  Abdullah Shah Ghazi (Arabic: عبد الله شاه غازى‎ ) is considered to be patron saint of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. He is widely revered in Pakistan. His tomb is also a revered Sindhi shrine especially for the Bawarij Sindhi Muslims and the Samma tribe.
  The Mausoleum and Dargah of Abdullah Shah Ghazi (see Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mausoleum) is located in Clifton neighbourhood of Saddar Town in Karachi.
  There are two versions about Abdullah Shah Ghazi.
  The first version states that Abdullah Shah Ghazi was Syed Abu Muhammad Abdullah Al Ishtar from the lineage of the Prophet Muhammad from the linage of Hasan Ibne Ali Ibne Abu Talib. According to historian Suhail Zaheer Lari, he was the son of Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya. He was born in Medina in 720 and arrived in Sindh in 760 as a merchant and brought with him a large number of horses purchased from Kufa, Iraq. He was given a warm welcome as he belonged to a saadat family, the noblest in Islam.
  
  wn.com/Abdullah_Shah_Ghazi
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  Adrien Brody
  Adrien Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor and film producer. He received widespread recognition and acclaim after starring in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002), for which he became the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor at age 29. Brody is also the only American actor to receive the French César Award.
  Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, the son of Sylvia Plachy, a photojournalist, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor and painter. Brody's father is of Polish Jewish descent; Brody's mother – who was raised Catholic – was born in Budapest, Hungary, the daughter of a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat father and a Czech Jewish mother. Brody was raised "without a strong connection to" Judaism or Catholicism. As a child, he performed magic shows at children's birthday parties as "The Amazing Adrien". He attended the I.S. 145 Joseph Pulitzer middle school and New York's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (famous as the inspiration for television's Fame). His parents enrolled him in acting classes to distance him from the dangerous children with whom he associated^{[citation needed]}. He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Brody attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook before transferring to Queens College for a semester.
  
  wn.com/Adrien_Brody
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  Aimee Mann
  Aimee Mann (born September 8, 1960) is an American rock singer-songwriter, guitarist and bassist.
  Aimee Mann grew up in Bon Air, Virginia, graduated from Open High School (Richmond, Virginia) in 1978 and attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out to sing with her first punk rock band, the Young Snakes.^{[citation needed]} The band released the EP Bark Along with the Young Snakes in 1982, and a compilation album was issued in 2004.
  In 1983, she co-founded with Berklee classmate and boyfriend Michael Hausman the new wave band 'Til Tuesday, which achieved success in 1985 with its first album, Voices Carry. The title song is said to be inspired by Hausman and Mann's breakup. The video became an MTV staple, winning the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. Mann was featured on the Rush song "Time Stand Still" (from Hold Your Fire, 1987) which hit #3 on the American rock charts and became a minor UK hit, singing backup vocals and appearing in the music video. Her laughter is also heard at the start of "Force Ten," from the same album. With Mann playing an increasingly important role in songwriting, 'Til Tuesday released two more albums, Welcome Home and Everything's Different Now. Shortly after the release of Welcome Home, Mann told a writer for Nine-O-One Network Magazine that she was much more pleased with it than "Voices Carry", primarily because she felt it made more of a personal statement about her life. On their final tour, musician Jon Brion joined the band, which broke up in 1990 when Mann left to start her solo career.
  
  wn.com/Aimee_Mann
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  Al Pacino
  Alfredo James "Al" Pacino (/pəˈtʃiːnɵ/; born April 25, 1940) is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy and Tony Montana in Scarface, though he has also appeared several times on the other side of the law — as a police officer, a detective and a lawyer. His role as Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman won him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1993 after receiving seven previous Oscar nominations, one of them being in the same year.
  He made his feature film debut in the 1969 film Me, Natalie in a minor supporting role, before playing the leading role in the 1971 drama The Panic in Needle Park. Pacino made his major breakthrough when he was given the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather in 1972, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor were for Dick Tracy and Glengarry Glen Ross. Oscar nominations for Best Actor include The Godfather Part II, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, ...And Justice for All and Scent of a Woman.
  
  wn.com/Al_Pacino
• Albert Finney
  Albert Finney (born 9 May 1936) is an English actor. He achieved prominence in films in the early 1960s, and has maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television.
  A recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards, Finney has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), and Under the Volcano (1984); and was nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Erin Brockovich (2000).
  Finney is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His career began in the theatre; he made his first appearance on the London stage in 1958 in Jane Arden's The Party, directed by Charles Laughton, who starred in the production along with his wife, Elsa Lanchester. Then in 1959 he appeared at Stratford in Coriolanus opposite Laurence Olivier (as Coriolanus), Edith Evans and Vanessa Redgrave.
  His first film appearance was a role in Tony Richardson's The Entertainer (1960), with Laurence Olivier, but he made his breakthrough with his portrayal of a disillusioned factory worker in Karel Reisz's film version of Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. This led to a series of "Angry Young Man" roles in kitchen sink dramas, before he starred in the Academy Award-winning 1963 film Tom Jones. Prior to this, Finney had been chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in David Lean's production of Lawrence of Arabia, but the actor quit after four days of shooting.
  
  wn.com/Albert_Finney
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  Alec Guinness
  Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE (2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage he was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. However, he was probably best known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Yevgraf in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984). In later years, he achieved fame with younger audiences for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’s Star Wars films.
  Guinness was born at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale, London as Alec Guinness de Cuffe. His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff. She was born 8 December 1890 to Edward Cuff and Mary Ann Benfield. On Guinness's birth certificate, the space for the mother's name shows Agnes de Cuffe. The space for the infant's name (where first names only are given) says Alec Guinness. The column for name and surname of father is blank.
  
  wn.com/Alec_Guinness
• Alfredo Landa
  Alfredo Landa Areitio (born March 3, 1933) is a Spanish actor.
  He was born in Pamplona, Navarra, Spain. He finished his pre-university studies in San Sebastián. He then began university studies on Law, where he began to work with university school groups. He left university to work in the theater.
  After working as a dubbing actor for a short time in the 1950s, he debuted with his first considerable role in film in José María Forqué's Atraco a las tres in 1962.
  When Francisco Franco died in 1975, censorship began to disappear. This led to a growth of erotic comedies on Spanish cinema. Landa became the "sexually repressed" role of that trend, especially under directors Mariano Ozores and Pedro Lazaga. He even created his own trend, that some people called landismo.
  Afterwards, Landa changed his image, taking much deeper roles, like his bandit in El Bosque Animado.
  Landa, together with Francisco Rabal, won Best Actor award at 1984 Cannes Film Festival by his memorable performance in Los santos inocentes.
  
  wn.com/Alfredo_Landa
• Andrew Daulton Lee
  Andrew Daulton Lee (1952- ) is an American who was convicted of espionage for his involvement in the spying activities of his childhood friend, Christopher Boyce.
  Lee was the adopted eldest son of Dr. Daulton Lee, a wealthy California physician. His lifelong friendship with Boyce led him into espionage activities after Boyce, a code clerk employed with the large US defense contractor, TRW (headquartered in the Los Angeles community of Redondo Beach), began stealing classified documents detailing how to decrypt secure US government message traffic and detailed specifications of the latest US spy satellites with the intention of delivering them to agents of the Soviet Union. With Boyce's stolen documents, Lee traveled to Mexico City, where he delivered them to Soviet embassy officials. Lee often also would use these trips as an opportunity to engage in drug deals when not working on espionage. A common tactic of Lee's drug smuggling was to learn of airline routes, where he would fly from Mexico to the United States, hiding the drugs inside a compartment of the plane (mainly the airline restroom), purchasing a ticket to whichever destination the same airplane was scheduled, then recapturing the drug stash after disembarking at the new destination.
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Daulton_Lee
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  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
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  Anthony Quinn
  Antonio Rodolfo Quinn-Oaxaca (April 21, 1915 – June 3, 2001), more commonly known as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican and American actor, as well as a painter and writer. He starred in numerous critically acclaimed and commercially successful films, including Zorba the Greek, Lawrence of Arabia, The Guns of Navarone, The Message, Guns for San Sebastian, Lion of the Desert and Federico Fellini's La Strada. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice; for Viva Zapata! in 1952 and Lust for Life in 1956.
  Quinn was born Antonio Reyes in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution. His mother, Manuela "Nellie" Oaxaca, was of Aztec Indian ancestry. His father, Francisco Quinn, was also born in Mexico, to an Irish immigrant father from County Cork and a Mexican mother. Frank Quinn rode with Pancho Villa, then later moved to Los Angeles and became an assistant cameraman at a movie studio. In Quinn's autobiography The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait by Anthony Quinn he denied being the son of an "Irish adventurer" and attributed that tale to Hollywood publicists.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Quinn
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  Ashkenazi Jews
  Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (Hebrew: אַשְׁכֲּנָזִים‎‎, pronounced [ˌaʃkəˈnazim], singular: [ˌaʃkəˈnazi]; also יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכֲּנָז, Y'hudey Ashkenaz, "the Jews of Ashkenaz"), are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north.^{[citation needed]}
  The name Ashkenazi derives from the bibilical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10). In the Rabbinic literature, Ashkenaz's kingdom was first associated with the Scythian region, then later on with the Slavic territories, and from the 11th century onwards with Northern Europe and Germany. The Jews living in the northern regions, associated with Ashkenaz's kingdom, thus came to call themselves the Ashkenazi Jews. Later, Jews from Western and Central Europe also came to be called "Ashkenazi" because the main centers of Jewish learning were located in Germany.
  Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas, including Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and elsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries. With them, they took and diversified Yiddish, a High German language written using the Hebrew alphabet. It had developed in medieval times as the lingua franca among Ashkenazi Jews. The Jewish communities of three cities along the Rhine: Speyer, Worms and Mainz, created the SHUM league (SHUM after the first Hebrew letters of Shpira, Vermayza, and Magentza). The ShUM-cities are considered the cradle of the distinct Ashkenazi culture and liturgy.
  
  wn.com/Ashkenazi_Jews
• Being John Malkovich
  Being John Malkovich is a 1999 American black comedy-fantasy film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and John Malkovich, who plays a fictional version of himself. The film depicts Craig Schwartz (Cusack), a puppeteer who finds a portal that leads into Malkovich's mind.
  It was nominated for the 72nd Academy Awards in three categories: Best Supporting Actress for Catherine Keener, Best Director for Spike Jonze and Best Original Screenplay for Charlie Kaufman.
  Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is an unemployed puppeteer in a forlorn marriage with his pet-obsessed wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz). Gaining a file clerk job through Dr. Lester (Orson Bean) at LesterCorp, in the strange Floor 7½ low-ceiling offices of the Mertin Flemmer Building in New York City, he develops an attraction to his co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener), who does not return his affections. Schwartz discovers a small door behind a filing cabinet which he enters, finding himself in the mind of actor John Malkovich; able to observe and sense whatever Malkovich does for fifteen minutes before he is ejected and dropped into a ditch near the New Jersey Turnpike. Schwartz reveals the portal to Maxine and they decide to let others use it at $200 a turn.
  
  wn.com/Being_John_Malkovich
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  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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  Billy Bob Thornton
  Billy Bob Thornton (born August 4, 1955) is an American actor, screenwriter, director and musician. Thornton gained early recognition as a cast member on the CBS sitcom Hearts Afire and in several early 1990s films including On Deadly Ground and Tombstone. In the mid-1990s, after writing, directing, and starring in the independent film Sling Blade, he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He appeared in several major film roles following Sling Blade 's success, including 1998's Armageddon and A Simple Plan. During the late 1990s, Thornton began a career as a singer-songwriter. He has released three albums and was the singer in a blues rock band.
  Thornton was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the son of Virginia Roberta (née Faulkner), a psychic, and William Raymond "Billy Ray" Thornton (November 1929–August 1974), a high school history teacher and basketball coach who died when Thornton was 18. He has two younger brothers, Jimmy Don (April 1958–October 1988), who died of a heart attack at 30, and John David (born 1969), who resides in California. Jimmy Don Thornton wrote a number of songs, two of which—"Island Avenue" and "Emily"—Thornton has recorded on his solo albums. During his childhood, Thornton lived in both Alpine, Arkansas, and Malvern, Arkansas. He was raised a Methodist, in an extended family in a shack that had neither electricity nor plumbing. Thornton graduated from high school in 1973. A good high school baseball player, he tried out for the Kansas City Royals, but was let go after an injury. After a short period laying asphalt for the Arkansas State Transportation Department, he attended Henderson State University to pursue studies in psychology, but he dropped out after two semesters.
  
  wn.com/Billy_Bob_Thornton
• Bilquis Edhi
  Bilquis Bano Edhi Hilal-e-Imtiaz, (Urdu: بلقیس ایدھی, born August 14, 1947), wife of Abdul Sattar Edhi, is a professional nurse and one of the most active philanthropists in Pakistan. She has been nicknamed, The Mother of Pakistan. She was born in 1947 in Karachi. She heads the Bilquis Edhi Foundation, and with her husband received the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. Her charity runs many services in Pakistan including a hospital and emergency service in Karachi. Together with her husband their charity has saved over 16,000 unwanted babies.
  Edhi was born in Karachi on August 14, 1947. When she was a teenager she was not enjoying school and managed to join a small expanding dispensary as a nurse in 1965. At the time the Edhi home was in the old city area of Karachi known as Mithadar where it had been founded in 1951. The small number of Christian and Hindu nurses who worked there had just reduced in number. The founder, Abdul Sattar Edhi, recruited a number of nurses including Bilquis who, unusually, was from a Muslim background.
  
  wn.com/Bilquis_Edhi
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  Bing Crosby
  Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artistes of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation.
  A multimedia star, from 1934 to 1954 Bing Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings and motion picture grosses. His early career coincided with technical recording innovations; this allowed him to develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influenced many of the popular male singers who followed him, including Perry Como,Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. Yank magazine recognized Crosby as the person who had done the most for American G.I. morale during World War II and, during his peak years, around 1948, polls declared him the "most admired man alive," ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. Also in 1948, the Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music.
  
