• 15th Empire Awards
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• Alan Arkin
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• Ape
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• BAFTA
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• Bob Balaban
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• Jump (2000 film)
• Karl Urban
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• Lorraine Ashbourne
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• Woody Harrelson
• Wool, Dorset
• Zoo
• 
  

• Bailrigg FM
  Bailrigg FM (Formerly known as University Radio Bailrigg (URB) and Radio Bailrigg) is the radio station for Lancaster University, operating in a music radio format predominantly featuring indie music. During evening and weekend hours programming moves to specialist content where the presenter is free (within reason) to play whatever they wish. This can range from classical music to heavy metal rock with much in between.
  The station has a long history and is one of the oldest student radio stations in the country Also as well as being the first student station licensed to broadcast on FM. Bailrigg FM broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - all year round. It originally broadcast to the university campus on 312m medium wave using an inductive loop aerial system around the various halls of residence. Now listeners on campus can tune in on 87.7 MHz, or by going to the station's website and listening to the live webstream.
  The station has received several awards in the national 'Student Radio Awards' over the years, including Best Website and Best Station Sound.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Bailrigg_FM
• 
  Crouch End
  Coordinates: 51°34′47″N 0°07′25″W / 51.579712°N 0.123729°W / 51.579712; -0.123729
  Crouch End is an area of north London, in the London Borough of Haringey.
  Crouch End is in a valley between Harringay to the east, Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green to the north, Finsbury Park and Archway to the south and Highgate to the west. Crouch End - the prosaic name is said^{[by whom?]} to come from the Latin 'crux', a cross or crossroads, plus 'End', as it is at the eastern end of a valley. Where the clock tower is was once a local house called Crouch Hall.
  To the immediate west, it is bounded by Highgate Wood, and the adjacent Queen's Wood, as well as a large expanse of playing fields. To the north is Alexandra Park and to the south Finsbury Park. The Parkland Walk, a former railway line, connects these two parks. Other parks in the area include Stationers' Park, Priory Park and Crouch Hill Park.
  Crouch End grew up as a hamlet on the old medieval route from London to the north. At this time it was governed as part of Hornsey which became a parish in around 1300. This heavily-wooded area contained farms and villas, one of which was Crouch Hall, probably built in 1681 at the crossroads of what came to be known as Crouch End.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Crouch_End
• 
  Ealing
  Coordinates: 51°30′40″N 0°18′21″W / 51.5111°N 0.3058°W / 51.5111; -0.3058
  Ealing is a suburban area of west London, England and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Ealing. It is located 7.9 miles (12.7 km) west of Charing Cross and around 12 miles (19.3 km) from the City of London. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically a rural village in the county of Middlesex and formed an ancient parish. Improvement in communications with London, culminating with the opening of the railway station in 1838, shifted the local economy to market garden supply and eventually to suburban development. As part of the growth of London in the 20th century, Ealing significantly expanded and increased in population, becoming a municipal borough in 1901 and has formed part of Greater London since 1965. It now forms a significant commercial and retail centre with a developed night time economy.
  The Saxon name for Ealing was recorded c.700 as 'Gillingas', meaning 'place of the people associated with Gilla', from the personal name Gilla and the Old English suffix '-ingas', meaning 'people of'. Over the centuries, the name has changed, and has been known as 'Illing', 1130; 'Gilling', 1243; and 'Ylling', 1254, until 'Ealing' became the standard spelling in the 19th century.
  
  wn.com/Ealing
• 
  England
  England ⁱ/ˈɪŋɡlənd/ is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, while the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separate it from continental Europe. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
  The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world. The English language, the Anglican Church, and English law—the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world—developed in England, and the country's parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's Royal Society laid the foundations of modern experimental science.
  
  wn.com/England
• 
  Focus on the Family
  Focus on the Family (FOTF or FotF) is an American evangelical Christian tax-exempt non-profit organization founded in 1977 by psychologist James Dobson, and is based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Focus on the Family is one of a number of evangelical parachurch organizations that rose to prominence in the 1980s. A component of the American Christian right, it is active in promoting interdenominational work toward its views on social conservative public policy. Focus on the Family is also currently the primary sponsor for Phil Vischer's JellyTelly.
  Focus on the Family's stated mission is "nurturing and defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide." The core promotional activities of the organization include a daily radio broadcast by Dobson and his colleagues, providing free resources and family counseling according to Focus on the Family views, and publishing magazines, videos, and audio recordings. The organization also produces programs for targeted audiences, such as Adventures in Odyssey for children, dramas, and Family Minute with James Dobson. Both Focus on the Family and Adventures in Odyssey are broadcast on Trans World Radio in the UK.
  
  wn.com/Focus_on_the_Family
• 
  Iraq
  Iraq (/ɪˈræk/ or ⁱ/ɪˈrɑːk/; Arabic: العراق‎ al-‘Irāq); officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic:  جمهورية العراق (help·info) Jumhūriyyat al-‘Irāq), is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.
  Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the southwest and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south. Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country.
  Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.
  Historically, Iraq was the center of the Abbasid Arabic Islamic Empire. Iraq has been known to the west by the Greek toponym 'Mesopotamia' (Land between the rivers) and has been home to continuous successive civilizations since the 6th millennium BC. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is often referred to as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of writing, law and the wheel. At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Abbasid empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.
  
  wn.com/Iraq
• 
  Lancaster University
  Lancaster University, officially The University of Lancaster, is a research-intensive British university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established by Royal Charter in 1964 and initially based in St Leonard's Gate until moving to a purpose-built 300 acre campus at Bailrigg in 1968. Lancaster expanded rapidly and now has the 11th highest research quality in the UK and is the 16th highest ranking research institution according to the latest Research Assessment Exercise. The university has an annual income of £177 million, 3,025 staff and 12,695 students. Along with the universities of Durham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York, Lancaster is a member of the N8 Group of research universities. Lancaster was ranked 7th in the 2013 Guardian University Guide, 9th in the 2013 Complete University Guide, 8th in the Times Higher Education Table, and 9th in the 2012 Good University Guide. It was also ranked 124th internationally in THE World University Rankings 2011 153rd in the 2011 QS World University Rankings, and 9th best university in the world under 50 years old.
  
  wn.com/Lancaster_University
• 
  London
  London ⁱ/ˈlʌndən/ is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
  London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is the world's leading financial centre alongside New York City and has the fifth-largest city GDP in the world (and the largest in Europe). London has been described as a world cultural capital. It was the world's most visited city during 2011 and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe. In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.
  
  wn.com/London
• 
  Monkey World
  Coordinates: 50°41′50″N 2°13′04″W / 50.697311°N 2.217725°W / 50.697311; -2.217725 Monkey World ( fully referred to as Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre) is a 65-acre (26.3 ha) ape and monkey sanctuary and rescue centre near Wool, Dorset, England. Set up in 1987 by the late Jim Cronin, and later operated by both him and his wife Alison, it was originally intended to provide a home for abused chimpanzees used as props by Spanish beach photographers, but is now home to many different species of primates.
  Monkey World works with foreign governments to stop the illegal smuggling of wild primates.
  The facility made the news in January 2008 with what The Guardian called "the world's biggest rescue mission of its kind," when it saved 88 capuchin monkeys from a laboratory in Santiago, Chile, where some of the animals had been kept in solitary cages for up to 20 years. The operation was carried out at the request of the laboratory, and with help from the Chilean Air Force, who flew the animals to Bournemouth airport with special permission from the British government.
  
  wn.com/Monkey_World
• 
  North London
  North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South London. However, it is also often used in comparisons with Central London, East London and West London.
  The River Thames divides Greater London into two parts. The northern part includes most of the historic central areas including the City, the East End and the West End; and the majority of the London Underground network.
  This area is made up of the City of London and the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Brent, Camden, Ealing, Enfield, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, and Westminster. This definition is used by the Boundary Commission for England. The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames includes sections on both sides of the River Thames. The boundary commission class the entire district as part of South London.
  
  wn.com/North_London
• 
  Royal Court Theatre
  The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre. In 1956 it was acquired by and is home to a resident company, the English Stage Company.
  The first theatre on Lower George Street, off Sloane Square, was the converted Nonconformist Ranelagh Chapel, opened as a theatre in 1870 under the name The New Chelsea Theatre. Marie Litton became its manager in 1871, hiring Walter Emden to remodel the interior, and it was renamed the Court Theatre.
  Several of W. S. Gilbert's early plays were staged here, including Randall's Thumb, Creatures of Impulse (with music by Alberto Randegger), Great Expectations (adapted from the Dickens novel), and On Guard (all in 1871); The Happy Land (1873, with Gilbert Abbott à Beckett; Gilbert's most controversial play); The Wedding March, translated from Un Chapeau de Paille d'Italie by Eugène Marin Labiche (1873); The Blue-Legged Lady, translated from La Dame aux Jambes d'Azur by Labiche and Marc-Michel (1874); and Broken Hearts (1875). By 1878, management of the theatre was shared by John Hare and W. H. Kendal.
  
  wn.com/Royal_Court_Theatre
• 
  Ruislip Manor
  Ruislip Manor is an area of Ruislip in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It is located approximately 13 miles (20.9 km) north west of Charing Cross.
  The area was originally owned by King's College, Cambridge, as a part of the Manor of Ruislip. At the turn of the 20th century, Ruislip Manor was undeveloped rural land until a halt was constructed in 1912 as part of the Metropolitan Railway running between Harrow and Uxbridge. George Ball later purchased 186 acres to the south of the railway line from King's College with construction of the new estate taking place between 1933 and 1939. Ball hoped the new housing would be available to the working man who wished to purchase his own home. The original plan under the "Manor Homes" name had been for 2,322 homes which Ball agreed would not number more than 14 per acre. The total number of houses was gradually reduced by 50 in 1934, then a further 35 in 1935, to allow the inclusion of Lady Bankes Primary School, St. Paul's Church and the Black Bull public house.
  
  wn.com/Ruislip_Manor
• 
  Shaftesbury Avenue
  Shaftesbury Avenue is a major street in central London, England, named after Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, that runs in a north-easterly direction from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus.
  Shaftesbury Avenue was built in the late 19th century (1877–86) by the architect George Vulliamy and the engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette to provide a north-south traffic artery through the crowded districts of St. Giles and Soho. It was also part of a slum clearance measure, to push impoverished workers out of the city centre^{[citation needed]} although the street's construction was stalled by legislation requiring rehousing some of these displaced residents, overcrowding persisted. Charles Booth's Poverty Map shows the neighbourhood makeup shortly after Shaftesbury Avenue opened. It is generally considered the heart of London's West End theatre district, with the Lyric, Apollo, Gielgud and Queen's theatres clustered together on the north side of the road between Piccadilly Circus and Charing Cross Road. At the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road there is also the large Palace Theatre. Finally, the north-eastern end of the road has another large theatre, called the Shaftesbury Theatre.
  
  wn.com/Shaftesbury_Avenue
• 
  The County College
  The County College, mostly known as County College, is a constituent college of the University of Lancaster. The establishment of the college was financed through the benefaction of Lancashire County Council and it is named after it. The original college building, County Main, was opened by HM The Queen in 1969.
  The college residences were expanded in 1978 with the construction of County West. In 2004 the college further expanded, after being granted buildings that had been vacated by Cartmel College. These buildings have since been renovated and named County South and now house a relocated college bar. In October 2006 County South expanded with the opening of three large residence houses built on the site of demolished Cartmel residence blocks. County West was demolished in August 2007 and in January 2008 the new construction of the 'Townhouses' on 'County Field' was completed. Following this expansion, the existing 'County Main' block was also renovated.
  The original college building is now known as County Main. A notable feature of the building is the large old oak tree in the college quad. The building was erected around the tree without damage to its roots. The College is very conscious of its responsibility for the health of the tree and beneath its shade are two bench seats erected in memory of two former College Officers. More recently County Main has been renovated to include modern standard accommodation on the top two floors and classrooms and offices on the bottom two floors.
  
  wn.com/The_County_College

• 
  Abigail Breslin
  Abigail Kathleen Breslin (born April 14, 1996) is an American actress. She is one of the youngest actresses ever to be nominated for an Academy Award.
  Breslin appeared in her first commercial when she was only three years old, and in her first film, Signs, at the age of five. Her subsequent films include Little Miss Sunshine, Nim's Island, Definitely, Maybe, My Sister's Keeper, Zombieland and Rango.
  Breslin was born in New York City, the daughter of Kim, who manages her career, and Michael, a telecommunications expert, computer programmer, and consultant. Breslin has two older brothers, Ryan and Spencer, who are also actors. Breslin lives in New York with her family, which her maternal grandparents have described as "very close-knit". She is named after First Lady of the United States Abigail Adams.
  
  wn.com/Abigail_Breslin
• Alan Arkin
  Alan Wolf Arkin (born March 26, 1934) is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as Wait Until Dark, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, Marley & Me, and Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2006. He is the father of actors Adam Arkin, Anthony Arkin, and Matthew Arkin.
  Arkin was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Beatrice (née Wortis), a teacher, and David I. Arkin, a painter and writer who mostly worked as a teacher. Arkin was raised in a Jewish family with "no emphasis on religion"; his maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Odessa, Ukraine. The family moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles when Arkin was 11 years old, but an eight-month Hollywood strike cost Arkin's father a set designer job he had wanted to take. During the 1950s Red Scare, Arkin's parents were accused of being Communists, which led to David losing his job when he refused to answer questions about his political affiliation. David challenged the dismissal and was ultimately vindicated, but only after his death.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Arkin
• 
  Alan Bates
  Sir Alain Arthur Bates CBE (17 February 1934 – 27 December 2003) was an English actor who came to prominence in the 1960s, a time of high creativity in British cinema, when he appeared in films ranging from the popular children's story Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving. He is also known for his performance with Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek, as well as his roles in King of Hearts, Georgy Girl, Far From the Madding Crowd, and The Fixer, which gave him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In 1969, he starred in the Ken Russell film Women in Love with Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson.
  Bates went on to star in The Go-Between, An Unmarried Woman, Nijinsky, and The Rose with Bette Midler, as well as playing varied roles in television drama, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Harold Pinter's The Collection, A Voyage Round My Father, An Englishman Abroad (as Guy Burgess), and Pack of Lies. He also continued to appear on the stage, notably in the plays of Simon Gray, such as Butley and Otherwise Engaged.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Bates
• 
  Albert Einstein
  Albert Einstein ( /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪnʃtaɪn] ( listen); 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. While best known for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc² (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"), he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory within physics.
  Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole.
  
  wn.com/Albert_Einstein
• Alex Rider
  Alex Rider is a series of spy novels by British author Anthony Horowitz about a 14-15 year old spy named Alex Rider. The series is aimed primarily at young adults. Nine novels have been published to date, as well as three graphic novels, three short stories and a supplementary book. The first novel, Stormbreaker, was first released in the United Kingdom in 2000 and was adapted into a motion picture in 2006 starring Alex Pettyfer. A video game was released in 2006, based on the film. The novels are published by Walker Books in the United Kingdom. They were first published by Puffin in the United States, but have also been published more recently by Philomel, also an imprint of Penguin Books. The graphic novels are published by Walker in the United Kingdom, and by Philomel in the United States.
  It was released in the United Kingdom in 2000 and in the United States in 2001. Alex, the main character, is recruited by the British secret service after discovering his uncle's assassination. Once recruited, he goes undercover as a scholar winning a prize to explore suspicious rumors of some sort of virus at Herod Sayle's manufacturing plant in Cornwall.
  
  wn.com/Alex_Rider
• 
  Andrew Garfield
  Andrew Russell Garfield (born 20 August 1983) is an American-English actor. His early roles include the films Lions for Lambs, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Boy A, which garnered him the 2007 BAFTA Television Award for "Best Actor". Garfield achieved wider recognition and critical acclaim for his role as Eduardo Saverin in the 2010 film The Social Network, a role which earned him Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. Garfield is a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom. He will portray the title character in the 2012 superhero film The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot of the Spider-Man film series.
  Garfield was born in Los Angeles, the son of a British mother from Essex and an American father from California. His family moved to England when he was three years old. Garfield is Jewish and was raised in a "middle class home". His parents ran a small interior design business; his father, Richard, later became head coach of the Guildford City Swimming Club, and his mother is a teaching assistant at a nursery school. He also has an older brother who is a doctor. Garfield was raised in Surrey, England and was a gymnast during his early years. He attended Priory Preparatory School in Banstead and later City of London Freemen's School in nearby Ashtead, before training at the Central School of Speech and Drama, from which he graduated in 2004.
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Garfield
• 
  Andy Serkis
  Andrew Clement "Andy" Serkis (born 20 April 1964) is an English film actor, director and author.
  He is popularly known for playing through motion capture to animate and voice computer-generated characters: Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and its upcoming prequel The Hobbit, King Kong in the eponymous 2005 film, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin.
  Andrew also earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of Ian Brady in the British television film Longford. Serkis's motion captured work have been critically acclaimed, especially as Gollum for which he earned several award nominations, becoming the first motion captured actor to win a Empire Award, a Saturn Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
  Serkis, one of five children, was born and brought up in Ruislip Manor in west London. His mother, Lylie (née Weech), was English and taught disabled children; his father, Clement Serkis, was an Iraqi gynaecologist of Armenian ethnicity. His ancestors' original surname had been "Sarkisian".
  
  wn.com/Andy_Serkis
• 
  Anil Kapoor
  Anil Kapoor (Hindi: अनिल कपूर; Punjabi: ਅਨਿਲ ਕਪੂਰ; born 24 December 1959) is an Indian actor, producer and director who has appeared in many Bollywood films and more recently international films.
  He won his first Filmfare Award, in the Best Supporting Actor category, for his role in Yash Chopra's Mashaal (1984). Kapoor earned his first Filmfare Best Actor Award for his performance in N. Chandra's Tezaab (1988) and later again for his perfornance in Indra Kumar's Beta (1992). He also starred in many other critically and commercially successful films, including Woh Saat Din (1983), Meri Jung (1985), Janbaaz (1986), Karma (1986), Mr. India (1987), Virasat (1997) for which he won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor, Biwi No.1 (1999), Taal (1999) for which he won his second Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award, Pukar (2000) for which he won his first National Film Award for Best Actor, No Entry (2005), and Welcome (2007).
  Kapoor's first role in an international film was in Danny Boyle's 2008 Academy Award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, for which he shared the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. His performance in the eighth season of the action series 24 generated rave reviews from the American press. Globally, Anil Kapoor is one of the most recognised Indian actors. He has also appeared in the 2011 film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
  
