- published: 14 Jun 2010
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Douglas Hodge (born 25 February 1960) is an English actor, director, and musician who trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Hodge is a council member of the National Youth Theatre for whom, in 1989, he co-wrote Pacha Mama's Blessing about the Amazon rain forests staged at the Almeida Theatre.
Hodge has achieved great success on stage in plays by Harold Pinter, including No Man's Land at the Comedy Theatre in February 1993; Moonlight at the Almeida Theatre in September 1993; A Kind of Alaska, The Lover and The Collection at the Donmar Warehouse in May 1998; as Jerry in Betrayal at the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre, in November 1998; and as Aston in The Caretaker at the Comedy Theatre in November 2000, co-starring Michael Gambon (Davies) and Rupert Graves (Mick), directed by Patrick Marber - for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award.
Hodge admired Pinter and has spoken and written very highly of the man and his work, and offered himself as a "birthday present" on his 70th birthday, among many other things offering "My own complete friendship, loyalty and thanks. Manners, civility, celerity, precision, class and clarity."
Willy Wonka is a character in Roald Dahl's 1964 children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, its sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and the film adaptations of these books that followed.
The book and the film adaptations both vividly depict an odd Wonka, a phoenix-like man arising from his creative and eccentric genius. He bewilders the other characters with his antics, but Charlie enjoys Wonka's behavior. In the 2005 film adaptation, Willy Wonka's behavior is viewed more as a sympathetic character flaw.
Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor who first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for playing the lead role in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He then received 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, he 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).
Owen has since played leading roles in films such as Sin City (2005), Derailed (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), and The International (2009). In 2012, he earned his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his role in Hemingway & Gellhorn. Since 2014, Owen has played Dr. John W. Thackery on the Cinemax medical drama series The Knick, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination.
The fourth of five brothers, Owen was born in Coventry, West Midlands, in the United Kingdom, to Pamela (née Cotton) and Jess Owen, a country and western singer. 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. After graduation, he won a position at the Young Vic, performing in several Shakespearean plays.