  wn.com/Bing_Crosby
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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 Pitt
  William Bradley "Brad" Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received four Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one Golden Globe. He has been described as one of the world's most attractive men, a label for which he has received substantial media attention.
  Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the road movie Thelma & Louise (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget productions came with A River Runs Through It (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994), and Legends of the Fall (1994). In 1995, he gave critically acclaimed performances in the crime thriller Seven and the science fiction film 12 Monkeys, the latter earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination. Four years later, Pitt starred in the cult hit Fight Club. He then starred in the major international hit Ocean's Eleven (2001) and its sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). His greatest commercial successes have been Troy (2004) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Pitt received his second and third Academy Award nominations for his leading performances in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011). In addition, Pitt owns a production company, Plan B Entertainment, whose productions include The Departed (2006), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Moneyball, which garnered a Best Picture nomination.
  
  wn.com/Brad_Pitt
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  Bruce Springsteen
  Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.
  Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.
  Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone. His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.
  
  wn.com/Bruce_Springsteen
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  Campbell Scott
  Campbell Scott (born July 19, 1961) is an American actor, director, producer, and voice artist.
  Scott was born in New York City, the son of George C. Scott, an actor, director, and producer, and Colleen Dewhurst, a Canadian-born actress. He graduated from Lawrence University in 1983. His brother is Alexander Scott. He has a son, Malcolm, born in 1998.
  In 1990, Scott played a lead role in the ground-breaking film Longtime Companion, which chronicles the early years of the AIDS/HIV epidemic and its impact upon a group of American friends. In the following year, Scott co-starred in the movie Dying Young (in which his mother also appeared) alongside Julia Roberts. He also appears in the 1992 movie Singles, and in 1996, he teamed up with Stanley Tucci to direct the film Big Night. The film met with critical acclaim and was nominated for the "Grand Jury Prize" at the Sundance Film Festival. For their work, Scott and Tucci won both the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best New Director.
  
  wn.com/Campbell_Scott
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  Charlie Sheen
  Carlos Irwin Estevez (born September 3, 1965), better known by his stage name Charlie Sheen, is an American film and television actor. He is the youngest son of actor Martin Sheen.
  His character roles in films have included Chris Taylor in the 1986 Vietnam War drama Platoon, Jake Kesey in the 1986 film The Wraith, and Bud Fox in the 1987 film Wall Street. His career has also included more comedic films such as Major League, the Hot Shots! films, and Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4. On television, Sheen is known for his roles on two sitcoms: as Charlie Crawford on Spin City and as Charlie Harper on Two and a Half Men. In 2010, Sheen was the highest paid actor on television, earning US$1.8 million per episode of Two and a Half Men.
  Sheen's personal life has also made headlines, including reports about alcohol and drug abuse and marital problems as well as allegations of domestic violence. He was fired from his role on Two and a Half Men by CBS and Warner Bros. on March 7, 2011. Sheen subsequently announced a nationwide tour.
  
  wn.com/Charlie_Sheen
• Chris Penn
  Christopher Shannon "Chris" Penn (October 10, 1965 – January 24, 2006) was an American film and television actor known for his roles in such films as The Wild Life, Reservoir Dogs, Footloose, Rush Hour, True Romance, All the Right Moves and Pale Rider and in the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
  Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the youngest son of Leo Penn, an actor and director, and Eileen Ryan (née Annucci), an actress. His paternal grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Lithuania and Russia, and his mother was a Roman Catholic of Italian and Irish descent. According to Penn's mother, Leo Penn may have had distant Sephardic ancestry, as the family's surname was originally "Piñón". His brothers are actor Sean Penn and musician Michael Penn.
  Penn started acting at the age of 12 at the Loft Studio and made his film debut in 1979’s Charlie and the Talking Buzzard, starring Christopher Hanks. In 1983, he was featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s youth drama Rumble Fish and appeared in the high school football drama All the Right Moves as the best friend of Tom Cruise's character. He also appeared in the hit dance movie Footloose in 1984 as the best friend of Kevin Bacon's character; played a villain in the Clint Eastwood western Pale Rider (1985); and co-starred with his brother Sean Penn and mother Eileen Ryan in At Close Range (1986).
  
  wn.com/Chris_Penn
• Christopher Ciccone
  Christopher G. Ciccone (born November 22, 1960 in Bay City, Michigan) is an American artist, film director, artistic director, dancer, best selling author, and interior and furniture designer. He is the younger brother of Madonna, and began his career working as Madonna's assistant, dresser, backup dancer, stylist, and artistic director. His first public appearance was alongside his sister in her 1982 debut music video "Everybody". After involvement in a promo tour for her debut album, he appeared in her 1984 "Lucky Star" video. He has decorated Madonna's various former residences in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. He has also designed the stage for her 1990 Blond Ambition concert tour, and directed her 1993 Girlie Show concert tour.
  Ciccone released his New York Times Bestselling memoirs Life With My Sister Madonna in 2008, debuting at #2 on the New York Times Best Seller List, and reached #8 on Amazon.com's bestseller list, and #5 on Barnes & Noble's bestseller list.
  Directed Tony Bennets Billboard award winning music video of "God Bless the Child"
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Ciccone
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  Christopher Reeve
  Christopher D'Olier Reeve (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author and activist. He achieved stardom for his acting achievements, including his notable motion picture portrayal of the fictional superhero Superman.
  On May 27, 1995, Reeve became a quadriplegic after being thrown from a horse in an equestrian competition in Virginia. He required a wheelchair and breathing apparatus for the rest of his life. He lobbied on behalf of people with spinal cord injuries, and for human embryonic stem cell research afterward. He founded the Christopher Reeve Foundation and co-founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center.
  Reeve married Dana Morosini in April 1992. Christopher and Dana's son, William Elliot Reeve, was born on June 7, 1992. Reeve also had two children, Matthew Exton Reeve (born 1979) and Alexandra Exton Reeve (born 1983), from his previous relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Gae Exton.
  Christopher Reeve was born in New York City on September 25, 1952, the son of Barbara Pitney (née Lamb), a journalist, and Franklin D'Olier Reeve, who was a teacher, novelist, poet and scholar. His paternal grandfather, Colonel Richard Henry Reeve, had been the CEO of Prudential Financial for over twenty-five years, and his great-grandfather, Franklin D'Olier, was a prominent businessman, veteran of World War I, and the first national commander of the American Legion. Reeve's father was also descended from a sister of statesman Elias Boudinot, as well as from Massachusetts governors Thomas Dudley and John Winthrop, Pennsylvania deputy governor Thomas Lloyd, and Henry Baldwin, a US Supreme Court Justice. Reeve's mother was the granddaughter of Mahlon Pitney, another U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and was also a descendant of William Bradford, a Mayflower passenger.
  
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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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  Cindy Sheehan
  Cindy Lee Miller Sheehan (born July 10, 1957) is an American anti-war activist whose son, U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed by enemy action during the Iraq War. She attracted national and international media attention in August 2005 for her extended anti-war protest at a makeshift camp outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch—a stand that drew both passionate support and angry criticism. Sheehan ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008. She is a vocal critic of President Barack Obama's foreign policy. Her memoir, Peace Mom: A Mother's Journey Through Heartache to Activism, was published in 2006.
  Cindy Sheehan was born in Inglewood, California in 1957. Her father worked at Lockheed while her mother raised her family. She graduated with honors from Cerritos College and studied history at UCLA. She worked as a youth minister at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Vacaville, California for eight years, and also coordinated an after-school program for at-risk middle school children for the City of Vacaville. In 1977 she married Patrick Sheehan, in Norwalk, California; they had four children, including Casey Sheehan (born in 1979), who was killed in action in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Patrick Sheehan filed for divorce on August 12, 2005, citing irreconcilable differences.
  
  wn.com/Cindy_Sheehan
• Cliff Robertson
  Clifford Parker "Cliff" Robertson III (September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011) was an American actor with a film and television career that spanned half a century. Robertson portrayed a young John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, and won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the movie Charly. On television, he portrayed retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the 1976 adaptation of Aldrin's autobiographic Return to Earth, played a fictional character based on Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms in the 1977 adaptation of John Ehrlichman's Watergate novel The Company, and portrayed Henry Ford in the 1987 Ford: The Man and the Machine. His last well-known film appearances were in 2002 through 2007 as Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man film trilogy.
  Robertson was born on September 9, 1923 in La Jolla, California, the son of Clifford Parker Robertson, Jr. (1902–1968), and his first wife, the former Audrey Olga Willingham (1903-1925). His Texas-born father was described as "the idle heir to a tidy sum of ranching money". Robertson recalled that his father "was a very romantic figure—tall, handsome. He married four or five times, and between marriages he'd pop in to see me. He was a great raconteur, and he was always surrounded by sycophants who let him pick up the tab. During the Depression, he tapped the trust for $500,000, and six months later he was back for more." The actor's parents divorced when he was one, and Robertson's mother died of peritonitis a year later in El Paso, Texas, at the age of 21. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Eleanor "Eleanora" Willingham (née Sawyer, 1875–1957), in California, and he and his father rarely saw one another. He graduated from La Jolla High School in 1941, where he was known as "The Walking Phoenix".^[why?] He then served in the merchant marine in World War II before attending Antioch College in Ohio and dropping out to work as a journalist for a short time.
  
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  Clint Eastwood
  Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide (1959–1965). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) during the late 1960s, and as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.
  For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others including Play Misty for Me (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), which are his two most commercially successful films after adjustment for inflation.
  
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  Colin Firth
  A Darcy Before I Die - satirical poem by Ronnie Taheny (c) 2008
  Colin Andrew Firth, CBE (born 10 September 1960) is an English film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In 2011, Firth received an Academy Award for his portrayal of King George VI in The King's Speech, a performance that also earned him the Golden Globe, BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor, amongst others. The previous year, he received his first Academy Award nomination, for his leading role in A Single Man, a performance that won him a BAFTA Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.
  Firth was born in England. His mother, Shirley Jean (née Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College Winchester (now the University of Winchester), and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, was a history lecturer (also at King Alfred's) and education officer for the Nigerian Government. Firth has a sister, Kate, and a younger brother, Jonathan, who is also an actor. Firth's parents were raised in India, because his maternal grandparents, Congregationalist ministers, and his paternal grandfather, an Anglican priest, performed missionary work abroad. Firth spent part of his childhood in Nigeria, where his father was teaching.
  
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  Condoleezza Rice
  Condoleezza Rice ( /ˌkɒndəˈliːzə/; born November 14, 1954) is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush. Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state, as well as the second African American (after Colin Powell), and the second woman (after Madeleine Albright). Rice was President Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position. Before joining the Bush administration, she was a professor of political science at Stanford University where she served as Provost from 1993 to 1999. Rice also served on the National Security Council as the Soviet and East European Affairs Advisor to President George H.W. Bush during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification.
  Following her confirmation as Secretary of State, Rice pioneered the policy of Transformational Diplomacy, with a focus on democracy in the Greater Middle East. Her emphasis on supporting democratically elected governments faced challenges as Hamas captured a popular majority in Palestinian elections, and influential countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt maintained authoritarian systems with U.S. support. While Secretary of State, she chaired the Millennium Challenge Corporation's board of directors.
  
  wn.com/Condoleezza_Rice
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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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  Danny Glover
  Danny Lebern Glover (born July 22, 1946) is an American actor, film director, and political activist. Glover is well known for his roles as Mr. Albert Johnson in The Color Purple, as Michael Harrigan in Predator 2, as corrupt cop James McFee in Witness, as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise, as Detective David Tapp in Saw as George Knox in Angels in the Outfield, and for his catch phrase "I'm too old for this shit." He has also appeared in many other movies, television shows, and theatrical productions. He is an active supporter of various humanitarian and political causes. He currently stars as Professor Arthur Teller in the Fox television series Touch.
  Glover was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Carrie (née Hunley) and James Glover. His parents, postal workers, were active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), working to advance equal rights. Glover's mother, daughter of a midwife, was born in Louisville, Georgia and graduated from Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. Glover grew up with a love for sports, like his father. Glover suffered from epilepsy in his teens and as a young adult. According to his own account, he "developed a way of concentrating so that seizures wouldn't happen." Using this technique, which he describes as "a type of self-hypnosis", Glover says he has not suffered a seizure since age 34.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  David Carradine
  David Carradine (born John Arthur Carradine; December 8, 1936 – June 3, 2009) was an American actor and martial artist, best known for his role as a warrior monk, Kwai Chang Caine, in the 1970s television series Kung Fu. He was a member of a productive acting family dynasty that began with his father, John Carradine. His acting career, which included major and minor roles on stage, television and cinema, spanned over four decades. A prolific "B" movie actor, he appeared in more than 100 feature films and was nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award. The last nomination was for his title role in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.
  Films that featured Carradine continued to be released after his death. These posthumous credits were from a variety of genres including horror, action, western, martial arts, drama, science fiction and documentary. In addition to his acting career, Carradine was also a musician and pursued a directing career. Influenced by his most popular acting role, he studied martial arts. The child of a frequently married actor, "Jack", as Carradine was known in his youth, had an unstable childhood. This instability would continue throughout his life as he himself was married five times. He was also frequently arrested and prosecuted for a variety of offenses which often involved substance abuse. He died on June 3, 2009 of an apparently accidental asphyxiation.
  
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  David Thewlis
  David Thewlis (born David Wheeler; 20 March 1963) is an English actor of stage and screen. His most commercially successful role to date has been that of Remus Lupin, in the Harry Potter film series. Other notable performances include his work in the films Timeline (2003), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), The Omen (2006), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), London Boulevard (2010) and War Horse (2011). He made his name known in 1993 with his performance of Johnny in Naked – for which he won multiple awards – became known publicly for his performance of main antagonist King Einon in the 1996 film Dragonheart. He has also done voice work in the films James and the Giant Peach (1996) and The Miracle Maker (2000).
  Thewlis, second of three children, was born David Wheeler in Blackpool, Lancashire, the son of Maureen (née Thewlis) and Alec Raymond Wheeler. Both of his parents worked at his father's shop, which sold toys in the summer and wallpaper and paint in the winter. As a teenager, he played in a rock band called QED, in which he, Cliff Ashcroft, Mark Fawl and Chris Swift wrote much of their own music and lyrics. QED played at some of the Blackpool hotels to earn money for equipment and their first recording session at Storm Studios in Blackpool. Later, Thewlis played lead guitar with a punk rock band called Door 66. As a musician he was "doing nicely, doing good" and did not want to be an actor. Thewlis was educated at Highfield High School (since renamed Highfield Humanities College), a state secondary school in Marton, Blackpool in North West England where his nickname, at least to his friends, was 'Sqwee'.
  
