Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

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

Applied mathematics

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

Related Topics

• Electromagnetic Spectrum
• Linear Equations
• Applied Physics
• Nano Technology
• Engineering Sciences
• Mathematical Medicine
• Fluid dynamics
• Computational Mathematics
• Gamma Ray Optics
• Onfrared Optics
• Relative Velocity
• Iciam
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• Biomedical Engineering
• Neuroscience Research
• Quantum Cosmology
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• 
  

• 
  Brooklyn College
  Coordinates: 40°37′52″N 73°57′9″W / 40.63111°N 73.9525°W / 40.63111; -73.9525
  Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.
  Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College (then a women's college) and the City College of New York (then a men's college). With the merger of these branches, Brooklyn College became the first public coeducational liberal arts college in New York City. The 26-acre (110,000 m²) campus is known for its great beauty, and is often regarded as "the poor man's Harvard" because of its low tuition and reputation for academic excellence (former President, Robert Hess, responded to the moniker by saying "I like to think of Harvard as the rich man's Brooklyn College").
  The 2003 edition of The Best 345 Colleges, published by The Princeton Review, ranked Brooklyn College #1 for Most Beautiful Campus and in the Top Ten for Best Academic Value, Diversity, and Location. The College ranked in the top 2 nationally for the second consecutive year in Princeton Review’s 2006 guidebook, America’s Best Value Colleges. Brooklyn College was ranked as one of America’s Top Fifty Best Value Public Colleges for 2009 by The Princeton Review in its annual survey.
  
  wn.com/Brooklyn_College
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  Cleveland
  Cleveland ( /ˈkliːvlənd/) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles (97 km) west of the Pennsylvania border. It was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, and became a manufacturing center owing to its location on the lake shore, as well as being connected to numerous canals and railroad lines. Cleveland's economy has diversified sectors that include manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, and biomedical. Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
  As of the 2010 Census, the city proper had a total population of 396,815 and was the 45th largest city in the United States, and the second largest city in Ohio. It is the center of Greater Cleveland, the largest metropolitan area in Ohio. The Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor Metropolitan Statistical Area in 2011 ranked as the 28th largest in the United States with 2,068,283 people. Cleveland is part of the larger Cleveland-Akron-Elyria Combined Statistical Area, which in 2011 had a population of 2,871,084, and ranked as the country's 15th largest.
  
  wn.com/Cleveland
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  Columbia University
  Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is an American private Ivy League research university located in New York City, New York, United States. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. Today the university operates seven Columbia Global Centers overseas in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Santiago and Nairobi.
  The university was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. After the American Revolutionary War, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. The University now operates under a 1787 charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees, and in 1896 it was further renamed Columbia University. That same year, the university's campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its location in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, where it occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (0.13 km²). The university encompasses twenty schools and is affiliated with numerous institutions, including Teachers College, Barnard College, and the Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America as well as the Juilliard School.
  
  wn.com/Columbia_University
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  Hollywood
  Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema. Today, much of the movie industry has dispersed into surrounding areas such as the Westside neighborhood, and the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys, but significant auxiliary industries, such as editing, effects, props, post-production, and lighting companies remain in Hollywood, as does the backlot of Paramount Pictures.
  On February 16, 2005, California Assembly Members Jackie Goldberg and Paul Koretz introduced a bill to require California to keep specific records on Hollywood as if it were independent, although it is not the typical practice of the City of Los Angeles to establish specific boundaries for districts or neighborhoods. For this to be done, the boundaries were defined. The bill was unanimously supported by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles City Council. Assembly Bill 588 was approved by the Governor of California on August 28, 2006, and now the district of Hollywood has official borders. The border can be loosely described as the area east of West Hollywood, south of Mulholland Drive, Laurel Canyon, Cahuenga Boulevard, and Barham Boulevard, and the cities of Burbank and Glendale, north of Melrose Avenue and west of the Golden State Freeway and Hyperion Avenue. This includes all of Griffith Park and Los Feliz^{[citation needed]} – two areas that were hitherto considered separate from Hollywood by most Angelenos. The population of the district, including Los Feliz, as of the 2000 census was 123,436 and the median household income was $33,409 in 1999.
  
  wn.com/Hollywood
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  Museum of Modern Art
  Coordinates: 40°45′41″N 73°58′40″W / 40.761484°N 73.977664°W / 40.761484; -73.977664
  The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The museum's collection offers an unparalleled overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film, and electronic media.
  MoMA's library and archives hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, as well as individual files on more than 70,000 artists. The archives contain primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art. It also houses a restaurant, The Modern, run by Alsace-born chef Gabriel Kreuther.
  The idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1928 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan. They became known variously as "the Ladies", "the daring ladies" and "the adamantine ladies". They rented modest quarters for the new museum in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue (corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street) in Manhattan, and it opened to the public on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, to become president of the new museum. Abby became treasurer. At the time, it was America's premier museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism.
  
  wn.com/Museum_of_Modern_Art
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  North Carolina
  North Carolina (ⁱ/ˌnɔrθ kærəˈlaɪnə/) is a state in the Southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina is the 28th most extensive and the 10th most populous of the 50 United States.
  North Carolina is comprised of 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte. In the past five decades, North Carolina's economy has undergone a transition from heavy reliance upon tobacco and furniture making to a more diversified economy with engineering, biotechnology, and finance sectors.
  North Carolina has a wide range of elevations, from sea level on the coast to 6,684 feet (2,037 m) at Mount Mitchell, the highest point in the Eastern US. The climate of the coastal plains is strongly influenced by the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone. More than 300 miles (500 km) from the coast, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.
  
  wn.com/North_Carolina
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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
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  Stanford University
  Coordinates: 37°26′N 122°10′W / 37.43°N 122.17°W / 37.43; -122.17
  The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is an American private research university located in Stanford, California on an 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus near Palo Alto, California, United States. It is situated in the northwestern Silicon Valley, approximately 20 miles (32 km) northwest of San Jose and 37 miles (60 km) southeast of San Francisco.
  Leland Stanford, a Californian railroad tycoon and politician, and his wife Jane Lathrop Stanford founded the university in 1891 in honor of their son, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid two months before his 16th birthday. The university was established as a coeducational and nondenominational institution, but struggled financially after the senior Stanford's 1893 death and after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would become known as Silicon Valley. By 1970, Stanford was home to a linear accelerator, was one of the original four ARPANET nodes, and had transformed itself into a major research university in computer science, mathematics, natural sciences, and social sciences.
  
  wn.com/Stanford_University
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  Utah
  Utah (/ˈjuːtɔː/ or ⁱ/ˈjuːtɑː/) (Arapaho: Wo'tééneihí' ) is a state in the Western United States. It became the 45th state admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896. Utah is the 13th-most extensive, the 34th-most populous, and the 10th-least-densely populated of the 50 United States. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,817,222 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the sixth most urbanized in the U.S. The name "Utah" is derived from the name of the Ute tribe and means "people of the mountains" in the Ute language. Utah is bordered by Arizona on the south, Colorado on the east, Wyoming on the northeast, Idaho on the north and Nevada on the west. It also touches a corner of New Mexico.
  Utah is the most religiously homogeneous state in the Union. It is home to the Salt Lake Temple, and approximately 60% of Utahns are reported to be members of LDS Church which greatly influences Utah culture and daily life.
  
  wn.com/Utah
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  Yale University
  Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university located in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.
  Incorporated as the "Collegiate School," the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed "Yale College" to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. school to award the PhD. Yale became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. Yale College was transformed, beginning in the 1930s, through the establishment of residential colleges: 12 now exist and two more are planned. Yale employs over 1,100 faculty to teach and advise about 5,300 undergraduate and 6,100 graduate and professional students. Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.
  
  wn.com/Yale_University

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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
• Alan Arkin
  Alan Wolf Arkin (born March 26, 1934) is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as Wait Until Dark, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, Marley & Me, and Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2006. He is the father of actors Adam Arkin, Anthony Arkin, and Matthew Arkin.
  Arkin was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Beatrice (née Wortis), a teacher, and David I. Arkin, a painter and writer who mostly worked as a teacher. Arkin was raised in a Jewish family with "no emphasis on religion"; his maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Odessa, Ukraine. The family moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles when Arkin was 11 years old, but an eight-month Hollywood strike cost Arkin's father a set designer job he had wanted to take. During the 1950s Red Scare, Arkin's parents were accused of being Communists, which led to David losing his job when he refused to answer questions about his political affiliation. David challenged the dismissal and was ultimately vindicated, but only after his death.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Arkin
• 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 Baldwin
  Alexander Rae "Alec" Baldwin III (born April 3, 1958) is an American actor who has appeared on film, stage, and television.
  Baldwin first gained recognition through television for his work, for two seasons (6 and 7), on the soap opera Knots Landing, in the role of Joshua Rush. He has since played both leading and supporting roles in films such as Beetlejuice (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Marrying Man (1991), The Shadow (1994), Notting Hill (1999), The Aviator (2004) and The Departed (2006). His performance in the 2003 film The Cooler garnered him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  Since 2006 he has starred as Jack Donaghy on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, receiving critical acclaim for his performance and winning two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards for his work on the show, making him the male performer with most SAG Awards ever.
  He is the eldest of the Baldwin brothers working in Hollywood.
  Baldwin was born on Long Island, New York, the son of Carolyn Newcomb (née Martineau) and Alexander Rae Baldwin, Jr., a high school history/social studies teacher and football coach. Baldwin was raised in a Roman Catholic family of Irish, English, and French descent. He has three younger brothers, Daniel, William, and Stephen, who also became actors. Baldwin has two sisters, Beth Baldwin Keuchler (born 1955), and Jane Baldwin Sasso (born 1965).^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Alec_Baldwin
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  Allen Ginsberg
  Irwin Allen Ginsberg ( /ˈɡɪnzbərɡ/; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression. Ginsberg is best known for his epic poem "Howl", in which he celebrated his fellow "angel-headed hipsters" and harshly denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. This poem is one of the classic poems of the Beat Generation. The poem, which was dedicated to writer Carl Solomon, opens:
  madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
  looking for an angry fix...</poem> In October 1955, Ginsberg and five other unknown poets gave a free reading at an experimental art gallery in San Francisco. Ginsberg's "Howl" electrified the audience. According to fellow poet Michael McClure, it was clear "that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America and its supporting armies and navies and academies and institutions and ownership systems and power support bases." In 1957, "Howl" attracted widespread publicity when it became the subject of an obscenity trial in which a San Francisco prosecutor argued it contained "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language." The poem seemed especially outrageous in 1950s America because it depicted both heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made homosexual acts a crime in every U.S. state. "Howl" reflected Ginsberg's own homosexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner. Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, adding, "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"
  
  wn.com/Allen_Ginsberg
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  Andy Serkis
  Andrew Clement "Andy" Serkis (born 20 April 1964) is an English film actor, director and author.
  He is popularly known for playing through motion capture to animate and voice computer-generated characters: Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and its upcoming prequel The Hobbit, King Kong in the eponymous 2005 film, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin.
  Andrew also earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of Ian Brady in the British television film Longford. Serkis's motion captured work have been critically acclaimed, especially as Gollum for which he earned several award nominations, becoming the first motion captured actor to win a Empire Award, a Saturn Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
  Serkis, one of five children, was born and brought up in Ruislip Manor in west London. His mother, Lylie (née Weech), was English and taught disabled children; his father, Clement Serkis, was an Iraqi gynaecologist of Armenian ethnicity. His ancestors' original surname had been "Sarkisian".
  