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  Anthony Andrews
  Anthony Corin Gerald Andrews ( /ˈæntəni ˈændruːz/; born 12 January 1948) is an English actor best known for his role as Lord Sebastian Flyte in the 1981 ITV miniseries Brideshead Revisited.
  Andrews was born in London, the son of Geraldine Agnes (née Cooper), a dancer, and Stanley Thomas Andrews, a musical arranger and musical conductor. He grew up in the North Finchley district of London. At the age of eight he undertook dancing lessons, making his stage debut as the White Rabbit in a stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
  After a series of short term "fill-in" jobs that included catering, farming and journalism, he secured a position at the Chichester Theatre where he worked as an assistant stage manager and later as a stand-in producer. He auditioned in 1968 for a production of Alan Bennett's new play, Forty Years On, which featured John Gielgud as the headmaster of a British public school during the First World War period. Andrews was cast as Skinner, one of twenty schoolboys; the role gave him the opportunity at an early age of working with Gielgud.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Andrews
• Anthony Horowitz
  Anthony Horowitz (born 5 April 1955) is an English novelist and screenwriter. He has written many children's novels, including The Power of Five, Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series and has written over fifty books. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels for the ITV series. He is the creator and writer of the ITV series Foyle's War, Midsomer Murders and Collision.
  Anthony Horowitz was born in 1955 in Middlesex, into a wealthy French Jewish family, and in his early years lived an upper-class lifestyle. As an overweight and unhappy child, Horowitz enjoyed reading books from his father's library. At the age of eight, Horowitz was sent to the boarding school Orley Farm in Harrow, Middlesex. There, he entertained his peers by telling them the stories he had read. Horowitz described his time in the school as "a brutal experience", recalling that he was often beaten by the headmaster.
  Horowitz's father acted as a "fixer" for prime minister Harold Wilson. Facing bankruptcy, he moved his assets into Swiss numbered bank accounts. He died from cancer when his son Anthony was 22, and the family was never able to track down the missing money despite years of trying. Horowitz adored his mother, who introduced him to Frankenstein and Dracula. She also gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. Horowitz said in an interview that it reminds him to get to the end of each story since he will soon look like the skull. From the age of eight, Horowitz knew he wanted to be a writer, realising "the only time when I'm totally happy is when I'm writing". He graduated from the University of York with a BA in English literature in 1977.
  
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  August Diehl
  August Diehl (born 4 January 1976) is a German actor, primarily known to international audiences for playing SS-Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellstrom in Inglourious Basterds and Michael "Mike" Krause, Evelyn Salt's husband, in the movie Salt, as well as for his leading role in the Academy Award-winning Austrian film The Counterfeiters (2007).
  Diehl was born in Berlin. His father is actor Hans Diehl, his mother is a costume designer and his brother is a composer. His family was frequently moving around, while he grew up: the Diehls used to live in Hamburg, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Bavaria and France. Growing up in a family of artists, at the age of 18, he played Franz Mohr in a school theatre production of Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller. After passing the Abitur exams, Diehl studied acting at the renowned Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch in Berlin. In 2000, he was named one of European film's "Shooting Stars" by the European Film Promotion. In 2006, Gala magazine named him "the most important German actor of today." Diehl is married to actress Julia Malik. On 23rd May 2009 the couple had a daughter, Elsa Augusta. Diehl plays the guitar and speaks Spanish, German, French and English.
  
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  Augusto Boal
  Augusto Boal (16 March 1931 - 2 May 2009) was a Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical popular education movements. Boal served one term as a vereador (the Brazilian equivalent of a city councillor) in Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 1997, where he developed legislative theatre.
  
  wn.com/Augusto_Boal
• Barrie Keeffe
  Barrie Colin Keeffe (born 31 October 1945) is an English dramatist and screenwriter, best known for his screenplay for the 1981 film The Long Good Friday.
  Keeffe was educated at East Ham Grammar School. He joined the National Youth Theatre as an actor, but actually started work as a journalist. His first television play, Substitute, was produced in 1972 and his first theatre play, Only a Game, in 1973, and in 1975 he became a full-time playwright. He was writer-in-residence at the Shaw Theatre in 1977, resident playwright with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1978, and associate writer with the Theatre Royal Stratford East from 1986 to 1991. He taught dramatic writing at City University, London from 2002 to 2005. In 2010 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Warwick.
  
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  Ben Affleck
  Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt (born August 15, 1972), better known as Ben Affleck, is an American actor, film director, writer, and producer. He became known with his performances in Kevin Smith's films such as Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), and Dogma (1999). Affleck won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997), which he co-wrote with Matt Damon, and has appeared in lead roles in such popular hits as Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), Changing Lanes (2002), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Daredevil (2003), Hollywoodland (2007) and State of Play (2009).
  Affleck is a critically acclaimed filmmaker. He directed Gone Baby Gone (2007) and The Town (2010), playing the lead in the latter. He has worked with his younger brother, actor Casey Affleck, on several projects, including Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone.
  Affleck has been married to Jennifer Garner since June 2005. They have two daughters, Violet and Seraphina, and a son, Samuel. He dated the actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998. His relationship with actress/singer Jennifer Lopez attracted worldwide media attention, in which Affleck and Lopez were dubbed "Bennifer". The two broke up in 2004.
  
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  Bernard Hill
  Bernard Hill (born 17 December 1944) is a British actor of film, stage and television. In a career spanning thirty years, he is known for playing Yosser Hughes, the troubled 'hard man' whose life is falling apart in Alan Bleasdale's groundbreaking 1980s TV drama, Boys from the Blackstuff. He is also known for a number of iconic roles in blockbuster films, including Captain Edward John Smith in Titanic, King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and as the Warden of San Quentin Prison in the Clint Eastwood film True Crime.
  Hill was born in Blackley, Manchester, England. He attended Xaverian College although at the time it was known as "Xaverian School", and then Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama at the same time as Richard Griffiths. He graduated with a diploma in theatre in 1970.
  Hill first came to prominence in Britain through his Yosser Hughes, a Liverpool working class man ultimately driven to the edge by an uncaring system, in Alan Bleasdale's BBC Play for Today, The Black Stuff and its more famous series sequel (also by Bleasdale), Boys from the Blackstuff. His character's much-repeated phrase Gizza job ("Give us a job") became popular with protesters against Margaret Thatcher's government, because of the high unemployment of the time.
  
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  Bob Balaban
  Robert Elmer "Bob" Balaban (born August 16, 1945) is an American actor, author and director.
  Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor (née Pottasch) and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television. His family was a dominant force in the theatre business; his uncles founded the Balaban and Katz Theatre circuit in Chicago, a chain which included the Chicago and Uptown Theatres. Balaban and Katz operated some of the most beautiful movie palaces in the United States beginning in the 1920s. Bob Balaban's father and his uncle Harry founded the H & E Balaban Corporation in Chicago. H & E Balaban Corporation operated their own movie palaces including the Esquire Theatre in Chicago. They later owned a powerful group of television stations and cable television franchises. His uncle Barney Balaban was president of Paramount Pictures for nearly 30 years from 1936 to 1964. His grandmother's second husband, Sam Katz, was a vice president at MGM beginning in 1936. Sam had early partnered with Bob's uncles Abe, Barney, John and Max to form Balaban and Katz. Sam also served as President of the Publix theatre division of Paramount Pictures.
  
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  Brad Pitt
  William Bradley "Brad" Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received four Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one Golden Globe. He has been described as one of the world's most attractive men, a label for which he has received substantial media attention.
  Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the road movie Thelma & Louise (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget productions came with A River Runs Through It (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994), and Legends of the Fall (1994). In 1995, he gave critically acclaimed performances in the crime thriller Seven and the science fiction film 12 Monkeys, the latter earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination. Four years later, Pitt starred in the cult hit Fight Club. He then starred in the major international hit Ocean's Eleven (2001) and its sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). His greatest commercial successes have been Troy (2004) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Pitt received his second and third Academy Award nominations for his leading performances in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011). In addition, Pitt owns a production company, Plan B Entertainment, whose productions include The Departed (2006), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Moneyball, which garnered a Best Picture nomination.
  
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  Brendan Fraser
  Brendan James Fraser (born December 3, 1968) is a Canadian-American film and stage actor. Fraser portrayed Rick O'Connell in the three-part Mummy film series (1999, 2001, and 2008), and is known for his comedic and fantasy film leading roles in major Hollywood films, including Encino Man (1992), George of the Jungle (1997), Dudley Do-Right (1999), Monkeybone (2001), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), and Inkheart (2009). Has also appeared in numerous dramatic roles, including Crash (2004) and The Quiet American (2002). He is set to star in the upcoming movie Gimme Shelter (2012).
  Fraser was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Canadian parents. His mother, Carol Mary (née Genereux), was a sales counselor, and his father, Peter Fraser, was a former journalist who worked as a Canadian foreign service officer for the Government Office of Tourism. His maternal uncle, George Genereux, was the only Canadian to win a gold medal in the 1952 Summer Olympics. Fraser has three older brothers: Kevin, Regan, and Sean. His surname is properly pronounced /ˈfreɪzər/, not /ˈfreɪʒər/. The correct pronunciation of his surname is a running gag in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, in which his character's surname is pronounced /frɛrəˈʒʊər/. His ancestry includes Irish, Scottish, German, Czech, and French Canadian.
  
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  Brent Spiner
  Brent Jay Spiner (born February 2, 1949) is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of the android Lieutenant Commander Data in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and four subsequent films. His portrayal of Data in Star Trek: First Contact and of Dr. Brackish Okun in Independence Day, both in 1996, earned him a Saturn Award and Saturn Award nomination respectively. He has also enjoyed a career in the theatre and as a musician.
  Spiner was born in Houston, Texas, to Sylvia and Jack Spiner, who owned a furniture store. After his father's death, Spiner was adopted by Sylvia's second husband, Sol Mintz, whose surname he used between 1955 and 1975. Spiner attended Bellaire High School, Bellaire, Texas, where he was influenced by drama teacher Cecil Pickett—the same man who coached his daughter Cindy Pickett, and future actors Randy Quaid, Dennis Quaid, Trey Wilson, Robert Wuhl, and director Thomas Schlamme. Spiner became active on the Bellaire Speech team, winning the national championship in dramatic interpretation. He attended the University of Houston where he performed in local theatre.
  
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  Cate Blanchett
  Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett (/ˈblɑːntʃ.ət/; born 14 May 1969) is an Academy Award–winning Australian actress. She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 biopic film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and Golden Globe Awards, and earned her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Blanchett appeared as the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy from 2001 to 2003. In 2004, Blanchett's portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator brought her numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Blanchett's other films include Babel (2006), Notes on a Scandal (2006), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
  Blanchett's work has earned her several accolades, including a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTAs, and an Academy Award. Due to her success and character variety, critics have often called her "the new Meryl Streep" or "the Meryl Streep of the next generation".
  
  wn.com/Cate_Blanchett
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  Charles Dance
  Walter Charles Dance, OBE (born 10 October 1946) is an English actor, screenwriter, and film director. Dance typically plays assertive bureaucrats or villains.^{[citation needed]} Some of his most high profile roles are Perron in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Dr Clemens, the doctor who becomes Ellen Ripley's confidante, in Alien 3 (1992), the villain in The Golden Child (1986) and Last Action Hero (1993), and Lord Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones.
  Dance was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) on 17 June 2006.
  Dance was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, the son of Eleanor (née Perks), a cook, and Walter Dance, an engineer. He attended Widey Technical School for Boys (it closed when known as Widey High School in 1988) in Manadon. He was set for a career in graphic design after graduating from the Plymouth College of Art before turning to acting.
  Dance was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company during the mid- to late-1970s and was in many of their productions in London and Stratford-upon-Avon. Later he returned to the RSC to take the title role in Coriolanus at Stratford-upon-Avon and Newcastle in 1989, and at the Barbican Theatre in 1990. He received rave reviews and a Critics' Circle Best Actor award for his performance as the Oxford don C. S. Lewis in William Nicholson's Shadowlands, in the 2007 stage revival.
  
  wn.com/Charles_Dance
• Christian Rivers
  Christian Rivers is a New Zealand visual effects art director and filmmaker. He first met Peter Jackson as a 17 year old, and storyboarded all of Jackson's films since Braindead. He also cameos in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King as a Gondorian soldier. He is set to make his directorial debut with a remake of The Dam Busters.
  
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  Christine Baranski
  Christine Jane Baranski (born May 2, 1952) is an American stage and screen actress, and is perhaps best known for her Emmy Award-winning portrayal as Maryanne Thorpe in the sitcom Cybill, and her Emmy-nominated portrayal of Diane Lockhart in The Good Wife. Prior to her appearances in film and television, Baranski rose to prominence as a Broadway actress, winning two Tony Awards.
  Baranski was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Virginia (née Mazurowski) and Lucien Baranski, who edited a Polish-language newspaper. She is of Polish descent and her grandparents were actors in the Polish theater. Baranski attended high school at the Villa Maria Academy in Cheektowaga, a suburb of Buffalo. She then studied at New York City's Juilliard School (Drama Division Group 3: 1970–1974) where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974.
  Baranski made her Off-Broadway debut in Coming Attractions at Playwrights Horizons in 1980, and has appeared in several Off Broadway productions at the Manhattan Theatre Club, starting with Sally and Marsha in 1982.
  
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  Christoph Waltz
  Christoph Waltz (German pronunciation: [kristɔf valts]; born 4 October 1956) is an Austrian actor, who also holds German citizenship.
  He received international acclaim for his portrayal of SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2009.
  Christoph Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria. He is the son of German-born Johannes Waltz and Austrian-born Elisabeth Urbancic, set and stage designers. His maternal grandmother was Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was actor Emmerich Reimers. His great-grandparents also worked in the theatre.
  Waltz studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. He also attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. He started as a stage actor, performing at venues such as Zurich's Schauspielhaus Zürich, Vienna's Burgtheater, and the Salzburg Festival. He became a prolific television actor. In 2000, he made his directorial debut, with the German-language television production Wenn man sich traut.
  
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  Clive Owen
  Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He then garnered critical acclaim for his work in the film Close My Eyes (1991) before getting international notice for his performance as a struggling writer in Croupier (1998). In 2005, Owen won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his appearance in the drama Closer (2004). He has since played leading roles in films such as Sin City (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), and The International (2009).
  The fourth of five brothers, Owen was born in Coventry, in the English Midlands, a son of Pamela (née Cotton) and Jess Owen, a country and western singer of Welsh descent. His father left the family when Owen was three years old, and despite a brief reconciliation when Owen was nineteen, the two have remained estranged. Raised by his mother and stepfather, a railway ticket clerk, he has described his childhood as "rough." While initially opposed to drama school, he changed his mind in 1984, after a long and fruitless period of searching for work. Owen graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1987 with a class that included Rebecca Pidgeon, Serena Harragin, Mark Womack, and Liza Tarbuck. After graduation, he won a position at the Young Vic, performing in several Shakespearean plays.
  
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  Colin Firth
  A Darcy Before I Die - satirical poem by Ronnie Taheny (c) 2008
  Colin Andrew Firth, CBE (born 10 September 1960) is an English film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In 2011, Firth received an Academy Award for his portrayal of King George VI in The King's Speech, a performance that also earned him the Golden Globe, BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor, amongst others. The previous year, he received his first Academy Award nomination, for his leading role in A Single Man, a performance that won him a BAFTA Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.
  Firth was born in England. His mother, Shirley Jean (née Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College Winchester (now the University of Winchester), and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, was a history lecturer (also at King Alfred's) and education officer for the Nigerian Government. Firth has a sister, Kate, and a younger brother, Jonathan, who is also an actor. Firth's parents were raised in India, because his maternal grandparents, Congregationalist ministers, and his paternal grandfather, an Anglican priest, performed missionary work abroad. Firth spent part of his childhood in Nigeria, where his father was teaching.
  
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  Colm Feore
  Colm Feore (born August 22, 1958) is an American-born Canadian stage, film and television actor.
  Feore was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Irish parents who lived in Ireland for several years during his early life. The family subsequently moved to Windsor, Ontario, where Feore grew up.
  After graduating from Ridley College in St. Catharines, Ontario, he attended the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, Quebec and University of Windsor in Ontario.
  Feore honed his acting skills as a member of the Acting Company of the Stratford Festival of Canada, North America’s largest classical repertory theatre. He spent 16 seasons at Stratford where he rose from bit parts to leading roles, including Romeo, Hamlet, Richard III, and Cyrano. He returned in 2006 to star in four productions, including Don Juan in both English and French and as Fagin in Oliver!. More recently, in 2009 he played the main role of Macbeth in the play Macbeth, and the main role of Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac both performed at the Stratford Festival Theatre.
  
