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  Abbey Theatre
  The Abbey Theatre (Irish: Amharclann na Mainistreach), also known as the National Theatre of Ireland (Irish: Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann), is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day. The Abbey was the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world; from 1925 onwards it received an annual subsidy from the Irish Free State. Since July 1966, the Abbey has been located at 26 Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1.
  A theatre or circus has stood on this site on Lower Abbey Street since at least the early 19th century. In the mid-19th century, at the urging of Dublin's gentry, John Classon, an upper-class merchant, acquired the buildings then on the site, one of which had housed a circus, in order to establish a joint concert hall and civic institution for the lower classes. The Music Hall, which could seat 4000 persons, in addition to hosting concerts, frequently hosted popular variety entertainments like Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal. In the late 19th Century the Music Hall was renamed the Mechanics' Theatre, after the adjacent Mechanics' Institute. The theatre was also known during this time as the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties, a name it retained until the building was acquired for Abbey Theatre at the beginning of the 20th Century.
  
  wn.com/Abbey_Theatre
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  Broadway theatre
  Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
  The Broadway theatre district is a popular tourist attraction in New York. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.081 billion worth of tickets in calendar year 2011, compared with $1.037 billion for 2010. Attendance in 2011 was 12.13 million.
  New York did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street (now called Park Row). The Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, and especially so with the arrival of the Virginia Minstrels in the 1840s.
  
  wn.com/Broadway_theatre
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  Dublin
  Dublin ( /ˈdʌblɨn/; locally /ˈdʊbᵊlən/; Irish: Baile Átha Cliath, meaning "town of the hurdled ford", pronounced [blʲaˈklʲiə] or Áth Cliath, [aː klʲiə], occasionally Duibhlinn) is the capital and most populous city of Ireland. The English name for the city is derived from the Irish name Dubhlinn, meaning "black pool". Dublin is situated near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and the centre of the Dublin Region.
  Originally founded as a Viking settlement, it evolved into the Kingdom of Dublin and became the island's principal city following the Norman invasion. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century; it was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire and the fifth largest in Europe. Dublin entered a period of stagnation following the Act of Union of 1800, but it remained the economic centre for most of the island. Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, the new parliament, the Oireachtas, was located in Leinster House. Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State and later the Republic of Ireland.
  
  wn.com/Dublin
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  Focus Theatre
  The Focus Theatre in Dublin is a small but respected theatre which offers a variety of plays from new and established writers.
  Focus Theatre's Acting Studio was founded in April 1963 by the Irish American actor, Deirdre O'Connell (d. 2001). The Focus Theatre itself was founded by O'Connell and her husband, Luke Kelly of The Dubliners in 1967, and opened on 29 September with a production of Doris Lessing's Play With a Tiger.
  It has been at the forefront of training actors and directors in Stanislavski's system as well as putting on productions of the classics of European and international theatre.
  Several notable actors have been associated with the Focus, including Gabriel Byrne, Sabina Coyne (wife of the President of Ireland), Olwen Fouéré, Tom Hickey, Bosco Hogan, and Gerard McSorley. The artistic director is Joe Devlin.
  Coordinates: 53°20′04″N 6°15′14″W / 53.334378°N 6.25388°W / 53.334378; -6.25388
  
  wn.com/Focus_Theatre
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  Galway
  Galway (Irish: Gaillimh, pronounced [ˈɡalʲɪvʲ]) or City of Galway (Cathair na Gaillimhe) is a city on the west coast of Ireland. It is located on the River Corrib between Lough Corrib and Galway Bay and is surrounded by County Galway. It is the third largest city within the state (after Dublin and Cork), though if the wider urban area is included then it falls into fourth place behind Limerick. The population of Galway city at the 2011 census was 75,529, rising to 76,778 across the entire urban area.
  The city takes its name from the Gaillimh river (River Corrib) that formed the western boundary of the earliest settlement, which was called Dún Bhun na Gaillimhe ("Fort at the mouth of the Gaillimh"). The word Gaillimh means "stony" as in "stony river" (the mythical and alternative derivations are given in History of Galway). Historically, the name was written as Gallive, which is closer to the Irish pronunciation.
  The city also bears the nickname "City of the Tribes" Irish: Cathair na dTreabh because "fourteen tribes of" merchant families led the city in its Hiberno-Norman period. The term tribes was often a derogatory phrase in Cromwellian times. The merchants would have seen themselves as Irish gentry and loyal to the King. They subsequently adopted the term as a badge of honour and pride in defiance of the town's Cromwellian occupiers.
  
  wn.com/Galway
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  London
  London ⁱ/ˈlʌndən/ is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
  London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is the world's leading financial centre alongside New York City and has the fifth-largest city GDP in the world (and the largest in Europe). London has been described as a world cultural capital. It was the world's most visited city during 2011 and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe. In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.
  
  wn.com/London
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  Manhattan
  Manhattan (/mænˈhætən/) is the most densely populated and the oldest of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the U.S. state of New York. The borough and county consist of Manhattan Island and several small adjacent islands: Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island, Wards Island, Governors Island, Liberty Island, part of Ellis Island,Mill Rock, and U Thant Island; as well as Marble Hill, a very small area on the mainland bordering the Bronx. The original city of New York began at the southern end of Manhattan, expanded northward, and then between 1874 and 1898, annexed land from surrounding counties.
  The New York County is the most densely populated county in the United States, and one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a 2010 population of 1,585,873 living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.5 km²), or 69,464 residents per square mile (26,924/km²), more dense than any individual American city. It is also one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a 2005 per capita income above $100,000. Manhattan is the third-largest of New York's five boroughs in population, and its smallest borough in land area.
  
