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• 
  

• 
  Afghanistan
  Afghanistan ⁱ/æfˈɡænɨstæn/ (Persian/Pashto: افغانستان, Afġānistān), officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming part of South Asia, Central Asia, and Greater Middle East, it is also considered to be part of a broader West Asia. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of 647,500 km² (250,001 sq mi), making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and the east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.
  Afghanistan has been an ancient focal point of the Silk Road and human migration. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation from as far back as 50,000 BC. Urban civilization may have begun in the area as early as 3,000 to 2,000 BC. Sitting at an important geostrategic location that connects the Middle East with Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the land has been home to various peoples through the ages and witnessed many military campaigns, notably by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and in modern era Western forces. The land also served as a source from which the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Timurids, Mughals and many others have risen to form major empires.
  
  wn.com/Afghanistan
• 
  Borough Market
  Coordinates: 51°30′17.67″N 0°5′27.92″W / 51.5049083°N 0.0910889°W / 51.5049083; -0.0910889
  Borough Market is a wholesale and retail food market in Southwark, London, England. It is one of the largest food markets in London, and sells a large variety of foods from all over the world.
  The wholesale market operates on all weekday mornings from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m., but the retail market operates only on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Fridays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The market, which has focused historically on fruits and vegetables, has in recent years added stalls dealing with the fine food retail market, including some of the market's most famous traders Artisan Bakers DeGustibus, Furness Fish & Game Supplies, Peter Gott and Sillfield Farm, and the Spanish company Brindisa.
  The present market, located on Southwark Street and Borough High Street just south of Southwark Cathedral on the southern end of London Bridge, is a successor to one that originally adjoined the end of London Bridge (and made a considerable nuisance of itself in the process). It was first mentioned in 1276, although the market itself claims to have existed since 1014 "and probably much earlier" and was subsequently moved south of St Margaret's church on the High Street. The City of London received a royal charter from Edward VI in 1550 to control all markets in Southwark (see Guildable Manor), which was confirmed by Charles II in 1671. However, the market caused such traffic congestion that in 1754 it was abolished by an Act of Parliament.
  
  wn.com/Borough_Market
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  Broadhurst Theatre
  Coordinates: 40°45′29″N 73°59′15″W / 40.758146°N 73.987636°W / 40.758146; -73.987636
  The Broadhurst Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 235 West 44th Street in midtown Manhattan.
  It was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, a well-known theatre designer who had been working directly with the Shubert brothers; the Broadhurst opened 27 September 1917. Built back-to-back with the Plymouth, it was meant to resemble the style of the neighboring Shubert and Booth theaters designed by Henry B. Herts, using less expensive brick and terra cotta materials on the discreetly neoclassical facades. Like all of Krapp's work during this period, it features minimal ornamentation, a single balcony, wide space, and excellent sightlines.
  It was named after George Howells Broadhurst, an Anglo-American dramatist who came to America in 1886. In addition to writing plays, he managed theaters in Milwaukee, Baltimore, and San Francisco before he decided to open his own in association with the Shubert brothers. The theatre was constructed to house both musicals and plays, which it has done successfully for more than ninety years. It has been designated a New York City landmark.
  
  wn.com/Broadhurst_Theatre
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  Denmark
  The Kingdom of Denmark (Danish: Kongeriget Danmark, pronounced [ˈkɔŋəʁiːəð ˈdanmɑɡ̊] ( listen)) is a constitutional monarchy and sovereign state consisting the country of Denmark in northern Europe and two autonomous constituent countries, the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic and Greenland in North America. The kingdom is a unitary state with some power being devolved from Denmark proper to Greenland and the Faroe Islands; this polity is referred to as the Danish Realm. Denmark proper is the hegemonial area, where judicial, executive, and legislative power resides. The Faroe Islands are defined to be a community of people within the kingdom, and the Greenlandic people are defined as a separate people with the right to self-determination.
  Denmark is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, located southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. The country consists of a large peninsula, Jutland and many islands, most notably Zealand, Funen, Lolland, Falster and Bornholm, as well as hundreds of minor islands often referred to as the Danish Archipelago.
  
  wn.com/Denmark
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  Donmar Warehouse
  Donmar Warehouse is a small not-for-profit theatre in the Covent Garden area of London, with a capacity of 251.
  Under the artistic leadership of Sam Mendes, Michael Grandage and now Josie Rourke the theatre has presented some of London’s most memorable award-winning theatrical experiences, as well as garnered critical acclaim at home and abroad. The theatre has a diverse artistic policy that includes new writing, contemporary reappraisals of European classics, British and American drama and small-scale musical theatre.
  Over the past 20 years the theatre has created a reputation associated with artistic excellence: it has showcased the talent of some of the industry’s premier creative artists, and built an unparalleled catalogue of work. As well as presenting at least six productions a year at its home in Covent Garden, the Donmar presents work nationally and internationally. Every year the Donmar tours one in-house production in the UK.
  Theatrical producer Donald Albery formed the Donmar company in 1953, the name reputedly formed from the first three letters of the names Donald Albery and Dame Margot Fonteyn, the prima ballerina and a friend.
  
  wn.com/Donmar_Warehouse
• 
  Durban
  Durban (Zulu: eThekwini, from itheku meaning 'bay / lagoon') is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal and the third largest city in South Africa. It forms part of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality. Durban is famous for being the busiest port in South Africa. It is also seen as one of the major centres of tourism because of the city's warm subtropical climate and extensive beaches. The municipality, which includes neighbouring towns, has a population of almost 3.5 million, making the combined municipality the biggest city on the east coast of the African continent. The metropolitan land area of 2,292 square kilometres (885 sq mi) is comparatively larger than other South African cities, resulting in a somewhat lower population density of 1,513 /km² (3,920 /sq mi).
  Archaeological evidence from the Drakensberg mountains suggests that the Durban area has been inhabited by communities of hunter-gatherers since 100,000 BC. These people lived throughout the area of present day KwaZulu-Natal until the expansion of Bantu farmers and pastoralists from the north saw their gradual displacement,incorporation or extermination.
  
  wn.com/Durban
• 
  Exeter
  Exeter (ⁱ/ˈɛksɨtər/ EK-si-tər) is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the County Council. The city is on the River Exe, about 37 miles (60 km) northeast of Plymouth, and 70 miles (110 km) southwest of Bristol. According to the 2001 Census, its population in that year was 111,076, while the mid-2010 estimate was 119,600.
  Exeter was the most south-westerly Roman fortified settlement in Britain. Its Exeter Cathedral, founded in the early 12th century, became Anglican at the time of the 16th century Reformation.
  Exeter has been identified as one of the top ten most profitable locations for a business to be based. The city has good transport links, with Exeter St David's railway station, Exeter Central railway station, the M5 motorway and Exeter International Airport connecting the city both nationally and internationally. Although a popular tourist destination, the city is not dominated by tourism.
  
  wn.com/Exeter
• 
  Hampstead
  Coordinates: 51°33′15″N 0°10′28″W / 51.5541°N 0.1744°W / 51.5541; -0.1744
  Hampstead (/ˈhæmpstɪd/ or /-stɛd/), commonly known as Hampstead Village, is an affluent area of London, England, 4 miles (6.4 km) north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. It has some of the most expensive housing in the London area. The village of Hampstead has more millionaires within its boundaries than any other area of the United Kingdom.
  The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon words ham and stede, which means, and is a cognate of, the Modern English "homestead".
  Although early records of Hampstead can be found in a grant by King Ethelred the Unready to the monastery of St. Peter’s at Westminster (AD 986) and it is referred to in the Domesday Book (1086), the history of Hampstead is generally traced back to the 17th century. Trustees of the Well started advertising the medicinal qualities of the chalybeate waters (water impregnated with iron) in 1700. Although Hampstead Wells was initially most successful and fashionable, its popularity declined in the 1800s due to competition with other fashionable London spas. The spa was demolished in 1882, although a water fountain was left behind.
  
  wn.com/Hampstead
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  Hampstead Theatre
  Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. In 2009 it celebrated its 50 year anniversary.
  The original theatre (The Hampstead Theatre Club) was created in Moreland Hall in 1959. James Roose-Evans was the first Artistic Director, and the 1959–1960 season included The Dumb Waiter and The Room by Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco's Jacques and The Sport of My Mad Mother by Ann Jellicoe. In 1962 the company moved to a portable cabin in Swiss Cottage where it remained for nearly 40 years, before, in 2003, the new purpose-built Hampstead Theatre opened in Swiss Cottage. The main auditorium now seats between 150 and 325 people. The studio theatre, the Michael Frayn Space, seats up to 80 people and hosts Heat&Light, Hampstead Theatre's Young Company for ages 10-25. Heat&Light produces 12 productions each year, including, previously, new plays by Bola Agbaje, Mike Bartlett, Joel Horwood, Jane Bodie, Ed Hime, Nick Grosso and John Donnelly.
  
  wn.com/Hampstead_Theatre
• 
  Italy
  Italy ⁱ/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic or the Republic of Italy (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a unitary parliamentary republic in south-central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km² (116,347 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world.
  Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance, an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.
  
  wn.com/Italy
• 
  Kabul
  Kabul ( /ˈkɑːbəl/, /ˈkɑːbuːl/; Pashto: کابل Kābəl, IPA: [kɑˈbəl]; Persian: کابل Kābol‎, IPA: [kɒːˈbol]), also spelled Cabool, Caubul or Cabul, mostly in historical contexts, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Kabul is the 5th fastest growing city in the world [2] and the world's 64th largest city [3]. It is also the capital of Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan. According to latest estimates, the population of the Kabul metropolitan area is over 4 million.
  The city serves as the nation's cultural and learning centre, situated 1,791 metres (5,876 ft) above sea level in a narrow valley, wedged between the Hindu Kush mountains along the Kabul River. It is linked with Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif via the circular Highway 1 that stretches across Afghanistan. It is also the start of the main road to Jalalabad and further to Peshawar, Pakistan. The Kabul International Airport is located about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from the center of the city, next to the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood. Bagram Airfield is about 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast of Kabul.
  
  wn.com/Kabul
• 
  Lewisham
  Coordinates: 51°27′41″N 0°00′19″W / 51.461456°N 0.00537°W / 51.461456; -0.00537
  Lewisham /lˈʊɪʃəm/ is a district in South London, England, located in the London Borough of Lewisham. It is situated 6.2 miles (10.0 km) south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
  It is most likely to have been founded by a pagan Jute, Leof, who settled (by burning his boat) near St Mary's Church (Ladywell) where the ground was drier, in the 6th century. As to the etymology of the name, Daniel Lysons (1796) wrote:
  "In the most ancient Saxon records this place is called Levesham, that is, the house among the meadows; leswe, læs, læse, or læsew, in the Saxon, signifies a meadow, and ham, a dwelling. It is now written, as well in parochial and other records as in common usage, Lewisham." "Leofshema" was an important settlement at the confluence of the rivers Quaggy (from Farnborough) and Ravensbourne (Caesar's Well, Keston), so the village expanded north into the wetter area as drainage techniques improved. In the mid-seventeenth century, then-vicar of Lewisham, Abraham Colfe, built a grammar school, primary school and six almshouses for the inhabitants. On 5 September 1711 William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth became the (hereditary) Viscount Lewisham The village of Lewisham was originally centred further south around the parish church of St Mary, towards the present site of University Hospital Lewisham. The centre migrated north with the coming of the North Kent railway line to Dartford in 1849, encouraging commuter housing. Lewisham was administratively part of Kent until 1889, and formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Lewisham in the County of London until 1965.
  
  wn.com/Lewisham
• 
  NATO
  Coordinates: 50°52′34.16″N 4°25′19.24″E / 50.8761556°N 4.4220111°E / 50.8761556; 4.4220111
  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO ( /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.
  For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966.
  
