Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

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

Applied mathematics

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

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• 
  

• 
  Manhattan
  Manhattan (/mænˈhætən/) is the most densely populated and the oldest of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the U.S. state of New York. The borough and county consist of Manhattan Island and several small adjacent islands: Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island, Wards Island, Governors Island, Liberty Island, part of Ellis Island,Mill Rock, and U Thant Island; as well as Marble Hill, a very small area on the mainland bordering the Bronx. The original city of New York began at the southern end of Manhattan, expanded northward, and then between 1874 and 1898, annexed land from surrounding counties.
  The New York County is the most densely populated county in the United States, and one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a 2010 population of 1,585,873 living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.5 km²), or 69,464 residents per square mile (26,924/km²), more dense than any individual American city. It is also one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a 2005 per capita income above $100,000. Manhattan is the third-largest of New York's five boroughs in population, and its smallest borough in land area.
  
  wn.com/Manhattan
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  Pennsylvania
  Pennsylvania (ⁱ/ˌpɛnsɨlˈveɪnjə/), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a US state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States, and the Great Lakes Region. The state borders Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Ontario, Canada to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.
  Pennsylvania is the 33rd most extensive, the 6th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state's four most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, and Erie. The state capital is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 51 miles (82 km) of shoreline along Lake Erie and 57 miles (92 km) of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary.
  Pennsylvania is 170 miles (274 km) north to south and 283 miles (455 km) east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles (119,282 km²), 44,817 square miles (116,075 km²) are land, 490 square miles (1,269 km²) are inland waters, and 749 square miles (1,940 km²) are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles (82 km) of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles (92 km) of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary.
  
  wn.com/Pennsylvania
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  Philadelphia
  Philadelphia ( /ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə/) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,526,006 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Philadelphia is also the commercial, cultural, and educational center of the Delaware Valley, home to 6 million people and the country's fifth-largest metropolitan area. The Philadelphia metropolitan division consists of five counties in Pennsylvania and has a population of 4,008,994. Popular nicknames for Philadelphia are Philly and The City of Brotherly Love, the latter of which comes from the literal meaning of the city's name in Greek (Greek: Φιλαδέλφεια ([pʰilaˈdelpʰeːa], Modern Greek: [filaˈðelfia]) "brotherly love", compounded from philos (φίλος) "loving", and adelphos (ἀδελφός) "brother").
  
  wn.com/Philadelphia
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  Second Stage Theatre
  Second Stage Theatre is an award-winning contemporary Off-Broadway theater company.
  The theatre's mission is to give new life to contemporary American plays and to produce the world premiers of new plays by both established and emerging playwrights. A fundamental part of its purpose is theatre education, which is accomplished through special performances for New York City school children, subscriber discussions with theatre artists, and an internship program.
  Second Stage Theatre was founded by Carole Rothman and Robyn Goodman with the purpose of giving renewed life to existing plays. Second Stage’s first season kicked off in 1979 with a production of Bits and Pieces . The company utilized multiple venues throughout New York City until 1984 when 2ST found a permanent home, the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, an intimate 108 seat theatre at Broadway and 76th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Although the original idea of Second Stage was to avoid competition for new plays, Rothman and Goodman fell in love with productions that they couldn’t resist introducing to their audiences.
  
  wn.com/Second_Stage_Theatre
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  Upper West Side
  The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 110th Street. The Upper West Side is sometimes also considered to include the neighborhood of Morningside Heights.
  Like the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side is an upscale, primarily residential, area, with many of its residents working in more commercial areas in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. While these distinctions were never hard-and-fast rules and now mean little, it has the reputation of being home to New York City's cultural and artistic workers, while the Upper East Side is traditionally perceived to be home to commercial and business types.
  The Upper West Side is bounded on the south by 58th Street, Central Park to the east, and the Hudson River to the west. Its northern boundary is somewhat less obvious. Although it has historically been cited as 110th Street, which fixes the neighborhood alongside Central Park, it is now sometimes considered to be 125th Street, encompassing Morningside Heights. This reflects demographic shifts in Morningside Heights, as well as the tendency of real estate brokers to co-opt the tony Upper West Side name when listing Morningside Heights and Harlem apartments.^{[citation needed]} The area north of West 96th Street and east of Broadway is also identified as Manhattan Valley. The overlapping area west of Amsterdam Avenue to Riverside Park was once known as the Bloomingdale District.
  
  wn.com/Upper_West_Side

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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
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  Alan Rickman
  Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor of stage and screen. He is a renowned stage actor in modern and classical productions and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His breakout performance was as the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Rickman is known for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series, Éamon de Valera in Michael Collins, and Metatron in Dogma.
  Rickman has also had a number of other notable film roles such as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply, P.L. O'Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure and Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee's 1995 film Sense and Sensibility. More recently, he played Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
  Rickman was born in South Hammersmith, London, to a working class family, the son of Margaret Doreen Rose (née Bartlett), a housewife, and Bernard Rickman, a factory worker. Rickman's mother was from Wales and a Methodist, and his father was of Irish Catholic background. He has one elder brother, David (b. 1944), a graphic designer, a younger brother, Michael (b. 1947), a tennis coach, and a younger sister, Sheila (b. 1949). Rickman attended Derwentwater Primary School, in Acton, a school that followed the Montessori method of education.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Rickman
• 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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  Allison Janney
  Allison Brooks Janney (born November 19, 1959) is an American actress, best known for her role as C.J. Cregg on the television series The West Wing.
  Janney was born in Dayton, Ohio, the daughter of Macy Brooks (née Putnam), a former actress and homemaker, and Jervis Spencer Janney, Jr., a real estate developer and jazz musician. She has an older brother, Jay, and a younger brother, Hal. She attended The Miami Valley School in Dayton, where she was named a distinguished alumna in 2004, and the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. She then attended Kenyon College. At Kenyon, Janney studied under another Kenyon alum, Paul Newman.^{[citation needed]} She went on to study drama at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.^{[citation needed]} She attended The Neighborhood Playhouse the same years as actor Dylan McDermott.^{[citation needed]}
  Janney's first roles on television were as comedic foils on soap operas: she first played Vi Kaminski for a short time on As the World Turns, following up with a two-year stint as one of the Spaulding maids, Ginger on Guiding Light. In the spring of 1994, she appeared in the season finale of Law & Order, as a reluctant witness against a member of the Russian mob.
  
  wn.com/Allison_Janney
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  Amy Irving
  Amy Davis Irving (born September 10, 1953) is an American actress, known for her roles in the films Crossing Delancey, The Fury, Carrie, and Yentl as well as roles on Broadway and Off-Broadway. She has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and has won an Obie award. She is also known for marrying director Steven Spielberg; they divorced in 1989 after four years of marriage, with Irving receiving a settlement of 100 million dollars.
  Irving was born in Palo Alto, California, the daughter of film and stage director Jules Irving (birth name: Jules Israel) and actress Priscilla Pointer. Irving's brother is writer/director David Irving (not the British author of the same name) and her sister is singer/teacher of deaf children Katie Irving. Her father was Jewish and her mother is of Cherokee and Welsh background. She was raised in the Christian Science faith.
  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Irving attended the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she appeared in several productions. She also trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and made her off-Broadway debut at age 17 in And Chocolate on Her Chin. She is a graduate of the Professional Children's School, in Manhattan, New York.
  
  wn.com/Amy_Irving
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  Annette Bening
  Annette Carol Bening (born May 29, 1958) is an American actress. Bening is a four-time Oscar nominee for her roles in The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia and The Kids Are All Right, winning Golden Globe Awards for the latter two films. Bening is married to actor Warren Beatty, with whom she has four children.
  Bening was born in Topeka, Kansas, the youngest of four children. Her mother, Shirley (née Ashley), was a church singer and soloist, and her father, Arnett Grant Bening, was a sales training consultant and insurance salesman. Her parents, natives of Iowa, were practicing Episcopalians and conservative Republicans. Her sister and two brothers are Jane, Bradley and Byron. The family moved to Wichita, Kansas, in 1959, where she spent her early childhood. In 1965, her father took a job with a company in San Diego, California, and they moved there. She began acting in junior high school, playing the lead in The Sound of Music. She graduated in 1975, from Patrick Henry High School where she studied drama.
  
  wn.com/Annette_Bening
• Antony Sher
  Sir Antony Sher, KBE (born 14 June 1949) is a double Olivier Award winning South African-born British actor, writer, theatre director and painter.
  Sher was born into a Lithuanian Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of Margery and Emmanuel Sher, who worked in business. He grew up in the suburb of Sea Point and is a cousin of the playwright Ronald Harwood. Sher, however, has worked mainly in the United Kingdom and is now a British citizen.
  In 1968, after completing his compulsory military service, he left for London to audition at the Central School of Speech and Drama and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but was unsuccessful. Instead, he studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art from 1969 to 1971. After training, and some early performances with the theatre group Gay Sweatshop, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982.
  In the 1970s Sher was part of an astonishing group of young actors and writers working at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. It consisted of the likes of writers Willy Russell and Alan Bleasdale and fellow actors Bernard Hill, Julie Walters, Trevor Eve and Jonathan Pryce. Sher summed up the work of the company with the phrase "Anarchy ruled." At the Royal Shakespeare Company he took the title role in Tartuffe and played the Fool in King Lear before his big breakthrough in 1984, when he played the title role in Shakespeare's Richard III. This won him the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award. Since then he has played the lead in such productions as Tamburlaine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Stanley and Macbeth. He also played Johnnie in Athol Fugard's Hello and Goodbye, Iago in Othello, Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
  
  wn.com/Antony_Sher
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  Atom Egoyan
  Atom Egoyan, OC (Armenian: Աթոմ Եղոյեան; born July 19, 1960) is a critically acclaimed Canadian stage director and film director. Egoyan made his career breakthrough with Exotica (1994). His most critically acclaimed film is The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and his biggest commercial success is Chloe (2009).
  Egoyan has been nominated for two Academy Awards - The Sweet Hereafter for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He also won several awards at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Genie Awards.
  His work often explores themes of alienation and isolation, featuring characters whose interactions are mediated through technology, bureaucracy or other power structures. Egoyan's films often follow non-linear plot-structures, in which events are placed out of sequence in order to elicit specific emotional reactions from the audience by withholding key information.
  In 2008 Egoyan received the Dan David Prize for "Creative Rendering of the Past".
  Egoyan was born Atom Yeghoyan in Cairo, Egypt, the son of Shushan (née Devletian) and Joseph Yeghoyan, artists who operated a furniture store. His parents were Armenian-Egyptians, and he was named Atom to mark the completion of Egypt's first nuclear reactor. In 1962, however, his parents left Egypt for Canada, where they settled in Victoria, British Columbia, and changed their last name to Egoyan. Atom and his sister, Eve, now a concert pianist based in Toronto, were raised by their parents in British Columbia.
  
  wn.com/Atom_Egoyan
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  Barack Obama
  
  
  Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.
  Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
  Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.
  
  wn.com/Barack_Obama
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  Barry Levinson
  Barry Levinson (born April 6, 1942) is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, and producer of film and television. His most notable films include Good Morning, Vietnam, Rain Man, Bugsy, Sleepers and Wag the Dog.
  Levinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Violet "Vi" (née Krichinsky) and Irvin Levinson, who worked in the furniture and appliance business. His family is of Russian Jewish descent. After growing up in Baltimore and graduating from Forest Park Senior High School, Levinson attended Baltimore City Community College, and American University in Washington, D.C. at the American University School of Communication, before moving to Los Angeles to work as an actor and writer. Levinson at one time shared an apartment with would-be drug smuggler (and basis for the movie Blow) George Jung.
  Levinson's first writing work was for variety shows such as The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, The Lohman and Barkley Show, The Tim Conway Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. After some success as a screenwriter — notably the Mel Brooks comedies Silent Movie (1976) and High Anxiety (1977) (in which he played a bellboy) and the Oscar-nominated script (co-written by then-wife Valerie Curtin) …And Justice for All (1979) — Levinson began his career as a director with Diner (1982), for which he had also written the script and which earned him a Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.
  
