Michael Aidan Courtney (5 February 1945 - 29 December 2003) was the Apostolic Nuncio to Burundi and Titular Archbishop of Eanach Dúin

Courtney was born in Summerhill in Nenagh, County Tipperary. He entered Clonfert Seminary and was ordained a priest on 9 March 1968.

Courtney entered the Holy See's diplomatic service in 1980 and worked at the Nunciatures in South Africa, Senegal, India, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Egypt. He was named the Special Envoy and Permanent Observer to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, on 30 December 1995.

Pope John Paul II appointed him Apostolic Nuncio to Burundi and Titular Archbishop of ''Eanach Dúin'' on 18 August 2000. He received episcopal ordination on 12 November 2000 at St Mary of the Rosary Church in Nenagh from Francis Arinze, Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, with Bishops John Kirby and William Walsh serving as co-consecrators.

As he returned to Bujumbura from pastoral duties, gunmen fired at his car as he passed Minago, a town about 30 miles south of the capital. Archbishop Courtney suffered gunshot wounds to the head, shoulder and leg and died from hemorrhaging while being operated on. He was 58 years old.

The funeral Mass was celebrated by Cardinals Arinze and Desmond Connell, Archbishop Seán Brady, Papal Nuncio Giuseppe Lazzarotto, and other prominent bishops and clerics from throughout Ireland. Minister for Defence Michael Smith represented the Government of Ireland at the funeral Mass and burial. Also present were many public representatives from Nenagh Town Council and North Tipperary County Council. Archbishop Courtney was survived by his brothers William, Louis, Jim, and sisters Kathleen Vandenberghe, Mary Courtney-Spreng and Eileen Frewen, as well as 16 nephews and nieces.

At his funeral Mass, Cardinal Arinze said that "Nuncio Courtney preached mutual love, Christian reconciliation, harmony and unity between people. He made his own the exhortation of St Paul to the Corinthians: 'We are ambassadors for Christ: it is as though God were appealing through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ's name is: be reconciled to God' (2 Cor 5: 20). It is tragic that this very witness of the love of Christ, this ambassador of the Pope who daily manifested the concern of the Successor of Saint Peter for all citizens of Burundi, is shot dead by the very people he was serving."

Archbishop Courtney was laid to rest at his "''heaven on earth''" on the shores of Lough Derg in Co Tipperary near Dromineer, six miles outside Nenagh.

References

New York Times

Irish Times

Category:1945 births Category:2003 deaths Category:Diplomats of the Holy See Category:Irish Roman Catholic priests Category:Alumni of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy Category:Roman Catholic titular archbishops Category:People from County Tipperary Category:People murdered in Burundi Category:Irish murder victims Category:Irish Roman Catholics Category:Assassinated Irish people Category:20th-century Roman Catholics Category:21st-century Roman Catholics

de:Michael Courtney

Name	Rachel Zoe
Birth name	Rachel Zoe Rosenzweig
Birth date	September 01, 1971
Birth place	New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Alma mater	George Washington University
Employer	Self
Occupation	Fashion stylist, designer
Spouse
Children	Skyler Morrison Berman. }}

Rachel Zoe Rosenzweig (born September 1, 1971), also known as Rachel Zoe, is an American fashion stylist best known for working with celebrities, fashion houses, beauty firms, advertising agencies, and magazine editors. In 2008, the first season of her Bravo reality television series ''The Rachel Zoe Project'' debuted. She is married to Rodger Berman, with whom she attended college at The George Washington University, in Washington, DC.

Early life

Zoe was born Rachel Zoe Rosenzweig in New York City, New York, the daughter of Leslie and Ron Rosenzweig. She was raised Jewish. Zoe grew up in Millburn, New Jersey, and graduated from Millburn High School. She has a sister Pamela Rosenzweig. She later studied sociology and psychology at George Washington University. Before working as a stylist, Zoe worked at ''Gotham'' and ''YM'' magazine.

Career

Although Zoe works with high-profile clients and has a very notable fashion sense, she does not have any formal fashion training. Zoe went freelance, giving her the opportunity to meet and work with some high-profile clients. As a stylist, she has worked with Brenda Song, Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton, Mario Orejel, Nicole Richie, and Keira Knightley. Zoe's current client list includes Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Garner, Kate Hudson, Kate Beckinsale, Debra Messing, Demi Moore, Liv Tyler, Joy Bryant, Molly Sims, Beau Garett, Eva Mendes, Paula Patton and Anne Hathaway. Zoe, with the help of reality TV star Nicole Richie, became the pioneer of the 'boho chic' look. This look consists of oversized jewelry, loose-fitting dresses and shirts, paired with a slim frame.

Other notable collaborations: Collaborated with accessories maker Judith Leiber on a line of luxury bags. Served as the face of Samsung's BlackJack cell phone national ad campaign. Consultant for Piperlime.com, Gap, Inc's shoe and handbag website. ''Style A to Zoe: The Art of Fashion, Beauty and Everything Glamour'' is the book that was co-written by Rose Apodaca, which made it to the New York Times Bestseller List. The book talks about styling tips and observations from a celebrity stylist's point of view. Also giving advice about everything style when it comes to your home décor, dressing stylishly, travel, and entertaining.

With the expansion of her clientele and numerous deals coming in, Zoe switched from her former agency, Magnet, and signed with the Todd Shemarya Agency.

In February, Swedish fashion retailer Lindex announced a collaboration with Rachel Zoe this spring. Zoe will be choosing her favorites from the Lindex spring collection. This will be Zoe’s first bigger collaboration with a European brand.

Reality show

In September 2008, Zoe's reality series, ''The Rachel Zoe Project'', debuted on Bravo. The series follows Zoe, her two fashion associates, Taylor Jacobson and Brad Goreski, as well as her husband and business partner, Rodger Berman.

The series' second season premiered on August 24, 2009. Bravo announced they would be picking up a third season of the show which premiered August 3, 2010 and covered the departure of Zoe's longtime assistant, Taylor Jacobson, while introducing her new assistant, Ashley.

The fourth season will premiere on September 6th, 2011 and will deal with Rachel dealing with Brad's departure as well as her pregnancy with Skyler, her first son with Rodger.

Clothing line

Zoe officially announced that she will be releasing a clothing line, with the intention of turning it into a full lifestyle brand. The line is set to come out in the fall of 2011, and Zoe is in the search now for a design team. Zoe intends on wearing the brand, which is completely different from her QVC line which she launched earlier in the year. Her line is intended to contain "accessories, shoes, and apparel, including fur vests, and maybe home items in the future", if all goes well and as planned.

Personal life

Zoe has been married to investment banker Rodger Berman since 1996. She announced on November 17, 2010, that they were expecting their first child, a boy, due mid-March 2011. On March 23, 2011, Zoe gave birth to a son, Skyler Morrison Berman.

References

External links

Official site

''The Rachel Zoe Project'' at Bravotv.com

"Being Rachel Zoe." - ''New York Times''

"Interview with Rachel Zoe" - ''ELLE.com''

Category:1971 births Category:American fashion designers Category:George Washington University alumni Category:Living people Category:People from Millburn, New Jersey Category:People in fashion Category:Reality television participants Category:Writers from New Jersey Category:Writers from New York

de:Rachel Zoe ja:レイチェル・ゾー ru:Зоуи, Рэйчел fi:Rachel Zoe sv:Rachel Zoe

birth name	Michael Kirk Douglas
birth date	September 25, 1944
birth place	New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States
spouse	Diandra Luker (1977–2000)Catherine Zeta-Jones(2000–present)
occupation	Actor, producer
years active	1966–present
parents	Kirk Douglas, Diana Dill
relatives	Joel (brother)Peter (half-brother)Eric (half-brother, deceased)
children	Cameron DouglasDylan Michael DouglasCarys Zeta Douglas }}

Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'', and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in ''Wall Street''. Douglas received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2009. He is the eldest of actor Kirk Douglas's four sons.

Early life

Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian actress Diana Dill. His paternal grandparents, Harry Demsky (born Herschel Danielovitch) and Bryna Demsky (née Sanglel), were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus (at that time a part of the Russian Empire). His mother and maternal grandparents, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill and Ruth Rapalje Neilson, were natives of Devonshire Parish, Bermuda. Thomas Dill served as Attorney General of Bermuda and was commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas (born 1947), and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas (born 1955) and Eric Douglas (1958–2004).

Education

Douglas attended The Choate prepatory school (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut. He received his B.A. in drama from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1968, where he was also the Honorary President of the UCSB Alumni Association. He studied acting with Wynn Handman at The American Place Theater in New York City.

Career

Early years

Douglas started his film career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, appearing in little known films like ''Hail, Hero!'' and ''Summertree''. His first significant role came in the TV series ''The Streets of San Francisco'' from 1972 to 1976, where he starred alongside Karl Malden. Douglas later said that Malden became a "mentor" and someone he "admired and loved deeply". After Douglas left the show, he had a long association with his mentor until Malden's death on July 1, 2009. In 2004, Douglas presented Malden with the Monte Cristo Award of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center (named for the father of Bermuda-born Oona O'Neill) in Waterford, Connecticut, for the Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1975, Douglas received from his father, Kirk Douglas, the rights to the novel ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest''. Michael went on to produce the film of the same name with Saul Zaentz. Kirk Douglas considered playing the starring role himself, having starred in an earlier stage version, but chose against it, considering himself too old. The lead role went instead to a young Jack Nicholson, who would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Douglas won the Award for Best Picture for producing the film.