  wn.com/NATO
• 
  New Orleans
  New Orleans ( /nuː ˈɔrliənz/ or /ˈnuː ɔrˈliːnz/, locally /nuː ˈɔrlənz/ or /ˈnɔrlənz/; French: La Nouvelle-Orléans [la nuvɛlɔʁleɑ̃] ( listen)) is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city proper was 343,829 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. The New Orleans metropolitan area (New Orleans–Metairie–Kenner Metropolitan Statistical Area) had a population of 1,167,764 in 2010 and was the 46th largest in the United States. The New Orleans–Metairie–Bogalusa Combined Statistical Area, a larger trading area, had a 2010 population of 1,214,932.
  The city is named after Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, Regent of France, and is well known for its distinct French Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music (particularly as the birthplace of jazz), and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is often referred to as the "most unique" in America.
  
  wn.com/New_Orleans
• 
  Northcott Theatre
  Coordinates: 50°44′09″N 3°32′07″W / 50.7358°N 3.5352°W / 50.7358; -3.5352
  The Northcott Theatre is a theatre situated on the Streatham Campus of the University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, England.
  The Northcott is the seventh building in Exeter to be used as a theatre.
  In 1962, the Theatre Royal, Exeter was demolished to be replaced by an office block; however there were many people in Exeter who were determined that the city should not be without a theatre for very long. Early in 1962 Mr G V Northcott had started negotiations with the Board of Directors of the Theatre Royal with the view to "saving" the theatre, and its re-creation as a theatre and arts centre. A small group from the University of Exeter prepared a memorandum explaining how they saw the Theatre Royal functioning in the kind of way that Mr Northcott visualised and outlining some ideas. They submitted this memorandum to the Board of Directors of the Theatre Royal and to Mr Northcott. After some time, however, negotiations failed to develop and the Theatre Royal was sold.
  
  wn.com/Northcott_Theatre
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  Royal Albert Hall
  The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941.
  Since its opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from several performance genres have appeared on its stage and it has become one of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings. Each year it hosts more than 350 events including classical concerts, rock and pop, ballet and opera, sports, award ceremonies, school and community events, charity performances and banquets.
  The hall was originally supposed to have been called The Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, but the name was changed by Queen Victoria to Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences when laying the foundation stone as a dedication to her deceased husband and consort Prince Albert. It forms the practical part of a national memorial to the Prince Consort – the decorative part is the Albert Memorial directly to the north in Kensington Gardens, now separated from the Hall by the road Kensington Gore.
  
  wn.com/Royal_Albert_Hall
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  Royal Court Theatre
  The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre. In 1956 it was acquired by and is home to a resident company, the English Stage Company.
  The first theatre on Lower George Street, off Sloane Square, was the converted Nonconformist Ranelagh Chapel, opened as a theatre in 1870 under the name The New Chelsea Theatre. Marie Litton became its manager in 1871, hiring Walter Emden to remodel the interior, and it was renamed the Court Theatre.
  Several of W. S. Gilbert's early plays were staged here, including Randall's Thumb, Creatures of Impulse (with music by Alberto Randegger), Great Expectations (adapted from the Dickens novel), and On Guard (all in 1871); The Happy Land (1873, with Gilbert Abbott à Beckett; Gilbert's most controversial play); The Wedding March, translated from Un Chapeau de Paille d'Italie by Eugène Marin Labiche (1873); The Blue-Legged Lady, translated from La Dame aux Jambes d'Azur by Labiche and Marc-Michel (1874); and Broken Hearts (1875). By 1878, management of the theatre was shared by John Hare and W. H. Kendal.
  
  wn.com/Royal_Court_Theatre
• 
  Tate Modern
  Coordinates: 51°30′28″N 0°05′57″W / 51.507778°N 0.099167°W / 51.507778; -0.099167
  Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group (together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives and Tate Online). It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year. It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of Central London.
  The galleries are housed in the former Bankside Power Station, which was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of Battersea Power Station, and built in two stages between 1947 and 1963. The power station closed in 1981. The building was converted by architects Herzog & de Meuron and contractors Carillion, after which it stood at 99m tall. The history of the site as well as information about the conversion was the basis for a 2008 documentary Architects Herzog and de Meuron: Alchemy of Building & Tate Modern. The southern third of the building was retained by the French power company EDF Energy as an electrical substation (in 2006, the company released half of this holding).
  
  wn.com/Tate_Modern
• 
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
  The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
  
  wn.com/United_Kingdom
• 
  Vaudelnay
  Coordinates: 47°08′13″N 0°12′11″W / 47.137°N 0.203°W / 47.137; -0.203
  Vaudelnay is a commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Vaudelnay
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  Young Vic
  The Young Vic is a theatre on the Cut, located near the South Bank, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It specialises in giving opportunities to young actors and directors. The theatre is publicly subsidised and has a high artistic reputation. Playwright David Lan has been the theatre's artistic director since 2000. Its philosophy is to "produce great plays for great audiences, now and in the future".
  The Young Vic's name derives from the nearby Old Vic, one of the most celebrated of London's theatres and the first home of the National Theatre.
  In the period after World War II a Young Vic Company was formed in 1946 by director George Devine as an offshoot of the Old Vic Theatre School for the purpose of performing classic plays for audiences aged nine to fifteen.
  This was discontinued in 1948 when Devine and the entire faculty resigned from the Old Vic, but in 1969 Frank Dunlop became founder-director of The Young Vic theatre with his free adaptation of Molière's The Cheats of Scapino, presented at the new venue as a National Theatre production, opening on 11 September 1970 and starring Jim Dale in the title role with designs by Carl Toms (decor) and Maria Bjornson (costumes).
  
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• Alan Arkin
  Alan Wolf Arkin (born March 26, 1934) is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as Wait Until Dark, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, Marley & Me, and Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2006. He is the father of actors Adam Arkin, Anthony Arkin, and Matthew Arkin.
  Arkin was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Beatrice (née Wortis), a teacher, and David I. Arkin, a painter and writer who mostly worked as a teacher. Arkin was raised in a Jewish family with "no emphasis on religion"; his maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Odessa, Ukraine. The family moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles when Arkin was 11 years old, but an eight-month Hollywood strike cost Arkin's father a set designer job he had wanted to take. During the 1950s Red Scare, Arkin's parents were accused of being Communists, which led to David losing his job when he refused to answer questions about his political affiliation. David challenged the dismissal and was ultimately vindicated, but only after his death.
  
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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.
  
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  Alexander Lukashenko
  Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (Belarusian: Аляксандр Рыгоравіч Лукашэнка, Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka), [alʲaˈksandr rɨˈɣoravʲɪtʃ ɫukaˈʂɛnka]; Taraškievica orthography: Аляксандар Рыгоравіч Лукашэнка, Russian: Александр Григорьевич Лукашенко, Aleksandr Grigoryevich Lukashenko, [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɡrʲɪˈɡorʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ɫʊkɐˈʂɛnkə]; born 30 or 31 August 1954) has been serving as the President of Belarus since 20 July 1994. Before his career as a politician, Lukashenko worked as director of a state-owned agricultural farm. Under Lukashenko's rule, Belarus has come to be viewed as a state whose conduct is out of line with international law and whose government is considered to violate human rights. Belarus has never held a poll seen as fair by international monitors since Lukashenko began his presidency. Belarus has been called "the last true remaining dictatorship in the heart of Europe" by the former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He and other Belarusian officials are also subject of the sanctions imposed by the European Union for human rights violations.
  
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  Amy Poehler
  Amy Meredith Poehler  /ˈpoʊlər/ (born September 16, 1971) is an American actress, comedienne, producer and writer. She was a cast member on the NBC television entertainment show Saturday Night Live from 2001 to 2008. In 2004, she had a minor role in the film Mean Girls with Tina Fey, with whom she worked again in Baby Mama in 2008. She is currently the lead of NBC's comedy Parks and Recreation. She has been nominated twice for both the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance on Saturday Night Live, and for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in Parks & Recreation. For the latter series she also received a 2012 Golden Globe Award nomination.
  Poehler was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of Eileen Frances (née Milmore) and William Grinstead Poehler, both teachers. She is a distant cousin of author Stephen King and U.S. senator Scott Brown, through shared New England ancestry. Poehler was raised Catholic.
  
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  Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.
  Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
  Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.
  
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• Andrew Niccol
  Andrew M. Niccol (born 10 June 1964) is a New Zealand screenwriter, producer, and director. He wrote and directed Gattaca, S1m0ne, In Time, and Lord of War. He also wrote and co-produced The Truman Show, which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 1999 and won a BAFTA award for Best Screenplay. Many of his films, such as Gattaca, S1m0ne, and The Truman Show, view societal or political issues through a fantasy-science fiction lens. Lord of War, however, is a contemporary, matter-of-fact exploration of gunrunning.
  Niccol was born in Paraparaumu, New Zealand, and grew up in Auckland, where he attended Auckland Grammar School. He left New Zealand at age 21 and began directing TV ads in London. During production of S1m0ne, he met model Rachel Roberts, with whom he has two children, Jack (born 2003) and Ava (born 2008).
  
  
  
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• Anthony Minghella
  Anthony Minghella, CBE (6 January 1954 – 18 March 2008) was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007.
  He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The English Patient (1996), which also won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the BAFTA Award for Best Film and Golden Globe Award for Best Director.
  Minghella was born in Ryde, Isle of Wight, the son of Gloria (née Arcari) and Edward Minghella, ice cream factory owners. His father was an Italian immigrant and his mother was born in Leeds to an Italian family; her ancestors originally came from Valvori, a small village in the Lazio region of central Italy.
  Minghella attended Sandown Grammar School and St. John's, Portsmouth. He graduated from the University of Hull, where he completed undergraduate and postgraduate courses, but eventually abandoned his doctoral thesis.^{[citation needed]}
  His first piece of produced work was a 1975 stage adaptation of Gabriel Josipovici's Mobius the Stripper and it was his 1985 piece Whale Music that kickstarted his career. He made his directorial debut with a double bill of Samuel Beckett's Play and Happy Days. His first feature film as a director was A Little Like Drowning in 1978.
  
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  Arthur Miller
  Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956).
  Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.
  Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, New York City, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants. His father owned a women's clothing manufacturing business employing some 400 people. He became a wealthy and respected man in the community. (BBC TV Interview; Miller and Yentob; 'Finishing the Picture,' 2004) The family, including his younger sister Joan, lived on East 110th Street in Manhattan and owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens. They employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn. As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.
  
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  Ashlee Simpson
  Ashlee Nicole Simpson (born October 3, 1984) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She rose to prominence in 2004 with the success of her number-one debut album Autobiography. Her reality series, The Ashlee Simpson Show, aired for two seasons. Following a North American concert tour and a film appearance, Simpson released her second number-one album, I Am Me (2005). Simpson assumed creative control over her third album, Bittersweet World (2008).
  Simpson was born in Waco, Texas and raised in the Richardson area of Texas. She is the daughter of Tina Ann (née Drew), a homemaker, and Joe Truett Simpson, a former psychologist and Baptist youth minister who works as Simpson's agent. Simpson has an older sister, Jessica, who is also a singer and actress. She attended the same schools as her sister, Prairie Creek Elementary and Richardson North Junior High.
  In 1987, when Simpson was three years old, she began studying classical ballet. Simpson enrolled at the School of American Ballet in New York City in 1995, a year in advance. During this time, Simpson suffered from an eating disorder for about six months but received treatment from her parents. Tina and Joe Simpson made the decision to relocate to Los Angeles, California for Jessica's singing career in 1999. Subsequently, Ashlee was cast in television commercials.
  
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  Beatrix Potter
  Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.
  Born into a privileged Unitarian family, Potter, along with her younger brother, Walter Bertram (1872–1918), grew up with few friends outside her large extended family. Her parents were artistic, interested in nature and enjoyed the countryside. As children, Beatrix and Bertram had numerous small animals as pets which they observed closely and drew endlessly. Summer holidays were spent in Scotland and in the English Lake District where Beatrix developed a love of the natural world which was the subject of her painting from an early age.
  She was educated by private governesses until she was eighteen. Her study of languages, literature, science and history was broad and she was an eager student. Her artistic talents were recognized early. Although she was provided with private art lessons, Potter preferred to develop her own style, particularly favouring watercolour. Along with her drawings of her animals, real and imagined, she illustrated insects, fossils, archeological artefacts, and fungi. In the 1890s her mycological illustrations and research on the reproduction of fungi spores generated interest from the scientific establishment. Following some success illustrating cards and booklets, Potter wrote and illustrated The Tale of Peter Rabbit publishing it first privately in 1901, and a year later as a small, three-colour illustrated book with Frederick Warne & Co. She became unofficially engaged to her editor Norman Warne in 1905 despite the disapproval of her parents, but he died suddenly a month later, of leukemia.
  