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  Daniel Brühl
  Daniel César Martín Brühl González Domingo ( listen (help·info); born 16 June 1978) is a Spanish-born German actor. He is best known as Daniel Brühl.
  Brühl was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. His father was the late German TV director Hanno Brühl and his mother was a Spanish professor. He also has a brother and a sister. Shortly after his birth his family moved to Cologne, Germany, where he grew up and attended the Dreikönigsgymnasium. Brought up in a fully multilingual home, he speaks Spanish, German, Catalan, French and English. In 2006, Brühl separated from his long-time girlfriend, actress Jessica Schwarz, to whom he was engaged. He is an FC Barcelona fan.
  Brühl began acting at a young age and made his first steps in 1995 as street kid Benji in the soap opera Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love). His international breakthrough role came in 2003 as Alex Kerner in the Golden Globe-nominated film Good Bye, Lenin!, which reached an estimated six million cinema-goers worldwide. In 2003, Brühl won the European Film Academy award trophies for Best Actor (Critics/Audience Awards) for the role. Brühl made his English-speaking film debut in the 2004 Ladies in Lavender, starring alongside British acting legends Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. The same year, he won the People's Choice trophy for Best Actor for the film Love in Thoughts while at the same time, he was nominated for Best Actor (critics) for The Edukators. Brühl featured as Lieutenant Horstmayer, a central character in the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, a trilingual World War One film based on the experiences of French, German and Scottish soldiers during the Christmas truce of 1914. The film shows Brühl's linguistic ability as he ably communicates in German, French and English throughout.
  
  wn.com/Daniel_Brühl
• Danny Brocklehurst
  Danny Brocklehurst (born 1971, Hyde, Cheshire, England, U.K.) is a BAFTA and International Emmy-winning English screenwriter. Brocklehurst worked as a journalist for several years (as a freelancer for The Guardian, City Life and Manchester Evening News and senior feature writer for The Big Issue) before becoming a full-time screenwriter.
  He has written acclaimed television drama series including the BAFTA-winning Clocking Off, Shameless and The Street; International Emmy winner Accused, comedy-drama Linda Green; the critically lauded serials Exile and The Stretford Wives and 2006 BBC One hit Sorted. He has been nominated for both BAFTA and Royal Television Society writing awards.
  Danny wrote several episodes of the BAFTA award winning series Clocking Off, as well as the acclaimed two part BBC film The Stretford Wives, which was shot by director Peter Webber.
  With Shameless, Danny won a BAFTA for series one, co-wrote series two with Paul Abbott and became lead writer on series three. He left prior to the fourth series.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Brocklehurst
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  David Carradine
  David Carradine (born John Arthur Carradine; December 8, 1936 – June 3, 2009) was an American actor and martial artist, best known for his role as a warrior monk, Kwai Chang Caine, in the 1970s television series Kung Fu. He was a member of a productive acting family dynasty that began with his father, John Carradine. His acting career, which included major and minor roles on stage, television and cinema, spanned over four decades. A prolific "B" movie actor, he appeared in more than 100 feature films and was nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award. The last nomination was for his title role in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.
  Films that featured Carradine continued to be released after his death. These posthumous credits were from a variety of genres including horror, action, western, martial arts, drama, science fiction and documentary. In addition to his acting career, Carradine was also a musician and pursued a directing career. Influenced by his most popular acting role, he studied martial arts. The child of a frequently married actor, "Jack", as Carradine was known in his youth, had an unstable childhood. This instability would continue throughout his life as he himself was married five times. He was also frequently arrested and prosecuted for a variety of offenses which often involved substance abuse. He died on June 3, 2009 of an apparently accidental asphyxiation.
  
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  David Tennant
  David Tennant (born David John McDonald; 18 April 1971) is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the TV serial Casanova (2005) and as Barty Crouch, Jr., in the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).
  Tennant was born in Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland, the son of Essdale Helen (née McLeod) and The Rev. Alexander McDonald (known to family and friends as Sandy McDonald). He grew up with his brother Blair and sister Karen in Ralston, Renfrewshire, where his father was the local Church of Scotland minister. Tennant's maternal great-grandparents, William and Agnes Blair, were staunch Protestants from Derry in Ulster, the northern province of Ireland, and were among the signatories of the Ulster Covenant in 1912; William was a member of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. Tennant's maternal grandfather, footballer Archie McLeod, met William and Agnes's daughter Nellie while playing for Derry City.
  
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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.
  
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  Denis Menochet
  Denis Menochet (born 1977 in Enghien-les-Bains, Val-d'Oise) is a French film and television actor. Menochet is perhaps best known to an international audience for his role as Perrier LaPadite, a French dairy farmer interrogated by the Nazis for harboring Jews, in the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds.
  Elizabeth Weitzman, a film critic for the New York Daily News, praised Menochet's work opposite Christoph Waltz in the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds. Weitzman wrote in August 2009, "The terrific opening, for example, does feature a hailstorm of bullets. What you'll remember best, though, is the haunted silence of actor Denis Menochet, playing a French farmer accused of harboring Jews."
  
  
  
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• Denise Faye
  Denise Faye Greenbaum (born July 16, 1963), professionally known as Denise Faye, is an American actress, dancer and choreographer. Internationally, she is best known for her performance in the 2002 film Chicago, for which she earned Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Faye also had smaller roles in films Mighty Aphrodite, Donnie Brasco, American Pie 2, Nine and Burlesque.
  
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  Derek Jacobi
  Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE ( /ˈdʒækəbi/; born 22 October 1938) is an English actor and film director.
  A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet,Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in Much Ado About Nothing. His stage work also included playing Edward II,Octavius Caesar,Richard III, and Cyrano de Bergerac.
  In addition to being a founder member of the Royal National Theatre and winning several prestigious theatre awards, Jacobi has also enjoyed a successful television career, starring in the critically praised adaptation of Roberts Graves' I, Claudius, for which he won a BAFTA; the titular role in the acclaimed medieval drama series Brother Cadfael, and Stanley Baldwin in The Gathering Storm. Though principally a stage actor, Jacobi has appeared in a number of films, such as Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Gladiator (2000), Gosford Park (2001), The Golden Compass (2007), The King's Speech (2010), My Week with Marilyn (2011), and the forthcoming Hippie Hippie Shake. Like Laurence Olivier, he holds two knighthoods, Danish and British.
  
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  Dev Patel
  Dev Patel (born 23 April 1990) is a British actor. He is best known for playing Jamal Malik in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008), for which Patel won a number of awards, including a Critics' Choice Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Patel is also known for his role as Anwar Kharral in the British teen drama series Skins.
  Patel was born in Harrow, England, to Hindu Indian parents, both of whom were born in Nairobi, Kenya, where there is a significant Indian community. His parents both emigrated from Kenya separately in their teens, and only met in London. His mother, Anita, is a carer, and his father, Raj, an IT consultant. He was raised in the Hindu faith. Patel grew up in Rayners Lane, Harrow, and attended Longfield Middle School. He had his first acting role as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in the school's production of Twelfth Night. Patel was given the Best Actor award for his performance. He later attended Whitmore High School, receiving an A* in GCSE Drama, for his "self-penned portrayal of a child in the Beslan school siege". His drama teacher Niamh Wright has stated: "Dev was a gifted student who quickly impressed me with his innate ability to communicate a wide variety of characters imaginatively and creatively. He was awarded full marks for his GCSE performance to a live audience and the visiting examiner was moved to tears by his honest portrayal". He completed his AS Levels in PE, Biology, History and Drama in 2007, while he was working in Skins. He has been dating his Slumdog Millionaire co-star Freida Pinto since 2009.
  
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  Diane Kruger
  Diane Kruger (born 15 July 1976) is a German actress and former fashion model. She is known for roles such as Helen in Troy, Dr. Abigail Chase in National Treasure and its sequel, Bridget von Hammersmark in Inglourious Basterds, Anna in Mr. Nobody, and Gina in Unknown.
  She was born as Diane Heidkrüger in Algermissen, Germany, near Hildesheim, the daughter of a computer specialist Hans-Heinrich Heidkrüger, and his wife, Maria-Theresa, a bank employee. She was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic school.
  She was raised in Germany with her younger brother, Stefan. Her mother sent her to student exchange programs when she was a teenager to improve her English. As a child, Kruger wanted to become a ballerina and successfully auditioned for the Royal Ballet School in London. However, after an injury ended her ballet career prematurely, Kruger moved to Paris and turned her energy toward modeling and learning French.
  Kruger soon became interested in acting and took lessons at the Cours Florent. She landed some small appearances in several French films. She made her onscreen debut in 2002, opposite Dennis Hopper and Christopher Lambert in The Piano Player, a TV-movie by Jean-Pierre Roux. Her first major role was the same year when she starred in her then husband's directorial debut Mon Idole.
  
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  Dominic Monaghan
  Dominic Bernard Patrick Luke Monaghan ( /ˈdɒmɨnɨk ˈmɒnəhæn/; born 8 December 1976) is an English actor. He has received international attention from playing Meriadoc Brandybuck in Peter Jackson's adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and for his role as Charlie Pace on the television show Lost.
  Monaghan was born in Berlin, Germany, to British parents: Maureen, a nurse, and Austin Monaghan, a science teacher. Monaghan's family lived in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Münster, moving about every four years. When he was about 11 years old, his family moved from Germany to Heaton Moor in Stockport, Greater Manchester. Monaghan's first language is English, but he also speaks some German and is well known for his ability to impersonate others and replicate accents^{[citation needed]}. Bernard is his maternal grandfather's name, and Patrick his paternal grandfather's name. He chose Luke as his confirmation name after Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, his favourite film, which was also one of his inspirations for becoming an actor. He attended St Anne's Roman Catholic High School (where his uncle taught and later became head teacher) and Aquinas College, where he studied English literature, drama and geography.
  
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  Dominic West
  Dominic Gerard Fe West (born 15 October 1969) is an English actor best known for his role as Detective Jimmy McNulty in the HBO drama series The Wire.
  West made his debut in 1991 in a short called 3 Joes.^{[citation needed]} His other screen appearances include True Blue, Chicago and Mona Lisa Smile. His most notable television role has been Baltimore police detective Jimmy McNulty on the HBO television police drama The Wire. West was praised for the accuracy of his character's accent.
  During his stint on The Wire, West directed the season 5 episode, "Took".
  In film, he portrayed the heavy metal guitarist Kirk Cuddy in the 2001 film Rock Star. In 2006 West made a guest appearance as an actor in a sketch in The Catherine Tate Show, alongside "Frankie Howerd impressionist". In 2007, he played the Spartan politician Theron in 300. West also starred in the 1999 film version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as Lysander.
  West appeared in the role of Oliver Cromwell in the Channel 4 series The Devil's Whore. West played the villain, Jigsaw, in the 2008 film Punisher: War Zone. He also features in "Dr. West", the opening track on Eminem's 2009 album Relapse, as a doctor discharging Eminem from a rehab facility. West played the part over the phone in January 2009 while Eminem was recording it in a Miami studio.
  
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  Don Cheadle
  Donald Frank "Don" Cheadle, Jr. (pronounced /ˈtʃiːdəl/; born November 29, 1964) is an American film actor and producer. Cheadle rose to prominence in the late 1990s and the early 2000s for his supporting roles in the Steven Soderbergh-directed films Out of Sight, Traffic, and Ocean's Eleven. In 2004, his lead role as Rwandan hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina in the genocide drama film Hotel Rwanda earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He also campaigns for the end of genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and co-authored a book concerning the issue titled Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond. In 2010, Cheadle was named U.N. Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador. He currently stars on the Showtime sitcom House of Lies.
  Cheadle was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bettye (née North), a teacher, and Donald Frank Cheadle, Sr., a clinical psychologist. He has a sister, Dawn, and a brother, Colin. His family moved from city to city throughout his childhood. Cheadle graduated in 1982 from East High School in Denver, Colorado, and went on to the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a BFA in Acting.
  
  wn.com/Don_Cheadle
• Eileen Atkins
  Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE (born 16 June 1934) is an English actress and occasional screenwriter. Born in 1934 she has worked in the theatre, film, and television consistently since 1953. She has been nominated for and received many professional awards and was created a CBE in 1990 and later a DBE in 2001.
  Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London. Her mother, Annie Ellen (née Elkins), was a barmaid who was 46 when Eileen was born, and her father, Arthur Thomas Atkins, was a gas meter reader who was previously under-chauffeur to the Portuguese Ambassador. She was the third child in the family and when she was born the family moved to a council home in Tottenham. Her father did not, in fact, know how to drive and was responsible, as under-chauffeur, mainly for cleaning the car. At the time Eileen was born, her mother worked in a factory the whole day and then as a barmaid in the Elephant & Castle at night. When Eileen was three, a Gypsy woman came to their door selling lucky heather and clothes pegs. She saw little Eileen and told her mother that her daughter would be a famous dancer. Her mother promptly enrolled her in a dance class. Although she hated it, she studied dancing from age 3 to 15 or 16. From age 7 to 15, which covered the last four years of the Second World War (1941–45), she danced in working men's club circuits for 15 shillings a pop as "Baby Eileen". During the war, she performed as well at London's Stage Door canteen for American troops and sang songs like "Yankee Doodle." At one time she was attending dance class four or five times a week.
  
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  Eli Roth
  Eli Raphael Roth (born April 18, 1972) is an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for his role as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds for which he won both a SAG Award (Best Ensemble) and a BFCA Critic's Choice Award (Best Acting Ensemble). He is part of a group of filmmakers dubbed the Splat Pack, because of their dedication to the genre and their relentless horror films.
  Roth was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Dr. Sheldon Roth, a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, and Cora Roth, a painter. His grandparents emigrated from Austria, Russia, and Poland; Roth was raised Jewish.
  Roth began shooting films at the age of eight after watching Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). He made over 50 short films with his brothers Adam and Gabe before graduating at Newton South High School and attending film school (the Tisch School of the Arts) at New York University, from which he graduated in 1994. By the age of 20, and while still a student at NYU, Roth ran the office of producer Frederick Zollo, eventually leaving to devote himself to writing full-time.
  
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  Elijah Wood
  Elijah Jordan Wood ( /ɪˈlaɪdʒə ˈdʒɔrdən ˈwʊd/; born January 28, 1981) is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II (1989), then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9, being nominated for several Young Artist Awards. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed The Lord of the Rings trilogy and its upcoming prequels The Hobbit films. Since then, he has resisted typecasting by choosing varied roles in critically acclaimed films such as Bobby, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sin City, Green Street and Everything Is Illuminated.
  Wood starred in the film Day Zero (2007) and provided the voice of the main character in the award-winning animated musical films Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two. Wood also voiced the lead as 9 in the Tim Burton-produced action/science fiction film 9. He played an American tourist turned vampire in Paris, je t'aime. In 2005, he started his own record label, Simian Records. He currently appears as Ryan in FX's dark comedy Wilfred, which debuted on June 23, 2011.
  
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  Emily Watson
  Emily Watson (born 14 January 1967) is an English actress who gave an acclaimed debut film performance in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves. She has won a number of awards for acting throughout her career, which has encompassed theatre, motion picture and television; most recently a BAFTA award for her role in ITV's Appropriate Adult.
  Watson was born in Islington, London, England. Her father was an architect and her mother was an English teacher at St David's Girls' School, West London. She was brought up as an Anglican. Watson describes her childhood self as a "Nice middle class English girl ... I'd love to say I was a rebellious teenager but I wasn't".
  Watson was educated at St James Independent Schools, in west London, which she has described as a 'progressive' school. She attended the University of Bristol, where she obtained a B.A. (1988, English).^{[citation needed]} Following university, she trained at Drama Studio London,^{[citation needed]} and later received a M.A. (2003, honorary) from Bristol University.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Freida Pinto
  Freida Selena Pinto (born 18 October 1984) is an Indian actress and model best known for her portrayal of Latika in the 2008 Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. After the success of the film she went on to star in the films such as You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Miral—in which she played the title character—and the box-office hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
  Pinto was born into a Mangalorean Catholic family in Mumbai, which she still refers to as Bombay out of habit. Her surname is of Portuguese origin as the result of her ancestors' conversion to Catholicism by missionaries. Her mother, Sylvia, is the principal of St. John's Universal High School (Goregaon), and her father, Frederick, is a senior branch manager at the Bank of Baroda. She has an elder sister, Sharon, who is an associate producer for the NDTV news channel. Pinto dreamed of becoming an actress since she was five years old. When Freida was ten, Sushmita Sen won Miss Universe 1994, which turned out to be a defining point in Freida's life. She studied at Carmel of St. Joseph School in Malad, Mumbai and completed a degree in arts with a major in English Literature, and minors in Psychology and Economics, from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. She had also acted in plays and amateur theatre while attending St. Xavier's. She later joined Elite Model Management and modelled for two and a half years.
  
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  Garret Dillahunt
  Garret Dillahunt (born November 24, 1964) is an American actor. He is married to actress Michelle Hurd. He currently plays the role of Burt Chance on the Fox sitcom Raising Hope.
  Garret L. Dillahunt was born in Castro Valley, California and grew up in Selah, Washington. One of three siblings, he has a brother, Brett. His other brother, Eric, is deceased. He graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in journalism and went on to receive his M.F.A. in acting from New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts.
  After spending years on and off Broadway, Dillahunt began pursuing television and film roles. He appeared as a regular in several short lived series on ABC and Showtime, and landed guest spots on TV shows such as The X Files and NYPD Blue among others, before playing two distinctly different characters on the HBO series Deadwood: Jack McCall in 2004 and Francis Wolcott in 2005. He later had a recurring role on USA Network's The 4400.
  Dillahunt portrayed Steve Curtis for three seasons on ER (2005–06). Later roles included Dr. Michael Smith on HBO's John From Cincinnati; Cromartie and John Henry on FOX's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles; Roman Nevikov, a Russian gangster, on NBC's Life; and Mason Turner, a paralyzed serial killer on Criminal Minds. He played Simon Escher in the Burn Notice third season finale airing March 4, 2010 on the USA, later reprising the role in the show's fourth season.
  