After leaving ''Streets of San Francisco'' in 1976, Douglas played a hospital doctor in the medical thriller ''Coma'' (1978), and in 1979 he played the role of a troubled marathon runner in ''Running''. In 1979, he both produced and starred in ''The China Syndrome'', a dramatic film co-starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon about a nuclear power plant accident (the Three Mile Island accident took place 12 days after the film's release). The film was considered "one of the most intelligent Hollywood films of the 1970s."

Success in Hollywood

Douglas' acting career was propelled to fame when he produced and starred in the 1984 romantic adventure comedy ''Romancing the Stone''. It also helped launch Kathleen Turner to stardom, reintroduced Douglas as a capable leading man, and gave director Bob Zemeckis his first box-office success. It was followed a year later by a sequel, ''The Jewel of the Nile'', which he also produced.

The year 1987 saw Douglas star in the thriller ''Fatal Attraction'' with Glenn Close. That same year he played tycoon Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's ''Wall Street'' for which he received an Academy Award as Best Actor. He reprised his role as Gekko in the sequel ''Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'' in 2010, also directed by Stone.

Douglas again paired with Kathleen Turner for the 1989 film ''The War of the Roses'', which also starred Danny DeVito. In 1989, he starred in Ridley Scott's international police crime drama ''Black Rain'' opposite Andy García and Kate Capshaw. The film was shot in Osaka, Japan.

In 1992, Douglas had another successful starring role when he appeared alongside Sharon Stone in the film ''Basic Instinct''. The movie was a box office hit, and sparked controversy over its depictions of bisexuality and lesbianism. In 1994, Douglas and Demi Moore starred in the hit movie ''Disclosure'' focusing on the topic of sexual harassment with Douglas playing a man harassed by his new female boss. Other popular films he starred during these decade were ''Falling Down'', ''The American President'', ''The Ghost and the Darkness'', ''The Game'' (directed by David Fincher), and a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic - ''Dial M for Murder'' - titled ''A Perfect Murder''. In 1998, Douglas received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

In 2000, Douglas starred in Steven Soderbergh's critically acclaimed film ''Traffic'', opposite Benicio del Toro and future wife Catherine Zeta-Jones. That same year, he also received critical acclaim for his role in ''Wonder Boys'' as a professor and novelist suffering from writer's block. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama as well as several other awards from critics.

Types of roles

According to film historian and critic David Thomson, Douglas was capable of playing characters who were "weak, culpable, morally indolent, compromised, and greedy for illicit sensation without losing that basic probity or potential for ethical character that we require of a hero." Critic and author Rob Edelman points out similarities in many of Douglas's roles, writing that in some of his leading films, he personified the "contemporary, Caucasian middle-to-upper-class American male who finds himself the brunt of female anger because of real or imagined sexual slights."

These themes of male victimization are seen in films such as ''Fatal Attraction'' (1987), with Glenn Close, ''War of the Roses'' (1989), with Kathleen Turner, ''Basic Instinct'' (1992), Sharon Stone, ''Falling Down'' (1993), and ''Disclosure'' (1994), with Demi Moore. For his characters in films such as these, "any kind of sexual contact with someone other than his mate and the mother of his children is destined to come at a costly price." Edelman describes his characters as the "Everyman who must contend with, and be victimized by, these women and their raging, psychotic sexuality."

Conversely, Douglas also played powerful characters with dominating personalities equally well: as Gordon Gekko, in both versions of ''Wall Street'', he acted the role of a "greedy yuppie personification of the Me generation," convinced that "greed is good;" in ''Romancing the Stone'' and ''The Jewel of the Nile,'' he played an idealistic soldier of fortune; in ''The Star Chamber'' (1983), he was a court judge fed up with an inadequate legal system, leading him to become involved with a vigilante group; and in Black Rain (1989), he proved he could also play a Stallone-like action hero as a New York City cop.

Actor and producer

Having become recognized as both a successful producer and actor, he describes himself as "an actor first and a producer second." He has explained why he enjoys both functions:

"I love the fact that on one side, with acting, you can be a child — acting is wonderful for its innocence and the fun. . . On the other side, producing is fun for all the adult kinds of things you do. You deal in business, you deal with the creative forces. As an adult who continues to get older, you like the adult risks. It's flying without a net, taking chances and learning. I was never good in economics or business — had no business background, you know, and I like it."

He has also offered reasons why he has become successful in both acting and producing:

"I think I'm a chameleon. I think it's something that I possibly inherited early on as a child going back and forth between two families. I know that whether it's right or wrong, I have an ability to sort of fit into a lot of different situations and make people feel relatively comfortable in a wide range without giving up all my moral values. I think that same chameleonlike quality can transfer into films. I think if you can remember the reason you got involved with it in the first place and try to keep that impulsive, instinctive feeling even when you're being beaten down or exhausted or waylaid, you'll be successful."

Recent years

In 2003, Douglas starred in ''It Runs in the Family'', which featured three generations of his family (his parents, Kirk and Diana, as well as his own son, Cameron). The film, although a labor of love, was not successful, critically or at the box office. Douglas starred in the solid commercial action flick ''Don't Say a Word'', then the poorly received action-thriller ''The Sentinel'' in 2006. During that time, he also guest-appeared on the episode, "Fagel Attraction", of the popular television sitcom ''Will and Grace'', as a gay cop attracted to Will Truman (Eric McCormack); the performance earned Douglas an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Show.

Douglas was approached for ''Basic Instinct 2'', but he declined to participate in the project. He said:

"Yes, they asked me to do it a while ago, I thought we had done it very effectively; [Paul] Verhoeven is a pretty good director. I haven't seen the sequel. I've only done one sequel in my life, ''The Jewel of the Nile'', from ''Romancing The Stone.'' Besides, there were age issues, you know? Sharon still looks fabulous. The script was pretty good. Good for her, she's in her late-40s, and there are not a lot of parts around. The first one was probably the best picture of her career—it certainly made her career and she was great in it".

Future engagements

Douglas was set to star in ''Tragic Indifference'', a courtroom thriller based on a landmark liability case against Ford Motor Company, according to ''Variety''. Douglas will play the attorney who took Ford to court on behalf of a single mother from Texas who was paralyzed and nearly died after an accident. The trial exposed the automaker's indifference to flaws in its Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV). The movie will be based on Adam Penenberg's 2003 book of the same name. Douglas will play Attorney Tab Turner, who represented Donna Bailey after the Ford Explorer SUV she was riding in rolled over following a Firestone tire failure.

On December 17, 2007 it was announced that Douglas would announce the introduction to ''NBC Nightly News'', some two years after Howard Reig, the previous announcer, retired.

Personal life

Family

After filming ''Summertree'' (1971), he began dating Brenda Vaccaro. The relationship lasted for about six years.

In March 1977, 33 year old Douglas married 19 year old Diandra Luker, the daughter of an Austrian diplomat. They had one son, Cameron, born in 1978. In 1997 Diandra filed for divorce

Dating since March 1999, Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones on November 18, 2000. They were both born on September 25, though 25 years apart. Zeta-Jones says that when they met in Deauville, France, Douglas used the line "I want to father your children ". They have two children, Dylan Michael (born August 8, 2000) and Carys Zeta (born April 20, 2003).

They planned on renewing their wedding vows in 2010 as part of their 10th wedding anniversary. The idea was hers, and came after Douglas was found to have advanced stages of cancer. One report notes that "Michael was in tears when she suggested it to him," and he sees it as a “wonderful expression of love.”

Douglas, the son of a Jewish father and an Anglican mother, has declared no religious affiliation.

Citizenship

Douglas is a U.S. citizen by birth in the United States and has Bermudian Status through his mother's birth in Bermuda.

Skiing accident and rehab

In 1980, Douglas was involved in a serious skiing accident which sidelined his acting career for three years. In September 1992, the same year ''Basic Instinct'' came out, he underwent treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction at Sierra Tucson Center.

Legal problems

In 1997, New York caddy James Parker sued Douglas for $25 million. Parker accused Douglas of hitting him in the groin with an errant golf ball, causing Parker to lose a testicle and his job. The case was later settled out of court.

Stalking

In 2004, Douglas and Zeta-Jones took legal action against stalker Dawnette Knight, who was accused of sending violent letters to the couple that contained graphic threats on Zeta-Jones' life. Testifying, Zeta-Jones said the threats left her so shaken she feared a nervous breakdown. Knight claimed she had been in love with Douglas and admitted to the offences, which took place between October 2003 and May 2004. She was sentenced to three years in prison.

Health problems

It was announced on August 16, 2010, that Douglas was suffering from throat cancer and will undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment. On August 31, 2010 Douglas appeared on ''Late Show with David Letterman'' and confirmed that the cancer was at an advanced stage IV. Douglas attributed the cancer to a combination of stress, his previous alcohol abuse, and years of heavy smoking.

In November 2010, Douglas was put on a special weight gain diet by his doctors due to the excessive weight loss leaving him weak. On January 11, 2011, he said in an interview that the tumor was gone. He admitted that the illness and aggressive treatment had caused him to lose 32 lbs in weight. He will have to have monthly screenings because there is a very high chance that the cancer could return over the course of the next two to three years. Although Douglas has described the cancer as throat cancer, many doctors believe he was actually diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer.

Activism

Political activities

Douglas and Zeta-Jones hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway, on December 11, 2003. They acted as co-masters of ceremony in the concert celebrating the award given to Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi. In 2006, Douglas was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

He is an advocate of nuclear disarmament, a supporter of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and sits on the Board of Directors of the anti-war grantmaking foundation Ploughshares Fund. In 1998, he was appointed UN Messenger of Peace by Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is a notable Democrat and has donated money to Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd, and Al Franken He has been a major supporter of gun control since John Lennon was murdered in 1980.