  wn.com/Andy_Serkis
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  Aron Ralston
  Aron Lee Ralston (born October 27, 1975) is an American outdoorsman, engineer and motivational speaker.
  He is widely known for having survived a canyoneering accident in south-eastern Utah in 2003, during which he was forced to amputate his own right arm with a dull multi-tool in order to free himself from a dislodged boulder, which had trapped him there for five days and seven hours. Even after he had escaped, he still had to climb down a 65 foot (around 20m) sheer cliff face to reach safety.
  The incident is documented in Ralston's autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and is the subject of the film 127 Hours.
  Ralston was born on October 27, 1975, in Indianapolis, but he and his family moved to Denver when he was age 11. He is a graduate of Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado. He received his college degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, finishing with degrees in mechanical engineering and French, with a minor in piano. At Carnegie Mellon, he served as a resident assistant, studied abroad, and was an active intramural sports participant. He left his job as a mechanical engineer with Intel in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2002 in order to pursue a life of climbing mountains. He had the goal of climbing all of Colorado's "fourteeners" — peaks over 14,000 ft high, of which there are 53 or 54, depending upon the definition parameters — solo and during winter (a feat that had never been recorded). He has subsequently achieved this goal.
  
  wn.com/Aron_Ralston
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  Bill Clinton
  William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Many of his policies have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.
  Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became both a student leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since 2009 and was a Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the National Governors Association.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Clinton
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  Bill Murray
  William James "Bill" Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor, comedian and golfer. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack (1980), Ghostbusters (1984), and Groundhog Day (1993). Murray gained additional critical acclaim later in his career, starring in Lost in Translation (2003), that earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, and a series of films directed by Wes Anderson, including Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012).
  Murray was born and raised in Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, the son of Lucille (née Collins), a mail room clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II, a lumber salesman. Murray's father died in 1967 from complications of diabetes when Bill was 17 years old. Murray, along with his eight siblings, was raised in an Irish American family. Three of his siblings are actors: John Murray, Joel Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray. A sister, Nancy, is an Adrian Dominican nun in Michigan, who has traveled the United States in a one-woman programme, portraying St. Catherine of Siena.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Murray
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  Bill Nighy
  William Francis "Bill" Nighy (pronounced NYE  /ˈnaɪ/; born 12 December 1949) is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof. Mark Carleton, whose extra-marital affairs kept him "vital".
  He became known around the world in 2003 for his critically acclaimed performance in Love Actually. Other notable roles in cinema include his portrayal of Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, as well as Viktor in the Underworld film series.
  He is also known for his roles in the films Lawless Heart, I Capture the Castle, Shaun of the Dead, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Hot Fuzz, Valkyrie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, and Rango. His performances were also acclaimed in the State of Play series and in the TV movies The Girl in the Café, Gideon's Daughter and Page Eight, for which he earned Golden Globe nominations, winning one for Gideon's Daughter.
  
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  Billy Crystal
  William Edward "Billy" Crystal (born March 14, 1948) is an American actor, writer, producer, comedian, and film director. He gained prominence in the 1970s for playing Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom Soap and became a Hollywood film star during the late 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the critical and box office successes When Harry Met Sally... and City Slickers. He has hosted the Academy Awards nine times, including the 84th Academy Awards in 2012.
  Crystal was born in the Doctor's Hospital in Manhattan and raised on Long Island in Long Beach, the son of Helen (née Gabler), a housewife, and Jack Crystal, a record company executive and jazz producer who also owned and operated the Commodore Record store. His babysitter was occasionally Billie Holiday. His uncle was musician and songwriter Milt Gabler, and his brother, Richard "Rip" Crystal, is a television producer. Crystal grew up in a Jewish family that he has described as "large" and "loving".
  After graduation from Long Beach High School, Crystal attended Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia on a baseball scholarship, having learned the game from his father, who pitched for St. John's University. Crystal never played a game at Marshall because the program was suspended during his freshman year, and because he was too busy being the Editor in Chief of The BG News from 1969–70. He did not return to Marshall as a sophomore, staying back in New York with his future wife. He instead attended Nassau Community College and later New York University, where he graduated in 1970 with a BFA from its Tisch School of the Arts.
  
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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.
  
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  Brian Dennehy
  Brian Mannion Dennehy (born July 9, 1938) is an American actor of film, stage and screen.
  Dennehy was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Hannah and Edward Dennehy, who was a wire service editor for the Associated Press; he has two brothers, Michael and Edward. Dennehy is of Irish ancestry and was raised Roman Catholic. The family relocated to Long Island, New York, where Dennehy attended Chaminade High School in the town of Mineola.
  Rather than immediately chase his dreams of stage and screen, Dennehy enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1959, actively serving until 1963. Although he said in numerous interviews that he had spent five years fighting in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, even telling harrowing tales of being hit by shrapnel, it was revealed in the 1998 book Stolen Valor by B.G. Burkett that Dennehy had never served overseas at all during his time in the military. Later that year, Dennehy admitted to the tabloid The Globe "I lied about serving in Vietnam and I'm sorry. That was very wrong of me. There is no real excuse for that. I was a peace-time Marine, and I got out in 1963 without ever serving in Vietnam. I started the story that I had been in 'Nam, and I got stuck with it. Then I didn't know how to set the record straight." Nonetheless, in 2007 Dennehy once again told a reporter that he had served in Vietnam, this time Joanne Kaufman of the Wall Street Journal.
  
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  Chiwetel Ejiofor
  Chiwetelu Umeadi "Chiwetel" Ejiofor,OBE (pronounced /ˈtʃuːwɨtɛl ˈɛdʒi.oʊfɔr/ CHEW-i-tel EJ-i-oh-for; born 10 July 1977) is a British actor of stage and screen. He has received numerous acting awards and award nominations, including the 2006 BAFTA Awards Rising Star, three Golden Globe Awards' nominations, and the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in Othello.
  Ejiofor was born in London's Forest Gate, to Nigerian parents who belonged to the Igbo ethnic group. His father, Arinze, was a doctor, and his mother, Obiajulu, was a pharmacist. In 1988, when Ejiofor was 11, tragedy occurred during a family trip to Nigeria for a wedding. After the celebrations, his father and Ejiofor were driving to Lagos, when their car was involved in a head-on crash with a lorry. His father was killed, but Ejiofor survived despite being badly injured, receiving the trademark scars on his forehead. Ejiofor began acting in school plays at the age of thirteen at Dulwich College and joined the National Youth Theatre. He played the title role in Othello at the Bloomsbury Theatre in September 1995, and again at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow in 1996 when he starred opposite Rachael Stirling, who played Desdemona.
  
  wn.com/Chiwetel_Ejiofor
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  Chris Rock
  Christopher Julius "Chris" Rock III (born February 7, 1965) is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director.
  After working as a standup comic and appearing in small film roles, Rock came to wider prominence as as a cast member of Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. He went on to more prominent film roles, and a series of acclaimed comedy specials for HBO.
  He was voted in the US as the 5th greatest stand-up comedian of all time by Comedy Central. He was also voted in the UK as the 9th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups in 2007, and again in the updated 2010 list as the 8th greatest stand-up comic.
  Rock was born in Andrews, South Carolina. Shortly after his birth, his parents moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. A few years later, they relocated and settled in the working-class area of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His mother, Rosalie (née Tingman), was a teacher and social worker for the mentally handicapped; his father, Julius Rock, was a former truck driver and newspaper deliveryman. Julius died in 1988 after ulcer surgery. His younger brothers Tony, Kenny and Jordan are also in the entertainment business. His older half-brother, Charles, died in 2006 after a long struggle with alcoholism. Rock has said that he was influenced by the performing style of his paternal grandfather, Allen Rock, a preacher.
  
  wn.com/Chris_Rock
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  Christopher Plummer
  Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer, CC (born December 13, 1929) is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1958's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include The Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther, and The Man Who Would Be King.
  In a career that spans seven decades and includes substantial roles in each of the dramatic arts, Plummer is probably best known to audiences as the autocratic widower Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp in the hit 1965 musical film The Sound of Music alongside Julie Andrews. Plummer has also ventured into various television projects, including the legendary miniseries The Thorn Birds.
  His most recent film roles include the The Insider as Mike Wallace, the Disney-Pixar 2009 film Up as Charles Muntz, the Shane Acker production 9 as 1, The Last Station as Leo Tolstoy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as Doctor Parnassus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Henrik Vanger, and Beginners as Hal.
  Plummer has won numerous awards and accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a SAG Award, and a BAFTA Award. With his win at the age of 82 in 2012 for Beginners, Plummer is the oldest actor ever to win an Academy Award.
  