  wn.com/Barry_Levinson
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  Ben Affleck
  Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt (born August 15, 1972), better known as Ben Affleck, is an American actor, film director, writer, and producer. He became known with his performances in Kevin Smith's films such as Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), and Dogma (1999). Affleck won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997), which he co-wrote with Matt Damon, and has appeared in lead roles in such popular hits as Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), Changing Lanes (2002), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Daredevil (2003), Hollywoodland (2007) and State of Play (2009).
  Affleck is a critically acclaimed filmmaker. He directed Gone Baby Gone (2007) and The Town (2010), playing the lead in the latter. He has worked with his younger brother, actor Casey Affleck, on several projects, including Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone.
  Affleck has been married to Jennifer Garner since June 2005. They have two daughters, Violet and Seraphina, and a son, Samuel. He dated the actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998. His relationship with actress/singer Jennifer Lopez attracted worldwide media attention, in which Affleck and Lopez were dubbed "Bennifer". The two broke up in 2004.
  
  wn.com/Ben_Affleck
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  Ben Kingsley
  Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji;Gujarati:કૃષ્ણા પંડિત ભાનજી; 31 December 1943) is an English actor who has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is also known for his performances in the films Schindler's List (1993), Sexy Beast (2000), House of Sand and Fog (2003), and Hugo (2011).
  Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji in Snainton, North Yorkshire, England, the son of Anna Lyna Mary (née Goodman), an actress and model, and Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a medical doctor.
  Kingsley's father, born in Kenya, is of Gujarati Indian descent; Kingsley's paternal grandfather was a spice trader who had moved from India to Zanzibar, where Kingsley's father lived until moving to England at the age of 14. Kingsley's mother, born out of wedlock, was "loath to speak of her background". Kingsley's maternal grandfather was believed by the family to have been a Russian or German Jew, while Kingsley's maternal grandmother was English and worked in the garment district of East London.
  
  wn.com/Ben_Kingsley
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  Benicio del Toro
  Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez (born February 19, 1967) is a Puerto Rican actor and film producer. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award for his role as Javier Rodríguez in Traffic (2000). He is also known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects (1995), Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Franky Four Fingers in Snatch (2000), Jackie Boy in Sin City (2005), and Che Guevara in Che (2008). He is the third Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award.
  Benicio del Toro was born in San German, on the southwest side of the island of Puerto Rico, and grew up in Santurce, a district of San Juan. He is the son of Gustavo Adolfo del Toro Bermúdez and Fausta Genoveva Sánchez Rivera, who were both lawyers, and deeply respected and beloved in Puerto Rico for their commitment to their community. Gustavo Del Toro was affectionately called the "lawyer of the poor". Many of Del Toro's relatives are involved in the island's legal system. He has an older brother, Gustavo, who was a pediatric oncologist at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. He is of Spanish descent through a Catalan paternal great-grandfather and a Basque maternal great-grandmother, he has Italian and Amerindian ancestry as well. The surname del Toro (Touro) is of Sephardic origin. Benicio del Toro is related to Puerto Rican basketball player Carlos Arroyo, his father Gustavo is a cousin of Arroyo's mother, Gloria Bermudez. Del Toro is also related to Spanish Euro-pop singer Rebeca Pous Del Toro, whose grandfather is Puerto Rican, and Puerto Rican singer Eliseo del Toro.
  
  wn.com/Benicio_del_Toro
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  Benjamin Bratt
  Benjamin Bratt (born December 16, 1963) is an American actor. He is most famous for his role as Rey Curtis on the TV series Law & Order; and his appearances in the movies Miss Congeniality, Demolition Man, Blood in Blood Out, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Traffic, and Piñero.
  Bratt was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Eldy (née Banda), a nurse, and Peter Bratt, Sr., a sheet metal worker. Bratt's mother is a Peruvian Indigenous activist of the Quechua ethnic group; born in Peru, she moved to the U.S. at age nine. His father was an American of German and English descent. They married December 30, 1960, in San Francisco, but divorced in September 1967. Bratt's paternal grandfather, George Cleveland Bratt (March 5, 1893 – March 29, 1984), was a Broadway actor who married his grandmother Wiltrude Hildner on August 6, 1920, in Detroit, Michigan.
  As a child, Bratt went with his mother and siblings to participate in the 1969 Native American occupation of Alcatraz. Today Bratt is an active supporter of such Native American causes as the American Indian College Fund and We Shall Remain, a mini-series and multi-media project, narrated by Bratt, that establishes Native history as an essential part of American history from PBS' acclaimed series American Experience.
  
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  Bernard Madoff
  Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff ( /ˈmeɪdɒf/; born April 29, 1938) is a former American businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor, and financier. He is the former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of a Ponzi scheme that is considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S. history.
  In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Madoff said he began the Ponzi scheme in the early 1990s. However, federal investigators believe the fraud began as early as the 1970s, and those charged with recovering the missing money believe the investment operation may never have been legitimate. The amount missing from client accounts, including fabricated gains, was almost $65 billion. The court-appointed trustee estimated actual losses to investors of $18 billion. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum allowed.
  
  wn.com/Bernard_Madoff
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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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  Bill Paxton
  William "Bill" Paxton (born May 17, 1955) is an American actor and film director. He gained popularity after starring roles in the films Apollo 13, Twister, Aliens, True Lies, and Titanic. Paxton starred in the HBO series Big Love (2006–2011).
  Paxton was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of Mary Lou (née Gray) and John Lane Paxton, a businessman, lumber wholesaler, museum executive, and occasional actor. He was raised Roman Catholic, his mother's religion. He attended St. Anne's Catholic School, Arlington Heights High School (Fort Worth, Texas), and Southwest Texas State University (San Marcos, Texas).^{[citation needed]}
  Paxton has appeared in such films as Weird Science, Aliens, Apollo 13, Near Dark, Twister, Titanic and True Lies. Four years after appearing in Titanic, he joined James Cameron on an expedition to the actual Titanic. A film about this trip, Ghosts of the Abyss, was released in 2003.
  Paxton has also directed a number of short films, including Fish Heads, which aired during Saturday Night Live's low-rated 1980-1981 season. He directed the feature films Frailty and The Greatest Game Ever Played.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Paxton
• Bored to Death
  Bored to Death is an American comedy series that premiered on HBO on September 20, 2009. As of 2011^[update], three seasons have aired, each consisting of eight episodes. The show was created by author Jonathan Ames, and stars Jason Schwartzman as a fictional Jonathan Ames—a writer based in Brooklyn, New York City, who moonlights as an unlicensed private detective. The show also stars Ted Danson as George, and Zach Galifianakis as Ray, both friends of Jonathan. The third season premiered October 10, 2011. HBO cancelled Bored to Death on December 20, 2011.
  When Jonathan's girlfriend Suzanne breaks up with him, and his career as a writer is floundering, he finds himself with a lot of spare time on his hands. Inspired by a Raymond Chandler detective novel, Jonathan posts an ad on Craigslist, advertising himself as an unlicensed private detective. He easily solves his first and second cases, which involve a missing person and a cheating boyfriend respectively.
  Jonathan attempts to reignite his relationship with Suzanne, but he is unsuccessful. George introduces Jonathan to film director Jim Jarmusch and is given an opportunity to write for him, but fails to produce any material before Jarmusch changes his mind. Ray agrees to donate sperm to a lesbian couple, although against Leah's will. In another attempt to win back Suzanne, Jonathan arranges to take her to Brighton Beach with Ray and Leah. However, Jonathan also tries to solve a case while with her, and it ruins the night. Seeking adventure, George joins Jonathan and Ray as Jonathan tries to steal from a notorious blackmailer. Ray and George establish a friendship for the first time while waiting for Jonathan, sharing their love of marijuana. Ray learns that the lesbian couple he supplied with sperm were actually reselling it to other couples, and the couple has since fled town. Jonathan meets and beds a new woman, Stella.
  
  wn.com/Bored_to_Death
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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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  Christine Baranski
  Christine Jane Baranski (born May 2, 1952) is an American stage and screen actress, and is perhaps best known for her Emmy Award-winning portrayal as Maryanne Thorpe in the sitcom Cybill, and her Emmy-nominated portrayal of Diane Lockhart in The Good Wife. Prior to her appearances in film and television, Baranski rose to prominence as a Broadway actress, winning two Tony Awards.
  Baranski was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Virginia (née Mazurowski) and Lucien Baranski, who edited a Polish-language newspaper. She is of Polish descent and her grandparents were actors in the Polish theater. Baranski attended high school at the Villa Maria Academy in Cheektowaga, a suburb of Buffalo. She then studied at New York City's Juilliard School (Drama Division Group 3: 1970–1974) where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974.
  Baranski made her Off-Broadway debut in Coming Attractions at Playwrights Horizons in 1980, and has appeared in several Off Broadway productions at the Manhattan Theatre Club, starting with Sally and Marsha in 1982.
  
  wn.com/Christine_Baranski
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  Christopher Reeve
  Christopher D'Olier Reeve (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author and activist. He achieved stardom for his acting achievements, including his notable motion picture portrayal of the fictional superhero Superman.
  On May 27, 1995, Reeve became a quadriplegic after being thrown from a horse in an equestrian competition in Virginia. He required a wheelchair and breathing apparatus for the rest of his life. He lobbied on behalf of people with spinal cord injuries, and for human embryonic stem cell research afterward. He founded the Christopher Reeve Foundation and co-founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center.
  Reeve married Dana Morosini in April 1992. Christopher and Dana's son, William Elliot Reeve, was born on June 7, 1992. Reeve also had two children, Matthew Exton Reeve (born 1979) and Alexandra Exton Reeve (born 1983), from his previous relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Gae Exton.
  Christopher Reeve was born in New York City on September 25, 1952, the son of Barbara Pitney (née Lamb), a journalist, and Franklin D'Olier Reeve, who was a teacher, novelist, poet and scholar. His paternal grandfather, Colonel Richard Henry Reeve, had been the CEO of Prudential Financial for over twenty-five years, and his great-grandfather, Franklin D'Olier, was a prominent businessman, veteran of World War I, and the first national commander of the American Legion. Reeve's father was also descended from a sister of statesman Elias Boudinot, as well as from Massachusetts governors Thomas Dudley and John Winthrop, Pennsylvania deputy governor Thomas Lloyd, and Henry Baldwin, a US Supreme Court Justice. Reeve's mother was the granddaughter of Mahlon Pitney, another U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and was also a descendant of William Bradford, a Mayflower passenger.
  