In 2006 he was a featured speaker in a public service campaign sponsored by a UN conference to focus attention on trade of illicit arms, especially of small arms and light weapons. Douglas made several appearances and offered his opinions: :"The conference is an opportunity for UN member states to build on the Program of Action and to encourage countries to strengthen their laws on the illicit trade, . . . an issue that affects us all . . .[and] while owning guns is a legal right in most countries, the illegal trade in guns continues to fuel conflict, crime and violence."

A few years earlier, in 2003, Douglas hosted a "powerful film" on child soldiers and the impact of combat on children in countries such as Sierra Leone. During the documentary film, Douglas interviewed children, and estimated that they were among 300,000 other children worldwide who have been conscripted or kidnapped and forced to fight. Of one such child he interviewed, Douglas stated, "After being kidnapped by a rebel group, he was tortured, drugged, and forced to commit atrocities." Douglas discussed his role as a Messenger Peace for the UN: :"I'm in an enviable position . . . When I talk about movies I can talk about messages of peace, and infuse them into the entertainment pages."

Humanitarian initiatives

In 2009 Douglas joined the project ''Soldiers of Peace'', a movie against all wars and for global peace.

Douglas lent his support for the campaign to release Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman, who after having been convicted of committing adultery, was given a sentence of death by stoning.

Filmography

+ Filmography
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
1966	''Cast a Giant Shadow''	Jeep driver
1969	''Hail, Hero!''	Carl Dixon
1970	''Adam at Six A.M.''	Adam Gaines
1971	''Summertree''	Jerry
1972	''Napoleon and Samantha''	Danny
1975			Won As ProducerAcademy Award for Best PictureBAFTA Award for Best FilmGolden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama
1978		Dr. Mark Bellows
1979		Michael Andropolis	Nominated — Genie Award for Best Performance by a Foreign Actor
1979	''''	Richard Adams	Also ProducerNominated - BAFTA Award for Best FilmNominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama
1980		Ben Lewin
1983	''''	Superior Court Judge Steven R. Hardin
1984	''Romancing the Stone''	Jack Colton	Also ProducerGolden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
1985	''''	Zach
1985	''''	Jack Colton	Also Producer
1987	''Fatal Attraction''	Dan Gallagher	Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1987		Gordon Gekko	Academy Award for Best ActorDavid di Donatello
1989	''''	Oliver Rose	Nominated — [[Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1989		Det. Sgt. Nick Conklin
1992	''Basic Instinct''	Nick Curran	Nominated — MTV Movie Award for Best PerformanceNominated — MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Duo shared with Sharon Stone
1992	''Shining Through''	Ed Leland
1992	''Oliver Stone: Inside Out''	Himself	Documentary
1993	''Falling Down''	William "D-Fens" Foster
1994		Tom Sanders
1995	''''		Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1996	''''	Charles Remington	Also Executive Producer
1997	''''	Nicholas Van Orton
1998	''''	Steven Taylor
1999	''One Day in September''	Narrator	Documentary
1999	''Get Bruce''	Himself	Documentary
2000		Professor Grady Tripp	Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorSatellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or ComedySEFCA Award for Best ActorNominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading RoleNominated — Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture DramaNominated — LVFCS Award for Best Actor (also for ''Traffic)''Nominated — London Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActorNominated — Online Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorNominated — Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Actor
2000		Robert Wakefield
2001	''Don't Say a Word	Dr. Nathan R. Conrad
2001	''In Search of Peace''	Narrator	Documentary
2001	''One Night at McCool's''	Mr. Burmeister	Also Producer
2003	''''	Steve Tobias
2003		Alex Gromberg
2003	''Direct Order''	Narrator	Documentary
2003	''Tell Them Who You Are''	Himself	Documentary
2006	''You, Me and Dupree''	Mr. Thompson
2006	''''	Pete Garrison	Also Producer
2007	''King of California''	Charlie
2009	''Ghosts of Girlfriends Past''	Uncle Wayne
2009		Mark Hunter
2009		Ben Kalmen	Nominated — Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor
2010	''Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps''	Gordon Gekko	Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture
2012		TBA	''Post-production''

References

External links

"The Films of Michael Douglas", video compilation of film clips, 5 minutes

Category:1944 births Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Actors from New Jersey Category:American anti–nuclear weapons activists Category:American film actors Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Bermudian descent Category:American people of British descent Category:American television actors Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:California Democrats Category:Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners Category:Choate Rosemary Hall alumni Category:Living people Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from New Brunswick, New Jersey Category:People self-identifying as alcoholics Category:Producers who won the Best Picture Academy Award Category:United Nations Messengers of Peace Category:University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Category:Cancer survivors Category:People from Majorca

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name	Courtney Love
alias	Courtney Love
background	solo_singer
birth name	Courtney Michelle Harrison
born	July 09, 1964San Francisco, California, U.S.
years active	1982–present
spouse(s)	Kurt Cobain (1992-1994), James Moreland (divorced 1989)
origin	Los Angeles, U.S.Portland, Oregon, U.S.
children	Frances Bean Cobain (born August 18, 1992)
occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, actress
instrument	Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboard
genre	Alternative rock, punk rock, grunge, post-grunge
label	Sympathy for the Record Industry, Sub Pop, Caroline, DGC / Geffen, City Slang, Universal, Virgin, Mercury
notable instruments	Fender JazzmasterRickenbacker 620Fender Vista VenusRickenbacker 360
associated acts	Hole, Babes in Toyland, Sugar Babydoll, Pagan Babies, Faith No More, Emilie Autumn }}

Courtney Michelle Love (born Courtney Michelle Harrison, July 9, 1964) is an American singer-songwriter, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and actress. Love started out in the film industry playing bit parts in Alex Cox films, but gained notoriety as frontwoman for alternative rock band Hole, which began as a Los Angeles noise rock quartet that catapulted into fame in the 1990s after releasing the massively successful albums ''Live Through This'' (1994) and ''Celebrity Skin'' (1998). Love also received substantial media attention over her marriage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, before and after his 1994 suicide.

Love continued to occasionally star in films, most notably ''The People vs. Larry Flynt'', which garnered her a Golden Globe nomination in 1997. After Hole's breakup in 2002, Love released a solo album and became a media spectacle while recovering from severe drug addiction, but reformed Hole in 2009 with entirely new members and released ''Nobody's Daughter'' (2010). Throughout her music career, Love's wild stage antics and subversive feminist attitude polarized audiences and critics, with ''Rolling Stone'' once calling her "the most controversial woman in rock history."

Early life

Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Linda Carroll, a therapist, and Hank Harrison, a publisher. According to Love, her mother named her after the alcoholic, fledgling debutante protagonist of a 1956 "dime-store novel" called ''Chocolates for Breakfast'' by Pamela Moore. Love would discover, in later years, that her biological grandmother was novelist Paula Fox and her great-grandmother was Cuban-born screenwriter Elsie Fox; Fox had given Linda Carroll up for adoption when she was an infant.

Love's family were part of the burgeoning hippie scene of the 1960s. Harrison was an "amateur acid maker", according to Love, and was briefly a road manager for The Grateful Dead. At five years old, Love was featured on the back of the Grateful Dead's third album, ''Aoxomoxoa'' (1969), sitting under a tree among the band members and various roadies and musicians.

Carroll and Harrison filed for a divorce by the time Love was five and, during a child custody case following her parents' divorce, Love's mother and one of her friends presented letters implying her father had given LSD to the three-year-old child. Love's father denied the allegation, and Love admitted that she couldn't remember it, but insisted it was alleged in court. The trial concluded with full custody being awarded to Love's mother. When Love was a toddler, her mother met Frank Rodriguez, whom she married and had two daughters with, also adopting a son.

Love relocated with her family to the small town of Marcola, Oregon in the early 1970s, and Linda studied psychotherapy at the University of Oregon. Love was bullied at school and called "pee girl" because her clothes were not often washed, and she was sent to various therapists and counselors by her mother after expressing deep-seated anger issues.thumb|right|160px|Childhood photograph of Love, early 1970s.In 1972, Love's mother relocated to New Zealand with Love's half-siblings and stepfather, but left Love behind in the United States under the care of a therapist friend. Love eventually reunited with her family, but was kicked out of her boarding school in New Zealand and was ultimately returned to Oregon where she lived in foster homes. Linda eventually returned to Oregon as well and divorced Rodriguez, marrying a third husband, Michael Meneley.

Adolescence

At age 14, Love was arrested for criminal mischief and theft after shoplifting a Kiss t-shirt at a Woolworth's and was sent to Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility. According to documents by the facility committee from 1979, Love was very "outspoken" and caused problems within the program because of her "boisterous, negative, and hurtful behavior" toward her teachers and her peers. The same report also noted that Love's "academic ability is seen to be far beyond the typical student at Hillcrest". Other documents from the Oregon's Children's Services Division noted that it was "evident that Courtney has been in search of the family life she has always been deprived of for so many years", and has "rejected substitutes as unworthy". According to a data sheet which logged Love's juvenile placements, she was shuffled between over 20 different facilities and foster homes between 1978 and 1980.

At age 16, Love moved to Portland, Oregon. Though still a minor, Love worked as an exotic dancer in various venues in the city, lying to club owners in order to get jobs, most notably at the Star Theater and the infamous Mary's Dine & Dance. According to Love, she also briefly worked as a DJ at Portland's community radio station, KBOO, and wrote an article under the name "Courtney Michelle" in punk zine ''MRR'': "I wrote three or four of these missives from Portland, all about Poison Idea and Rancid Vat. But of course being me, I wrote something controversial and got a cross burned on my lawn. I wrote that Tom 'Pig' was a neo-fascist or something."

