Deborah

Deborah (Hebrew: דְּבוֹרָה, Modern Dvora, Tiberian Dəḇôrā ; "Bee") was a prophet of the God of the Israelites, the fourth Judge of pre-monarchic Israel, counselor, warrior, and the wife of Lapidoth according to the Book of Judges chapters 4 and 5. The only female judge mentioned in the Bible, Deborah led a successful counterattack against the forces of Jabin king of Canaan and his military commander Sisera; the narrative is recounted in chapter 4.

Judges chapter 5 gives the same story in poetic form. This passage, often called The Song of Deborah, may date to as early as the 12th century BC and is perhaps the earliest sample of Hebrew poetry. It is also significant because it is one of the oldest passages that portrays fighting women, the account being that of Jael, the wife of Heber, a Kenite tent maker. Jael killed Sisera by driving a tent peg through his temple as he slept. Both Deborah and Jael are portrayed as strong independent women. The poem may have been included in the Book of the Wars of the Lord mentioned in Numbers 21:14.

Deborah Kerr

Deborah Kerr CBE (/kɑːr/; born Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer; 30 September 1921 – 16 October 2007) was a Scottish film, theatre and television actress. During her career, she won a Golden Globe for her performance as Anna Leonowens in the motion picture The King and I (1956) and the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance as "Laura Reynolds" in the play Tea and Sympathy (a role she originated on Broadway). She was also a three-time winner of the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.

Kerr was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, more than any other actress without ever winning. In 1994, however, having already received honorary awards from the Cannes Film Festival and BAFTA, she received an Academy Honorary Award with a citation recognising her as "an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance". As well as The King and I, her films include An Affair to Remember; From Here to Eternity; Quo Vadis; The Innocents; Black Narcissus; Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison; King Solomon's Mines; The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; The Sundowners and Separate Tables.

Yul Brynner

Yul Brynner (born Yuly Borisovich Briner, Russian: Юлий Борисович Бринер; July 11, 1920 – October 10, 1985) was a Russian-born United States-based film and stage actor.

Brynner was best known for his portrayals of Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster The Ten Commandments, and of King Mongkut of Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won two Tony Awards and an Academy Award for the film version. He played the role 4625 times on stage. He portrayed General Bounine in the 1956 film Anastasia and Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven.

Brynner was noted for his distinctive voice and for his shaved head, which he maintained as a personal trademark long after adopting it in 1951 for his role in The King and I. Earlier, he was a model and television director, and later a photographer and the author of two books.

Early life

Yul Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Briner in 1920. He exaggerated his background and early life for the press, claiming that he was born "Taidje Khan" of part-Mongol parentage, on the Russian island of Sakhalin. In reality, he was born at home in a four-story residence at 15 Aleutskaya Street, Vladivostok, in the Far Eastern Republic (present-day Primorsky Krai, Russia). He occasionally referred to himself as Julius Briner, Jules Bryner or Youl Bryner. The 1989 biography by his son, Rock Brynner, clarified some of these issues.

Glenn Close

Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American film, television and stage actress. Throughout her long and varied career, she has been consistently acclaimed for her versatility and is widely regarded as one of the finest actresses of her generation. She has won three Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards and received six Academy Award nominations.

Close began her professional stage career in 1974 in Love for Love, and was mostly a New York stage actress through the rest of the 1970s and early 1980s, appearing in both plays and musicals, including the Broadway productions of Barnum in 1980 and The Real Thing in 1983, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Her first film role was in The World According to Garp (1982), which she followed up with supporting roles in The Big Chill (1983), and The Natural (1984); all three earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She would later receive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Fatal Attraction (1987), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), and Albert Nobbs (2011). In the 1990s, she won two more Tony Awards, for Death and the Maiden in 1992 and Sunset Boulevard in 1995, while she won her first Emmy Award for the 1995 TV film Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story.