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  Colin Firth
  A Darcy Before I Die - satirical poem by Ronnie Taheny (c) 2008
  Colin Andrew Firth, CBE (born 10 September 1960) is an English film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In 2011, Firth received an Academy Award for his portrayal of King George VI in The King's Speech, a performance that also earned him the Golden Globe, BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor, amongst others. The previous year, he received his first Academy Award nomination, for his leading role in A Single Man, a performance that won him a BAFTA Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.
  Firth was born in England. His mother, Shirley Jean (née Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College Winchester (now the University of Winchester), and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, was a history lecturer (also at King Alfred's) and education officer for the Nigerian Government. Firth has a sister, Kate, and a younger brother, Jonathan, who is also an actor. Firth's parents were raised in India, because his maternal grandparents, Congregationalist ministers, and his paternal grandfather, an Anglican priest, performed missionary work abroad. Firth spent part of his childhood in Nigeria, where his father was teaching.
  
  wn.com/Colin_Firth
• Dan Futterman
  Daniel Futterman (born June 8, 1967) is an American actor and screenwriter. Although he is known for several high-profile acting roles, including Val Goldman in the film The Birdcage, and Vincent Gray on the CBS television series Judging Amy, he is also a screenwriter. In 2005, he wrote the screenplay for the film Capote for which he received an Academy Award nomination and an Independent Spirit Award, Boston Society of Film Critics award, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association award.
  Futterman, one of three siblings, was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a lawyer father and a psychoanalyst mother. He was raised in Conservative Judaism and grew up in an "intellectual family". Futterman grew up in Larchmont, New York, and graduated from Mamaroneck High School in 1985 and Columbia University in 1989.
  Futterman is married to television writer Anya Epstein (sister of former Boston Red Sox General Manager and Executive Vice President and current President of Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs Theo Epstein), with whom he has two daughters: Sylvie (b. 2001) and Eve (b. 2005).
  
  wn.com/Dan_Futterman
• David Koepp
  David Koepp (born June 9, 1963) is an American screenwriter and director. Koepp is the fourth most successful screen writer of all time in terms of domestic box office receipts with totals at just over $2 billion.
  As a writer, Koepp has worked on such blockbuster Hollywood films such as Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, and Spider-Man. Koepp had a cameo as the "Unlucky Bastard" in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, in which he was serving as Writer and Second Unit Director. He is the man who gets eaten by the T-Rex in San Diego.
  His work as a director has not had quite the same box office success; films include Secret Window, Stir of Echoes, and The Trigger Effect. Koepp was reportedly paid $4,000,000 for his Panic Room screenplay. He also created the 2002 television series Hack starring David Morse. He wrote the screenplay for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and co-wrote and directed 2008's Ghost Town starring Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear. In 2012, Koepp directed Premium Rush which he co-wrote with John Kamps. In an August 2011 lawsuit, Joe Quirk, the author of the 1998 novel Ultimate Rush accused Koepp and the makers of Premium Rush of copyright infringement.( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/us/21bcquirk.html )
  
  wn.com/David_Koepp
• Deirdre Costello
  Deirdre Costello is a former camogie player, winner of an All Ireland senior medal when her county won its first senior success in 1996 and winner of the AIB Gaelic Star award for Camogie Junior Player of the year in 1985.
  She won three All Ireland medals at different grades in 1985, scoring four goals in her county's victorious All Ireland Junior final against Armagh in September, scoring 3-5 for St Raphael’s Loughrea whom she captained to victory against Loreto, Letterkenny in the All Ireland colleges final in March, winning a National Junior League with Galway in May. She finished second in the Gradam Taillte skills competition and scored 2-1 in the All Ireland minor final against Cork, in which Galway were defeated. She played for Connacht in both the junior and senior finals of the Gael Linn Cup that year, scoring a goal in the senior final.
  She scored 3-3 for St Raphael’s Loughrea in the All Ireland colleges final of 1986.
  
  wn.com/Deirdre_Costello
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  Dennis Quaid
  Dennis William Quaid (born April 9, 1954) is an American actor known for his comedic and dramatic roles. First gaining widespread attention in the 1980s, his career rebounded in the 1990s after he overcame an addiction to drugs and an eating disorder. Some of his notable credits include Jaws 3-D, The Right Stuff, Enemy Mine, Great Balls of Fire!, The Big Easy, Far from Heaven, The Rookie, The Day After Tomorrow, Vantage Point, Footloose, The Parent Trap, Soul Surfer and Innerspace.
  Quaid was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Juanita Bonniedale "Nita" (née Jordan), a real estate agent, and William Rudy Quaid (November 21, 1923 – February 8, 1987), an electrician and a third cousin of performer Gene Autry. He is the younger brother of actor Randy Quaid. The Quaid brothers grew up in Bellaire, Texas, which is a small city surrounded by Houston, and in southwest Houston. Quaid has English, Irish, and Cajun (French) ancestry. He attended Paul W. Horn Elementary School in Bellaire and Pershing Middle School in Houston. He studied Mandarin and dance at Bellaire High School in Bellaire, Texas, and later in college, at the University of Houston, under drama coach Cecil Pickett, who had previously taught at Bellaire High and whose daughter is actress Cindy Pickett. It was during his time at Bellaire High School that he developed the nickname 'Dennis Quand', (a combination of 'Quaid' and 'Bond') in relation to his obsession with the 007 movie character and was regularly referred to by this name.
  
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  Dianne Wiest
  Dianne Wiest (born March 28, 1948) is an American actress on stage, television and film. She has won two Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. Wiest has also been nominated for a BAFTA Award.
  Wiest was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Her mother, Anne Stewart (née Keddie), was born in Auchtermuchty, Scotland, and worked as a nurse, and her father, Bernard John Wiest, was a college dean and former psychiatric social worker for the U.S. Army. The two met in Algiers. She has two brothers: Greg and Don Wiest. Wiest's original ambition was to be a ballerina, but in late high school she switched her goal to theatre.^{[citation needed]}
  Wiest graduated from the University of Maryland in 1969 with a degree in Arts and Sciences.
  She made her film debut in It's My Turn (1980), but did not establish herself as a film actress until her work for Woody Allen in the 1980s.
  Wiest studied theatre at the University of Maryland, leaving after her third term to tour with a Shakespearean troupe. Later, she had a supporting role in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of Ashes. She also acted at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT, playing the title role in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. She was an understudy both off-Broadway and on Broadway, in Kurt Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June in 1970.
  
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  Don Cheadle
  Donald Frank "Don" Cheadle, Jr. (pronounced /ˈtʃiːdəl/; born November 29, 1964) is an American film actor and producer. Cheadle rose to prominence in the late 1990s and the early 2000s for his supporting roles in the Steven Soderbergh-directed films Out of Sight, Traffic, and Ocean's Eleven. In 2004, his lead role as Rwandan hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina in the genocide drama film Hotel Rwanda earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He also campaigns for the end of genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and co-authored a book concerning the issue titled Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond. In 2010, Cheadle was named U.N. Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador. He currently stars on the Showtime sitcom House of Lies.
  Cheadle was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bettye (née North), a teacher, and Donald Frank Cheadle, Sr., a clinical psychologist. He has a sister, Dawn, and a brother, Colin. His family moved from city to city throughout his childhood. Cheadle graduated in 1982 from East High School in Denver, Colorado, and went on to the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a BFA in Acting.
  
  wn.com/Don_Cheadle
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  Dustin Lance Black
  Dustin Lance Black (born June 10, 1974) is an American screenwriter, director, film and television producer, and LGBT rights activist. He has won two Writers Guild of America Awards for his work on the television series Big Love and an Academy Award for the 2008 film Milk.
  Black is a Founding Board Member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights and writer of 8, a staged reenactment of the federal trial that led to an appellate court's overturn of California's Proposition 8.
  Black was born in Sacramento, California and grew up in a Mormon household, in San Antonio, Texas and later moved to Salinas, California when his mother remarried. His father had been the Mormon missionary who had baptized Black's mother earlier.
  Growing up surrounded by Mormon culture and military bases, Black worried about his sexuality. He told himself, "I'm going to hell. And if I ever admit it, I'll be hurt, and I'll be brought down" when he found himself attracted to a boy in his neighborhood at the age of six or seven. He says that his "acute awareness" of his sexuality made him dark, shy and at times suicidal, and he came out in his senior year of college.
  
  wn.com/Dustin_Lance_Black
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  Ed Harris
  Edward Allen "Ed" Harris (born November 28, 1950) is an American actor, writer, and director, known for his performances in Appaloosa, The Rock, The Abyss, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, The Truman Show, and The Hours. Harris has also narrated commercials for The Home Depot and other companies. He is a three-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, along with an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for the title role in Pollock.
  Harris was born in Englewood Hospital, and raised in Tenafly, the son of Margaret, a travel agent, and Robert L. Harris, who sang with the Fred Waring chorus and worked at the bookstore of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has an older brother, Robert, and a younger brother, Spencer. His parents were originally from Oklahoma. Harris was raised in a middle-class Presbyterian family. He graduated from Tenafly High School in 1969, where he played on the football team, serving as the team's captain in his senior year. He was a star athlete in high school, and competed in athletics at Columbia University in 1969. Two years later his family moved to New Mexico, and he followed, after having discovered his interest in acting in various theater plays. He enrolled at the University of Oklahoma to study drama. After several successful roles in the local theater, he moved to Los Angeles, and enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts.
  
  wn.com/Ed_Harris
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  Elizabeth Perkins
  Elizabeth Ann Perkins (born November 18, 1960) is an American actress. Her film roles have included Big, The Flintstones, Miracle on 34th Street, About Last Night..., and Avalon. She is perhaps best known for her role as Celia Hodes in the Showtime series Weeds.
  Perkins was born in Queens, New York City, the daughter of Jo Williams, a drug treatment counselor and concert pianist, and James Perkins, a farmer, writer, and businessman. Her paternal grandparents were Greek immigrants from Salonika who anglicized their surname from "Pisperikos" to "Perkins" when they emigrated to the United States. Perkins was raised in Colrain, Massachusetts; her parents divorced in 1963. She began working in theatre with Arena Civic Theatre, a non-profit community theatre group based out of Greenfield, Massachusetts. Perkins attended Northfield Mount Hermon School, an elite preparatory school, and then spent three years in Chicago studying acting at the Goodman School of Drama. In 1984, she made her theatrical debut on Broadway in Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs and afterward, worked in a number of ensemble companies, including The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Steppenwolf Theater.
  
  wn.com/Elizabeth_Perkins
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  Ellen Barkin
  Ellen Rona Barkin (born April 16, 1954) is an American actress.
  She was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, New York, the daughter of Evelyn (née Rozin), a hospital administrator who worked at Jamaica Hospital, and Sol Barkin, a chemical salesman. Barkin was raised in a lower-middle-class Jewish family, a descendant of immigrants from Siberia and the Russia-Poland border.
  Barkin received her high school diploma at Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts. She then attended Hunter College and double majored in history and drama. At one point, Barkin wanted to teach ancient history. She continued her acting education at New York City's Actors Studio. According to Time, she studied acting for ten years before landing her first audition.
  Her break-out role was in the comedy-drama film Diner (1982), written and directed by Barry Levinson, for which she received favorable reviews. Barkin was cast in the drama film Tender Mercies (1983) after impressing its director Bruce Beresford during an audition in New York City, despite her inexperience and his lack of familiarity with her work. Robert Duvall, who played the lead role in Tender Mercies, said of Barkin, "She brings a real credibility for that part, plus she was young and attractive and had a certain sense of edge, a danger for her that was good for that part." She also appeared in the 1983 rock & roll drama film Eddie and the Cruisers.
  
  wn.com/Ellen_Barkin
• Emily Woof
  Emily Woof (born 1967), is an English actress and author, best known for film roles including The Full Monty, The Woodlanders, Velvet Goldmine, Wondrous Oblivion, Silent Cry and The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse.
  Her father was Wordsworth Trust Director Dr Robert Woof.
  Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Woof studied at Oxford University. Her first stage work was a trilogy of one-man plays: Sex, Sex 2, and Sex 3. Sections of these plays were written to be performed on a trapeze, which Woof had trained to use in Bristol after completing her degree.
  Parts in The Full Monty (1997), Photographing Fairies (1997), Velvet Goldmine (1998) and The Woodlanders (1998) established Emily Woof as one of Britain's leading young actresses.
  She has also appeared in several television roles, ranging from period dramas (Middlemarch, Oliver Twist) to contemporary drams (Killer Net) and comedy (The Ronni Ancona Show).
  For theatre she has written the Sex, Sex II, Sex III, and Revolver.^{[citation needed]} For radio, Pianoman, Baby Love, and Home to The Black Sea. She has written and directed two short films, Between The Wars, and Meeting Helen.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Emily_Woof
• Erika Christensen
  Erika Jane Christensen (born August 19, 1982) is an American actress whose film appearances include Traffic (2000), Swimfan (2002), How to Rob a Bank (2007), and The Perfect Score (2004), among others. She also co-starred in the short-lived drama Six Degrees on ABC. She is currently co-starring in the 2010 television series Parenthood as Julia Braverman-Graham.
  Christensen was born in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Kathy, a construction manager, and Steven, an insurance worker/human-resources executive. She has an older half-brother, Nick, and two younger twin brothers, Dane (who appeared in the film The Upside of Anger) and Brando. She has Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Welsh, and Irish ancestry. Christensen was raised in Los Angeles, California and started out on television in commercials for McDonald's.
  Christensen is a member of the Church of Scientology. Her parents became Scientologists in their 20s and raised her to be a Scientologist as well as home-schooling her.
  