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  Dennis Quaid
  Dennis William Quaid (born April 9, 1954) is an American actor known for his comedic and dramatic roles. First gaining widespread attention in the 1980s, his career rebounded in the 1990s after he overcame an addiction to drugs and an eating disorder. Some of his notable credits include Jaws 3-D, The Right Stuff, Enemy Mine, Great Balls of Fire!, The Big Easy, Far from Heaven, The Rookie, The Day After Tomorrow, Vantage Point, Footloose, The Parent Trap, Soul Surfer and Innerspace.
  Quaid was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Juanita Bonniedale "Nita" (née Jordan), a real estate agent, and William Rudy Quaid (November 21, 1923 – February 8, 1987), an electrician and a third cousin of performer Gene Autry. He is the younger brother of actor Randy Quaid. The Quaid brothers grew up in Bellaire, Texas, which is a small city surrounded by Houston, and in southwest Houston. Quaid has English, Irish, and Cajun (French) ancestry. He attended Paul W. Horn Elementary School in Bellaire and Pershing Middle School in Houston. He studied Mandarin and dance at Bellaire High School in Bellaire, Texas, and later in college, at the University of Houston, under drama coach Cecil Pickett, who had previously taught at Bellaire High and whose daughter is actress Cindy Pickett. It was during his time at Bellaire High School that he developed the nickname 'Dennis Quand', (a combination of 'Quaid' and 'Bond') in relation to his obsession with the 007 movie character and was regularly referred to by this name.
  
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  Denzel Washington
  Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr. Philip Chandler for six years. He has received much critical acclaim for his work in film since the 1990s, including for his portrayals of real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Melvin B. Tolson, Frank Lucas and Herman Boone.
  Washington has received two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe awards, and a Tony Award. He is notable for winning the Best Supporting Actor for Glory in 1989; and the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2001 for his role in the film Training Day.
  Denzel Washington was born in Mount Vernon, near New York City, New York on December 28, 1954. His mother, Lennis "Lynne", was a beauty parlor-owner and operator born in Georgia and partly raised in Harlem. His father, Reverend Denzel Hayes Washington, Sr., a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, served as an ordained Pentecostal minister, and also worked for the Water Department and a local department store, S. Klein.
  
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  Dick Cheney
  
  
  Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney (born January 30, 1941) served as the 46th Vice President of the United States (2001–2009), under George W. Bush.
  Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cheney was primarily raised in Sumner, Nebraska, and Casper, Wyoming. He began his political career as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger, eventually working his way into the White House during the Nixon and Ford administrations, where he served the latter as White House Chief of Staff. In 1978, Cheney was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Wyoming; he was reelected five times, eventually becoming House Minority Whip. Cheney was selected to be the Secretary of Defense during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, holding the position for the majority of Bush's term. During this time, Cheney oversaw the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, among other actions.
  Out of office during the Clinton presidency, Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000.
  Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Marjorie Lorraine (née Dickey) and Richard Herbert Cheney. He is of predominantly English, as well as Welsh, Irish, and French Huguenot, ancestry; Cheney's 8th great-grandfather, William Cheney, immigrated from England to Massachusetts in the 17th century. Although not a direct descendant, he is collaterally related to Benjamin Pierce Cheney (1815–1895), the early American expressman. Cheney is a very distant cousin of both Harry S. Truman and Barack Obama; the three share a common ancestor in Mareen Duvall, a Huguenot who fled from France to England in the 17th century and later settled in Maryland. His father was a soil conservation agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his mother was a softball star in the 1930s; Cheney was one of three children.
  
  wn.com/Dick_Cheney
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  Edward James Olmos
  Edward James Olmos (born February 24, 1947) is an American (with Mexican citizenship) actor and director. Among his most memorable roles are William Adama in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, Lt. Martin Castillo in Miami Vice, teacher Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver, patriarch Abraham Quintanilla in the film Selena, Detective Gaff in Blade Runner, and narrator El Pachuco in both the stage and film versions of Zoot Suit.
  In 1988, Olmos was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the film Stand and Deliver.
  He has also been a longtime pioneer for more diversified roles and images of Latinos in the U.S. media besides from his most notable roles/work by him starring, directing and producing films, Made for TV Movies and TV shows such as American Me, The Burning Season, My Family/Mi Familia, 12 Angry Men, The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca, Walkout, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and American Family: Journey of Dreams.
  Olmos was born Edward Olmos in Los Angeles, California, where he was raised, the son of Eleanor (nee Huizar) and Pedro Olmos, who was a welder and mail carrier. His father was a Mexican immigrant and his mother was Mexican American. He grew up wanting to be a professional baseball player, and became the Golden State batting champion. In his teen years, he turned to rock and roll, and became the lead singer for a band he named Pacific Ocean, so-called because it was to be "the biggest thing on the West Coast." He graduated from Montebello High School in 1964. While at Montebello High School, he lost a race for Student Body President to future California Democratic Party Chair Art Torres. For several years, Olmos performed at various clubs in and around Los Angeles, and released a record in 1968. At the same time, he attended classes at East Los Angeles College, including courses in acting.
  
  wn.com/Edward_James_Olmos
• Eileen Ryan
  Eileen Ryan (born October 16, 1928) is an American actress who has appeared in a number of movies and TV series. She is the widow of actor and director Leo Penn, and mother of singer Michael Penn and actors Sean Penn and the late Chris Penn.
  Ryan was born Eileen Annucci in New York City, the daughter of Rose Isabel (née Ryan), a nurse, and Amerigo Giuseppe Annucci, a dentist. Ryan's mother was an Irish American native of Plattsburgh, New York, and her father was Italian American.
  She was married to Leo Penn, an actor and active union member, who was once blacklisted, from 1957 until his death in 1998. Ryan appeared with her sons Sean and Chris in the 1986 film At Close Range, as their grandmother. She also made a memorable appearance in The Crossing Guard, which Sean directed. While Madonna was married to Sean, she told the press "My mother-in-law is the only woman I've ever met whom I find truly intimidating."
  
  
  
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  Elizabeth McGovern
  Elizabeth McGovern (born July 18, 1961) is an American film, television and theater actress, and a musician.
  McGovern was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Katharine Wolcott (née Watts), a high school teacher, and William Montgomery McGovern, Jr., a university professor. Her paternal grandfather was adventurer William Montgomery McGovern and her maternal great-grandfather was U.S. diplomat Ethelbert Watts. The McGovern family moved to Los Angeles where her father accepted a teaching position with the law school at UCLA. Her younger sister is novelist Cammie McGovern.
  McGovern started acting in plays while attending The Oakwood School in North Hollywood.^{[citation needed]} Agent Joan Scott saw her performance in The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder, was impressed by her talent, and recommended she take acting lessons.^{[citation needed]} McGovern studied at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, then at The Juilliard School in New York City.
  In 1980, while studying at Juilliard, McGovern was offered a part in her first film, Ordinary People, in which she played the girlfriend of troubled teenager Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton).
  
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  Emilio Estevez
  Emilio Estevez (/ɛˈmiːljoʊ ˈɛstɨvɛz/; born May 12, 1962) is an American actor, film director, and writer. He started his career as an actor and is well known for being a member of the acting Brat Pack of the 1980s, starring in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire. He is also known for Repo Man, The Mighty Ducks and its sequels, Maximum Overdrive, Bobby (which he also wrote and directed), and his performances in Western films such as Young Guns and its sequel. One of his first appearances was as "Two-Bit" in The Outsiders.
  
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  Ernest Borgnine
  Ernest Borgnine (born Ermes Effron Borgnino; January 24, 1917) is an American actor of television and film. His career has spanned more than six decades. He was an unconventional lead in many films of the 1950s, including his Academy Award-winning turn in the 1955 film Marty. On television, he played Quinton McHale in the 1962–66 series McHale's Navy and co-starred in the mid-1980s action series Airwolf, in addition to a wide variety of other roles. Borgnine is also known for his role as Mermaid Man in the animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants. Borgnine earned an Emmy Award nomination at age 92 for his work on the series ER.
  Borgnine was born in Hamden, Connecticut, the son of Anna (née Boselli), who immigrated to the United States from Carpi (Modena, Italy), and Camillo Borgnino, who immigrated to the U.S. from Ottiglio (Province of Alessandria, Italy).
  His parents separated when he was two years old, and he and his mother went to live in Italy. By 1923, his parents had reconciled, and the family name was changed from Borgnino to Borgnine. The family had settled in North Haven, Connecticut, where he attended public schools. His mother also had the passion to develop her own style of dance.^{[citation needed]} Anna gave her son a lot of moral support and he stood closely by her at all times.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Forest Whitaker
  Forest Steven Whitaker (born July 15, 1961) is an American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television series, The Shield. Whitaker won an Academy Award for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker has also won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.
  Whitaker was born in Longview, Texas, and his family moved to South Central Los Angeles when he was four. His father, Forest Whitaker, Jr., was an insurance salesman and the son of novelist Forest Whitaker, Sr. His mother, Laura Francis (née Smith), was a special education teacher who put herself through college and earned two Masters degrees while raising her children. Whitaker has two younger brothers, Kenn and Damon, and an older sister, Deborah.
  As a teenager, Whitaker commuted from Carson to wealthy Palisades High School on LA's West Side. There, he was all-league defensive tackle on the football team quarterbacked by Jay Schroeder, a future NFL player. While in high school, he also took voice lessons, performed in musicals, and caught the "acting bug"; his first role as an actor was the lead in Dylan Thomas' play, Under Milk Wood. Whitaker graduated from "Pali High" in 1979.
  
  wn.com/Forest_Whitaker
• Francisco Rabal
  Francisco Rabal (8 March 1926 – 29 August 2001), perhaps better known as Paco Rabal, was a Spanish actor born in Águilas, a small town in the province of Murcia, Spain.
  In 1936, after the Spanish Civil War broke out. Rabal and his family left Murcia and moved to Madrid. Young Francisco had to work as a street salesboy and in a chocolate factory. When he was 13 years old, he left school to work as an electrician at Estudios Chamartín.
  Rabal got some sporadic jobs as an extra. Dámaso Alonso and other people advised him to try his luck with a career in theater.
  During the following years, he got some roles in theater companies such as Lope de Vega or María Guerrero. It was there that he met actress Asunción Balaguer; they married and remained together for the rest of Rabal's life. Their daughter, Teresa Rabal, is also an actor.
  In 1947, Rabal got some regular jobs in theater. He used his full name, Francisco Rabal, as stage name. However, the people who knew him always called him Paco Rabal. (Paco is the familiar form for Francisco.) "Paco Rabal" became his unofficial stage name.
  
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  Ge You
  Ge You (born April 19, 1957) is an acclaimed Mainland Chinese actor. A native of Beijing, he is considered by many to be one of the most recognizable acting personalities in the Mainland. His success with major comedy roles made him a well known name throughout Mainland China.
  Ge You won the Best Actor Award at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival for his role in the Zhang Yimou movie To Live.
  
  
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  Gene Hackman
  Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is a retired American actor and novelist.
  Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. His major subsequent films include The French Connection (1971), in which he played Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle; The Poseidon Adventure (1972); The Conversation (1974); Superman (1978), in which he played arch-villain Lex Luthor; Hoosiers (1986); Mississippi Burning (1987); Unforgiven (1992); The Firm (1993); Crimson Tide (1995); Get Shorty (1995); The Birdcage (1996); Enemy of the State (1998); and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
  Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Lyda (née Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman. He has a brother, Richard. His family moved frequently, finally settling in Danville, Illinois, where they lived in the house of his English-born maternal grandmother, Beatrice. Hackman's father operated the printing press for the Commercial-News, a local paper. Hackman's parents divorced in 1943 and his father subsequently left the family.
  
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  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 Clooney
  George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received three Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award. Clooney is also noted for his political activism, and has served as one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace since January 31, 2008.
  Though he made his acting debut on television in 1978, Clooney gained fame and recognition by portraying Dr. Douglas "Doug" Ross on the long-running medical drama ER from 1994 to 1999. While working on ER, he started attracting a variety of leading roles in films including Batman & Robin (1997) and Out of Sight (1998), in which he first teamed with long-term collaborator Steven Soderbergh. 1999 saw the release of Three Kings, a well-received war satire set during the Gulf War featuring Clooney in another lead role. In 2001, Clooney's fame widened with the release of his biggest commercial success, Ocean's Eleven, the first of a profitable film trilogy, a remake of the film from 1960 with the members of The Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean. He made his directorial debut a year later with the 2002 biographical thriller Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and has since directed Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), Leatherheads (2008), and The Ides of March (2011). He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the Middle East thriller Syriana (2005) and subsequently fetched Best Actor nominations for such films as Michael Clayton (2007), Up in the Air (2009) and The Descendants (2011).
  
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  Gian Maria Volonté
  Gian Maria Volonté (9 April 1933 – 6 December 1994) was an Italian actor. He is perhaps most famous outside of Italy for his roles as the main villain in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (credited in the USA as "Johnny Wels") and For a Few Dollars More. In Italy, he was more notable for his roles in high-profile social dramas depicting the poilitical and social stirrings of Italian and European society in the 1960s and 1970s.
  Volonté was born in Milan, and graduated in Rome in 1957. He had a brief career as a television and theatre (Shakespeare, Goldoni) actor, before concentrating on his film career.
  He made his debut in 1960 in Sotto dieci bandiere, directed by Duilio Coletti. Just four years later, Volonté played "Ramón Rojo" in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), and "El Indio" in For a Few Dollars More (1965), both for cash reasons as he did not consider either role seriously. Both films were directed by the then-unknown Sergio Leone, and Volonté's roles in them would bring him his greatest recognition from American audiences. He also played the memorable role of the Bandito-turned-guerrilla, El Chucho, in A Bullet for the General (1966).
  