  wn.com/Manhattan
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  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
  Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km²), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
  
  wn.com/New_York_City
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  Republic of Ireland
  Ireland (/ˈaɪərlənd/ or /ˈɑrlənd/; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen)) is a sovereign state in Europe occupying about five-sixths of the island of Ireland. Its capital is Dublin. The population of the state was 4.59 million in 2011. It is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy, with an elected president serving as head of state. In the 1937 constitution, the name of the state is given as simply "Ireland". The Constitution of Ireland (Article 4) and the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 provides that the "Republic of Ireland" (Irish: Poblacht na hÉireann) is "the description of the state".
  Ireland is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations. A developed country with the seventh highest Human Development Index, Ireland is also highly ranked for press freedom, economic freedom and democracy and political freedom.
  The modern Irish state was established in 1922 as the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Empire, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty which brought an end to the Irish War of Independence. The partition of Ireland had already been provided for in previous British legislation in 1921 in response to opposition to Irish Home Rule or independence by Unionists, who formed a majority in the north-eastern part of the country. Six of the nine counties in the northern province of Ulster were established under that legislation as Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, with which the Irish state shares its only land border. The state is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south east, and the Irish Sea to the east.
  
  wn.com/Republic_of_Ireland
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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
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  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
  wn.com/United_States

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  Anthony Edwards
  Anthony Charles Edwards (born July 19, 1962) is an American actor and director. He has appeared in various movies and television shows, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Top Gun, Zodiac, Revenge of the Nerds, Northern Exposure and ER.
  Edwards was born in Santa Barbara, California, the son of Erika Planck (née Weber), an artist/landscape painter, and Peter Edwards, an architect. He has two older sisters, Heidi and Ann-Marie, and two older brothers, Peter and Jeffrey. Edwards was encouraged by his parents to attend college before pursuing his interest in acting. He received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in England and studied theatre at University of Southern California but by the age of nineteen was being offered enough acting work to enable him to leave college.
  Edwards' early work includes a co-starring role in the TV series It Takes Two with Richard Crenna and Patty Duke Astin as his parents and Helen Hunt as his sister. His first starring role was in the 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds as Gilbert Lowe, though he had a tiny part in the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, credited as "stoner Bud". It was his role as LTJG Nick "Goose" Bradshaw alongside Tom Cruise in the 1986 film Top Gun that brought his first widespread public acknowledgement. His character, who died in an aviation accident, was among the most prominent and popular in the film. He also appeared as a terminally ill patient in Hawks (1988) alongside Timothy Dalton, another role which brought him worldwide fame. He also starred in the 1990 movie Downtown with Penelope Ann Miller and Forest Whitaker. In 1992 and 1993 he played Mike Monroe in ten episodes of Northern Exposure.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Edwards
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  Anthony LaPaglia
  Anthony M. LaPaglia ( /ləˈpɑːljə/; born 31 January 1959) is an Australian actor. He is best known for his role as FBI agent Jack Malone on the American TV series Without a Trace, for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama and for his portrayal of Simon Moon on the TV show Frasier for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. He is also known for his role as Barry "The Blade" Muldanno in The Client.
  LaPaglia was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of Maria Johannes (née Brendel), a secretary, and Gedio "Eddie" LaPaglia, an auto mechanic and car dealer. LaPaglia's mother was Dutch and his Italian father immigrated from Bovalino, Calabria at the age of eighteen. His younger brother, Jonathan LaPaglia, is also an actor, and his other brother, Michael, is a car wholesaler in Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]} LaPaglia attended Rostrevor College.
  LaPaglia first began his venture into dramatic art in his late teens, when he enrolled in an acting course at the South Australian Castings Agency (SA Castings) in Adelaide. The two and half year course was to be supplemented with a further three months, which would have included a "boot camp" and a trial listing with SA Castings. After completing one and half years of the course, LaPaglia left Adelaide for Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Anthony_LaPaglia
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  Brendan Gleeson
  Brendan Gleeson (born 29 March 1955) is an Irish actor. His best-known films include Braveheart, Gangs of New York, In Bruges, 28 Days Later, Troy, the Harry Potter films, The Guard and the role of Michael Collins in The Treaty. He won an Emmy Award in 2009 for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the film Into the Storm.
  Gleeson was born in Dublin, the son of Pat and Frank Gleeson. Gleeson has described himself as having been an avid reader as a child. After training as an actor, he returned to Ireland and worked for several years as a secondary school teacher of Irish and English at the now defunct Catholic Belcamp College in North County Dublin, which closed in 2004. He was working simultaneously as an actor while teaching, doing semi-professional and professional productions in Dublin and surrounding areas. He left the teaching profession to commit full-time to acting in 1991.
  Gleeson started his film career at the age of 34.^{[citation needed]} He first came to prominence in Ireland for his role as Michael Collins in The Treaty, a television film broadcast on RTÉ One, and for which he won a Jacob's Award in 1992. He has acted in such films as Braveheart, I Went Down, Michael Collins, Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain, 28 Days Later, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, Lake Placid, Artificial Intelligence: AI, Mission: Impossible II and The Village. He won critical acclaim for his performance as Irish gangster Martin Cahill in John Boorman's 1998 film The General.
  
  wn.com/Brendan_Gleeson
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  Bryan Cranston
  Bryan Lee Cranston (born March 7, 1956) is an American actor. He is also a voice actor, writer and director. He is best known for his roles as Hal, the father in the Fox situation comedy Malcolm in the Middle and Walter White in the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series three consecutive times. Since earning critical acclaim while starring in these television series, he has gone on to perform in many feature films.
  Cranston was born in Canoga Park, California, to Peggy Sell, a radio actress, and Joseph L. "Joe" Cranston, an actor and Hollywood producer. His great-grandmother was from County Clare, Ireland. Cranston grew up in the Los Angeles area, graduated from Canoga Park High School, and earned an associate degree in police science from Los Angeles Valley College.
  Cranston performed as a youth, but his show business parents had mixed feelings about their son being involved in the profession, so he did not continue until years later.
  