  wn.com/Erika_Christensen
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  Forest Whitaker
  Forest Steven Whitaker (born July 15, 1961) is an American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television series, The Shield. Whitaker won an Academy Award for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker has also won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.
  Whitaker was born in Longview, Texas, and his family moved to South Central Los Angeles when he was four. His father, Forest Whitaker, Jr., was an insurance salesman and the son of novelist Forest Whitaker, Sr. His mother, Laura Francis (née Smith), was a special education teacher who put herself through college and earned two Masters degrees while raising her children. Whitaker has two younger brothers, Kenn and Damon, and an older sister, Deborah.
  As a teenager, Whitaker commuted from Carson to wealthy Palisades High School on LA's West Side. There, he was all-league defensive tackle on the football team quarterbacked by Jay Schroeder, a future NFL player. While in high school, he also took voice lessons, performed in musicals, and caught the "acting bug"; his first role as an actor was the lead in Dylan Thomas' play, Under Milk Wood. Whitaker graduated from "Pali High" in 1979.
  
  wn.com/Forest_Whitaker
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  Gary Sinise
  Gary Alan Sinise ( /səˈniːs/; born March 17, 1955) is an American actor, film director and musician. During his career, Sinise has won various awards including an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1992, Sinise directed, and played the role of George Milton in the successful film adaptation of Of Mice and Men. Sinise was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1994 for his role as Lt. Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump. He won a Golden Globe Award for his role in Truman, as Harry S. Truman. In 1996, he played a corrupt police officer in the dramatic hit Ransom, Detective Jimmy Shaker. In 1998, Sinise was awarded an Emmy Award for the television film George Wallace, a portrayal of the late George C. Wallace. Since 2004, Sinise has starred in CBS's CSI: NY as Detective Mac Taylor.
  Sinise was born in Blue Island, Illinois, the son of Mylles S. (née Alsip; b. 1932) and Robert L. Sinise (b. 1931), the latter of whom was a film editor. He is of part Italian ancestry (from his paternal grandfather). He attended Highland Park High School in Highland Park, Illinois. In 1974, Sinise and two friends, Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry, founded the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Since its founding, Steppenwolf has showcased the talents of such notable actors as Joan Allen, Kevin Anderson, Gary Cole, Ethan Hawke, Glenne Headly, John Mahoney, John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf, Martha Plimpton, Jim True-Frost and most recently William Petersen. At Steppenwolf, Sinise honed his acting and directing skills, received a Joseph Jefferson Award for his direction of Lyle Kessler's play Orphans, that took him from Chicago, to New York City to London's West End, and worked on more than thirty of the company's productions.
  
  wn.com/Gary_Sinise
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  Gene Hackman
  Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is a retired American actor and novelist.
  Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. His major subsequent films include The French Connection (1971), in which he played Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle; The Poseidon Adventure (1972); The Conversation (1974); Superman (1978), in which he played arch-villain Lex Luthor; Hoosiers (1986); Mississippi Burning (1987); Unforgiven (1992); The Firm (1993); Crimson Tide (1995); Get Shorty (1995); The Birdcage (1996); Enemy of the State (1998); and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
  Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Lyda (née Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman. He has a brother, Richard. His family moved frequently, finally settling in Danville, Illinois, where they lived in the house of his English-born maternal grandmother, Beatrice. Hackman's father operated the printing press for the Commercial-News, a local paper. Hackman's parents divorced in 1943 and his father subsequently left the family.
  
  wn.com/Gene_Hackman
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  Geoffrey Rush
  Geoffrey Roy Rush (born 6 July 1951) is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting (from four nominations), three British Academy Film Awards (from five nominations), two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He is the foundation President of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts. He is the 2012 Australian of the Year.
  Rush was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, to Merle (née Kiehne), a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. His parents divorced when he was five and his mother subsequently took him to live with her parents in suburban Brisbane. Before he began his acting career, Rush attended Everton Park State High School. He also has an arts degree from the University of Queensland. While at university, he was talent-spotted by Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) in Brisbane. Rush began his career with QTC in 1971, appearing in 17 productions.
  
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  George Clooney
  George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received three Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award. Clooney is also noted for his political activism, and has served as one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace since January 31, 2008.
  Though he made his acting debut on television in 1978, Clooney gained fame and recognition by portraying Dr. Douglas "Doug" Ross on the long-running medical drama ER from 1994 to 1999. While working on ER, he started attracting a variety of leading roles in films including Batman & Robin (1997) and Out of Sight (1998), in which he first teamed with long-term collaborator Steven Soderbergh. 1999 saw the release of Three Kings, a well-received war satire set during the Gulf War featuring Clooney in another lead role. In 2001, Clooney's fame widened with the release of his biggest commercial success, Ocean's Eleven, the first of a profitable film trilogy, a remake of the film from 1960 with the members of The Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean. He made his directorial debut a year later with the 2002 biographical thriller Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and has since directed Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), Leatherheads (2008), and The Ides of March (2011). He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the Middle East thriller Syriana (2005) and subsequently fetched Best Actor nominations for such films as Michael Clayton (2007), Up in the Air (2009) and The Descendants (2011).
  
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  Gwyneth Paltrow
  Gwyneth Kate Paltrow ( /ˈɡwɪnɨθ ˈpæltroʊ/; born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Seven (1995) and Emma (1996) (in which she played the title role). Following the films Sliding Doors (1998) and A Perfect Murder (1998), Paltrow garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the Outstanding Cast. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011 for her role as Holly Holliday on the Fox hit TV show Glee in the episode "The Substitute".
  Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Shallow Hal (2001), and Proof (2005), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. Since 2008, she has portrayed Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring in Iron Man and its sequel, Iron Man 2 (2010), and also appearing in The Avengers (2012). Paltrow has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume since 2005. She is married to Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of Coldplay. They have two children together, Apple and Moses. She is also the face of American fashion brand Coach, owner of the lifestyle company Goop.com and author of the cookbook My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness.
  
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  Hank Azaria
  Henry Albert "Hank" Azaria ( /əˈzɛəriə/ ə-ZAIR-ee-ə; born April 25, 1964) is an American film, television and stage actor, director, voice actor, and comedian. He is noted for being one of the principal voice actors on the animated television series The Simpsons (1989–present), on which he performs the voices of Moe Szyslak, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Chief Wiggum, Comic Book Guy, Carl Carlson and numerous others. Azaria, who attended Tufts University, joined the show with little voice acting experience, but became a regular in its second season. Many of his performances on the show are based on famous actors and characters; Moe's voice, for example, is based on actor Al Pacino.
  Alongside his continued voice acting on The Simpsons, Azaria became more widely known through his live-action appearances in films such as The Birdcage (1996) and Godzilla (1998). He has continued to star in numerous films including Mystery Men (1999), America's Sweethearts (2001), Shattered Glass (2003), Along Came Polly (2004), Run Fatboy Run (2007), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and The Smurfs (2011). He also had recurring roles on the television series Mad About You and Friends, and starred in the drama Huff (2004–2006), playing the titular character, as well as appearing in the popular stage musical Spamalot. Originally primarily a comic actor, in recent years Azaria has taken on more dramatic roles including the TV films Tuesdays With Morrie (1999) and Uprising (2001). He has won four Emmys and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Azaria was married to actress Helen Hunt from 1999 to 2000.
  
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  Henry Louis Gates
  Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual. He was the first African American to receive the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship. He has received numerous honorary degrees and awards for his teaching, research, and development of academic institutions to study black culture. In 2002, Gates was selected to give the Jefferson Lecture, in recognition of his "distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities".
  Gates has hosted several PBS television miniseries, including the history and travel program Wonders of the African World and the biographical African American Lives and Faces of America. Gates sits on the boards of many notable arts, cultural, and research institutions. He serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, where he is director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.
  Potomac State College in Keyser, West Virginia. He went on to complete his undergraduate B.A. degree at Yale University, summa cum laude, in History. The first African American to be awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, the day after his undergraduate commencement, Gates set sail on the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 for England and the University of Cambridge where he studied English literature at Clare College and obtained a PhD.
  
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• Hugo Speer
  Hugo Speer (born 17 March 1969) is an English actor.
  He was born in Harrogate, West Riding of Yorkshire, and educated at Harrogate Grammar School. He studied acting at the Arts Educational School.
  He began his acting career appearing in TV series The Bill and Heartbeat, and played a minor role in the film Bhaji on the Beach before his first notable appearance as "Guy" in the film The Full Monty. He has gone on to appear in several films including Swing (1999), Deathwatch and The Interpreter (playing Nicole Kidman's brother). However, most of his work has been on TV, including sitcoms Men Behaving Badly, dramas Clocking Off, The Last Detective, Boudica (2003) and The Rotters' Club (2005), as well as the 2005 BBC adaptation of Dickens' Bleak House. In 2006, he appeared in the postal worker drama Sorted. In 2008, he appeared alongside Martine McCutcheon in Echo Beach. In 2011 he played a repairman whose repairs "come to life" in Haven. Speer also provides narration for ITV1 series, Cops with Cameras, and the BBC series Seaside Rescue. He appears as John Foster in the penultimate and final episodes of the fourth series of Skins.
  
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  Ian McKellen
  Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH CBE (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He has won multiple Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is known for film roles such as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Magneto in the X-Men films, and as Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code.
  McKellen was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality, in the 2008 New Year Honours.
  McKellen was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, though he spent most of his early life in Wigan. Born shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the experience had some lasting impact on him. In response to an interview question when an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, he said: "Well, darling, you forget — I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old."
  
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  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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  Imelda Staunton
  Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton, OBE (born 9 January 1956) is an English actress. She is perhaps best known for her performances in the British comedy television series Up the Garden Path, the Harry Potter film series (in which she plays Professor Dolores Jane Umbridge) and Vera Drake. She drew critical acclaim as Vera Drake, earning her a Best Actress Oscar nomination and a number of wins including the BAFTA and Venice Film Festival Awards for best actress in a leading role.
  Staunton was born in Archway, North London, the only child of Bridie (née McNicholas), a hairdresser, and Joseph Staunton, a road-worker and labourer. The family lived over Staunton's mother's hair dressing salon while Staunton’s father worked on the roads. Both of her parents were first-generation Catholic immigrants from County Mayo, Ireland, with her father coming from Ballyvary and her mother from Bohola. Staunton's mother was a musician who could not read music, but could master almost any tune by ear on the accordion or fiddle and had played in Irish showbands.
  
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• Jack Brennan
  John "Jack" Vincent Brennan (born August 16, 1937) is a retired American United States Marine Corps Reserve officer and political aide. He is best known as President Richard Nixon's post-resignation chief of staff.
  Brennan was born on August 16, 1937, in Fall River, Massachusetts, and attended Providence College, a Catholic college in Providence, Rhode Island, where he graduated in 1959. He served with the United States Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam War, where he earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart at the Battle of Khe Sanh.
  In 1969, then-Major Brennan was appointed as a Marine Corps Aide to President Nixon; during that time he rose to Colonel. During his time as Marine Corps Aide, Brennan accompanied Nixon on his historic trip to China in 1972, which opened up the country to the United States; he was the first Marine to set foot in the People's Republic of China, and he met Mao Zedong. He made a positive impression on Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, who described Brennan as having "machismo." In addition, he met Pope Paul VI; he later said that, as a Catholic, it was a special honor for him. Brennan remained attached to Nixon during his resignation after the Watergate scandal in 1974; he was aboard the helicopter and airplane that flew the Nixon family back to their home state of California.
  