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  Gary Sinise
  Gary Alan Sinise ( /səˈniːs/; born March 17, 1955) is an American actor, film director and musician. During his career, Sinise has won various awards including an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1992, Sinise directed, and played the role of George Milton in the successful film adaptation of Of Mice and Men. Sinise was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1994 for his role as Lt. Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump. He won a Golden Globe Award for his role in Truman, as Harry S. Truman. In 1996, he played a corrupt police officer in the dramatic hit Ransom, Detective Jimmy Shaker. In 1998, Sinise was awarded an Emmy Award for the television film George Wallace, a portrayal of the late George C. Wallace. Since 2004, Sinise has starred in CBS's CSI: NY as Detective Mac Taylor.
  Sinise was born in Blue Island, Illinois, the son of Mylles S. (née Alsip; b. 1932) and Robert L. Sinise (b. 1931), the latter of whom was a film editor. He is of part Italian ancestry (from his paternal grandfather). He attended Highland Park High School in Highland Park, Illinois. In 1974, Sinise and two friends, Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry, founded the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Since its founding, Steppenwolf has showcased the talents of such notable actors as Joan Allen, Kevin Anderson, Gary Cole, Ethan Hawke, Glenne Headly, John Mahoney, John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf, Martha Plimpton, Jim True-Frost and most recently William Petersen. At Steppenwolf, Sinise honed his acting and directing skills, received a Joseph Jefferson Award for his direction of Lyle Kessler's play Orphans, that took him from Chicago, to New York City to London's West End, and worked on more than thirty of the company's productions.
  
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  Geoffrey Rush
  Geoffrey Roy Rush (born 6 July 1951) is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting (from four nominations), three British Academy Film Awards (from five nominations), two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He is the foundation President of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts. He is the 2012 Australian of the Year.
  Rush was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, to Merle (née Kiehne), a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. His parents divorced when he was five and his mother subsequently took him to live with her parents in suburban Brisbane. Before he began his acting career, Rush attended Everton Park State High School. He also has an arts degree from the University of Queensland. While at university, he was talent-spotted by Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) in Brisbane. Rush began his career with QTC in 1971, appearing in 17 productions.
  
  wn.com/Geoffrey_Rush
• Geraldine Somerville
  Geraldine Margaret Agnew-Somerville (born 19 May 1967) is an Irish actress best known for her roles as Detective Sergeant Jane "Panhandle" Penhaligon in Cracker, and Lily Potter in the Harry Potter film series.
  Geraldine Agnew-Somerville was born in County Meath, Ireland, the daughter of Sir Quentin Charles Agnew-Somerville, 2nd Baronet, and Margaret April Irene, Lady Agnew-Somerville (née Drummond), an antiques dealer, but was brought up on the Isle of Man.
  Her mother is a daughter of John Drummond, 15th Baron Strange, and sister of the late Cherry Drummond, 16th Baroness Strange. She has an elder sister, Amelia Rachel (who owns and works in a restaurant with her husband in the Australian rainforest), and a younger brother, James Lockett Charles Agnew-Somerville, who worked in Hong Kong and writes poetry.
  Somerville attended dance classes from the age of six, and at eight was sent to the Arts Educational School, a boarding school in Tring, Hertfordshire. There she was taught ballet. She left at sixteen, but continued her studies in London.
  
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  Greg Kinnear
  Gregory "Greg" Kinnear (born June 17, 1963) is an American actor and television personality who first rose to stardom in 1991. He has appeared in more than 20 motion pictures, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in As Good as It Gets.
  Kinnear was born in Logansport, Indiana, the son of Suzanne, a homemaker, and Edward Kinnear, a career diplomat who worked for the US State Department. He has two brothers, James and Steven. When he was a child, the Kinnear family moved around frequently, from Beirut to Athens, part of a group sometimes referred to as the "Foreign Service Brats". While a student at the American Community Schools in Athens, Greg Kinnear first ventured into the role of talk show host with his radio show "School Daze With Greg Kinnear". Returning to the United States for a college education, he attended the University of Arizona, where he graduated in 1985 with a degree in broadcast journalism. At Arizona, Greg was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity.
  Kinnear hosted a short-lived game show, College Mad House, which was spun off from the kids' show, Fun House. Later he would become the creator, co-executive producer, and host of Best of the Worst which aired from 1990 to 1991. In 1991, Kinnear became the first host of Talk Soup, which he did until 1995, when he left the show for the NBC late-night talk show, Later with Greg Kinnear (1994).
  
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  Guy Pearce
  Guy Edward Pearce (born 5 October 1967) is an English-born Australian actor and musician, known for his roles as Leonard Shelby in Christopher Nolan's Memento, Lieutenant Ed Exley in L.A. Confidential, Adam Whitely aka Felicia Jollygoodfellow (a drag queen) in the The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Mike Young in the Australian television series Neighbours and King Edward VIII ("David") in The King's Speech. Pearce has won an Emmy Award, and received nominations for Golden Globe Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards and Saturn Awards.
  Pearce was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire. His mother, Anne Cocking (née Pickering), was a County Durham-born schoolteacher specialising in needlework and home economics, and his father, Stuart Pearce, was a New Zealand-born air force test pilot who died when Pearce was nine. When he was three years old, Pearce moved to Geelong, Australia, where his mother ran a deer farm. He attended the Geelong College, a local private school, and was a member of the GSODA Junior Players. From the age of 15 to 22, he was a competitive amateur bodybuilder, leading to the title of Junior Mr. Victoria. He also partook in fencing. He lived in Box Hill North, Victoria in the late 1980s while working on the Australian drama series Neighbours.
  
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  Heath Ledger
  Heath Andrew Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008) was an Australian television and film actor. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger left his homeland for the United States in 1998 to develop his film career. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and The Dark Knight (2008). In addition to acting, he produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
  For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger won the 2005 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the 2006 "Best Actor" award from the Australian Film Institute and was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor as well as the 2006 BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Posthumously he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There, which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona. Ledger received numerous accolades for his critically acclaimed portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards, for which he became the first actor to win an award posthumously, the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  
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  Helen Mirren
  Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.
  Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Chiswick, West London. Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913–1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English. Mirren's paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Tsarist Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat, and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain, when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution. The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family.
  His son, Helen Mirren's father, changed the family name to the Scottish-sounding Mirren in the 1950s and became known as Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, East London, and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".
  
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  Helena Bonham Carter
  Helena Bonham Carter, CBE (born 26 May 1966) is an English actress. She made her acting debut in a television adaptation of K. M. Peyton's A Pattern of Roses before winning her first film role as the titular character in Lady Jane. She is known for her roles in films such as A Room with a View, Fight Club, and playing the villainess Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter series, as well as for frequently collaborating with director and domestic partner Tim Burton in films such as Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows.
  A two-time Academy Award nominee for her performances in The Wings of the Dove and The King's Speech, Bonham Carter's acting has been further recognised with six Golden Globe nominations, an International Emmy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to drama, and received the award from the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 22 February 2012.
  
  wn.com/Helena_Bonham_Carter
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  Hugo Weaving
  Hugo Wallace Weaving (born 4 April 1960) is an English-Australian film and stage actor and voice artist. He is best known for his roles as Tick in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy, Elrond in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, "V" in V for Vendetta, and performances in numerous Australian character dramas.
  Weaving was born at the University Teaching Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria, two English parents Anne (née Lennard), a tour guide and former teacher, and Wallace Weaving, a seismologist. His maternal grandmother was Belgian. A year after his birth, his family returned to England, living in Bedford and Brighton before moving to Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, Johannesburg in South Africa, and then returning to England again. While in England, he attended the independent boarding school Queen Elizabeth's Hospital. His family moved back to Australia in 1976, where he attended another private school, Sydney's Knox Grammar School. He later graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1981.
  
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  Ian Dury
  Ian Robins Dury (12 May 1942 – 27 March 2000) was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader, artist, and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music. He is best known as founder and lead singer of the British band Ian Dury and the Blockheads, who were one of the groups of the New Wave era in the UK.
  Dury was born in north-west London at his parents' home at 43 Weald Rise, Harrow Weald, Harrow (although he often pretended that he had been born in Upminster, Havering and indeed all but one of his obituaries in the national press stated this). His father, William George Dury (born 23 September 1905, Southborough, Kent; died 25 February 1968), was a bus driver and former boxer, while his mother Margaret (known as "Peggy", born Margaret Cuthbertson Walker, 17 April 1910, Rochdale, Lancashire) was a health visitor, the daughter of a Cornish doctor, and granddaughter of an Irish landowner.
  William Dury trained with Rolls-Royce to be a chauffeur, and was then absent for long periods, so Peggy Dury took Ian to stay with her parents in Cornwall. After the Second World War, the family moved to Switzerland, where his father chauffeured for a millionaire and the Western European Union. In 1946 Peggy brought Ian back to England and they stayed with her sister, Mary, a physician in Cranham, a small village bordering Upminster. Although he saw his father on visits, they never lived together again.
  
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  Ian Holm
  Sir Ian Holm, CBE (born 12 September 1931) is an English actor known for his stage work and many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear. He was nominated for the 1981 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as athletics trainer Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire. Other well-known film roles include the android Ash in Alien, Father Vito Cornelius in The Fifth Element, and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the first and third films of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
  
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  Ian McKellen
  Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH CBE (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He has won multiple Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is known for film roles such as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Magneto in the X-Men films, and as Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code.
  McKellen was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality, in the 2008 New Year Honours.
  McKellen was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, though he spent most of his early life in Wigan. Born shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the experience had some lasting impact on him. In response to an interview question when an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, he said: "Well, darling, you forget — I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old."
  
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  Irrfan Khan
  Sahabzade Irrfan Ali Khan, previously known as Irrfan Khan and now just Irrfan (Hindi: इरफ़ान ख़ान; born on 7th January 1967 ), is an Indian actor in film, television and theatre. He received recognition for his roles in The Warrior (2001), Maqbool (2003), Haasil (2004), The Namesake (2006), A Mighty Heart (2007), Life in a... Metro (2007), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Billu (2009), New York (2009), New York, I Love You (2009), Paan Singh Tomar (film) (2012), and Vodafone commercials.
  He has won two Filmfare Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Independent Spirit Award nomination. He is also the recipient of 2011 Padma Shri award, the fourth highest civilian award in India. He has also been cast in The Amazing Spider-Man as Dr. Ratha. He has appeared in more than 30 films in the Bollywood.
  Khan was born in Jaipur to a Muslim family. Khan's mother, Sayeeda Begum, was from the Tonk Hakim family, and his father, the late Jagirdar, was from the Khajuriya village near the Tonk district, and ran a tyre business. Khan was studying for his M.A. degree when he earned a scholarship to study at National School of Drama (NSD) in New Delhi in 1984.
  
  wn.com/Irrfan_Khan
• Jacky Ido
  Jacky Ido (born May 14, 1977 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) is a Burkina Faso-born French film actor. His first role was as Lemalian in the 2005 German film, The White Masai. He is best known to English-language audiences for his role as Marcel, the film projectionist in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film, Inglourious Basterds. Ido's brother Cedric Ido who is also an actor has directed him in the short Hasaki Ya Suda. Jacky Ido works and resides in Paris, France and is working on a slam potry album.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Jacky_Ido
• James Wilby
  James Jonathon Wilby (born 20 February 1958) is an English film, television and theatre actor.
  He was born in Rangoon, Burma to a corporate executive father. He was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, and from there went on to study for a degree in Mathematics at Grey College, University of Durham, and then at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
  Wilby's first appearance on screen was in the Oxford Film Company 1982 production Privileged alongside Hugh Grant. He is known to an international audience for roles in Maurice (1987), for which he received Venice Film Festival's Best Actor award with co-star Hugh Grant. Along with Grant, Wilby has always been best known for his regular inclusion in the Merchant/Ivory film 'family' which also boasts Rupert Graves, Helena Bonham-Carter, Emma Thompson, and Anthony Hopkins among its regulars. He then starred in A Handful of Dust (1988), for which he won the Bari Film Festival Best Actor award. Then came A Tale of Two Cities (1989), Howards End (1992), the critically acclaimed Regeneration (1997 film), Ismail Merchant's Cotton Mary (1999), Gosford Park (2001) and Alain Robbe-Grillet's C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006) co-starring Arielle Dombasle which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
  
  wn.com/James_Wilby
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  Javier Bardem
  Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (Spanish pronunciation: [xaˈβjer βarˈðen]; born 1 March 1969) is a Spanish actor. In 2007 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as sociopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, and has also garnered critical acclaim for roles in films such as Jamón, jamón, Carne trémula, Boca a boca, Los Lunes al sol and Mar adentro.
  As well as the Academy Award, Bardem has been awarded a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA, five Goya awards, two European Film Awards, a Prize for Best Actor at Cannes and two Coppa Volpis at Venice for his work. He is the first Spaniard to be nominated for an Oscar (Best Actor, 2000, for Before Night Falls, lost to Russell Crowe for Gladiator), as well as the first Spanish actor to win an Academy Award. He received his third Academy Award nomination, and second Best Actor nomination, for the film Biutiful.
  Bardem was born in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands (Spain). His mother, Pilar Bardem, is an actress, and his father, José Carlos Encinas Doussinague, was a businessman who was involved in environmental work; the two separated shortly after his birth. His mother raised him alone. Bardem comes from a long line of filmmakers and actors who have been working since the earliest days of Spanish cinema; he is the grandson of actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, and the nephew of screenwriter and director Juan Antonio Bardem. Both his older brother and sister, Carlos and Mónica, are actors. Bardem was raised Roman Catholic by his grandmother. He also comes from a very political background, his uncle Juan Antonio was imprisoned by Franco for his anti-fascist films.
  
  wn.com/Javier_Bardem
• Jennifer Ehle
  Jennifer Ehle ( /ˈiːliː/; born December 29, 1969) is an American actress of stage and screen. She is known for her BAFTA winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice.
  Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to English actress Rosemary Harris and American author John Ehle, Ehle made her stage debut as a toddler in a 1973 Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which her mother played Blanche Dubois.^{[citation needed]} She spent her childhood between the UK and US, attending 18 different schools including the Interlochen Arts Academy. She was raised largely in Asheville, North Carolina, which was close by her hometown. Her drama training was split between the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.^{[citation needed]}
  In 1992, Peter Hall cast her as Calypso in a television adaptation of Mary Wesley's novel The Camomile Lawn, in which she and her mother played the same character at different ages. This story, produced by UK's Channel 4, was a five part miniseries about the lives and loves of a family of cousins from 1939 to the present. The two would later reprise this different age portrayal of a character as Valerie in István Szabó's 1999 movie Sunshine.
  
  wn.com/Jennifer_Ehle
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  Jennifer Esposito
  Jennifer Esposito (born April 11, 1973) is an American actress, dancer and model, known for her appearances in films such as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Summer of Sam and Crash, and in television series such as Spin City, The Looney Tunes Show, Samantha Who? and Blue Bloods.
  Esposito, an Italian-American, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Phyllis, an interior decorator, and Robert Esposito, a computer consultant and music producer. She has one older sister. Esposito grew up and attended St. Teresa School in Staten Island, and graduated from Moore Catholic High School in Staten Island.^{[citation needed]}. In 1989, she won the title of homecoming queen at Msgr. Farrell High School.
  Esposito made her first television appearance in Law & Order in 1996, but she is best known as Stacey in the prime time hit Spin City. She also appeared in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer playing Nancy, who is killed when a spear impales her chest. One of her more notable roles was as Ruby in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam in 1999, which was set against the late-1970s backdrop of the Son of Sam murders. She originally had the Mira Sorvino role in Summer of Sam, but had to take a different role due to scheduling conflicts. Esposito's next film was Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000.
  
  wn.com/Jennifer_Esposito
• Jeremy Northam
  Jeremy Philip Northam (born 1 December 1961) is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Ivor Novello in the 2001 film Gosford Park, as Dean Martin in the 2002 television movie Martin and Lewis, and as Thomas More on the Showtime series The Tudors. Most recently, he starred in the now-canceled CBS drama Miami Medical.
  Northam was born in Cambridge, as the youngest of four siblings. His mother, Rachel (née Howard), was a potter and professor of economics, and his father, John Northam, was a professor of literature and theatre, as well as being an Ibsen specialist and teacher (first at Clare College, Cambridge and later at Bristol). Northam was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Bedford College, University of London, and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He married Canadian film/television make-up artist Liz Moro in April 2005, though they later divorced.
  Northam performed at the Royal National Theatre – he replaced Daniel Day-Lewis in the role of Hamlet (1989), and won the Olivier Award in 1990 for "most promising newcomer" for his performance in The Voysey Inheritance.
  
  wn.com/Jeremy_Northam
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  Jim Broadbent
  James "Jim" Broadbent (born 24 May 1949) is an English theatre, film, and television actor. He is known for his roles in Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Topsy-Turvy, Hot Fuzz, and Bridget Jones' Diary. He also appears in the Harry Potter films as Horace Slughorn.
  Broadbent was born in Holton cum Beckering, the son of Doreen "Dee" Broadbent (née Findlay), a sculptor, and Roy Laverick Broadbent, an artist, sculptor, interior designer, and furniture maker who turned a former church into a theatre named after him. Broadbent's parents were both amateur actors who co-founded the Holton Players acting troupe at Holton cum Beckering; the two were described by the BBC as conscientious objectors who "worked the land" rather than participate in World War II. He had a twin sister who died at birth. Broadbent was educated at Leighton Park School, a Quaker school in Reading, and briefly attended art college before transferring to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from which he graduated in 1972.
  Broadbent's early stagework included a number of productions for The National Theatre of Brent, as the downtrodden assistant Wallace to Patrick Barlow's self-important actor/manager character Desmond Olivier Dingle. Broadbent and Barlow played many male and female character roles in comically less-than-epic tellings of historical and religious stories such as The Messiah, The Complete Guide to Sex, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Revolution!!, and All The World's A Globe. These were hits at the Edinburgh Fringe, in London, and on tour. Later stage work included the original productions of Kafka's Dick (1986) and Our Country's Good (1988) at the Royal Court Theatre and work for the Royal National Theatre including "The Government Inspector". Work on the stage with Mike Leigh includes Goosepimples and Ecstasy.
  