Love befriended punk kids and strippers, and often hung out at local gay bars, including Portland's Metropolis club, where she said she was "raised by her friends and drag queens." Love also started her first musical project during this time, an on-and-off band called Sugar Babydoll. While continuing to strip in Portland, Love was approached by a stranger who offered her a high-paying job at a dance hall in Japan. Love took the deal, but was deported within a month after the Japanese government closed down the dance ring due to their employment of underage girls. She returned to stripping upon arriving back to Portland, but was sent to court after the dance club was raided; a social worker in the case discovered a trust fund established for Love by her mother's adoptive parents, and she gained legal emancipation.

She subsequently traveled to England and Ireland, briefly reuniting with her father in Dublin and living on her trust fund. While in Ireland, Love took two semesters at Trinity College in Dublin and worked as a photographer for ''Hot Press''. In England, she moved into the Liverpool home of musician Julian Cope, of The Teardrop Explodes, and became a regular at rock shows. She also developed a friendship with Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen.

In 1982, Love's Visa expired and she returned to Portland, whereupon a DJ at the Metropolis offered her a job spinning records. While working there, Love became acquainted with Rozz Rezabek of a local band, Theatre of Sheep, and the two had a brief relationship with one another. After the relationship ended, 19-year-old Love returned to the far East in order to make more money, and ended up stripping in Taiwan, where her passport was allegedly taken from her; Love reportedly feared that she was going to end up becoming a sex slave and returned to Portland once again.

Music career

Early endeavors

Love began her music career with a brief stint as lead singer of Faith No More. According to Love, she showed up to a concert in San Francisco wearing a wedding gown, and basically "demanded" to be in their band. Her work in the band was brief, though she later maintained a friendship with band member Roddy Bottum.

At age 20, in 1984, Love met Kat Bjelland in Portland at the Satyricon nightclub, and the two began a friendship. Both interested in music, they collaborated with friend Jennifer Finch, a bass player. Love and Bjelland moved to San Francisco the following year and formed a band called The Pagan Babies, with Deidre Schletter and Janis Tanaka, but the band dissolved in the summer of 1985 after recording one demo, largely due to fighting and troubles involving drug abuse. Love briefly played bass in Kat Bjelland's band Babes In Toyland in Minneapolis for a short time but was kicked out of this group as well. Love stayed in Minneapolis and got a gig as a promoter for rock shows, promoting concerts by bands such as The Butthole Surfers, but left to Los Angeles soon after.

In-between relocations, Love took classes at Portland State University, as well as San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, studying English and Buddhism, but never invested enough time to graduate.

Love starred in two Alex Cox films in the late 1980s, but was ultimately dissatisfied with acting and the "low level of celebrity" that it brought her, particularly in the New York art scene, and returned to stripping, where she was recognized and photographed by customers at a bar in McMinnville, Oregon. Love then retreated to Alaska for several months where she continued to strip to support herself, all the while writing song lyrics and aspiring to form a band.

Hole

In 1989, Love boarded a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles—dissatisfied with acting, the 24-year-old taught herself to play guitar and set out to form her own band. She placed an ad in ''Flipside'', reading: "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac" to which Eric Erlandson, along with over a dozen other musicians, replied. Love ultimately chose Erlandson. After a cycle of several bass players and drummers, Love and Erlandson recruited bassist Jill Emery and drummer Caroline Rue into the band, which they named Hole. The band's name allegedly came from a quote from Euripides' ''Medea'' which read "there's a hole that pierces my soul" and a conversation Love had with her mother about her upbringing.

Hole played their first gig in November 1989 at Raji's after three months of rehearsal, and made singles on the Long Beach, California, independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry. Their first single, titled "Retard Girl," was issued in spring 1990, and had been produced by Love's then ex-husband Moreland. Disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer jokingly said that Love would often "stalk him" at a downtown Denny's, showing him the band's single and insinuating that he should give it air time on his station, KROQ-FM. One year later, the band debuted their second single, "Dicknail" through Sub Pop Records, and began to gain a following in Los Angeles.

Influenced by the sounds and style of no wave rock bands, Love sought out Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon to produce the band's first studio album, a proposal which Gordon accepted. Hole's debut album ''Pretty on the Inside'' (1991) was released in September 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Gordon and Gumball's Don Fleming. It sold well for an independent release and received specifically favorable reviews in the British alternative music press, charting at 59 on the UK Albums Chart in October 1991. ''The New Yorker'' referred to it as "the most compelling album to have been released in 1991" and ''Spin'' also labeled it one of the 20 best albums of the year. Love went on tour with Hole to promote the record in the United States following a lengthy tour of Europe. Several years after the album's release, Love made comments that though the album was "the truth", it was also an act of proving herself to her "indie peers" who had "made fun of her" for liking R.E.M. and The Smiths. She also referred to the creation of the album as a sort of self-exorcism.

Breakthrough

Love had begun dating Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1991, two years after their initial encounter with one another. The two were married in 1992 and had a daughter, Frances that year. The marriage between Love and Cobain lasted up until 1994, when Cobain was experiencing immense success with Nirvana and Love was in the studio recording Hole's second album, ''Live Through This'' (1994). In April 1994, Cobain was found dead in the couple's Seattle home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Both Love and Cobain had been staying in separate rehabilitation centers in California at the time due to heroin abuse; Cobain checked himself out of the center during treatment and vanished, returning to Seattle without telling anyone. His body was found in their home on April 8, 1994, four days before the release of Hole's ''Live Through This''. A memorial was held for Cobain two days later at the Seattle Center, with a pre-recorded message of Love reading Cobain's suicide note, while crying and chastising him. Near the end of the vigil, Love arrived at the park and distributed some of Cobain's clothing to those who still remained.

The tragedy in Love's personal life occurred during Hole's biggest achievement thus far— ''Live Through This'', recorded in the fall of 1993 in Atlanta, would garner much attention, not only because of it being the group's first commercial album, but also because of its release date, just days after Cobain committed suicide. The album featured a new lineup, with Kristen Pfaff on bass and Patty Schemel on drums; Jill Emery and Caroline Rue had both left the band in 1992. Less than two months after the release of ''Live Through This'', on June 16, Kristen Pfaff died of an apparent heroin overdose. Love soon after recruited 22-year-old bassist Melissa Auf der Maur for the band's upcoming tour. Throughout the months preceding the tour, Love was rarely seen in public, and had Namgyal Buddhist monks move into her home to help her deal with the recent tragedies.

The live performances for Hole's 1994 and 1995 tours became notorious due to Love's emotional state at the time; they were described as "part therapy and part eulogy", with Love often altering hurtful song lyrics toward herself, dedicating songs to Cobain and Pfaff, provoking fans, throwing guitars into the audience, and breaking into screaming fits onstage. Disgruntled Nirvana fans—many of whom had been adherents to conspiracy theories alleging that Love had murdered Cobain— threw shotgun shells at her onstage on several occasions.

The dramatic nature of the tour came to public light on the Fourth of July, 1995— while playing at the Lollapalooza Music Festival, Love punched Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna in the face, after pelting her with candy and throwing a lit cigarette at her. Hanna had allegedly made a joke about Love's daughter shooting up in a closet. Following the incident, Hanna pressed charges, and Love pled guilty and underwent anger management classes.

In spite of the recent tragedies in Love's life and the highly emotional tour, ''Live Through This'' was an immense commercial and critical success. ''Spin'' and the ''Village Voice'' declared it "Album of the Year" and by November the record was certified gold. By April 1995, it went platinum. ''Entertainment Weekly'' gave it a positive review, noting the lyrical content of the songs and Love's dealings with it: "Life in the media spotlight, motherhood, being called Nirvana's Yoko Ono, the idea that love and sex strip women of their dignity-these and other thoughts are on her mind, and her frazzled, occasionally venomous observations make for what amounts to a shrink session with a beat." Columnist Geoffrey Himes noted the album's reactiveness toward "the impossible situation that confronts women when they are asked to be both wild sources of pleasure and unblemished mother figures."

The album's subject matter ranged from themes of pregnancy, rape, and relationships to conformity, child abuse, and suicide. ''Live Through This'' went on to be declared one of the best albums of all time by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine in their ''500 Greatest Albums of All Time'' issue in 2003.

Commercial success

Following the success of ''Live Through This'', Hole went on a hiatus beginning in 1996 while Love acted in several films. In 1997, the band released a compilation album, ''My Body, The Hand Grenade'' through City Slang records, which featured material from the band's earliest recordings in 1989 up until 1995— the album featured several singles and live tracks, and was described as an anthology of the band's progression from punk rock to more mainstream alternative rock tastes.

While ''My Body, The Hand Grenade'' was hitting store shelves, Hole was in the studio recording ''Celebrity Skin'', which featured a more pop rock style than the band's previous albums. Released in September 1998, ''Celebrity Skin'' was noted for its commercial style, and received positive critical reaction. ''Rolling Stone'' gave the album four out of five stars, saying, "the album teems with sonic knockouts that make you see all sorts of stars. It's accessible, fiery and intimate—often at the same time. Here is a basic guitar record that's anything but basic." ''Celebrity Skin'' went on to go multi-platinum, and topped "Best of Year" lists at ''Spin'', the ''Village Voice'', and other periodicals. Erlandson was still the lead guitarist, and now there were Melissa Auf der Maur's backup vocals and bass, but drummer Patty Schemel was replaced by a session drummer during the recording. The album is noted for being the only Hole album to garner a No. 1 hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, with its title track, "Celebrity Skin".