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  Jack Lemmon
  John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won 'Best Actor' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
  Lemmon was born in an elevator^{[citation needed]} at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the only child of Mildred Burgess LaRue (née Noel) and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., who was the president of a doughnut company. Lemmon attended John Ward Elementary School in Newton and The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He had stated that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight. Lemmon attended Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard University (Class of 1947), where he lived in Adams House and was an active member of several Drama Clubs - becoming president of the Hasty Pudding Club - as well as a member of the Delphic Club for Gentleman, a final club at Harvard. After Harvard, Lemmon joined the Navy, receiving V-12 training and serving as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway. He studied acting under coach Uta Hagen. He also became enamored of the piano and learned to play it on his own. He could also play the harmonica, organ, and the double bass.
  
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  Jack Nicholson
  Not to be confused with Nicholas Jackson
  John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. His twelve Oscar nominations make him the second most nominated actor of all time, behind only Meryl Streep, and tied with Katharine Hepburn.
  Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets. He also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. He is tied with Walter Brennan for most acting wins by a male actor (three). Nicholson is well known for playing villainous roles such as Jack Torrance in The Shining, Frank Costello in The Departed, and the Joker in 1989's Batman, among many other roles.
  Nicholson is one of only two actors who have been nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s; the other is Michael Caine. He has won seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In 1994, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. Notable films in which he has starred include Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Passenger, The Shining, Reds, Terms of Endearment, Batman, A Few Good Men, As Good as It Gets, About Schmidt, The Departed and Anger Management .
  
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  Jack Swigert
  John Leonard "Jack" Swigert, Jr., (August 30, 1931 – December 27, 1982) was a NASA astronaut, one of the 24 persons who have flown to the Moon.
  Before joining NASA, Swigert was a test pilot. After leaving NASA, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, but died before being sworn in.
  Swigert attended the Blessed Sacrament School, Regis Jesuit High School, and East High School. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he played varsity football and earned a bachelor-of-science degree in mechanical engineering. He earned a master-of-science degree in aerospace science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from University of Hartford, in West Hartford, Connecticut.
  He served in the United States Air Force from 1953 to 1956. After completing flight training at Nellis Air Force Base, he was assigned as a fighter pilot in Japan and Korea. After leaving active duty, Swigert was a test pilot for Pratt & Whitney (1957–1964) and North American Aviation (1964–1966). He served in the Massachusetts Air National Guard from September 1957 to March 1960 and as a member of the Connecticut Air National Guard from April 1960 to October 1965.
  
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• Jacob Vargas
  Jacob Vargas (born August 18, 1971) is a Mexican-born American actor.
  Vargas was born in Michoacán, Mexico, and raised in Pacoima, Los Angeles, California, since 1971. He was raised in a devout Roman Catholic family.
  Vargas’ break into acting came when he was cast as a street dancer on Diff'rent Strokes, and his career has continued successfully including films such as Traffic and Jarhead. He was also in the horror movie The Hills Have Eyes 2. But he is most known for his role as Joker from the Joker Brothers in the 2000 film Next Friday and as Abraham Quintanilla, the brother of the late Tejano singer Selena in the biopic film of the same name.
  He is married to Sylvia Arzate. They have a daughter named Rose, born in 2004.
  
  
  
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  James Brolin
  James Brolin /ˈbroʊlɨn/; born July 18, 1940) is an American actor, producer and director, best known for his roles in soap operas, movies, sitcoms, and television. He is the father of actor Josh Brolin and husband of singer/actress Barbra Streisand.
  Brolin was born Craig Kenneth Bruderlin in Los Angeles, California. The eldest of two brothers and two sisters, he was the son of Helen Sue (née Mansur), a homemaker, and Henry Hurst Bruderlin, a building contractor. The family settled in Westwood after his birth. As a young child, he was apparently more interested in animals and airplanes than in acting. When Brolin was 10 in 1950, he began building and flying model airplanes. As a teenaged moviegoer in the mid-1950s he was particularly fascinated with actor James Dean. When his parents invited a director over to his family's house for dinner before auditioning, he met another fellow actor and classmate, Ryan O'Neal, who was about a year younger than Brolin. The two clicked and later enrolled in Los Angeles's renowned University High School. However, Bruderlin's own acting exposed his stifling shyness. His assurance grew when O'Neal invited him to a casting agency. Brolin graduated from high school in 1958, and his family was already encouraging him to become an actor like O'Neal.
  
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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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  Jamie Foxx
  Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), professionally known as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer-songwriter, rapper, stand-up comedian, and talk radio host who began playing the piano when he was five years old. As an actor, his work in the film Ray earned him the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a musical/comedy. He is also a Grammy Award winning musician, producing three albums which have charted highly on the Billboard 200: Unpredictable, which topped the chart, Best Night of My Life and Intuition.
  Born in Terrell, Texas, Foxx was raised by his mother's adoptive parents. He performed in high school and was awarded with a scholarship to United States International University. In his twenties, Foxx began performing stand-up at comedy clubs, and eventually joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991; this exposure helped him land film roles and star in his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show. He released his debut album, Peep This, in 1994, but he did not gain significant musical success until 2004 when he was featured in Twista's song "Slow Jamz". Also in 2004, Foxx played critically acclaimed roles in the films Collateral and Ray. He released his second album, Unpredictable, in 2005, which was helped by his collaboration on Kanye West's number-one single "Gold Digger". His third album Intuition was released in 2008 and was anchored by the single "Blame It". Foxx released his fourth studio album, Best Night of My Life, in 2010.
  
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  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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  Jeremy Irons
  Jeremy John Irons (born 19 September 1948) is an English actor. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969, and has since appeared in many London theatre productions including The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Godspell and Richard II. In 1984, he made his Broadway debut in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and received a Tony Award for Best Actor.
  Irons's first major film role came in the 1981 romantic drama The French Lieutenant's Woman, for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor. After starring in such films as Moonlighting (1982), Betrayal (1983), and The Mission (1986), he gained critical acclaim for portraying twin gynaecologists in David Cronenberg's psychological thriller Dead Ringers (1988). In 1990, Irons played accused murderer Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune, and took home multiple awards including an Academy Award for Best Actor. Other notable films have included The House of the Spirits (1993), The Lion King (1994), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Lolita (1997), The Merchant of Venice (2004), Being Julia (2004), Appaloosa (2008), and Margin Call (2011).
  
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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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  Joel Schumacher
  Joel T. Schumacher (born August 29, 1939) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer.
  Schumacher was born in New York City, the son of Marian (née Kantor) and Francis Schumacher. His mother was a Swedish Jew, and his father was a Baptist from Knoxville, Tennessee, who died when Joel was four years old. Schumacher studied at Parsons The New School for Design and The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. After first working in the fashion industry, he realized his true love was in filmmaking. He moved out to Los Angeles, where he began his media work as a costume designer in films such as Sleeper and developed his skills with television work while earning an MFA from UCLA. He wrote the screenplay for the 1976 low-budget hit movie Car Wash and a number of other minor successes. He also wrote 1978's The Wiz, an adaptation of the stage play of the same name. His film directorial debut was The Incredible Shrinking Woman in 1981, which starred Lily Tomlin, and he quickly made more successful films, including two "brat pack" works.
  
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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.
  
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  Joseph Fiennes
  Joseph Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes ( /ˈfaɪnz/; b. 27 May 1970) is an English film and stage actor. He is perhaps best known for his portrayals of William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love, Sir Robert Dudley in Elizabeth, Commisar Danilov in Enemy at the Gates, Martin Luther in Luther, Merlin in Camelot, and his portrayal of Mark Benford in the 2009 TV series FlashForward.
  Fiennes was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England in 1970, the son of photographer Mark Fiennes and novelist Jennifer Lash. The youngest of six siblings, his elder siblings are actor Ralph Fiennes, filmmakers Sophie Fiennes and Martha Fiennes, composer Magnus Fiennes, and conservationist Jacob Fiennes, his twin brother. His foster brother, Michael Emery, is an archaeologist.
  Fiennes was briefly educated in the Republic of Ireland and then at Swan School For Boys (now known as Leehurst Swan School, following a merger with another school), an independent school in Salisbury, before passing his 11+ exam and continuing to Bishop Wordsworth's School, a voluntary-aided state day grammar school, in the Cathedral Close of the city. He then attended art school in Suffolk for a year, before joining the Young Vic Youth Theatre. Fiennes subsequently trained for three years at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, graduating in 1993.
  
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  Judi Dench
  Dame Judith Olivia “Judi” Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA (born 9 December 1934) is an English film, stage and television actress.
  Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. She branched into film work, and won a BAFTA Award as Most Promising Newcomer; however, most of her work during this period was in theatre. Not generally known as a singer, she drew strong reviews for her leading role in the musical Cabaret in 1968.
  During the next two decades, she established herself as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In television, she achieved success during this period, in the series A Fine Romance from 1981 until 1984 and in 1992 began a continuing role in the television romantic comedy series As Time Goes By.
  Her film appearances were infrequent until she was cast as M in GoldenEye (1995), a role she has played in each James Bond film since. She received several notable film awards for her role as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown (1997), and has since been acclaimed for her work in such films as Shakespeare in Love (1998), Chocolat (2000), Iris (2001), Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) and Notes on a Scandal (2006), and the television production The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2001).
  
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  Judy Garland
  Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress, singer and vaudevillian. Renowned for her contralto voice, she attained international stardom through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award, as well as Grammy Awards and a Special Tony Award. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the remake of A Star is Born and for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1961 film, Judgment at Nuremberg. At 39 years of age, she remains the youngest recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the motion picture industry.
  After appearing in vaudeville with her two older sisters, Garland was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. There she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney and the 1939 film with which she would be most identified, The Wizard of Oz. After 15 years, she was released from the studio but gained renewed success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a return to acting beginning with critically acclaimed performances.
  
  wn.com/Judy_Garland
• Kathleen Quinlan
  Kathleen Denise Quinlan (born November 19, 1954) is an American actress, mostly seen on television and in motion pictures.
  Quinlan was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Josephine (née Zachry), a military supply supervisor, and Robert Quinlan, a television sports director. She was raised in Mill Valley, California, where she attended Tamalpais High School and began her acting career. She has been married to actor Bruce Abbott since April 12, 1994. They have a son, Tyler (born 1990).
  Quinlan made her film debut in George Lucas' 1973 nostalgic look at the early sixties, American Graffiti, at the age of 19 (although she did appear in an uncredited role in 1972's One is a Lonely Number). As a young actress, she guest-starred in several 1970s television series including Police Woman, Ironside, Emergency! and Kojak.
  She has appeared in over 50 films, but is perhaps best known for her roles as Deborah, a schizophrenic, in the film version of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture-Drama, and for a Golden Globe and Oscar nominated turn in the Best Supporting Actress category as an astronaut's wife, Marilyn Lovell, in the 1995 true story Apollo 13 opposite Tom Hanks.
  
  wn.com/Kathleen_Quinlan
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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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  Kevin Kline
  Kevin Delaney Kline (born October 24, 1947) is an American stage and film actor. An Academy Award winner for his supporting role in the comedy hit Fish Called Wanda, AA Fish Called Wanda, he also won two Tony Awards and was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards and an Emmy Award.
  Kline was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Peggy (née Kirk) and Robert Joseph Kline. His father was a classical music lover and an amateur opera singer who owned and operated The Record Bar, a record store in St. Louis that opened in the early '40s, and sold toys during the '60s and '70s; his father's family also owned Kline's Inc., a department store chain. Kline has described his mother as the "dramatic theatrical character in our family." Kline's father was Jewish, from a family that had emigrated from Germany; Kline's mother was of Irish descent, the daughter of an emigrant from County Louth. Kline was raised in his mother's Catholic religion (his father had become an agnostic). He has three siblings, Alex, Christopher, and Kate.
  