  wn.com/Bryan_Cranston
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  Christopher Columbus
  Christopher Columbus (before 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents. Those voyages, and his efforts to establish permanent settlements in the island of Hispaniola, initiated the process of Spanish colonization, which foreshadowed the general European colonization of what became known as the "New World".
  In the context of emerging western imperialism and economic competition between European kingdoms seeking wealth through the establishment of trade routes and colonies, Columbus's speculative proposal to reach the East Indies by sailing westward received the support of the Spanish crown, which saw in it a promise, however remote, of gaining the upper hand over rival powers in the contest for the lucrative spice trade with Asia. During his first voyage in 1492, instead of reaching Japan as he had intended, Columbus landed in the Bahamas archipelago, at a locale he named San Salvador. Over the course of three more voyages, Columbus visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America, claiming them for the Spanish Empire.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Columbus
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  Cillian Murphy
  Cillian Murphy  /ˈkɪliən/ (born 25 May 1976) is an Irish film and theatre actor. He is often noted by critics for his chameleonic performances in diverse roles and his distinctive blue eyes.
  A native of Cork, Murphy began his performing career as a rock musician. After turning down a record deal, he made his professional acting debut in the play Disco Pigs in 1996. He went on to star in Irish and British film and stage productions throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, first coming to international attention in 2003 as the hero in the post-apocalyptic film 28 Days Later. Murphy's best-known roles are as villains in two 2005 blockbusters: Scarecrow in the superhero film Batman Begins (a role later reprised as a cameo in The Dark Knight), and Jackson Rippner in the thriller Red Eye. Next came two contrasting and acclaimed starring roles: his Golden Globe Award-nominated performance as a glam transgender orphan teen in 2005's Breakfast on Pluto and a turn as a 1920s Irish revolutionary in the 2006 Palme d'Or winner, The Wind That Shakes the Barley. In 2010, Murphy played the target of Leonardo DiCaprio's dreamscape heist in the acclaimed blockbuster Inception.
  
  wn.com/Cillian_Murphy
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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.
  
  wn.com/Colin_Farrell
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  Costa Gavras
  Costa-Gavras, (short for Constantinos Gavras or Κωνσταντίνος Γαβράς; born 12 February 1933) is a Greek filmmaker, who lives and works in France, best known for films with overt political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller, Z (1969). Most of his movies were made in French; starting with Missing (1982), several were made in English.
  Gavras was born in Loutra Iraias (Λουτρά Ηραίας), Arcadia. His family spent the Second World War in a village in the Peloponnese, and moved to Athens after the war. His father had been a member of the left-wing EAM branch of the Greek Resistance, and was imprisoned after the war as a suspected communist. His father's record made it impossible for him to attend university or emigrate to the United States, so after high school Costa Gavras went to France, where he began his studies of law in 1951. His father's political blacklisting not only barred him from Greek university, but, in the McCarthyite 50s, denied Gavras a visa for US film school.
  In 1956, he left his university studies to study film at the French national film school, IDHEC. After film school, he apprenticed under Yves Allégret, and became an assistant director for Jean Giono and René Clair. After several further positions as first assistant director, he directed his first feature film, Compartiment Tueurs, in 1965.
  
  wn.com/Costa_Gavras
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  David Caruso
  David Stephen Caruso (born January 7, 1956) is an American actor and producer. He may be best known for portraying Lieutenant Horatio Caine on the TV series CSI: Miami. The role that gained him initial significant recognition was the role of Detective John Kelly on the ABC crime drama NYPD Blue.
  Caruso was born in Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, New York, New York, the son of Joan, a librarian, and Charles Caruso, a magazine and newspaper editor. He is of Irish and Italian (Sicilian) descent. His father left when he was two years of age, forcing him to "end up fathering myself", as he put it. Raised as a Roman Catholic, Caruso attended Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Catholic School in Forest Hills. He later attended Archbishop Molloy High School in nearby Briarwood, graduating in 1974.
  He worked as a cinema usher, where he would see up to eighty movies a week. He said they would act out scenes from some of these movies while they were up the back. It was in this job he found his role models in Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Edward G Robinson. He said:
  
  wn.com/David_Caruso
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  David Duchovny
  David William Duchovny (born August 7, 1960) is an American actor, writer and director. He has won Golden Globe awards for his work as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files and Hank Moody on Californication.
  Duchovny was born in New York City, New York, the son of Margaret "Meg" (née Miller), a school administrator and teacher, and Amram Ducovny (1927–2003), a writer and publicist who worked for the American Jewish Committee. David's paternal grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Ukraine, and his mother is a Lutheran emigrant from Aberdeen, Scotland. His father dropped the h in his last name to avoid the sort of mispronunciations he encountered while serving in the Army.
  Duchovny attended Grace Church School and The Collegiate School For Boys; both are in Manhattan. He graduated from Princeton University in 1982 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. He was a member of the Charter Club, one of the university's eating clubs. In 1982, his poetry received an honorable mention for a college prize from the Academy of American Poets. The title of his senior thesis was The Schizophrenic Critique of Pure Reason in Beckett's Early Novels. Duchovny played a season of junior varsity basketball as a shooting guard and centerfield for the varsity baseball team.
  