During the release and promotion of ''Celebrity Skin'', Love and Fender designed a low-price Squier brand guitar, called Vista Venus (as Cobain did in 1994, doing the design of his Fender Jag-Stang). The instrument featured a shape inspired by Mercury, Stratocaster, and Rickenbacker's solidbodies and had a single-coil and a humbucker pickup. In an early 1999 interview, Love said about the Venus: "I wanted a guitar that sounded really warm and pop, but which required just one box to go dirty (...) And something that could also be your first band guitar. I didn't want it all teched out. I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch. Because I think that cultural revolutions are in the hands of guitar players". She also declared, "my Venus is better than the Jag-Stang". The Squier Vista Venus model is currently discontinued, as is the Jag-Stang as of 2006.

Hole toured Australia in 1999 to support the album, then the U.S. on a tour with Marilyn Manson. The two bands mocked each other on stage. Hole dropped off the tour, citing the obligation to pay 50% of Manson's staging costs as a reason. The singers of both bands told MTV there was no animosity and they were happy to end the tour. Hole finished the year's dates with Imperial Teen opening.

Solo career

thumb|160px|right|Love performing in London, England on her 43rd birthday (2007).With Hole in disarray, Love began a "punk rock femme supergroup" called Bastard during autumn 2001, enlisting Schemel, Veruca Salt co-frontwoman Louise Post, and bassist Gina Crosley, whom Post recommended. Though a demo was completed, the project never reached fruition: conflicts between Love and Crosley, then between Love and replacement bassist Corey Parks from Nashville Pussy, led to the group's demise. On May 24, 2002, Hole officially announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group.

A whirlwind of legal troubles surrounded Love beginning in 2003, when public attention fell on her for various arrests and drug charges, most notably after the release of her solo album, ''America's Sweetheart''. Love had begun composing the album with Linda Perry in 2002. ''America's Sweetheart'', released on Virgin Records in February 2004, was embraced by critics with mixed reviews. ''Spin'' called it a "jaw-dropping act of artistic will and a fiery, proper follow-up to 1994’s ''Live Through This''" and awarded it eight out of ten stars, while ''Rolling Stone'' suggested that, "for people who enjoy watching celebrities fall apart, ''America's Sweetheart'' should be more fun than an Osbournes marathon."

The album sold a disappointing 86,000 copies in its first three months, with the singles ''Mono'' and "Hold on to Me", both of which earned competent spots on album charts. Love has publicly expressed her regret over the record several times, calling it "a crap record" during a 2010 Oxford Union speech, reasoning that her drug issues at the time were to blame. During the promotion for the record, Love battled various highly-publiciezd legal issues as well as drug sentences, which eventually resulted in six months of lockdown rehab.

In June 2005, Love started recording what was going to be her second solo album, ''Nobody's Daughter'', collaborating with Linda Perry and Billy Corgan in the writing and recording of the album. Love had written several songs, including an anti-cocaine song entitled "Loser Dust", during her time in rehab.

Some tracks and demos from the album (initially planned for release in 2008) were leaked on the internet in 2006, and a documentary entitled ''The Return of Courtney Love'', detailing the making of ''Nobody's Daughter'', aired on the British television network in the fall of that year. A rough acoustic version of "Never Go Hungry Again", recorded during an interview for ''The Times'' in November, was also released. Incomplete audio clips of the song "Samantha", originating from an interview with NPR, were also distributed on the internet in 2007.

Hole reformation

On June 17, 2009, ''NME'' reported that Hole would be reuniting. Former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson stated in ''Spin'' magazine that contractually no reunion can take place without his involvement; therefore ''Nobody's Daughter'' would remain Love's solo record, as opposed to a "Hole" record. Love responded to Erlandson's comments in a Twitter post, claiming that "he's out of his mind, Hole is my band, my name, and my Trademark".

''Nobody's Daughter'' was released worldwide as a Hole album in April 2010. Hole now consists of Love (guitar, vocals), Micko Larkin (guitar), Shawn Dailey (bass guitar), and Stu Fisher (drums, percussion). Some songs from the sessions with Linda Perry and Billy Corgan are on the album, including "Pacific Coast Highway", "Letter to God", "Samantha", and "Never Go Hungry", although they have been re-produced with Micko Larkin.

The first single from ''Nobody's Daughter'' was "Skinny Little Bitch", which was the most added song on alternative rock radio in early March 2010. Hole performed on ''The Late Show with David Letterman'' on April 27, 2010, and Courtney Love was interviewed. Hole also performed on ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' on April 29, 2010, on the outdoor stage.

The album received mixed reviews, though the majority of them leant toward positive. ''Rolling Stone'' gave the album three out of five stars, saying that Love "worked hard on these songs, instead of just babbling a bunch of druggy bullshit and assuming people would buy it, the way she did on her 2004 flop, ''America's Sweetheart''." ''Slant Magazine'' also gave the album three out of five stars, saying "It's Marianne Faithfull's substance-ravaged voice that comes to mind most often while listening to songs like "Honey" and "For Once in Your Life." The latter track is, in fact, one of Love's most raw and vulnerable vocal performances to date. Co-penned by Linda Perry, the song offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a woman who, for the last 15 years, has been as famous for being a rock star as she's been for being a victim."

The album's subject matter was largely centered on Love's tumultuous life between 2003 and 2007, and featured a polished folk-rock sound with much more acoustic work than previous Hole albums. Love toured Europe, Japan, and the United States promoting the album in the spring and summer of 2010, ending the tour at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival in September. In the summer of 2011, the band played at several festivals in Russia, and are slated to tour Australia in September and October.

Acting career

Love actually started out acting before breaking into the music industry. In 1987, she submitted an audition tape to director Alex Cox, which earned her a bit part in the Sid Vicious biopic ''Sid and Nancy'' (1986). Impressed by Love's energy and "star attitude", Cox offered her $40,000 for a leading role in his following film ''Straight to Hell'' (1987), which she filmed in Spain in 1986. ''Straight to Hell'' was a critical flop, and in 1987, Love starred in Andy Warhol's ''Fifteen Minutes'' television show with Robbie Nevil in a segment titled "C'est la Vie" (eponymous for Neville's hit song). The segment features Love dressed in vintage clothes from the Paramount costume department discussing her aspirations about being a poet and an English major, but how she "mostly would have been a bag lady".

Nearly a decade later, in 1996, Love returned to acting in the midst of her success and work with Hole. She had small parts in ''Basquiat'' and ''Feeling Minnesota'', but her largest role came in that of Larry Flynt's wife, Althea, in Miloš Forman's 1996 film ''The People vs. Larry Flynt'', opposite Woody Harrelson as Flynt. Forman chose Love, unaware of her history as a musician, because she was "an extremely talented actress." Initially, Columbia Pictures had been hesitant to hire Love for the role, because she wasn't a "big enough name", and they were also worried about her "troubled" past. Nonetheless, Forman fought the company and Love was given the role; however, Columbia Pictures refused to insure her during the making of the film. Ultimately, Forman, co-star Woody Harrelson, Oliver Stone, Michael Hausman, and Love herself pooled their money together in order to pay for her insurance, which demanded weekly urine tests, which she passed.

Love received unanimous critical acclaim upon the film's release, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress. Film critic Roger Ebert called her work in the film "quite a performance; Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress".

The late 1990s— after Hole released ''Celebrity Skin''— saw Love in the party film ''200 Cigarettes'' (1998), and starring opposite Jim Carrey in ''Man on the Moon'' (1999). In 2001, Love returned to acting and took a leading role in ''Julie Johnson'' (2001) as Lili Taylor's lesbian lover, for which she won an Outstanding Actress award at L.A.'s Outfest. She followed with another leading part in the thriller film ''Trapped'' (2002), alongside Kevin Bacon and Charlize Theron.

Other projects

In 2004, Love collaborated with manga illustrators Misaho Kujiradou and Ai Yazawa to create a manga series title ''Princess Ai'', based in part on Love's life. Love wrote the stories for the series, and it was released through Tokyopop in two volumes between 2004 and 2005. The manga focused on an amnesiac alien who is transported to Tokyo where she becomes a rock star, and the key to her past is locked inside of a heart-shaped box. The series was released by publishing company Tokyopop, and was also featured in Japanese shōjo magazine ''Wings''.

Although Love said she would "never write a book", she did publish a memoir in 2006 titled ''Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love''. The memoir was composed of years' worth of diary entries, poems, letters, drawings, personal photos, and lyric compositions spanning from Love's childhood up until the year 2006, shortly after her release from a six-month rehab sentence. The book was generally well-reviewed by critics, and Love did book readings in promotion for it.

In more recent years, Love has expressed a great deal of interest in fashion, coining her flamboyant outfits and accessories with the term "kook". Love attended various fashion shows in 2009 and 2010, and performed with Hole at several of the shows, including the Givenchy fashion party in Paris. She also started a fashion blog titled ''What Courtney Wore Today'' . In October 2010, Love and Michael Mouris created an animated short film detailing Love's "kooky" fashion sense, titled ''The Dark Night of the Soul''.