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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.
  
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  Bertolt Brecht
  Bertolt Brecht (German: [ˈbɛɐ̯tɔlt ˈbʁɛçt] ( listen); born  Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (help·info); 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.
  An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble – the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife, long-time collaborator and actress Helene Weigel.
  Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, (about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of Munich) to a conventionally-devout Protestant mother and a Catholic father (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914. Thanks to his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would impact on his writing throughout his life. From her, too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama. Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied. At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership, Neher designing many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helping to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.
  
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• Bill Naughton
  William John Francis Naughton, or Bill Naughton (Ballyhaunis, 12 June 1910 - Ballasalla, 9 January 1992) was an Irish-born British playwright and author, best known for his play Alfie.
  Born in Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, Ireland, he moved to Bolton, Lancashire, England in 1914 as a child. There he attended Saint Peter and Paul's School, worked as a weaver, coal-bagger and lorry-driver before he started writing.
  Although best remembered for his play, Alfie, mostly because of the British film starring Michael Caine in the eponymous role, Naughton was a prolific writer of plays, novels, short stories and children's books. His preferred environment was working class society, which is reflected in much of his written work.
  In addition to Alfie, at least two of his other plays have been made into feature films. These are Spring and Port Wine, which had James Mason starring in the role of Rafe Crompton, and The Family Way, which starred John Mills. His work also includes the novel One Small Boy (1957), and the collection of short stories The Goalkeeper's Revenge: And Other Stories (1961). His 1977 children's novel My Pal Spadger is an account of his childhood in 1920s Bolton.
  
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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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  Cameron Diaz
  Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) is an American actress and former model. She became famous during the 1990s with roles in the movies The Mask, My Best Friend's Wedding, and There's Something About Mary. Other high-profile credits include the two Charlie's Angels films, voicing the character Princess Fiona in the Shrek series, and Bad Teacher. Diaz received Golden Globe award nominations for her performances in the movies There's Something About Mary, Being John Malkovich, Vanilla Sky, and Gangs of New York.
  Diaz, the younger of two daughters, was born in San Diego, California. Her mother, Billie (née Early), is an import-export agent, and her father, Emilio Diaz (1949–2008), worked for the California oil company UNOCAL for more than 20 years as a field gauger. Diaz has an older sister, Chimene. Her father's family came from Cuba, before settling in Tampa's Ybor City, and eventually California, where Emilio was born. Her mother is of German and Cherokee descent. Diaz was raised in Long Beach, California and attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School.
  
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  Charlie Rose
  Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored CBS This Morning since January 2012. Rose, along with Lara Logan, has hosted the revived CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted from 1953 to 1961 by Edward R. Murrow.
  Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child of Margaret Frazier and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store. As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven. Rose admitted in a Fresh Dialogues interview that as a child his insatiable curiosity was constantly getting him in trouble. A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968. He met his wife, Mary (née King), while attending Duke.
  
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  Chrissie Hynde
  Christine Ellen "Chrissie" Hynde (born 7 September 1951Akron, Ohio) is an American musician best known as the leader of the rock/new wave band the Pretenders. She is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and has been the only constant member of the band throughout its history.
  Hynde is the daughter of a part-time secretary and a Yellow Pages manager. She graduated from Firestone High School in Akron, Ohio. She stated that "I was never too interested in high school. I mean, I never went to a dance, I never went out on a date, I never went steady. It became pretty awful for me. Except, of course, I could go see bands, and that was the kick. I used to go to Cleveland just to see any band. So I was in love a lot of the time, but mostly with guys in bands that I had never met. For me, knowing that Brian Jones was out there, and later that Iggy Pop was out there, made it kind of hard for me to get too interested in the guys that were around me. I had, uh, bigger things in mind."
  Hynde was for some time interested in hippie counterculture, eastern mysticism, and vegetarianism. While attending Kent State University's Art School for three years, she joined a band called Sat. Sun. Mat., which included Mark Mothersbaugh, later of Devo (Hynde was on the campus during the infamous Kent State shootings; she knew Jeffrey Miller, one of those killed^{[citation needed]}.)
  
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  Christoph Waltz
  Christoph Waltz (German pronunciation: [kristɔf valts]; born 4 October 1956) is an Austrian actor, who also holds German citizenship.
  He received international acclaim for his portrayal of SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2009.
  Christoph Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria. He is the son of German-born Johannes Waltz and Austrian-born Elisabeth Urbancic, set and stage designers. His maternal grandmother was Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was actor Emmerich Reimers. His great-grandparents also worked in the theatre.
  Waltz studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. He also attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. He started as a stage actor, performing at venues such as Zurich's Schauspielhaus Zürich, Vienna's Burgtheater, and the Salzburg Festival. He became a prolific television actor. In 2000, he made his directorial debut, with the German-language television production Wenn man sich traut.
  
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  Christopher Marlowe
  Christopher Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564; died 30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian until his mysterious early death. Marlowe greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's death. Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse, and their overreaching protagonists.
  A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason for it was given, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain "vile heretical conceipts". On 20 May he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until "licensed to the contrary." Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved.
  
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  Christopher Walken
  Christopher Walken (/ˈwɔːkən/; born March 31, 1943) is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New York, True Romance, Catch Me If You Can, Pulp Fiction, Wedding Crashers, The Rundown, Click, and Hairspray, as well as music videos by recording artists such as Madonna, Journey, Run DMC, The Left Rights and Fatboy Slim.
  Walken's films have grossed more than $1.8 billion in the United States. He has also played the main role in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Coriolanus. He is also a popular guest-host of Saturday Night Live, having hosted 7 times as of April 2008. His most notable roles on the show include record producer Bruce Dickinson (no relation to the singer with the same name) in the "More Cowbell" sketch and his multiple appearances as The Continental.
  
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  Clint Eastwood
  Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide (1959–1965). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) during the late 1960s, and as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.
  For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others including Play Misty for Me (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), which are his two most commercially successful films after adjustment for inflation.
  
  wn.com/Clint_Eastwood
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  Clive Owen
  Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He then garnered critical acclaim for his work in the film Close My Eyes (1991) before getting international notice for his performance as a struggling writer in Croupier (1998). In 2005, Owen won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his appearance in the drama Closer (2004). He has since played leading roles in films such as Sin City (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), and The International (2009).
  The fourth of five brothers, Owen was born in Coventry, in the English Midlands, a son of Pamela (née Cotton) and Jess Owen, a country and western singer of Welsh descent. His father left the family when Owen was three years old, and despite a brief reconciliation when Owen was nineteen, the two have remained estranged. Raised by his mother and stepfather, a railway ticket clerk, he has described his childhood as "rough." While initially opposed to drama school, he changed his mind in 1984, after a long and fruitless period of searching for work. Owen graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1987 with a class that included Rebecca Pidgeon, Serena Harragin, Mark Womack, and Liza Tarbuck. After graduation, he won a position at the Young Vic, performing in several Shakespearean plays.
  
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  Colin Farrell
  Colin James Farrell (born 31 May 1976) is an Irish actor, who has appeared in such films as Tigerland, Miami Vice, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Recruit, Alexander and S.W.A.T.. In 2008 he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his role in In Bruges.
  Farrell was born in Dublin, the son of Rita (née Monaghan), a housewife, and Eamon Farrell, a footballer who played for Shamrock Rovers F.C. and owned a company importing and exporting canned goods in Dublin City. He was raised as a Roman Catholic. His uncle Tommy Farrell also played for Rovers. Farrell has two sisters, Claudine (who is his personal assistant) and Catherine, and a brother, Eamon Jr. When he was ten, the Farrells moved to Castleknock, a Dublin suburb. Farrell was educated at St. Brigid's National School Castleknock followed by Castleknock College and Gormanston College. Farrell unsuccessfully auditioned for the Irish group Boyzone when he was still unknown. Farrell attended The Gaiety School of Acting, but dropped out and was cast in the part of Danny Byrne on Ballykissangel, a BBC television drama. Farrell appeared on the show seven times from 1998 to 1999. He was inspired to try acting after being brought to tears while watching E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
  
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  Cynthia Nixon
  Cynthia Ellen Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is an American actress, best known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004). She has received two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, a Grammy Award, and a GLAAD Media Award.
  Nixon was born in New York, New York, the daughter of Anne Knoll, an actress from Chicago, and Walter E. Nixon, a Texas-born radio journalist. She graduated from Hunter College High School, and attended Barnard College. During her college years she also studied abroad with Semester at Sea in the spring of 1986.
  From 1988 to 2003, Nixon was in a relationship with photographer Danny Mozes. They have two children together, a daughter born in 1996 and a son born in 2002. Since 2004, Nixon has been in a relationship with education activist Christine Marinoni. Nixon and Marinoni became engaged in April 2009. Marinoni gave birth to a son in 2011. Nixon and Marinoni were married on May 27, 2012. Regarding her sexual orientation, Nixon remarked in 2007: "I don't really feel I've changed. I'd been with men all my life, and I'd never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn't seem so strange. I'm just a woman in love with another woman." She identified herself as bisexual in 2012.
  
  wn.com/Cynthia_Nixon
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  Danny Goffey
  Daniel Robert Goffey (born 7 February 1974 in Slough, Buckinghamshire (now Berkshire) is an English musician and singer-songwriter best known as the drummer and backing vocalist for the English Britpop band, Supergrass. In June 2010, it was announced he had become the drummer for Babyshambles following their drummer's departure.
  Goffey started his music career as a child when he formed his first band, The Jubbly Spufflewubs, which consisted of his brother on guitar and friend David Mackay. He had no drums so had to accompany the others by hitting chopsticks on lunch boxes. At age ten he received a high hat and snare from his parents, prompting him to start his other band, The Fallopian Tubes. They made songs such as "My Wife Shut My Gonads In The Door", Goffey saying: "That one was about sexual frustration I seem to recall. So were all the others [songs]...". At Wheatley Park School, north of Oxford, he became drummer for the four-piece The Jennifers, which featured a sixteen year old Gaz Coombes on vocals. The Jennifers began building a reputation in the Oxford indie music scene and released one single in 1992 on Nude Records before they disbanded.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Goffey
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  David Cronenberg
  David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical. In the first half of his career, he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction, although his work has since expanded beyond these genres. He has been called "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world."
  Born in Toronto, Canada, Cronenberg was the son of Esther (born Sumberg), a musician, and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor. His family has been described as "a nurturing middle class family." He began writing as a child and wrote constantly. He attended high school at Harbord Collegiate Institute. A keen interest in science, especially botany and lepidopterology, led him to enter the Honours Science program the University of Toronto in 1963, but he switched to Honors English Language and Literature later in his first year. Cronenberg's fascination with the film Winter Kept Us Warm (1966) by classmate David Secter sparked his interest in film. He began frequenting film camera rental houses, learning art of filmmaking and made two 16mm films (Transfer and From the Drain). Inspired by the New York underground film scene, he founded the Toronto Film Co-op with Iain Ewing and Ivan Reitman. After taking a year off to travel in Europe, he returned to Canada in 1967, graduating from University College at the top of his class.
  
  wn.com/David_Cronenberg
• David Essex
  David Essex OBE (born David Albert Cook on 23 July 1947) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and actor. Since the 1970s, Essex has attained nineteen Top 40 singles in the UK (including two number ones), and sixteen Top 40 albums. He has also had an extensive career as an actor performing on stage and screen.
  Essex was born in Plaistow, which was at that time in Essex (hence his stage name), but now falls within the borders of Greater London. His father, Albert, was an East End dock worker and his mother, Olive (née Kemp), was a self-taught pianist and an Irish Traveller. His grandfather, Thomas Kemp, was named 'Philimore' which was the anglicised version of 'Philly Mor' - being Irish for 'Big Philly'. Essex was two years old when his parents moved out of the overcrowded home the family was sharing with relatives, to Canning Town where he grew up. Essex attended Star Lane Primary School, he loved playing football and did not answer any of the questions in the Eleven plus exam for entry into a Grammar School, so that he could ensure he attended Shipman County Secondary School where he knew they played the game. He was also a member of West Ham United Juniors for a while and dreamed of one day being a professional player. He then also became interested in music and played drums with a local band, before becoming a singer.
  