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  Gérard Depardieu
  Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu (French pronunciation: [ʒeʁaʁ dəpaʁdjø] ( listen); born 27 December 1948) is a French actor and filmmaker. He is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite and has twice won the César Award for Best Actor. He also won the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in Green Card and was nominated for an Academy Award for the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac.
  Gérard Depardieu was born in Châteauroux, Indre, France. He is one of five children of Anne Jeanne Josèphe "la Liette" (née Marillier) and René Maxime Lionel "le Dédé" Depardieu, a metal worker and volunteer fireman. His mother did not want more children and told Depardieu that she had tried to abort him with knitting needles. He has stated that as a child he would inspect his hands for scars from the needles.
  Depardieu spent more time on the street than in the classroom and left school at 15.^{[citation needed]}
  At the age of 16, Depardieu left Châteauroux for Paris. There he began acting in the new comedy theatre Café de la Gare, along with Patrick Dewaere, Romain Bouteille, Sotha, Coluche, and Miou-Miou. His breakout film role came in 1974 playing Jean-Claude in Bertrand Blier's comedy Going Places. He studied dancing under Jean-Laurent Cochet, and went on to become one of France's most renowned actors. In 1986, his international fame grew as a result of his performance as a doomed, hunchbacked farmer in the film Jean de Florette. Five years later he won a César for his starring role in Cyrano de Bergerac.
  
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  Harvey Keitel
  Harvey Keitel (born May 13, 1939) is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma & Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and From Dusk Till Dawn, Jane Campion's The Piano, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, James Mangold's Cop Land, Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing, and Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze. He recently played Detective Lieutenant Gene Hunt on the American adaptation of Life on Mars.
  Keitel (/kaɪˈtɛl/ ky-TEL) was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the son of Miriam (née Klein) and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland. His parents owned and ran a luncheonette and his father also worked as a hat maker.
  Keitel grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, with his sister, Renee, and brother, Jerry. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School. At the age of sixteen, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps, a decision that took him to Lebanon, during Operation Blue Bat. After his return to the United States, he was a court reporter for several years and was able to support himself before beginning his acting career.
  
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  Harvey Milk
  Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician who became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not his early interests; he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s.
  Milk moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men to the Castro District. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests, and ran unsuccessfully for political office three times. His theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977, part of the broader social changes the city was experiencing.
  Milk served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. Milk's election was made possible by and was a key component of a shift in San Francisco politics. The assassinations and the ensuing events were the result of continuing ideological conflicts in the city.
  
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  Huey Long
  Huey Pierce Long, Jr. (August 30, 1893 – September 10, 1935), nicknamed The Kingfish, served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana from 1928–1932 and as a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. A Democrat, he was noted for his radical populist policies. Though a backer of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election, Long split with Roosevelt in June 1933 and planned to mount his own presidential bid for 1936.
  Long created the Share Our Wealth program in 1934 with the motto "Every Man a King", proposing new wealth redistribution measures in the form of a net asset tax on corporations and individuals to curb the poverty and homelessness endemic nationwide during the Great Depression. To stimulate the economy, Long advocated federal spending on public works, schools and colleges, and old age pensions. He was an ardent critic of the Federal Reserve System's policies. Charismatic and immensely popular for his programs and willingness to take forceful action, Long was accused by his opponents of dictatorial tendencies for his near-total control of the state government.
  
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  Hugo Chávez
  Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as]; born 28 July 1954) is the current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Following his own political ideology of Bolivarianism and "Socialism for the 21st Century", he has focused on implementing socialist reforms in the country as a part of a social project known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has seen the implementation of a new constitution, participatory democratic councils and the nationalisation of several key industries.
  Born into a working class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system, he founded the secretive Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s to work towards overthrowing it. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez government in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Getting out of prison after two years, he founded a social democratic political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He subsequently introduced a new constitution which increased rights for marginalised groups and altered the structure of Venezuelan government, and was re-elected in 2000. During his second presidential term, he introduced a system of Bolivarian Missions, Communal Councils and worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform, whilst also nationalising various key industries.
  
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  Ian McKellen
  Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH CBE (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He has won multiple Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is known for film roles such as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Magneto in the X-Men films, and as Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code.
  McKellen was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality, in the 2008 New Year Honours.
  McKellen was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, though he spent most of his early life in Wigan. Born shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the experience had some lasting impact on him. In response to an interview question when an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, he said: "Well, darling, you forget — I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old."
  
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  Jack Lemmon
  John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won 'Best Actor' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
  Lemmon was born in an elevator^{[citation needed]} at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the only child of Mildred Burgess LaRue (née Noel) and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., who was the president of a doughnut company. Lemmon attended John Ward Elementary School in Newton and The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He had stated that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight. Lemmon attended Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard University (Class of 1947), where he lived in Adams House and was an active member of several Drama Clubs - becoming president of the Hasty Pudding Club - as well as a member of the Delphic Club for Gentleman, a final club at Harvard. After Harvard, Lemmon joined the Navy, receiving V-12 training and serving as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway. He studied acting under coach Uta Hagen. He also became enamored of the piano and learned to play it on his own. He could also play the harmonica, organ, and the double bass.
  
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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 .
  
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  James Mason
  James Neville Mason (15 May 1909 - 27 July 1984) was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes (winning once).
  Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to John and Mabel Mason; his father was a wealthy merchant. He was educated at Marlborough College, and earned a first in architecture at Peterhouse, Cambridge where he became involved in stock theatre companies in his spare time. Mason had no formal training as an actor and initially embarked upon it for fun. After Cambridge he joined the Old Vic theatre in London under the guidance of Tyrone Guthrie and Alexander Korda. In 1933 Korda gave Mason a small role in The Private Life of Don Juan but fired him three days into shooting.
  From 1935 to 1948 he starred in many British quota quickies. A conscientious objector during World War II (causing his family to break with him for many years), he became immensely popular for his brooding anti-heroes in the Gainsborough series of melodramas of the 1940s, including The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945). He also starred with Deborah Kerr and Robert Newton in Hatter's Castle (1942). He then took the lead role in the critically acclaimed and immensely popular The Seventh Veil (1945) that set box office records in postwar Britain and raised him to international stardom. He followed it with a role as a mortally wounded Irish bank robber in Odd Man Out (1947) and his first Hollywood film, Caught (1949). Exhibitors voted him the most popular star in Britain in 1944 and 1945.
  
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  James Spader
  James Todd Spader (born February 7, 1960) is an American actor best known for his eccentric roles in films such as Pretty in Pink; Less Than Zero; Sex, Lies, and Videotape; Crash; Stargate; and Secretary. His most famous television roles are those of the colorful attorney Alan Shore in The Practice and its spin-off Boston Legal, for which he won three Emmy Awards, and Robert California in The Office.
  Spader was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of teachers Jean (née Fraser) and Stoddard Greenwood "Todd" Spader. During his early education, he attended The Pike School (where his mother taught art) and enrolled in the Brooks School (where his father taught) for one year in North Andover, Massachusetts. Spader later transferred to Phillips Academy, but dropped out of school in the eleventh grade to pursue acting at the Michael Chekhov School in New York City. Before becoming a full-time actor, Spader held a variety of jobs including being a yoga instructor, busboy, truck driver, stable boy, and railroad-car loader.
  
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  James Woods
  James Howard Woods (born April 18, 1947) is an American film, stage and television actor. Woods is known for starring in critically acclaimed films such as Once Upon a Time in America, Salvador, Nixon, Ghosts of Mississippi, The Last Day of Summer, Casino, and in the television legal drama Shark. He has won three Emmy Awards, and has gained two Academy Award nominations. He is also well known for appearing several times in the comedy animated series Family Guy, as well as the voice of Hades in Disney's Hercules.
  Woods was born in Vernal, Utah. His father, Gail Peyton Woods, was an army intelligence officer who died in 1960 following routine surgery. His mother, Martha A. (née Smith), operated a pre-school after her husband's death and later married Thomas E. Dixon. Woods grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, where he attended Pilgrim High School.
  Woods chose to pursue his undergraduate studies at MIT, where he majored in political science (though he originally planned on a career as an eye surgeon). While at MIT, Woods pledged to Theta Delta Chi Fraternity. He was also an active member of the student theatre group "Dramashop" where he both acted in and directed a number of plays. He dropped out of MIT 1969 before his graduation in order to pursue a career in acting. Woods has said that he became an actor because of the father of actor Ben Affleck, Tim Affleck, who was a stage manager at the Theatre Company of Boston while Woods was a student there.
  
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  Jamie Foxx
  Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), professionally known as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer-songwriter, rapper, stand-up comedian, and talk radio host who began playing the piano when he was five years old. As an actor, his work in the film Ray earned him the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a musical/comedy. He is also a Grammy Award winning musician, producing three albums which have charted highly on the Billboard 200: Unpredictable, which topped the chart, Best Night of My Life and Intuition.
  Born in Terrell, Texas, Foxx was raised by his mother's adoptive parents. He performed in high school and was awarded with a scholarship to United States International University. In his twenties, Foxx began performing stand-up at comedy clubs, and eventually joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991; this exposure helped him land film roles and star in his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show. He released his debut album, Peep This, in 1994, but he did not gain significant musical success until 2004 when he was featured in Twista's song "Slow Jamz". Also in 2004, Foxx played critically acclaimed roles in the films Collateral and Ray. He released his second album, Unpredictable, in 2005, which was helped by his collaboration on Kanye West's number-one single "Gold Digger". His third album Intuition was released in 2008 and was anchored by the single "Blame It". Foxx released his fourth studio album, Best Night of My Life, in 2010.
  
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  Jason Robards
  Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. (July 26, 1922 – December 26, 2000) was an American actor on stage, and in film and television. He is a winner of the Tony Award, two Academy Awards and the Emmy Award. He was also a United States Navy combat veteran of World War II.
  He became famous playing works of Eugene O'Neill, an American playwright, and regularly performed in O'Neill's works throughout his career. Robards was cast in both common-man roles and as well-known historical figures.
  Robards was born in Chicago, the son of Hope Maxine (née Glanville) Robards and Jason Robards, Sr., an actor who regularly appeared on the stage and in such early films as The Gamblers (1929). Robards was of English, Welsh, Irish, and Swedish descent.
  The family moved to New York City, New York, when Jason Jr. was still a toddler, and then moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was six years old. Later interviews with Robards suggested that the trauma of his parents' divorce, which occurred during his grade-school years, greatly affected his personality and worldview.
  
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  Javier Bardem
  Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (Spanish pronunciation: [xaˈβjer βarˈðen]; born 1 March 1969) is a Spanish actor. In 2007 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as sociopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, and has also garnered critical acclaim for roles in films such as Jamón, jamón, Carne trémula, Boca a boca, Los Lunes al sol and Mar adentro.
  As well as the Academy Award, Bardem has been awarded a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA, five Goya awards, two European Film Awards, a Prize for Best Actor at Cannes and two Coppa Volpis at Venice for his work. He is the first Spaniard to be nominated for an Oscar (Best Actor, 2000, for Before Night Falls, lost to Russell Crowe for Gladiator), as well as the first Spanish actor to win an Academy Award. He received his third Academy Award nomination, and second Best Actor nomination, for the film Biutiful.
  Bardem was born in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands (Spain). His mother, Pilar Bardem, is an actress, and his father, José Carlos Encinas Doussinague, was a businessman who was involved in environmental work; the two separated shortly after his birth. His mother raised him alone. Bardem comes from a long line of filmmakers and actors who have been working since the earliest days of Spanish cinema; he is the grandson of actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, and the nephew of screenwriter and director Juan Antonio Bardem. Both his older brother and sister, Carlos and Mónica, are actors. Bardem was raised Roman Catholic by his grandmother. He also comes from a very political background, his uncle Juan Antonio was imprisoned by Franco for his anti-fascist films.
  
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  Jean Dujardin
  Jean Edmond Dujardin (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ dy.ʒaʁ.dɛ̃]; born 19 June 1972) is a French actor and comedian. He has worked notably with director Michel Hazanavicius, starring in his OSS 117 spy parodies. His starring role in Hazanavicius' silent movie The Artist, playing actor George Valentin, received widespread acclaim. The role won him the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award, and the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is the first French actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.
  Dujardin was born and raised in Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France), a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. After attending high school, he went to work for his parents' construction company. Dujardin began contemplating a career in acting while serving his mandatory military service a few years later.
  
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  Jeff Bridges
  Jeffrey Leon Bridges (born December 4, 1949) is an American actor, musician, producer, photographer, cartoonist, storyteller, and occasional vintner. He comes from a well-known acting family and began his first televised acting in 1958 as child with his father, Lloyd Bridges, and brother Beau on television's Sea Hunt. Some of his best-known major motion films include: Tron (and its sequel) , Fearless, Iron Man, Contender, TheThe Contender, Starman, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Jagged Edge, Against All Odds, Fisher King, TheThe Fisher King, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Seabiscuit, and The Big Lebowski. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart and earned his sixth Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in 2010's True Grit.
  Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California on December 4, 1949. He is son of showbiz parents, actor Lloyd Bridges. and actress and writer Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson). His older brother, Beau Bridges, is also an actor. He has a younger sister, Lucinda, and had another brother, Garrett, who died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1948. Growing up, Bridges shared a close relationship with his brother Beau, who acted as a surrogate father when their father was working. Bridges and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. He graduated from University High School (Los Angeles, California) in 1967. At age fourteen, Jeff toured with his father in a stage production of Anniversary Waltz.
  
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  Jesse Eisenberg
  Jesse Adam Eisenberg (born October 5, 1983) is an American actor. He made his screen debut with the comedy-drama television series Get Real from 1999 to 2000. After his first leading role in the film Roger Dodger (2002), he appeared in such films as The Squid and the Whale (2005) and The Education of Charlie Banks (2007).
  In 2004, Eisenberg was honored with the Vail Film Festival Rising Star Award. In 2009, he starred in the comedy drama Adventureland and the horror comedy Zombieland, for which he won critical acclaim. He then played Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010), for which he received a Golden Globe and Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor category. He also starred in Holy Rollers (2010), which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, he has voiced the main character in the animated film Rio (2011), and starred in the comedy 30 Minutes or Less (2011). He will once again voice Blu in Rio 2, which is scheduled for a 2014 release.
  