  wn.com/Jim_Broadbent
• Jim Threapleton
  James Edward "Jim" Threapleton (born 1973, Wharfedale, North Yorkshire, England). Threapleton has worked as an assistant director on many films, including Hideous Kinky.
  He and Kate Winslet, whom he met on the set of Hideous Kinky, married on 22 November 1998 in Reading, Berkshire, Winslet's hometown. They had a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, on 12 October 2000 in London. However, the two separated in September 2001 and divorced on 13 December 2001.
  Threapleton married again to Julie, a special needs teacher.
  His first work as a director (and writer) was the film Extraordinary Rendition which premiered at the 2007 Locarno Film Festival.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Jim_Threapleton
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  John Landis
  John David Landis (born August 3, 1950) is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.
  Landis was born to a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Shirley Levine (née Magaziner) and Marshall Landis, an interior designer and decorator. His family relocated to Los Angeles when he was four months old.
  He began working as a mailboy at 20th Century Fox. His first noteworthy job in Hollywood was working as a "go-fer" and then as an assistant director during filming MGM's Kelly's Heroes in Yugoslavia in 1969; he replaced the film's original assistant director, who suffered from a nervous breakdown and was sent home by the producers. While filming, he met actors Don Rickles and Donald Sutherland, both of whom he would later cast in his own films. Following this, Landis worked on many films made in Europe (especially in Italy and England), most notably, Once Upon a Time in the West, El Condor and A Town Called Bastard (a.k.a. A Town Called Hell). Landis also worked as a stunt double.
  
  wn.com/John_Landis
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  John Noble
  John Noble (born 20 August 1948) is an Australian film and television actor, and theater director of more than 80 plays. He was born in Port Pirie, South Australia, Australia and is currently starring as scientist Walter Bishop in the J. J. Abrams television series Fringe.
  He made occasional appearances on the television series All Saints. He is internationally known for his performance as Denethor in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He played Russian Consul Anatoly Markov in the sixth season of the American television series 24. In 2011 he appeared as Real Estate tycoon Leland Monroe in Rockstar's video game L.A. Noire. He is also the voice of Unicron for the television show Transformers: Prime.
  John lives in the US with wife Penny Noble. They have three children: Daniel Noble, Jess Noble and Actress Samantha Noble. In 2011, John's hobbies were reported to be "music and painting".
  
  wn.com/John_Noble
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  Josh Brolin
  Josh James Brolin (pronounced /ˈbroʊlɨn/; born February 12, 1968) is an American actor. He has acted in theater, film and television roles since 1985, and won acting awards for his roles in the films W., No Country for Old Men, Milk and True Grit.
  Brolin was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Jane Cameron Agee, a wildlife activist who was a native of Corpus Christi, Texas, and actor James Brolin. Brolin was raised on a California ranch with little exposure to his father's acting career. His parents divorced when he was 16 and his stepmother is singer/actress Barbra Streisand. He became interested in acting after taking an improv acting class in high school.
  Brolin started his career in TV movies and guest spots on TV shows before getting a more notable role as Brand Walsh in the Richard Donner-directed movie The Goonies (1985). He was considered for the role of Tom Hanson in the series 21 Jump Street; he and Johnny Depp were the finalists for the role, and at that time the two became close and remained friends even after the role was ultimately awarded to Depp. Brolin guest-starred in an episode of the show in its first season.
  
  wn.com/Josh_Brolin
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  Julie Dreyfus
  Julie Dreyfus (born January 24, 1966 in Paris) is a French actress.
  Dreyfus, who's fluent in Japanese and English, is well known in Japan, where she made her TV debut on a French-language lesson program on NHK's educational channel in the late 1980s, and has appeared on the TV show Ryōri no Tetsujin (Iron Chef) as a guest and judge.
  She is best known to Western audiences for her apparences in two of her good friend Quentin Tarantino's films: she played Sofie Fatale in Kill Bill Volume 1 and Francesca Mondino in Inglourious Basterds.
  Julie was born and raised in Paris, the only child of French actress Pascale Audret and producer Francis Dreyfus. She is of Romanian descent on her father's maternal lineage, and Alsatian Jewish on the paternal side. Her grandfather was a descendant of the famous Captain Alfred Dreyfus. She spent her summers in the U.K. She started learning Japanese in 1985 at the Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilization at the University of Paris, after studying interior design and becoming interested in Japanese architecture. She moved to Japan to study at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies for a six-month intensive Japanese course, thinking she would eventually land a job in interior design. After finishing the course, she moved to Tokyo working part time in a design studio while continuing her private Japanese lessons. In 1988, she worked as a French language instructor on the NHK morning television educational program. Centering on a mystery drama, chief producer Motoyoshi Sei hired Dreyfus to increase ratings by changing the program into an episode-format. Eventually, she was cast by Japanese network executives as the 20-something beauty in several TV and film roles, leading her to become a gaijin tarento (foreign talent). She was also a judge on the cult-hit cooking show Ryōri no Tetsujin (Iron Chef).
  
  wn.com/Julie_Dreyfus
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  Karl Urban
  Karl-Heinz Urban (born 7 June, 1972) is a New Zealand actor.
  He is known for playing Éomer in the second and third installments of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in the 2009 film Star Trek and Caesar on Xena: Warrior Princess. He played Vaako in The Chronicles of Riddick, the Russian assassin Kirill in The Bourne Supremacy, and Ghost in Pathfinder and won acclaim for his performances in New Zealand films The Price of Milk and Out of the Blue.
  Urban was born in Wellington, New Zealand. His father, a German immigrant, owned a leather goods store, and his mother once worked for Film Facilities in Wellington, through which the young Urban was exposed to classic New Zealand cinema and developed an interest in the film industry. Urban attended St Mark's Church School, where he showed an early love for public performance. His first acting role came at age eight, when he had a single line in one episode of the New Zealand television series 'Pioneer Woman'. Though continuing to take part in school stage productions, he did not act professionally again until after high school.
  
  wn.com/Karl_Urban
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  Kelly Macdonald
  Kelly Macdonald (born (1976-02-23)23 February 1976) is a Scottish actress, known for her role in the independent film Trainspotting and mainstream releases such as Nanny McPhee, Gosford Park, Intermission, No Country for Old Men and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. On television, she is known for her roles in Boardwalk Empire, The Girl in the Café and State of Play.
  Macdonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Her mother was a garment industry sales executive.
  In August 2003, Macdonald married musician Dougie Payne. Their son was born in March 2008.
  Macdonald's career began while working as a barmaid. She saw a leaflet advertising an open casting session for Trainspotting and decided to audition, winning the part of Diane, the underage seductress to Ewan McGregor's Renton. Other roles include Mary O'Neary in Two Family House and an actress playing Peter Pan in Finding Neverland. She also had major roles in Robert Altman's British period piece Gosford Park, where she played an aristocrat's maid, as well as in Intermission (2003), as Deirdre.
  
  wn.com/Kelly_Macdonald
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  Kristin Scott Thomas
  Kristin A. Scott Thomas,OBE (born 24 May 1960) is an English actress who has also acquired French nationality. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient.
  Since the 1980s, she has also worked in French cinema in films such as the thriller Tell No One and Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long. She has lived in France since she was 19, has brought up her three children in Paris, and says she considers herself more French than British. She was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2005.
  Scott Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall. Her mother, Deborah (née Hurlbatt), was brought up in Hong Kong and Africa, and studied drama before marrying Scott Thomas's father. Her father, Lieutenant Commander Simon Scott Thomas, was a pilot for the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm who died in a flying accident in 1964. She is the elder sister of actress Serena Scott Thomas, the niece of Admiral Sir Richard Thomas (who was a Black Rod in the House of Lords), and a more distant great-great-niece of Captain Scott, the ill-fated explorer who lost the race to the South Pole.
  
  wn.com/Kristin_Scott_Thomas
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  Lance Henriksen
  Lance James Henriksen (born May 5, 1940) is an American actor and artist best known to film and television audiences for his roles in science fiction, action, and horror films such as the Alien film franchise, and on television shows such as Millennium. Henriksen is also a voice actor; he is noted for his deep, commanding voice.
  Henriksen was born in New York City. His father, James Henriksen (born as Jim Marino Henriksen in Tønsberg 1910), was a Norwegian merchant sailor and boxer nicknamed "Icewater" who spent most of his life at sea. His mother, Margueritte, struggled to find work as a dance instructor, waitress, and model. His parents divorced when he was two years old and he was raised by his mother. As he grew up, Henriksen found himself in trouble at various schools and even saw the inside of a children's home. Henriksen left home^{[not in citation given]} and dropped out of school at the age of twelve;^{[not in citation given]} he would not learn to read until he was 30, when he taught himself by studying film scripts. Henriksen's grandmother from Norway was of Sami origin.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Lance_Henriksen
• Larenz Tate
  Larenz Tate (born September 8, 1975) is an American film and television actor.
  Tate was born on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, the son of Peggy and Larry Tate. He is the youngest of three siblings (his two brothers, Larron and Lahmard, are also actors) whose family moved to California when he was nine years old. Convinced by their parents to enter a drama program at the Inner City Cultural Center, the trio did not take the lessons seriously until classmate Malcolm-Jamal Warner's ascent to fame after being cast on the sitcom The Cosby Show. Subsequently realizing that they could parlay their efforts into a tangible form of success, the siblings began to receive small roles and in 1985, Tate made his small-screen debut in an episode of The New Twilight Zone series.
  Following appearances in such television series as 21 Jump Street and The Wonder Years, Tate was cast in the television movie The Women of Brewster Place before receiving the recurring role of Steve Urkel's nemesis, Willie Fuffner, in the family comedy series Family Matters (1989). He was also a cast member on the CBS series The Royal Family, starring Redd Foxx and Della Reese, which ended prematurely after Redd Foxx died. In the video game 187 Ride or Die, Tate voices the main character, Buck.
  
  wn.com/Larenz_Tate
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  Liv Tyler
  Liv Rundgren Tyler (born July 1, 1977) is an American actress and model. She is the daughter of Aerosmith's lead singer, Steven Tyler, and Bebe Buell, model and singer. Tyler began a career in modeling at the age of 14, but after less than a year she decided to focus on acting. She made her film debut in the 1994 film Silent Fall. She then appeared in supporting roles in Empire Records (1995), Heavy (1996) and That Thing You Do! (1996). Tyler later achieved critical recognition in the leading role in Stealing Beauty (1996). She followed this by starring in supporting roles including Inventing the Abbotts (1997) and Cookie's Fortune (1999).
  Tyler achieved international recognition as a result of her portrayal of Elf maiden Arwen Undómiel in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. She has appeared in an eclectic range of films, including the 2004 comedy Jersey Girl, the indie film Lonesome Jim (2005), the drama Reign Over Me (2007) and big-budget studio films such as Armageddon (1998), The Strangers (2008) and The Incredible Hulk (2008).
  
  wn.com/Liv_Tyler
• Lorraine Ashbourne
  Lorraine Ashbourne (born 1961 in Manchester, Lancashire) is an English stage, film and television actress.
  She has appeared on British television series and television films, including: The Street, True Dare Kiss, Thin Ice, In a Land of Plenty, Boon, Playing the Field, City Central, Peak Practice, The Bill, Pie in the Sky, Casualty, In Suspicious Circumstances, Mr. Wroe's Virgins, Rich Tea and Sympathy, and London's Burning.
  As a stage actress, Lorraine regularly appeared at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, England, playing roles such as Kate Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer and as Emilia in Othello both of which she acted alongside husband Andy Serkis.
  Her roles in the theatre include
  She has been married to actor Andy Serkis since 22 July 2002; they have 3 children, Ruby (b. 1998), Sonny (b. 2000) and Louis (b. 2004). The family resides in Crouch End, London.
  
  wn.com/Lorraine_Ashbourne
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  Lucy Liu
  Lucy Alexis Liu (Chinese: 劉玉玲; pinyin: Liú Yùlíng; born December 2, 1968) is an American actress, singer and film producer. She became known for playing the role of the vicious and ill-mannered Ling Woo in the television series Ally McBeal (1998–2002), and has also appeared in several Hollywood films including Payback, Charlie's Angels, Chicago, Kill Bill, and Kung Fu Panda. In 2012, Liu joined the cast of the TNT original series Southland.
  Liu was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. In high school, she adopted her middle name "Alexis". She is the youngest of three children born to Cecilia, who worked as a biochemist, and Tom Liu, who was a civil engineer. Both of Liu's parents were immigrants from Taiwan of Chinese descent. Her grandparents were born and raised in China. She has an older brother, John, and an older sister, Jenny. Liu has stated that she grew up in a "diverse" neighborhood. She learned to speak Mandarin Chinese at home and began studying English when she was five years old.
  
  wn.com/Lucy_Liu
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  Ludacris
  Christopher Brian Bridges (born September 11, 1977), better known by his stage name Ludacris, is an American rapper and actor. Along with his manager, Chaka Zulu, Ludacris is the co-founder of Disturbing tha Peace, an imprint distributed by Def Jam Recordings. Ludacris has won a Screen Actors Guild, Critic's Choice, MTV, and three Grammy Awards during his career. Along with fellow Atlantans Big Boi and Andre 3000 of OutKast, Ludacris was one of the first and most influential Dirty South artists to achieve mainstream success.
  Born in Champaign, Illinois, Ludacris moved to Atlanta, Georgia at age nine, where he began rapping. After a brief stint as a disc jockey, he released his debut album Back for the First Time in 2000, which contained the singles "Southern Hospitality" and "What's Your Fantasy". In 2001, he released Word of Mouf, followed by Chicken-n-Beer in 2003. He took a more serious approach with his next three albums, The Red Light District (2004), Release Therapy (2006), and Theater of the Mind (2008). His latest record, Battle of the Sexes, was released in 2010.
  
  wn.com/Ludacris
• Madhur Mittal
  Madhur Mittal (Hindi: मधुर मित्तल; Urdu: مدھر دوستتل; born 1987) is an Indian actor, best known for his performance as Salim Malik in the film Slumdog Millionaire, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2008 and for which he won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
  Madhur was born in Agra, a city in North India well known for the Taj Mahal in civil court compound near khandari. Today he lives in a flat at Mira Road. Madhur has attended Abhinav Degree College and as of February 2011 is 24 years old. Currently he is a theatre student at the University of Mumbai.
  In 1997, Madhur won Boogie Woogie a popular reality-based dance show on Indian television. Shortly after, his family moved to Mumbai where he joined Abhinav Vidya Mandir at Bhayander East for his schooling and Madhur forayed into acting and dancing on stage in charity shows, cultural events and film-award ceremonies. He traveled the world performing in over 950 stage shows. As a child actor he worked in well known Hindi films like One Two Ka Four, Kahin Pyaar Na Ho Jaaye, and more recently Say Salaam India. He has also acted in several TV shows including Shaka Laka Boom Boom, Kasauti Zindagi Ki, Jalwa, Chamatkar and Dastak.
  
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  Maggie Smith
  Dame Margaret Natalie "Maggie" Smith, DBE (born 28 December 1934) is an English film, stage and television actress. She has had an extensive career both on screen and in live theatre, and is known as one of Britain's pre-eminent actors. She made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 60 years. She has won numerous awards for acting, both for the stage and for film, including seven BAFTA Awards (five competitive awards and two special awards including the Bafta Fellowship in 1996), two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, two SAG Awards and a Tony Award. Dame Maggie is the only actor ever to win this collective of awards and is one of the most successful and acclaimed actors of the film era.
  Her critically acclaimed films include Othello (1965), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), Travels with My Aunt (1972), California Suite (1978), Clash of the Titans (1981), A Room with a View (1985) and Gosford Park (2001). She has also appeared in a number of widely-popular films, including Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992) and as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series. She currently stars in the critically acclaimed drama Downton Abbey as Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, for which she has won an Emmy.
  
  wn.com/Maggie_Smith
• Martin Hannett
  James Martin Hannett (31 May 1948 – 10 April 1991), initially credited as Martin Zero, was a record producer and an original partner/director at Factory Records with Tony Wilson. Hannett's trademark sound, most apparent on Joy Division's debut album Unknown Pleasures and its follow-up, Closer, is sparse, eerie and spacious.
  Born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, Hannett was raised in a working class, Catholic family in Miles Platting, Manchester, attending Corpus Christi school and Xaverian College in Rusholme. In 1967, he began to attend UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) where he earned a degree in chemistry but chose not to pursue that profession.
  Martin's uncle was a bass player and he gave Martin a bass guitar when he was 14. Martin played bass with Spider Mike King and as member in a band called Paradox, in 1973, alongside Paul Young, later of Sad Café and Mike + The Mechanics.
  His production work began with the cartoon show All Kinds of Heroes soundtrack, which also was produced by Steve Hopkins (with whom later worked again). By this time, he also began to mix at pub gigs. Another early production works included Greasy Bear material, Belt & Braces Road Show Band's eponymous album, in 1975, and five songs from Pete Farrow's repertoire recorded at Pennine Studios, Oldham, later included on that artist's compilation album Who Says There's No Beach in Stockport. However, he first came to musical attention in 1977, when, as Martin Zero, he produced the first independent punk record, The Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch EP. Under the same moniker he produced early records by punk poet John Cooper Clarke, whose Salford monotone was complemented by drum machines, simple synthesiser motifs and Hannett's own bass playing. As Martin Zero, Hannett appeared on Top of the Pops playing bass on Jilted John's eponymous single, which he also produced.
  
  wn.com/Martin_Hannett
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  Martin Wuttke
  Martin Wuttke (born February 8, 1962) is a German actor and director who reached international recognition for his portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds.
  Wuttke began his actor training at the college theater in Bochum and then changed to the Westphalian Drama School in Bochum (Bochum today drama school). He played in numerous German-speaking stages: Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, Berliner Ensemble, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Schiller Theater in Berlin, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Theater of West Berlin, the Thalia Theater of Hamburg, Stuttgart State Theater, Freie Volksbühne Berlin, Schauspielhaus Frankfurt am Main.
  Wuttke lives with actress Margarita Broich with two children.
  
  wn.com/Martin_Wuttke
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  Matt Dillon
  Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon (born February 18, 1964) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.
  Matthew Raymond Dillon was born in New Rochelle, New York, to second-generation Irish American parents Mary Ellen, a homemaker, and Paul Dillon, a portrait painter and sales manager for Union Camp, a packing material manufacturer. He was raised in a close-knit Irish Roman Catholic family as the second of six children. Dillon's paternal grandmother was the sister of comic strip artist Alex Raymond. Dillon has one sister and four brothers, one of whom, Kevin Dillon, is also an actor, and appears on the hit TV series Entourage which has earned him several Emmy nominations in the supporting actor comedy category. Dillon grew up in Mamaroneck, New York, and before dropping out in junior year, he attended Mamaroneck High School.^{[citation needed]}
  In 1978, Jane Bernstein and a friend were helping director Jonathan Kaplan cast the violent teen drama Over the Edge when they found Dillon cutting class at Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont. Dillon auditioned for a role and made his debut in the film. The film received a regional, limited theatrical release in May 1979, and grossed only slightly over $200,000. Dillon's performance was well-received, which led to his casting in two films released the following year; the teenage sex comedy Little Darlings, in which Kristy McNichol's character loses her virginity to a boy from the camp across the lake, played by Dillon, and the more serious teen dramedy My Bodyguard, where he played a high-school bully opposite Chris Makepeace. The films, released in March and July 1980, respectively, were box office successes and raised Dillon's profile among teenage audiences.
  
