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• 
  

• Belvoir St Theatre
  Belvoir St Theatre is an Australian theatre venue in Sydney. The venue in Belvoir Street, Surry Hills previously operated as the Nimrod Theatre, and was founded as "Belvoir St" in 1984 by Sue Hill and Chris Westwood. It is the home of the theatre company Belvoir.
  The building was purchased by a syndicate of people and there are currently 600 owners including noted actors, writers and performers: Robyn Archer, Gillian Armstrong, Peter Carey, Ruth Cracknell, Judy Davis, Mel Gibson, Max Gillies, Dorothy Hewett, Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, Dame Joan Sutherland, Patrick White, David Williamson, Neil Armfield, Mike Willesee, Colin Friels, and Gwen Plumb.^[1]
  The theatre was renovated during 2005-2006, and reopened in October 2006 with the Sydney season of It Just Stopped by Stephen Sewell.
  1. Belvoir St Theatre Retrieved November 12, 2006.
  Coordinates: 33°53′20″S 151°12′33″E / 33.88889°S 151.20917°E / -33.88889; 151.20917
  
  wn.com/Belvoir_St_Theatre
• 
  Cannes Film Festival
  The Cannes International Film Festival (French: Le Festival International du Film de Cannes or just Festival de Cannes), is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is the world's most prestigious and publicized film festival. The invitation-only festival is held annually (usually in May) at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.
  The 2012 Cannes Film Festival took place from May 16 to May 27, 2012. The President of the Jury was the Italian film director Nanni Moretti.
  The Cannes Film Festival has its origins in the late 1930s when Jean Zay, the French Minister of National Education, on the proposal of Philippe Erlanger and with the support of the British and Americans,^{[clarification needed]} set up an international cinematographic festival. In 1947, the festival was held as the "Festival du film de Cannes", where films from sixteen countries were presented. Moreover, the principle of equality was introduced, so that the jury was to be made up only of one representative per country. Also, this year the festival was held at the made-for-the-occasion Palais des Festivals, although the roof was unfinished and blew off during a storm. The festival was not held in 1948 and 1950 on account of budgetary problems. In 1951, owing to better relations between France and Italy, the Cannes Festival was moved to Spring, while the Mostra remained in Autumn.
  
  wn.com/Cannes_Film_Festival
• 
  Melbourne
  Melbourne ([ˈmelbən, -bn̩, ˈmæl-],rhotically  /ˈmɛlbərn/) is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2010, the greater geographical area had an approximate population of four million. Inhabitants of Melbourne are called Melburnians or Melbournians.
  The metropolis is located on the large natural bay known as Port Phillip, with the city centre positioned at the estuary of the Yarra River (at the northernmost point of the bay). The metropolitan area then extends south from the city centre, along the eastern and western shorelines of Port Phillip, and expands into the hinterland. The city centre is situated in the municipality known as the City of Melbourne, and the metropolitan area consists of a further 30 municipalities.
  Melbourne was founded in 1835 (47 years after the European settlement of Australia) by settlers from Launceston in Van Diemen's Land. It was named by governor Richard Bourke in 1837, in honour of the British Prime Minister of the day, William Lamb—the 2nd Viscount Melbourne. Melbourne was officially declared a city by Queen Victoria in 1847. In 1851, it became the capital city of the newly created colony of Victoria. During the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, it was transformed into one of the world's largest and wealthiest cities. After the federation of Australia in 1901, it then served as the interim seat of government of the newly created nation of Australia until 1927.
  
  wn.com/Melbourne
• 
  New South Wales
  Coordinates: 32°0′S 147°0′E / 32°S 147°E / -32; 147
  New South Wales (abbreviated as NSW) is a state of Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales encompasses the whole of the Australian Capital Territory. The state capital is Sydney, which is also the state's most populous city. As of June 2010^[update], the estimated population was 7,238,819, which was 34.5% of the population of Australia, making it Australia's most populous state. Inhabitants of New South Wales are referred to as New South Welshmen.
  The colony of New South Wales was founded in 1788 and originally comprised much of the Australian mainland, as well as Van Diemen's Land, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island, in addition to the area currently referred to as the state of New South Wales, which was formed during Federation in 1901. New Zealand briefly became a part of New South Wales when it was annexed by Britain in 1840. During the 19th century, large areas were successively separated to form the British colonies of Tasmania (established as a separate colony named Van Diemen's Land in 1825), South Australia (1836), Victoria (1851) and Queensland (1859).
  
  wn.com/New_South_Wales
• 
  Sydney
  Sydney ( /sɪdni/) is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is classified as an Alpha+ World City indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world.
  Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people. Inhabitants of Sydney are called Sydneysiders, comprising a cosmopolitan and international population.
  The site of the first British colony in Australia, Sydney was established in 1788 at Sydney Cove by Arthur Phillip, commodore of the First Fleet as a penal colony. The city is built on hills surrounding Port Jackson which is commonly known as Sydney Harbour, where the iconic Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge feature prominently. The hinterland of the metropolitan area is surrounded by national parks, and the coastal regions feature many bays, rivers, inlets and beaches including the famous Bondi Beach and Manly Beach. Within the city are many notable parks, including Hyde Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens.
  
  wn.com/Sydney

• 
  Alan Parker
  Sir Alan William Parker, CBE (born 14 February 1944) is an English film director, producer, writer and actor. He has been active in both the British cinema and American cinema and was a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.
  Parker was born into a working class family in Islington, North London, the son of Elsie Ellen, a dressmaker, and William Leslie Parker, a house painter. He attended Dame Alice Owen's School. Parker started out as a copywriter for advertising agencies in the 1960s and 1970s and later began to write his own television commercial scripts. His most celebrated and enduring advertising work was when he worked for famed London agency Collett Dickenson Pearce where he directed many award winning commercials, including the famous Cinzano vermouth advertisement, starring Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins, shown in the UK.
  His film career began through his association with producer David Puttnam, now Lord Puttnam, when he wrote the screenplay for the feature Melody (1971). Puttnam would later produce a number of Parker's films including Midnight Express (1978). This was a highly controversial film set in a Turkish prison that was lauded by critics and ended up earning a number of Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Parker. He was later nominated for Best Director with Mississippi Burning (1988).
  
  wn.com/Alan_Parker
• 
  Amanda Seyfried
  Amanda Michelle Seyfried (born December 3, 1985) is an American actress and singer-songwriter. She began her career as a child model when she was 11, and at 15 began her career as an actress, starting off with uncredited roles and moving on to recurring roles on As the World Turns and All My Children.
  In 2004, Seyfried made her film debut in Mean Girls. Her subsequent supporting roles were in independent films, such as Nine Lives (2005) and Alpha Dog (2006). She also had a recurring role in the UPN TV show Veronica Mars (2004–2006). Between 2006 and 2011, she was on HBO's series Big Love. After that, Seyfried appeared in her breakthrough role in the 2008 musical feature film Mamma Mia!. Other appearances include leading roles in Jennifer's Body (2009), Chloe (2009), Dear John (2010), Letters to Juliet (2010), Red Riding Hood (2011), and In Time (2011). She is scheduled to play Linda Lovelace in the biopic Lovelace and Cosette in Les Misérables, both to be released in 2012.
  Seyfried was born in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania on December 3, 1985. Her mother, Ann (née Sander), is an occupational therapist, and her father, Jack, is a pharmacist. She has German ancestry. Seyfried graduated in 2003 from Allentown's William Allen High School. Seyfried has an older sister, Jennifer Seyfried, who is a musician in the Philadelphia organ-driven rock band, Love City.
  
  wn.com/Amanda_Seyfried
• 
  Amitabh Bachchan
  Amitabh Bachchan ([əmɪtaːbʱ bəttʃən] ( listen), born Amitabh Harivansh Bachchan on 11 October 1942) is an Indian film actor. He first gained popularity in the early 1970s as the "angry young man" of Hindi cinema, and has since appeared in over 180 Indian films in a career spanning more than four decades. Bachchan is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema.
  Bachchan has won numerous major awards in his career, including three National Film Awards as Best Actor, and fourteen Filmfare Awards. He is the most-nominated performer in any major acting category at Filmfare, with 37 nominations overall. In addition to acting, Bachchan has worked as a playback singer, film producer and television presenter. He also had a stint in politics in the 1980s. He has received both the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan civilian awards from the Indian government.
  Bachban was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. His father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, was a Hindi poet, and his mother, Teji Bachchan, was a Sikh from Faisalabad (now in Pakistan). Bachchan was initially named Inquilaab, inspired from the famous phrase Inquilab Zindabad, during the Indian independence struggle. However, at the suggestion of fellow poet Sumitranandan Pant, Harivansh Rai changed the name to Amitabh which means, "the light that would never go off." Though his surname was Shrivastava, his father had adopted the pen-name Bachchan (meaning child-like in colloquial Hindi), under which he published all his works. It is with this last name that Amitabh debuted in films, and, for all public purposes, it has become the surname of all members of his family. Bachchan's father died in 2003, and his mother in 2007.
  