  wn.com/David_Duchovny
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  Dennis Franz
  Dennis Franz (born October 28, 1944) is an American actor best known for his role as Andy Sipowicz, a hard-boiled police detective, in the television series NYPD Blue. He previously appeared as Lt. Norman Buntz on Hill Street Blues, and earlier played Detective Benedetto on the same show.
  Franz was born Dennis Franz Schlachta in Maywood, Illinois, the son of German immigrants Eleanor, a postal worker, and Franz Schlachta, who was a baker and postal worker. Franz is a graduate of Proviso East High School (in Maywood) and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. After graduating from college, Franz was drafted into the United States Army. He served eleven months with the 82nd Airborne Division in Vietnam.
  Franz began his acting career at Chicago's Organic Theater Company. Although he has in the past performed Shakespeare, his "look" led to his being typecast early in his career as a police officer. (By Franz' own count, the character of Detective Andy Sipowicz was his 27th role as a police officer). He has also guest-starred in shows such as The A-Team. Other major roles were on the television series Hill Street Blues in which he played two characters over the run of that show. Franz first played the role of Officer Sal Benedetto, a corrupt cop in the 1983 season, who later kills himself. Due to his popularity with fans, he returned in 1985 as Lt. Norm Buntz, remaining until the show's end in 1987. He starred in the short-lived Beverly Hills Buntz as the morally questionable Norman Buntz.
  
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  Dylan McDermott
  Mark Anthony McDermott (born October 26, 1961), better known by his professional name of Dylan McDermott, is an American actor, known for his role as lawyer and law firm head Bobby Donnell on the television legal drama The Practice which earned him a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination and his role in the series American Horror Story as Dr. Ben Harmon. He also starred in the TNT series Dark Blue as Lt. Carter Shaw.
  McDermott was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the son of Diane (née Marino) and Richard McDermott. His mother was fifteen and his father was seventeen when he was born. By 1967, the couple had divorced, and Diane and her children were living with her mother. On February 9, 1967, his mother was accidentally shot and killed with her boyfriend's gun; McDermott was five. Her boyfriend reported to newspapers at the time that she picked up his gun and it went off. He and his sister, Robin, then began to be raised by their maternal grandmother, Avis (Rogers) Marino, in Waterbury. His father was of Irish descent and his mother was of Italian and English ancestry.
  
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  Ellen Barkin
  Ellen Rona Barkin (born April 16, 1954) is an American actress.
  She was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, New York, the daughter of Evelyn (née Rozin), a hospital administrator who worked at Jamaica Hospital, and Sol Barkin, a chemical salesman. Barkin was raised in a lower-middle-class Jewish family, a descendant of immigrants from Siberia and the Russia-Poland border.
  Barkin received her high school diploma at Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts. She then attended Hunter College and double majored in history and drama. At one point, Barkin wanted to teach ancient history. She continued her acting education at New York City's Actors Studio. According to Time, she studied acting for ten years before landing her first audition.
  Her break-out role was in the comedy-drama film Diner (1982), written and directed by Barry Levinson, for which she received favorable reviews. Barkin was cast in the drama film Tender Mercies (1983) after impressing its director Bruce Beresford during an audition in New York City, despite her inexperience and his lack of familiarity with her work. Robert Duvall, who played the lead role in Tender Mercies, said of Barkin, "She brings a real credibility for that part, plus she was young and attractive and had a certain sense of edge, a danger for her that was good for that part." She also appeared in the 1983 rock & roll drama film Eddie and the Cruisers.
  
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  Gabriel Byrne
  Gabriel James Byrne (born May 12, 1950) is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, writer, cultural ambassador and audiobook narrator. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined London's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's screen debut came in the Irish soap opera The Riordans and the spin-off show Bracken. He has now starred in over 35 feature films, such as The Usual Suspects, Miller's Crossing, Stigmata and End of Days, in addition to writing two. Byrne's producing credits include the Academy Award-nominated In the Name of the Father. More recently, he has received much critical acclaim for his role as Dr. Paul Weston in the HBO drama In Treatment.
  Byrne, the first of six children, was born in Crumlin, Dublin, Ireland, the son of a cooper and soldier, Dan, and a hospital nurse from Galway, Eileen (née Gannon). He has four siblings: Donal, Thomas, Breda, and Margaret; another, Marian, died at a young age. Byrne was raised a strict Roman Catholic and educated in Ardscoil Éanna in Crumlin, where he later taught Spanish and History. About his early training to become a priest, he said in an interview, "I spent five years in the seminary and I suppose it was assumed that one had a vocation. I realised subsequently that I didn't."^{[citation needed]} He attended University College Dublin, where he studied archaeology and linguistics, becoming proficient in Irish. He played football in Dublin with the Stella Maris Football Club, in Drumcondra.
  
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  Gay Byrne
  Gabriel Mary "Gay" Byrne (born 5 August 1934; affectionately known as Uncle Gay,Gaybo or Uncle Gaybo) is a veteran Irish presenter of radio and television. His most notable role was first host of The Late Late Show over a 37-year period spanning 1962 until 1999. The Late Late Show is the world's longest-running chat show. His time working in Britain with Granada Television saw him become the first person to introduce The Beatles on screen.
  From 1973 until 1998, Byrne presented The Gay Byrne Hour—later The Gay Byrne Show when it expanded to two hours—on RTÉ Radio 1 each weekday morning. Since "retiring" from his long-running radio and television shows Byrne has presented several other shows, including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, The Meaning of Life and For One Night Only on RTÉ One and Sunday Serenade/Sunday with Gay Byrne on RTÉ lyric fm. In 2006 he was elected Chairman of Ireland's Road Safety Authority. Since retiring he has become the "Elder Lemon of Irish broadcasting".
  In 2010, The Irish Times said Byrne was "unquestionably the most influential radio and television man in the history of the Irish State". In 2011, he was approached to become President of Ireland but declined to run, despite topping opinion polls.
  