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  Kevin Spacey
  Kevin Spacey, CBE (born Kevin Spacey Fowler; July 26, 1959) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s, culminating in his first Academy Award for The Usual Suspects (Best Supporting Actor), followed by a Best Actor Academy Award win for American Beauty (1999). His other starring roles in Hollywood include Seven, L.A. Confidential, Pay It Forward, K-PAX, and Superman Returns in a career which has earned him several Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Since 2003, he has been artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London.
  Spacey was born in South Orange, New Jersey, the son of Kathleen Ann (née Knutson; December 5, 1931 – March 19, 2003), a secretary, and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler (June 4, 1924 – December 24, 1992), a technical writer and data consultant. He has two older siblings: a sister, Julie, and a brother, Randy. He attended Northridge Military Academy, Canoga Park High School (in tenth and eleventh grades), and then Chatsworth High School in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, where he graduated valedictorian of his class. At Chatsworth High, he starred in the school's senior production of The Sound of Music, playing the part of Captain Georg von Trapp, opposite Mare Winningham's character, Maria.
  
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  Kyra Sedgwick
  Kyra Minturn Sedgwick (born August 19, 1965) is an American actress. She is best known for her starring role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama The Closer. Sedgwick's role in the series won her a Golden Globe Award in 2007 and an Emmy Award in 2010. The series will end in Summer 2012, following the completion of its seventh season.
  Sedgwick was born in New York City, the daughter of Patricia (née Rosenwald), a speech teacher and educational/family therapist, and Henry Dwight Sedgwick V, a venture capitalist. Her father was Episcopalian and of English heritage, and her mother was Jewish. On her father's side, she is a descendant of Judge Theodore Sedgwick, Endicott Peabody (the founder of the Groton School), William Ellery (a signer of the Declaration of Independence), John Lathrop (American minister) (1740–1816), of Boston, Mass and Ellery Sedgwick, owner / editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Sedgwick is also the first cousin once removed of actress Edie Sedgwick, a niece of the writer John Sedgwick, a sister of actor Robert Sedgwick, and half-sister of jazz guitarist Mike Stern.
  
  wn.com/Kyra_Sedgwick
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  Lanford Wilson
  Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937 – March 24, 2011) was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was nominated for three Tony Awards.
  Wilson was raised in Missouri by his mother, but in 1956 he moved to California, where he worked and attended college. There, Wilson lived with his father, who did not accept Wilson's homosexuality, and so, in 1957, he moved to Chicago, where he worked as a graphic artist and studied playwriting. In 1962, he moved to New York and began to write plays for Off-Off-Broadway theatres. His 1964 short play, The Madness of Lady Bright, was his first significant success and led to further works treating gay identity and other social and romantic issues throughout the 1960s. In 1969, he was a co-founder of Circle Repertory Company, for whom he wrote many plays in the 1970s. His 1973 play, The Hot l Baltimore, was the company's first major hit with both audiences and critics; its Off-Broadway run exceeded 1,000 performances.
  
  wn.com/Lanford_Wilson
• Lesley Sharp
  Lesley Sharp (born 1960 in Liverpool, Lancashire) is an English stage, film and television actress, particularly well known for her variety of British television roles including Clocking Off, Bob & Rose and afterlife.
  Adopted as the second daughter of mature Scottish parents, Sharp grew up in Formby, Merseyside. Childhood holidays were spent in Edinburgh, where "every fucking summer it rained". Sharp started acting because, as a child, she felt "invisible" and didn't "quite fit in." She has said that her inspiration to act came from watching Dick Emery on television. Her father worked for the Inland Revenue and was not keen on her taking up acting, preferring her to follow in his footsteps by becoming a civil servant. Her adoptive mother died of cancer when Sharp was 15. The adoption was never a secret in the family, but it was only after leaving home that she met her genetic mother — a working class woman unable to keep her because the father was a married man.
  Sharp moved to London at 18 and, after initially failing to get into drama school, worked at the Department of Education and Science at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Responsible for filling in the warders' overtime sheets, her poor numeracy skills resulted in frequent mistakes before she was eventually asked "very nicely, but firmly" to leave.
  
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  Luis Guzmán
  Luis Guzmán (born August 28, 1956) is a Puerto Rican-born American actor, who is known for his character work. For much of his Guzmán's career, he has played character roles largely as sidekicks, thugs, or policemen.
  He is a favorite of director Steven Soderbergh, who cast him in Out of Sight, The Limey, and Traffic, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast him in Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. He also voiced Ricardo Diaz in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. He recently starred in the HBO original series How to Make It in America.
  Guzmán was born in Cayey, Puerto Rico and was raised in New York City's Greenwich Village and the surrounding Lower East Side neighborhood. His mother, Rosa, was a hospital worker, and his stepfather, Benjamin Cardona, was a TV repairman. A graduate of City College of New York, he began his career not as an actor but as a social worker and moonlighted as an actor, eventually becoming heavily involved in street theater and independent films.
  
  wn.com/Luis_Guzmán
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  Mark Addy
  Mark Addy Johnson (born 14 January 1964) is an English actor, best known for his roles as Detective Constable Gary Boyle in the British sitcom The Thin Blue Line, Dave in the film The Full Monty, father Bill Miller in the U.S. sitcom Still Standing and most recently as King Robert Baratheon in the HBO medieval fantasy epic Game of Thrones.
  Addy was born in Tang Hall, York, and was educated in the city. In 1982–84 he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He lives with his wife Kelly and three children (Ruby, born 2000; Charlie, born 2003; and Oscar, born 2005) in Rufforth, close to Upper Poppleton village, near York. Addy's ancestors have lived in York at least since 1910 when his great-grandfather was living there. His father Ian has spent his working life as a glazier at York Minster.
  Addy made his first TV appearance in 1988 in A Very Peculiar Practice, followed by TV performances in shows such as Heartbeat, Band of Gold, Married with Children (one episode), Bruised Fruit, Peak Practice, The Thin Blue Line, Too Much Sun, Sunnyside Farm and most recently Trollied.
  
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  Martin Clunes
  Alexander Martin Clunes (born 28 November 1961) is an English actor and comedian. Clunes is perhaps best known for his roles as Gary Strang in Men Behaving Badly, Doctor Martin Ellingham in Doc Martin and the title character in Reggie Perrin.
  Clunes is the son of the classical actor Alec Clunes, who died of lung cancer when Clunes was eight and a half years old. He has an older sister, Amanda. His mother Daphne, later a board member of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, once worked for Orson Welles. Clunes was educated at two independent secondary schools, the Royal Russell School in Croydon and The Arts Educational Schools, in Chiswick, London.^{[citation needed]}
  Clunes served his first role in rep at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, and his first television appearance came in the 1980s Doctor Who story Snakedance as the spoiled Lon. But a sporadic career led to his supplementing his income as a photo model for Gilbert and George, and he can be seen in their 1983 work World.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Matthew Vaughn
  Matthew Vaughn (born 7 March 1971) is an Englishfilm producer and director known for producing such films as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000) and directing the films Layer Cake (2004), Stardust (2007) and Kick-Ass (2010). His latest film is the 2011 superhero film X-Men: First Class.
  Vaughn was educated at Stowe School in Buckingham, England. Taking a gap year between Stowe and university, he travelled the world on a Hard Rock Cafe tour and landed in Los Angeles, U.S., where he began working as an assistant to a director. He returned to London, attending University College London where he studied anthropology and ancient history. But the film bug had taken hold, he dropped out of university after a few weeks and returned to Los Angeles to start his career. He later moved back to England,^{[citation needed]} where at 25 he produced a little-seen thriller, The Innocent Sleep (1995), starring Annabella Sciorra and Michael Gambon.
  Vaughn continued as a producer on close friend Guy Ritchie's film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The film was a success in all aspects, earning Vaughn and Ritchie £9 million each. Vaughn would go on to produce Ritchie's equally acclaimed Snatch and the critically mauled Swept Away.
  
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  Mena Suvari
  Mena Alexandra Suvari (born February 13, 1979) is an American actress, fashion designer, and model. Shortly after beginning her career as a model, she appeared in guest roles on 1990's television shows such as Boy Meets World and High Incident. She made her film debut in the 1997 drama film Nowhere.
  Her first major film roles were in American Beauty, for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award, and American Pie (both released in 1999). Since then she has appeared in Loser (2000), with her American Pie co-star, Jason Biggs, and later played a main character in the comedy film Sugar & Spice (2001). She had appearances in the 2002 independent drama Spun, and the 2004 thriller feature Trauma. She also appeared in the HBO's drama series Six Feet Under in 2004, she received a nomination as a member of the Outstanding Cast at the 2005 Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2008, she was cast in a string of films, including Day of the Dead, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and the film adaptation of The Garden of Eden.
  
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  Meryl Streep
  Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television, and film. She is widely regarded as one of the most talented actors of all time.
  Streep made her professional stage debut in The Playboy of Seville (1971), before her screen debut in the television movie Deadliest Season (1977). In that same year, she made her film debut with Julia (1977). Both critical and commercial success came quickly with roles in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), the former giving Streep her first Academy Award nomination and the latter her first win. She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Sophie's Choice (1982) and The Iron Lady (2011).
  Streep has received 17 Academy Award nominations, winning three, and 26 Golden Globe nominations, winning eight, more nominations than any other actor in the history of either award. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, five New York Film Critics Circle Awards, two BAFTA awards, an Australian Film Institute Award, five Grammy Award nominations, and a Tony Award nomination, amongst others. She was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004 and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2009 for her contribution to American culture through performing arts, the youngest actress in each award's history.
  
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  Michael Douglas
  Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2009. He is the eldest of actor Kirk Douglas's four sons.
  Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian-born actress Diana Dill. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus (at that time a part of the Russian Empire). His mother was from Devonshire Parish, Bermuda; Douglas's maternal grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, served as Attorney General of Bermuda and was commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas (born 1947), and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas (born 1955) and Eric Douglas (1958–2004), from stepmother Anne Buydens.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Douglas
• Michael Greif
  Michael Greif (born ca. 1959) is a stage director and producer, born in Brooklyn, New York. He has received three Tony Award nominations and won the Obie Award.
  Greif attended Northwestern University and graduated from the University of California-San Diego graduate directing program. He was the Artistic Director of the La Jolla Playhouse, LaJolla, California from 1994 - 1999.
  For Broadway he has most recently directed the musicals Next to Normal (also at Second Stage Theatre and Arena Stage) and Grey Gardens (also at Playwrights Horizons), receiving Tony Award nominations as director for each. He directed the original 1996 production of Rent, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Musical, the Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Director of a Musical, and the Obie Award.
  He was an Artistic Associate at the New York Theatre Workshop where he directed, among others, Bright Lights, Big City (1998–99) and the original production of Rent.
  Among his many directing credits off-Broadway are John Guare's Landscape of the Body and A Few Stout Individuals at the Signature Theater,Beauty of the Father for the Manhattan Theatre Club, and Romeo and Juliet at the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theater (June 2007).
  
  wn.com/Michael_Greif
• Michael Strobl
  Michael R. Strobl is a retired United States Marine Corps officer.
  After serving in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Strobl was assigned a desk job at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Feeling guilty that Marines he served with in the Gulf War were serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom while he wasn't, Strobl volunteered to escort the remains of a fallen Marine to his home in the United States.
  Strobl escorted home PFC Chance Phelps, a Marine killed in the Iraq War on April 9, 2004 (Good Friday), outside Ar Ramadi, Iraq.
  He initially volunteered to escort PFC Phelps home because the press release concerning the death of PFC Phelps had listed Clifton, Colorado as his hometown, a town near Strobl's hometown of Grand Junction. But the final destination and resting place of PFC Phelps would be Dubois, Wyoming, Phelps having only lived in Clifton for his senior year of high school.
  During the trip, Strobl kept a diary of the experience and his feelings. After he concluded the mission, he wrote an essay entitled "A Marine's Journey Home" from the notes in the diary and shared it with Phelps's father John. The essay appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 2, 2004 (with the approval of John Phelps), and then a longer version (of 5,375 words) appeared in the July issue of Marine Corps Gazette as "Taking Chance".
  