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  Danny Boyle
  Daniel "Danny" Boyle (born 20 October 1956) is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for his work on films such as Slumdog Millionaire, Shallow Grave, 127 Hours, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Trainspotting. For Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle won numerous awards in 2008, including the Academy Award for Best Director. Boyle was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2008 Austin Film Festival, where he also introduced that year's AFF Audience Award Winner Slumdog Millionaire. On 17 June 2010, it was announced that he will be the Artistic Director for the 2012 Olympic games opening ceremony.
  Boyle was born on 20 October 1956 in Radcliffe, Lancashire, (now in the modern day metropolitan borough of Bury, Greater Manchester) into a working-class Irish Catholic family. His mother was from Ballinasloe in County Galway, and his father was born in England to an Irish family.
  It was a very strict, Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years, I was supposed to be a priest and really, it was my mother's fondest wish that I would become one.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Boyle
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  Danny McBride
  Daniel Richard "Danny" McBride (born December 29, 1976) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, producer, screenwriter, and voice artist.
  In 2006, he played one of the lead roles in the low-budget comedy film The Foot Fist Way, which he wrote with friends and frequent collaborators Jody Hill and Ben Best. McBride appeared as a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on February 26, 2008 as the character Fred Simmons of The Foot Fist Way and advertised the new soft drink flavor "mountain mist" for Gatorade. McBride has appeared in the comedy films Hot Rod, The Heartbreak Kid, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Observe and Report, Due Date, and Your Highness. He currently writes and stars in the HBO comedy Eastbound & Down, about a washed up former major league baseball pitcher with anger management issues, also a collaboration with Hill and Best. The series is produced by Gary Sanchez Productions and the pilot episode premiered February 15, 2009. It features guest appearances from frequent collaborators Will Ferrell and Craig Robinson. On April 8, 2009, HBO announced it had renewed the series for a second season. In March 2009, McBride was offered a contract to play professional baseball with the Pensacola Pelicans, a minor league team in the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball. He received the offer for his role as Kenny Powers on Eastbound & Down. In addition, in 2010, he signed an endorsement deal with K-Swiss shoes, again performing in character as Powers. On October 27, 2010, it was announced that HBO had renewed Eastbound & Down for a third season. In 2011, he appeared as an antagonist in 30 Minutes or Less. He also played the eponymous roadie in the Tenacious D music video for Roadie in 2012.
  
  wn.com/Danny_McBride
• Dave Franco
  David John "Dave" Franco (born June 12, 1985) is an American television, film and voice actor who played Cole Aaronson on season nine of Scrubs. He also recently co-starred in the film 21 Jump Street, playing the role of Eric Molson. Franco is the brother of actor James Franco.
  Franco was born in Palo Alto, California, the son of Betsy (née Verne), a poet, author and editor, and Doug Franco (1948-2011), who met as students at Stanford University. His maternal grandmother, Mitzi Levine Verne, runs the Verne Art Gallery, a prominent art gallery in Cleveland. Franco's father is of Portuguese and Swedish descent and Franco's mother is Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Russia. Dave grew up in California with his two brothers, Tom Franco and Hollywood actor James Franco.
  MTV Networks' NextMovie.com named him one of the Breakout Stars to Watch for in 2011.
  
  wn.com/Dave_Franco
• David Cromer
  David Cromer (born October 17, 1964) is an American theatre director and stage actor. He has received recognition for his work Off-Broadway and in his native Chicago. Cromer has won or been nominated for numerous awards, including winning the Lucille Lortel Award and Obie Award for his direction of Our Town. He was nominated for the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for his direction of The Adding Machine.
  Born the third of four sons to Richard and Louise Cromer, David was raised in Skokie, Illinois. He dropped out of high school his junior year (later acquiring a GED), and attended Columbia College Chicago.
  He was nominated for or won the Joseph Jefferson Award for his work in Chicago productions, winning for Angels in America Parts I and II in 1998, The Price in 2002, and The Cider House Rules in 2003. In 2005, Cromer made his Off-Broadway debut directing Austin Pendleton's Orson's Shadow at the Barrow Street Theatre. The production originated at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. His 2008 production of a musical adaptation of The Adding Machine also moved to Off-Broadway from Chicago and received wide critical acclaim, receiving six Lucille Lortel Award nominations in the 2008 season, more than any other show. Cromer received a nomination for the 2008 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Director of a Musical, for The Adding Machine. It is now being produced in regional theaters around the country.
  
  wn.com/David_Cromer
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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.
  
  wn.com/Dennis_Quaid
• Derek Luke
  Derek Luke (born April 24, 1974) is an American actor. He won the Independent Spirit Award for his big-screen debut performance in the 2002 film Antwone Fisher, directed and produced by Denzel Washington.
  Luke was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of pianist Marjorie Dixon and Guyanese native Maurice Luke, a former actor. He graduated from Linden High School, Linden, NJ, Class of 1993.
  Luke played one of the four male leads in Spike Lee's 2008 war film Miracle at St. Anna, replacing Wesley Snipes, who had to leave the film due to his highly-publicized tax problems.
  Luke played a small part as a nurse in the 1999 episode "White Collar" of the sitcom The King of Queens, and appeared on on the NBC show Trauma. He played one of the group member of Mayhem in the Moesha episode "Mayhem at the Jam Esp' (March 19, 2001).
  He plays Alicia Keys' love interest in her music video for "Teenage Love Affair". He played singer Monica's love interest in the her music video for "So Gone". Luke played Sean 'Puffy' Combs in the 2009 film Notorious, and James 'Boobie' Miles in the 2004 film Friday Night Lights.
  
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  Djimon Hounsou
  Djimon Diaw Hounsou (pronounced [dʒimɔ̃ hũsu];^{[need tone]} born April 24, 1964) is a Beninese actor and model. As an actor, Hounsou has been nominated for two Academy Awards.
  Djimon Hounsou was born in Cotonou, Benin, in 1964, to lbertine and Pierre Hounsou, a cook. He emigrated to Lyon in France at the age of thirteen with his brother, Edmond. In 1987, he became a model and established a career in Paris. He moved to the U.S. in 1990.
  In 1989 he appeared in a music video of Straight Up by Paula Abdul. Hounsou's film debut was in the 1990 Sandra Bernhard film Without You I’m Nothing, and he has had television parts on Beverly Hills, 90210 and ER and a guest starring role on Alias, but received a larger role in the science fiction film Stargate. His first on-screen appearance was in the 1990 Janet Jackson video “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” from Rhythm Nation 1814, which co-starred Antonio Sabàto, Jr. He also starred in a 2002 Gap commercial directed by Peter Lindbergh, dancing to a rendition of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom" by Arrested Development's Baba Oje.
  
  wn.com/Djimon_Hounsou
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  Ellen DeGeneres
  Ellen Lee DeGeneres ( /dɨˈdʒɛnərəs/; born January 26, 1958) is an American stand-up comedian, television host and actress. She hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
  DeGeneres has hosted both the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmys. As a film actress, she starred in Mr. Wrong, appeared in EDtv and The Love Letter, and provided the voice of Dory in the Disney-Pixar animated film Finding Nemo, for which she was awarded a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first and only time a voice performance won a Saturn Award. She was a judge on American Idol for one year, having joined the show in its ninth season. She also starred in two television sitcoms, Ellen from 1994 to 1998 and The Ellen Show from 2001 to 2002. During the fourth season of Ellen in 1997, DeGeneres came out publicly as a lesbian in an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Shortly afterwards, her character Ellen Morgan also came out to a therapist played by Winfrey, and the series went on to explore various LGBT issues including the coming out process. She has won thirteen Emmys and numerous other awards for her work and charitable efforts.
  
  wn.com/Ellen_DeGeneres
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  Emile Hirsch
  Emile Davenport Hirsch (born March 13, 1985) is an American television and film actor. He began performing in the late 1990s, appearing in several television films and series, and became known as a film actor after roles in Lords of Dogtown, The Emperor's Club, The Girl Next Door, Alpha Dog, and Into the Wild. In 2008, Hirsch starred in Speed Racer and Milk. He participated in Summit on the Summit, an expedition to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness of the need for clean water in the world.
  Hirsch was born in Topanga, California. His mother, Margaret Esther (née Davenport), is a visual artist and teacher who designed pop-up books, and his father, David M. Hirsch, is an entrepreneur, manager, and producer. His older sister, Jenny, introduced him to acting when they were enrolled at the Will Geer Theatricum, a summer drama camp in Topanga. Hirsch was raised in Los Angeles, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lived with his mother for several years after his parents divorced. He attended Topanga Canyon Elementary School, Paul Revere Middle School and the Academy of Music at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles. Hirsch was a varsity baseball player who set a California state record in his time at Paul Revere Middle School for the most stolen bases in a season, with 156.^{[citation needed]} "I was pretty good," Hirsch said.^{[citation needed]} Hirsch left Hamilton High School halfway through his senior year in order to pursue his career, later graduating from Beach High School,^{[citation needed]} an independent private high school in Northern California.
  
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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.
  
  wn.com/Geoffrey_Rush
• Green Goblin
  The Green Goblin is a fictional character, a supervillain who appears in the comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, and first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #14 (July 1964).
  Although many characters have taken up this identity, the most well-known is the original Green Goblin, Norman Osborn. Osborn was originally an amoral industrialist head of OSCORP and father of Spider-Man's best friend, Harry Osborn, who took a serum which enhanced his physical abilities and intellect but also drove him to insanity. He adopted a Halloween-themed appearance, dressing in a goblin costume, riding on a bat-shaped "Goblin Glider", and using an arsenal of high-tech weapons, notably grenade-like "Pumpkin Bombs", to terrorize New York City. He is one of Spider-Man's most persistent foes, and many consider him to be one of the archenemies of Spider-Man, being directly responsible for numerous tragedies in Spider-Man's life, such as the death of Gwen Stacy and the Clone Saga. He is also the lead protagonist of the company-wide Dark Reign storyline.
  
  wn.com/Green_Goblin
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  Gus Van Sant
  Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an American film director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director — for Good Will Hunting (1997) and Milk (2008), both of which were also nominated for Best Picture — and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Elephant (2003). He lives in Portland, Oregon.
  His early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. In his films, he has dealt with themes concerning homosexuality and other marginalized subcultures.
  His filmography as writer and director includes a 1994 adaptation of Tom Robbins' 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which features a diverse cast (Keanu Reeves, Roseanne Barr, Uma Thurman, and k.d. lang, with cameos by William S. Burroughs and Heather Graham, among others); and My Own Private Idaho (1991), also starring Reeves as well as River Phoenix.
  He wrote the screenplays for most of his early movies, and wrote one novel, Pink. A book of his photography has also been published, called 108 Portraits.
  
  wn.com/Gus_Van_Sant
• Harry Osborn
  Harry Osborn is a fictional character, a supporting character of Spider-Man in the Marvel Comics Universe. In addition to being Peter Parker's best friend, Harry was the second Green Goblin and is the son of Norman Osborn. Harry Osborn first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #32 (December 1965), and was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
  Harry Osborn first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #31 (December 1965), and was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. Harry Osborn received an entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Update '89 #5.
  Harry is the son of industrialist Norman Osborn and his wife Emily. Unfortunately, the circumstances of Harry's birth weakened Emily, and she died after several years of illness. Heartbroken, Norman becomes a cold and unloving father; he either contemptuously dismisses Harry, or lashes out at him in fury. As a result, Harry spends much of his life trying desperately to earn his father's approval.
  Upon graduating from high school, he enrolls in Empire State University. Among the wealthiest students in the school, Harry soon becomes one of the most popular as well, despite his aloof manner. He has a clique of rich, popular students around him; one of these is the lovely Gwen Stacy. Gwen is intrigued by a new student: bookish, studious and painfully-shy Peter Parker. Harry takes a dislike to Parker; he resents the attention Gwen gives to Peter, and he assumes that Peter's standoffishness is snobbery. After confronting Parker, Harry realizes that Peter is merely shy, and is also worried about his ailing aunt, May. Despite this rocky start, Harry and Peter became friends, eventually sharing an apartment.
  