Personal life

Relationships

Love's most prolific relationship was with fellow rock musician Kurt Cobain. The two first encountered one another at the Satyricon nightclub in January 1989, where Nirvana was playing a show. Cobain passed by a booth where Love was seated with a friend, and she blurted to him, "You look like Dave Pirner" (lead singer of Soul Asylum). The two purportedly playfully wrestled on the floor in front of a jukebox that night, but Love left the club before Cobain did. They later became reacquainted through Jennifer Finch, one of Love's longtime friends and former bandmates, who was dating Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl at the time. Love told Grohl she had a crush on Cobain, and later sent him a heart-shaped box with a letter and porcelain doll head inside of it. Love and Cobain officially began dating in 1991, and were married on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, on February 24, 1992. Love wore a satin and lace dress once owned by actress Frances Farmer, and Cobain wore green pajamas. Six months later, on August 18, the couple's only child, a daughter named Frances Bean Cobain, was born. In 1994, Cobain committed suicide. In speaking of her marriage with Kurt Cobain, she has been adamant about the fact that she loved him, but in more recent years has been less inclined to discuss it. In a 2010 interview with ''NME'', Love said she was "sick of talking about it". "I am not his spokesperson on Earth," she told the magazine. "I don't know what he'd be like now; he could be into society girls, he could be into fat girls, he could be homosexual. We don't know, he died at 27."

Prior to her relationship with Cobain, she married "Falling" James Moreland, vocalist of The Leaving Trains, in Las Vegas in 1989. Moreland was a transvestite and Love later referred to their wedding as "a joke"; an annulment was filed within the first few months of the marriage. In 1991, Love also dated The Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Billy Corgan. Beginning in 1996, Love dated actor Edward Norton when the two met on the set of ''The People vs. Larry Flynt''. Her relationship with Edward was described as her "most stable". The two were together for several years and were at one point engaged, but separated in 1999. Love was also romantically linked to Trent Reznor in 1995 and once left a suicide note in her room in the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood after a fight with Reznor. According to her book ''Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love'', she left a suicide-note-like apology letter addressed to deceased husband Kurt Cobain and daughter Frances Bean, saying that ''I love you. Please forgive me. ... You are both too beautiful for me. I love you forever''. Love was also briefly involved with British comedian Steve Coogan in the mid-2000s.

Love's relationship with her daughter, Frances, has likewise been turbulent. After a 2003 oxycodone overdose, Love temporarily lost custody of the 13-year-old, who went to live with Kurt Cobain's mother, Wendy O'Connor. Love regained custody of Frances in January 2005. In December 2009, it was reported that Love had "lost" custody of Frances again, though her spokesperson Keith Fink told the media: "Courtney's been clean for years and is perfectly fine. This is simply about Frances preferring to live with her grandmother at this time. Frances is 17 and a strong-willed child, and this is a decision she made on her own." Nonetheless, legal guardianship of Frances was placed in the hands of O'Connor, whom had guardianship over Frances until her 18th birthday in August 2010.

Substance abuse

Love has struggled with substance abuse problems for a great deal of her life. Love admitted to trying marijuana in her teenage years, but was first introduced to heavier drugs at age 16 while living in Taiwan, using heroin after mistaking it for cocaine. She also revealed that she first tried cocaine with friend Jennifer Finch at age 19; Finch shot an entire roll of film of them as they did lines of the drug, but Love referred to it as "[not] a very pleasant experience." According to Love, "Later that day Jennifer gulped down a bunch of dilaudid and overdosed. I had never driven a car in my life, but I threw her in a car, and drove her to the hospital, and the doctors saved her life. After that, I was really scared of drugs."

As Love transitioned into the public eye in the 1990s, her struggle with drug abuse was subject of many media outlets, first beginning in a ''Vanity Fair'' article by Lynn Hirschberg in 1992, which alluded that Love was addicted to heroin during her pregnancy. Though Love has admitted she used heroin before she knew she was pregnant, she asserts that she stopped "damn fast": "My daughter knows I did drugs in my first trimester of pregnancy. She weighed 7lb 6oz when she was born and she was healthy. [Kurt and I] were excellent parents and I say that despite pretty much always having an edge on."

In 2004, Love's drug use came to public attention again while she promoted her solo album. On March 17, 2004, Love was arrested in New York for possession of a controlled substance after a concert. Love protested her arrest, denying charges and describing the drugs found on her as "one expired Percocet and one Ambien". The police, however, alleged possession of oxycodone and hydrocodone without prescription. After several probation violations, Love was sentenced to six months of lock down rehab after struggles with prescription drugs and cocaine. She made a public statement after her release, saying: "I would just like to thank the court for allowing me these 90 days... [It] helped me deal with a very gnarly drug problem, which is behind me... I've just been playing guitar and taking care of my daughter. I want to [take this opportunity] to let the community know I'm doing great... I've been really inspired and have remained inspired."

In retrospect, Love has jokingly referred to 2004-2007 as "The Letterman Years", in reference to her public breakdown and drug-fueled behavior first surfacing during a chaotic interview with David Letterman in 2004. Love has also admitted to abusing rohypnol and other opiates. In May 2011, Love made public statements that she was "tired" of her reputation as a drug addict: "I've been maligned as this drug freak for years, and I'm getting tired of it. That's not the way I live anymore. I try to work a good program. I don't do smack. I don't do crack anymore." Love has credited Buddhism as having helped her through her addictions several times.

Love has also been a lifelong smoker. In a 2010 interview, she commented, saying: "Someone compared me to Bette Davis in that I make smoking cool for kids. And I think it was a tragic and truthful statement. And it made me feel, as you can imagine, just horrible. Then they challenged me to quit smoking – because if I can quit smoking, anyone can quit smoking. So while I ''am'' smoking a cigarette right now, I have written 'The Last Pack' with a Sharpie on every pack since then. And I'm gearing up to quit."

Beliefs

Love is a member of Soka Gakkai, a branch of Nichiren Buddhism, having started exploring the religion in 1991. Love stated that in 1990, she would chant ''Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō'' daily, and in retrospect, has credited her spiritual awakening as a being responsible for her success with Hole. Love was raised by a Roman Catholic mother and attended a Catholic girls' school while living in New Zealand as a young child.

Love has advocated for several liberal causes, including stricter gun control laws and reform of the "corrupt" record industry. Love has also been an advocate for gay rights; during a 1997 award speech at VH1's Fashion Awards, Love said "I think that great personal style is being true to yourself and speaking your mind, which, since I'm up here, I'm going to do... I feel that keeping gay people in the closet with our actions and attitudes is cruel and tacky, and most of all, it's boring. I think we need to respect each other and ourselves, and who we are, and what we are, and not be afraid to be what we are, whether we're gay, or straight, or... insane." Love voted against California's Proposition 8 during the 2008 elections.

In January 2011, while attending an Oxford Union debate, Love publicly endorsed her support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and called it "a step in the right direction for democracy".

Love is also self-identified feminist, a theme that has not only come across in her music, but in her own persona. Love was written about in the journal ''Bad Subjects'' for her subversive feminism and "slut/diva" image, and her "self-conscious parody of female sex roles", which is often misinterpreted because the public "only sees the 'slut' without the critique of the system that creates categories like 'slut.'"

Influences and style

Love has often cited new wave and punk groups/musicians as being great influences on her. Such musical acts as Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, and Joy Division have been mentioned by Love, including songs by several of them being covered by Hole in live performances and, in some cases, studio recordings as album B-sides. In the early '90s, Hole as a group was greatly influenced by no wave music— in the initial advertisement placed by Love which resulted in Hole's formation, she cited Fleetwood Mac, Sonic Youth, and Big Black as her three major musical influences.

In a 1995 interview with Kurt Loder, Love divulged that in the late 1980s, guitarist Joe Strummer of The Clash told her that she was "the worst guitar player he'd ever heard", but she insisted she had improved by the early 1990s: "I'm fine... I have my style... and, you know what's funny, is most of the songs [from ''Pretty on the Inside''] are complete Bauhaus rip-offs." During the same interview, Love said she was greatly influenced by guitarists Will Sergeant of Echo and the Bunnymen and Johnny Marr of the Smiths.

Although emphasis on new wave and punk rock influence has been noted by Love as well as critics, her favorite artists vary across genres and time periods. In her teenage years, Love was cited listening to jazz and lounge singers such as Billie Holliday and Frank Sinatra, as well as punk rock acts such as Flipper and The Dead Kennedys. Over the course of Hole's career, the band has done various live and studio covers from a wide array of artists, such as: Fleetwood Mac, The Velvet Underground, Wipers, The Germs, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Donovan, Nirvana, Guns N' Roses, Neil Young, Leadbelly, Duran Duran, and Carole King.

Although Hole's sound changed over the course of the band's career, the pretty/ugly dynamic has often been noted as a consistent theme in Love's music, most prominently in Hole's first two studio albums. In conjunction with the extremes between beauty and ugliness, Love's musical style has also been remarked for its layering of harsh and abrasive riffs which often bury more sophisticated musical arrangements. Upon the release of ''Pretty on the Inside'', the album was lauded for its "fascination with the repulsive aspects of L.A.— superficiality, sexism, violence, and drugs." In Love's later musical career, however, on both ''Celebrity Skin'' and her solo ''America's Sweetheart'', Los Angeles and the state of California was cast in a different light; such songs as "Malibu", "Sunset Marquis", and "Celebrity Skin" all highlight aspects of the glamourous nature of L.A. and its relationship with Love's own life. ''Celebrity Skin'' has been referred to as Love's "personal love letter to Los Angeles."

In terms of musical equipment, Love has used several different guitars during her career. In 1989 and the early 1990s, Love was seen several times with a Rickenbacker onstage, and, more often, a Fender Jazzmaster, which she played in the music video for "Miss World"; Love's Jazzmaster is now on display at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City. In the later '90s, Love played several Fender Stratocasters, as well as her own line of Squier Venus guitars. Most recently, in 2010, Love played a Rickenbacker 360 while touring.