  wn.com/Amitabh_Bachchan
• 
  Ang Lee
  Ang Lee (Chinese: 李安; Pinyin: Lǐ Ān; born October 23, 1954) is a Taiwanese-American film director. Lee has directed a diverse set of films such as Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film), Hulk (2003), and Brokeback Mountain (2005), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director. He is the first person of Asian descent to win the Best Director Oscar.
  Ang Lee was born in the town of Chaochou in Pingtung, a southern agricultural county in Taiwan. He grew up in a household that put heavy emphasis on education and the Chinese classics. Both of Lee's parents moved to Taiwan from China following the Chinese Nationalists' defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Lee's father, a native of Jiangxi Province in southern China, imbued his children with studying Chinese culture and art, especially calligraphy.
  Lee studied in the National Tainan First Senior High School where his father was the principal. He was expected to pass the annual Joint College/University Entrance Examination, the only route to a university education in Taiwan. But after failing the Exam twice, to the disappointment of his father, he entered a three-year college, National Arts School (now reorganized and expanded as National Taiwan University of Arts) and graduated in 1975. His father had wanted him to become a professor, but he had become interested in drama and the arts at college. This early frustration set his career on the path of performance art. Seeing Ingmar Bergman's film The Virgin Spring (1960) was a formative experience for him.
  
  wn.com/Ang_Lee
• 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.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Minghella
• 
  Barry Otto
  Barry Otto (born 1941) is an Australian actor with a long list of memorable roles on stage and in film. Otto received an AFI Award for Best Supporting Actor in Strictly Ballroom as well as being nominated for Bliss, Cosi and The More Things Change.... He is the father of actresses Gracie Otto and Miranda Otto.
  Otto is also a keen amateur artist, often painting members of his family, and has twice entered the Archibald Prize.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Barry_Otto
• Baz Luhrmann
  Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann (/ˈbæz ˈlʊərmən/; born 17 September 1962) is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!. In 2008, he released his film Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman.
  Luhrmann was born in Sydney, Australia to a mother who was a ballroom dance teacher and dress shop owner, and Leonard Luhrmann, a farmer. He was raised in Herons Creek, a tiny rural settlement in northern New South Wales, where his father ran a petrol station and a movie theatre, both of which would influence his son's film-making career. He attended St. Joseph's Hasting Regional School, Port Macquarie 1975-1978 and Balgowlah Boys Campus. He attended Year 11 at Narrabeen Sports High School in Sydney, performing in the school's version of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1. His nickname was given to him because of a perceived resemblance to the character Basil Brush.^{[citation needed]} Luhrmann first auditioned for the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1980 but didn't get into the prestigious drama school. He successfully auditioned again two years later, starting the three-year acting course in 1983. He graduated from NIDA in 1985, alongside Sonia Todd, Catherine McClements and Justin Monjo.
  
  wn.com/Baz_Luhrmann
• 
  Benjamin Britten
  Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten,OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist; and one of the central figures of 20th century British classical music. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. For the next fifteen years he devoted much of his compositional attention to writing operas, establishing him as one of the leading 20th century figures in this genre.
  Britten's interests as a composer were wide-ranging; he produced important music in such varied genres as orchestral, choral, solo vocal (much of it written for his life partner, tenor Peter Pears), chamber and instrumental, as well as film music. He also took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, and was an outstanding pianist and conductor.
  Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 22 November 1913, the youngest of four children. His father, Robert, was a dentist, and his mother Edith, a talented amateur musician who gave Britten his first lessons in piano and notation. He showed musical gifts very early in life, making his first attempts at composition aged five, and thereafter composing prolifically as a child. He started piano lessons with a teacher from his pre-prep school when aged 7, and viola lessons with Audrey Alston when 10 years old.
  
  wn.com/Benjamin_Britten
• 
  Beyoncé Knowles
  Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter (née Beyoncé Giselle Knowles; September 4, 1981), known mononymously as Beyoncé ( /biˈjɒnseɪ/ bee-YON-say), is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and actress. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, she enrolled in various performing arts schools and was first exposed to singing and dancing competitions as a child. Knowles rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of the R&B girl group Destiny's Child, one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time.
  During the hiatus of Destiny's Child, Knowles released her debut solo album, Dangerously in Love, in 2003, which spawned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100—"Crazy in Love" and "Baby Boy"—and became one of the most successful albums of that year, earning her a then record-tying five Grammy Awards. Following the disbandment of Destiny's Child in 2005, Knowles released her second solo album, B'Day, in 2006, which spawned the top 10 singles "Déjà Vu", "Irreplaceable" and "Beautiful Liar". Her third solo album I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), spawned the hit singles "If I Were a Boy", "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", "Halo" and "Sweet Dreams". The album helped Knowles earn six Grammys in 2010, breaking the record for most Grammy Awards won by a female artist in one night. Knowles' fourth solo album, 4 (2011), became her fourth consecutive number one album on the Billboard 200 as a solo artist. This made her the third artist in history to have her first four studio albums debut atop the chart.
  
  wn.com/Beyoncé_Knowles
• Bill Hunter (actor)
  William John "Bill" Hunter (27 February 1940 – 21 May 2011) was an Australian actor of film, stage and television. He appeared in more than 60 films and won two Australian Film Institute Awards.
  Hunter was born in Ballarat, a son of William and Francie Hunter. He had a brother, John, and a sister, Marie Ann.
  During his teens, Hunter was a champion swimmer, and briefly held a world record for the 100 yards freestyle until his record was broken by John Devitt in the very next heat ten minutes later. Hunter had qualified for the Australian swimming team in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, but a bout of meningitis ended his Olympic hopes.
  Hunter made his film debut as an extra in 1957 film The Shiralee. An introduction to Ava Gardner saw him gain a job as an extra and swimming double in the Hollywood film On the Beach, which was filming in Melbourne. Hunter claimed that he was inspired to take up acting after watching one of the leads (variously claimed to be either Gregory Peck or Fred Astaire) do 27 takes of a scene, and thinking he could do better. He took an intensive drama course in Melbourne, and then won a two-year scholarship to the prestigious Northampton Repertory Company in England. In 1966, he made his television debut in an uncredited role in two episodes of the Doctor Who serial The Ark.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Hunter_(actor)
• 
  Bryan Brown
  Bryan Neathway Brown,AM (born 23 June 1947) is an Australian actor.
  Brown was born in Sydney, the son of John (Jack) Brown and Molly Brown, a house cleaner who worked as a pianist in the early days of the Langshaw School of Ballet. He grew up in the south-western Sydney suburb of Bankstown and began working at AMP as an actuarial student. He started to act in amateur theatre performances, where he discovered a passion for acting.
  Brown went to England in 1964, eventually winning minor roles at the Old Vic. He returned to Australia and became a member of the Genesian Theatre, Sydney. He appeared in Colleen Clifford's production of A Man for All Seasons, before joining the Queensland Theatre Company. He made his cinema debut in 1977 with a small role in The Love Letters from Teralba Road and appeared in several more Australian films over the next two years such as Stir.
  In 1980, Brown became known to international audiences for his performance in Breaker Morant. While he continued appearing in Australian productions, he also appeared in American TV mini-series, winning popularity in the United States in A Town Like Alice (1981).
  
  wn.com/Bryan_Brown
• 
  Bryan Singer
  Bryan Singer (born September 17, 1965) is an American film director, writer and producer. Singer won critical acclaim for his work on The Usual Suspects, and is especially well-known among fans of the science fiction and superhero genres for his work on the X-Men films and Superman Returns.
  Singer was born in New York City, and was adopted by Grace Singer (née Sinden), an environmental activist, and Norbert Dave Singer, a corporate executive. He grew up in a Jewish household in West Windsor Township, New Jersey. He attended West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South (formerly just West Windsor-Plainsboro High School), graduating in 1984. For college, Singer studied filmmaking for two years at New York's School of Visual Arts and later transferred to the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. Actors Lori and Marc Singer are his cousins. He is openly gay and has said that his life experiences of growing up as a minority influenced his movies. He was diagnosed with dyslexia.
  After graduating, Singer directed a short film called Lion's Den involving a number of friends, including actor Ethan Hawke whom he knew from his childhood in New Jersey and editor John Ottman who he had met while working on a friend's short film.
  
  wn.com/Bryan_Singer
• 
  Cameron Crowe
  Cameron Buttboy Crowe (born July 13, 1957) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes.
  Crowe has made his mark with character-driven, personal films that have been generally hailed as refreshingly original and devoid of cynicism. Michael Walker in The New York Times called Crowe "something of a cinematic spokesman for the post-baby boom generation" because his first few films focused on that specific age group, first as high schoolers and then as young adults making their way in the world.
  Crowe's debut screenwriting effort, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, grew out of a book he wrote while posing for one year undercover as a student at Clairemont High School in San Diego, California, where he met Geraldine Edwards, who was a student there while he was visiting mutual friends in 1975. He later based part of his Penny Lane character on her in Almost Famous after discovering that she had been going backstage to Rock and Roll concerts. Later, he wrote and directed one more high school saga, Say Anything, and then Singles, a story of Seattle twentysomethings that was woven together by a soundtrack centering on that city's burgeoning grunge music scene. Crowe landed his biggest hit, though, with Jerry Maguire. After this, he was given a green light to go ahead with a pet project, the autobiographical effort Almost Famous. Centering on a teenage music journalist on tour with an up-and-coming band, it gave insight to his life as a 15-year-old writer for Rolling Stone. Part of the dialogue was inspired by comments that were made by Bebe Buell in certain interviews. Also in late 1999, Crowe released his second book, Conversations with Billy Wilder, a question and answer session with the legendary director.
  