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  Gregory Peck
  Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor.
  One of the world's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an Academy Award. President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at #12. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983.
  Eldred Gregory Peck was born in La Jolla, California, the son of Missouri-born Bernice Mae "Bunny" (née Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, who was a chemist and pharmacist. Peck's father was of Irish (maternal) heritage and English (paternal) heritage, and his mother was of Scots (paternal) and English (maternal) ancestry. Peck's father was a Catholic and his mother converted upon marrying his father. Peck's Irish-born paternal grandmother, Catherine Ashe, was related to Thomas Ashe, who took part in the Easter Rising fewer than three weeks after Peck's birth and died while on hunger strike in 1917. Peck's parents divorced by the time he was six years old and he spent the next few years being raised by his maternal grandmother.
  
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  Hugh Laurie
  James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE (born 11 June 1959), known as Hugh Laurie (/ˈhjuː ˈlɒri/), is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director. He first became known as one half of the Fry and Laurie double act, along with his friend and comedy partner Stephen Fry, whom he joined in the cast of Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster from 1987 to 1999.
  From 2004 to 2012, he played Dr Gregory House, the protagonist of House, for which he received two Golden Globe awards, two Screen Actors Guild awards, and six Emmy nominations. As of August 2010, Laurie is the highest paid actor in a drama series on US television. He has been listed in the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor ever in a TV Drama—earning US$ 700,000 per episode in House—and for being the most watched leading man on television.
  Laurie was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. The youngest of four children, Laurie has an older brother named Charles and two older sisters named Susan and Janet. He had a somewhat strained relationship with his mother, Patricia (née Laidlaw). His father, Ran Laurie, was a medical doctor who also won an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs (rowing) at the 1948 London Games.
  
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  Ian McShane
  Ian David McShane (born 29 September 1942) is an English actor, director, producer, voice artist, and comedian.
  Despite appearing in numerous films, McShane is best known for his television roles, particularly the BBC's Lovejoy (1986–94) and HBO's Western drama Deadwood (2004–06). McShane starred as King Silas Benjamin in NBC series Kings, Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda, and as Blackbeard in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
  McShane was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, on 29 September 1942, the son of Irene (née Cowley) and Scottish footballer Harry McShane. He grew up in Urmston, Lancashire, and attended Stretford Grammar School.
  In the United Kingdom, McShane's best known role may be that of antiques dealer Lovejoy in the BBC drama series of the same name. He also enjoyed fame in the United States as English cad Don Lockwood in the soap opera Dallas and as an English cockfighting aficionado in the mini-series Roots. Even before Lovejoy, McShane was a pin-up as a result of appearances in television series such as Wuthering Heights (1967, as Heathcliff), If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969 as Charlie), Jesus of Nazareth (1977, as Judas Iscariot), and Disraeli (1978) — as well as films like Sky West and Crooked (1965) and Battle of Britain (1969). In the United States, he is perhaps best known for the role of historical figure Al Swearengen in the HBO series Deadwood, for which he won the 2005 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Drama. He was also nominated for at the 2005 Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
  
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  Irish people
  The Irish people (Irish: Muintir na hÉireann or na hÉireannaigh; Ulster-Scots: Airisch or Airish fowk) are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years (according to archaeological studies, see Prehistoric Ireland). The Irish people's earliest ancestors are recorded in legends – they are claimed to be descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians.Lebor Gabála Érenn, a book of Irish mythology tells that Tuatha Dé Dananns were Scythian descendants.
  The main groups that interacted with the Irish in the Middle Ages include the Picts, Scots, and the Vikings. Due to this contact, Icelanders are noted for having some Irish descent. The Anglo-Norman invasion of the High Middle Ages, the English plantations and the subsequent English rule of the country introduced the Normans and Flemish into Ireland. Welsh, Picts, Bretons, and small parties of Gauls and even Anglo-Saxons are known in Ireland from much earlier times.
  
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  James Gandolfini
  James J. Gandolfini, Jr. (born September 18, 1961) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Tony Soprano in the HBO TV series The Sopranos, about a troubled crime boss struggling to balance his family life and career in the Mafia. For this role, Gandolfini garnered enormous praise, winning both the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series three times. Gandolfini's other roles include the woman-beating mob henchman Virgil in True Romance, enforcer/stuntman Bear in Get Shorty, Lt. General Miller in In the Loop, and the impulsive Wild Thing Carol in Where the Wild Things Are. In 2007, Gandolfini produced the HBO documentary "Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq" in which he interviewed 10 injured veterans from the Iraq War. In 2010, Gandolfini produced another HBO documentary "Wartorn: 1861-2010" in which Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and its impact on soldiers and families is analyzed throughout several wars in American history from 1861 to 2010.
  
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  Jimmy Smits
  Jimmy Smits (born July 9, 1955) is an American actor. Smits is perhaps best known for his roles as attorney Victor Sifuentes on the 1980s legal drama L.A. Law, as NYPD Detective Bobby Simone on the 1990s police drama NYPD Blue, and as Congressman and then President Matthew Vincente Santos on The West Wing. He is also notable for his portrayal of Bail Organa in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and Miguel Prado in Dexter. In the fall of 2010, he starred in NBC's short-lived series Outlaw, about a U.S. Supreme Court justice who leaves the bench to return to practicing law.
  Smits was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Cornelius Smits, was a Surinamese immigrant of Dutch descent who managed a screen-printing factory. His mother, Emilina, was a Puerto Rican who worked as a nurse. Smits was raised in a strict devout Roman Catholic family. "Jimmy" is actually the name on his birth certificate, rather than "Jim" or "James." He has two sisters, Yvonne and Diana. He grew up in a working-class neighborhood and spent time in Puerto Rico during his childhood. Smits earned a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College in 1980 and an MFA from Cornell University in 1982. Though born in New York, Smits has deep Puerto Rican roots and frequently visits the island. In 2001, he was arrested for his participation in protests against U.S. Navy bombing practices on the Puerto Rican offshore island of Vieques.
  