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  Jessica Chastain
  Jessica Chastain is an American theater, film, and television actress. She is known for her roles in the films The Help, The Debt, Take Shelter, Coriolanus, and The Tree of Life. She broke out in 2011 with seven films premiering. She won over 35 critics awards and was widely named as breakout star. For her role in the film The Help she received Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress. In 2012, she was named to the list of Time 100 most influential people of the world.
  Chastain was born and raised in Northern California. She is one of five children. Her mother is a vegan chef, and her father (one source says stepfather) is a firefighter. Chastain is also vegan herself. She grew up as Jessica Howard, and later took her mother's maiden name as her stage name. Chastain had a "blue collar" upbringing around San Francisco.
  She graduated from El Camino High School in Sacramento in 1995 and attended Sacramento City College, where she was a member of the debate team (1996–1997). In 1998, she appeared as Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet staged by TheatreWorks, a professional theater company in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  
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• Jim Goddard
  Jim Goddard is an English film and TV director born in London on February 2, 1936. He has directed episodes of many UK TV series such as Public Eye, Callan, Special Branch, The Sweeney, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, The Bell and Holby City. He may be best known outside of England for directing the film Shanghai Surprise as a vehicle for newlyweds Sean Penn and Madonna.
  
  
  
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  John Travolta
  John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, dancer, and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Travolta's acting career declined in the early 1980s and continued to deteriorate for the rest of the decade. His career enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction, and he has since continued starring in Hollywood films, including Face/Off, Ladder 49, and Wild Hogs. Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty.
  Travolta, the youngest of six children, was born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City. His father, Salvatore Travolta (November 1912 – May 1995), was a semi-professional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Cecilia (née Burke, January 1912 – December 1978), was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher. His siblings, Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta, have all acted. His father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American; he grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture. He was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Scientology in 1975.
  
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  John Turturro
  John Michael Turturro (born February 28, 1957) is an American actor, writer and director known for his roles in the films Do the Right Thing (1989), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Quiz Show (1994), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and the Transformers film series. He has appeared in over sixty films, and has worked frequently with the Coen brothers, Adam Sandler and Spike Lee.
  Turturro was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Katherine, an amateur jazz singer who worked in a Navy yard during World War II, and Nicholas Turturro, a carpenter and construction worker who fought as a Navy sailor in D-Day. Turturro's mother was Sicilian (from Aragona near Agrigento) and his father emigrated from Giovinazzo, Bari, Italy at the age of six. Turturro was raised a Roman Catholic and moved to the Rosedale section of Queens, New York with his family when he was six. He majored in drama at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and completed his MFA at the Yale School of Drama. He first appeared on film working as an extra in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed Raging Bull (1980).
  
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  Johnny Depp
  John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol. Dissatisfied with that status, Depp turned to film for more challenging roles; he played the title character of Edward Scissorhands (1990) and later found box office success in films such as Sleepy Hollow (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Rango (2011) and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (2003–present). He has collaborated with director and friend Tim Burton in eight films, most recently with Dark Shadows (2012).
  Depp has gained acclaim for his portrayals of people such as Ed Wood, in Ed Wood, Joseph D. Pistone in Donnie Brasco, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, George Jung in Blow, and the bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.1 billion at the United States box office and over $7.6 billion worldwide. He has been nominated for top awards many times, winning the Best Actor Awards from the Golden Globes for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and from the Screen Actors Guild for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He also has garnered a sex symbol status in American cinema, being twice named as the "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine in 2003 and 2009. He has been listed in the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor, with $75 million.
  
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  Jon Voight
  Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight (/vɔɪt/) (born December 29, 1938) is an American actor. He has won one Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie.
  Voight came to prominence in the late 1960s with his performance as a would-be gigolo in Midnight Cowboy (1969). During the 1970s, he became a Hollywood star with his portrayals of a businessman mixed up with murder in Deliverance (1972), a paraplegic Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, and a penniless ex-boxing champion in The Champ (1979).
  Although his output slowed during the 1980s, Voight received critical acclaim for his performance as a ruthless bank robber in Runaway Train (1985). During the 1990s, he most notably starred as an unscrupulous showman attorney in The Rainmaker (1997). Voight gave critically acclaimed biographical performances during the 2000s, appearing as sportscaster Howard Cosell in Ali (2001), as Nazi officer Jürgen Stroop in Uprising (2001), and as Pope John Paul II in the television miniseries of the same name (2005).
  
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  Jonathan Pryce
  Jonathan Pryce, CBE (born 1 June 1947) is a Welsh stage and film actor and singer. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and meeting his longtime partner English actress Kate Fahy in 1974, he began his career as a stage actor in the 1970s. His work in theatre, including an award-winning performance in the title role of the Royal Court Theatre's Hamlet, led to several supporting roles in film and television. He made his breakthrough screen performance in Terry Gilliam's 1985 cult film Brazil.
  Critically lauded for his versatility, Pryce has participated in big-budget films such as Evita, Tomorrow Never Dies, Pirates of the Caribbean and The New World, as well as independent films such as Glengarry Glen Ross and Carrington. His career in theatre has also been prolific, and he has won two Tony Awards—the first in 1977 for his Broadway debut in Comedians, the second for his 1991 role as "The Engineer" in the musical Miss Saigon.
  
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  Karl Lagerfeld
  Karl Lagerfeld (born Karl Otto Lagerfeldt on 10 September 1933 in Hamburg) is a German fashion designer, artist and photographer based in Paris. He has collaborated on a variety of fashion and art related projects, most notably as head designer and creative director for the fashion house Chanel. Lagerfeld has his own label fashion house, as well as the Italian house Fendi.
  Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg. He has claimed he was born in 1938, by Elisabeth (born Bahlman) and his Swedish father Otto Lagerfeldt. He is known to insist that no-one knows his real birth date: Interviewed on French television in February 2009, Lagerfeld said that he was "born neither in 1933 nor 1938." His older sister, Martha Christiane (a.k.a. Christel), was born in 1931. Lagerfeld also has an older half-sister, Thea, from his father's first marriage. His original name was Lagerfeldt (with a "t"), but he later changed it to Lagerfeld as "it sounds more commercial."
  Lagerfeld grew up as the son of a wealthy businessman from Hamburg who was introducing condensed milk (Glücksklee-Milch GmbH) to Germany; his mother is from Berlin. According to Alicia Drake,^[vague] Lagerfeld's mother, Elisabeth Bahlmann, was a lingerie saleswoman in Berlin when she met her husband and married him in 1930.
  
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  Kevin Bacon
  Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, JFK, Apollo 13, Hollow Man, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Friday the 13th, Tremors, Death Sentence, Frost/Nixon, and X-Men: First Class.
  Bacon has won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, was nominated for an Emmy Award, and was named by The Guardian as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.
  In 2003, Bacon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
  Bacon, one of six children, was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Ruth Hilda (née Holmes; 1916–1991), taught at an elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Norwood Bacon (May 2, 1910 – October 14, 2005), was a well-respected architect and a prominent Philadelphian who had been Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for many years. At 16, in 1975, Bacon won a full scholarship to and attended the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University, a state-funded five-week arts program where he studied Theatre under Dr. Glory Van Scott, which helped solidify Bacon's passion for the arts.
  
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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.
  
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  Lee Marvin
  Lee Marvin (February 19, 1924 – August 29, 1987) was an American film actor. Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou (1965), he landed more heroic and sympathetic leading roles.
  Marvin was born in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and his wife Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion writer and beauty consultant. He was named in honor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was his first cousin, four times removed. His father was a direct descendant of Matthew Marvin, Sr., who emigrated from Great Bentley, Essex, England in 1635 and helped found Hartford, Connecticut.
  Marvin studied violin when he was young. As a teenager, Marvin "spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bobwhite in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades." He attended St. Leo College Preparatory School in St. Leo, Florida after being expelled from several other schools for bad behavior.
  
  wn.com/Lee_Marvin
• Leo Penn
  Leo Z. Penn (August 27, 1921 — September 5, 1998) was an American actor and director, and father of musician Michael Penn and actors Sean Penn and the late Chris Penn.
  Penn was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Elizabeth (née Melincoff) and Maurice Daniel Penn. Leo Penn may have had distant Sephardic ancestry, as his father's surname was originally "Piñon."
  Penn served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II as a B-24 Liberator bombardier with the 755th Bomb Squadron, 458th Bomb Group, stationed in England as part of the Eighth Air Force.
  Penn supported the Hollywood trade unions and refused to accuse others to the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was blacklisted, and Paramount refused to renew his contract. As a result Penn was not able to work as a movie actor. He found acting work in television, but CBS ousted him after receiving an anonymous accusation that he had addressed a political meeting. Barred from acting in film or TV, he became a director.
  
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  Leonardo DiCaprio
  Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (/dɨˈkæpri.oʊ/; born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and film producer. He has been nominated for the Golden Globe Award eight times as an actor, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator (2004). He has also been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite Awards, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
  Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, DiCaprio started his career by appearing in television commercials prior to landing recurring roles in TV series such as the soap opera Santa Barbara and the sitcom Growing Pains in the early 1990s. He made his film debut in the comedic sci-fi horror film Critters 3 (1991) and received first notable critical praise for his performance in This Boy's Life (1993). DiCaprio obtained recognition for his subsequent work in supporting roles in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and Marvin's Room (1996), as well as leading roles in The Basketball Diaries (1995) and Romeo + Juliet (1996), before achieving international fame in James Cameron's Titanic (1997).
  
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  Lyle Lovett
  Lyle Pearce Lovett (born November 1, 1957) is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Active since 1980, he has recorded thirteen albums and released 21 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, "Cowboy Man". Lovett has won four Grammy Awards, including Best Male Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Album. It's Not Big It's Large was released in 2007, where it debuted and peaked at number 2 on the Top Country Albums chart. A new studio album, Natural Forces, was released on October 20, 2009 by Lost Highway Records.
  Lovett was born in North Harris County, Texas, in the community of Klein, the son of William Pearce and Bernell Louise (née Klein) Lovett, a marketing executive and training specialist, respectively. He was raised in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Lovett attended Texas A&M University, where he studied German and journalism. It is a common misconception that Lyle and Robert Earl Keen were roommates at A&M. They were not. However, they lived across from each other on Church St. in College Station, became good friends, and wrote "The Front Porch Song" together, which both went on to record.
  
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  Marcello Mastroianni
  Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, Knight Grand Cross (Italian pronunciation: [marˈtʃɛllo mastroˈjanni]; 28 September 1924 – 19 December 1996) was an Italian film actor. His prominent films include La Dolce Vita; La Notte; Divorce, Italian Style; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; Marriage Italian-Style; A Special Day; and Ready to Wear, opposite Sophia Loren. Mastroianni and Loren were one of the most successful and enduring screen couples of cinema history, paired up in 14 movies over twenty years. His honours included British Film Academy Awards, Best Actor awards at the Cannes Film Festival and two Golden Globe Awards.
  Mastroianni was born in Fontana Liri, a small village in the Apennines in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, and grew up in Turin and Rome. He was the son of Ida (née Irolle) and Ottone Mastroianni, who ran a carpentry shop, and the nephew of the Italian sculptor Umberto Mastroianni (1910–1998). During World War II, after the division into Axis and Allied Italy, he was interned in a loosely guarded German prison camp, from which he escaped to hide in Venice. Mastroianni married Italian actress Flora Carabella (1926–1999) in 1950. They separated in the early 1960s but remained legally married until his death. They had one child together, Barbara. After the separation, he cohabited with actress Faye Dunaway for two years. His brother Ruggero Mastroianni (1929–1996) was a highly regarded film editor who not only edited a number of his brother's films, but appeared alongside Marcello in Scipione detto anche l'Africano, a spoof of the once popular peplum/sword and sandal film genre released in 1971.
  
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  Matt Dillon
  Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon (born February 18, 1964) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.
  Matthew Raymond Dillon was born in New Rochelle, New York, to second-generation Irish American parents Mary Ellen, a homemaker, and Paul Dillon, a portrait painter and sales manager for Union Camp, a packing material manufacturer. He was raised in a close-knit Irish Roman Catholic family as the second of six children. Dillon's paternal grandmother was the sister of comic strip artist Alex Raymond. Dillon has one sister and four brothers, one of whom, Kevin Dillon, is also an actor, and appears on the hit TV series Entourage which has earned him several Emmy nominations in the supporting actor comedy category. Dillon grew up in Mamaroneck, New York, and before dropping out in junior year, he attended Mamaroneck High School.^{[citation needed]}
  In 1978, Jane Bernstein and a friend were helping director Jonathan Kaplan cast the violent teen drama Over the Edge when they found Dillon cutting class at Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont. Dillon auditioned for a role and made his debut in the film. The film received a regional, limited theatrical release in May 1979, and grossed only slightly over $200,000. Dillon's performance was well-received, which led to his casting in two films released the following year; the teenage sex comedy Little Darlings, in which Kristy McNichol's character loses her virginity to a boy from the camp across the lake, played by Dillon, and the more serious teen dramedy My Bodyguard, where he played a high-school bully opposite Chris Makepeace. The films, released in March and July 1980, respectively, were box office successes and raised Dillon's profile among teenage audiences.
  
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  Michael Douglas
  Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2009. He is the eldest of actor Kirk Douglas's four sons.
  Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian-born actress Diana Dill. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus (at that time a part of the Russian Empire). His mother was from Devonshire Parish, Bermuda; Douglas's maternal grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, served as Attorney General of Bermuda and was commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas (born 1947), and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas (born 1955) and Eric Douglas (1958–2004), from stepmother Anne Buydens.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Douglas
• Michael Penn
  Michael Penn (born August 1, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter and composer. He is the eldest son of actor/director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan, and the brother of actors Sean Penn and the late Chris Penn.
  Michael Penn is a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter and film composer. Prior to the release of his 1989 debut album March, Penn was a member of the Los Angeles band Doll Congress, and had appeared as an extra on a few television series, including St. Elsewhere.
  March, particularly the first single, "No Myth," brought Penn attention, as well as the 1990 MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. Penn's follow-up albums Free-for-All (1992), Resigned (1997) MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident (2000 ) Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 (2005) and Palms and Runes, Tarot and Tea (2007) weren't able to match the commercial success of March, although critics continued to praise his songcraft.
  It was with Free-for-All that Penn faced the specter of the one-hit wonder. The album, while praised by critics, was not as successful as Penn's debut, though it had more than its share of supporters. Rolling Stone called it "stunning" and CMJ wrote that the album "exhausts any doubts" about whether March was a fluke.
  