  wn.com/Cameron_Crowe
• 
  Carey Mulligan
  Carey Hannah Mulligan (born 28 May 1985) is an English actress. She made her film debut as Kitty Bennet in Pride & Prejudice (2005). She had roles in numerous British programmes and, in 2007, made her Broadway debut in The Seagull to critical acclaim.
  In 2009, she gained widespread recognition for playing the lead role of Jenny in An Education, winning a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and also being nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award for her performance. She went on to star in dramatic films such as The Greatest, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Never Let Me Go, Drive and Shame.
  Mulligan was born in Westminster, London, England. Her father, Stephen, was originally from Liverpool, and her mother, Nano (née Booth), a college lecturer, came from Llandeilo in West Wales. Her paternal great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland. Mulligan has one sibling, an elder brother. At the age of 3, she moved with her family from England to Germany after her father accepted the job of managing the European arm of Intercontinental Hotels. Due to her father's job, her family lived in expensive hotels for 8 years. She was "quite shy" during her childhood and a tomboy until the age of 15. She was also "quite straight-laced" and very academic until age 14, having then become more interested in acting. She was educated at Woldingham School, a girls' boarding school.
  
  wn.com/Carey_Mulligan
• Catherine Martin
  Catherine Martin (born 26 January 1965, in Lindfield, New South Wales) is an Australian costume designer, production designer, set designer, and film producer.
  Catherine Martin went to school at North Sydney Girls High School. She did a Diploma Design Course at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, where she started collaborating with her collegemate Baz Luhrmann (now her husband). She designed sets and costumes for his one-act stage precursor of Strictly Ballroom. After completing studies, she worked as a designer on Luhrmann's production of "Lake Lost" (1988).
  In 1989, she designed the sets for an Australian stage production of Diary of a Madman starring Geoffrey Rush. She worked on Luhrmann's La Bohème (1990) and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
  She recreated her designs for screen-version of Strictly Ballroom (1992), for which she won two Australian Film Institute Awards (Best Production design and Best Costume design). She won an Oscar nomination (as a production designer) for Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996). She also made her debut as an associate producer for the same. She married Luhrmann on her 32nd birthday, 26 January 1997.
  
  wn.com/Catherine_Martin
• Catherine McClements
  Catherine McClements (born 30 November 1965 in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian actress.
  Catherine is the third of four children, and after acting with the St Martin's Youth Arts Centre in Melbourne for a couple of years, she successfully auditioned for the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art when she was 17. She graduated from NIDA in 1985, alongside Baz Luhrmann, Sonia Todd and Justin Monjo. In 1988, Catherine, along with a number of other people including Baz Luhrmann, set up an experimental theatre ensemble called 'Six Years Old', and they worked on expanding the play Strictly Ballroom, which was first produced in their second year of NIDA in 1984.
  Catherine McClements is best known for her starring role as Rachel Goldstein on the Australian police drama Water Rats from 1996 to 1999. She had a recurring guest role on The Secret Life of Us in 2001, for which she won the AFI Award for Best Actress in a Guest Role in a Television Drama. She later starred as Rosie in the 2003 drama series CrashBurn and appeared in the Network Ten telemovie Mary Bryant in 2005. In 1993 she had a role in The Girl from Tomorrow Part II: Tomorrow's End.
  
  wn.com/Catherine_McClements
• Christopher Hampton
  Christopher James Hampton, CBE, FRSL (born 26 January 1946) is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement.
  Hampton was born in Faial, Azores, to British parents Dorothy Patience (née Herrington) and Bernard Patrick Hampton, a marine telecommunications engineer for Cable & Wireless. His father's job led the family to subsequently settle in Aden and Alexandria in Egypt and later Hong Kong and Zanzibar. The Suez Crisis in 1956 necessitated that the family flee under cover of darkness, leaving their possessions behind.
  After a prep school at Reigate, Hampton went to the independent boarding school Lancing College at the age of 13, where he won house colours for boxing and distinguished himself as a sergeant in the CCF. Fellow dramatist David Hare was a school contemporary; poet Harry Guest was a teacher.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Hampton
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  Claire Danes
  Claire Catherine Danes (born April 12, 1979) is an American television, stage and film actress. She has appeared in roles as diverse as Angela Chase in My So-Called Life, as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, as Kate Brewster in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, as Yvaine in Stardust and as Temple Grandin in the HBO TV film Temple Grandin. She portrays Carrie Mathison in the Showtime series Homeland.
  Danes was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Her mother, Carla (née Hall), is a day-care provider, painter, and textile designer who later served as her daughter's manager, and her father, Christopher Danes (b. May 6, 1944 in Austin, Texas), is a computer consultant and former architectural photographer. Danes has described her background as being "as WASPy as you can get"; her paternal grandfather, Gibson Andrew Danes (1910–1992 in Litchfield, Connecticut), was the dean of the art and architecture school at Yale University. She has an older brother, Asa (b. 1973).
  Danes attended the Dalton School in New York City, the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, the Professional Performing Arts School, and the Lycée Français de Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California. In 1998, Danes went to Yale University, her father's alma mater. Director Oliver Stone wrote her letter of recommendation to Yale. After studying for two years as a psychology major, she dropped out of Yale to focus on her film career.
  
  wn.com/Claire_Danes
• Claude Berri
  Claude Berri (1 July 1934 – 12 January 2009), born Claude Berel Langmann^{[citation needed]}, was a French actor, writer, producer, director and distributor.
  Berri was born in Paris, France, the son of Polish/Romanian Jewish parents Beila (née Bercu) and Hirsch Langmann, a furrier. His sister was the screenwriter and editor Arlette Langmann. Berri won the "Best Film" BAFTA for Jean de Florette, and was also nominated for twelve César Awards, though he never won. Berri also won the Oscar for Best Short Film for Le Poulet at the 39th Academy Awards in 1966, and produced Roman Polanski's Tess which was nominated for Best Picture in 1981.
  Internationally, however, two films in 1986 overshadow all his other achievements. Jean de Florette and its sequel Manon des Sources were huge hits. In 1991, his film Uranus was entered into the 41st Berlin International Film Festival. Six years later, his film Lucie Aubrac was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.
  In 2003, he was elected President of the Cinémathèque Française where he obtained enough state subsidies to cover the costs of its resurgence at its new site in the rue de Bercy.
  
  wn.com/Claude_Berri
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  Coen brothers
  Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films include Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit.
  The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until recently Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing film credits for editor under the alias Roderick Jaynes.
  Joel and Ethan Coen, of Jewish heritage, grew up in a Jewish community in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Their father, Edward, was an economist at the University of Minnesota, and their mother, Rena, an art historian at St. Cloud State University.
  When they were children, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television with a neighborhood kid, Mark Zimering ("Zeimers"),^{[citation needed]} as the star. Their first attempt was a romp titled, Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go. Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey (1966) became their Zeimers in Zambia, which also featured Ethan as a native with a spear.
  
  wn.com/Coen_brothers
• Craig Pearce
  Craig Pearce is an Australian actor and writer.
  Pearce co-wrote the play Strictly Ballroom and the screenplay of the movie adaptation with Baz Luhrmann. He wrote the screenplay for the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet and co-wrote the 2001 film Moulin Rouge!, both with Baz Luhrmann.
  Brother of Guy Pearce
  
  
  
  wn.com/Craig_Pearce
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  Danny Boyle
  Daniel "Danny" Boyle (born 20 October 1956) is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for his work on films such as Slumdog Millionaire, Shallow Grave, 127 Hours, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Trainspotting. For Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle won numerous awards in 2008, including the Academy Award for Best Director. Boyle was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2008 Austin Film Festival, where he also introduced that year's AFF Audience Award Winner Slumdog Millionaire. On 17 June 2010, it was announced that he will be the Artistic Director for the 2012 Olympic games opening ceremony.
  Boyle was born on 20 October 1956 in Radcliffe, Lancashire, (now in the modern day metropolitan borough of Bury, Greater Manchester) into a working-class Irish Catholic family. His mother was from Ballinasloe in County Galway, and his father was born in England to an Irish family.
  It was a very strict, Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years, I was supposed to be a priest and really, it was my mother's fondest wish that I would become one.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Boyle
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  David Wenham
  David Wenham (born 21 September 1965) is an Australian actor who has appeared in movies, television series and theatre productions. He is known in Hollywood for his roles as Faramir in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Carl in Van Helsing and Dilios in 300 and Neil Fletcher in Australia. He is also known in his native Australia for his role as Diver Dan in SeaChange.
  Wenham was born in Marrickville, Sydney, Australia, the son of Kath and Bill Wenham. He has five older sisters; Helen, Anne, Carmel, Kathryn, and Maree; and one older brother, Peter. David was raised in the Roman Catholic faith and attended Christian Brothers' High School, Lewisham. He worked as a bingo caller and an insurance clerk before becoming successful as an actor.
  Wenham started his career as an actor after graduating from Theatre Nepean at the University of Western Sydney in 1987. Wenham's television credits include several telemovies, such as his AFI award winning role in the 1996 telemovie Simone de Beauvoir's Babies; and his role as the outwardly laid back but deeply enigmatic diver Dan Della Bosca in the 1998 and 1999 seasons of the highly successful ABC television series SeaChange. His role as "Diver Dan" has made the actor something of a sex symbol, although he dislikes thinking of himself as such, and he has been voted Australia's "sexiest man alive". A portrait of Wenham by artist Adam Cullen won the Archibald Prize in 2000. Wenham is signed to Storm Model Management in London.
  
  wn.com/David_Wenham
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  David Yates
  David Yates (born 30 November 1963) is an English filmmaker who began his career by directing various short films and television productions. He rose to mainstream prominence by directing the final four films in the Harry Potter film series: instalments five, six, seven, and eight. This feat notably won him the 2011 BAFTA Britannia Award for Artistic Excellence in Directing and made him the most commercially successful British director in recent years. Yates' following works include A Reliable Wife and the upcoming Al Capone trilogy Cicero.
  Early in his career, Yates received attention for his award-winning short films. He became a prolific television director with credits including the acclaimed political thriller State of Play (2003), for which he won the Directors Guild of Great Britain Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, the BAFTA-lauded two-part drama Sex Traffic (2004), and the Primetime Emmy Award-winning HBO production The Girl in the Café (2005). He has been recognised for his transition to the big screen and is considered to be one of Britain's most celebrated directors of film and television.
  