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  Michael Fassbender
  Michael Fassbender (born 2 April 1977) is an Irish-German actor. He is perhaps best known for having played Lieutenant Archie Hicox in the war film Inglourious Basterds (2009), Magneto in the superhero film X-Men: First Class (2011), and the android David in the science fiction film Prometheus.
  His other credits include the fantasy action film 300 (2007); the drama film Fish Tank (2009); the romantic drama film Jane Eyre (2011); the historical film A Dangerous Method (2011), directed by David Cronenberg, in which he plays psychologist Carl Jung; as well as the biographical film Hunger (2008) and the drama film Shame (2011), both directed by Steve McQueen. For his role in Shame, he won the Volpi Cup best-actor award at the 68th Venice International Film Festival held in August 2011 along with being nominated for a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA.
  Fassbender was born in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany (now Germany). His mother is from Larne, County Antrim in Northern Ireland, and his father, Josef Fassbender, is German. According to Fassbender's "family lore", his mother is the great-great-niece of Michael Collins, an Irish leader during the War of Independence. When he was two years old, his parents moved to Killarney, County Kerry, in the Republic of Ireland, where they ran the West End House, a restaurant where his father worked as a chef. Fassbender was brought up as a Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Fassbender
• Michael Gambon
  Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE (born 19 October 1940) is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlow in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as Professor Albus Dumbledore in the last six Harry Potter films (following the death of actor Richard Harris).
  Gambon was born in Cabra, Dublin, during World War II. His father, Edward Gambon, was an engineer, and his mother, Mary (née Hoare), was a seamstress. His father decided to seek work in the rebuilding of London, and so the family moved to Mornington Crescent in North London, when Gambon was five. His father had him made a British citizen, a decision that would later allow Gambon to receive an actual, rather than honorary, knighthood and CBE.
  Brought up as a strict Roman Catholic, he attended St Aloysius Boys' School in Somers Town and served at the altar. He then moved to St Aloysius' College in Hornsey Lane, Highgate, London, whose former pupils include Peter Sellers and Joe Cole. He later attended a school in Kent, before leaving with no qualifications at fifteen. He then gained an apprenticeship with Vickers Armstrong as a toolmaker. By the time he was 21, he was a fully qualified engineer. He kept the job for a further year, acquiring a fascination and passion for collecting antique guns, clocks, watches, and classic cars.
  
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  Mickey Rourke
  Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. (born September 16, 1952) is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films.
  During the 1980s, Rourke starred in Diner, Rumble Fish, and the erotic drama 9½ Weeks, and received critical praise for his work in Barfly and Angel Heart. In 1991, Rourke, who had trained as a boxer in his early years, left acting and became a professional boxer for a period. He had supporting roles in several later films, including The Rainmaker, Buffalo '66, The Pledge, Get Carter, Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Man on Fire.
  In 2005, Rourke made his comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role in Sin City, for which he won awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Irish Film and Television Awards and the Online Film Critics Society. In the 2008 film The Wrestler, Rourke portrayed a past-his-prime wrestler, and received a 2009 Golden Globe award, a BAFTA award, and a nomination for an Academy Award.
  
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  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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  Mike Myers
  Michael John "Mike" Myers (born May 25, 1963) is a Canadian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film producer of British parentage. He was a long-time cast member on the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s and the early 1990s and starred as the title characters in the films Wayne's World, Austin Powers, and the Shrek film series.
  Myers was born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario, the son of British-born parents Eric Myers (1922–1991), an insurance man and World War II veteran of the Royal Engineers, and his wife Alice E. (née Hind; born 1926), an office supervisor and veteran of the Royal Air Force. Both of his parents are from Liverpool, England. He has two older brothers, Peter Myers and Paul Myers, an indie rock singer-songwriter, broadcaster and author. Myers is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry, and was raised Protestant. He holds three citizenships, American, British, and Canadian.
  Myers began school at Bishopbriggs Academy then changed to the Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Ontario. He began performing in commercials at age eight, and at ten he made a commercial for British Columbia Hydro Electric, with Gilda Radner playing his mother. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Second City Theatre. He left to tour Britain with comedian Neil Mullarkey.
  
  wn.com/Mike_Myers
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  Miranda Otto
  Miranda Otto (born 16 December 1967) is an Australian actress. The daughter of actors Lindsay and Barry Otto and the sister of actress Gracie Otto, she began acting at age eighteen, and has performed in a variety of independent and major studio films.
  Her first major film appearance was in the 1986 film Emma's War, in which she played a teenager who moves to Australia's bush country during World War II. After a decade of critically acclaimed roles in Australian films, she gained Hollywood's attention after appearing in supporting roles in The Thin Red Line (1998) and What Lies Beneath (2000). Her breakthrough role came in 2002, when she portrayed Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. More recent work includes a starring role in the 2008 now-cancelled American television series Cashmere Mafia, and Australian films such as In Her Skin and Blessed (2009).
  Otto was born in Brisbane to stage and film actor Barry Otto and former actress Lindsay Otto (who retired from acting upon Miranda Otto's birth). Gracie Otto, Miranda's half-sister, is also an actress. Otto was raised in Newcastle and Brisbane, and briefly resided in Hong Kong following her parents' separation in 1973. She spent weekends and holidays with her father in Sydney and developed an interest in acting through him.
  
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  Myra Hindley
  The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around what is now Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17—Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans—at least four of whom were sexually assaulted. The murders are so named because two of the victims were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor, with a third grave also being discovered there in 1987, over 20 years after Brady and Hindley's trial in 1966. The body of a fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also suspected to be buried there, but despite repeated searches it remains undiscovered.
  The police were initially aware of only three killings, those of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. The investigation was reopened in 1985, after Brady was reported in the press as having confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Brady and Hindley were taken separately to Saddleworth Moor to assist the police in their search for the graves, both by then having confessed to the additional murders.
  
  wn.com/Myra_Hindley
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  Mélanie Laurent
  Mélanie Laurent (born 21 February 1983) is a French actress, director, singer and writer. She is best known to international audiences for her role as Shosanna Dreyfus in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, for which she won Best Actress from the Online Film Critics Society and the Austin Film Critics Association.
  Mélanie Laurent was born in Paris, the daughter of Annick, a ballerina, and Pierre Laurent, a voiceover actor (who dubs the character Ned Flanders in the French version of The Simpsons). Laurent is Jewish, and has both Ashkenazi and Tunisian Sephardic ancestry. A grandfather survived deportation by the Nazis. Her maternal grandparents were film poster editors. She grew up in the 9th arrondissement of Paris and was immersed from birth in the arts.
  Her career began when Gérard Depardieu, seeing her while she watched her best friend's father working on the set of Asterix and Obelix, asked her if she wanted to be in movies. Laurent replied 'Why not?' and next week his assistant called her. Depardieu gave Laurent a part when she was 16 in The Bridge, a drama he starred in and co-directed with Fréderic Auburtin.
  
  wn.com/Mélanie_Laurent
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  Mýa
  Mýa Marie Harrison (born October 10, 1979), professionally referred to as Mýa, is an American R&B and pop recording artist, entertainer, philanthropist, and occasional actress. A Washington, D.C. native, as a young child, Harrison took ballet lessons from the age of two and added jazz and tap dancing lessons to her schedule two years later. As she entered her teens, Harrison began to shift her focus to music. Gifted and musically-inclined, with the help of her father she put together a demo tape when she was 15 and begin to scout around for a record deal while still attending high school. At the age of 16, she signed a recording contract with Interscope Records.
  Harrison's eponymous debut album with (through) Interscope Records was released in the spring of April 1998. It sold over one million copies in the United States, producing the gold-certified top ten single "It's All About Me" featuring Sisqó. Her second studio album, platinum-plus selling Fear of Flying was released in 2000 and became a worldwide success, with single "Case of the Ex" becoming Mýa's breakthrough hit; topping the Australian Singles Chart for two consecutive weeks.
  
  wn.com/Mýa
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  Neneh Cherry
  Neneh Mariann Cherry (born Neneh Mariann Karlsson; 10 March 1964) is a Swedish singer-songwriter, rapper, and occasional DJ and broadcaster. Blending hip hop with other influences, Cherry experienced mainstream success with several of her recordings.
  Cherry was born in Stockholm to a Sierra Leonean father, drummer Amahdu Jah, and a Swedish mother, painter and textile artist Monica Karlsson, later known as Moki Cherry. Her stepfather Don Cherry, an American jazz musician, helped raise her since birth and she took his surname. Through her father, she is the half-sister of singer Titiyo and record producer Cherno Jah, and through her mother, she is the half-sister of musician Eagle-Eye Cherry. She has a stepsister, violinist Jan Cherry, and a stepbrother, jazz musician David Ornette Cherry.
  During the first years of her life, Cherry lived in a hippie commune just outside the small town of Hässleholm. The family later moved to Pudsey, England, and in the early 1970s, they lived in an apartment on East Ninth Street in New York. At the age of 14, Cherry dropped out of school and moved to London.
  
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  Nikola Tesla
  Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and futurist. He was an important contributor to the use of commercial electricity, and is best known for developing the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. His many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were based on the theories of electromagnetic technology discovered by Michael Faraday. Tesla's patents and theoretical work also formed the basis of wireless communication and the radio.
  Born in the village of Smiljan (now part of Gospić, present day Croatia), Tesla was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen. Because of his 1894 demonstration of short range wireless communication through radio and as the eventual victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America. He pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. In the United States during this time, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture. Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transfer to power electronic devices in 1891, and aspired to intercontinental wireless transmission of industrial power in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.
  
  wn.com/Nikola_Tesla
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  Orlando Bloom
  Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom (born 13 January 1977) is an English actor. He had his break-through roles in 2001 as the elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and in 2003 as blacksmith Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. He subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood films, including Elizabethtown and Kingdom of Heaven. He appeared in the ensemble films New York, I Love You, Sympathy for Delicious, and Main Street. Bloom made his professional stage debut in West End's In Celebration at the Duke of York's Theatre, St. Martin's Lane, which ended its run on 15 September 2007. On 12 October 2009, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
  Orlando Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, England, and has one sister, Samantha Bloom, who was born in 1975.
  His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine (née Copeland), was born in the British section of Kolkata, India, the daughter of Betty Constance Josephine Walker and Francis John Copeland, who was a physician and surgeon. Through her, Bloom is a cousin of photographer Sebastian Copeland. Bloom's maternal grandmother's family lived in Tasmania, Australia, Japan, and India, and were of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent. During his childhood, Bloom was told that his father was his mother's husband, Jewish South African-born anti-Apartheid novelist Harry Saul Bloom; however, when he was thirteen (nine years after Harry's death), Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, his mother's partner and family friend. Stone, the principal of the Concorde International language school, was made Orlando Bloom's legal guardian after Harry Bloom's death. Bloom is named after the 16th century composer Orlando Gibbons.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Orlando_Bloom
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  Paul Dano
  Paul Franklin Dano (born June 19, 1984) is an American actor and producer. He has appeared in films such as L.I.E. (2001), Too Young to Be a Dad (2002), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Gigantic (2008).
  Dano was born in New York City, the son of Gladys (née Pipp) and Paul Dano. He spent the first few years of his childhood in New York City and initially attended the Browning School, while his father worked as a businessman in New York.
  While he was still a child, Dano's family moved from New York to New Canaan, Connecticut, finally settling in Wilton, Connecticut, where Dano continued his education at Wilton High School, graduating in 2002 to further attend Eugene Lang College in New York, NY.
  As a child he was involved in community theatre, and while performing in New Canaan his parents were encouraged to take him to New York City. At age 10, he was quickly scouted for roles in plays on Broadway, making his debut at age 12 in a revival of Inherit the Wind along with George C. Scott and Charles Durning. At age 17, Dano acted in his first major film role as Howie in L.I.E.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Dano
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  Paul Giamatti
  Brawl Edward Valentine Giamatti (/dʒiəˈmɑːti/; born June 6, 1967) is an American actor. An acclaimed character actor, Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon before earning lead roles in several projects in the 2000s including American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, The Illusionist, John Adams, Cold Souls, Barney's Version, and Win Win.
  Giamatti, the youngest of three children, was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Angelo Bartlett Giamatti, was a Yale University professor who later became president of the university and commissioner of Major League Baseball. His mother, Toni Marilyn (née Smith), was a homemaker and English teacher who taught at Hopkins School and had also previously acted. Giamatti is of Italian, Irish, and English descent. Giamatti's paternal grandmother was from a family with deep roots in New England, and his paternal grandfather was the son of Italian immigrants from Telese. His brother, Marcus, is also an actor, and his sister, Elena, is a jewelry designer. Giamatti was educated at The Foote School and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in 1985. He attended Yale University, where he was elected to the Skull and Bones secret society. Giamatti was active in the undergraduate theater scene, working alongside actors Ron Livingston and Edward Norton, who were also Yale students. He graduated from Yale in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in English. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama where he studied with Earle R. Gister. He performed in numerous theatrical productions (including Broadway) before appearing in some small television and film roles in the early 1990s.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Giamatti
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  Queen Latifah
  Dana Elaine Owens (born March 18, 1970), better known by her stage name Queen Latifah, is an American singer, rapper, and actress. Her work in music, film and television has earned her a Golden Globe award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Image Awards, a Grammy Award, six additional Grammy nominations, an Emmy Award nomination and an Academy Award nomination.
  Latifah was born, and primarily raised, in East Orange, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Rita (née Bray), a teacher at Irvington High School (her daughter's alma mater), and Lancelot Owens, Sr., a police officer, her parents divorced when Latifah was ten. Latifah was raised in the Baptist church and attended Catholic school in Newark, New Jersey. Her stage name, Latifah (لطيفة laţīfa), meaning "delicate" and "very kind" in Arabic, she found in an Islamic book of names when she was eight. Always a tall girl, the 5'10" Latifah was a power forward on her high school basketball team. She performed the number "Home" from the musical The Wiz in a high school play. She is of African American and Native American ancestry.
  
  wn.com/Queen_Latifah
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  Renée Zellweger
  Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire (1996), and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) (which she reprised in its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)), and as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Cold Mountain (2003).
  She has won an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and a BAFTA Award, was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2009, and established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses as of 2007.
  Zellweger was born in Katy, Texas. Her father, Emil Erich Zellweger, is from Au in the canton of St. Gallen,Switzerland, and is a mechanical and electrical engineer who worked in the oil refining business. Her mother, Kjellfrid Irene (née Andreassen), is Norwegian; of part Sámi and Kven (Finnish) descent, Kjellfrid grew up in Kirkenes and Ekkerøy, and is a nurse and midwife who moved to the United States to work as a governess for a Norwegian family in Texas. Zellweger has described herself as being raised in a family of "lazy Catholics and Episcopalians".
  
  wn.com/Renée_Zellweger
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  Richard Gere
  Richard Tiffany Gere ( /ˈɡɪər/ GEER; born August 31, 1949) is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol. He went on to star in several hit films including An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman, Primal Fear, and Chicago, for which he won a Golden Globe Award as Best Actor, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the Best Cast.
  Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Gere is a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims Francis Eaton, John Billington, George Soule, Richard Warren, Degory Priest, William Brewster, and Francis Cooke. His paternal great-grandfather had changed the spelling of the surname from "Geer". Gere's mother, Doris Ann (née Tiffany, born 1924), was a homemaker, and his father, Homer George Gere (born 1922), was an insurance agent for the Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company and had originally intended to become a minister. Gere is their eldest son and second child. In 1967, he graduated from North Syracuse Central High School, where he excelled at gymnastics and music, playing the trumpet. He attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst on a gymnastics scholarship, majoring in philosophy, but did not graduate, leaving after two years.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Gere
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  Robin Williams
  Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.
  Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was senator and Mississippi governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams is of English, Welsh, Irish, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and later moved to Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams studied at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd (who died August 14, 2007) and McLaurin.
  
  wn.com/Robin_Williams
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  Rod Taylor
  Rodney Sturt "Rod" Taylor (born 11 January 1930) is an Australian actor of film and television. He has appeared in over 50 films, and is well known for his roles in the science fiction film The Time Machine (1960), and in the Alfred Hitchcock horror movie The Birds (1963).
  Taylor was Born on 11 January 1930 in Lidcombe, a suburb of Sydney, the only child of William Sturt Taylor, a steel construction contractor and commercial artist, and the former Mona Thompson, a writer of more than a hundred short stories and children's books. His middle name comes from his great-great grand uncle, Captain Charles Sturt, a British explorer of the Australian Outback in the 19th century.
  Taylor attended Parramatta High School and later studied at the East Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College. For a time he worked as a commercial artist, but decided to become an actor after seeing Laurence Olivier in an Old Vic touring production in Australia.
  Taylor acquired extensive radio and stage experience in Australia where his radio work included a period on Blue Hills and a role as Tarzan. Earlier in his career he had to support himself by working at Sydney's Mark Foys department store designing and painting window and other displays during the day. In 1951 he took part in a re-enactment of Charles Sturt's voyage down the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers, playing Sturt's offsider, George Macleay. A short documentary, Inland with Sturt (1951), was based on it. Taylor also appeared in a number of theatre productions for Australia's Mercury Theatre.
  