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  John Boorman
  John Boorman (born 18 January 1933) is a British filmmaker who is a long time resident of Ireland and is best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope and Glory, The General and The Tailor of Panama.
  Boorman was born in Shepperton, Surrey, England, the son of Ivy (née Chapman) and George Boorman. He was educated at the Salesian School in Chertsey, Surrey, even though his family was not Roman Catholic. He has directed a total of 22 movies.
  Boorman first began by working as a drycleaner and journalist in the late 1950s. He ran the newsrooms at Southern Television in Southampton and Dover before moving into TV documentary filmmaking, eventually becoming the head of the BBC's Bristol-based Documentary Unit in 1962.
  Capturing the interest of producer David Deutsch, he was offered the chance to direct a film aimed at repeating the success of A Hard Day's Night (directed by Richard Lester in 1964): Catch Us If You Can (1965) is about competing pop group Dave Clark Five. While not as successful commercially as Lester's film, it drew good reviews from distinguished critics such as Pauline Kael and Dilys Powell and smoothed Boorman's way into the film industry. Boorman was drawn to Hollywood for the opportunity to make larger-scale cinema and in Point Blank (1967), a powerful interpretation of a Richard Stark novel, brought a stranger's vision to the decaying fortress of Alcatraz and the proto-hippy world of San Francisco. Lee Marvin gave the then-unknown director his full support, telling MGM he deferred all his approvals on the project to Boorman.
  
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  John Gielgud
  Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH (/ˈɡiːlɡʊd/; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937. He was known for his beautiful speaking of verse and particularly for his warm and expressive voice, which his colleague Sir Alec Guinness likened to "a silver trumpet muffled in silk". Gielgud is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
  John Gielgud was born in South Kensington in London to Kate Terry and Frank Gielgud. He was of theatrical lineage on his mother's side, being the grandson of actress Kate Terry, whose actor-siblings included Ellen Terry, Marion Terry and Fred Terry.
  Gielgud's Catholic father, Franciszek Giełgud, born in 1880, was a descendant of a Polish noble family residing at a manor in a town called Giełgudyszki (now Gelgaudiškis in Marijampolė County, Lithuania). In his autobiography, Gielgud states repeatedly and clearly that his father was Polish Catholic, and mentions Gelgaudiškis as being his ancestral home whence his family and their surname originated.
  
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  Jon Hamm
  Jonathan Daniel "Jon" Hamm (born March 10, 1971) is an American actor best known for playing advertising executive Don Draper in the AMC drama series Mad Men, which premiered in July 2007. His performance on the show earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series in 2008.
  Hamm was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Daniel and Deborah Hamm. His father ran a family trucking company and his mother was a secretary. Hamm's parents divorced when he was two, and he lived with his mother in Creve Coeur, Missouri, until she was diagnosed with terminal abdominal cancer when he was 10. Hamm then moved in with his father, who died when Hamm was 20.
  Hamm's first acting role was as Winnie-the-Pooh in first grade. At 16, he was cast as Judas in Godspell. Although he enjoyed the experience, he did not take acting seriously. Hamm attended John Burroughs School in Ladue, Missouri, where he was a member of the football, baseball, and swim teams. Following graduation in 1989, Hamm enrolled at the University of Texas, where he was a member of the Upsilon Chapter of Sigma Nu fraternity. Hamm returned home to attend the University of Missouri after his father's death. At Missouri, he auditioned for and won a role in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other roles followed, including Leon Czolgosz in Assassins.
  
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  Kiefer Sutherland
  Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland (born 21 December 1966) is a British-Canadian actor, producer and director. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Jack Bauer on the Fox series 24 for which he won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Satellite Awards. He currently stars as Martin Bohm in the Fox drama Touch.
  Sutherland was born in London, the son of Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas, both of whom are successful Canadian actors. He has Scottish ancestry from both parents, and is the grandson of Canadian politician Tommy Douglas, widely credited for bringing universal health care to Canada.
  He received his first given name from Warren Kiefer, the Italian director who gave his father his first movie role.
  His family moved to Corona, California and in 1970, his parents divorced. In 1975, Sutherland moved with his mother to Toronto. He attended elementary school at Crescent Town Elementary School, St. Clair Junior High East York, and John G. Althouse Middle School in Toronto. He attended five different high schools including St. Andrew's College, Martingrove Collegiate Institute, Harbord Collegiate Institute, Silverthorn Collegiate Institute, Malvern Collegiate Institute and Annex Village Campus. He also spent a semester at Regina Mundi Catholic College in London (Ontario) and attended weekend acting lessons at Sir Frederick Banting Secondary School.
  
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  King Arthur
  King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historians. The sparse historical background of Arthur is gleaned from various sources, including the Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum, and the writings of Gildas. Arthur's name also occurs in early poetic sources such as Y Gododdin.
  The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). Some Welsh and Breton tales and poems relating the story of Arthur date from earlier than this work; in these works, Arthur appears either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh Otherworld, Annwn. How much of Geoffrey's Historia (completed in 1138) was adapted from such earlier sources, rather than invented by Geoffrey himself, is unknown.
  