  wn.com/David_Yates
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  Dominic Cooper
  Dominic Edward Cooper (born 2 June 1978) is an English actor. He has worked in TV, film, theatre and radio, in productions including Mamma Mia!, The Duchess, The History Boys, The Devil's Double, and Captain America: The First Avenger.
  Cooper was born and brought up in Greenwich, London, the son of Julia (née Heron), a nursery school teacher, and Brian Cooper, an auctioneer. His maternal great-grandfather was film enthusiast E.T. Heron, who published The Kinematograph Weekly. He attended the Thomas Tallis School in Kidbrooke, London, and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), graduating in 2000. He also attended John Ball Primary School, the same school that actor Jude Law attended.
  He first worked in television and film before making his stage debut in Mother Clap's Molly House at the National Theatre in 2001.
  Cooper was involved in Alan Bennett's play The History Boys from its first reading. He also toured with the production to Broadway, Sydney, Wellington and Hong Kong as well as appearing in the radio and film adaptations of the play.
  
  wn.com/Dominic_Cooper
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  Edgar Wright
  Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English film and television director and writer. He is most famous for his work with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on the films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, the TV series Spaced, and for directing the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and co-writing Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin with Joe Cornish and Steven Moffat.
  Wright was born in Poole, Dorset, but grew up predominantly in Wells, Somerset, after his family moved there during his childhood. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wright directed many short films, first on a Super-8 camera which was a gift from a family member and later on a Video-8 camcorder won in a competition on the television programme Going Live. These films were mostly comedic pastiches of popular genres, such as the super hero-inspired Carbolic Soap and Dirty Harry tribute Dead Right (the latter of which was eventually featured on the DVD release of Hot Fuzz).
  After graduating from Bournemouth Arts College he made a spoof western, A Fistful of Fingers, which was picked up for a limited theatrical release and broadcast on the British satellite TV channel Sky Movies. Despite Wright's dissatisfaction with the finished product, it caught the attention of comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who subsequently chose him as the director of their Paramount Comedy channel productions Mash and Peas and Sir Bernard's Stately Homes. During this time he also worked on BBC programmes such as Is It Bill Bailey? and Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round. In an interview with journalist and author Robert K. Elder for The Film That Changed My Life, Wright cites his edgy and comedic style in his love for An American Werewolf in London:
  
  wn.com/Edgar_Wright
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  Ewan McGregor
  Ewan Gordon McGregor (born 31 March 1971) is a Scottish actor who has had success in mainstream, indie, and art house films. He is perhaps best known for his roles as heroin addict Mark Renton in the drama Trainspotting (1996), Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005), poet Christian in the musical film Moulin Rouge! (2001), and storyteller Edward Bloom in Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003). He has also received critical acclaim for his starring roles in theatre productions of Guys and Dolls (2005–07) and Othello (2007–08). McGregor was ranked No. 36 on Empire magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list in 1997.
  Born in the Royal Infirmary in Perth, Scotland, McGregor was brought up in the nearby small town of Crieff, where he attended the independent Morrison's Academy. His mother, Carole Diane (née Lawson), is a teacher and school administrator, and his father, James Charles Stewart "Jim" McGregor, is a physical education teacher. He has an older brother, Colin, who is a former Tornado GR4 pilot in the Royal Air Force. He is the nephew of actor Denis Lawson and the late actress Sheila Gish, and the step-cousin of the late actress Lou Gish. McGregor studied drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
  
  wn.com/Ewan_McGregor
• Gale Edwards
  Gale Edwards (born 14 November 1954) is an Australian theatre director, who has worked extensively throughout Australia and internationally. She has also directed for television and film. She began her career at Adelaide youth theatre company Energy Connection. From 1986 to 1989 she was Associate Director of the State Theatre Company of South Australia, has been an Artistic Director of the Melbourne Theatre Company and has worked with every other major theatre Australian company, including the Sydney Theatre Company and Opera Australia. Internationally, Edwards directed the 1996 London revival of Jesus Christ Superstar, which opened on Broadway in 2000, and for which she won an Emmy Award for a recording of the production. Edwards contributed to the book of the musical Whistle Down the Wind, for which she directed the West End production. Edwards has also directed for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington D.C.). She directed the premiere production of The Boy from Oz.
  
  wn.com/Gale_Edwards
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  Giacomo Puccini
  Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒaːkomo putˈtʃiːni]; 22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.
  Described by Encyclopædia Britannica Online as "one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism", he is regarded as one of the last major Italian opera composers. His repertoire is essentially rooted in verismo, or a post-Romantic operatic tradition and literary style. Whilst his work is essentially based on traditional late-19th century Italian opera, his music shows some influences from then-contemporary composers and movements such as Igor Stravinsky and Impressionism. Common themes within his operas include the important role, yet usually tragic end, of his heroines, as well as love; furthermore, there is a strong presence of exoticism in his operas, with several being set in faraway locations.
  
  wn.com/Giacomo_Puccini
• Gérard Brach
  Gérard Brach (23 July 1927 – 9 September 2006) was a French screenwriter best known for his collaborations with the film directors Roman Polanski and Jean-Jacques Annaud. At the beginning of the 70s he twice tried his hand at directing, but neither film achieved commercial success.
  
  wn.com/Gérard_Brach
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  Hugh Jackman
  Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.
  Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters. He is known for his role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series, as well as for his leads in Kate & Leopold, Van Helsing, The Prestige, Australia, and Real Steel. Jackman is a singer, dancer, and actor in stage musicals, and won a Tony Award for his role in The Boy from Oz.
  In November 2008, Open Salon named Jackman one of the sexiest men alive. Later that same month, People magazine named Jackman "Sexiest Man Alive."
  A three-time host of the Tony Awards, winning an Emmy Award for one of these appearances, Jackman also hosted the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009.
  Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the youngest of five children of English parents Chris Jackman and Grace Watson, and the second child to be born in Australia (he also has a younger half-sister, from his mother's re-marriage). One of his paternal great-grandfathers was Greek. His parents divorced when he was eight, and he remained with his accountant father and siblings, while his mother moved back to England. As a child, Jackman liked the outdoors, spending a lot of time at the beach and on camping trips and vacations all over Australia. He wanted to see the world: "I used to spend nights looking at atlases. I decided I wanted to be a chef on a plane. Because I'd been on a plane and there was food on board, I presumed there was a chef. I thought that would be an ideal job."
  
  wn.com/Hugh_Jackman
• Jacek Koman
  Jacek Koman (born 15 August 1956) is a Polish actor, who now lives in Australia.
  Koman was born in Bielsko-Biała, Poland and came to Australia in 1982 with his brother Tomek. They landed in Perth, before heading over to Melbourne, where he began acting again.
  In Melbourne, Koman met his partner, Australian actress Catherine McClements, in the late 1980s at the Anthill Theatre. They now have two children together – Clementine Coco (born July 2001) and Quincy (born May 2007). The couple have worked together a number of times, including films Redheads and Floodhouse, as well as an episode of Rush in 2009, and theatre productions Cruel and Tender (2005), Macbeth (2003), The Blind Giant is Dancing (1995) and Angels in America (1994).
  He has recently been nominated for an AACTA award for his guest performance in Spirited.
  In 2012 he appeared as "The Great Hypno" in the Australian television series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.
  Koman is also the lead singer of VulgarGrad, a Melbourne band who play Russian-style music and who formed in 2004.
  
  wn.com/Jacek_Koman
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  James Cameron
  James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian film director, film producer, deep-sea explorer, screenwriter, visual artist and editor. His writing and directing work includes Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997), Dark Angel (2000–02), and Avatar (2009). In the time between making Titanic and Avatar, Cameron spent several years creating many documentary films (specifically underwater documentaries) and co-developed the digital 3D Fusion Camera System. Described by a biographer as part-scientist and part-artist, Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies. On March 26, 2012, Cameron reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, in the Deepsea Challenger submersible.
  He has been nominated for six Academy Awards overall and won three for Titanic. In total, Cameron's directorial efforts have grossed approximately US$2 billion in North America and US$6 billion worldwide. Without adjusting for inflation, Cameron's Titanic and Avatar are the two highest-grossing films of all time at $2.16 billion and $2.78 billion respectively. In March 2011 he was named Hollywood's top earner by Vanity Fair, with estimated 2010 earnings of $257 million.
  
  wn.com/James_Cameron
• Jim Sharman
  James "Jim" Sharman (born 12 March 1945 in Sydney, Australia), the son of boxing tent entrepreneur Jimmy Sharman, is a director and writer for film and stage with over 70 productions to his credit. He is renowned in Australia for his work as a theatre director from the 1960s to the present, but is probably best known internationally as the director of the 1973 theatrical hit The Rocky Horror Show, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and its follow-up Shock Treatment (1981).
  James David Sharman was born in 1945 in Sydney, Australia, to James Michael Sharman (1912–2006) and Christina McAndleish Sharman (1914–2003). Sharman was educated in Sydney, though his upbringing included time spent on Australian showgrounds where his father and grandfather ran a travelling sideshow of popular legend: Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Troupe. This brought him into contact with the world of circus and travelling vaudeville. Developing an interest in theatre, he graduated from the production course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney in 1966.
  