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  Michael Redgrave
  Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.
  Redgrave was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, the son of the silent film actor Roy Redgrave and the actress Margaret Scudamore. He never knew his father, who left when Michael was only six months old to pursue a career in Australia. His mother subsequently married Captain James Anderson, a tea planter, but Redgrave greatly disliked his stepfather.
  He studied at Clifton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was a schoolmaster at Cranleigh School in Surrey before becoming an actor in 1934. There he directed the boys in Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest, but managed to play all the leading roles himself. The 'Redgrave Room' at the school was later named after him. In the new Guildford School of Acting building which opened in January 2010, there is the Sir Michael Redgrave studio.
  Redgrave made his first professional appearance at the Liverpool Playhouse on 30 August 1934 as Roy Darwin in Counsellor-at-Law (by Elmer Rice), then spent two years with its Liverpool Repertory Company where he met his future wife Rachel Kempson. They married on 18 July 1935.
  
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  Michel Blanc
  Michel Blanc (born 16 April 1952 in Courbevoie, France) is a actor and director who is noted for his roles of losers and hypochondriacs. He is frequently associated with the Splendid group, which he co-founded, along with Thierry Lhermitte, Josiane Balasko, Christian Clavier and Gérard Jugnot.
  Michel Blanc has also shown his versatility by appearing in more serious roles, such as the title role in the Patrice Leconte film Monsieur Hire.
  As actor unless otherwise specified
  
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  Michel Martelly
  Joseph Michel Martelly (born 12 February 1961), also known by his stage name "Sweet Micky", is a Haitian politician, former musician and businessman. Since 2011 he is the President of Haiti.
  On 4 April 2011, a senior Haitian official announced that Martelly had won the second round of the election against candidate Mirlande Manigat. He assumed his position of the President of Haiti on May 14, 2011.
  Martelly was born in Port-au-Prince, the middle-class son of a super market supervisor. Martelly is a self-taught keyboard player and mango seller. After graduating from high school, Martelly briefly worked for a construction company in the United States before he enlisted in the Haitian Military Academy. In 1986, after one semester, he returned to Haiti just as Jean-Claude Duvalier, then president-for-life, was heading into exile. Martelly later returned to the U.S. with his then-girlfriend, Sophia, whom he later married in a small ceremony in Miami, Florida.
  Upon their return to Haiti, Martelly had his first breakthrough in the music industry when he began playing keyboard as a fill-in musician in local venues in Pétionville and Kenscoff, upscale suburbs of Port-au-Prince.
  
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  Michel Piccoli
  Michel Piccoli (born 27 December 1925) is a French actor.
  He was born in Paris to a musical family; his mother was a pianist and his father a violinist.
  He has appeared in many different roles, from seducer to cop to gangster, in more than 170 movies. Piccoli has worked with Jean Renoir, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Lelouch, Jacques Demy, Claude Sautet, Louis Malle, Agnès Varda, Leos Carax, Luis Buñuel, Costa-Gavras, Alfred Hitchcock, Marco Ferreri, Jacques Rivette, Otar Iosseliani, Nanni Moretti, Jacques Doillon, Mario Bava, Manoel de Oliviera, Raul Ruiz, Theodoros Angelopoulos and Alain Resnais.
  He has been married three times, first to Éléonore Hirt, then for eleven years to the singer Juliette Gréco and finally to Ludivine Clerc. He has one daughter from his first marriage, Anne-Cordélia.
  Piccoli is politically active on the left, and is vocally opposed to the Front National.
  He won the Best Actor Award at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival for A Leap in the Dark. In 1982, he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival for his role in Strange Affair.
  
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  Mickey Cohen
  Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen (September 4, 1913 – July 29, 1976) was a gangster based in Los Angeles and part of the Jewish Mafia, and also had strong ties to the American Mafia from the 1930s through 1960s.
  Mickey Cohen was born on September 4, 1913, of a Jewish family. His mother Fanny had immigrated to the U.S. from Kiev, Ukraine. At age six, Cohen was selling newspapers on the street; his brothers Louie or Harry would drop him off at his regular corner, Soto and Brooklyn Streets. Soon Cohen and his brothers became involved in crime (Cohen's brother Sam, an Orthodox Jew, was an exception). In 1923, at age nine, Cohen was delivering alcohol to customers from a gin mill operated by his older brother in the drug store. Cohen was arrested that same year for this activity, but avoided prosecution due to his brother's connections.
  
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  Mickey Rourke
  Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. (born September 16, 1952) is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films.
  During the 1980s, Rourke starred in Diner, Rumble Fish, and the erotic drama 9½ Weeks, and received critical praise for his work in Barfly and Angel Heart. In 1991, Rourke, who had trained as a boxer in his early years, left acting and became a professional boxer for a period. He had supporting roles in several later films, including The Rainmaker, Buffalo '66, The Pledge, Get Carter, Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Man on Fire.
  In 2005, Rourke made his comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role in Sin City, for which he won awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Irish Film and Television Awards and the Online Film Critics Society. In the 2008 film The Wrestler, Rourke portrayed a past-his-prime wrestler, and received a 2009 Golden Globe award, a BAFTA award, and a nomination for an Academy Award.
  
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  Morgan Freeman
  Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, film director, aviator and narrator. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby. He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Freeman has appeared in many other box office hits, including Unforgiven, Glory, Seven, Deep Impact, The Sum of All Fears, Bruce Almighty, Batman Begins, March of the Penguins, The Bucket List, Wanted, The Dark Knight, and RED.
  Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Mayme Edna (née Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber who died April 27, 1961, from cirrhosis. He has three older siblings. Freeman was sent as an infant to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. His family moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Indiana; and finally Chicago, Illinois. Freeman made his acting debut at age 9, playing the lead role in a school play. He then attended Broad Street High School, later named Threadgill Elementary School, in Mississippi. At age 12, he won a statewide drama competition, and while still at Broad Street High School, he performed in a radio show based in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1955, he graduated from Broad Street, but turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to work as a mechanic in the United States Air Force.
  
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  Nicolas Cage
  Nicolas Cage (born Nicolas Kim Coppola; January 7, 1964) is an Academy Award–winning American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona (1987), The Rock (1996), Face/Off (1997), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Adaptation (2002), National Treasure (2004), Lord of War (2005), Ghost Rider (2007), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), Kick-Ass (2010), and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012).
  Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola on January 7, 1964 in Long Beach, California. His father, August Coppola, a professor of literature, and his mother, Joy Vogelsang, a dancer and choreographer, divorced in 1976. He was raised in a Catholic family. Cage's mother is of German descent and his father was of Italian descent. His paternal grandparents were composer Carmine Coppola and actress Italia Pennino, and his paternal great-grandparents were immigrants from Bernalda, Basilicata. Through his father, Cage is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, and the cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, film producer Gian-Carlo Coppola, and actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman. Cage's two brothers are New York radio personality Marc "The Cope" Coppola and director Christopher Coppola. He attended Beverly Hills High School, which is known for its many alumni who became entertainers. He aspired to act from an early age and also attended UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television. His first non-cinematic acting experience was in a school production of Golden Boy.
  
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  Norman Solomon
  Norman Solomon (born 1951) is an American journalist, media critic, antiwar activist, and current candidate for the United States House of Representatives. Solomon is a longtime associate of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). In 1997 he founded the Institute for Public Accuracy which works to provide alternative sources for journalists, and served as its executive director until 2010. Solomon's weekly column, "Media Beat", was in national syndication from 1992-2009. More recently Solomon has focused on his 2012 congressional campaign in California's 2nd congressional district.
  Solomon came under FBI scrutiny after he picketed for the desegregation of a Maryland apartment complex at age 14. As a high school senior, he drew further FBI surveillance for his efforts on behalf of the Montgomery County Student Alliance activist group. He became aware of their surveillance later, through a Freedom of Information request.
  After high school, Solomon attended Reed College in Oregon but left before graduating. It was in college that he began a lifelong commitment to peaceful protests against nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Solomon engaged in civil disobedience as part of the anti-nuclear movement, and would eventually spend 40 days in jail as a result. He made eight trips to Moscow during the 1980s, including one during which he and a leader of a veterans' group organized a sit-in at the U.S. Embassy, demanding that the U.S. join the Soviet Union in a halt to tests of nuclear bombs.
  
  wn.com/Norman_Solomon
• Pascal Duquenne
  Pascal Duquenne (b. 8 August 1970 in Vilvoorde, Belgium) is a Belgian actor. He shared the prize for a male role in 1996 Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Georges in the movie The Eighth Day, with Daniel Auteuil, who played Harry. He currently lives in Brussels. He has Down syndrome. In 2004 he received the very high civil distinction of Commander in the Order of the Crown (Belgium).
  
  
  
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  Paul Newman
  Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver, auto racing team owner, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
  Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2011, these donations exceeded $300 million.
  Newman was born in Shaker Heights (a suburb of Cleveland). He was the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková) and Arthur Sigmund Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. His father was Jewish (Paul's paternal grandparents, Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, were immigrants from Hungary and Poland). His mother, who practiced Christian Science, was born to a Slovak Roman Catholic family at Humenné, Ptičie (formerly Pticsie) in the former Kingdom of Hungary, Austria–Hungary (now Humenné in Slovakia). Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, stating that "it's more of a challenge". Newman's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur, who later became a producer and production manager.
  
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  Paul Scofield
  David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE (21 January 1922 – 19 March 2008), better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen. Noted for his distinctive voice and delivery, Scofield received an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for his performance as Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, a reprise of the role he played in the stage version at the West End and on Broadway for which he received a Tony Award.
  Scofield was born in Birmingham, England, the son of Mary and Edward Harry Scofield. When Scofield was a few weeks old, his family moved to Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, where his father served as the headmaster at the Hurstpierpoint Church of England School. At the age of 12 he began attending the Varndean Secondary School in Brighton, where he took various roles in school plays.
  Scofield began his stage career in 1940 with a debut performance in Desire Under the Elms at the Westminster Theatre, and was soon being compared to Laurence Olivier. He played at the Old Rep in Birmingham. From there he went to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford, where he starred in Walter Nugent Monck's 1947 revival of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
  
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  Peter Finch
  Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch (28 September 1916 – 14 January 1977) was a British-born Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a Best Actor award from the Golden Globes. He was the first of two people to win a posthumous Academy Award in an acting category; the other was fellow Australian Heath Ledger.
  Finch was born as Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch in London to Alicia Gladys Fisher. At the time, Alicia was married to George Finch. George Finch was born in New South Wales, Australia, but was educated in Paris and Zurich. He was a research chemist when he moved to England in 1912 and later served during the first World War with the Royal Army Ordnance Depot and the Royal Field Artillery. In 1915, at Portsmouth, in Hampshire, George married Alicia Fisher, the daughter of a Kent barrister. However, George Finch was not Peter Finch's biological father. He learned only in his mid-40s that his biological father was Wentworth Edward Dallas "Jock" Campbell, an Indian Army officer, whose adultery with Finch's mother was the cause of George and Alice's divorce, when Peter was two years old. Alicia Finch married "Jock" Campbell in 1922.
  
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  Peter Fonda
  Peter Henry Fonda (born February 23, 1940) is an American actor. He is the son of Henry Fonda, brother of Jane Fonda, and father of Bridget and Justin Fonda (by first wife Susan Brewer, stepdaughter of Noah Dietrich). Fonda is an icon of the counterculture of the 1960s.
  Fonda was born in New York City, the only son of actor Henry Fonda and his wife Frances Ford Seymour; he is the younger brother of actress Jane Fonda.
  On his eleventh birthday, he accidentally shot himself in the stomach and nearly died. Years later, he would reference this incident to John Lennon and George Harrison while taking LSD with The Beatles, and claiming "I know what it's like to be dead", which ended up becoming a direct inspiration for The Beatles song "She Said, She Said".
  Early on, Fonda studied acting in Omaha, Nebraska, his father's home town. While attending the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Fonda joined the Omaha Community Playhouse, where many actors (including his father and Marlon Brando) had begun their careers.
  
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  Peter Gabriel
  Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career. His 1986 album, So, is his most commercially successful, and the album's biggest hit, "Sledgehammer", won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, and the song is the most played music video in the history of the station.
  More recently, Gabriel has focused on producing and promoting world music and pioneering digital distribution methods for music. He has also been involved in various humanitarian efforts. Gabriel has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1987, six Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, and in 2007 he was honoured as a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his “influence on generations of music makers.” Gabriel was also awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2009, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.
  
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  Peter Mullan
  Peter Mullan (born 2 November 1959) is a Scottish actor and filmmaker.
  Mullan was born in Peterhead, Scotland, the son of Patricia (a nurse) and Charles Mullan (a lab technician at Glasgow University). The second youngest of eight children, Mullan was brought up in a working class Roman Catholic family. They later moved to Mosspark.^{[citation needed]} An alcoholic and sufferer from lung cancer, Mullan's father became increasingly tyrannical and abusive. For a brief period, Mullan was a member of a street gang while at secondary school, and worked as a bouncer in a number of south-side pubs. His father died on the day Mullan began studying economic history and drama at the University of Glasgow.
  Mullan began acting at university and continued stage acting after graduation. He had roles in several films such as Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, Braveheart, and Riff-Raff. His first full-length film, Orphans, won an award at the Venice Film Festival. In 2002, he returned to directing and screenwriting with the controversial film The Magdalene Sisters, based on life in an Irish Magdalene asylum. Mullan won a Golden Lion award from the Venice Film Festival.
  
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  Peter Sellers
  Richard Henry Sellers, CBE (8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980), known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr. Strangelove, as Clare Quilty in Lolita, and as the TV-addicted man-child Chance the gardener in his penultimate film, Being There. Actress Bette Davis once remarked of him, "He isn't an actor—he's a chameleon."
  Sellers rose to fame on the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show. His ability to speak in different accents (e.g., French, Indian, Italian, American, German, as well as British regional accents), along with his talent to portray a range of characters to comic effect, contributed to his success as a radio personality and screen actor and earned him national and international nominations and awards. Many of his characters became ingrained in public perception of his work. Sellers' private life was characterised by turmoil and crises, and included emotional problems and substance abuse. Sellers was married four times, and had three children from the first two marriages.
  