  wn.com/David_Essex
• David Lan
  David Lan is an English playwright, filmmaker and theatre director.
  Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1952, he emigrated to London in 1972. Since 2000 he has been artistic director of the Young Vic theatre in London's South Bank.
  He was writer in residence at the Royal Court Theatre from 1995 to 1997.
  At the Young Vic, he led the campaign to rebuild the theatre which reopened to much acclaim in October 2006. He also initiated the Genesis Directors' Project, the Jerwood Directors Award and the Young Vic Award.
  In addition to his many plays, libretti, and films, he is the author of the non-fiction work Guns and Rain: Guerrillas & Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (1985) about Zimbabwe's struggle for independence from colonial rule. Some of his stage works reflect his academic interest in aspects of African religion, including spiritual possession and cargo cults. He has also written and directed a number of documentaries for the BBC, mostly set in Africa.
  He has received the John Whiting Award and the George Orwell Award, and in 2004 the Young Vic received an Olivier Award for "a provocative season under the artistic leadership of David Lan". In the recent survey in The Stage of the 100 most influential people in the UK theatre, he was ranked #15.
  
  wn.com/David_Lan
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  Errol Flynn
  Errol Leslie Flynn (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959) was an Australian-born American actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films and his flamboyant lifestyle.
  Errol Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania, where his father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was a lecturer (1909) and later professor (1911) of biology at the University of Tasmania. Flynn was born at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Battery Point. His mother was born Lily Mary Young, but dropped the first names Lily Mary shortly after she was married and changed her name to Marelle. Flynn described his mother's family as "seafaring folk" and this appears to be where his life-long interest in boats and the sea originated. Despite Flynn's claims, the evidence indicates that he was not descended from any of the Bounty mutineers. Married at St John's Church of England, Balmain North, Sydney, New South Wales, on 23 January 1909, both of his parents were native-born Australians of Irish, English, and Scottish descent, with convict links to Tasmania long before Flynn's birth. Flynn, living at Mclean Avenue Chatswood, Sydney in 1926, attended Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore School) where he was the classmate of future Australian Prime Minister, John Gorton. He was expelled for fighting and, allegedly, having sex with a school laundress. He was also expelled from several other schools he had attended in Tasmania. At the age of 20 he moved to New Guinea where he bought a tobacco plantation, a business which failed. A copper mining venture in the hills near the Laloki Valley, behind the present national capital, Port Moresby, also failed.
  
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  Euripides
  Euripides (Ancient Greek: Εὐριπίδης) (ca. 480 – 406 BC) was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete (there has been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds) and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined — he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes and Menander.
  Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. Yet he also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of...that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "...imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates", and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
  
  wn.com/Euripides
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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
• Gary Kemp
  Gary Kemp (born 16 October 1959) is an English pop musician and actor who is the guitar player and chief songwriter for the 1980s Synthpop band Spandau Ballet. His brother, Martin Kemp, plays bass guitar in the band. Gary Kemp also provided backing vocals on many of the tracks to lead singer Tony Hadley.
  Kemp was born in St Bartholomew's Hospital, Smithfield, London, and grew up in Islington, London, in a working-class family. He attended Rotherfield Junior School and Dame Alice Owen's school, Islington, as well as the Anna Scher Children’s Theatre drama club, along with his brother, Martin. In 1968 he began appearing in TV and film, including a role in the 1972 film Hide & Seek, alongside Roy Dotrice.
  Kemp eventually decided to concentrate on a career in music and, in the late Seventies, he formed a band called The Gentry with school friends. The Gentry was later renamed Spandau Ballet.
  After recording Spandau Ballet's final album, Heart Like A Sky, Kemp and his brother returned to acting. He won the contempt of his fellow band members, Tony Hadley, Steve Norman and John Keeble, but good reviews for his performance as Ronnie Kray in The Krays (1990). Making this film was the death-knell to Spandau Ballet.
  
  wn.com/Gary_Kemp
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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.
  
  wn.com/Geoffrey_Rush
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  George Bernard Shaw
  George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.
  He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council.
  
  wn.com/George_Bernard_Shaw
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  George Michael
  George Michael (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (Greek: Γεώργιος Κυριάκος Παναγιώτου); 25 June 1963) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer. Michael rose to fame in the 1980s when he formed the pop duo Wham! with his school friend, Andrew Ridgeley. His first solo single, "Careless Whisper", was released when he was still in the duo and sold about six million copies worldwide.
  As one of the world's best-selling music artists, Michael has sold more than 100 million records worldwide as of 2010. His 1987 debut solo album, Faith, has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and made several records and achievements in the United States. Michael has garnered seven number one singles in the UK and eight number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Michael the 40th most successful artist on the Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists list.
  Michael has won numerous music awards throughout his 30-year career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male twice, four MTV Video Music Awards, four Ivor Novello Awards, three American Music Awards, and two Grammy Awards from eight nominations.
  
  wn.com/George_Michael
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  Guy Barker
  Guy Barker (born 26 December 1957) is an English jazz trumpeter and composer. Barker was born in Chiswick, London, the son of an actress and a stuntman. He started playing the trumpet at the age of twelve, and within a year had joined the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. After lessons from Clark Terry in 1975, Barker went on in the 1980s to play with John Dankworth, Gil Evans (with whose orchestra he toured and recorded in 1983), Lena Horne and Bobby Watson.
  Barker was a member of Clark Tracey's quintet from 1984 to 1992, and continues to play with Tracey, as well as with Tracey's father Stan. As a sideman he has played with many major musicians and groups, including Ornette Coleman, Carla Bley, Georgie Fame, James Carter, Mike Westbrook, Frank Sinatra, Colin Towns, Natalie Merchant, ABC, The The, Erasure, Chris Botti, Wham!, Kajagoogoo, The Housemartins, Matt Bianco, Alphaville, The Moody Blues, Sting, Bucks Fizz, Mike Oldfield, Cleo Laine, Acoustic Alchemy, and XTC.
  Previously, his own band has featured an international mix of musicians – Perico Sambeat (alto saxophone; Spain), Bernardo Sassetti (piano; Portugal), Geoff Gascoyne (bass, United Kingdom), and Gene Calderazzo (drums; United States)
  
  wn.com/Guy_Barker
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  Guy Ritchie
  Guy Stuart Ritchie (born 10 September 1968) is an English screenwriter and film maker best known for directing Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Revolver, RocknRolla and Sherlock Holmes and its sequel.
  Ritchie was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, the second of two children born to Amber (née Parkinson) and Captain John Vivian Ritchie (b. 1928), former Seaforth Highlanders serviceman and advertising executive. John Vivian's father was Major Stewart Ritchie, who died in France, in 1940, during World War Two. John Ritchie's mother was Doris Margaretta McLaughlin (b. 1896), daughter of Vivian Guy McLaughlin (b. 1865) and Edith Martineau (b. 1866). Most of Ritchie's family on the McLaughlin and Martineau lines were appointed Reverends, Barons or Knighted at some point. The peerage started with the Very Rev. Hubert McLaughlin (b. 1805), father of famous nurse Louisa McLaughlin, and ancestor of Patrick McLaughlin, who was the first in his direct family to be given the according title, as he was born into a blue collar family and worked hard to find nobility. Ritchie's mother, Amber, would later go on to marry a baronet herself. His father's second marriage was to Shireen Ritchie, Baroness Ritchie of Brompton, a former model and later Conservative politician and life peer.
  
  wn.com/Guy_Ritchie
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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.
  
  wn.com/Gwyneth_Paltrow
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  Hamid Karzai
  Hamid Karzai, GCMG (Pashto: حامد کرزی, Hāmid Karzay; born 24 December 1957) is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001. During the December 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Germany, Karzai was selected by prominent Afghan political figures to serve a six month term as Chairman of the Interim Administration.
  He was then chosen for a two year term as Interim President during the 2002 loya jirga (grand assembly) that was held in Kabul, Afghanistan. After the 2004 presidential election, Karzai was declared winner and became President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. He won a second five-year-term in the 2009 presidential election.
  Karzai was born on 24 December 1957 in the Karz area of Kandahar City in southern Afghanistan. He is an ethnic Pashtun of the Popalzai tribe. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, served as the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament during the 1960s. His grandfather, Khair Mohammad Khan, had served in the 1919 Afghanistan's war of independence and as the Deputy Speaker of the Senate. Karzai's family were strong supporters of Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan. His uncle, Habibullah Karzai, served as representative of Afghanistan at the UN and is said to have accompanied King Zahir Shah in the early 1960s to the United States for a special meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
  
  wn.com/Hamid_Karzai
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  Harold Pinter
  Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted to film. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others' works.
  Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refusing National Service as a conscientious objector. Subsequently, he continued training at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in repertory theatre in Ireland and England. In 1956 he married actress Vivien Merchant and had a son, Daniel born in 1958. He left Merchant in 1975 and married author Antonia Fraser in 1980.
  
  wn.com/Harold_Pinter
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  Heath Ledger
  Heath Andrew Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008) was an Australian television and film actor. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger left his homeland for the United States in 1998 to develop his film career. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and The Dark Knight (2008). In addition to acting, he produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
  For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger won the 2005 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the 2006 "Best Actor" award from the Australian Film Institute and was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor as well as the 2006 BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Posthumously he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There, which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona. Ledger received numerous accolades for his critically acclaimed portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards, for which he became the first actor to win an award posthumously, the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  
  wn.com/Heath_Ledger
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  Helena Christensen
  Helena Christensen (born December 25, 1968) is a Danish fashion model, (former) Victoria's Secret Angel, beauty queen, and photographer. She has also served as creative director for Nylon magazine, designed clothing, and supported funding for breast cancer organizations and other charities.
  Christensen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her father is Danish, and her mother is Peruvian.
  Christensen won the Miss Denmark crown in 1986 and represented Denmark in Miss Universe 1986. She left her home soon afterwards to pursue modeling in Paris.
  Christensen appeared on many magazine covers (including Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, W) and in fashion campaigns (including Revlon, Chanel, Versace, Lanvin, Prada, Sonia Rykiel, Hermes, Valentino, Karl Lagerfeld) during the 1990s. One noted campaign featured her in a 20 by 40 feet (6 by 12 m) billboard in Times Square, bare, "except for a strategically placed banana leaf." She was in the Victoria's Secret catalog and in their television commercials as one of the signature Angels, along with Tyra Banks, Karen Mulder, Daniela Pestova, and Stephanie Seymour. She also became a spokesmodel for Revlon cosmetics.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Helena_Christensen
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  Jake Gyllenhaal
  Jacob Benjamin "Jake" Gyllenhaal ( /ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl/ JIL-ən-hawl; born December 19, 1980) is an American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at the age of ten. Following his first lead role in 1999's October Sky, he starred in the indie cult hit Donnie Darko (2001), in which he played a psychologically troubled teenager alongside his older sister, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. In 2004 he appeared in the science-fiction film The Day After Tomorrow, portraying a student caught in a cataclysmic global cooling event. He then played against type as a frustrated Marine in Jarhead (2005). The same year his role as Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain earned him critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He has since played the lead roles in many notable films, including Zodiac (2007), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) and Source Code (2011).
  Gyllenhaal has promoted various political and social causes. He has appeared in Rock the Vote advertising, campaigned for the Democratic Party in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, promoted environmental causes, and campaigned on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.
  
  wn.com/Jake_Gyllenhaal
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  Javier Bardem
  Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (Spanish pronunciation: [xaˈβjer βarˈðen]; born 1 March 1969) is a Spanish actor. In 2007 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as sociopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, and has also garnered critical acclaim for roles in films such as Jamón, jamón, Carne trémula, Boca a boca, Los Lunes al sol and Mar adentro.
  As well as the Academy Award, Bardem has been awarded a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA, five Goya awards, two European Film Awards, a Prize for Best Actor at Cannes and two Coppa Volpis at Venice for his work. He is the first Spaniard to be nominated for an Oscar (Best Actor, 2000, for Before Night Falls, lost to Russell Crowe for Gladiator), as well as the first Spanish actor to win an Academy Award. He received his third Academy Award nomination, and second Best Actor nomination, for the film Biutiful.
  Bardem was born in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands (Spain). His mother, Pilar Bardem, is an actress, and his father, José Carlos Encinas Doussinague, was a businessman who was involved in environmental work; the two separated shortly after his birth. His mother raised him alone. Bardem comes from a long line of filmmakers and actors who have been working since the earliest days of Spanish cinema; he is the grandson of actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, and the nephew of screenwriter and director Juan Antonio Bardem. Both his older brother and sister, Carlos and Mónica, are actors. Bardem was raised Roman Catholic by his grandmother. He also comes from a very political background, his uncle Juan Antonio was imprisoned by Franco for his anti-fascist films.
  