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  Kyle MacLachlan
  Kyle Merritt MacLachlan (born February 22, 1959) is an American actor. MacLachlan is best known for his roles in cult films Blue Velvet as Jeffrey Beaumont, Showgirls as Zack Carey, as Paul Atreides in Dune, and Ray Manzarek in the Oliver Stone film The Doors. His television series roles include Orson Hodge on ABC's Desperate Housewives from 2006 to 2012, Trey MacDougal on HBO's Sex and the City, and Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks.
  MacLachlan was born in Yakima, Washington. His mother was a public relations director and his father was a stockbroker and lawyer. He is of Scottish, Cornish and German descent. He has two younger brothers named Craig and Kent, both of whom live in the Pacific Northwest. MacLachlan graduated from Eisenhower High School in 1977. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1982 and, shortly afterward, moved to Hollywood, California to pursue his career.
  MacLachlan has worked extensively with David Lynch. He first appeared as Paul Atreides in the film Dune (1984), Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel, and as Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986). Later he played Special Agent Dale Cooper in Lynch's ABC television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991), reprising that role for Lynch's 1992 prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Lynch commented on those roles in a GQ story about MacLachlan: "Kyle plays innocents who are interested in the mysteries of life. He's the person you trust enough to go into a strange world with."
  
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  Laurence Olivier
  Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM ( /ˈlɒrəns ɵˈlɪvi.eɪ/; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer. One of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, he was the youngest actor to be knighted and the first to be elevated to the peerage. He married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Actor Spencer Tracy said that Olivier was 'the greatest actor in the English-speaking world'.
  Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is regarded by some to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries. Olivier's AMPAS acknowledgments are considerable: twelve Oscar nominations, with two awards (for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet), plus two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.
  
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  Lord Byron
  George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.
  He travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died at 36 years old from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi in Greece.
  Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses including huge debts, numerous love affairs, rumours of a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile. It has been speculated that he suffered from bipolar I disorder, or manic depression.
  
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  Martin Sheen
  Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (born August 3, 1940), better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an American film actor best known for his performances in the films Badlands (1973), Apocalypse Now (1979), Wall Street (1987), The Departed (2006), his role as The Illusive Man in the Mass Effect trilogy and President Josiah Bartlet in the television series The West Wing.
  He is considered one of the best actors never to be nominated for an Academy Award despite his acclaimed performances.^[opinion] In film he has won the Best Actor award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival for his performance as Kit Carruthers in Badlands. His portrayal of Capt. Willard in Apocalypse Now earned a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. Sheen has worked with a wide variety of film directors, such as Richard Attenborough, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, David Cronenberg, Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone. He has had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame since 1989. In television he has won both a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild awards for playing the lead role of President Bartlet in The West Wing, and an Emmy for guest acting in the sitcom Murphy Brown.
  
  wn.com/Martin_Sheen
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  Michael Chiklis
  Michael Charles Chiklis (born August 30, 1963) is an American actor, voice actor, director and television producer. Some of the previous roles for which he is best known include Commissioner Tony Scali on the ABC police drama The Commish, LAPD Detective Vic Mackey on the FX police drama The Shield, the Thing in the Fantastic Four film series, and Jim Powell on the ABC science-fiction comedy-drama No Ordinary Family.
  Chiklis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the son of Charlie Chiklis, who runs a hair/beauty salon, and Katherine, a hospital administrative aide from whom Chiklis has been described as inheriting his acting ability. Chiklis' father is a second-generation Greek American (his paternal ancestors came from Lesbos Island) and his mother is of Greek and Irish descent. Chiklis grew up in Andover, Massachusetts and began entertaining his family with celebrity imitations when he was five years old. As a child, Chiklis appeared in regional theater productions and became a member of the Actors' Equity Association at age thirteen. He later attended Boston University College of Fine Arts, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
  
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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.
  
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  People Magazine
  People (originally called People Weekly) is a weekly American magazine of celebrity and human-interest stories, published by Time Inc. As of 2006, it has a circulation of 3.75 million and revenue expected to top $1.5 billion. It was named "Magazine of the Year" by Advertising Age in October 2005, for excellence in editorial, circulation and advertising.People ranked #6 on Advertising Age's annual "A-list" and #3 on Adweek's "Brand Blazers" list in October 2006.
  The magazine runs a roughly 50/50 mix of celebrity and human-interest articles. People's editors claim to refrain from printing pure celebrity gossip, enough so to lead celebrity publicists to propose exclusives to the magazine, evidence of what one staffer calls a "publicist-friendly strategy".
  People's website, People.com, focuses exclusively on celebrity news. In February 2007, the website drew 39.6 million page views "within a day" of the Golden Globes. However "the mother ship of Oscar coverage" broke a site record with 51.7 million page views on the day after the Oscars, beating the previous record set just a month before from the Golden Globes.^{[not in citation given]}
  
  wn.com/People_Magazine
• Quest for Camelot
  Quest for Camelot is a 1998 animated feature film from Warner Bros. Animation, based on the novel The King's Damosel by Vera Chapman, starring the voices of Jessalyn Gilsig, Cary Elwes, Gary Oldman, Eric Idle, Don Rickles, Jane Seymour, Pierce Brosnan, Bronson Pinchot, Jaleel White, Gabriel Byrne, John Gielgud, and Frank Welker, with the singing voices of Céline Dion, Bryan White, and Andrea Corr.
  The film is about a sprited teenage girl named Kayley who wants to be a knight of the Round Table in Camelot like her father Sir Lionel, a blind young man named Garrett who wishes only to be left alone, and their quest to find Excalibur.
  A young girl named Kayley desires to become a knight of the Round Table like her father Lionel in the kingdom of Camelot and wishes to accompany him when the knights are called to a special meeting with King Arthur, but he kindly objects that she is too young and promises to take her someday. When the knights arrive at Camelot (United We Stand) one of the knights named Sir Ruber (who has gone mad with power and seeks riches from his position as a knight of the Round Table) attacks Arthur in retaliation towards his motives. Mortally wounding Lionel with his mace, he is ultimately driven off by the other knights after Arthur strikes him down with Excalibur.
  