  wn.com/Harry_Osborn
• Hart Crane
  Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem, in the vein of The Waste Land, that expressed a more optimistic view of modern, urban culture than the one that he found in Eliot's work. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has come to be seen as one of the most influential poets of his generation.
  Hart Crane was born in Garrettsville, Ohio. His father, Clarence, was a successful Ohio businessman who invented the Life Savers candy and held the patent, but sold it for $2,900 before the brand became popular. He made other candy and accumulated a fortune from the candy business with chocolate bars. Crane's mother and father were constantly fighting, and early in April, 1917, they divorced. Hart dropped out of high school during his junior year and left for New York City, promising his parents he would attend Columbia University later. His parents, in the middle of divorce proceedings, were upset. Crane took various copywriting jobs and jumped between friends’ apartments in Manhattan. Between 1917 and 1924 he moved back and forth between New York and Cleveland, working as an advertising copywriter and a worker in his father’s factory. From Crane's letters, it appears that New York was where he felt most at home, and much of his poetry is set there.
  
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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.
  
  wn.com/Harvey_Milk
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  Heather Graham
  Heather Joan Graham (born January 29, 1970) is an American actress. Following early roles in License to Drive, Drugstore Cowboy and Twin Peaks, she won critical acclaim for her role as Rollergirl in 1997's Boogie Nights, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. She has since become known as a Hollywood sex symbol and has appeared in films such as Lost In Space, Bowfinger, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, From Hell, Anger Management, Bobby and Hangover, TheThe Hangover.
  Heather Graham was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the older of two children. Her family is of "three quarters Irish" descent, with her father's side from County Cork. Her younger sister, Aimee Graham, is also an actress and writer. Their mother, Joan (née Bransfield), is a teacher and author of children's books. Their father, James Graham, is a retired FBI agent. The girls were raised with traditional Catholic values. Her family relocated repeatedly before settling down in Agoura Hills, California when she was nine years old. She was introduced to acting during a school production of The Wizard of Oz. Graham graduated from Agoura High School in California in 1988.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Heather_Graham
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  Hugh Hefner
  Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner (born April 9, 1926) is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.
  Hefner was born in Chicago, Illinois, being the elder of two sons born to Grace Caroline (née Swanson; 1895–1997) and Glenn Lucius Hefner (1896–1976), both teachers. Hefner's mother was of Swedish descent and his father had German and English ancestry. On his father's side, Hefner is a direct descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. He has described his family as "conservative, Midwest, Methodist." He went to Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served as a writer for a military newspaper in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946. He later graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign with a B.A. in psychology with a double minor in creative writing and art in 1949, earning his degree in two and a half years. After graduation, he took a semester of graduate courses in sociology at Northwestern University but dropped out soon after.
  
  wn.com/Hugh_Hefner
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  Hugh Jackman
  Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.
  Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters. He is known for his role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series, as well as for his leads in Kate & Leopold, Van Helsing, The Prestige, Australia, and Real Steel. Jackman is a singer, dancer, and actor in stage musicals, and won a Tony Award for his role in The Boy from Oz.
  In November 2008, Open Salon named Jackman one of the sexiest men alive. Later that same month, People magazine named Jackman "Sexiest Man Alive."
  A three-time host of the Tony Awards, winning an Emmy Award for one of these appearances, Jackman also hosted the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009.
  Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the youngest of five children of English parents Chris Jackman and Grace Watson, and the second child to be born in Australia (he also has a younger half-sister, from his mother's re-marriage). One of his paternal great-grandfathers was Greek. His parents divorced when he was eight, and he remained with his accountant father and siblings, while his mother moved back to England. As a child, Jackman liked the outdoors, spending a lot of time at the beach and on camping trips and vacations all over Australia. He wanted to see the world: "I used to spend nights looking at atlases. I decided I wanted to be a chef on a plane. Because I'd been on a plane and there was food on board, I presumed there was a chef. I thought that would be an ideal job."
  
  wn.com/Hugh_Jackman
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  Idris Elba
  Idrissa Akuna "Idris" Elba (born 6 September 1972) is a British television, theatre, and film actor who has starred in both British and American productions. He grew up in Canning Town, East London. One of his first acting roles was in the soap opera Family Affairs. He has worked in a variety of TV roles including Ultraviolet and The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. He is known for playing Russell "Stringer" Bell, a Baltimore drug lord and aspiring businessman, in HBO's critically acclaimed show The Wire. Elba is a DJ under the moniker DJ Big Driis/Big Driis the Londoner, and a hip-hop soul recording artist.
  In 2009, Elba appeared on a six-episode arc of the American sitcom The Office, playing Charles Miner, Michael Scott's new boss. In 2010, he appeared in the action film The Losers in the role of Roque, the second-in-command of a black-ops team. The same year, he appeared in the thriller Takers. Elba plays the title role of Detective John Luther in the BBC television show Luther that aired on BBC One, which has finished its second series. Elba has won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of DCI Luther.
  
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  James Dean
  James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his stardom were as loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), and as the surly ranch hand, Jett Rink, in Giant (1956). Dean's enduring fame and popularity rests on his performances in only these three films, all leading roles. His premature death in a car crash cemented his legendary status.
  Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Dean the 18th best male movie star on their AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list.
  James Dean was born on February 8, 1931, at the Seven Gables apartment house located at the corner of 4th Street and McClure Street in Marion, Indiana, to Winton Dean and Mildred Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, James and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. The family spent several years there, and by all accounts young Dean was very close to his mother. According to Michael DeAngelis, she was "the only person capable of understanding him". He was enrolled at Brentwood Public School in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles until his mother died of cancer when Dean was nine years old.
  
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  James Franco
  James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor. His first prominent role was a lead part on the short-lived cult hit television program Freaks and Geeks; he later achieved recognition for playing the titular character in the TV biographical film James Dean (2001), for which he was awarded a Golden Globe Award. He achieved international fame with his portrayals of Harry Osborn in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.
  Franco has won or been nominated for a number of awards. He has done both dramatic and comedic work in projects and has appeared in an eclectic range of films since the 2000s, ranging from period to contemporary pieces, and from major Hollywood productions to less publicized indie films, as well as fantasy films to biopics and soap operas. Other notable films include Pineapple Express, a 2008 stoner comedy that earned him his second Golden Globes nomination; the 2008 Harvey Milk-biopic Milk; and Danny Boyle's 2010 drama film 127 Hours, about real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston's struggle to free his hand from a boulder. His performance in 127 Hours earned him nominations for many high-profile awards, including the Academy Awards, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2011, he starred opposite Andy Serkis in Rupert Wyatt's successful science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise. Since 2009, he has played a recurring role in the ABC daytime soap opera General Hospital.
  
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  James Joyce
  James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominently the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
  Joyce was born to a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."
  
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  Jane Krakowski
  Jane Krakowski (pronounced /krəˈkovski/; born October 11, 1968) is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her performance as Elaine Vassal on Ally McBeal, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and for her current role as Jenna Maroney on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, for which she has received three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She also regularly performs on the stage and won a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway revival of Nine and an Olivier Award for her role as Miss Adelaide in the West End revival of Guys and Dolls.
  Krakowski was born Jane Krajkowski in Parsippany, New Jersey. Her mother, Barbara (née Benoit), is a college theater instructor and producing artistic director for the Women's Theater Company, and her father, Ed Krajkowski, is a chemical engineer. She has an older brother. Krakowski's father's family is entirely Polish and comes from Kraków, and although she only knows a few words in Polish, her father and grandparents are fluent. Krakowski was a childhood classmate of astronaut Garrett Reisman.
  
  wn.com/Jane_Krakowski
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  Jason Segel
  Jason Jordan Segel (born January 18, 1980) is an American television and film actor, screenwriter, composer, puppeteer, musician, and singer, known for his work with producer Judd Apatow on the cult classic, short-lived television series Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, the films Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, I Love You, Man, Gulliver's Travels, Bad Teacher, Despicable Me, and The Muppets, and also for his role as Marshall Eriksen in the CBS hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother.
  Segel was born in Los Angeles, the son of Jillian (née Jordan), a homemaker, and Alvin G. Segel, a lawyer, and grew up in Pacific Palisades, California. His father is Jewish and his mother is Christian. He has stated that he was raised Jewish, as well as "a little bit of everything": he went to Hebrew school and had a Bar Mitzvah, and also attended St. Matthew's Parish School, a private Episcopal school. He has an older half-brother, Adam, and a younger sister, Alison. He has stated that he and Adam were not close while growing up.
  
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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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  Jim Broadbent
  James "Jim" Broadbent (born 24 May 1949) is an English theatre, film, and television actor. He is known for his roles in Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Topsy-Turvy, Hot Fuzz, and Bridget Jones' Diary. He also appears in the Harry Potter films as Horace Slughorn.
  Broadbent was born in Holton cum Beckering, the son of Doreen "Dee" Broadbent (née Findlay), a sculptor, and Roy Laverick Broadbent, an artist, sculptor, interior designer, and furniture maker who turned a former church into a theatre named after him. Broadbent's parents were both amateur actors who co-founded the Holton Players acting troupe at Holton cum Beckering; the two were described by the BBC as conscientious objectors who "worked the land" rather than participate in World War II. He had a twin sister who died at birth. Broadbent was educated at Leighton Park School, a Quaker school in Reading, and briefly attended art college before transferring to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from which he graduated in 1972.
  Broadbent's early stagework included a number of productions for The National Theatre of Brent, as the downtrodden assistant Wallace to Patrick Barlow's self-important actor/manager character Desmond Olivier Dingle. Broadbent and Barlow played many male and female character roles in comically less-than-epic tellings of historical and religious stories such as The Messiah, The Complete Guide to Sex, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Revolution!!, and All The World's A Globe. These were hits at the Edinburgh Fringe, in London, and on tour. Later stage work included the original productions of Kafka's Dick (1986) and Our Country's Good (1988) at the Royal Court Theatre and work for the Royal National Theatre including "The Government Inspector". Work on the stage with Mike Leigh includes Goosepimples and Ecstasy.
  