  wn.com/Rod_Taylor
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  Rubina Ali
  Rubina Ali (born January 21, 1999), also known as Rubina Qureshi, is an Indian child actress who played the child version of Latika in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award. Following the film's success, she was cast in the Bollywood film Kal Kisne Dekha (2009).
  Rubina's casting in Slumdog Millionaire proved controversial with the producers admitting they debated whether to use real slum children in the film fearing it would distort their lives too much. Director Danny Boyle justified the casting saying: "These people have so much prejudice against them, why should we be prejudiced against them as well?"
  Critics have claimed Rubina and her co-star Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail had been underpaid for their part in the film. This has been disputed by the film's producer, who says the actors had been paid the equivalent of a monthly salary payment for the production company's senior staff in Britain. A trust fund has been set up for the children which will be released to them when they turn eighteen, provided they continue in education until this time.
  
  wn.com/Rubina_Ali
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  Rupert Graves
  Rupert Graves (born 30 June 1963) is an English film, television and theatre actor. He is best known for his role as DI Lestrade in the critically acclaimed television series Sherlock.
  He was born in Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England, to Mary Lousilla (née Roberts) Graves, a travel coordinator, and Richard Harding Graves, a music teacher and musician.
  Graves was educated at Wyvern Community School, a state comprehensive school in his home town of Weston-super-Mare, which he left at the age of fifteen. The school has since closed and re-opened as the Hans Price Academy.
  Graves's first job after leaving school was as a circus clown. He has appeared in over twenty-five films and over thirty-five television productions; he has also appeared on stage. During his career, he has starred alongside actress Helena Bonham Carter four times in A Room with a View, Maurice, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Revengers' Comedies.
  He first came to prominence in costume-drama adaptations of E. M. Forster's novels A Room with a View (1985) and Maurice (1987), before going on to appear in films including A Handful of Dust (1988), Different for Girls (1996) and Intimate Relations (1996).
  
  wn.com/Rupert_Graves
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  Ryan Phillippe
  Matthew Ryan Phillippe ( /ˈfɪlɨpiː/; born September 10, 1974), better known as Ryan Phillippe, is an American actor. After appearing on the soap opera One Life to Live, he came to fame in the late 1990s starring in a string of films, including I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, and 54. In the 2000s, he appeared in several films, including 2001's Academy Award Best Picture nominee Gosford Park, 2005's Academy Award-winning ensemble film Crash, and the 2006 war drama Flags of Our Fathers. In 2007 he starred in Breach, a movie based on the true story of FBI operative Eric O'Neill, while in 2008 he headlined Kimberly Peirce's Iraq war film Stop-Loss. In 2010, he starred as Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer Greg Marinovich in The Bang-Bang Club.
  Phillippe was born in New Castle, Delaware. His mother, Susan (née Thomas), ran a day care center in the family's house, and his father, Richard Phillippe, worked for DuPont. Phillippe is of part French descent. He has three sisters. He attended New Castle Baptist Academy, where he played basketball and soccer, as well as earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do; he was also the Yearbook Editor in his senior year.
  
  wn.com/Ryan_Phillippe
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  Sacha Baron Cohen
  Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (born 13 October 1971) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor. A graduate of Cambridge University, Baron Cohen is most widely known for writing and playing four unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, Brüno, and Admiral General Aladeen. In his routines, Baron Cohen's characters interact with unsuspecting people who do not realise they are being set up for comic situations and self-revealing ridicule.
  Baron Cohen was named Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards for The 11 O'Clock Show, and since then, his work has been further recognised with two BAFTA Awards for Da Ali G Show, several Emmy nominations, a nomination for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work in the feature film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. After the release of Borat, Baron Cohen stated that because the public had become too familiar with the characters, he would retire Borat and Ali G. Similarly, after the release of Brüno, Baron Cohen has stated he would also retire the title character.
  
  wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen
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  Samantha Morton
  Samantha Jane Morton (born 13 May 1977) is an English actress and film director. She began her performing career with guest roles in television shows such as Soldier Soldier and Boon before making her film debut in the 1997 drama film This Is the Sea, playing the character of Hazel Stokes. After a string of roles in low-budget^{[citation needed]} and television films, she landed the role of Hattie in 1999's Sweet and Lowdown, for which she received the attention from Hollywood, the critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
  Morton subsequently starred in 2002's Minority Report and Morvern Callar. She received her second Academy Award nomination for her performance as the young Irish mother, Sarah, coping with life in New York City in 2003's In America. Morton starred in 2004's Enduring Love and The Libertine and 2005's Lassie. She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Movie for her role as Myra Hindley in 2006's Longford. She appeared in the 2007 biographical films Control, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Mister Lonely. She then starred in 2008's Synecdoche, New York. Morton appeared in the 2009 critically acclaimed The Messenger. She made her directorial debut in the English television film The Unloved.
  
  wn.com/Samantha_Morton
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  Sandra Bullock
  Sandra Annette Bullock ( /ˈbʊlək/; born July 26, 1964) is an American actress and producer who rose to fame in the 1990s after roles in successful films such as Demolition Man, Speed, The Net, A Time to Kill, and While You Were Sleeping. In the new millennium she appeared in such films as Miss Congeniality, The Lake House, and Crash, the third of which received critical acclaim. In 2007, she was ranked as the 14th richest female celebrity with an estimated fortune of US$85 million. In 2009, Bullock starred in two of the more financially successful films of her career, The Proposal and The Blind Side. Bullock was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, and the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side. She is listed in the 2012 edition of the Guinness Book Of World Records as the highest-paid actress, with $56 million.
  Sandra Annette Bullock was born in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Her father, John W. Bullock (born 1925), was a United States Army employee and part-time voice coach from Birmingham, Alabama, and her mother, Helga D. Meyer (1942–2000), was a German opera singer and voice teacher. Bullock's maternal grandfather was a rocket scientist from Nuremberg, Germany. John Bullock, then in charge of the Army's Military Postal Service in Europe, was stationed in Nuremberg when he met his wife. They married in Germany, soon moving to Arlington, where John Bullock worked with the Army Materiel Command, before becoming a contractor for The Pentagon.
  
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  Sandra Oh
  Sandra Oh (born July 20, 1971) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for the role of Dr. Cristina Yang on ABC's Grey's Anatomy, for which she has won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards. She has also played notable roles in the feature films Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways, and had a supporting role on the HBO original series Arli$$. Other films she has appeared in include The Night Listener, Blindness and Rabbit Hole.
  Oh was born in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, to middle-class Korean immigrant parents Joon-Soo (John) and Young-Nam, who had come to Canada in the early 1960s. Her father is a businessman and her mother a biochemist. Oh has a brother, Ray, and a sister, Grace. She grew up living on Camwood Crescent in Nepean, where she began acting and ballet at an early age. At the age of 10, she played The Wizard of Woe in a class musical, The Canada Goose.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Sean Astin
  Sean Astin (born February 25, 1971) is an American film actor, director, voice artist, and producer best known for his film roles as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies, the title character of Rudy, and Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In television, he appeared as Lynn McGill in the fifth season of 24. Most recently, he provided the voice for the title character in Disney's Special Agent Oso. Astin also served as campaign manager for his friend, Democratic entertainment industry businessman Dan Adler in California's 36th congressional district special election, 2011.
  Astin was born Sean Patrick Duke in Santa Monica, California, the son of actress Patty Duke. At the time, it was reported that Desi Arnaz, Jr., was his biological father. In 1994, Astin discovered his father was Michael Tell, a music promoter and writer, and publisher of the newspaper The Las Vegas Israelite.
  Tell's marriage to Patty Duke was annulled shortly before her marriage in 1972 to actor John Astin, who adopted Sean. In 1973, Duke gave birth to Astin's half-brother Mackenzie Astin, who also became an actor. Although Patty Duke and John Astin divorced in 1985, Sean Astin has written that he has always considered John his "real" father.
  
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  Sean Bean
  Shaun Mark "Sean" Bean (born 17 April 1959) is an English actor of stage and screen. Bean is known for playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and, previously, British Colonel Richard Sharpe in the ITV television series Sharpe. He is also known for his film work playing such roles as Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye, Jason Locke in Essex Boys, Odysseus in Troy, Ian Howe in National Treasure and Andy McNab in Bravo Two Zero. Bean has also acted in a number of television productions and character roles such as playing Robert Aske in Henry VIII and Eddard Stark in HBO's Game of Thrones. He has also performed voice work for computer games, including Martin Septim in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
  Bean was born Shaun Mark Bean in the Handsworth district of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, the son of Rita (née Tuckwood) and Brian Bean. Bean's father owned a fabrication shop, which he had set up with a colleague. The business employed 50 people, including Bean's mother, who worked as a secretary. He has a younger sister named Lorraine. Despite becoming relatively wealthy (his father owned a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow), the family never moved away from the council estate, because they preferred to remain close to friends and family.
  
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  Simon Pegg
  Simon Pegg (born Simon John Beckingham; 14 February 1970) is an English actor, comedian, writer, film producer, and director. He is best known for having co-written and starred in various Edgar Wright features, mainly Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the comedy series Spaced.
  He also portrayed Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the 2009 Star Trek film, Benji Dunn in Mission: Impossible III and its sequel Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and Thompson in The Adventures of Tintin. Much of his major work has been in collaboration with some combination of Wright, Nick Frost, Jessica Hynes, and Dylan Moran. He also starred in and co-wrote Paul (with Frost) and Run Fatboy Run (with Michael Ian Black).
  Pegg was born in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, England, the son of Gillian Rosemary (née Smith), a civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician and keyboard salesman. His parents divorced when he was seven and he took on the surname "Pegg" after his mother re-married. He attended many schools, including Castle Hill Primary School;^{[citation needed]}Brockworth Comprehensive Secondary School;^{[citation needed]}The King's School, Gloucester; and later Stratford-upon-Avon College to study English literature and Theatre.He studied drama at the University of Bristol and wrote his undergraduate thesis on "A Marxist overview of popular 1970s cinema and hegemonic discourses". At Bristol he appeared in a Drama Society production of Howard Barker's Victory alongside Sarah Kane and David Greig.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Simon Schama
  Simon Michael Schama, CBE (born 13 February 1945) is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain. Other works on history and art include The Embarrassment of Riches, Landscape and Memory, Dead Certainties, Rembrandt's Eyes, and his history of the French Revolution, Citizens. Schama is an art and cultural critic for The New Yorker.
  The son of Jewish parents with roots in Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey, Schama was born in London. In the mid-1940s, the family moved to Southend-on-Sea in Essex before moving back to London. Schama writes of this period in the Introduction to Landscape & Memory (pp. 3–4)
  I had no hill [the previous paragraph had talked of his enthusiasm for Puck of Pook's Hill], but I did have the Thames. It was not the upstream river that the poets in my Palgrave claimed burbled betwixt mossy banks. ... It was the low, gull-swept estuary, the marriage bed of salt and fresh water, stretching as far as I could see from my northern Essex bank, toward a thin black horizon on the other side. That would be Kent, the sinister enemy who always seemed to beat us in the County Cricket Championship. ...
  
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• Sophie Thompson
  Sophie Thompson (born 20 January 1962) is an English actress, best known for playing evil Stella Crawford in EastEnders.
  The second daughter born in 1962, to actress Phyllida Law and actor Eric Thompson, Sophie is the younger sister of twice Academy Award-winning actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson.
  Sophie Thompson has worked in film, television, theatre and radio, and has narrated a number of audiobooks. She made her debut in 1978, at the age of 16, starring in A Traveller in Time, before going on to study at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.^{[citation needed]}
  Big-screen roles include Four Weddings and a Funeral, "Eat, Pray, Love", Emma, Dancing at Lughnasa, Gosford Park, Fat Slags, Relative Values and Morris: A Life with Bells On. Thompson appeared in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2010, as Mafalda Hopkirk and Hermione Granger disguised as Hopkirk.
  Thompson starred alongside popular British comedians Alan Davies, in Jonathan Creek, and Lee Evans in So What Now? She has also appeared in Persuasion, Midsomer Murders, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A Harlot's Progress and Magnolia. She played Miss Bartlett in Andrew Davies' 2007 adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View and also appeared in the last episode of series 4 of Doc Martin.
  
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  Stephen Fry
  Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.
  After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.
  He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.
  As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.
  
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  Steve Carell
  Steven John "Steve" Carell ( /kəˈrɛl/; born August 16, 1962) is an American comedian, actor, voice artist, producer, writer, and director. Although Carell is notable for his role on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he found greater fame in the late 2000s for playing Michael Scott on The Office. He has also starred in lead roles in the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine, Evan Almighty, Dan in Real Life, Get Smart, Date Night, Dinner for Schmucks, and Crazy, Stupid, Love.; and voiced characters in the animated films Over the Hedge, Horton Hears a Who!, and Despicable Me. Carell was nominated as "America's funniest man" in Life magazine, and received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Comedy Series for playing the lead role of Michael Scott for The Office in 2006.
  Carell, the youngest of four brothers, was born at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts, and was raised in nearby Acton by his parents, Harriet T. (née Koch), a psychiatric nurse, and Edwin A. Carell, an electrical engineer. His maternal uncle, Stanley Koch, worked with Allen B. DuMont to create cathode ray tubes. Carell's paternal grandfather was Italian; his father was born with the surname "Caroselli", later shortening it to "Carell". Carell was raised Roman Catholic, and was educated at The Fenn School and Middlesex School. Carell also played ice hockey as a teenager for his high school.^{[citation needed]} He played the fife, performing with other members of his family, and later joined a reenacting group portraying the 10th (North Lincoln) Regiment of Foot. Carell attributed his interest in history to this, in which he earned his degree from Denison University in Granville, Ohio in 1984. While at Denison, Carell was a member of Burpee's Seedy Theatrical Company, a student-run improvisational comedy troupe.
  
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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
• Susan Misner
  Susan Misner (born February 8, 1971) is an American dancer, television and film actress.
  Misner portrayed the doomed Grace Davidson on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live from 12 March 1999 to 17 November 1999. In 2002, Misner appeared in the film Chicago, performing the renowned "Cell Block Tango" as Liz with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Denise Faye, Deidre Goodwin, Ekaterina Chtchelkanova and Mýa Harrison.
  Misner has guest-starred on many TV series, including three of the series in the Law & Order franchise — Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001/2005), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2002) and Law & Order (2006) — as well as both CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2002) and CSI: Miami (2004). She had dancing role in the 2002 film Chicago. Misner appeared as Theresa on Rescue Me in 2006 and 2007, and later as Gretchen Martin in the 2007 miniseries The Bronx Is Burning. She appeared in two episodes of the hit CBS procedural Without a Trace during the 2004-2005 television season. She portrayed Alison Humphrey in several 2007 episodes of The CW series Gossip Girl and Sergeant Burnett in New Amsterdam (2008). In 2010, she played the girlfriend of therapist Paul Weston in the series In Treatment. Currently she has the role of "Jessica" in Person of Interest.
  
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  Susannah York
  Susannah York (9 January 1939 – 15 January 2011) was an English film, stage and television actress. She was awarded a BAFTA as Best Supporting Actress for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) and was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe for the same film. She won best actress for Images at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. In 1991 she was appointed an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Her appearances in various hit films of the 1960s formed the basis of her international reputation, and an obituary in The Telegraph characterised her as "the blue-eyed English rose with the china-white skin and cupid lips who epitomised the sensuality of the swinging Sixties".
  York was born Susannah Yolande Fletcher in Chelsea, London, in 1939, the younger daughter of Simon William Peel Vickers Fletcher (1910–2002), a merchant banker and steel magnate, and his first wife, the former Joan Nita Mary Bowring – they married in 1935 and divorced prior to 1943. Her maternal grandfather was Walter Andrew Bowring, CBE, a British diplomat who served as Administrator of Dominica (1933–1935); she was a great-great-granddaughter of political economist Sir John Bowring. York had an elder sister, as well as a half-brother, Eugene Xavier Charles William Peel Fletcher, from her father's second marriage to Pauline de Bearnez de Morton de La Chapelle.
  
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  Sylvester Groth
  Sylvester Groth (born 31 March 1958) is a German film actor and tenor.
  He is best known to English-language audiences for appearing in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, in which he portrayed Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.
  Groth portrayed Goebbels in the 2007 German film Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler, directed by Dani Levy. His first major film role was in 1993's Stalingrad.
  
  
  
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• Tanay Chheda
  Tanay Hemant Chheda (Marathi: तनय हेमंत छेडा; born 27 June 1996) is an Indian child actor. He is best known for his performances in the critically acclaimed films Taare Zameen Par (Like Stars on Earth) (2007) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008), with the latter earning him the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture and a nomination for Best Ensemble at the Black Reel Awards of 2008. His most recent performance was in My Name Is Khan (2010).
  Tanay was born in Mumbai, India. He currently lives in Mumbai, his birthplace. He used to study in Campion School, but changed to Dhirubhai Ambani International School; both in Mumbai.
  He was first seen in the movie, Don, in 2006. He also has the critically acclaimed Taare Zameen Par (Like Stars on Earth) in 2007 to his name and the award-sweeping Slumdog Millionaire in 2008. In Don, he played the role of Deepu, the son of Jasjit (played by Arjun Rampal) . In Taare Zameen Par, he played the role of a handicapped child who is an extremely helpful and supportive friend to the protagonist Ishaan (played by Darsheel Safary). In Slumdog Millionaire, Chheda played the role of Jamal Malik, in adolescence, for which he has won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture and received a nomination for Best Ensemble at the Black Reel Awards of 2008. He has most recently portrayed the young Rizwan Khan, an autistic child, in Shahrukh Khan's film, My Name Is Khan. He was nominated for the best child actor in Star Screen Awards for 'My Name Is Khan'. He will now be seen in a German film Hexe Lilli- Journey to Mandolan which is scheduled for release on Feb 13, 2011.
  