  wn.com/Jim_Sharman
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  Joel Coen
  Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films include Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit.
  The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until recently Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing film credits for editor under the alias Roderick Jaynes.
  Joel and Ethan Coen, of Jewish heritage, grew up in a Jewish community in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Their father, Edward, was an economist at the University of Minnesota, and their mother, Rena, an art historian at St. Cloud State University.
  When they were children, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television with a neighborhood kid, Mark Zimering ("Zeimers"),^{[citation needed]} as the star. Their first attempt was a romp titled, Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go. Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey (1966) became their Zeimers in Zambia, which also featured Ethan as a native with a spear.
  
  wn.com/Joel_Coen
• John Duigan
  John Duigan, (born 19 June 1949 in Hampshire, England, UK) is an Australian film director.
  Duigan emigrated to Australia in 1961, having been born to an Australian father. He is related to many Australian performers, being the brother of novelistVirginia Duigan (wife of director Bruce Beresford) and uncle of Trilby Beresford. Duigan studied at Melbourne University, graduating in 1973 with a Masters degree in Philosophy. While at university, he worked extensively as an actor and director in theatre, and acted in a number of short films. He began directing films in 1974, with early successes including Mouth to Mouth, winner of the Jury Prize at the Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, Winter of our Dreams, for which he won an Australian Writers' Guild award for Best Screenplay, and the multi-award winning mini-series Vietnam. Subsequent films included The Year My Voice Broke, for which he won AFIs for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and Flirting, both of which won Best Picture at the AFI Awards. Subsequently, Duigan worked in the United States and Europe, returning to Australia to make Sirens (1993), winner of Best Film at the St. Petersburg Film Festival. In the United States he directed Romero, starring Raul Julia, which won the Humanitas Award, and Lawn Dogs, winner of numerous prizes in European festivals. In England he directed The Leading Man, from a screenplay by his sister Virginia, The Parole Officer with Steve Coogan, and in Canada/France/UK Head in the Clouds with Charlize Theron and Penélope Cruz, winner in Canada of four Genie Awards and Best Film at the Milan International Film Festival. Between 2005 and 2010 he took time off from the flm industry to work on a book on secular ethics, returning to Australia to direct Careless Love in 2011/12.
  
  wn.com/John_Duigan
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  John Leguizamo
  Jonathan Alberto "John" Leguizamo (born July 22, 1964) is a Colombian-American actor, producer, voice artist, and comedian.
  John Leguizamo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, to Alberto and Luz Leguizamo, According to Leguizamo, his paternal grandfather was of Puerto Rican and Italian descent and his maternal grandfather was Lebanese. Leguizamo has also described himself as being of Amerindian and Mestizo heritage. Leguizamo's father was once an aspiring film director and studied at Cinecittà, but eventually dropped out due to lack of finances. When Leguizamo was four years old, his family emigrated to the United States and lived in various neighborhoods of Queens in New York City, including Jackson Heights. He later credited growing up as one of the first Latino children in his Jackson Heights neighborhood as formative in his acting ability: "It was tough. There were lots of fights. I would walk through a park and be attacked, and I had to defend myself all the time. But this helped me to become funny so that I wouldn’t get hit." Leguizamo attended the Joseph Pulitzer Middle School (I.S.145) and later the Murry Bergtraum High School. As a student at Murry Bergtraum, Leguizamo wrote comedy material and tested it out on his classmates. He was voted "Most Talkative" by his fellow classmates. After graduating from high school, he began his theater career as an undergraduate at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in which he eventually dropped out to seek a stand-up comedy career. Post NYU Leguizamo enrolled at Long Island University C.W. Post Campus where he took theater classes.
  
  wn.com/John_Leguizamo
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  Judy Davis
  Judy Davis (born 23 April 1955) is an Australian actress best known for her roles in Husbands and Wives, Barton Fink, A Passage to India and in the TV miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.
  Davis first came to attention for her role as the fiery Sybylla Melvyn in the 1979 film My Brilliant Career. She has won many acting awards, including two Golden Globe Awards, three Emmy Awards, one BAFTA and seven AFI Awards. She has also been nominated twice for an Academy Award.
  Davis was born in Perth and had a strict Catholic upbringing. She was educated at Loreto Convent and the Western Australian Institute of Technology, and graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1977. She has been married to actor and fellow NIDA graduate Colin Friels since 1984. They have two children.
  First coming to prominence for her role as Sybylla Melvyn in the coming-of-age saga My Brilliant Career (1979), for which she won BAFTA Awards for Best Actress and Best Newcomer, she also played the lead in such Australian New Wave classics as Winter of Our Dreams (1981) (as the waif-like heroin addict) and Heatwave (1982) (as the radical tenant organizer).
  
  wn.com/Judy_Davis
• Justin Monjo
  Justin Monjo (born 1963, New York) is an Australian screenwriter, television producer, and actor, best known for his work on Farscape.
  He is the son of children's author F. N. Monjo III and the great-great-grandson of arctic furrier F. N. Monjo. Monjo wrote Adrian Pasdar's film debut screenplay Cement and worked on Young Lions. He created the 2005 TV series The Alice with Robyn Sinclair. He graduated from NIDA in 1985, alongside actresses Catherine McClements and Sonia Todd, and director Baz Luhrmann. His adaptation with Nick Enright of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton enjoyed huge critical and box-office success at the Festivals of Sydney and Perth, on tour of Australia, at the Festival of Dublin, and in London.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Justin_Monjo
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  Kathryn Bigelow
  Kathryn Ann Bigelow (born November 27, 1951) is an American film director, film producer, screenwriter and television director. Her best-known films are the cult horror film Near Dark (1987), the surfer/bank robbery action picture Point Break (1991), the science fiction/film noir Strange Days (1995), the historical/mystery film The Weight of Water (2000) and the war drama The Hurt Locker (2008). The Hurt Locker won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Picture, won the BAFTA Award for Best Film, and was nominated for the 2010 Golden Globe Award for Best Drama.
  With The Hurt Locker, Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing, the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, and the Critics' Choice Award for Best Director. She also became the first woman to win the Saturn Award for Best Director in 1995 for Strange Days.
  In April 2010, Bigelow was named to the Time 100 list of most influential people of the year.
  Bigelow was born in San Carlos, California, United States, the only child of a paint factory manager and a librarian. Her early creative endeavors were as a student of painting. She enrolled at San Francisco Art Institute in the fall of 1970 and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in December 1972. While enrolled at SFAI, she was accepted into the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study scholarship program in New York City. Bigelow’s early work benefited from her apprenticeships with Vito Acconi, Richard Serra, and Lawrence Weiner.
  
  wn.com/Kathryn_Bigelow
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  Kenneth Branagh
  Kenneth Charles Branagh (/ˈbrænə/ BRAN-ə; born 10 December 1960) is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V (1989) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello, Hamlet (1996) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay), Love's Labour's Lost (2000), and As You Like It (2006).
  He has also starred in numerous other films and television series including Fortunes of War (1987), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Conspiracy (TV) (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Warm Springs (TV) (2005), Valkyrie (2008), Wallander (TV series) (2008–present), and My Week with Marilyn (2011) as Laurence Olivier (Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor); and directed such notable films as Dead Again (1991) (also starring), Swan Song (1992) (Academy Award nominated for Best Live Action Short Film), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) (also starring), The Magic Flute (2006), Sleuth (2007), and the blockbuster action film Thor (2011).
  
  wn.com/Kenneth_Branagh
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  Kevin Rudd
  Kevin Michael Rudd (born 21 September 1957) is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He also served as the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2010 to 2012. A member of the Australian Labor Party, Rudd has served in the House of Representatives since the 1998 federal election, representing Griffith, Queensland.
  Rudd was born in Queensland and grew up on a dairy farm. He joined the Australian Labor Party at the age of 15 and was dux of Nambour State High School in 1974. He studied an arts degree in Asian studies at the Australian National University, majoring in Chinese language and Chinese history. In 1981, he married Thérèse Rein and they have three children. He worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs from 1981 and from 1988 he was Chief of Staff to the Queensland Labor Opposition Leader and later Premier, Wayne Goss. After the Goss government lost office in 1995, Rudd was hired as a Senior China Consultant by the accounting firm KPMG Australia.
  
  wn.com/Kevin_Rudd
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  Leonardo DiCaprio
  Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (/dɨˈkæpri.oʊ/; born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and film producer. He has been nominated for the Golden Globe Award eight times as an actor, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator (2004). He has also been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite Awards, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
  Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, DiCaprio started his career by appearing in television commercials prior to landing recurring roles in TV series such as the soap opera Santa Barbara and the sitcom Growing Pains in the early 1990s. He made his film debut in the comedic sci-fi horror film Critters 3 (1991) and received first notable critical praise for his performance in This Boy's Life (1993). DiCaprio obtained recognition for his subsequent work in supporting roles in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and Marvin's Room (1996), as well as leading roles in The Basketball Diaries (1995) and Romeo + Juliet (1996), before achieving international fame in James Cameron's Titanic (1997).
  
  wn.com/Leonardo_DiCaprio
• Louis Malle
  Louis Malle (30 October 1932 – 23 November 1995) was an award-winning French film director, screenwriter, and producer. His film, Le Monde du silence, won the Palme d'Or and Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1956. He was also nominated multiple times for Academy Awards later in his career.
  Malle worked in both French cinema and Hollywood, and he produced both French and English language films. His most famous films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), Atlantic City (1981), and Au revoir, les enfants (1987).
  Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries, Nord, France. He initially studied political science at the Sciences-Po before turning to film studies at IDHEC instead.
  He worked as the co-director and cameraman to Jacques Cousteau on the Oscar and Palme d'Or-winning (at the 1956 Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival respectively) documentary The Silent World (1956) and assisted Robert Bresson on A Man Escaped (French title: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut, 1956) before making his first feature, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (released in the U.K. as Lift to the Scaffold and in the U.S. originally as Frantic, later as Elevator to the Gallows) in 1957. A taut thriller featuring an original score by Miles Davis, the film made an international film star of Jeanne Moreau, at the time a leading stage actress of the state Comédie-Française. Malle was 24 years old.
  