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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 Stewart
  Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28, 1962) is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian. He is widely known as host of The Daily Show, a satirical news program that airs on Comedy Central.
  Stewart started as a stand-up comedian, but branched into television as host of Short Attention Span Theater for Comedy Central. He went on to host his own show on MTV, called The Jon Stewart Show, and then hosted another show on MTV called You Wrote It, You Watch It. He has also had several film roles as an actor. Stewart became the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central in early 1999. He is also a writer and co-executive-producer of the show. After Stewart joined, The Daily Show steadily gained popularity and critical acclaim, resulting in his sixteen Emmy Awards.
  Stewart has gained acclaim as an acerbic, satirical critic of personality-driven media shows, in particular those of the US media networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Critics say Stewart benefits from a double standard: he critiques other news shows from the safe, removed position of his "fake news" desk. Stewart agrees, saying that neither his show nor his channel purports to be anything other than satire and comedy. In spite of its self-professed entertainment mandate, The Daily Show has been nominated for news and journalism awards. Stewart hosted the 78th and 80th Academy Awards. He is the co-author of America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, which was one of the best-selling books in the U.S. in 2004 and Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race released in 2010.
  
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  Jonah Hill
  Jonah Hill (born Jonah Hill Feldstein; December 20, 1983) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter, and comedian, best known for his roles in Superbad (2007), Knocked Up (2007), Funny People (2009), Get Him to the Greek (2010), Moneyball (2011), and 21 Jump Street (2012). He made his theatrical debut in I Heart Huckabees (2004), alongside Jason Schwartzman and Dustin Hoffman. He also co-created and starred in the animated comedy Allen Gregory on FOX. Hill was first nominated for a Teen Choice Award for his role in Accepted (2006) as Sherman Schrader, and for his role in Moneyball he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  Hill was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Sharon Lyn (née Chalkin), a costume designer and fashion stylist, and Richard Feldstein, a tour accountant for Guns N' Roses. Hill was raised Jewish. His parents were originally from Long Island, New York, and the family vacationed in the Catskills. He attended The Center for Early Education, Brentwood School and then Crossroads School, in Santa Monica. After graduating from high school, Hill left California to attend The New School, where he studied music and sport.
  
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  Jonathan Rhys Meyers
  Jonathan Rhys Meyers (born Jonathan Michael Francis O'Keeffe, 27 July 1977) is an Irish actor and model.
  He is best known for his roles in the films Velvet Goldmine, Mission Impossible III, Bend It Like Beckham, Match Point and his television roles as Elvis Presley in the biographical miniseries Elvis, which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor, and as King Henry VIII in the historical drama The Tudors. He has been the face of several advertising campaigns for Hugo Boss fragrances.
  He was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Mary Geraldine Meyers and musician John O'Keeffe. He was raised Roman Catholic by his family. Born in Drimnagh, he moved to Cork, at one year old and was raised there with his three younger brothers, Jamie, Alan, and Paul, who are all professional musicians. When he was three, his parents separated. His mother raised Rhys Meyers and his brother Alan while his other two brothers went to live at their grandmother's house with their father. Rhys Meyers attended North Monastery School.
  
  wn.com/Jonathan_Rhys_Meyers
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  Josh Brolin
  Josh James Brolin (pronounced /ˈbroʊlɨn/; born February 12, 1968) is an American actor. He has acted in theater, film and television roles since 1985, and won acting awards for his roles in the films W., No Country for Old Men, Milk and True Grit.
  Brolin was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Jane Cameron Agee, a wildlife activist who was a native of Corpus Christi, Texas, and actor James Brolin. Brolin was raised on a California ranch with little exposure to his father's acting career. His parents divorced when he was 16 and his stepmother is singer/actress Barbra Streisand. He became interested in acting after taking an improv acting class in high school.
  Brolin started his career in TV movies and guest spots on TV shows before getting a more notable role as Brand Walsh in the Richard Donner-directed movie The Goonies (1985). He was considered for the role of Tom Hanson in the series 21 Jump Street; he and Johnny Depp were the finalists for the role, and at that time the two became close and remained friends even after the role was ultimately awarded to Depp. Brolin guest-starred in an episode of the show in its first season.
  
  wn.com/Josh_Brolin
• Joshua Mohr
  Joshua Mohr (born July 8, 1976) is an American author. His first novel, Some Things That Meant the World to Me was published by Two Dollar Radio in June 2009. His second novel, Termite Parade, was published by Two Dollar Radio in 2010. His third novel, Damascus, will be published by Two Dollar Radio in 2011. Visit his website for news, readings and more: www.joshuamohr.net.
  Joshua Mohr moved to the Bay Area (from Phoenix, AZ) in 1988, and currently lives in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA. He attended San Francisco State University for his undergraduate studies, where he received two Bachelor of Arts degrees: the first in history, the second in creative writing. He then went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of San Francisco, where he graduated in 2005.
  Joshua Mohr teaches creative writing at The Writing Salon in San Francisco and at the University of San Francisco.
  Following a 30-year-old man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization, Some Things That Meant the World to Me is a gritty and beautiful work that is creative and hypnotic, and should stand as an introduction of an original new voice to American literature.
  
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  Judd Apatow
  Judd Apatow ( /ˈæpətaʊ/; born December 6, 1967) is an American film producer, director, and screen and comedy writer. He is well known for his work in comedy films, especially for films he has been involved with throughout the latter half of the 2000s. He is the founder of Apatow Productions, a film production company that also developed the cult television series Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. In 2007, he was Ranked #1 on Entertainment Weekly's The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood.
  Judd Apatow was born in Flushing, New York to a Jewish family, and raised in Syosset, New York. His father, Maury Apatow, was a real estate developer, and his mother, Tami (Shad), worked at a comedy club in Southampton. Apatow has an older brother, Robert, and a younger sister, Mia; His maternal grandfather was music producer Bob Shad. When Apatow was twelve years old, his parents divorced. Robert went to live with his maternal grandparents, and Mia went to live with her mother. As a child, Apatow lived mainly with his father, and visited his mother on weekends.
  
  wn.com/Judd_Apatow
• Kenneth Turan
  Kenneth Turan ( /təˈræn/; born October 27, 1946) is an American film critic and Lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.
  Turan was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.S. in history from Swarthmore College in 1967 and M.S. from Columbia University in 1968. From 1969-1978 he was a sports writer and feature writer for the Washington Post. He also served as film critic for a number of publications including The Progressive, New West/California Magazine, Gentlemen's Quarterly, and E!Entertainment.
  He has been a film critic for the Los Angeles Times since 1991 and the Director for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Los Angeles Times since 1993. He is the founding film critic for Arts Alive on KUSC-FM and www.kusc.org. He also provides regular reviews for Morning Edition on National Public Radio
  Kenneth Turan is featured in the documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism discussing his famous public quarrel with James Cameron, and recalling how Cameron e-mailed the LA Times’s editors calling for Turan’s firing after Turan wrote a negative review of Titanic.
  
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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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  Kirsten Dunst
  Kirsten Caroline Dunst (born April 30, 1982) is an American-German actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories (1989). At the age of 12, Dunst gained widespread recognition playing the role of vampire Claudia in Interview with the Vampire (1994), a performance for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. The same year she appeared in Little Women, to further acclaim.
  Dunst achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–07). Since then her films have included the romantic comedy Wimbledon (2004), the romantic science fiction Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Cameron Crowe's tragicomedy Elizabethtown (2005). She played the title role in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006) and starred in the comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008). She won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 for her performance in Lars von Trier's Melancholia.
  
  wn.com/Kirsten_Dunst
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  Mark Rydell
  Mark Rydell (born March 23, 1935, in New York City) is an American actor, film director and producer.
  Rydell's initial training was in music. As a youth, he wanted to be a conductor. He began his career as an actor and first became known for his role as Walt Johnson on The Edge of Night and as Jeff Baker on As the World Turns, which he played from 1956 to 1962. He won plaudits for his role of violent Jewish mob kingpin Marty Augustine in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973). His most recent significant film role was in Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending (2002).
  As a director, Rydell's credits include The Reivers (1969), The Cowboys (1972), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Rose (1979), On Golden Pond (1981, for which he received an Oscar nomination as Best Director), The River (1984), For the Boys (1991) and Intersection (1994). In 2006, Rydell directed the movie Even Money which starred Kim Basinger, Forest Whitaker, and Danny DeVito.
  Rydell was also director of the TV bio-pic James Dean (2001), which earned actor James Franco a Golden Globe award. Rydell also acted in the movie, playing Jack Warner (head of Warner Bros).
  
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  Marla Sokoloff
  Marla Lynne Sokoloff (born December 19, 1980) is an American actress and musician, known for playing the part of Lucy Hatcher on the TV show The Practice, and Gia Mahan on the ABC sitcom, Full House.
  Sokoloff was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Cindi (née Sussman), a former caterer, and Howard Sokoloff, a podiatrist. Her family is Jewish, and originates from Russia and Germany. Sokoloff graduated from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.^{[citation needed]} In 2004, she began dating composer and Deadsy drummer, Alec Puro. Sokoloff and Puro were married November 7, 2009. On August 1, 2011, it was announced that the couple was expecting their first child. On September 19, 2011, Sokoloff confirmed that the child would be a girl. On February 8, 2012, she gave birth to her daughter, Elliotte Anne.
  Sokoloff began acting at age 12 (1993), when she was cast as Gia Mahan in the sitcom Full House. She played Stephanie Tanner's arch enemy, but later became her best friend. Sokoloff also had a three-episode stint as a nanny in Desperate Housewives.^{[citation needed]} Along with other popular appearances, she is well-remembered as Joey's pregnant sister, Dina, in season 8 of Friends.^{[citation needed]} She also played Imogene O'Neill in the mini series, "Meteor".^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Marla_Sokoloff
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  Martin Starr
  Martin Starr (born July 30, 1982) is an American television and film actor, known for his roles as Bill Haverchuck on the short-lived NBC comedy-drama Freaks and Geeks and as Roman DeBeers on the Starz comedy series Party Down, as well as for his roles in the films Knocked Up, Cheats, and Adventureland.
  Starr was born Martin James Pflieger Schienle in Santa Monica, California. His Kansas-born mother, Jean St. James (née Pflieger), is an actress, and his father, Jim Schienle, is an instructor at Pasco-Hernando Community College.
  After Freaks and Geeks, Starr had a number of guest appearances and one-time roles on shows such as Ed, Mysterious Ways, Providence, King of the Hill, and Normal, Ohio. He had a small recurring role during the third season of Roswell as the character Monk. In 2002, Starr appeared in the films Stealing Harvard and Cheats. He also reunited with both Freaks and Geeks producer Judd Apatow and Freaks and Geeks co-star Seth Rogen when he made a guest appearance on Apatow's situational comedy Undeclared in the episode "The Perfect Date".
  
  wn.com/Martin_Starr
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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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  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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  Natalie Portman
  Natalie Hershlag (Hebrew: נטלי הרשלג‎; born June 9, 1981), better known by her stage name Natalie Portman, is an actress with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon, but mainstream success came when she was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (released in 1999, 2002 and 2005). In 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology while still working as an actress. She completed her bachelor's degree in 2003.
  In 2001, Portman opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. In 2005, Portman received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture for the drama Closer. She won a Constellation Award for Best Female Performance, and a Saturn Award for Best Actress for her starring role in V for Vendetta (2006). She played leading roles in the historical dramas Goya's Ghosts (2006) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). In May 2008, she served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury. Portman's directorial debut, Eve, opened the 65th Venice International Film Festival's shorts competition in 2008. Portman directed a segment of the collective film New York, I Love You.
  