  wn.com/Quest_for_Camelot
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  Ralph Richardson
  Sir Ralph David Richardson (19 December 1902 – 10 October 1983) was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films.
  Richardson first became known for his work on stage in the 1930s. In the 1940s, together with Laurence Olivier, he ran the Old Vic Company. He continued on stage and in films into the early 1980s and was especially praised for his comedic roles. In his later years he was celebrated for his theatre work with his old friend John Gielgud. Among his most famous roles were Peer Gynt, Falstaff, John Gabriel Borkman and Hirst in Pinter's No Man's Land.
  Richardson was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, the third son and youngest child of Arthur Richardson, a master at the Ladies' College, and his wife Lydia (née Russell). When he was a baby, his mother left his father and took him with her to Gloucester, where he was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith of his mother (his father and brothers were Quakers). His father supported them with a small allowance. Lydia Richardson wished Ralph to become a priest. He was an altar boy in Brighton, and was sent to the Xavierian College, but he ran away from it.
  
  wn.com/Ralph_Richardson
• 
  Richard Burton
  Richard Burton, CBE (10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role (without ever winning), and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. He remains closely associated in the public consciousness with his second wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor; the couple's turbulent relationship was rarely out of the news.
  Richard Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in the village of Pontrhydyfen, Neath Port Talbot, Wales. He grew up in a working class, Welsh-speaking household, the twelfth of thirteen children. His father, Richard Walter Jenkins, was a short, robust coal miner, a "twelve-pints-a-day man" who sometimes went off on drinking and gambling sprees for weeks. Burton later claimed, by family telling, that "He looked very much like me...That is, he was pockmarked, devious, and smiled a great deal when he was in trouble. He was, also, a man of extraordinary eloquence, tremendous passion, great violence."
  
  wn.com/Richard_Burton
• Richard Harris
  Richard St John Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor, singer-songwriter, theatrical producer, film director and writer.
  He appeared on stage and in many films, and is perhaps best known for his roles as King Arthur in Camelot (1967), as Oliver Cromwell in Cromwell (1970) and as Albus Dumbledore in the first two films in the Harry Potter series, his final works. He played a British aristocrat and prisoner in A Man Called Horse (1970), Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator (2000), Saint John in Apocalypse Revelation (2002), gunfighter English Bob in Clint Eastwood's Western film Unforgiven (1992), and Dom Frollo in the 1997 TV movie version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Harris had a top ten hit in the UK and the US with his 1968 recording of Jimmy Webb's song "MacArthur Park".
  Harris, the fifth of nine children, was born in Limerick city, Ireland (then known as the Irish Free State) into a middle-class, staunchly Roman Catholic family. His parents were Ivan John Harris (b. 1896, son of Richard Harris, b. 1854, son of James Harris of St. Michael's, Limerick) and Mildred Josephine Harty Harris (b. 1898, daughter of James Harty, St. John's, Limerick, who owned a flour mill.) Harris' siblings include Patrick Ivan (born 1929), Noel William Michael (born 1932), Diarmid (Dermot, born 1939), and William George Harris (born 1942). He was schooled by the Jesuits at Crescent College. A talented rugby player, he was on several Munster Junior and Senior Cup teams for Crescent, and played for Garryowen. Harris' athletic career was cut short when he caught tuberculosis in his teens. He remained an ardent fan of the Munster Rugby and Young Munster teams then until his death, and attending many of its matches, and there are numerous stories of japes at rugby matches with the actors and fellow rugby fans Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Harris
• 
  Sam Waterston
  Samuel Atkinson "Sam" Waterston (born November 15, 1940) is an American actor and occasional producer and director. Among other roles, he is noted for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Sydney Schanberg in 1984's The Killing Fields, and his Golden Globe- and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning portrayal of Jack McCoy on the NBC television series Law & Order. He has been nominated for multiple Golden Globe-, Screen Actors Guild-, BAFTA- and Emmy Awards, having starred in over eighty film and television productions during his forty-five year career.Allmovie has characterised Waterston as having "cultivated a loyal following with his quietly charismatic, unfailingly solid performances." In January 2010, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
  Waterston, the third of four siblings, (Roberta, George and Ellen) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother, Alice Tucker (née Atkinson), was an American Mayflower descendant and worked as a landscape painter, and his father, George Chychele Waterston, was an immigrant from Leith, Scotland and a semanticist and language teacher. Waterston attended both the Brooks School, a boarding school in North Andover, Massachusetts where his father taught, and the Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts. He entered Yale University on a scholarship in 1958 and graduated with a BA in 1962. After graduating from Yale, he attended the Clinton Playhouse for several months. Waterston also attended the Sorbonne in Paris and the American Actors Workshop.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Waterston
• 
  Scott Bakula
  Scott Stewart Bakula ( /ˈbækjʊlə/; born October 9, 1955) is an American actor, known for his role as Sam Beckett in the television series Quantum Leap, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama in 1991 and was nominated for four Emmy Awards. He also had a prominent role as Captain Jonathan Archer in Star Trek: Enterprise. Bakula also guest starred in seasons two and three of NBC's Chuck as the title character's father Stephen Bartowski.
  Bakula's most recent role was on Desperate Housewives as the lawyer named Trip which happened to be his chief engineer's nickname in Enterprise.
  Bakula was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Sally and Stewart J. Bakula, a concert pianist/lawyer. He graduated from Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Missouri, in 1973. During high school, he was active in soccer, tennis, and theatre. Also during high school, he had the lead roles in Godspell and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at First Presbyterian Church in Kirkwood. He also played Tevye in an Independent Theatre Production of Fiddler on the Roof at Kirkwood High. Bakula attended college at the University of Kansas until his sophomore year. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta while attending the University.
  
  wn.com/Scott_Bakula
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata

Gabriel Byrne: Stories from Home (2008)

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• Documentary

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