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  Ralph Nader
  Ralph Nader ( /ˈneɪdər/; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.
  Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, an NYU panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.
  Nader is a six-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. Some people claim that Nader acted as a spoiler in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, while others, including Nader, dispute this claim.
  Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose (née Bouziane) Nader, were immigrants from Lebanon and members of the Maronite Church. His family's native language is Arabic, and he has spoken it along with English since childhood. His sister, Laura Nader, is an anthropologist. His father worked in a textile mill and later owned a bakery and restaurant where he talked politics with his customers.
  
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  Ralph Richardson
  Sir Ralph David Richardson (19 December 1902 – 10 October 1983) was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films.
  Richardson first became known for his work on stage in the 1930s. In the 1940s, together with Laurence Olivier, he ran the Old Vic Company. He continued on stage and in films into the early 1980s and was especially praised for his comedic roles. In his later years he was celebrated for his theatre work with his old friend John Gielgud. Among his most famous roles were Peer Gynt, Falstaff, John Gabriel Borkman and Hirst in Pinter's No Man's Land.
  Richardson was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, the third son and youngest child of Arthur Richardson, a master at the Ladies' College, and his wife Lydia (née Russell). When he was a baby, his mother left his father and took him with her to Gloucester, where he was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith of his mother (his father and brothers were Quakers). His father supported them with a small allowance. Lydia Richardson wished Ralph to become a priest. He was an altar boy in Brighton, and was sent to the Xavierian College, but he ran away from it.
  
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  Ray Milland
  Ray Milland (3 January 1907 – 10 March 1986) was a Welsh actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best remembered for his Academy Award–winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend (1945), a sophisticated leading man opposite a corrupt John Wayne in Reap the Wild Wind (1942), the murder-plotting husband in Dial M for Murder (1954), and as Oliver Barrett III in Love Story (1970).
  Milland was born Alfred Reginald Jones (not Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones as has often been stated). His birth was registered in the March Quarter of 1907 in Neath, Wales, and he was the son of Elizabeth Annie (née Truscott) and Alfred Jones. In the 1911 census the family were living at 66 Coronation Road, Mount Pleasant, Neath, Wales. Of his parents, Milland wrote in his 1974 autobiography Wide-Eyed in Babylon, "My father was not a cruel or harsh man. Just a very quiet one. I think he was an incurable romantic and consequently a little afraid of his emotions and perhaps ashamed of them... he had been a young hussar in the Boer War and had been present at the relief of Mafeking. He never held long conversations with anyone, except perhaps with me, possibly because I was the only other male in our family. The household consisted of my mother, a rather flighty and coquettish woman much concerned with propriety and what the neighbours thought.."
  
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  Raúl Castro
  Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz (born 3 June 1931) is a Cuban politician and revolutionary who has been President of the Council of State of Cuba and the President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba since 2008; he previously exercised presidential powers in an acting capacity from 2006 to 2008. Raúl Castro was a rebel commander during the 1950s; after his older brother, Fidel Castro, took power, Raúl Castro was one of the most important figures in the new regime, serving as Minister of the Armed Forces from 1959 to 2008. As President, he is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces (Army, Navy, and Air Force) and has also been First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) since 2011.
  On 31 July 2006, Raúl Castro was designated as the President of the Council of State in a temporary transfer of power due to Fidel Castro's illness. According to the Cuban Constitution of 1976, Article 94, the First Vice President of the Council of State assumes presidential duties upon the illness or death of the president.
  
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  Raúl Juliá
  Raúl Rafael Juliá y Arcelay (March 9, 1940 – October 24, 1994) was a Puerto Rican actor.
  Born in San Juan, he gained interest in acting while still in school. Upon completing his studies, Juliá decided to pursue a career in acting. After performing in the local scene for some time, he was convinced by entertainment personality Orson Bean to move and work in New York City. Juliá, who had been bilingual since his childhood, soon gained interest in Broadway and Off-Broadway plays. He performed in mobile projects, including the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre.
  Juliá was eventually noticed by Joseph Papp, who offered him work in the New York Shakespeare Festival. After gaining notoriety, he received roles in two television series, Love of Life and Sesame Street. For his performance in Two Gentlemen of Verona, he received a nomination for the Tony Award and won a Drama Desk Award. Between 1974 and 1982, Juliá received Tony Award nominations for Where's Charley?, The Threepenny Opera and Nine. During the 1980s, he worked in several films, receiving nominations for the Golden Globe Awards, for his performance in Tempest, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, winning the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor for the latter.
  
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  Rex Harrison
  Sir Reginald Carey "Rex" Harrison (5 March 1908 – 2 June 1990) was an English actor of stage and screen. One of Harrison's best remembered film roles was that of Professor Henry Higgins in the stage and film versions of My Fair Lady. The role earned him a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award and Best Actor Oscar.
  Harrison was born in Huyton, Lancashire, and educated at Liverpool College. After a bout of childhood measles, Harrison lost most of the sight in his left eye, which on one occasion caused some on-stage difficulty. He first appeared on the stage in 1924 in Liverpool. Harrison's acting career was interrupted during World War II while serving in the Royal Air Force, reaching the rank of Flight Lieutenant. He acted in various stage productions until 11 May 1990. He acted in the West End of London when he was young, appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, which proved to be his breakthrough role.
  
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  Richard Basehart
  John Richard Basehart (August 31, 1914 – September 17, 1984) was an American actor. He starred in the 1960s television science fiction drama Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, in the role of Admiral Harriman Nelson.
  One of his most notable film roles was the acrobat known as "the Fool" in the acclaimed Italian film La Strada, directed by Federico Fellini. He also appeared as the killer in the film noir classic He Walked by Night (1948), as a psychotic member of the Hatfield clan in Roseanna McCoy (1949), as Ishmael in Moby Dick (1956), and in the drama Decision Before Dawn (1951). He was married to Italian Academy Award-nominated actress Valentina Cortese, with whom he had one son, the actor Jackie Basehart, before their divorce in 1960. Cortese and Basehart also costarred in Robert Wise's The House on Telegraph Hill (1951).
  From 1964-68, Basehart played the lead role, Admiral Harriman Nelson, on Irwin Allen's first foray into science-fiction television, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Allen would go on to produce a number of sci-fi series in the 1960s and the highly successful feature films The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), earning him the moniker "The Master of Disaster." Although Basehart started his career as a film actor, he became best known for his role on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
  
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• Richard Farnsworth
  Richard W. Farnsworth (September 1, 1920 – October 6, 2000) was an American actor and stuntman. His film career began in 1937; however, he achieved his greatest success for his performances in The Grey Fox (1982) and The Straight Story (1999), for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
  Farnsworth was born in Los Angeles, California, to a housewife mother and an engineer father. He was raised during the Great Depression. He lived with his aunt, mother, and two sisters in downtown Los Angeles after his father died when he was seven years old.
  He was working as a stable hand at a polo field in Los Angeles for six dollars a week when he was offered a chance to make seven dollars a day plus a box lunch as a stuntman. In 1937, when he was sixteen, he started by riding horses in films such as The Adventures of Marco Polo with Gary Cooper. He performed several horse-riding stunts in such films as the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races (1937) and Gunga Din (1939).
  What differentiated Farnsworth from other western actors was his gradual transition into acting from stunt work. He made uncredited appearances in numerous films, including Gone with the Wind (1939), Red River (1948), The Wild One (1953), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He was on the set of Spartacus (1960) for eleven months. He laughed when he said he did not look like a gladiator but drove a chariot. However, it was not until 1963 that he finally received his first acting credit.
  
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  River Phoenix
  River Jude Phoenix (August 23, 1970 – October 31, 1993) was an American film actor, musician, and activist. He was the oldest brother of fellow actors Rain, Joaquin, Liberty, and Summer Phoenix. Phoenix's work encompassed 24 films and television appearances, including the science fiction adventure film Explorers, the coming-of-age film Stand By Me, the action sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the independent adult drama My Own Private Idaho.
  Phoenix began acting at age 10 in television commercials. He appeared in diverse roles, making his first notable appearance in the 1986 film Stand by Me, a hugely popular coming-of-age film based on a novella by Stephen King. Phoenix made a transition into more adult-oriented roles with Running on Empty (1988), playing the son of fugitive parents in a well-received performance that earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination, and My Own Private Idaho (1991), playing a gay hustler in search of his estranged mother. For his performance in the latter, Phoenix garnered enormous praise and won a Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival, along with Best Actor from the National Society of Film Critics. He was listed by John Willis as one of twelve promising new actors of 1986.
  
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  Robert De Niro
  Robert De Niro (pronounced /dəˈnɪəroʊ/; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973. In 1974, he played the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, a role that won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  His critically acclaimed, longtime collaborations with Martin Scorsese began with 1973's Mean Streets, and earned De Niro an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in the 1980 film Raging Bull. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his roles in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Cape Fear (1991). In addition, he received nominations for his acting in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) and Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990). Also in 1990, his portrayal as Jimmy Conway in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas earned him a BAFTA nomination.
  He has earned four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: New York, New York (1977), Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). De Niro directed A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). He has received accolades for his esteemed career, including the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.
  
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  Robert 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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  Robert Mitchum
  Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time. Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir style, and is considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s.
  Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, into a Methodist family. His mother, Ann Harriet (née Gunderson), was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter, and his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was a shipyard and railroad worker. A sister, Annette, (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career) was born in 1914. James Mitchum was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919, when his son was less than 2 years old. After his death, Ann Mitchum was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. She returned to her family in Connecticut, and married a former British Army major who helped her care for the children. In September 1919 a second son, John, was born. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the Bridgeport Post.
  
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  Robert Pinsky
  Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry. His published work also includes critically acclaimed translations, including a collection of poems by Czesław Miłosz and Dante Alighieri. He teaches at Boston University and is the poetry editor at Slate.
  Robert Pinsky was born on October 20, 1940, in Long Branch, New Jersey, where he attended Long Branch High School. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned both an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing. He was a student of poet & critic Yvor Winters at Stanford.
  Early on, Pinsky was inspired by the flow and tension of jazz and the excitement that it made him feel. He said it was an incredible experience that he has tried to reproduce in his poetry. The musicality of poetry was and is extremely important to his work.
  
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  Robert Ryan
  Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor who often played hardened cops and ruthless villains.
  Ryan was born in Chicago, Illinois, the first child of Timothy Ryan and his wife Mabel Bushnell Ryan. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932, having held the school's heavyweight boxing title all four years of his attendance. After graduation, the 6′ 4" Ryan found employment as a stoker on a ship, a WPA worker, and a ranch hand in Montana.
  Ryan attempted to make a career in show business as a playwright, but had to turn to acting to support himself. He studied acting in Hollywood and appeared on stage and in small film parts during the early 1940s.
  In January 1944, after securing a contract guarantee from RKO Radio Pictures, Ryan enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served as a drill instructor at Camp Pendleton, in San Diego, California. At Camp Pendleton, he befriended writer and future director Richard Brooks, whose novel, The Brick Foxhole, he greatly admired. He also took up painting.
  
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  Robin Williams
  Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.
  Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was senator and Mississippi governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams is of English, Welsh, Irish, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and later moved to Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams studied at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd (who died August 14, 2007) and McLaurin.
  
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  Russell Crowe
  Russell Ira Crowe (born 7 April 1964) is a New Zealand born Australian actor, film producer and musician. He came to international attention for his role as Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 historical epic film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, an Empire Award for Best Actor and a London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and ten further nominations for Best Actor. Crowe appeared as the tobacco firm whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand in the 1999 film The Insider, for which he received five awards as Best Actor and seven nominations in the same category. In 2001, Crowe's portrayal of mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John F. Nash in the biopic A Beautiful Mind brought him numerous awards, including an BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor category Motion Picture Drama and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.
  
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  Sean Penn
  Sean Justin Penn (born August 17, 1960) is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his left-wing political and social activism (including humanitarian work). He is a two-time Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008), as well as the recipient of a Golden Globe Award for the former and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter.
  Penn began his acting career in television with a brief appearance in a 1974 episode of Little House on the Prairie, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in 1981's Taps and a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, Penn emerged as a prominent leading actor with the 1995 drama film Dead Man Walking, for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination and the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Penn received another two Oscar nominations for Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and I Am Sam (2001), before winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and a second one in 2008 for Milk. He has also won a Best Actor Award of the Cannes Film Festival for She's So Lovely (1997), and two Best Actor Awards at the Venice Film Festival for Hurlyburly (1998) and 21 Grams (2003).
  
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  Sephardi Jews
  Sephardi Jews (Hebrew: סְפָרַדִּי, Modern Sfaraddi Tiberian Səp̄āraddî) is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and traditions which originated in the Iberian Peninsula. Accordingly, the term Sephardic Jew refers to the Jews following the Sephardic Halakha.
  The term essentially means "Spanish". It comes from Sepharad (Hebrew: סְפָרַד, Modern Sfarád Tiberian Səp̄āráḏ), a Biblical location. This location is disputed, but "Sepharad" was identified by later Jews as the Iberian Peninsula, and still means "Spain" in modern Hebrew.^{[citation needed]}
  In other languages and scripts, "Sephardi" translates as plural Hebrew: סְפָרַדִּים, Modern Sfaraddim Tiberian Səp̄āraddîm; Spanish: Sefardíes; Portuguese: Sefarditas; Catalan: Sefardites; Basque: Sefardiak; Galician: Sefardís; Italian: Sefarditi; Greek: Σεφαρδίτες Sefardites; Bulgarian: Сефаради Sefaradi; Bosnian: Sefardi; Serbian: Сефарди Sefardi; Turkish: Sefarad, Judaeo-Spanish: Sefaradies/Sefaradim; and Arabic: سفارديون‎ Safārdīyyūn‎.
  