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  Neve Campbell
  Neve Adrianne Campbell ( /ˈnɛv ˈkæmbəl/; born October 3, 1973) is a Canadian actress. Described as 'TV's most believable teenager', she rose to international fame for her teenage roles in the 1990's as Julia Salinger in the television series Party of Five and as Sidney Prescott in the horror film Scream and its sequels.
  She has also starred in films such as The Craft, Wild Things, and later several films that were critically acclaimed but received a limited theatrical release, including Panic (2000) and The Company (2003).
  Campbell was born in Guelph, Ontario. Campbell's mother, Marnie (née Neve), is a yoga instructor and psychologist from Amsterdam. Her father, Gerry Campbell, an immigrant to Canada from the East End of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, taught high school drama classes in Mississauga, Ontario — first at Westwood Secondary School (now Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School), later at Lorne Park Secondary School, and now at Erindale Secondary School. Campbell's maternal grandparents ran a theatre company in the Netherlands and her paternal grandparents were also performers. On her mother's side, Campbell is descended from Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the Netherlands and converted to Catholicism; she has stated, "I am a practicing Catholic, but my lineage is Jewish, so if someone asks me if I'm Jewish, I say yes".
  
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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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  Nicole Kidman
  Nicole Mary Kidman, AC (born 20 June 1967) is an Australian actress, singer, film producer, and humanitarian. Kidman began her career in 1983, starring in various Australian film and television productions until her breakthrough in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Following several films over the early 1990s, she came to worldwide recognition for her performances in Days of Thunder (1990), Far and Away (1992), and Batman Forever (1995). Kidman followed this with other successful films in the late 1990s. It was her performance in the musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001) which earned Kidman her second Golden Globe Award and first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her performance as Virginia Woolf the following year in the drama film The Hours (2002) received critical acclaim and earned Kidman the Academy Award for Best Actress.
  Kidman's other notable films include To Die For (1995), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Cold Mountain (2003), The Interpreter (2005), and Australia (2008). Her performance in 2010's Rabbit Hole (which she also produced) earned Kidman further accolades including a subsequent Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Kidman has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 1994 and for UNIFEM since 2006. Kidman's work has earned her a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three Golden Globe Awards, one BAFTA, and an Academy Award. In 2006, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia's highest civilian honor, and was also the highest-paid actress in the motion picture industry. As a result of being born to Australian parents in Hawaii, Kidman has dual citizenship in Australia and the United States.
  
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  Paul Giamatti
  Brawl Edward Valentine Giamatti (/dʒiəˈmɑːti/; born June 6, 1967) is an American actor. An acclaimed character actor, Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon before earning lead roles in several projects in the 2000s including American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, The Illusionist, John Adams, Cold Souls, Barney's Version, and Win Win.
  Giamatti, the youngest of three children, was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Angelo Bartlett Giamatti, was a Yale University professor who later became president of the university and commissioner of Major League Baseball. His mother, Toni Marilyn (née Smith), was a homemaker and English teacher who taught at Hopkins School and had also previously acted. Giamatti is of Italian, Irish, and English descent. Giamatti's paternal grandmother was from a family with deep roots in New England, and his paternal grandfather was the son of Italian immigrants from Telese. His brother, Marcus, is also an actor, and his sister, Elena, is a jewelry designer. Giamatti was educated at The Foote School and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in 1985. He attended Yale University, where he was elected to the Skull and Bones secret society. Giamatti was active in the undergraduate theater scene, working alongside actors Ron Livingston and Edward Norton, who were also Yale students. He graduated from Yale in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in English. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama where he studied with Earle R. Gister. He performed in numerous theatrical productions (including Broadway) before appearing in some small television and film roles in the early 1990s.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Giamatti
• Philip Carlo
  Philip Carlo (April 18, 1949 – November 8, 2010) was a journalist and best selling biographer of Thomas Pitera, Richard Kuklinski, Anthony Casso, and Richard Ramirez.
  Philip Carlo was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York. From an early age, he was involved in gang activity. He was shot and wounded in a gang war.
  Carlo suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and was bound to a wheelchair and respirator, but retained his ability to speak normally during his lifetime.
  Despite his illness, in early November 2009, Carlo was able to appear on Shovio's Talk Back TV, to take questions about his research.
  He died of Lou Gehrig's disease on November 8, 2010 at age 61.
  His last book, The Killer Within: In the Company of Monsters (which deals with his battle against ALS), was released posthumously in January 2011.
  Non-fiction:
  Novels:
  
  
  
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  Portuguese American
  Portuguese Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry originates in the southwest European nation of Portugal, including the offshore island groups of the Azores and Madeira.
  Colloquially, the term is also incorrectly applied to people whose ancestry stems from Portuguese-speaking countries. Such use of the term "Portuguese American" is employed as a synonym to Luso American. Accurately, a Portuguese American denotes any person born in the United States whose family came to the USA from Portugal. Americans and others who are not native Europeans from Portugal but originate from countries that were former colonies of Portugal are not Portuguese American, rather, they are codified as Lusitanic, or simply referred to by their present-day nationalities (Cape Verdean, Brazilian, etc.) although many citizens of former Portuguese colonies are also ethnically Portuguese. Famous Portuguese Americans include Tom Hanks, Katy Perry, Meredith Viera, James Franco and Joe Perry.
  Portuguese people have had a very long history in the United States (from 1634), which may even be pre-Columbian, although there is lack of solid historical evidence. Navigators, like the Miguel Corte-Real family, may have visited the North American shores in first time at the beginning of the 16th century. There is a monumental landmark, the Dighton Rock, in southeastern Massachusetts, that testifies their presence in the area. And João Rodrigues Cabrilho who explored the California coast for the first time.
  
  wn.com/Portuguese_American
• Richard Kuklinski
  Richard Leonard "The Iceman" Kuklinski (Polish: Kukliński; April 11, 1935 – March 5, 2006) was a Polish American contract killer. The 6'5" (196 cm), 300 pound (135 kg) Kuklinski worked for Newark's DeCavalcante crime family and New York City's Five Families. He claimed to have murdered over 250 men between 1948 and 1986. He claimed to have committed his first murder at the age of 13. Richard Kuklinski lived with his wife and three children in suburban Dumont, New Jersey before his arrest.
  Kuklinski was born in a housing project in Jersey City, New Jersey, to a family of mixed Polish and Irish-American descent. His father, Stanley Kuklinski, was an alcoholic who frequently abused his wife and children. He had a brother, Joseph Kuklinski (1944–2003) who was convicted of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl.
  Kuklinski spent the remainder of his life fantasizing about murdering his father. When asked about his brother Joseph's crimes, he replied: "We come from the same father." His mother, Anna McNally Kuklinski, was also abusive to Richard, hitting him with broom handles and other household objects to stop him from stealing.
  
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  Richard Ramirez
  Ricardo "Richard" Muñoz Ramirez (born February 29, 1960 in El Paso, Texas) is a convicted serial killer awaiting execution on California's death row at San Quentin State Prison. Prior to his capture, Ramirez was dubbed the "Night Stalker" by the news media.
  Julian and Mercedes Ramirez had five children, the fifth being Richard Ramirez. The mother was a Catholic, and his father was a former policeman who later became a laborer on the Santa Fe railroad. Richard's father was also abusive and believed in corporal punishment.
  Ramirez may have been influenced into killing by his cousin, Mike, a Special Forces Vietnam War veteran who boasted of killing and torturing his Vietnamese enemies and showed him Polaroid pictures of his victims. These included pictures of the severed heads of Vietnamese women, who in other pictures had been shown fellating Mike. Ramirez was present the night Mike shot and killed his wife, and her blood splattered on Ramirez's face. Ramirez was 13 years old at the time.
  On March 17, 1985, Ramirez attacked 22-year old Angela Barrios outside her home. He shot her before entering her house. Inside was Dayle Okazaki, age 34, whom Ramirez immediately shot and killed. Barrios survived. The bullet had ricocheted off the keys she held in her hands, as she lifted them to protect herself. Within an hour of killing Okazaki, Ramirez struck again in Monterey Park. He jumped 30-year-old Tsai-Lian Yu and pulled her out of her car onto the road. He shot her several times and fled. A policeman found her still breathing, but she died before the ambulance arrived. The two attacks occurring on the same day bolstered media attention, and in turn caused panic and fear among the public. The news media dubbed the attacker, who was described as having long curly hair, bulging eyes and wide-spaced rotting teeth, "The Walk-in Killer" and "The Valley Intruder".
  
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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 Altman
  Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.
  His films MASH (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), and Nashville (1975) have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
  Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen (née Matthews), a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler, who came from an upper-class family. Altman's ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman, Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name from "Altmann" to "Altman". Altman had a Catholic upbringing, but he did not continue to practice as a Catholic as an adult, although he has been referred to as "a sort of Catholic" and a Catholic director. He was educated at Jesuit schools, including Rockhurst High School, in Kansas City. He graduated from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri in 1943.
  