Legacy

Once labelled by ''Rolling Stone'' as "the most controversial woman in the history of rock", Love has been influential in the music world, particularly in the area of alternative rock and female-driven musical acts.

Most notable has been her vision of female potential in rock music—an industry and art form that has been notorious for its male dominance. Of the slew of female-driven rock and punk bands that emerged in the 1990s—from alternative punk bands such as L7 to "riot grrrl" musical acts like Bikini Kill—Hole was also perhaps the most successful of its time, garnering a widespread fanbase, critical accolades, and notable album sales. In a 1996 New York Magazine piece on women in rock music, it was noted that Love "had the ambition most people would associate with a male rock star... One thing you have to admire her for is that she refuses— just refuses— to be overlooked in any way."

Likewise, Love has been cited as a gay icon by several LGBT publications, such as ''The Advocate'', probably due to her perseverance and endurance through adverse situations in her life. Love's devoted gay fanbase was later written about in a New York Press article when Hole released their fourth album in 2010. In the article, John Russel writes:

In more recent years, Love's presence in music has been noted: in 2004, ''Spin'' magazine ranked Love No. 18 in their list of "The 50 Greatest Rock Frontmen Of All Time", calling her "a great band leader because onstage or off, she always makes sure we're paying attention". In January 2002, Love ranked at No. 14 in ''Q Magazine'''s list of "100 Women Who Rock the World". The Biography Channel called Love "outspoken, brash, and sometimes out of control", and "one of alternative rock's most fascinating figures".

Discography

;Hole

''Pretty on the Inside'' (1991)

''Live Through This'' (1994)

''Celebrity Skin'' (1998)

''Nobody's Daughter'' (2010)

;Solo

''America's Sweetheart'' (2004)

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1986	''Sid and Nancy''	Gretchen
1987		Velma
1988	''Tapeheads''	Norman's spanker	Uncredited
		Big Pink
''Feeling Minnesota''	Rhonda the Waitress
''The People vs. Larry Flynt''
	''200 Cigarettes''	Lucy
	Lynne Margulies
2000		Joan Vollmer Burroughs
2001	''Julie Johnson''	Claire
2002		Cheryl
2005	''Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula''	Caligula	Short film

As herself:

Year	Film/program	Notes
1987	''Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes''	Segment "C'est la vie"
1992	''1991: The Year Punk Broke''
1995	''Not Bad for a Girl''
1997	''Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's''	Uncredited
1998	''Kurt & Courtney''
1999	''Clara Bow: Discovering the It Girl''	Narrator (documentary)
2000	''Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope''
	''Last Party 2000''
''Crossover''
2003	''Mayor of the Sunset Strip''
2004	''(This Is Known As) The Blues Scale''
2006	''The Return of Courtney Love''	Channel 4 special
2010	''Alan Carr Chatty Man ''	Channel 4 interview

See also

Hole

List of female rock singers

''Live Through This'' (1994)

List of 54th Golden Globe Award nominees

List of feminists

List of punk rock bands

Kurt Cobain

Grunge

Riot grrrl

List of alternative rock artists

List of Buddhists

References

External links

Official Hole website

''What Courtney Wore Today''— a personal fashion blog created by Love in 2010

Courtney Love Interview (2006) on her book ''Dirty Blonde'' by AOL Books

Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:People from San Francisco, California Category:American Buddhists Category:American female guitarists Category:American female singers Category:American feminists Category:American film actors Category:American punk rock singers Category:American diarists Category:American poets Category:American multi-instrumentalists Category:American rock singers Category:Musicians from California Category:Custard Records artists Category:Faith No More members Category:Female rock singers Category:Female post-grunge singers Category:Female punk rock singers Category:Feminist musicians Category:Grunge musicians Category:Hole members Category:People self-identifying as substance abusers Category:Sympathy for the Record Industry artists Category:Kurt Cobain Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni Category:Members of Soka Gakkai

am:ኮርትኒ ላቭ an:Courtney Love az:Kortni Lav bg:Кортни Лав cs:Courtney Love da:Courtney Love de:Courtney Love et:Courtney Love es:Courtney Love fa:کورتنی لاو fr:Courtney Love gl:Courtney Love hr:Courtney Love id:Courtney Love is:Courtney Love it:Courtney Love he:קורטני לאב csb:Courtney Love lv:Kortnija Lava hu:Courtney Love mn:Кортни Лав nl:Courtney Love ja:コートニー・ラブ no:Courtney Love uz:Courtney Love pl:Courtney Love pt:Courtney Love ro:Courtney Love ru:Лав, Кортни simple:Courtney Love sk:Courtney Love sl:Courtney Love sr:Кортни Лав fi:Courtney Love sv:Courtney Love tr:Courtney Love uk:Кортні Лав zh:寇特妮·洛芙

name	Michael Stipe
background	solo_singer
birth name	John Michael Stipe
born	January 04, 1960Decatur, Georgia, United States
genre	Alternative rock
occupation	Singer-songwriter, producer, film producer, television producer, blogger extraordinaire
years active	1980–present
instrument	Vocals, harmonica, guitar, synthesizer, melodica
associated acts	R.E.M.Automatic BabyPlaceboKristin HershNatalie MerchantThe Golden Palominos }}

John Michael Stipe (born January 4, 1960) is an American singer and the lead vocalist for the alternative rock band R.E.M. Stipe has been occasionally parodied for the "mumbling" style of his early career, as well as his social and political activism. Stipe is in charge of the band's visual image, often selecting album artwork and directing many of the band's music videos. Stipe's work extends outside of the music industry: he runs his own film production companies, C-00 and Single Cell Pictures.

Life and career

Early life

Stipe was born in Decatur, Georgia on January 4, 1960. Stipe was a military brat; his father was a serviceman in the United States Army whose career resulted in frequent relocations for his family. Stipe and his family moved to various locales during his childhood, including Germany, Texas, Illinois, Alabama and Georgia. Stipe graduated from high school in Collinsville, Illinois in 1978. His senior photo is pictured in the album art work of ''Eponymous''. Stipe also worked at the local Waffle House. Stipe later enrolled at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, as an art major, studying photography and painting.

Formation of R.E.M.

While attending college in Athens, Stipe frequented the Wuxtry record shop where he met store clerk Peter Buck in 1980. "He was a striking-looking guy and he also bought weird records, which not everyone in the store did", Buck recalled. The two became friends and eventually decided to form a band. Buck and Stipe started writing music together; at the time Stipe also spent time in a local group named Gangster. The pair were soon joined by Bill Berry and Mike Mills and named themselves R.E.M., a name Stipe selected at random from a dictionary.

All four members of R.E.M. dropped out of school in 1980 to focus on the band. Stipe was the last to do so. The band issued its debut single, "Radio Free Europe", on Hib-Tone. The song was a college radio success and the band signed to I.R.S. Records for the release of the ''Chronic Town'' EP one year later. R.E.M. released its debut album ''Murmur'' in 1983, which was widely acclaimed by critics. Stipe's vocals and lyrics received particular attention from listeners. ''Murmur'' went on to win the ''Rolling Stone'' Critics Poll Album of the Year over Michael Jackson's ''Thriller''. The band's second album, ''Reckoning'', followed in 1984.

R.E.M. traveled to England to record its third album ''Fables of the Reconstruction'' (1985). The process was difficult and brought the band to the verge of break-up. Even after the album was released, relationships were tense within the band. Stipe said of the period: "I was well on my way to losing my mind". Stipe gained weight and his behaviour became more eccentric; he shaved his hair into a monk's tonsure.

Personal life

With the success of the albums ''Out of Time'' (1991) and ''Automatic for the People'' (1992), R.E.M. became mainstream music stars. Around 1992, rumors that Stipe had contracted HIV began to circulate. According to Stipe, he did not start the rumor and he does not know who did.

In 1994, with questions still swirling about his sexuality, Stipe described himself as "an equal opportunity lech," and said he did not define himself as gay, straight, or bisexual, but that he was attracted to and had relationships with both men and women. In 1995 he appeared on the cover of ''Out'' magazine. Stipe described himself as a "queer artist" in ''Time'' in 2001 and revealed that he had been in a relationship with "an amazing man" for three years at that point. Stipe reiterated this in a 2004 interview with ''Butt'' magazine. When asked if he ever declares himself as gay, Stipe stated, "I don’t. I think there’s a line drawn between gay and queer, and for me, queer describes something that’s more inclusive of the grey areas."

In 1999, author Douglas A. Martin published a novel, ''Outline of My Lover'', in which the narrator has a six-year romantic relationship with the unnamed lead singer of a successful Athens, Georgia-based rock band; the book was widely speculated, and later confirmed by its author, to have been a roman à clef based on a real relationship between Martin and Stipe. The two had previously collaborated on two books, both in 1998: ''The Haiku Year'' (for which the two had both contributed haikus) and Martin's book of poetry ''Servicing the Salamander'' (for which Stipe took the cover photograph).

Stipe was a vegetarian from 1980 to 2000.

Projects

Stipe had planned a collaboration with friend, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain in 1994, partly in an attempt to lure Cobain away from his home and his drug addiction, but did not manage to compose or record anything before Cobain's death. Stipe was chosen as the godfather of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. R.E.M. wrote and recorded the song "Let Me In" from the 1994 album ''Monster'' (R.E.M. album) in tribute to Cobain

Stipe was once very close to fellow singer Natalie Merchant and has recorded a few songs with her, including one titled "Photograph" which appeared on a pro-choice benefit album titled ''Born to Choose'' and they have appeared live with Peter Gabriel singing Gabriel's single "Red Rain".