  wn.com/Louis_Malle
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  M. Night Shyamalan
  Manoj Shyamalan ( /ˈʃæməlɑːn/;Maṉōj Śyāmaḷaṉ; Malayalam: മനോജ് ശ്യാമളന്‍; Tamil: மனோஜ் ஷியாமளன்; born 6 August 1970), known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots. He is also known for filming his movies (and staging his plots) in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was raised.
  Most of Shyamalan's commercially successful films were co-produced by Disney's Touchstone Pictures film division.
  In 2008, Shyamalan was awarded the Padma Shri by the government of India.
  Shyamalan was born in a Hindu household in Mahé, Pondicherry, India. His father, Nelliate C. Shyamalan, is a Malayali physician from Mahé. His mother, Jayalakshmi, speaks Tamil and is an obstetrician and gynecologist by profession. In the 1960s, after medical school (at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research in Pondicherry) and the birth of their first child, Veena, his parents moved to the United States. His mother returned to India to spend the last five months of her pregnancy at her parents’ home in Chennai.
  
  wn.com/M._Night_Shyamalan
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  Martin Scorsese
  Martin Charles Scorsese ( /skɔrˈsɛsɛ/; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Academy Award, Palme d'Or, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
  Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,machismo, modern crime, and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated a previous five times.
  
  wn.com/Martin_Scorsese
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  Michael Tolkin
  Michael L. Tolkin (born October 17, 1950) is an American filmmaker and novelist. He has written numerous screenplays, including The Player (1992), which he adapted from his 1988 book by the same name, and for which he received the 1993 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. A follow-up book, The Return of the Player, was published in 2006.
  Tolkin was born in New York City, New York, the son of Edith (née Leibovitch), a studio executive and film industry lawyer, and the late comedy writer Mel Tolkin.
  Michael Tolkin is a graduate of Middlebury College.
  Tolkin lives in Los Angeles with his wife Wendy Mogel (parenting expert and author of bestseller The Blessing of a Skinned Knee). They have two daughters, Susanna and Emma.^{[citation needed]}
  
  
  
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• 
  Mike Leigh
  Mike Leigh, OBE (born 20 February 1943) is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s his career moved between work for the theatre and making films for BBC Television, many of which were characterized by a gritty "kitchen sink realism" style. His well-known films include Life is Sweet (1990), the comedy-drama Career Girls (1997), the Gilbert and Sullivan biopic Topsy Turvy (1999), and the bleak working-class drama All or Nothing (2002). His most notable works are arguably Naked (1993) for which he won the Best Director Award at Cannes, the BAFTA-winning (and Oscar-nominated) Palme d'Or winner Secrets & Lies (1996) and Golden Lion winner Vera Drake (2004).
  
  wn.com/Mike_Leigh
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  Neil Jordan
  Neil Patrick Jordan (born 25 February 1950) is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay) for The Crying Game. He also won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival for The Butcher Boy.
  Jordan was born in County Sligo, the son of Angela (née O'Brien), a painter, and Michael Jordan, a professor. He was educated at St. Paul's College, Raheny. Of his religious background, Jordan said in a 1999 Salon interview: "I was brought up a Catholic and was quite religious at one stage in my life, when I was young. But it left me with no scars whatever; it just sort of vanished." He said about his current beliefs that "God is the greatest imaginary being of all time. Along with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, the invention of God is probably the greatest creation of human thought." Later, Jordan attended University College Dublin, where he studied Irish history and English literature.
  When John Boorman was filming Excalibur in Ireland, he recruited Jordan as a script consultant, which led to his doing second unit work. His first feature Angel, a tale of a musician caught up in the Troubles, starred Stephen Rea who has subsequently appeared in almost all of Jordan's films to date.
  
  wn.com/Neil_Jordan
• Nick Enright
  Nick Enright (22 December 1950 - 30 March 2003) was an Australian playwright.
  He was drama captain of St Ignatius' College, Riverview in 1964, where, like Gerard Windsor and Justin Fleming, he was taught by Melvyn Morrow. At that school, he won the 1sts Debating Premiership in both 1966 and 1967.
  During 1971 and 1972 Enright was a member of Sydney's Genesian Theatre, performing in A Doll's House and Uncle Vanya, and directing London Assurance. Enright received a pass BA from Sydney University in 1972, having decided not to proceed to an honours degree as might have been expected of one so formidably intelligent. He worked as a gofer for Sydney's Nimrod Theatre before being appointed a trainee director at the Melbourne Theatre Company. He won an Australia Council Fellowship to study directing at New York University, graduating in 1977. On his return to Australia, he joined the State Theatre Company of South Australia as actor and director, later becoming Associate Director. He was Head of Acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) during the 1980s.
  
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  Nick Park
  Nicholas Wulstan "Nick" Park, CBE (born 6 December 1958) is an English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.
  Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times, and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995), and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
  Park was born on Brookfield Park in Preston in Lancashire, England and grew up on Greenlands Estate, Preston and later moved to Walmer Bridge, where his mother still resides. He is the middle child, of five siblings. He was born to Mary Cecilia Ashton (b. 1930), a seamstress, and Roger Wulstan Park (b. 1925 d.2004), an architectural photographer.^{[citation needed]} His sister Janet lives in the South Ribble area still, in Longton. He attended Cuthbert Mayne High School (now Our Lady's Catholic High School). He grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons, and as a 13-year old made films with the help of his mother – who was a dressmaker – and her home movie camera and cotton bobbins. He also took after his father, an amateur inventor, and would send items – such as a bottle that squeezed out different coloured wools – to Blue Peter. He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) and then went to the National Film and Television School, where he started making the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out.
  
  wn.com/Nick_Park
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  Nicole Kidman
  Nicole Mary Kidman, AC (born 20 June 1967) is an Australian actress, singer, film producer, and humanitarian. Kidman began her career in 1983, starring in various Australian film and television productions until her breakthrough in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Following several films over the early 1990s, she came to worldwide recognition for her performances in Days of Thunder (1990), Far and Away (1992), and Batman Forever (1995). Kidman followed this with other successful films in the late 1990s. It was her performance in the musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001) which earned Kidman her second Golden Globe Award and first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her performance as Virginia Woolf the following year in the drama film The Hours (2002) received critical acclaim and earned Kidman the Academy Award for Best Actress.
  Kidman's other notable films include To Die For (1995), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Cold Mountain (2003), The Interpreter (2005), and Australia (2008). Her performance in 2010's Rabbit Hole (which she also produced) earned Kidman further accolades including a subsequent Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Kidman has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 1994 and for UNIFEM since 2006. Kidman's work has earned her a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three Golden Globe Awards, one BAFTA, and an Academy Award. In 2006, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia's highest civilian honor, and was also the highest-paid actress in the motion picture industry. As a result of being born to Australian parents in Hawaii, Kidman has dual citizenship in Australia and the United States.
  
  wn.com/Nicole_Kidman
• Paul Attanasio
  Paul Albert Attanasio (born November 14, 1959) is an American screenwriter and producer of film and television, who is currently an executive producer on the television series House.
  Attanasio was born in The Bronx, New York City, the son of Connie, a real estate broker, and Joseph Attanasio, a commercial consultant. Raised in the Pelham Bay section of The Bronx, he moved with his family to Tenafly, New Jersey. He is a 1981 graduate of Harvard College where he lived in Currier House, and earned his law degree at Harvard Law School in 1984. His wife Katie Jacobs is his producing partner; Attanasio and Jacobs have three children: Annabelle, John, and Grace. He is the brother of Mark Attanasio, Los Angeles investment manager who is the principal owner of the Milwaukee Brewers.
  He was a film critic for The Washington Post from 1984 to 1987. He started writing for television with the CBS sitcom Doctor Doctor and the NBC crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street, which he created. In 1994 he wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay adaptation for the drama Quiz Show. He would later write the screenplays for the thriller Disclosure, the gangster movie Donnie Brasco, the science fiction film Sphere, and the political thriller The Sum of All Fears. In 2000 he returned to television and started executive producing, in addition to writing, the medical drama Gideon's Crossing and the pilot for R.U.S.H. Along with David Shore, he is one of the creators of the TV series House. In 2006 he wrote the screenplay for the dramatic film The Good German. According to various reports, Attanasio is co-writing a new film based on John Steinbeck's novel, East of Eden.
  