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  Jean Cocteau
  Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ kɔkto]; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants terribles (1929), and the films Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946), and Orpheus (1949). His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María Félix, Édith Piaf and Raymond Radiguet.
  Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, a village near Paris, to Georges Cocteau and his wife, Eugénie Lecomte; a socially prominent Parisian family. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. He left home at fifteen. He published his first volume of poems, Aladdin's Lamp, at nineteen. Cocteau soon became known in Bohemian artistic circles as The Frivolous Prince, the title of a volume he published at twenty-two. Edith Wharton described him as a man "to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundation of the Heavenly City..."
  
  wn.com/Jean_Cocteau
• Jeremy Gilley
  Jeremy Gilley is an English actor, filmmaker and founder of the charity Peace One Day.
  Born in 1969, Gilley spent his early years in Southampton, England. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at 17.
  Following a decade of professional acting, in 1994 Gilley started his own film making company, P.U.R.E. Productions.
  In 1998, Gilley began to make the Peace One Day documentary, eventually deciding to aim for a UN resolution formalising the idea. This goal was reached in 2001 when UN GA resolution (A/Res/55/282), put forward by the UK and Costa Rican Governments, was unanimously adopted to establish the first ever day of global ceasefire and non-violence fixed in the calendar as 21 September annually. This resolution drew on a 1981 UN resolution that had declared the third Tuesday of September the international day of peace.
  Gilley organised two concerts at Brixton Academy, London, on 21 September 2002 and 2003. In 2004, the Peace One Day documentary premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival, then the BBC aired the documentary in September of the same year. On the other side of the Atlantic in 2005, Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller hosted the North American Film Premiere to highlight Peace Day.
  
  wn.com/Jeremy_Gilley
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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.
  
  wn.com/Jim_Broadbent
• John Arden
  John Arden (26 October 1930 – 28 March 2012) was an English playwright whose works tended to expose social issues of personal concern. At his death, he was laded as "one of the most significant British playwrights of the late 1950s and early 60s [...] one of the very few 20th-century dramatists you could mention in the same breath as Shakespeare, Molière and Brecht without the parallels sounding too far-fetched."
  Born in Barnsley (which at the time was in the West Riding of Yorkshire), he was was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, King's College, Cambridge and the Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied architecture. He first gained critical attention for the radio play The Life of Man in 1956 shortly after finishing his studies.
  Arden was initially associated with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in London. His 1959 play, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, dealing with the realities of war and protesters against it, is considered his best. His work bore the heavy influence of Bertolt Brecht and the Epic Theatre. Other plays include Live Like Pigs, The Workhouse Donkey and Armstrong's Last Goodnight, the last of which was performed at the National Theatre, starring Albert Finney, after the Royal Court had rejected it. His 1978 radio play Pearl was considered in a Guardian survey to be one of the best plays for that medium.
  
  wn.com/John_Arden
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  Johnny Depp
  John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol. Dissatisfied with that status, Depp turned to film for more challenging roles; he played the title character of Edward Scissorhands (1990) and later found box office success in films such as Sleepy Hollow (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Rango (2011) and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (2003–present). He has collaborated with director and friend Tim Burton in eight films, most recently with Dark Shadows (2012).
  Depp has gained acclaim for his portrayals of people such as Ed Wood, in Ed Wood, Joseph D. Pistone in Donnie Brasco, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, George Jung in Blow, and the bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.1 billion at the United States box office and over $7.6 billion worldwide. He has been nominated for top awards many times, winning the Best Actor Awards from the Golden Globes for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and from the Screen Actors Guild for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He also has garnered a sex symbol status in American cinema, being twice named as the "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine in 2003 and 2009. He has been listed in the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor, with $75 million.
  
  wn.com/Johnny_Depp
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  Jude Law
  David Jude Heyworth Law (born 29 December 1972), known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.
  He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989. After starring in films directed by Andrew Niccol, Clint Eastwood and David Cronenberg, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1999 for his performance in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley. In 2000 he won a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award for his work in the film. In 2003, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in another Minghella film, Cold Mountain.
  In 2006, he was one of the top ten most bankable movie stars in Hollywood. In 2007, he received an Honorary César and he was named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He was a member of the main competition jury at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
  Law was born in Lewisham, South London, the second child of comprehensive school teachers Margaret Anne (née Heyworth) and Peter Robert Law; his father later became, according to Law, "the youngest headmaster in London". He has a sister, Natasha. Law was named after a "bit of both" the book Jude the Obscure and the song Hey Jude. He grew up in Blackheath, an area in the Borough of Lewisham, and was educated at John Ball Primary School in Blackheath and Kidbrooke School, before attending the Alleyn's School.
  
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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).
  
  wn.com/Judi_Dench
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  Kathleen Turner
  Mary Kathleen Turner (born June 19, 1954) is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Serial Mom and Prizzi's Honor. More recently, she guest starred on the third season of Showtime's Californication as Sue Collini, a jaded sex-crazed public relations company owner.
  Turner was born in Springfield, Missouri, the daughter of Patsy (née Magee) and Allen Richard Turner, a U.S. Foreign Service officer who grew up in China^{[citation needed]} (where Turner's great-grandfather had been a Methodist Christian missionary). Her father, a diplomat, had been imprisoned by the Japanese Empire for four years during the World War II.^{[citation needed]} As a girl, Turner lived in Canada, Venezuela, and England, and she was living in Cuba at the time that Fidel Castro took over the government. When the United States soon after broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba, it forced the staff members of the American embassy in Havana to leave the country. Turner has two brothers and one sister. While attending high school in England, she was a gymnast, and she also took classes at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
  
  wn.com/Kathleen_Turner
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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.
  
  wn.com/Kevin_Spacey
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  Laurence Olivier
  Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM ( /ˈlɒrəns ɵˈlɪvi.eɪ/; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer. One of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, he was the youngest actor to be knighted and the first to be elevated to the peerage. He married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Actor Spencer Tracy said that Olivier was 'the greatest actor in the English-speaking world'.
  Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is regarded by some to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries. Olivier's AMPAS acknowledgments are considerable: twelve Oscar nominations, with two awards (for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet), plus two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.
  
  wn.com/Laurence_Olivier
• Lemony Snicket
  Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American novelist Daniel Handler (born February 28, 1970). Snicket is the author of several children's books, serving as the narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events (his best-known work) and appearing as a character within the series. Because of this, the name Lemony Snicket may refer to both a fictional character and a real person. This article deals primarily with the character.
  As a character, Snicket is a harried, troubled writer and researcher falsely accused of felonies and continuously hunted by the police and his enemies, the fire-starting side of the secret organization Volunteer Fire Department (V.F.D.). As a child he was kidnapped and inducted as a "neophyte" into V.F.D., where he was trained in rhetoric and sent on seemingly pointless missions while all connections to his former life, apart from his siblings Jacques and Kit (who were also kidnapped and inducted), were severed. In the organization he met and fell in love with a peer named Beatrice, to whom he eventually became engaged. After a series of unfortunate events (after which the real-world series is in some ways named), he became falsely accused of murder and arson. Eventually the fallacies grew so much that The Daily Punctilio reported his death. Beatrice eventually moved on and married Bertrand Baudelaire, becoming the mother of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, the protagonists of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Fourteen years thereafter Beatrice and Bertrand were murdered in a house fire, leaving the Baudelaires orphans. Feeling indebted to his former fiancée, Snicket embarks on a quest to chronicle the lives of the Baudelaire children until they become old enough to face the troubles of the world on their own.
  
  wn.com/Lemony_Snicket
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  Lord Alfred Douglas
  Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde. Much of his early poetry was Uranian in theme, though he tended, later in life, to distance himself from both Wilde's influence and his own role as a Uranian poet.
  The third son of John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry and his first wife, Sibyl née Montgomery, Douglas was born at Ham Hill House in Worcestershire. He was his mother's favourite child; she called him Bosie (a derivative of Boysie), a nickname which stuck for the rest of his life.
  Douglas was educated at Winchester College (1884–88) and at Magdalen College, Oxford (1889–93), which he left without obtaining a degree. At Oxford, Douglas edited an undergraduate journal The Spirit Lamp (1892-3), an activity that intensified the constant conflict between him and his father. Their relationship had always been a strained one and during the Queensberry-Wilde feud, Douglas sided with Wilde, even encouraging him to prosecute his own father for libel. In 1893, Douglas had a brief affair with George Ives.
  
  wn.com/Lord_Alfred_Douglas
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  Matt Damon
  Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting (1997) from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck. The pair won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for their work. Damon alone received multiple Best Actor nominations, including an Academy Award for his lead performance in the film.
  Damon has since starred in commercially successful films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), the Ocean's trilogy, and the Bourne series, while also gaining critical acclaim for his performances in dramas such as Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), and The Departed (2006). He garnered a Golden Globe nomination for portraying the title character in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Invictus (2009). He is one of the top 40 highest grossing actors of all time. In 2007, Damon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. Damon has been actively involved in charitable work, including the ONE Campaign, H2O Africa Foundation, and Water.org.
  
  wn.com/Matt_Damon
• Matthew Warchus
  Matthew Warchus (born 24 October 1966) is a British director and dramatist. He is married to Lauren Ward, who originated the role of Miss Honey in the Stratford-upon-Avon and London productions of Matilda the Musical.
  Warchus studied music and drama at Bristol University. He has directed for the National Youth Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Donmar Warehouse, Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre, Opera North, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera and in the West End. He won the Globe's Most Promising Newcomer Award for Much Ado About Nothing in the West End, the Evening Standard Best Director award, and Olivier Award nominations for Henry V and Volpone.^{[citation needed]}
  Productions include: Sejanus his Fall (Edinburgh), Master Harold and the Boys (Bristol Old Vic), The Suicide, Coriolanus (National Youth Theatre), Life is a Dream, Plough and the Stars, True West (Donmar Warehouse), Henry V, The Devil is an Ass, Hamlet (RSC), Volpone (RNT), Troilus and Cressida (Opera North), Rake's Progress (Welsh National Opera), Falstaff (Opera North & ENO), and Art (West End & Broadway).
  
  wn.com/Matthew_Warchus
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  Maya Rudolph
  Maya Khabira Rudolph (born July 27, 1972) is an American actress, comedienne and singer who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2000 to 2007, and has appeared in films such as Away We Go, Bridesmaids, Grown Ups, A Prairie Home Companion and MacGruber. She is the daughter of R&B and soul singer Minnie Riperton and music producer/composer Richard Rudolph. Since 2011, she has co-starred in the NBC sitcom Up All Night.
  Rudolph was born in Gainesville, Florida. She is the daughter of soul singer Minnie Riperton and composer/songwriter/producer Richard Rudolph. Her father is Ashkenazi Jewish and her mother was African-American. Her paternal grandfather was Sidney Rudolph, a philanthropist who once owned all of the Wendy's and Rudy's restaurants in Dade County, FL. Her parents moved to Los Angeles when she and her brother Marc were very young, and they grew up primarily in the Westwood section.
  Rudolph was in the studio with her mother on the day Riperton recorded "Lovin' You",^{[citation needed]} Near the end of the track, Riperton can be heard singing "Maya, Maya, Maya" to Rudolph. Riperton incorporated this into her performance of the song on The Midnight Special. Riperton died on July 12, 1979, at age 31, from breast cancer, just shy of Rudolph's seventh birthday. Rudolph's godmother was R&B singer Teena Marie.
  