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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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  Roger Ebert
  Roger Joseph Ebert ( /ˈiːbərt/; born June 18, 1942) is an American journalist, film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
  Ebert is known for his film review column (appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and later online) and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The Movies, all of which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel. After Siskel's death in 1999, Ebert teamed with Richard Roeper for the television series Ebert & Roeper & the Movies, which began airing in 2000. Although his name remained in the title, Ebert did not appear on the show after mid-2006 after he suffered post-surgical complications related to thyroid cancer, leaving him unable to speak. Ebert ended his association with the show in July 2008, but in February 2009 he stated that he and Roeper would continue their work on a new show. Ebert's current show, Ebert Presents: At the Movies, premiered on January 21, 2011, with Ebert contributing a review voiced by someone else in a brief segment called "Roger's Office".
  
  wn.com/Roger_Ebert
• Rupert Wyatt
  Rupert Wyatt (born 26 October 1972) is a British writer and film director. His debut film was The Escapist, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008. His second film was Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).
  Born and raised in Exeter, Devon, Wyatt was educated at Winchester College in Winchester, Hampshire.
  Wyatt is the founder of the film collective Picture Farm, which has produced numerous shorts, documentaries and features, including the Sundance Award-winning documentary Dark Days.
  He also co-wrote and directed the British prison escape thriller The Escapist (2008), starring Brian Cox, Damian Lewis, Dominic Cooper, Joseph Fiennes, Seu Jorge, Steven Mackintosh, and Liam Cunningham. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, was nominated for eight international film awards, and was the winner of two. In March 2010, he was selected to direct Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise, which was based on a screenplay by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. The film was released on 5 August 2011 to mostly positive reviews, and holds an 82% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
  
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  Ryan Gosling
  Ryan Thomas Gosling (born November 12, 1980) is a Canadian actor and musician. He began his career as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club (1993–95) and went on to appear in other family entertainment programs including Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1995), Goosebumps (1996), Breaker High (1997–98) and Young Hercules (1998–99). His first serious role was as a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer (2001), and he then built a reputation for playing misfits in independent films such as Murder by Numbers (2002), The Slaughter Rule (2002), The United States of Leland (2003) and Stay (2005).
  Gosling came to the attention of a wider audience in 2004 with a leading role in the romantic drama The Notebook, for which he won four Teen Choice Awards and an MTV Movie Award. His performance as a drug-addicted teacher in Half Nelson (2006) was nominated for an Academy Award and his performance as a socially inept loner in Lars and the Real Girl (2007) was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, he starred in the courtroom thriller Fracture.
  
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  Sam Raimi
  Samuel Marshall "Sam" Raimi (October 23, 1959) is an American film director, producer, actor and writer. He is best known for directing cult horror/comedy films the Evil Dead series, the action/superhero film Darkman, crime thriller A Simple Plan and supernatural horror Drag Me to Hell, as well as the blockbuster Spider-Man films and the producer of the successful TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Legend of the Seeker (also the creator) and Spartacus: Blood and Sand. He is also the founder of Renaissance Pictures.
  Raimi, the fourth of five children, was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, and grew up in Birmingham, Michigan. He was raised in Conservative Judaism; his ancestors immigrated from Russia and Hungary. Raimi attended Groves High School, and Michigan State University and majored in English, leaving after three semesters to film The Evil Dead. He is Ted Raimi's older brother.
  
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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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  Seth Rogen
  Seth Rogen (pronounced /ˈroʊɡɪn/; born April 15, 1982) is a Canadian stand-up comedian, actor, producer, screenwriter, and voice artist. Rogen began his career doing stand-up comedy during his teen years, winning the Vancouver Amateur Comedy Contest in 1998. While still living in his native Vancouver, he landed a small part in Freaks and Geeks. Shortly after Rogen moved to Los Angeles for his role, Freaks and Geeks was canceled after one season due to poor ratings. He then got a part on the equally short-lived Undeclared, which also hired him as a staff writer.
  After landing a job as a staff writer on the final season of Da Ali G Show, for which Rogen and the other writers received an Emmy nomination, he was guided by film producer Judd Apatow toward a film career. Rogen was cast in a major supporting role and credited as a co-producer in Apatow's directorial debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. After Rogen received critical praise for that performance, Universal Pictures agreed to cast him as the lead in Apatow's directorial feature films Knocked Up and Funny People. Rogen and his comedy partner Evan Goldberg co-wrote the films Superbad, Pineapple Express, and The Green Hornet. Rogen has done voice work for the films Horton Hears a Who!, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Paul. He married fellow screenwriter Lauren Miller in October 2011.
  
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  Shallon Lester
  Shallon Lester (born January 23, 1980) is an American author and television personality. She is the central figure in reality show Downtown Girls and blogger for Glamour magazine and a popular video blogger for DoubleAgent.com. In 2008 she published a teen fiction novel, Hot Mess co-written with Slept Away author Julie Kraut. Her second novel, a collection of humor memoirs called Exes and Ohs: A Downtown Girl's (Mostly Awkward) Tales of Love, Lust, Revenge and a Little Facebook Stalking, was released June 7, 2011 through Random House.
  She has been a gossip writer for the New York Daily News as well as Associate Editor for FHM magazine. She is romantically linked with Joel Lindpere of the New York Red Bulls major league soccer team.
  
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  Sienna Miller
  Sienna Rose Miller (born December 28, 1981) is an American born English actress, model, and fashion designer. She is best known for her roles in Layer Cake, Alfie, Factory Girl, The Edge of Love and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. In 2007, the London Film Critics named her British Actress of the Year for Interview. In 2006, she designed a fashion capsule for Pepe Jeans.
  Born in a theatre in New York City, Miller moved to London with her family when she was just over a year old. Her mother, Josephine, is a South African-born former model. Her father, Edwin Miller, is an American banker turned dealer of Chinese art. Miller has a sister, Savannah, and two half-brothers, Charles and Stephen. Miller attended Heathfield St Mary's School, a boarding school in Ascot, Berkshire, and later studied for a year at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City. She carries both British and American passports, and acquired her first driving licence in the US Virgin Islands, as it was easier to qualify there, thus allowing her to drive in both the US and UK.
  
  wn.com/Sienna_Miller
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  Sophia Myles
  Sophia Jane Myles ( /səˈfaɪ.ə/; born 18 March 1980) is an English film and television actress.
  Myles was born in London. Her mother, Jane (née Allan), works in educational publishing, and her father, Peter R. Myles, is a retired Church Of England vicar in Isleworth, West London. Her maternal grandmother was Russian, and she refers to herself as "half-Welsh, half-Russian". She grew up in Notting Hill, where her father served at the church of St. George the Martyr, and she attended Fox Primary School. At the age of eleven, Myles moved with her family to Isleworth and attended the Green School. Following success at her A-levels, she had been planning to accept a conditional place to study philosophy at Cambridge, but chose to pursue an acting career after being spotted by Julian Fellowes in a school play.
  Since 1996, Myles has appeared in a number of American and British films and television productions. In 2001, she got a small role alongside Johnny Depp as his on-screen wife, Victoria Abberline, in the thriller film From Hell. She had a supporting role in the 2003 film Underworld and its sequel Underworld: Evolution (in a brief flashback scene). In 2003, she played the schoolgirl lead in the thriller Out of Bounds and she also played Lady Penelope in the Thunderbirds. In 2006, Myles co-starred with actor James Franco in the romantic drama Tristan and Isolde, playing the role of Isolde.
  
  wn.com/Sophia_Myles
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  Steve Buscemi
  Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi (/bʉˈʃɛmi/ boo-SHEM-ee or boo-SEM-ee; born December 13, 1957) is an American actor, writer and film director. An associate member of the renowned experimental theater company The Wooster Group, Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films including New York Stories, Mystery Train, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Desperado, Con Air, Armageddon, The Grey Zone, Ghost World and Big Fish; and the HBO television series The Sopranos. He is also known for his appearances in many films by the Coen brothers: Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski and Paris, je t'aime.
  Since 2010, he has starred in the critically acclaimed series Boardwalk Empire, which earned him two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Golden Globe, and a nomination for an Emmy Award.
  He made his directorial debut in 1996, with Trees Lounge, in which he also starred. Other works include Animal Factory (2000), Lonesome Jim (2005) and Interview (2007).
  
  wn.com/Steve_Buscemi
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  Steve Martin
  Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, author, playwright, producer, musician and composer. Martin came to public notice as a writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and later became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. In the 1970s, Martin performed his offbeat, absurdist comedy routines before packed houses on national tours. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics.
  Since the 1980s, having branched away from stand-up comedy, Martin has become a successful actor in both comedic and dramatic roles, as well as an author, playwright, pianist, and banjo player, eventually earning Emmy, Grammy, and American Comedy awards, among other honors.
  
  wn.com/Steve_Martin
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  Swedish American
  Swedish Americans are Americans of Swedish descent, especially the descendants of about 1.2 million immigrants from Sweden during 1885–1915. Most were Lutherans who were affiliated with predecessor bodies of what are now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) or Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod or North American Lutheran Church (NALC); some were Methodists. Historically Swedish Americans are concentrated in the Midwest, roughly in the area west and northwest of Chicago.
  The first Swedish Americans were the settlers of New Sweden. A colony established by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1638, it centered around the Delaware Valley including parts of the present-day states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. New Sweden was incorporated into New Netherland in 1655 and ceased to be an official territory of the Realm of Sweden. However, many Swedish and Finnish colonists remained and were allowed some political and cultural autonomy.
  Present day reminders of the history of New Sweden are reflected in the presence of the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia, Fort Christina State Park in Wilmington, Delaware, Governor Printz Park and The Printzhof in Essington, Pennsylvania.
  
  wn.com/Swedish_American
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  Tennessee Williams
  Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs. His professional career lasted from the mid 1930s until his death in 1983, and saw the creation of many plays that are regarded as classics of the American stage. Williams adapted much of his best known work for the cinema.
  Williams received virtually all of the top theatrical awards for his works of drama, including several New York Drama Critics' Circle awards, a Tony Award for best play for The Rose Tattoo (1951) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). In 1980 he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter and is today acknowledged as one of the most accomplished playwrights in the history of English speaking theater.
  Theater scholar Charlotte Canning, of the University of Texas at Austin where Williams' archives are located, has said, "There is no more influential 20th-century American playwright than Tennessee Williams... He inspired future generations of writers as diverse as Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, David Mamet and John Waters, and his plays remain among the most produced in the world."
  