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  Paul Keating
  Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944) is a former Australian politician who served as the 24th Prime Minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996.
  Keating was first elected to the House of Representatives at the 1969 election as the Labor member for Blaxland in New South Wales. He came to prominence as the reformist Treasurer of the government of Bob Hawke, which came to power at the 1983 election. In 1991, Keating defeated Hawke for the Labor leadership in a partyroom ballot and became prime minister. He went on to lead Labor to a record fifth consecutive victory at the 1993 election against the Liberal-National coalition led by John Hewson. Many had considered this election unwinnable for Labor due to poor polls for the 10-year-incumbent federal Labor government, and the effects of the early 1990s recession on Australia. Keating Labor lost the subsequent 1996 election to the Liberal/National Coalition led by John Howard.
  Keating grew up in Bankstown, a working-class suburb of Sydney. He was one of four children of Matthew Keating, a boilermaker and trade-union representative of Irish Catholic descent, and his wife, Minnie. Keating was educated at Catholic schools; he was the first practising Catholic Labor prime minister since James Scullin left office in 1932. Leaving De La Salle College Bankstown (now LaSalle Catholic College) at 15, Keating decided not to pursue higher education, and worked as a clerk at the Electricity Commission of New South Wales and then as a trade union research assistant. He joined the Labor Party as soon as he was eligible. In 1966, he became president of the ALP’s Youth Council. In the 1960s Keating managed ‘The Ramrods’ rock band.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Keating
• Paul Mercurio
  Paul Joseph Mercurio (born 31 March 1963) is an Australian actor, dancer and TV presenter. Mercurio is well known for his lead role in Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom (1992). His father was the character actor Gus Mercurio.
  Mercurio was born in Swan Hill, Victoria in 1963 and began ballet at nine. By the age of 19 in 1982, he was Principal Dancer with the Sydney Dance Company – a position he held for 10 years. During this time, he was commissioned to choreograph six works performed by the company. Mercurio left the Sydney Dance Company to found the Australian Choreographic Ensemble which danced from 1992 to 1998, where he was the Director, Principal Dancer and Principal Choreographer.
  Mercurio made his film debut in Strictly Ballroom, receiving an Australian Film Institute Award nomination in 1993. His film credits have included: Exit to Eden, Back of Beyond, Cosi, Red Ribbon Blues, Welcome to Woop Woop, The Dark Planet, The First 9½ Weeks, Kick and Sydney: A Story of a City. He starred, wrote, choreographed, produced and directed the short film Spilt Milk. Mercurio made his TV debut in a documentary on his life called Life's Burning Desire in 1992. He starred in the lead role of Joseph in the Emmy award–winning US TV mini-series The Bible: Joseph in 1995.
  
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  Pedro Almodóvar
  Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpeðɾo almoˈðoβar kaβaˈʎeɾo]; born 25 September 1949) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.
  Almodóvar is arguably the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humor, strong colors and glossy décor. Desire, passion, family and identity are among Almodóvar’s most prevalent themes. His films enjoy a worldwide following and he has become a major figure on the stage of world cinema.
  He founded Spanish film production company El Deseo S.A. with his younger brother Agustín Almodóvar who has produced almost all of Pedro’s films. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.
  Pedro Almodóvar Caballero was born in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain, a rural small town of Ciudad Real, a province of Castile-La Mancha in the administrative district of Almagro. La Mancha is the windswept region of flat lands made famous by Don Quijote. He was born as one of four children (two boys, two girls) in a large and impoverished family of peasant stock. His father, Antonio Almodóvar, who could barely read or write, worked most of his life hauling barrels of wine by mule. Almodóvar's mother, Francisca Caballero, turned her son into a part time teacher of literacy in the village and also a letter reader and transcriber for the neighbors. When Pedro was eight years old, the family sent him to study at a religious boarding school in the city of Cáceres, Extremadura, in the west of the country, with the hope that he might someday become a priest. His family eventually joined him in Cáceres, where his father opened a gas station and his mother opened a bodega where she sold her own wine.
  
  wn.com/Pedro_Almodóvar
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  Peter Jackson
  Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, who is well known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001 to 2003), adapted from the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien.
  He won international attention early in his career with his "splatstick" horror comedies beginning with Bad Taste (1987) before coming to mainstream prominence with Heavenly Creatures (1994), for which he shared an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay nomination with his wife, Fran Walsh. Jackson has been awarded three Academy Awards in his career, including the award for Best Director in 2003; he also won the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Saturn Award for Best Direction the same year.
  His films also include Meet the Feebles (1989), Braindead (1992), Forgotten Silver (1995), The Frighteners (1996), King Kong (2005),The Lovely Bones (2009), and the upcoming The Lord of the Rings prequels The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Hobbit: There and Back Again (2013). He is also the producer of District 9 (2009) and The Adventures of Tintin (2011).
  
  wn.com/Peter_Jackson
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  Peter Weir
  Peter Lindsay Weir, AM (born 21 August 1944) is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office hits—including the Academy Award nominees Witness, Dead Poets Society, Green Card, The Truman Show and Master and Commander.
  Weir was born in Sydney, the son of Peggy (née Barnsley) and Lindsay Weir, a real estate agent. Weir attended The Scots College and Vaucluse Boys' High School before studying art and law at the University of Sydney. His interest in film was sparked by his meeting with fellow students, including Phillip Noyce and the future members of the Sydney filmmaking collective Ubu Films.
  After leaving university in the mid-1960s he joined Sydney television station ATN-7, where he worked as a production assistant on the groundbreaking satirical comedy program The Mavis Bramston Show. During this period, using station facilities, he made his first two experimental short films, Count Vim's Last Exercise and The Life and Flight of Reverend Buckshotte.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Weir
• Philip Kaufman
  Philip Kaufman (born October 23, 1936) is an American film director and screenwriter. His movies have adapted novels of widely different types – from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being to Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun; from Tom Wolfe’s heroic epic The Right Stuff to the erotic writings of Anaïs Nin’s Henry & June. His greatest success has been the film The Right Stuff which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.
  Kaufman was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Elizabeth (Brandau) and Nathan Kaufman. He attended the University of Chicago and later Harvard Law School. After spending some time backpacking in Europe with his wife Rose, Kaufman relocated back to the United States. His time in Europe heavily influenced Kaufman's decision to become a filmmaker, when he and his wife would wander into small movie theaters showcasing the works of John Cassavetes among others. He held some odd jobs including mailman. During his frequent travels he met Anaïs Nin, lover of writer Henry Miller. The relationship between Miller and Nin was the inspiration for Kaufman's film Henry and June.
  
  wn.com/Philip_Kaufman
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  Quentin Tarantino
  Quentin Jerome Tarantino (pronunciation: /ˌtærənˈtiːnoʊ/; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. He has received many industry awards, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA and the Palme d'Or and had been nominated for an Emmy and Grammy.
  Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Tarantino was an avid film fan. His career began in the late 1980's, when he wrote and directed My Best Friend's Birthday. Its screenplay would form the basis for True Romance. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence. His films include Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (2003, 2004), Death Proof (2007), and Inglourious Basterds (2009).
  His movies are generally characterized by stylistic influences from grindhouse, kung fu, and spaghetti western films. Tarantino also frequently collaborates with his friend and fellow filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.
  
  wn.com/Quentin_Tarantino
• Richard Condon
  Richard Thomas Condon (March 18, 1915 in New York City, New York – April 9, 1996 in Dallas, Texas) was a prolific and popular American political novelist whose satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers. More than being particularly clever genre works, however, all 26 books were written in a style nearly always instantly recognizable as Condon's, while their focus was almost always obsessively directed at monetary greed and political corruption. Fast-moving and easily accessible, they generally combined elements of political satire, bare-knuckled outrage at the greed and corruption of those in power, and were written with extravagant characterizations and a uniquely sparkling and frequently humorous style. Condon himself once said: "Every book I've ever written has been about abuse of power. I feel very strongly about that. I'd like people to know how deeply their politicians wrong them." Condon occasionally achieved bestseller status, and many of his books were made into films, but today he is primarily remembered for two of his works: an early book, The Manchurian Candidate of 1959, and, many years later, for four novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Condon
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  Robert Altman
  Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.
  His films MASH (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), and Nashville (1975) have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
  Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen (née Matthews), a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler, who came from an upper-class family. Altman's ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman, Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name from "Altmann" to "Altman". Altman had a Catholic upbringing, but he did not continue to practice as a Catholic as an adult, although he has been referred to as "a sort of Catholic" and a Catholic director. He was educated at Jesuit schools, including Rockhurst High School, in Kansas City. He graduated from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri in 1943.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Altman
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  Roddy Doyle
  Roddy Doyle (Irish: Ruaidhrí Ó Dúill; born 8 May 1958 in Dublin) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He was awarded the Booker Prize in 1993.
  Doyle grew up in Kilbarrack, Dublin. His mother, Ita Bolger Doyle, was first cousin of the short story writer Maeve Brennan. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from University College Dublin. He spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1993.
  He established a creative writing centre, "Fighting Words", which opened in Dublin in January 2009. It was inspired by a visit to his friend Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia project in San Francisco. His personal notes and work books reside at the National Library of Ireland.
  He is an atheist. He signed a petition supporting journalist Suzanne Breen, who faced gaol for refusing to divulge her sources in court. He joined thousands of angry people from Clontarf to protest against an attempt by Dublin City Council to construct 9ft-high barriers which would interfere with one of his favourite views.
  
  wn.com/Roddy_Doyle
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  Roman Polanski
  Roman Polanski (born 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers." Polanski's films have inspired diverse directors, including the Coen brothers,Atom Egoyan,Darren Aronofsky,Park Chan-wook,Abel Ferrara, and Wes Craven.
  Born in Paris to Polish parents, he moved with his family back to Poland in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Holocaust and was educated in Poland and became a director of both art house and commercial films. Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for a United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but was beaten by Federico Fellini's 8½. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, along with two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival in France. In the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning with Repulsion (1965). In 1968 he moved to the United States, and cemented his status by directing the Oscar-winning horror film Rosemary's Baby (1968).
  
  wn.com/Roman_Polanski
• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
  Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (born 7 May 1927) is a Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant. Their films won six Academy Awards.
  She was born Ruth Prawer in Cologne, Germany to Jewish parents Marcus and Eleanora Prawer. Marcus was a lawyer from Poland and Eleanora's father was cantor of Cologne's biggest synagogue. The family fled the Nazi regime in 1939, emigrating to Britain. Her elder brother, Siegbert Salomon (1925–2012), was honorary fellow of The Queen's College and professor emeritus of German at the University of Oxford, an expert on Heine and horror films.
  During World War II she lived in Hendon in London, experienced the Blitz and began to speak English rather than German. She became a British citizen in 1948. She received her MA in English literature from Queen Mary College, University of London in 1951. She also married Cyrus H. Jhabvala, an Indian Parsi architect, in 1951.
  