  wn.com/Maya_Rudolph
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  Michael Caine
  Sir Michael Caine, CBE (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933) is an English actor.
  Caine is one of two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s, the other one being Jack Nicholson. In 2000, Caine was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to cinema.
  Caine was born in St Olave's Hospital, Rotherhithe, Southwark in South East London, the son of Ellen Frances Marie (née Burchell; 1900-1989), a cook and charwoman, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, a fish market porter. His father was of English, Irish, and, reportedly, Irish Traveller ancestry. Caine was brought up in his mother's Protestant religion (his father was Catholic).
  Caine grew up in Southwark, South London, and during the Second World War he was evacuated to North Runcton near King's Lynn in Norfolk. After the war, when his father was demobilised, the family was rehoused by the council in Marshall Gardens at the Elephant and Castle in a pre-fabricated house made in Canada, as much of London's housing stock had been damaged during the Blitz in 1940-41.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Caine
• Michael Grandage
  Michael Grandage CBE (born 2 May 1962) is an award-winning British theatre director and producer. He is currently Artistic Director of the Michael Grandage Company. From 2002 to 2012 he was Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse in London.
  Grandage was born in Yorkshire, England, and raised in Penzance, Cornwall where his parents ran a family business. He was educated at the Humphry Davy Grammar School before training as an actor at Central School of Speech and Drama through 1984. He spent twelve years working as an actor for companies such as the Royal Exchange and the Royal Shakespeare Company before turning to directing. He made his directorial debut in 1996 with a production of The Last Yankee at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester. In 1998 he was invited to Sheffield to direct Twelfth Night, his first Shakespeare production. He lives in London and Cornwall with his partner, the award-winning British theatre designer Christopher Oram.
  From 1999 to 2005 he was Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres where his high-profile productions included Edward II with Joseph Fiennes, Richard III with Kenneth Branagh, Suddenly Last Summer with Diana Rigg and Victoria Hamilton, The Tempest with Derek Jacobi and Don Carlos with Derek Jacobi. He produced over forty plays with predominantly young directors and designers. The Crucible was awarded Theatrical Management Association Theatre of the Year in 2001.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Grandage
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  Moby
  Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965), better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.
  Moby gained attention in the early 1990s with his electronic dance music work, which dabbled in the techno and breakbeat hardcore (also known as "rave") genres. With his fifth studio album, the electronica and house-influenced Play, he gained international success. Originally released in mid-1999 to an unflattering response, it re-entered the charts in early 2000 and slowly became an unexpected hit, producing eight singles and eventually selling over 10 million copies worldwide.
  Moby followed the album in 2002 with 18, which was also successful, selling over 5 million copies worldwide and receiving mostly positive reviews, though some criticizing it for being too similar to Play. His next offer, 2005's mostly upbeat Hotel was a stylistic departure, incorporating more alternative rock elements than previous albums, and received mixed reviews. However, it still sold around 2 million copies worldwide. After 2008's dance-influenced Last Night (2008), he returned to the downtempo electronica of Play and 18 with 2009's mostly-ambient Wait for Me, finding higher critical acclaim and moderate sales. Moby's latest album, Destroyed., was released on May 13, 2011.
  
  wn.com/Moby
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  Natasha Law
  Andrea Natasha Law (born 1970) is an English painter and graphic designer.
  Law was born in London, the first child of comprehensive school teachers Margaret Anne (née Heyworth) and Peter Robert Law. She is older sister to actor Jude Law. She gained experience of acting at the The Bob Hope Theatre (then called the Eltham Little Theatre) in Eltham, performing Teenage Follies in 1982. She went on to study art at the Camberwell College of Arts in South London. She now lives in Peckham, London with her husband and three children.
  Natasha Law is known for her inky sexy line drawings, which lie on the boundaries between art and fashion. Her work also features strong and evident erotic undertones, normally symbolized by effortless females in high heels and knickers. She has won many celebrity admirers including the likes of Jo Whiley and Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall.
  Her paintings are created with general household paints. She starts by photographing and sketching her model, then projects the image onto an aluminium panel to determine how it will be cropped. Paint is then applied to the metal, building up several layers to produce areas of strong colour.
  
  wn.com/Natasha_Law
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  Nick Barratt
  Nicholas David Barratt (born 16 May 1970) is an English genealogist. He is best known as genealogical consultant for series 1 to 4 of the BBC show Who Do You Think You Are?. Barratt is also the CEO of Sticks Research Agency and personal heritage site Nations Memory Bank, and executive director of FreeBMD. He also presents Live the Dream: As Seen on TV with Melissa Porter.
  He was educated at Hampton School, and took a PhD in history from King's College London, before completing his PhD in state finance and fiscal history also from King's College London. He then worked at the Public Record Office, now The National Archives, from 1996-2000 before leaving to work as a specialist researcher at the BBC, whilst establishing Sticks Research Agency. He is also CEO of Nations Memory Bank and advisor at Digital Estate Corporation. He is currently involved in the project the Family History Show, a genealogy video magazine.
  Barratt has made numerous TV appearances, and his credits include House Detectives, Invasion, Omnibus and the BAFTA-nominated Seven Wonders of the Industrial World. Since 2002, he has moved into presenting, History Mysteries, Hidden House History and So You Think You’re Royal on television, and Tracing Your Roots for Radio 4. He also presented the research strands for BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? DVD.
  
  wn.com/Nick_Barratt
• Nicola Salerno
  Nicola Salerno, also known as Nisa (11 March 1910 - 22 May 1969) was an Italian lyricist. He formed a famous songwriting duo with Renato Carosone.
  Nicola Salerno was born in Naples.
  His first hit was "Eulalia Torricelli" of 1947, about the unhappy love story between a wealthy girl from Forlì and a guy named Giosuè. Nisa put the whole team of songwriters in the lyrics, as heirs to the beautiful Eulalia: "Un castello lo dà a Nisa, un castello lo dà a Redi, un castello, ma il più bello, al maestro Olivieri lo dà" ("she gives one castle to Nisa, one castle to Redi, but the most beautiful ones goes to Maestro Olivieri").
  Nisa and Carosone met in 1955. It was Mariano Rapetti, Ricordi record company's director - and father of lyricist Mogol - who suggest them to work together in view of a radio contest. Nisa brought Carosone three texts to be set to music. One of them was titled Tu vuò fà l'americano. Carosone had an instant inspiration and started composing a boogie-woogie on the piano keyboard. It took just fifteen minutes to create Carosone's most famous song, that became a worldwide success.
  
  wn.com/Nicola_Salerno
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  Oscar Wilde
  Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
  Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States of America and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day.
  
  wn.com/Oscar_Wilde
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  Paul McCartney
  Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of the Beatles (1960–1970) and Wings (1971–1981), he has been described by Guinness World Records as "The Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist of All Time", with 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million albums and 100 million singles. With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and with Lennon formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. After leaving the Beatles, he began a solo career and later formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine.
  According to the BBC, his Beatles song "Yesterday" has been covered by over 2,200 artists—more than any other song. Wings' 1977 release, "Mull of Kintyre", became one of the best-selling singles ever in the UK, and he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK chart history, according to Guinness. As a songwriter or co-writer, he is included on thirty-one number one titles on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2012 he has sold over 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States.
  
  wn.com/Paul_McCartney
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  Paul Scofield
  David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE (21 January 1922 – 19 March 2008), better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen. Noted for his distinctive voice and delivery, Scofield received an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for his performance as Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, a reprise of the role he played in the stage version at the West End and on Broadway for which he received a Tony Award.
  Scofield was born in Birmingham, England, the son of Mary and Edward Harry Scofield. When Scofield was a few weeks old, his family moved to Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, where his father served as the headmaster at the Hurstpierpoint Church of England School. At the age of 12 he began attending the Varndean Secondary School in Brighton, where he took various roles in school plays.
  Scofield began his stage career in 1940 with a debut performance in Desire Under the Elms at the Westminster Theatre, and was soon being compared to Laurence Olivier. He played at the Old Rep in Birmingham. From there he went to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford, where he starred in Walter Nugent Monck's 1947 revival of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Scofield
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  Paweł Althamer
  Paweł Althamer (born 1967) is a contemporary Polish sculptor, collaborative artist, and creator of installations and video art. In 2000 he participated in Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He won the Vincent Award in 2004. In 2007 he presented the exhibition One of many with the Nicola Trussardi Foundation.
  His longest-running collaboration is with the Nowolipie Group, an organisation in Warsaw for adults with mental or physical disabilities, to whom he has been teaching a Friday night ceramics class since the early 1990s. In 2008 Althamer arranged for the group to wear matching overalls and take a trip on a biplane, which became the subject of a short film by Althamer’s frequent collaborator, Artur Żmijewski (Winged, 2008).
  Althamer was part of the so-called Kowalski Studio at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, along with many of today’s leading generation of Polish artists, including Artur Żmijewski and Katarzyna Kozyra. Under the working title ‘Common Space—Private Space’, Kowalski foregrounded the work of art as an effect of complex non-verbal communication performed by artists in interaction with each other, neutralising individualism: ‘each of the participants had at his/her disposal “a space of their own” […], where they could build elements of their own visual language, and the “common space” open to everyone, where they could conduct simultaneous dialogues with the other participants. All without using words.’
  
  wn.com/Paweł_Althamer
• Philip Ridley
  Philip Ridley (born 1964 in East London ) is a British artist working with various media.
  Ridley was born in Bethnal Green, in the East End of London, where he still lives and works. Ridley studied painting at St. Martin’s School of Art and his work has been exhibited throughout Europe and Japan. He started as both a performance artist and the creator of a long sequence of charcoal drawings called The Epic Fail of Oracle Foster. One drawing from this sequence, "Corvus Cum", portraying a man ejaculating a black bird, was exhibited at the ICA in London while Ridley was still a student and – with calls for it to be displayed behind a curtain – became a cause célèbre. Ridley also started his own theatre group as a student, acting in many of the productions, and made several short art films, including Visiting Mr Beak which starred the veteran actor Guy Rolfe. His short film for Channel 4, The Universe of Dermot Finn, was officially selected for the Cannes Film Festival, where it was a critical success and went on to receive theatrical distribution.
  
  wn.com/Philip_Ridley
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  Prince Hamlet
  Prince Hamlet is a fictional character, the protagonist in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius and son of the previous King of Denmark, Old Hamlet. Throughout the play he struggles with whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and struggles with his own sanity along the way. By the end of the tragedy, Hamlet has caused the deaths of Polonius, Laertes, Claudius and his two childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He is also indirectly involved in the deaths of his love Ophelia (drowning) and of his mother Gertrude (poisoned by mistake). Hamlet himself is the final character to die in the play.
  Perhaps the most straightforward view sees Hamlet as seeking truth in order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. The 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role is introduced by a voiceover: "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind."
  