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  Shania Twain
  Shania Twain, OC ( /ʃəˌnaɪ.ə ˈtweɪn/; born Eilleen Regina Edwards; August 28, 1965) is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. Her album The Woman in Me (1995), brought her fame and her 1997 album Come On Over, became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time. It has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and is the ninth best-selling album in the U.S. Her fourth album, Up!, was released in November 2002. To date it has sold 20 million copies worldwide.
  Twain has won five Grammy Awards and 27 BMI Songwriter awards. She has had three albums certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and is the second best-selling artist in Canada, behind Céline Dion, with three of her studio albums certified double diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. She is the first (and currently only) female artist in history to have 3 consecutive albums reach diamond status, indicating sales of at least 10 million, certified by the RIAA. Sometimes referred to as "The Queen of Country Pop", Twain has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide and is ranked 10th best-selling artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era. She was also ranked 72nd on Billboard's "Artists of the decade" (2000–10). Most recently, Twain has her own TV series, Why Not? with Shania Twain, that premiered on the OWN on May 8, 2011. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 2, 2011.
  
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  Spencer Tracy
  Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor. Respected for his natural style and versatility, Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age. In a screen career that spanned 37 years, he was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Actor—a record he holds with Laurence Olivier—of which he won two.
  Tracy discovered his talent for acting while a student at Ripon College, and subsequently gained a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He spent seven years in the theatre, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway. Tracy's breakthrough came in 1930, when his lead performance in The Last Mile caught the attention of Hollywood. After a successful film debut in Up the River, Tracy was signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation. His five years with Fox were unremarkable, and he remained largely unknown to audiences after 25 films. In 1935, Tracy joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hollywood's most prestigious studio. His career flourished with a series of hit films, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. By the 1940s, Tracy was one of the studio's top stars. In 1942 he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, beginning a popular partnership that produced nine movies over 25 years.
  
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  Spike Lee
  Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983.
  Lee's movies have examined race relations, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. Lee has won numerous awards, including an Emmy Award. He has also received two Academy Award nominations.
  Spike Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Jacqueline Carroll (née Shelton), a teacher of arts and black literature, and William James Edward Lee III, a jazz musician and composer. Lee moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York when he was a small child. (The Fort Greene neighborhood is home to Lee's production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, and other Lee-owned or related businesses.) As a child, his mother nicknamed him "Spike." In Brooklyn, he attended John Dewey High School. Lee enrolled in Morehouse College where he made his first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn. He took film courses at Clark Atlanta University and graduated with a B.A. in Mass Communication from Morehouse College. He then enrolled in New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Film & Television.
  
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  Stephen Colbert
  Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( /koʊlˈbɛər/ or /ˈkoʊlbərt/; born May 13, 1964) is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.
  Colbert originally studied to be an actor, but became interested in improvisational theatre when he met famed Second City director Del Close while attending Northwestern University. He first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago; among his troupe mates were comedians Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, with whom he developed the critically acclaimed sketch comedy series Exit 57.
  Colbert also wrote and performed on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show before collaborating with Sedaris and Dinello again on the cult television series Strangers with Candy. He gained considerable attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet. It was his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show, however, that first introduced him to a wide audience.
  
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  Tim Robbins
  Timothy Francis "Tim" Robbins (born October 16, 1958) is an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and musician. He is the former longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon. He is known for his roles as Nuke in Bull Durham, Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, and as Dave Boyle in Mystic River, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  Robbins was born in West Covina, California, and raised in New York City, the son of Mary Robbins (née Bledsoe), an actress, and Gilbert Lee Robbins (1931–2011), a musician, folk singer, actor and former manager of The Gaslight Cafe. Robbins has two sisters, Adele and Gabrielle, and a brother, David. Robbins was raised Catholic. He moved to Greenwich Village with his family at a young age, while his father pursued a career as a member of the folk music group The Highwaymen. Robbins started doing theater at age twelve and joined the drama club at Stuyvesant High School. He spent two years at SUNY Plattsburgh and then returned to California to study at the UCLA Film School.
  
  wn.com/Tim_Robbins
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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."
  
  wn.com/Timothy_Hutton
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  Tom Conti
  Thomas "Tom" Conti (born 22 November 1941) is a Scottish actor, theatre director and novelist.
  Born Thomas Conti in Paisley, Renfrewshire, he was brought up Roman Catholic, but he considers himself anti-religious. Conti's father was Italian and his mother was Scottish.
  Conti was educated Hamilton Crescent School an independent fee-paying Catholic boys' (at that time) school in Glasgow, and at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.
  Conti is an accomplished film and television actor. He began working with the Dundee Repertory in 1959. He appeared on Broadway in Whose Life Is It Anyway? in 1979, and in London he played the lead in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell at the Garrick Theatre.
  Besides taking the leading role in the TV versions of Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes and Alan Ayckbourn's Norman Conquests, Conti appeared in the Princess and the Pea episode of the family television series Faerie Tale Theatre, guested on Friends and Cosby, and played opposite Nigel Hawthorne in a long-running series of Vauxhall Astra car advertisements in the UK during the mid 1990s.
  
  wn.com/Tom_Conti
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  Tom Cruise
  Thomas Cruise Mapother IV ( /ˈtɒməs ˈkruːz ˈmeɪpɒθər/; born July 3, 1962), widely known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has won three Golden Globe Awards for the same movies: Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jerry Maguire (1996), Magnolia (1999). He started his career with the movie Endless Love. Cruise's first appearance in a major film was in 1981's Taps. His first leading role was in the film Risky Business, released in August 1983. Cruise played the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and successful 1986 film Top Gun, and also secret agent Ethan Hunt in the series of Mission: Impossible action films.
  He has starred in a variety of other successful films, including: Rain Man (1988), Days of Thunder (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), and War of the Worlds (2005).
  Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the United Artists film studio, with Cruise as producer and star and Wagner as the chief executive. Cruise is also known for his support of and adherence to the Church of Scientology.
  
  wn.com/Tom_Cruise
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  Tom Hanks
  Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks is known for his roles in Philadelphia and as the title character in Forrest Gump, roles which won him two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor. Hanks is also known for his Oscar nominated roles in Big, Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away.
  Hanks' other acting roles include Apollo 13 as Jim Lovell, The Green Mile as Paul Edgecomb, Toy Story as Woody and Charlie Wilson's War as Charlie Wilson.
  Hanks was born in Concord, California. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks (born in Glenn County, California, on March 9, 1924 – died in Alameda, California, on January 31, 1992), was an itinerant cook. His mother, Janet Marylyn (née Frager; born in Alameda County, California, on January 18, 1932), was a hospital worker. Hanks' mother is of Portuguese ancestry, while two of his paternal great-grandparents immigrated from Britain. Hanks's parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer)^{[citation needed]}, Larry (now Lawrence M. Hanks, PhD, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Tom_Hanks
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  Ugo Tognazzi
  Ugo Tognazzi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈuɡo toɲˈɲattsi]; 23 March 1922 - 27 October 1990) was an Italian film, TV, and theatre actor, director, and screenwriter.
  Tognazzi was born in Cremona, in northern Italy but spent his youth in various localities as his father was a traveller clerk for an insurance company.
  After his return in the native city in 1936, he worked in a salami production plant. In World War II, he was called to the Army, returning home after the Armistice of September 1943. His passion for spectacles and acting dates from his early years, and also during the conflict he had organized spectacles for his fellow soldiers. In 1945 he moved to Milan, where he was enrolled in the theatrical company led by Wanda Osiris. A few years later he formed his own successful musical revue company.
  In 1950 Tognazzi made his debut for cinema, in I cadetti di Guascogna directed by Mario Mattoli. In the following year he met Raimondo Vianello, with whom he formed a successful comical duo for the new-born RAI TV (1954–1960). Their shows, sometimes containing satirical aspects, were also among the first ones to be censored in Italian television.
  
  wn.com/Ugo_Tognazzi
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  Valerie Plame
  Valerie Elise Plame Wilson (born April 19, 1963), known as Valerie Plame, Valerie E. Wilson, and Valerie Plame Wilson, is a former United States CIA Operations Officer and the author of a memoir detailing her career and the events leading up to her resignation from the CIA.
  Valerie Elise Plame was born on April 19, 1963, on Elmendorf Air Force Base, in Anchorage, Alaska, to Diane (McClintock) and Samuel Plame III. Plame's paternal grandfather was Jewish, the son of a rabbi who emigrated from Ukraine; the original family surname was "Plamevotski". Plame was raised in her paternal grandmother's and mother's Protestant religion, and was unaware of her grandfather's ancestry until she was an adult.
  Growing up in "a military family ... imbued her with a sense of public duty"; her father was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force, who worked for the National Security Agency for three years, and, according to her "close friend Janet Angstadt," her parents "are the type who are still volunteering for the Red Cross and Meals on Wheels in the Philadelphia suburb where they live," having moved to that area while Plame was still in school.
  
  wn.com/Valerie_Plame
• Victor Banerjee
  Victor Banerjee (Bengali: ভিক্টর ব্যানার্জী, Hindi: विक्टर बनर्जी) (born 15 October 1946) is an Indian actor who appears in Hindi, Bengali and English language films. He has also appeared on a number of TV series on Indian television. He has worked for prominent directors like Jerry London, Shyam Benegal, Satyajit Ray, Ram Gopal Varma, Roman Polanski, James Ivory, Mrinal Sen and David Lean.
  Banerjee was born to a of Bengali Hindu family and is a descendant of Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, a leading intellectual, a prominent man of his time and the first president of the Indian National Congress (1885).
  He had his schooling in St. Edmund's, Shillong, and graduated in English Literature from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta.
  In 1984, he acted as Dr. Aziz Ahmed in David Lean's film of A Passage to India, bringing him to the attention of Western audiences. Victor was nominated for BAFTA award for this role in 1986. He won two other awards for this role: Evening Standard British Film Award and NBR Award (National Board Review, USA).
  
  wn.com/Victor_Banerjee
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  Victor Sjöström
  Victor Sjöström (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈvɪktɔɾ ˈɧœˈstɾœm] ( listen); in the United States sometimes known as Victor Seastrom) (20 September 1879 – 3 January 1960) was a Swedish actor, screenwriter, and film director.
  Born in Silbodal, in the Värmland region of Sweden, he was only a year old when his father, Olof Adolf Sjöström, moved the family to Brooklyn, New York. His mother died when he was seven years old in 1886. Sjöström returned to Sweden where he lived with relatives in Stockholm, beginning his acting career at 17 as a member of a touring theater company.
  Drawn from the stage to the fledgling motion picture industry, he made his first film in 1912 under the direction of Mauritz Stiller. Between then and 1923, he directed another forty-one films in Sweden, some of which are now lost. Those surviving include The Sons of Ingmar (1919), Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), all based on stories by the Nobel-prize winning novelist Selma Lagerlöf. They confirm him as one the very greatest of silent film directors, who helped to create a unique idiom with qualities quite different from those of sound cinema. Many of his films from the period are marked by subtle character portrayal, fine storytelling and evocative settings in which the Swedish landscape often plays a key psychological role. The naturalistic quality of his films was enhanced by his (then revolutionary) preference for on-location filming, especially in rural and village settings.
  
  wn.com/Victor_Sjöström
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  Walter Huston
  Walter Thomas Huston ( /ˈwɔːltər ˈhjuːstən/; April 5, 1883 – April 7, 1950) was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.
  Huston was born in York County, Ontario, the son of Elizabeth (née McGibbon) and Robert Moore Huston, a provincial farmer who founded a construction company. He was of Scottish and Irish descent.
  Huston began his Broadway career in 1924. Once talkies began in Hollywood, he achieved fame in character roles. His first major role was in 1929's The Virginian with Gary Cooper. He appeared in the Broadway theatrical adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel Dodsworth in 1934 and the play's film version two years later.
  Huston remained busy throughout the 1930s and 1940s, both on stage and screen (becoming one of America's most distinguished actors); he performed "September Song" in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938 (his grandaughter Anjelica Huston sang it on the May 7, 2012 episode of the NBC TV series "Smash"). Among his films are Abraham Lincoln (1930), Rain (1932), Gabriel Over the White House (1933), The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and Mission to Moscow (1943), a pro-Soviet World War II propaganda film as Ambassador Joseph E. Davies. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1948 for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was directed by his son, John Huston. His last film was The Furies in 1950 with Barbara Stanwyck.
  
  wn.com/Walter_Huston
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  Warren Beatty
  Warren Beatty ( /ˈbeɪti/ BAY-tee; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including winning the Best Director Award and its highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. He has been nominated for 16 Golden Globe Awards and won six, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he received in 2007. Only Beatty and Orson Welles have been nominated for producer, director, writer and actor in the same film. Welles did it once (for Citizen Kane), Beatty did it twice (for Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
  Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Nova Scotia-born teacher, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a Ph.D. of educational psychology, a public school administrator, and dealt in real estate. Beatty's grandparents were also educators. The family was Baptist. In 1945, the family moved from Richmond to Arlington, Virginia. Beatty's sister is the multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine.
  
  wn.com/Warren_Beatty
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/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
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  Woody Allen
  Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an award-winning American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, and playwright, whose career spans over half a century.
  He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for television and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen started performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.
  By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into more dramatic material influenced by European art films during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s. Allen often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. The best-known of his over 40 films include the Academy Award-winners Annie Hall (1977), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Midnight in Paris (2011); and the Golden Globe-winning The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Critic Roger Ebert has described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema."
  
  wn.com/Woody_Allen
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  Yul Brynner
  Yul Brynner (Russian: Юлий Борисович Бринер, Yuliy Borisovich Bryner; July 11, 1920  – October 10, 1985) was a Russian-born stage and film actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Mongkut, king of Siam, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the film version; he also played the role more than 4,500 times onstage. He is also remembered as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster The Ten Commandments, General Bounine in Anastasia and Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven. Brynner was noted for his distinctive voice and for his shaven head, which he maintained as a personal trademark long after adopting it for his initial role in The King and I. He was also a photographer and the author of two books.
  Yul Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Bryner in 1920. He exaggerated his background and early life for the press, claiming that he was born Taidje Khan of part-Mongol-Tatar parentage, on the Russian island of Sakhalin. In reality, he was born at home in a four-storey residence at 15 Aleutskaya Street, Vladivostok, in the Far Eastern Republic (present-day Primorsky Krai, Russia). He also occasionally referred to himself as Julius Briner,Jules Bryner, or Youl Bryner. A biography written by his son, Rock Brynner, in 1989 clarified these issues.
  
  wn.com/Yul_Brynner

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