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  Mickey Rooney
  Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule, Jr.; (September 23, 1920) is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has received multiple awards, including a Juvenile Academy Award, an Honorary Academy Award, two Golden Globes and an Emmy Award. Working as a performer since he was a child, he was a superstar as a teenager for the films in which he played Andy Hardy, and he has had one of the longest careers of any actor, to date spanning 90 years actively making films in ten decades, from 1920s to 2010s. For a younger generation of fans, he gained international fame for his leading role as Henry Dailey in The Family Channel's The Adventures of the Black Stallion, as well as the film itself.
  Rooney was born Joseph Yule, Jr. in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Joseph Yule, was from Scotland, and his mother, Nellie W. (née Carter), was from Kansas City, Missouri. Both of his parents were in vaudeville, appearing in a Brooklyn production of A Gaiety Girl when Joseph, Jr. was born. He began performing at the age of 17 months as part of his parents' routine, wearing a specially tailored tuxedo.
  
  wn.com/Mickey_Rooney
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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.
  
  wn.com/Mickey_Rourke
• Miguel Ferrer
  Miguel José Ferrer (born February 7, 1955) is an American actor and voice actor who is often cast as a villain. His notable roles include Bob Morton, a supporting character in RoboCop (1987), the short-tempered FBI agent Albert Rosenfield in Twin Peaks, and Dr. Garret Macy on Crossing Jordan. His voice acting in Mulan (1998), as the villain Hun leader Shan Yu, is also especially memorable.
  Ferrer was born in Santa Monica, California, the oldest of five children of Puerto Rican Academy Award-winner José Ferrer and American singer Rosemary Clooney. Ferrer's siblings are Maria, Gabriel, Monsita, and Rafael, also an actor. Ferrer was raised in Hollywood, and as a teenager his interests shifted toward music. Ferrer played the drums on Keith Moon's Two Sides of the Moon. Jenerators band mate Bill Mumy ("Will Robinson" on the television classic Lost In Space and later Lennier on the TV series Babylon 5) cast him as a drummer in his first television role, in the series Sunshine. He only took the role because Mumy talked him into it.
  
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  Nathan Lane
  Nathan Lane (born February 3, 1956) is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and his voice work in The Lion King and Stuart Little. In 2006, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2008, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
  Lane was born Joseph Lane in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of Irish American Catholic parents. He was named after his uncle, a Jesuit priest. His father, Daniel, was a truck driver and an aspiring tenor who died from alcoholism when Lane was eleven; his mother, Nora, was a housewife and secretary who suffered from manic-depression, and died in 2000. He has two brothers, Robert and Daniel. Lane attended Roman Catholic schools in Jersey City, including Jesuit-run St. Peter's Preparatory High School, where he was selected Best Actor in 1974.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Oliver Stone
  William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, in which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. He won further attention - and controversy - with films JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994). Stone's movies frequently focus on contemporary political and cultural issues. He has received three Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay for Midnight Express (1978), and Best Director for Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). British newspaper The Guardian described Stone as "one of the few committed men of the left working in mainstream American cinema." Stone's films often combine different cameras and film formats within a single scene (including VHS and 8 mm film) as evidenced in JFK and Natural Born Killers.
  
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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
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  Paul Newman
  Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver, auto racing team owner, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
  Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2011, these donations exceeded $300 million.
  Newman was born in Shaker Heights (a suburb of Cleveland). He was the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková) and Arthur Sigmund Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. His father was Jewish (Paul's paternal grandparents, Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, were immigrants from Hungary and Poland). His mother, who practiced Christian Science, was born to a Slovak Roman Catholic family at Humenné, Ptičie (formerly Pticsie) in the former Kingdom of Hungary, Austria–Hungary (now Humenné in Slovakia). Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, stating that "it's more of a challenge". Newman's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur, who later became a producer and production manager.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Newman
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  Paul Verhoeven
  Paul Verhoeven (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpʌu̯l vərˈɦuvə(n)]; born 18 July 1938) is a Dutch film director, screenwriter, and producer who has made movies in both the Netherlands and the United States. Explicitly violent and/or sexual content and social satire are trademarks of both his drama and science fiction films. He is best known for directing the American feature films RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), Starship Troopers (1997), and Hollow Man (2000).
  Turkish Delight (1973) received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century at the Netherlands Film Festival. His films altogether received a total of nine Academy Award nominations, mainly for editing and effects. Both RoboCop and Total Recall won an Special Achievement Academy Award. In contrast, his film Showgirls (1995) was poorly received and won seven Golden Raspberry Awards, but has become a cult film over time.
  Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the son of school teacher Wim Verhoeven and hat maker Nel van Schaardenburg. Although born in Amsterdam, the family lived in the village of Slikkerveer.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Verhoeven
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  Peter Gallagher
  Peter Killian Gallagher (born August 19, 1955) is an American actor, musician, and writer. Since 1980, Gallagher has played roles in numerous Hollywood films. He starred as Sandy Cohen in the television drama series The O.C. from 2003 to 2007. He currently appears in a recurring role on the USA Network drama Covert Affairs, as CIA Clandestine Services Director Arthur Campbell.
  Gallagher was born in New York City, New York. His mother, Mary Ann (née O'Shea), was a bacteriologist, and his father, Thomas Francis Gallagher II, was an advertising executive. He is of Irish Catholic background and was raised in Armonk, New York. Gallagher graduated from Tufts University, where he had been active in theater, appearing in such shows as Stephen Sondheim's Company and singing with the all-male a cappella group the Beelzebubs.
  Gallagher's debut movie performance was as one of the co-stars in the 1980 movie, The Idolmaker.
  Gallagher appeared on Broadway with Glenn Close in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, but first achieved fame for his role in Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). He also starred as Sky Masterson in the 1992 Broadway Revival of Guys and Dolls.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Gallagher
• 
  Peter Riegert
  Peter Riegert (born April 11, 1947) is an American actor, screenwriter, and film director, best known for his roles as Boon from Animal House, the fast talking ganster Aldo in Oscar, the tough Lt. Kellaway in The Mask, and crooked New Jersey State Assemblyman Ronald Zellman on the HBO original series The Sopranos.
  Riegert was born in The Bronx, the son of Lucille, a piano teacher, and Milton Riegert, a food wholesaler. Riegert grew up in Hartsdale, New York, and was raised in a nonobservant Jewish household. He graduated from Ardsley High School in 1964 and later from the University at Buffalo. He worked at a number of jobs, including teaching, waiting tables, and social worker before settling on acting as a career.
  He made his Broadway debut in the musical Dance with Me. Other Broadway credits include The Old Neighborhood, An American Daughter, The Nerd, and Censored Scenes From King Kong. Off-Broadway he has appeared in Road to Nirvana, The Birthday Party, Isn't It Romantic, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and A Rosen by Any Other Name.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Riegert
• 
  Rachel Blanchard
  Rachel Elise Blanchard (born March 19, 1976) is a Canadian actress.
  Blanchard was born in Toronto, Ontario, and graduated from Havergal College in Toronto, going on to Queen's University.
  Her career was launched with a part in a McDonald's commercial, and as an eight-year-old on the Canadian children's show The Kids of Degrassi Street, in which she played Melanie Schlegel. She also starred in War of the Worlds as Suzanne McCullough's daughter Debi and in Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark? as Kristen. Blanchard is probably best known for playing the part of Cher Horowitz (originally portrayed by Alicia Silverstone in the film version) on the television series Clueless (based on the 1995 movie of the same name).
  She received critical acclaim for her performance in the award-winning second series of sitcom Peep Show. She played Jeremy's girlfriend and eventual "wife" in an arranged marriage for UK visa. She reprised this role in the fourth series (2007).
  She played Jemaine's (and Bret's) girlfriend Sally on the HBO show Flight of the Conchords.
  
  wn.com/Rachel_Blanchard
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  Raúl Juliá
  Raúl Rafael Juliá y Arcelay (March 9, 1940 – October 24, 1994) was a Puerto Rican actor.
  Born in San Juan, he gained interest in acting while still in school. Upon completing his studies, Juliá decided to pursue a career in acting. After performing in the local scene for some time, he was convinced by entertainment personality Orson Bean to move and work in New York City. Juliá, who had been bilingual since his childhood, soon gained interest in Broadway and Off-Broadway plays. He performed in mobile projects, including the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre.
  Juliá was eventually noticed by Joseph Papp, who offered him work in the New York Shakespeare Festival. After gaining notoriety, he received roles in two television series, Love of Life and Sesame Street. For his performance in Two Gentlemen of Verona, he received a nomination for the Tony Award and won a Drama Desk Award. Between 1974 and 1982, Juliá received Tony Award nominations for Where's Charley?, The Threepenny Opera and Nine. During the 1980s, he worked in several films, receiving nominations for the Golden Globe Awards, for his performance in Tempest, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, winning the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor for the latter.
  
  wn.com/Raúl_Juliá
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  Robert Carlyle
  Robert Carlyle, OBE (born 14 April 1961) is a Scottish actor. He is known for a variety of roles in films such as Trainspotting, The Full Monty, The World Is Not Enough, Angela's Ashes, The 51st State, and 28 Weeks Later. In addition to his film work, he is also known for his roles in the television shows Hamish Macbeth and Once Upon A Time.
  Carlyle was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, the son of Elizabeth, a bus company employee, and Joseph Carlyle, a painter and decorator. He was brought up by his father after his mother left when Carlyle was four years old. He left school at the age of 16 without any qualifications and worked for his father as a painter and decorator; however, he continued his education by attending night classes at Cardonald College in Glasgow.
  Carlyle became involved in drama at the Glasgow Arts Centre at the age of 21 (having been inspired by reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible), and subsequently graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In 1991, he and four friends founded a theatre company, Raindog (which is now primarily involved in television and film work), and guest starred in The Bill. The same year he starred in his first movie, Riff-Raff, directed by Ken Loach.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Carlyle
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  Robin Williams
  Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.
  Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was senator and Mississippi governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams is of English, Welsh, Irish, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and later moved to Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams studied at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd (who died August 14, 2007) and McLaurin.
  
  wn.com/Robin_Williams
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  Russell Crowe
  Russell Ira Crowe (born 7 April 1964) is a New Zealand born Australian actor, film producer and musician. He came to international attention for his role as Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 historical epic film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, an Empire Award for Best Actor and a London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and ten further nominations for Best Actor. Crowe appeared as the tobacco firm whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand in the 1999 film The Insider, for which he received five awards as Best Actor and seven nominations in the same category. In 2001, Crowe's portrayal of mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John F. Nash in the biopic A Beautiful Mind brought him numerous awards, including an BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor category Motion Picture Drama and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.
  
  wn.com/Russell_Crowe
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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).
  
  wn.com/Sean_Penn
• Shakespeare in Love
  Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American romantic comedy-drama film directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard. The film depicts a love affair involving playwright William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) at the time that he was writing the play Romeo and Juliet. The story is fiction, though several of the characters are based on real people. In addition, many of the characters, lines, and plot devices are references to Shakespeare's plays.
  Shakespeare in Love won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench).
  William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is a poor playwright for Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), owner of The Rose Theatre, in 1593 London. After learning that his love was cheating on him with his patron, Shakespeare burns his new comedy, Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter, rewriting it as the tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Suffering from writer's block, he is unable to complete the play, but begins auditions for Romeo. A young man named Thomas Kent is cast in the role after impressing Shakespeare with his performance and his love of Shakespeare's previous work. Kent is actually Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), the daughter of a wealthy merchant who desires to act but, since women are banned from the stage, she must disguise herself.
  