  wn.com/Prince_Hamlet
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  Rachel Dratch
  Rachel Susan Dratch (born February 22, 1966) is an American comic actress best known for her roles as a cast member of Saturday Night Live from 1999 to 2006.
  Dratch was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, the daughter of Elaine, a transportation director, and Paul Dratch, a radiologist. Her younger brother, Daniel, is a television producer and writer, most recently on Monk. Dratch grew up the "class clown type", attending William Diamond Middle School and Lexington High School in Massachusetts.
  Dratch attended the National Theater Institute in the fall of 1986,^{[citation needed]} and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1988, where she majored in drama and psychology and was a member of the improvisational comedy group "Said and Done".
  Dratch was a member of the mainstage cast of the Second City comedy troupe for four years. She received the Joseph Jefferson award for Best Actress in a Revue for the latter two revues in which she performed: Paradigm Lost and Promisekeepers, Losers Weepers. At Second City, she performed alongside future SNL head writers Adam McKay and Tina Fey, as well as future 30 Rock performer Scott Adsit. The first incarnation of her SNL "Wicked" sketch was performed in Second City's Paradigm Lost. In addition to acting, Dratch also played the cello onstage. The theater also hosted the first incarnation of Dratch & Fey (her critically praised^{[citation needed]} two-woman show with Tina Fey), which was later performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York, where it was dubbed "the funniest thing to be found on any New York comedy stage" by Time Out New York.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Rachel_Dratch
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  Rachel McAdams
  Rachel Anne McAdams (born November 17, 1978) is a Canadian actress. After graduating from a four-year theatre program at York University in 2001, McAdams initially worked in Canadian television and film productions such as My Name is Tanino, Perfect Pie (for which she received a Genie Award nomination) and Slings and Arrows (for which she won a Gemini Award). Her first Hollywood movie was the 2002 comedy The Hot Chick. McAdams found fame in 2004 with starring roles in the teen comedy Mean Girls and the romantic drama The Notebook. In 2005, she appeared in the romantic comedy Wedding Crashers, the psychological thriller Red Eye and the family drama The Family Stone. She was hailed by the media as "the new Hollywood it girl" and received a BAFTA nomination for Best Rising Star.
  However, McAdams withdrew from public life in 2006 and 2007. During this time, she turned down leading roles in high-profile films such as The Devil Wears Prada. She made a low-key return to work in 2008, starring in two limited release films: the film noir Married Life and the road trip movie The Lucky Ones. She returned to prominence in 2009 with appearances in the political thriller State of Play, the science-fiction romance Time Traveler's Wife, TheThe Time Traveler's Wife and the action-adventure film Sherlock Holmes. McAdams's first star vehicle was the 2010 comedy Morning Glory. In 2011, she starred in Woody Allen's romantic comedy Midnight in Paris and made a cameo appearance in the action-adventure sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. McAdams starred in 2012's romantic drama The Vow, and will next appear in Terrence Malick's To the Wonder and Brian De Palma's Passion.
  
  wn.com/Rachel_McAdams
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  Ralph Fiennes
  Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes ( /ˈreɪf ˈfaɪnz/; born 22 December 1962) is an English theatre and film actor. A noted Shakespeare interpreter, he first achieved success onstage in the Royal National Theatre. Since then, he has portrayed characters such as Nazi war criminal Amon Goeth in Schindler's List, Count Almásy in The English Patient, and Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show. He also starred in The Constant Gardener, Strange Days, Red Dragon, Onegin, and The End of the Affair, among others. He is also well known for playing Lord Voldemort in five Harry Potter movies (of eight).
  In 2011, Fiennes made his directorial debut with his film adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus, in which he also played the titular character. Fiennes won a Tony Award for playing Hamlet on Broadway and has been nominated twice for the Academy Award.
  Ralph Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes was born in Ipswich on 22 December 1962, the eldest child of Mark Fiennes (1933–2004), a farmer and photographer whose father was industrialist Sir Maurice Fiennes (1907–1994), and Jennifer Lash (1938–1993), a writer of English and Irish descent. His surname is of Norman origin.
  
  wn.com/Ralph_Fiennes
• Ray McAnally
  Ray McAnally (30 March 1926 – 15 June 1989) was an Irish actor famous for his performances in films such as The Mission, My Left Foot, and A Very British Coup.
  Ray McAnally was born in Buncrana, a seaside town located on the Inishowen Peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland. The son of a bank manager, he was educated at St. Eunan's College in Letterkenny where he wrote, produced and staged a musical called 'Madame Screwball' at the age of 16. He entered a seminary at the age of 18. However, he left the seminary after a short time having decided that the priesthood was not his vocation. He joined the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he met and married actress Ronnie Masterson. He was bilingual in English and Irish, and performed on stage in both languages.
  The couple would later form Old Quay Productions and present an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s and 1970s. He made his theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gave a well-received performance as George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre.
  
  wn.com/Ray_McAnally
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  Renato Carosone
  Renato Carosone (3 January 1920 – 20 May 2001), born Renato Carusone, was among the greatest figures of Italian music scene in the second half of the 20th century. He was also a modern performer of the so-called canzone napoletana, Naples' song tradition.
  Carosone was born in Naples. He studied piano at the Naples Conservatory and obtained his diploma in 1937, when he was just 17. Soon after he signed a contract as a band leader for a tour of Africa, which resulted in him working in Addis Ababa as a pianist. Here he would become a prominent figure of the music scene, performing with his band on several occasions. He returned to Italy only in 1946, after the end of World War II.
  Despite his success abroad, Carosone was a stranger to Italian audiences. He had to start his career afresh, playing the piano for small dance-hall bands. These new performances were strongly influenced by the new rhythms and music styles he had encountered during his ten years' absence from the Italian music scene.
  
  wn.com/Renato_Carosone
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  Rhys Ifans
  Rhys Ifans (Welsh pronunciation: [r̥ɨːs ˈivans]; born Rhys Owain Evans; 22 July 1967) is a Welsh actor and musician. He is known for his portrayal of characters such as Spike in Notting Hill and Jed Parry in Enduring Love and as a member of the Welsh rock groups Super Furry Animals and The Peth. Ifans also appeared as Xenophilius Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1, and will appear as Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard in the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man. He played Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, in Anonymous. Ifans gained fame in the United States as the gambling footballer turned American football player Nigel Gruff in the 2000 film The Replacements.
  Ifans was born in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales, in 1967, the son of Beti Wyn (née Davies), a nursery school teacher, and Eirwyn Evans, a primary school teacher. His first language is Welsh. Ifans grew up in Ruthin, North Wales, and received his primary education at Ysgol Pentrecelyn, where his mother worked, before attending Ysgol Maes Garmon, a Welsh language secondary school in Mold, Flintshire, where he sat his O levels and A levels. He also attended youth acting schools at Theatr Clwyd, Mold and trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
  
  wn.com/Rhys_Ifans
• Richard Stilgoe
  }} Richard Henry Simpson Stilgoe OBE (born 28 March 1943) is a British songwriter, lyricist and musician. He is noted for clever wordplay as much as for his music.
  Stilgoe was born in Camberley, Surrey but brought up in Liverpool—where as lead singer of a group calling itself 'Tony Snow and the Blizzards' he performed at the Cavern Club. He was educated at Monkton Combe School in Somerset and at Clare College, Cambridge where he was a member of the Cambridge University Footlights.
  In 1966 he played the role of Benjamin in the West End musical Jorrocks. He made his name on the BBC television teatime programme Nationwide, followed by Esther Rantzen's That's Life!, a light-hearted consumer affairs programme for which he wrote comic songs satirising various minor domestic misfortunes, often to the tune of Oh! Mr Porter. His ability to write a song from almost any source material and at prodigious speed is part of his cabaret act, which includes such diverse gems as singing the instructions from a Swedish payphone; a pastiche of the King's Singers listing all the kings and queens of England in which he sings all four parts; and composing a song in the interval from a series of words and musical notes called out by the audience. He has also written and presented numerous BBC radio programmes, including Hamburger Weekend, Used Notes, Stilgoe's Around, Maestro and Richard Stilgoe's Traffic Jam Show, on BBC Radio 4.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Stilgoe
• Rob Ashford
  Rob Ashford (November 19, 1959) is an American choreographer and director. He is a seven-time Tony Award nominee (winning one), five-time Olivier Award nominee, Emmy Award winner, Drama Desk winner, and Outer Critics Circle Award winner.
  Born in Orlando, Florida and raised in Beckley, West Virginia, Ashford attended Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, in the pre-law program. He became interested in theatre with his work in the theatre department, and went on to study dance at Pittsburgh’s Point Park University. He performed in the Pittsburgh theatre scene while in college, appearing with such companies as Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. After graduation, Ashford moved to New York City where he shared an apartment with friend and fellow choreographer Kathleen Marshall.
  As a dancer, he made his Broadway debut in the 1987 Lincoln Center revival of Anything Goes starring Patti LuPone. Productions of The Most Happy Fella (1992), Crazy for You, My Favorite Year (1992), Victor/Victoria and Parade (1998) quickly followed.
  
  wn.com/Rob_Ashford
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  Robbie Williams
  Robert Peter "Robbie" Williams (born 13 February 1974) is an English singer-songwriter, vocal coach and occasional actor. He is a member of the pop group Take That.
  Williams rose to fame in the band's first run in the early- to mid-1990s. After many disagreements with the management and certain group members, Williams left the group in 1995 to launch his solo career. On 15 July 2010, it was announced he had rejoined Take That and that the group intended to release a new album in November 2010 which became the second fastest-selling album of all-time in UK chart history and the fastest-selling record of the century.
  Williams has sold over 70 million records worldwide, which ranks him among the best-selling music artists worldwide. He is the best-selling British solo artist in the United Kingdom and the best selling non-Latino artist in Latin America. Six of his albums are among the top 100 biggest-selling albums in the United Kingdom. He has also been honoured with seventeen BRIT Awards—more than any other artist—and seven ECHO Awards. In 2004, he was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame after being voted as the "Greatest Artist of the 1990s."
  
  wn.com/Robbie_Williams
• Roger Rees
  Roger Rees (born 5 May 1944) is a Welsh actor. He is best known to American audiences for playing the characters Robin Colcord on the American television sitcom show Cheers and Lord John Marbury on the American television drama The West Wing. He won a Tony Award for his performance as the lead in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
  Rees was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, the son of Doris Louise (née Smith), a shop clerk, and William John Rees, a police officer.
  Rees started his career with the Royal Shakespeare Company and attended the Slade School of Fine Arts. He played Malcolm in the acclaimed Trevor Nunn 1976 stage and 1978 television production of Macbeth. Rees created the title role in the original production of the play The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, winning both an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1982. He also starred in the original production of The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard in London in 1984.
  Rees began to work in television during the 1970s, appearing opposite Laurence Olivier in The Ebony Tower (1984). From 1988 to 1991 he starred in the late 80s/early 90s British sitcom Singles, with actress and co-star Judy Loe. From 1989 to 1991 and in 1993, he also appeared intermittently on the long-running American TV series Cheers as the English tycoon Robin Colcord. Later television appearances include My So-Called Life as substitute teacher Mr Racine, British Ambassador Lord John Marbury on The West Wing and James MacPherson on Warehouse 13.
  
  wn.com/Roger_Rees
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  Rosario Fiorello
  Rosario Tindaro Fiorello (born 16 May 1960), known just as Fiorello, is an Italian comedian, singer, radio and television presenter.
  Fiorello was born in Catania, Sicily and raised in Augusta, Sicily. He began his career working in tourist villages, first as a barman, and then as an entertainer. Near the end of the 1980s, Fiorello met Claudio Cecchetto, a talent-scout. Soon afterwards, Fiorello began hosting the show "Viva Radio Deejay".
  Having become popular through the TV show Karaoke, Fiorello went on to host various TV shows. Soon after, he endured a period of drug problems that kept him away from the world of TV. However, he returned to show business and television in the 1990s, displaying great abilities as a showman, first in the Mediaset networks, then with RAI in 2001, 2002, and 2004 with Stasera Pago Io.
  Since 2002, Fiorello has hosted the radio broadcast Viva Radio 2 together with Marco Baldini, Francesco Bozzi and Enrico Cremonesi, during which Fiorello shows off his skills as a singer, mimic and entertainer. In the summer of 2005, a CD was published that collected the best of his radio career. The CD's high points include: the imitation of Mike Bongiorno and the Forgetful of Cologno (Berlusconi). The CD also includes imitations of Andrea Camilleri, Antonio Cassano, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Gianni Minà, Franco Califano, Carla Bruni, Oliviero Toscani, Marina Flaibani from Onda Verde, Nanni Moretti, Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Ignazio La Russa, the prince Albert of Monaco, Monica Bellucci and her husband Vincent Cassel.
  