  wn.com/Tennessee_Williams
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  Thomas Haden Church
  Thomas Haden Church (born June 17, 1960) is an American actor. After co-starring in the 1990s sitcom Wings, Church became well known for his film roles, including his Academy Award-nominated performance in Sideways and his role as the Sandman in Spider-Man 3.
  Church, the fourth of six children, was born Thomas Richard McMillen in Yolo, California, to an Army officer/health care worker father and a telephone company sales rep mother. He was raised under his stepfather's surname, "Quesada", and later changed his surname to "Haden Church" (both names are in his family tree). He was raised in Laredo, Texas, and graduated from Harlingen High School, Harlingen, Texas, in 1979, going on to attend the University of North Texas.
  Church started in the entertainment business as a radio personality and doing voice over work. A part in an independent film convinced him to move to California to pursue an acting career. He played the part of slow-witted airport mechanic Lowell Mather for six seasons (1990–1995) on the NBC sitcom Wings. He worked in television for two more seasons with a lead role on Ned and Stacey opposite Debra Messing. He has had supporting roles in films such as Tombstone, George of the Jungle, and The Specials. Church often plays villains or comic relief in films, most evident by turns in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight and Over the Hedge.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Haden_Church
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  Tobey Maguire
  Tobias Vincent "Tobey" Maguire (born June 27, 1975) is an American actor and producer. He began his career in the late 1980s. While perhaps best known for his role as Peter Parker / Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man film trilogy (2002–2007), he has also appeared in films such as Pleasantville (1998), Ride with the Devil (1999), The Cider House Rules (1999), Wonder Boys (2000), Seabiscuit (2003), The Good German (2006), Tropic Thunder (2008), and Brothers (2009). He has been nominated for Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Awards and received two Saturn Awards, including one for Best Actor.
  Maguire was born in Santa Monica, California. He is the son of Wendy (née Brown), a secretary turned screenwriter and producer, and Vincent Maguire, a construction worker and cook. He has four half-brothers. His parents, 18 and 20 years old, were unmarried at the time of his birth; the two married and subsequently divorced when Maguire was two. Maguire spent much of his childhood moving from town to town, living with each parent and other family members. During his childhood, Maguire entertained the idea of becoming a chef and to that end wanted to enroll in a home economics class as a sixth grader. His mother offered him US$100 to take a drama class instead, and Tobey agreed.
  
  wn.com/Tobey_Maguire
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  Tom Wilkinson
  Thomas Geoffrey "Tom" Wilkinson,OBE (born 5 February 1948) is a British actor. He has twice been nominated for an Academy Award, for his roles in In the Bedroom and Michael Clayton. In 2009, he won Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Film for John Adams.
  Wilkinson was born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, the son of Thomas Wilkinson, Sr., a farmer. At the age of four, he moved with his family to Canada, where they lived for several years before returning to England and running a pub in Cornwall. Wilkinson graduated from the University of Kent, where he was a member of T24 Drama Society (then named UKCD) and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
  Wilkinson currently lives in North London with his wife, actress Diana Hardcastle, and their two children, Alice and Mollie.
  In 2011, Wilkinson and Hardcastle portrayed real life husband and wife Joe and Rose Kennedy in the mini series The Kennedys.
  Wilkinson made his television debut in the mid-1970s and worked on several British television series, most notably the mini-series First Among Equals (1986). He first gained critical acclaim with his appearance as Mr. Pecksniff, in the BBC’s 1994 adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit. He made only the occasional film (including a brief appearance in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility). After becoming part of the ensemble cast of the smash hit The Full Monty in 1997, a role which earned him a BAFTA, he began to take film roles more frequently, including supporting parts in Oscar and Lucinda, Wilde, Shakespeare in Love, and The Patriot.
  
  wn.com/Tom_Wilkinson
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  Tristan
  Tristan /ˈtrɪstən/ (Latin/Brythonic: Drustanus; Welsh: Drystan, Trystan; also known as Tristran, Tristram /ˈtrɪstrəm/, etc.) is one of the main characters of the Tristan and Iseult story, a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table featuring in the Matter of Britain. He is the son of Blancheflor and Rivalen (in later versions Isabelle and Meliodas), and the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, sent to fetch Iseult back from Ireland to wed the king. However, he and Iseult accidentally consume a love potion while en route and fall helplessly in love. The pair undergo numerous trials that test their secret affair.
  Tristan makes his first medieval appearance in the early twelfth century in Celtic folklore circulating in the north of France, and Brittany in particular, which had close ancestral and cultural links with Cornwall by way of the ancient British kingdom of Dumnonia, as made clear in the story itself. Although the oldest stories concerning Tristan are lost, some of the derivatives still exist. Most early versions fall into one of two branches, the "courtly" branch represented in the retellings of the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas of Britain and his German successor Gottfried von Strassburg, and the "common" branch, including the works of the French poet Béroul and the German poet Eilhart von Oberge.
  
  wn.com/Tristan
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  Tyrese Gibson
  Tyrese Darnell Gibson (born December 30, 1978) also known simply as Tyrese, is an American R&B singer, rapper, actor, author, former fashion model and MTV VJ. After releasing several albums, he transitioned into films, with lead roles in several Hollywood releases.
  Gibson was born in Los Angeles, California, growing up in the Watts neighborhood. His mother, Priscilla Murray Gibson (née Durham), raised him & his 3 older siblings as a single parent after Gibson's father, Lurk Gibson left. Gibson's career began when he was discovered on a bus. An appearance in a 1994 Coca-Cola advertisement, singing the phrase "Always Coca-Cola", led to bigger fame.
  Gibson also featured in Lady Gaga's music video, "Telephone" ft. Beyonce and "Angel of Mine" by Monica.
  
  wn.com/Tyrese_Gibson
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  Whoopi Goldberg
  Whoopi Goldberg ( /ˈhwʊpi/, born Caryn Elaine Johnson; November 13, 1955) is an American comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.
  Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple (1985) playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe Award for her role in the film. In 1990, she starred as Oda Mae Brown, a psychic helping a slain man (Patrick Swayze) find his killer in the blockbuster film Ghost. This performance won her a second Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Notable later films include Sister Act and Sister Act 2, The Lion King, Made in America, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Girl, Interrupted and Rat Race. She is also acclaimed for her roles as the bartender Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Terry Doolittle in Jumpin' Jack Flash. More recently, she had performed the voice of Stretch in Toy Story 3 and made an appearance in Glee as Carmen Tibideaux.
  
  wn.com/Whoopi_Goldberg
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
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  Willem Dafoe
  Willem Dafoe (born July 22, 1955) is an American film, stage, and voice actor, and a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group. He has had roles in a wide range of films, including Platoon, Affliction, Off Limits, Streets of Fire, To Live and Die in L.A., Born on the Fourth of July, The English Patient, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mississippi Burning, "The Life Aquatic" The Boondock Saints, Spider-Man, and The Aviator, and voice roles in Fantastic Mr. Fox and Finding Nemo.
  Dafoe has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice. The first was for his role in Platoon in 1986 and the second time for his performance in Shadow of the Vampire in 2000.
  Dafoe was born William J. Dafoe in Appleton, Wisconsin. One of seven children of Muriel Isabel (née Sprissler) and Dr. William Alfred Dafoe, he recalled in 2009, "My five sisters raised me because my father was a surgeon, my mother was a nurse and they worked together, so I didn't see either of them much." In high school, he acquired the nickname Willem. His ancestry includes Irish, Scottish, German, and Canadian.
  
  wn.com/Willem_Dafoe
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  William Faulkner
  William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his childhood, and Holly Springs/Marshall County.
  Faulkner is one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States, along with Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
  
  wn.com/William_Faulkner
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  Winona Ryder
  Winona Ryder (born Winona Laura Horowitz; October 29, 1971) is an American actress. She made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder's first significant role came in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988) as Lydia Deetz, a goth teenager, which won her critical and commercial recognition. After various appearances in film and television, Ryder continued her career with the cult film Heathers (1989), a controversial satire of teenage suicide and high school life, which drew Ryder further critical and commercial attention.
  Having played diverse roles in many well-received films, Ryder won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination in the same category for her role in The Age of Innocence in 1993, as well as another Academy Award nomination for Little Women the following year for Best Actress. In 2000, Ryder received a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.
  Ryder's personal life has been widely reported by the media. Her relationship with actor Johnny Depp in the early 1990s was highly publicized and received much scrutiny by the media and tabloid press. A much talked-about 2001 shoplifting incident led to a four-year hiatus from acting. She has also revealed her personal struggle with anxiety and depression, briefly checking into a clinic.
  
  wn.com/Winona_Ryder
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  Woody Harrelson
  Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson (born July 23, 1961) is an American actor.
  Harrelson's breakout role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd. Some notable film characters include basketball hustler Billy Hoyle in White Men Can't Jump, bowler Roy Munson in Kingpin, serial killer Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers, magazine publisher Larry Flynt in The People vs. Larry Flynt, country singer Dusty in A Prairie Home Companion, bounty hunter Carson Wells in No Country for Old Men, zombie killer Tallahassee in Zombieland, blind piano player/meat salesman Ezra Turner in Seven Pounds, conspiracy nut Charlie Frost in 2012, a delusional man who believes that he is a superhero named Defendor in Defendor and Cpt. Tony Stone in The Messenger. For The People vs. Larry Flynt and The Messenger, Harrelson earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. He also appeared as Haymitch in the film The Hunger Games, which was released on March 23, 2012.
  
  wn.com/Woody_Harrelson
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  Zooey Deschanel
  Zooey Claire Deschanel ( /ˈzoʊ.iː deɪʃəˈnɛl/ ZOH-ee day-shə-NEL; born January 17, 1980) is an American actress, musician and singer-songwriter. In 1999, Deschanel made her film debut in Mumford, followed by her breakout role as young protagonist William Miller's troubled older sister Anita in Cameron Crowe's 2000 semi-autobiographical film Almost Famous. Deschanel soon became known for her deadpan or "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" supporting roles in films such as Elf (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Failure to Launch (2006), Bridge to Terabithia (2007), and Happening, TheThe Happening (2008). She then began playing lead roles in films, including Yes Man (2008) and (500) Days of Summer (2009). She currently stars in the Fox series New Girl. She has been nominated for Golden Globe and Grammy Awards.
  For a few years starting in 2001, Deschanel performed in the jazz cabaret act If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies with fellow actress Samantha Shelton. Besides singing, she plays keyboards, percussion, banjo and ukulele. She also often sings in her films. Deschanel teamed up with M. Ward to release their debut album Volume One (recorded with M. Ward under the moniker She & Him) which was released in March 2008. The follow-up album Volume Two was released in the U.S. in March 2010. She married Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard in September 2009, and filed for divorce from him in December 2011.
  
  wn.com/Zooey_Deschanel

Acting with James Franco (2009)

Genres

• Comedy
• Short

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