Stipe and Tori Amos became friends in the mid 1990s and recorded a duet in 1994 called "It Might Hurt a Bit" for the ''Don Juan DeMarco'' motion picture soundtrack. Both Stipe and Amos decided to keep it in the vaults, though it was later slated to appear on the Empire Records motion picture soundtrack in 1995. The song remains unreleased and unheard.

In 1998, Stipe published a collection called ''Two Times Intro: On the Road with Patti Smith.'' In 2006, Stipe released an EP that comprised six different cover versions of Joseph Arthur's "In The Sun" for the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief fund. One version, recorded in a collaboration with Coldplay's Chris Martin, reached number one on the Canadian Singles Chart. Also in 2006, Stipe appeared on the song "Broken Promise" on the Placebo release ''Meds''. Continuing his non-R.E.M. work in 2006, Stipe sang the song "L'Hôtel" on the tribute album to Serge Gainsbourg titled ''Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited'' and appeared on the song "Dancing on the Lip of a Volcano" on the New York Dolls album ''One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This''.

In 2008, Stipe collaborated with Lacoste to release his own "holiday collector edition" brand of polo shirt. The design depicts a concert audience from the view of the performer on stage.

In 2011, Stipe participated in a live online Facebook chat with fans following the premiere of a new R.E.M. video on ''Dazed & Confused'''s website, Dazed Digital. The video for "Walk It Back" was taken from R.E.M.'s 15th album, ''Collapse into Now''.

Musical style

Stipe's role in the songwriting process for R.E.M. is to write lyrics and devise melodies. While each member is given an equal vote in the songwriting process, Peter Buck has conceded that Stipe, as the band's lyricist, can rarely be persuaded to follow an idea he does not favor. Stipe sings in "wailing, keening, arching vocal figures" that R.E.M. biographer David Buckley compared to Celtic folk artists and Muslim muezzin. Stipe often harmonizes with Mills in songs; in the chorus for "Stand," Mills and Stipe alternate singing lyrics, creating a dialogue. Early articles about the band focused on Stipe's singing style (described as "mumbling" by ''The Washington Post''), which often rendered his lyrics indecipherable. Stipe commented in 1984, "It's just the way I sing. If I tried to control it, it would be pretty false."

"That voice. It's an extraordinary voice," said U2's Bono in 2003. "I often tell him I think he's a crooner, and he doesn't like that very much. But it is sort of one part some sort of Bing Crosby '50s laid-back crooner, and one part Dolly Parton," he added, laughing.

Stipe insisted that many of his early lyrics were "nonsense", saying in a 1994 online chat, "You all know there aren't words, ''per se'', to a lot of the early stuff. I can't even remember them." In truth, many early R.E.M. songs had definite lyrics that Stipe wrote with care. Stipe explained in 1984 that when he started writing lyrics they were like "simple pictures", but after a year he grew tired of the approach and "started experimenting with lyrics that didn't make exact linear sense, and it's just gone from there." In the mid-1980s, as Stipe's pronunciation while singing became clearer, the band decided that its lyrics should convey ideas on a more literal level. Mills explained, "After you've made three records and you've written several songs and they've gotten better and better lyrically the next step would be to have somebody question you and say, are you saying anything? And Michael had the confidence at that point to say yes . . ." After what Stipe has referred to as "The Dark Ages of American Politics [The Reagan/Bush Years]", R.E.M. incorporated more politically oriented concerns into his lyrics on ''Document'' and ''Green''. "Our political activism and the content of the songs was just a reaction to where we were, and what we were surrounded by, which was just abject horror," Stipe said later. "In 1987 and '88 there was nothing to do but be active." While Stipe continued to write songs with political subject matter like "Ignoreland" and "Final Straw", later albums have focused on other topics. ''Automatic for the People'' dealt with "mortality and dying. Pretty turgid stuff", according to Stipe, while ''Monster'' critiqued love and mass culture.

Stipe normally does not play instruments, focusing more on his singing, but has played instruments on albums, including harmonica on ''Reckoning'', synthesizer on ''New Adventures in Hi-Fi'', guitar on ''Up'' and melodica on ''Out of Time'', and has occasionally played guitar on some songs in concert.

Film and television work

In early 1987 Stipe co-founded C00 Films with Jim McKay, a mixed-media company that was "designed to channel its founder's creative talents towards the creation and promotion of alternative film works." Stipe and his producing partner, Sandy Stern, have served as executive producers on films including ''Being John Malkovich'', ''Velvet Goldmine'', and ''Man on the Moon''. He was also credited as a producer of the 2004 film ''Saved!''.

In 1998 he worked on Single Cell Pictures, a film production company which released several arthouse / indie movies.

Stipe has made a number of acting appearances on film and on television. Stipe appeared in an episode of ''The Adventures of Pete & Pete'' as an ice cream man named Captain Scrummy. Stipe has appeared as himself with R.E.M. on ''Sesame Street'' playing a reworked version of "Shiny Happy People" called "Furry Happy Monsters", and appeared in an episode of ''The Simpsons'' titled "Homer the Moe", where R.E.M. was tricked into playing a show in Homer Simpson's garage. He also appeared as a guest on the Cartoon Network talk show spoof Space Ghost Coast to Coast in the episode 'Hungry'.

Stipe voiced Schnitzel the Reindeer in the 1999 movie ''Olive, the Other Reindeer''.

Stipe appeared on the BBC topical magazine-style daily television programme, "The One Show" which was broadcast in the UK on 10 March 2011.

Discography

;Albums

With The Golden Palominos: "Boy (Go)", "Omaha", and "Clustering Train" on ''Visions of Excess'' (1985); "Alive and Living Now" on ''Drunk With Passion'' (1991)

With Our Favorite Band: "Dreamin' Of Eternity" ''Saturday Nights...Sunday Mornings'' (1987)

With 10,000 Maniacs: "A Campfire Song" on ''In My Tribe'' (1987)

With the Indigo Girls : "Kid Fears" on ''Indigo Girls'' (1988); "I'll Give You My Skin" on ''Rarities'' (2005)

With Syd Straw: "Future 40's" on ''Surprise'' (1989)

With The Blue Aeroplanes: "What It Is" on ''Swagger'' (1990)

With Billy Bragg: "You Woke Up My Neighbourhood" on ''Don't Try This at Home'' (1991)

With Neneh Cherry: "Trout" on ''Homebrew'' (1992)

With Kristin Hersh: "Your Ghost" on ''Hips and Makers'' (1994)

"My Gang" on ''Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness'' (1997)

With Vic Chesnutt: "Injured Bird" on ''The End of Violence'' (1997)

With Patti Smith: "Last Call" on ''Peace & Noise'' (1997); "Glitter in Their Eyes" on ''Gung-Ho'' (2000)

With Rain Phoenix: "Happiness" on the soundtrack for the film ''Happiness'' (1998)

With Grant Lee Buffalo: "Everybody Needs a Little Sanctuary" on ''Jubilee'' (1998)

With Spacehog: "Almond Kisses" on ''The Chinese Album'' (1999)

With Utah Saints: "Sun", "Rhinoceros" and "Wiggedy Wack" on ''Two'' (2000)

With Community Trolls: "Tainted Obligation" (1983) on ''To Understand: The Early Recordings of Matthew Sweet'' (2002)

With Faultline: "Greenfields" on ''Your Love Means Everything'' (2002)

With 1 Giant Leap: "The Way You Dream" on ''1 Giant Leap'' (2002); ''I Have Seen Trouble'' on ''What About Me?'' (2009)

With Stéphane Pompougnac: "Clumsy" on ''Living on the Edge'' (2003)

"L'Hôtel" (Serge Gainsbourg cover) on ''Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited'' (2006)

With Placebo: "Broken Promise" on ''Meds'' (2006)

With Miguel Bosé: "Lo que hay es lo que ves" on ''Papito'' (2007)

With Maria Taylor: "Cartoons And Forever Plans" on ''LadyLuck'' (2009)

;Singles

"In the Sun" (with Chris Martin) (2006)

;Compilation albums

''Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films'' - "Opening Melody — Little April Shower" (with Natalie Merchant and Mark Bingham and The Roches)

;Production

With Vic Chesnutt: "Little (album)" (1990), "West of Rome" (1992)

With Magnapop: ''Magnapop'' (1992)

References

Buckley, David. ''R.E.M.: Fiction: An Alternative Biography''. Virgin, 2002. ISBN 1-85227-927-3

Platt, John (editor). ''The R.E.M. Companion: Two Decades of Commentary''. Schirmer, 1998. ISBN 0-02-864935-4

Notes

External links

Category:1960 births Category:American activists Category:American baritones Category:American male singers Category:American rock singers Category:Bisexual musicians Category:English-language singers Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:Living people Category:Military brats Category:People from Athens, Georgia Category:People from DeKalb County, Georgia Category:R.E.M. members Category:The Golden Palominos members Category:University of Georgia people Category:American record producers Category:Songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:American vegetarians Category:People from Decatur, Georgia Category:American alternative rock musicians Category:American rock songwriters Category:American musicians of European descent

bg:Майкъл Стайп cs:Michael Stipe da:Michael Stipe de:Michael Stipe es:Michael Stipe eo:Michael Stipe fa:مایکل استایپ fr:Michael Stipe hr:Michael Stipe it:Michael Stipe he:מייקל סטייפ hu:Michael Stipe nl:Michael Stipe ja:マイケル・スタイプ no:Michael Stipe nn:Michael Stipe pl:Michael Stipe pt:Michael Stipe ro:Michael Stipe ru:Стайп, Майкл sk:Michael Stipe fi:Michael Stipe sv:Michael Stipe