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• Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar
  Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar (Marathi: तन्वी गणेश लोणकर) (born 5 March 1995) is an Indian actress best known for her 2008 role as the teenage version of 'Latika', a character in the Academy Award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. As a member of the cast of that film, Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar is a recipient of the 15th Screen Actors Guild Award for 'Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture'.
  Lonkar lives in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India with her parents, Ganesh and Sharmila, and younger sister Janhavi. She speaks Marathi, Hindi, English fluently. She lives in Goregaon, a far-flung suburb of Mumbai, and studies in Vibgyor High, Mumbai. Her mother Sharmila works as a technician in Hinduja Hospital while her father Ganesh works with the Union Bank of India.
  Lonkar was chosen for the role as the teenage Latika when her uncle, an acquaintance of Slumdog Millionaire co-director Loveleen Tandan, encouraged her to go for the audition; unfortunately, the scene for which she was auditioning was cut out of the film.
  
  wn.com/Tanvi_Ganesh_Lonkar
• Taye Diggs
  Scott Leo "Taye" Diggs (born January 2, 1971) is an American theatre, film and television actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the Broadway musical Rent, the motion picture How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and the television series Private Practice. His nickname, Taye, comes from the playful pronunciation of Scotty as "Scottay".
  Diggs was born in Newark, New Jersey but grew up in Rochester, New York, the son of Marcia (née Berry), a teacher and actress, and Jeffries Diggs. He attended Allendale Columbia School in Rochester and later transferred to School of the Arts. He starred in the first production of "It All Adds Up", an original musical by the piano teacher and musician John Gabriele and math teacher Jack Donovan. He is the oldest of five children; he has two brothers, Gabriel and Michael, and two sisters, Shalom and Christian. Diggs received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theater from Syracuse University. He performed many times at the popular Lakes Region Summer Theatre in Meredith, New Hampshire. Diggs's Broadway debut was in the ensemble cast of the 1994 Tony Award-winning revival of the musical Carousel. In 1995, he also performed as a dancer in Sebastian's Caribbean Carnival at Tokyo Disneyland.
  
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  Terrence Howard
  Terrence Dashon Howard (born March 11, 1969) is an American actor and singer. Having his first major role in the 1995 film Mr. Holland's Opus, Howard broke into the mainstream with a succession of television and film roles between 2004 and 2006. His roles in movies includes Winnie, Ray, Lackawanna Blues, Crash, Four Brothers, Hustle & Flow, Get Rich or Die Tryin', Idlewild, August Rush and The Brave One. Howard co-starred in Iron Man and reprised the role in the video game adaption.
  His debut album, Shine Through It, was released in September 2008.
  Howard was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Cleveland, Ohio , the son of Anita Williams (née Hawkins) and Tyrone Howard. His maternal great-grandmother, Minnie Gentry, was a stage actress, as were his mother and uncles. Both of his parents were biracial, of African American and European American descent; he experienced racism throughout his childhood.^{[citation needed]} His father was involved in what has been termed the Santa Line Slaying, serving 11 months in prison on manslaughter charges after stabbing another man. At the age of 16, Howard emancipated himself from his parents and was put on welfare; at 18, he moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. He wanted to be a science teacher, though he had a low GPA in high school and was admitted to the Pratt Institute in New York only after convincing them to give him a special entrance exam. Howard did not complete his education, as he had joined his brother on an audition for The Cosby Show and was cast in the role. Though he did not obtain a degree, Howard claims to be an engineer. Howard had a principal role in a short-lived CBS sitcom, Tall Hopes.
  
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• Tess Harper
  Tess Harper (born August 15, 1950) is an American actress.
  Born Tessie Jean Washam on August 15, 1950 in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. Her parents' names are Ed and Rosemary Washam. She grew up around lots of quilts and quilt makers. On her own time, she liked to sit on the porch-swing and read. She graduated from high school in 1968.
  Tess Harper began acting in theater production and appearances in theme parks, dinner theatres and children's theatre. She was performing theater in Texas when she attended a casting call for a minor female role in the film Tender Mercies. Director Bruce Beresford was impressed with Harper and cast her instead in the lead female role of Rosa Lee, the young widow and mother who marries country singer Mac Sledge. Beresford said the previous actress who auditioned for the role brought to it a sophistication and worldliness inappropriate for the part, whereas Harper brought a kind of rural quality without coming across as simple or foolish. Beresford said of Harper, "She walked into the room and even before she spoke, I thought, 'That's the girl to play the lead.'"
  
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  Thandie Newton
  Thandiwe Nashita "Thandie" Newton (born 6 November 1972) is a British actress. She has appeared in a number of British and American films, including The Pursuit of Happyness, Mission: Impossible II, Crash, Run, Fatboy, Run and W.
  Newton was born in London, the daughter of Nyasha, a Zimbabwean health-care worker and Nick Newton, a laboratory technician and artist. Her birthplace has been incorrectly reported to be Zambia in some biographies, but she has confirmed in interviews that she was born in London, during a two-week trip by her parents. The name "Thandiwe" means "beloved" in Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa or Swazi, and "Thandie" is pronounced /ˈtændi/ TAN-dee in English. According to Newton, her mother is a Shona princess. Regarding her childhood, Newton remarked at a TED conference: "From about the age of 5, I was aware that I didn't fit. I was the black, atheist kid in the all-white, Catholic school run by nuns. I was an anomaly." Raised in London and Penzance, Cornwall, she studied dance at the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts and at sixteen, while recovering from a back injury, she successfully auditioned for her first film role. She then went on to study social anthropology at Downing College, Cambridge, from 1992 to 1995, where she achieved a 2:1.
  
  wn.com/Thandie_Newton
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  Thomas Haden Church
  Thomas Haden Church (born June 17, 1960) is an American actor. After co-starring in the 1990s sitcom Wings, Church became well known for his film roles, including his Academy Award-nominated performance in Sideways and his role as the Sandman in Spider-Man 3.
  Church, the fourth of six children, was born Thomas Richard McMillen in Yolo, California, to an Army officer/health care worker father and a telephone company sales rep mother. He was raised under his stepfather's surname, "Quesada", and later changed his surname to "Haden Church" (both names are in his family tree). He was raised in Laredo, Texas, and graduated from Harlingen High School, Harlingen, Texas, in 1979, going on to attend the University of North Texas.
  Church started in the entertainment business as a radio personality and doing voice over work. A part in an independent film convinced him to move to California to pursue an acting career. He played the part of slow-witted airport mechanic Lowell Mather for six seasons (1990–1995) on the NBC sitcom Wings. He worked in television for two more seasons with a lead role on Ned and Stacey opposite Debra Messing. He has had supporting roles in films such as Tombstone, George of the Jungle, and The Specials. Church often plays villains or comic relief in films, most evident by turns in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight and Over the Hedge.
  
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  Til Schweiger
  Tilman Valentin "Til" Schweiger (German pronunciation: [ˈtɪlman ˈvaləntiːn ˈʃvaɪɡɐ]; born 19 December 1963) is a German actor, director, and producer. He is one of Germany’s most successful filmmakers. Since 1968, when the FFA started counting, no other German actor has drawn more people to the cinemas. He runs his own production company, Barefoot Films, in Berlin.
  Schweiger was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. He married American model Dana Carlson on June 19, 1995. The couple has four children: Valentin Florian (b. 1995), Luna Marie (b. 1997), Lilli Camille (b. 1998), and Emma Tiger (b. October 2002). They separated in 2005, but have not divorced.
  
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  Timothy Spall
  Timothy Leonard Spall, OBE (born 27 February 1957) is an English character actor and occasional presenter.
  Spall, the third of four sons, was born in Battersea, South London. His mother, Sylvia R. (née Leonard), was a hairdresser, and his father, Joseph L. Spall, was a postal worker. He trained at the National Youth Theatre and RADA, where he was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor in his year. His brother, Matthew, is studio director of the computer games company Morpheme. Another brother, Richard, is the landlord tenant of the Astolat public house in Guildford.
  Spall initially made his mark in theatre performing in productions for Birmingham Rep and, later, The Royal Shakespeare Company including The Merry Wives of Windsor, Three Sisters, Nicholas Nickleby and The Knight of the Burning Pestle.
  Following a film debut in Quadrophenia and wider TV exposure playing the gormless Radish Barry Taylor in all five series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Kevin in Outside Edge and as Aubrey the appalling chef in Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet, Spall has since appeared in films such as Crusoe, Secrets & Lies, Shooting the Past, Topsy-Turvy, Vanilla Sky, Rock Star, The Last Samurai, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and The King's Speech. He gained international recognition as Peter Pettigrew ("Wormtail") in the Harry Potter film series. In 1991 he guest-starred in the series 5 Red Dwarf episode Back to Reality. In 1993, Spall was in Rab C. Nesbitt.
  
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  Tom Hollander
  Thomas Anthony "Tom" Hollander (born 25 August 1967) is a British actor who has appeared in films Enigma, Gosford Park, Cambridge Spies, Pride and Prejudice, Pirates of the Caribbean, In the Loop, Valkyrie and Hanna.
  Tom Hollander was born in Bristol and raised in Oxford, the son of teachers. His parents are English, though his father is descended from Czech Jews who converted to Catholicism; Hollander was chief chorister at school. He attended the Dragon School and then Abingdon School. As a youngster, he was a member of the National Youth Theatre and the National Youth Music Theatre (then known as the Children's Music Theatre). In 1981, at fourteen years of age, he was awarded the lead role in a BBC dramatization of Leon Garfield's John Diamond. He read English at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He was actively involved in stage productions as a member of the Footlights and president of the Marlowe Society. Friend and fellow student Sam Mendes directed him in several plays while they were at Cambridge, including a critically acclaimed production of Cyrano de Bergerac (which also featured future Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg). After finishing university and failing to secure a place at a drama school, he found work in theatre nevertheless.
  
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  Tommy Lee Jones
  Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive.
  His notable film roles include federal marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals, Agent K in Men in Black and its sequels, Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men, the villain "Two-Face" in Batman Forever, terrorist William Strannix in Under Siege, former Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call in Lonesome Dove, a Texas Ranger in Man of the House and rancher Pete Perkins in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Colonel Chester Phillips in Captain America: The First Avenger. Jones has also portrayed real-life figures such as businessman Howard Hughes, executed murderer Gary Gilmore, Oliver Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter and baseball great Ty Cobb.
  Jones was born in San Saba, Texas. His mother, Lucille Marie (née Scott), was a police officer, school teacher, and beauty shop owner, and his father, Clyde C. Jones, was an oil field worker. The two were married and divorced twice. Jones has stated that his grandmother was of Cherokee ancestry. He was a resident of Midland, Texas, and attended Robert E. Lee High School.
  
  wn.com/Tommy_Lee_Jones
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  Toni Collette
  Antonia "Toni" Collette (born 1 November 1972) is an Australian actress and musician, known for her acting work on stage, television and film as well as a secondary career as the lead singer of the band Toni Collette & the Finish.
  Collette's acting career began in the early 1990s with comedic roles in films such as Spotswood (1992) and Muriel's Wedding (1994), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Following her performances in Emma (1996) and The Boys (1998), Collette achieved international recognition as a result of her Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Lynn Sear in The Sixth Sense (1999). She has appeared in thrillers such as Shaft (2000) and Changing Lanes (2002) and independent comedy films like About a Boy (2002), Connie and Carla (2004), In Her Shoes (2005) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
  In 2009, she began playing the lead role in the television series United States of Tara, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2010.
  
  wn.com/Toni_Collette
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  Viggo Mortensen
  Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. (born October 20, 1958) is an American actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He made his film debut in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness, and subsequently appeared in many notable films of the 1990s, including The Indian Runner (1991), Carlito's Way (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Daylight (1996), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), G.I. Jane (1997), A Perfect Murder (1998), and A Walk on the Moon (1999).
  Mortensen made his major breakthrough in 2001 with his role as Aragorn in the epic film trilogy The Lord of the Rings. In 2005, Mortensen won critical acclaim for David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence. Two years later, another Cronenberg film Eastern Promises (2007) earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Other well-received films in recent years have included Appaloosa (2008) and the 2009 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road.
  Aside from acting, his other artistic pursuits include fine arts, photography, poetry, and music. In 2002, he founded the Perceval Press to publish the works of little-known artists and authors. Mortensen is politically active. He campaigned for Dennis Kucinich in the 2008 United States presidential election, and later endorsed Barack Obama for President.
  
  wn.com/Viggo_Mortensen
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  Vincent Van Gogh
  Vincent Willem van Gogh (UK  /ˌvæn ˈɡɒx/, US /ˌvæn ˈɡoʊ/;Dutch: [vɑŋ ˈɣɔχ] ( listen); 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died at the age of 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.
  Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes of flowers, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
  
  wn.com/Vincent_Van_Gogh
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  Virginia Madsen
  Virginia G. Madsen (born September 11, 1961) is an American actress and documentary film producer. She came to fame during the 1980s, having appeared in several films aimed at a teenage audience. Two decades later, she had an Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated role in the 2004 film Sideways.
  Madsen was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Elaine (née Melson), an Emmy-winning poet, producer and playwright who often works for PBS, and Calvin Madsen, a fireman. Madsen's mother left a career in corporate business to pursue a writing career. Madsen's brother is actor Michael Madsen. Her paternal grandparents were Danish and her mother has Irish and distant Native American ancestry. Madsen is a graduate of New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois.
  Her first effort as an actor was as her brother’s assistant in magic shows the two would concoct for their family. She later attended the Ted Liss Acting Studio in Chicago and Harand Camp Adult Theater Seminar in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Of her experience with Liss, she said: "I had wanted to join his class since I was 12. It was well worth the wait because I don't think I could have got that sort of training anywhere else especially in the United States...I always wanted to make a real career out of acting."
  
  wn.com/Virginia_Madsen
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
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  Willem Dafoe
  Willem Dafoe (born July 22, 1955) is an American film, stage, and voice actor, and a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group. He has had roles in a wide range of films, including Platoon, Affliction, Off Limits, Streets of Fire, To Live and Die in L.A., Born on the Fourth of July, The English Patient, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mississippi Burning, "The Life Aquatic" The Boondock Saints, Spider-Man, and The Aviator, and voice roles in Fantastic Mr. Fox and Finding Nemo.
  Dafoe has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice. The first was for his role in Platoon in 1986 and the second time for his performance in Shadow of the Vampire in 2000.
  Dafoe was born William J. Dafoe in Appleton, Wisconsin. One of seven children of Muriel Isabel (née Sprissler) and Dr. William Alfred Dafoe, he recalled in 2009, "My five sisters raised me because my father was a surgeon, my mother was a nurse and they worked together, so I didn't see either of them much." In high school, he acquired the nickname Willem. His ancestry includes Irish, Scottish, German, and Canadian.
  
  wn.com/Willem_Dafoe
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  William Fichtner
  William Edward Fichtner (November 27, 1956) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Sheriff Tom Underlay on Invasion, as Alexander Mahone on Prison Break, as William Sharp in Armageddon, and as Ken Rosenberg in the video games Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
  Fichtner was born at Mitchel Air Force Base in East Meadow, New York, and was raised in Cheektowaga, New York, the son of Patricia A. (née Steitz) and William E. Fichtner. He is of German descent.
  Fichtner graduated from Maryvale High School (Cheektowaga, New York) in 1974. After graduating from Farmingdale State College in 1976 with an associate degree in criminal justice, he attended SUNY Brockport and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in criminal justice in 1978. Fichtner decided to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Fichtner credits his Farmingdale State College admissions counselor, Don Harvey, with his decision to study acting. Harvey, who became a lifelong friend, took Fichtner to his first Broadway show. On 18 May 2008, Fichtner was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Farmingdale State College.
  
  wn.com/William_Fichtner
• Wilson Milam
  Wilson Milam is an American theatre director from Bellevue, Washington. He is a founding member and Artistic Director of The Hired Gun Theatre Company.
  Nominated for a Tony Award for Best Director of a Play for Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Milam helmed the show's UK premiere, as well as the Off-Broadway production which transferred to Broadway. He also directed Patrick Marber's Closer at the Berkeley Rep in San Francisco and The Wexford Trilogy at the Tricycle Theatre.
  His production of David Rabe's Hurlyburly for the Peter Hall Company at the Old Vic and Queen's theatres, London, was nominated for two Olivier Awards including one for Best Play.
  Milam studied history at the University of Washington and began his career as an actor.
  Chicago credits include Pot Mom at Steppenwolf; The Caine Mutiny Court Martial at A Red Orchid Theatre; Skeleton at Shattered Globe Theatre, and Killer Joe at the Next Lab Theatre, a production that moved to the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh where it won the Scotsman Fringe First Award.
  
  wn.com/Wilson_Milam
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  Woody Harrelson
  Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson (born July 23, 1961) is an American actor.
  Harrelson's breakout role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd. Some notable film characters include basketball hustler Billy Hoyle in White Men Can't Jump, bowler Roy Munson in Kingpin, serial killer Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers, magazine publisher Larry Flynt in The People vs. Larry Flynt, country singer Dusty in A Prairie Home Companion, bounty hunter Carson Wells in No Country for Old Men, zombie killer Tallahassee in Zombieland, blind piano player/meat salesman Ezra Turner in Seven Pounds, conspiracy nut Charlie Frost in 2012, a delusional man who believes that he is a superhero named Defendor in Defendor and Cpt. Tony Stone in The Messenger. For The People vs. Larry Flynt and The Messenger, Harrelson earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. He also appeared as Haymitch in the film The Hunger Games, which was released on March 23, 2012.
  
  wn.com/Woody_Harrelson

Untitled Andy Serkis Project ()

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• Thriller

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