  wn.com/Shakespeare_in_Love
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  Simon Callow
  Simon Phillip Hugh Callow, CBE (born 15 June 1949) is an English actor, musician, writer and theatre director. He is also currently a judge on Popstar to Operastar.
  Callow was born in Streatham, London, England, UK, the son of Yvonne Mary (née Guise), a secretary, and Neil Francis Callow, a businessman. His father was of English and French descent and his mother was of Danish and German ancestry. He was brought up Roman Catholic. Callow attended the London Oratory School and then went on to study at Queen's University Belfast ('Queen's') in Northern Ireland before giving up his degree course to go into acting at the Drama Centre London.^{[citation needed]}
  Callow's immersion in the theatre began after he wrote a fan letter to Sir Laurence Olivier, the Artistic Director of the National Theatre, and received a response suggesting he join their box office staff. It was while watching actors rehearse that he realised he wanted to act.
  Callow made his stage debut in 1973, appearing in The Thrie Estates at the Assembly Rooms Theatre, Edinburgh. In the early 1970s he joined the Gay Sweatshop theatre company and performed in Martin Sherman's critically acclaimed Passing By. In 1977 he took various parts in the Joint Stock Theatre Company's production of Epsom Downs and in 1979 he starred in Snoo Wilson's The Soul of the White Ant at the Soho Poly.
  
  wn.com/Simon_Callow
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  Steve Guttenberg
  Steve Guttenberg (born August 24, 1958) is an American actor and comedian. He became well known during the 1980s after a series of starring roles in major Hollywood films, including Cocoon, Three Men and a Baby, Police Academy, and Short Circuit.
  Steven Robert Guttenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ann Iris (née Newman), and Jerome Stanley Guttenberg, an electrical engineer. He has two sisters. He had a Jewish upbringing in North Massapequa, New York, where he graduated from Plainedge High School in 1976 (according to some sources, he transferred to New York City's High School of Performing Arts two years before graduating). During high school, he attended a summer program at the Juilliard School where he studied under John Houseman, and he won a role in an off-Broadway production of The Lion in Winter. After his high school graduation, he moved to California to pursue an acting career.
  Guttenberg has starred in three film franchises: Police Academy (1984), Cocoon (1985), and Three Men and a Baby (1987). He has also appeared in such renowned films as Diner (1982), The Bedroom Window (1987), The Boys from Brazil (1978), and Short Circuit (1986).
  
  wn.com/Steve_Guttenberg
• Steve Huison
  Steve Huison (born 10 December 1963, Leeds), is a British actor, mostly on TV and occasional films. He trained at the Rose Bruford College in Sidcup. He is best known for his role as "Lomper" in the massively successful UK box-office and critical hit The Full Monty (1997). He also appeared in a Ken Loach film The Navigators, made in 2001. He has played character roles in such TV series as Casualty, Where the Heart Is, dinnerladies, Heartbeat and The Royle Family.
  In January 2008, Huison took the role of porter Norman Dunstan in ITV1 daily hospital drama The Royal Today, a spin-off of popular Sunday night drama The Royal.
  Huison appeared as Eddie Windass in Coronation Street.
  He is also a co-founder of the Shoestring Theatre Company. Currently starring in CBBC's Television show "The 4 o'clock club".
  
  
  
  wn.com/Steve_Huison
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  Steven Bauer
  Steven Bauer (born December 2, 1956) is a Cuban-American actor. He is known for his role as Manny Ribera in the 1983 film Scarface, and his role on the bilingual PBS show ¿Qué Pasa, USA?.
  Bauer was born Esteban Ernesto Echevarría Samson in Havana, Cuba, the son of Lillian Samson Agostini, a schoolteacher, and Esteban Echevarria, a pilot who worked for Cubana Airlines. Bauer's maternal grandfather was a Jewish refugee from Germany, and Bauer's maternal grandmother was a Cuban of partial Italian ancestry. His stage surname comes from his maternal great-grandmother. Bauer's parents fled from Cuba to Miami, Florida, on July 4, 1960, following Fidel Castro's Revolution. He graduated from Miami Coral Park High School in 1974. Originally intending to become a musician, Bauer turned to acting while attending Miami-Dade Community College, but then transferred to the University of Miami, where he studied in its Department of Theater Arts and performed at its Jerry Herman Ring Theatre where he became friends with actor Ray Liotta.
  
  wn.com/Steven_Bauer
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  Thora Birch
  Thora Birch (born March 11, 1982) is an American actress. She was a child actor in the 1990s, starring in movies such as All I Want for Christmas (1991), Patriot Games (1992), Hocus Pocus (1993), Monkey Trouble (1994), Now and Then (1995), and Alaska (1996). She came to prominence in 1999 after earning worldwide attention and praise for her performance in American Beauty. She then starred in the well received film Ghost World (2001), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination.
  Birch was born in Los Angeles, California, the eldest child of Jack Birch and Carol Connors. Her parents, who were her business managers from the start, are former adult film actors and both appeared in the pornographic film Deep Throat. Birch is of German Jewish, Nordic, and Italian ancestry . The family's original surname was Biersch, coming from her German Jewish ancestors. Her name Thora is derived from the name of the Norse God of thunder and lightning, Thor. She has a younger brother, Bolt.
  Due to their own experience with acting, Birch's parents were reticent to encourage her in the profession, but were persuaded to show her photograph to agents by a babysitter who noticed her imitating commercials. She landed several parts in the late '80s, including advertisements for Burger King, California Raisins, Quaker Oats, and Vlasic Pickles. Her first acting job followed.
  
  wn.com/Thora_Birch
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  Tim Daly
  James Timothy "Tim" Daly (born March 1, 1956) is an American stage, screen and voice actor, director and producer. He is best known for his television role as Joe Hackett on the NBC sitcom Wings and for his voice role as Superman/Clark Kent in Superman: The Animated Series, as well as his recurring role of the drug-addicted screenwriter J.T. Dolan on The Sopranos for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. He starred as Pete Wilder on Private Practice until he was fired.
  Daly, an Irish American, was born in New York City, New York, the only son and youngest child of actors James Daly and Hope Newell. He is the younger brother of actress Tyne Daly, who is 10 years his senior, and is a brother-in-law of television and film composer Mark Snow. He has two other sisters, Mary Glynn (Snow's wife) and Pegeen Michael. He attended The Putney School, where he started to study acting.
  Daly began his professional career while a student at Vermont's Bennington College, where he studied theatre and literature, in which he now holds a Bachelor of Arts, and acted in summer stock. He graduated from college in 1979 and returned to New York to continue studying acting and singing.
  
  wn.com/Tim_Daly
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  Tom Hanks
  Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks is known for his roles in Philadelphia and as the title character in Forrest Gump, roles which won him two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor. Hanks is also known for his Oscar nominated roles in Big, Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away.
  Hanks' other acting roles include Apollo 13 as Jim Lovell, The Green Mile as Paul Edgecomb, Toy Story as Woody and Charlie Wilson's War as Charlie Wilson.
  Hanks was born in Concord, California. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks (born in Glenn County, California, on March 9, 1924 – died in Alameda, California, on January 31, 1992), was an itinerant cook. His mother, Janet Marylyn (née Frager; born in Alameda County, California, on January 18, 1932), was a hospital worker. Hanks' mother is of Portuguese ancestry, while two of his paternal great-grandparents immigrated from Britain. Hanks's parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer)^{[citation needed]}, Larry (now Lawrence M. Hanks, PhD, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Tom_Hanks
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  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
• Tomás Milián
  Tomás Milián (born March 3, 1932) is a Cuban-American actor best known for having worked extensively in Italian films from the late 1950s to the 1980s.
  Tomás Milián was born in Havana as Tomás Quintín Rodríguez, the son of a Cuban general. His father was arrested and jailed after Fulgencio Batista took power in Cuba : he later committed suicide. Milián then decided to leave Cuba and pursue his wishes of being an actor. He settled in the United States to study at New York's Actor's Studio and later became an American citizen.
  After starting a career in the United States, he went to Italy in 1958 to take part to a theater festival in Spoleto. He eventually decided to relocate to Italy, where he lived for over 25 years, gradually becoming a very successful performer. His first film part in Italy was in the 1959 picture La Notte brava. Although his voice was dubbed most of the time due to his accent, Milián performed his lines in Italian (or in English, depending on the film). He initially starred in arthouse movies and worked with directors such as Mauro Bolognini and Luchino Visconti.
  
  wn.com/Tomás_Milián
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  Topher Grace
  Christopher John "Topher" Grace (pronounced /ˈtoʊfər/; born July 12, 1978) is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Eric Forman on the Fox sitcom That '70s Show, Eddie Brock/Venom in the Sam Raimi film Spider-Man 3, and Edwin in the 2010 film Predators.
  Grace was born in New York City, the son of Pat, an assistant to the schoolmaster of the New Canaan Country School, and John, a Madison Avenue executive.
  Grace grew up in Darien, Connecticut, where he knew actress Kate Bosworth, as well as Opie & Anthony producer Nathaniel Bryan, and was sometimes babysat by actress Chloë Sevigny, who later appeared with him in high school stage plays. Grace chose the name Topher because he did not want his full name abbreviated to Chris at school.
  Grace was cast as Eric Forman on Fox's That '70s Show, which debuted in 1998. The sitcom was successful and Grace became well known among television watchers; he played the role until the seventh season. The series was renewed for another season despite his absence before its ending in 2006. His character was written out and was replaced with a new character named Randy Pearson who was portrayed by Josh Meyers. Grace makes a very brief guest appearance in the final episode.
  
  wn.com/Topher_Grace
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  Val Kilmer
  Val Edward Kilmer (born December 31, 1959) is an American actor. Originally a stage actor, Kilmer is best known for his role as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors, as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever. He became popular in the mid-1980s after a string of appearances in comedy films, starting with Top Secret! (1984), then the cult classic Real Genius (1985), as well as blockbuster action films, including a supporting role in Top Gun and a lead role in Willow.
  Kilmer was born in in Los Angeles, California, the son of Gladys (née Ekstadt) and Eugene Kilmer, an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer. Kilmer's grandfather was a gold miner in New Mexico; the poet Joyce Kilmer is a distant cousin of Kilmer's. Kilmer is of German, Swedish, Irish, and Cherokee descent. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley with his two siblings, older brother Mark and younger brother Wesley (who died at 15 due to an epileptic seizure in a swimming pool). His parents divorced when he was nine years old.
  
  wn.com/Val_Kilmer
• 
  Wes Bentley
  Wesley Cook "Wes" Bentley (born September 4, 1978) is an American film actor known for his roles of Ricky Fitts in American Beauty and Seneca Crane in The Hunger Games.
  Bentley was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of Cherie and David Bentley, who are United Methodist ministers. In 1996, he graduated from Sylvan Hills High School in Sherwood, Arkansas. Bentley then attended the Juilliard School's Drama Division (Group 29: 1996–2000) but left the school after one year to pursue his acting career.
  Bentley has starred in several films, including the Oscar-winning film American Beauty, The Four Feathers, P2, and Ghost Rider. He starred in the thriller Dolan's Cadillac, based on the short story by Stephen King, and There Be Dragons by director Roland Joffé. Bentley is one of the main subjects in the documentary My Big Break, directed by Tony Zierra, which follows Bentley and three of his former roommates, Chad Lindberg, Brad Rowe and Greg Fawcett, as they pursue their dream to become successful actors in Hollywood.
  
  wn.com/Wes_Bentley
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
• William Snape
  William Snape is an actor, perhaps most notable for playing Gaz's son Nathan in the British comedy The Full Monty.
  Snape was born in Sheffield on 17 April 1985. He attended Dobcroft Junior School followed by Silverdale School.
  He has more recently acted in ITV's Emmerdale as farmer Stephen Butler.
  He made a guest appearance in the medical drama Holby City on 17 April 2007 as Tony Dunmore. He has also made guest appearances in one episode of Doctors and in two episodes of Heartbeat.
  He underwent two operations after being hit by a car on 29 January 1999.
  
  
  
  wn.com/William_Snape

Kevin Bacon for SixDegrees.org (2008)

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• Drama
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