  wn.com/Ruth_Prawer_Jhabvala
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  Sam Raimi
  Samuel Marshall "Sam" Raimi (October 23, 1959) is an American film director, producer, actor and writer. He is best known for directing cult horror/comedy films the Evil Dead series, the action/superhero film Darkman, crime thriller A Simple Plan and supernatural horror Drag Me to Hell, as well as the blockbuster Spider-Man films and the producer of the successful TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Legend of the Seeker (also the creator) and Spartacus: Blood and Sand. He is also the founder of Renaissance Pictures.
  Raimi, the fourth of five children, was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, and grew up in Birmingham, Michigan. He was raised in Conservative Judaism; his ancestors immigrated from Russia and Hungary. Raimi attended Groves High School, and Michigan State University and majored in English, leaving after three semesters to film The Evil Dead. He is Ted Raimi's older brother.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Raimi
• Sonia Todd
  Sonia Todd (born 1959; Adelaide) is an Australian actress.
  She studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art and starred in the play Strictly Ballroom, directed by Baz Luhrmann. She also played the waitress, Sylvia, in the film Shine directed by Scott Hicks, in the café scene where Geoffrey Rush plays Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov to an understandably stunned audience.
  Todd is married to Rhett Walton and has two sons (born in 1992 and 2000), the first from a previous relationship.
  Todd became known from the role of Georgia Rattray in the television series Police Rescue, for which she won for an AFI Award in 1991. She was also nominated for an AFI Award for her role in the four-part mini-series The Potato Factory (2000).
  From 2001–06, 2007, 2009 (guest), she played "Meg Fountain" in McLeod's Daughters.
  Todd held a recurring role in All Saints from late 2007 to early 2008; she portrayed psychiatrist Dr Elizabeth Foy. She also appeared in All Saints previously, playing the part of Kate Larson
  
  wn.com/Sonia_Todd
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  Steve Bisley
  Steve Bisley (born 26 December 1951 at Lake Munmorah, New South Wales) is an Australian film and television actor, who attended the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA).
  Bisley's major television roles have included the Australian police dramas Water Rats and Police Rescue, as well as Halifax f.p.. He had a role in the Australian television medical drama series The Flying Doctors. He also had a regular appearance in the third and final season of the critically acclaimed Australian satirical television series Frontline. Bisley also played Dr Henry King in the ABC-TV series G. P..
  In his youth and continuing to present day he has been close friends with actor Mel Gibson, with whom he attended NIDA and starred in the movies Summer City and Mad Max. The latter role is his best known performance, in which he played "Jim Goose", the best friend and partner to Gibson's character. The Mad Max trilogy has since became a cult classic, and was the film that launched Gibson to mainstream stardom.
  
  wn.com/Steve_Bisley
• Steve Box
  Steve Box (born 23 January 1967 in Bristol) is an English animator and director who works for Aardman Animations.
  His early work in animation included the popular British claymation television series The Trap Door for Bristol-based animation studio CMTB Animation.
  Box joined Aardman Animations in 1990. He directed the video for the Spice Girls' "Viva Forever" in 1998. He won a BAFTA Award in 1998 for his 11-minute animated film Stage Fright which he wrote, directed and produced. He also provided the voice for the character of Vince in the TV series Rex the Runt.
  He was the key animator for Aardman's film Chicken Run and was an animator for the Wallace and Gromit films The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, before co-writing and co-directing the much-anticipated Wallace and Gromit feature film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Nick Park. The film scooped his second BAFTA and his first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The film has also collected another 22 international awards and 12 other nominations for other awards.The film was a massive success at the Annie Awards where it won 10 Annie awards out of its 16 nominations.
  
  wn.com/Steve_Box
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  Steven Spielberg
  Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio.
  Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes puts Spielberg's wealth at $3.0 billion.
  
  wn.com/Steven_Spielberg
• Steven Zaillian
  Steven Ernest Bernard Zaillian (born January 30, 1953) is an American screenwriter, director, editor, producer, and founder of Film Rites, a film production company. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Schindler's List and he has been nominated for Awakenings, Gangs of New York and Moneyball. The Times called him "the most artful and subtle screenwriter Hollywood has had since Robert Towne."^{[citation needed]}
  Zaillian was born in Fresno, California, the son of Jim Zaillian, a radio news reporter. He attended Sonoma State University, graduated from San Francisco State University and lives in Los Angeles. He is of Armenian descent.
  
  wn.com/Steven_Zaillian
• Tara Morice
  Tara Morice (born 23 June 1964) is an Australian actress, singer, and dancer.
  Born in Hobart, Tasmania, Morice also lived in Sydney, Alice Springs and Adelaide as a child. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Australian History and English from the Australian National University and graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1987.
  She has worked extensively on stage in Australia, including productions for the Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare Company, Griffin Theatre Company,^{[clarification needed]}Company B, and the Ensemble Theatre. She was a part of "Strictly Ballroom" when it premiered as a stage play in 1988.
  Her first film appearance was as Fran, the lead female role in the 1992 film Strictly Ballroom (directed by Baz Luhrmann), for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and an Australian Film Institute award. Morice also appeared on the film's soundtrack, singing a duet of the Cyndi Lauper song "Time After Time" with Mark Williams.
  
  wn.com/Tara_Morice
• 
  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
• 
  Vanessa Hudgens
  Vanessa Anne Hudgens (born December 14, 1988) is an American actress and singer.
  Hudgens rose to prominence playing Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical series. Hudgens also has appeared in several television programs including Quintuplets, Still Standing, The Brothers García, Drake & Josh, and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. In 2009, she earned critical acclaim for her role in the film Bandslam.
  In addition to acting, Hudgens released her debut album V on September 26, 2006 which entered the Billboard 200 at number twenty four, and was later certified Gold. Her second album, Identified, was released on July 1, 2008 in the United States.
  Hudgens was born in Salinas, California, and has lived with her parents throughout the West Coast from Oregon to Southern California. Her mother, Gina (née Guangco), held a succession of office jobs, and her father, Gregory Hudgens, was a firefighter. She has a younger sister, Stella Hudgens, who is also an actress. She was raised as a Roman Catholic. Hudgens is of mixed ethnic background, as her father is of Irish and Native American descent, and her mother, a native of Manila, Philippines, is of Chinese-Filipino-Spanish descent. All of her grandparents were musicians.
  
  wn.com/Vanessa_Hudgens
• 
  Whoopi Goldberg
  Whoopi Goldberg ( /ˈhwʊpi/, born Caryn Elaine Johnson; November 13, 1955) is an American comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.
  Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple (1985) playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe Award for her role in the film. In 1990, she starred as Oda Mae Brown, a psychic helping a slain man (Patrick Swayze) find his killer in the blockbuster film Ghost. This performance won her a second Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Notable later films include Sister Act and Sister Act 2, The Lion King, Made in America, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Girl, Interrupted and Rat Race. She is also acclaimed for her roles as the bartender Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Terry Doolittle in Jumpin' Jack Flash. More recently, she had performed the voice of Stretch in Toy Story 3 and made an appearance in Glee as Carmen Tibideaux.
  
  wn.com/Whoopi_Goldberg
• 
  Woody Allen
  Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an award-winning American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, and playwright, whose career spans over half a century.
  He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for television and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen started performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.
  By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into more dramatic material influenced by European art films during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s. Allen often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. The best-known of his over 40 films include the Academy Award-winners Annie Hall (1977), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Midnight in Paris (2011); and the Golden Globe-winning The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Critic Roger Ebert has described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema."
  
  wn.com/Woody_Allen
• 
  Zac Efron
  Zachary David Alexander "Zac" Efron (born October 18, 1987) is an American actor and singer. He began acting professionally in the early 2000s and became known with his lead roles in the Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical, the WB series Summerland, and the 2007 film version of the Broadway musical Hairspray. Efron has since starred in the films 17 Again, Me and Orson Welles, Charlie St. Cloud, New Year's Eve, and The Lucky One.
  In 2007, Rolling Stone declared him the "poster boy for tweenyboppers" and featured him in their late August 2007 issue.
  Efron was born in San Luis Obispo, California, and later moved to Arroyo Grande, California. His father, David Efron, is an electrical engineer at a power station, and his mother, Starla Baskett, is a former secretary who worked at the same power plant. Efron has a younger brother, Dylan, and had, as he has described it, a "normal childhood" in a middle class family. He is an agnostic, having never been religious. His surname, "Efron", means "lark" in Hebrew (his paternal grandfather was Jewish).
  
  wn.com/Zac_Efron

Untitled Baz Luhrmann ()

Genres

Taglines:

Quotes:

• Bazmark Fanfare
• Young Hearts Run Free (The Overture mix)
• Lovefool (Snooper version)
• Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps
• Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen) Mix
• Che Gelida Manina (Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen)
• When Doves Cry (extended mix)
• Love Is in the Air (Fran mix)
• NUTBOD (Houseboats of Kashmir mix)
• Happy Feet (High Heels mix)
• Angel (7″ mix)
• Os Quindos de Ya Ya
• Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In
• Time After Time (The S.F.E. version)
• I’m Losing You
• Now Until the Break of Day (single version)
• Jupiter (edit)

• timeline:
• 2012
• 2011
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• timeline:
• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003
• 2002
• 2001