  wn.com/Rosario_Fiorello
• Sadie Frost
  Sadie Frost (born June 19, 1965) is an English actress, who currently runs fashion label Frost French and has designed the kitchens for a new development in the East End of London.
  Frost was born in London. Her parents were psychedelic artist David Vaughan, who worked for The Beatles, and his then-16-year-old muse, actress Mary Davidson.
  She has described her childhood as a "chaotic but positive experience," as she was born in Primrose Hill but spent much of her youth in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester after her parents separated. Her parents had six relationships between them, which gave her 4 sisters and 5 brothers, including fellow actresses Holly Davidson and Jade Davidson; primary school teacher Jessi Frost, brothers called Gabriel Jupiter and Tobias Vaughan; and a sister named Sunshine Purple Tara Velvet. One of Frost's stepfathers - the rock photographer Robert Davidson - was a follower of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult, who forbade the children to say the words “No” or “Sorry”; during her father's colour-therapy phase, he insisted that everybody in the house wear orange and he wouldn’t let them eat anything that was red. They also had to take showers wearing tracksuits, and they were forced to refer to objects as the most opposite they could think of as a test of character, for example calling apples elephants.
  
  wn.com/Sadie_Frost
• Salvatore Cascio
  Salvatore "Totò" Cascio (Italian pronunciation: [salvaˈtɔre ˈkaʃʃo]; born 8 November 1979) is an award winning Italian film and television actor.
  
  wn.com/Salvatore_Cascio
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  Sam Mendes
  Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film American Beauty (1999) and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1996) and Gypsy (2003). He is currently working on Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond film. He has a child with his former wife Kate Winslet.
  Mendes was born in Reading, Berkshire, the only child of Valerie Helene (née Barnett), an author of children's books, and Jameson Peter Mendes, a university professor. His father is from Trinidad of ethnic Portuguese descent, and his mother an English Jew. His grandfather is the Trinidadian writer Alfred Mendes.
  Mendes' parents divorced when he was a child. He grew up in Oxfordshire and attended Magdalen College School and Peterhouse, Cambridge where he graduated with a first in English. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Marlowe Society and directed several plays, including a critically acclaimed production of Cyrano de Bergerac with Tom Hollander and Nick Clegg amongst the cast members.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Mendes
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  Samuel Beckett
  Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.
  Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
  Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.
  The Becketts were members of the Anglican Church of Ireland. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuel's father, William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse, the Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line, all feature in his prose and plays. Beckett's father was a quantity surveyor and his mother a nurse.
  
  wn.com/Samuel_Beckett
• Sean Mathias
  Sean Gerard Mathias (born 14 March 1956) is a British theatre director, film director, writer and actor.
  Mathias was born in Swansea, south Wales. He is known for directing the film Bent and for directing highly acclaimed theatre productions in London, New York, Cape Town, Los Angeles and Sydney. He has also had a notable professional partnership with actor and former lover Sir Ian McKellen since the late 1970s.
  He was included in the 2006 list of the 101 most influential gay and lesbian people in Britain by the Independent on Sunday. Mathias is co-owner of The Grapes pub along with business partners Ian McKellen and Evgeny Lebedev, since September 2011.
  Mathias began his acting career by appearing on the television screen in a small role on an episode of the cult BBC TV series Survivors, in 1977. In the same year, he played an Irish Guards lieutenant in the film A Bridge Too Far.
  In 1978, Mathias appeared in a production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, during which time he met actor Ian McKellen who subsequently became his lover of about nine years.
  
  wn.com/Sean_Mathias
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  Sienna Miller
  Sienna Rose Miller (born December 28, 1981) is an American born English actress, model, and fashion designer. She is best known for her roles in Layer Cake, Alfie, Factory Girl, The Edge of Love and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. In 2007, the London Film Critics named her British Actress of the Year for Interview. In 2006, she designed a fashion capsule for Pepe Jeans.
  Born in a theatre in New York City, Miller moved to London with her family when she was just over a year old. Her mother, Josephine, is a South African-born former model. Her father, Edwin Miller, is an American banker turned dealer of Chinese art. Miller has a sister, Savannah, and two half-brothers, Charles and Stephen. Miller attended Heathfield St Mary's School, a boarding school in Ascot, Berkshire, and later studied for a year at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City. She carries both British and American passports, and acquired her first driving licence in the US Virgin Islands, as it was easier to qualify there, thus allowing her to drive in both the US and UK.
  
  wn.com/Sienna_Miller
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  Stella McCartney
  Stella Nina McCartney (born 13 September 1971) is an English fashion designer. She is the daughter of former Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney and the late photographer and animal rights activist, Linda McCartney.
  Stella McCartney was born in Lambeth, London, England on 13 September 1971, the second child of Beatles bassist Paul McCartney and photographer Linda Eastman. She is named after her maternal great-grandmothers (both of Linda McCartney's grandmothers were named Stella). As a young girl, McCartney travelled the globe with her parents and their pop music group Wings, along with her siblings: older half-sister Heather (who was legally adopted by Paul McCartney), older sister Mary, and younger brother James. According to her father, the name of Wings was inspired by Stella's difficult birth. As his daughter was being born by emergency caesarean section, Paul sat outside the operating room and prayed that she be born "on the wings of an angel." Wings toured from shortly after her birth in 1971 until 1980.
  
  wn.com/Stella_McCartney
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  Stephen Fry
  Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.
  After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.
  He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.
  As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.
  
  wn.com/Stephen_Fry
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  Terry Gilliam
  Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam ( /ˈɡɪliəm/; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Fisher King (1991), 12 Monkeys (1995), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). The only "Python" not born in Britain, he took British citizenship in 1968.
  Gilliam was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Beatrice (née Vance) and James Hall Gilliam, who was a traveling salesman for Folgers before becoming a carpenter. Soon after, they moved to the nearby Medicine Lake.
  The family moved to Panorama City, California, in 1952. Gilliam attended Birmingham High School where he was class president and senior prom King, was voted "Most Likely to Succeed", and achieved straight A's. During high school, he began to avidly read Mad magazine, which was then edited by Harvey Kurtzman; this later influenced his work.
  
  wn.com/Terry_Gilliam
• Tim Rice
  Sir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice (born 10 November 1944) is a British lyricist and author. An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and additional songs for the 2011 West End revival of The Wizard of Oz, and for his work for Walt Disney Studios with Alan Menken (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, King David), Elton John (The Lion King, Aida) and Ennio Morricone.
  Rice was born at Shardeloes, an historic English country house near Amersham, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom that was requisitioned as a maternity hospital during World War II. His father, Hugh Gordon Rice, served with the Eighth Army and reached the rank of major during World War II, whilst his mother, Joan Odette (née Bawden), served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as a photographic interpreter. After the war, they worked for the de Havilland aircraft company.
  
  wn.com/Tim_Rice
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  Tim Roth
  Simon Timothy "Tim" Roth (born 14 May 1961) is an English film actor and director. He is best known for his roles in the films Made in Britain, Legend of 1900, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, Skellig, Planet of the Apes, The Incredible Hulk and Rob Roy, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the latter. He most recently starred as Cal Lightman in the TV series Lie to Me.
  Roth was born in London, England, the son of Ann, a painter and teacher, and Ernie, a Fleet Street journalist, painter and, until the 1970s, a member of the British Communist Party. Roth's father was born under the surname "Smith" in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, to a British immigrant family of Irish descent; he changed his surname to "Roth" in the 1940s, "partly through solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust, partly because the British were far from welcome in some of the countries to which his job took him".
  Roth attended the Strand School in Tulse Hill. As a young man, he wanted to be a sculptor and studied at London's Camberwell College of Art.
  
  wn.com/Tim_Roth
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  Tina Fey
  Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey ( /ˈfeɪ/; born May 18, 1970) is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer, known for her work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL), the NBC comedy series 30 Rock, and films such as Mean Girls (2004) and Baby Mama (2008).
  Fey first broke into comedy as a featured player in the Chicago-based improvisational comedy group The Second City. She then joined SNL as a writer, later becoming head writer and a performer, known for her position as co-anchor in the Weekend Update segment. In 2004 she adapted the screenplay Mean Girls in which she also co-starred. After leaving SNL in 2006, she created the television series 30 Rock, a situation comedy loosely based on her experiences at SNL. In the series, Fey portrays the head writer of a fictional sketch comedy series. In 2008, she starred in the comedy film Baby Mama, alongside former SNL co-star Amy Poehler. Fey next appeared in the 2010 comedy films Date Night and Megamind.
  She has received seven Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, four Writers Guild of America Awards and has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her autobiographical book Bossypants, which topped the The New York Times Best Seller list for five weeks. She was singled out as the performer who had the greatest impact on culture and entertainment in 2008 by the Associated Press, which gave her its AP Entertainer of the Year award for her satirical portrayal of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a guest appearance on SNL. In 2010, Fey was the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the youngest-ever winner of the award.
  
  wn.com/Tina_Fey
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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
• Tony Christie
  Tony Christie (born Anthony Fitzgerald, 25 April 1943) is an English musician, singer and actor. He is best known for his track, "Is This The Way To Amarillo", a double UK chart success.
  Tony Christie has sold over 10 million albums Worldwide. He had two Top Twenty hits in the UK Singles Chart in 1971 with "I Did What I Did For Maria", which reached #2 and "Is This the Way to Amarillo", which peaked at #18. He also had a minor hit with "Avenues And Alleyways" which reached #37, the theme to the television series The Protectors. "Is This the Way to Amarillo" sold over one million copies by September 1972, and was awarded a gold disc. His early songs were dramatic big-voiced numbers, many of which were written by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander.
  He recorded albums regularly throughout the 1970s and made infrequent appearances on the charts. His album With Loving Feeling sold well boosted by the hit single "Is This The Way to Amarillo". He recorded an album in the United States in 1973 with the record producer Snuff Garrett, which did little to stop his commercial slide. A live album followed which sold relatively better. But by the mid 1970s recorded work became rarer and stage work took preference.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Christie
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  Vasily Zaytsev
  Vasily Grigoryevich Zaytsev (Russian: Василий Григорьевич Зайцев; IPA: [vʌˈsʲilʲɪj ɡrʲɪˈɡorʲjevʲɪtɕ ˈzajtsɨf]; March 23, 1915 – December 15, 1991) was a Soviet sniper during World War II, notable particularly for his activities between November 10 and December 17, 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad. He killed 225 soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht and other Axis armies, including 11 enemy snipers.
  Prior to November 10, he had already killed 32 Axis soldiers with the standard-issue Mosin–Nagant rifle. Between October 1942 and January 1943, Zaytsev made 242 verified kills.
  Zaytsev was born in Yeleninskoye and grew up in the Ural Mountains, where he learned marksmanship by hunting deer and wolf with his grandfather and younger brother. When he was 5 years old, he killed his first wolf. His surname is based on the Russian word zayats (заяц) meaning "hare". He was nicknamed 'Vasya' by his friends.
  Zaytsev served in the Soviet Navy as a clerk in Vladivostok. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Zaytsev, like many of his comrades, volunteered to be transferred to the front line. At the time he had already reached the rank of Sergeant Major.
  
  wn.com/Vasily_Zaytsev
• Vincent Canby
  Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.
  Canby was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Katharine Anne (née Vincent) and Lloyd Canby. He attended a boarding school with the novelist William Styron, and the two became friends. He introduced Styron to the works of E.B. White and Ernest Hemingway, and the pair hitchhiked from their Christ Church, Virginia boarding school to Richmond, Virginia to buy Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. After war service in the Pacific he attended the Dartmouth College and then was employed as a film critic by Variety for six years.
  Canby was an enthusiastic supporter of many filmmakers, notably Woody Allen, who credited Canby's rave review of Take The Money and Run as a crucial point in his career. He was also heavily critical of some otherwise acclaimed films, such as Rocky, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Jaws, Patton, Night of the Living Dead, Once Upon a Time in America, Chinatown, After Hours, Blazing Saddles, A Christmas Story, Witness, Mask, The Natural, Rain Man, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,Deliverance, The Godfather Part II and Alien. In the early 1990s, Canby switched his attention from film to theatre; he was named the chief theatre critic in 1994.
  
  wn.com/Vincent_Canby
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
• 
  William Shakespeare
  William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
  Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
  
  wn.com/William_Shakespeare

Jude Law's Nanny (2009)

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