Hollywood

Hollywood (/ˈhɒliwʊd/ HOL-ee-wuud) is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. The neighborhood is notable for its place as the home of the U.S. film industry, including several of its historic studios. Its name has come to be a metonym for the motion picture industry of the United States. Hollywood is also a highly ethnically diverse, densely populated, economically diverse neighborhood and retail business district.

Hollywood was a small community in 1870 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It officially merged with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, and soon thereafter a prominent film industry began to emerge, eventually becoming the most recognizable film industry in the world.

History

Early history and development

In 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera (Nopal field), named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished. The area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains immediately to the north.

Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lynn Lopez (born July 24, 1969), also known as J. Lo, is an American actress, author, fashion designer, dancer, producer, and singer. She became interested in pursuing a career in the entertainment industry following a minor role in the 1986 film My Little Girl, to the dismay of her Puerto Rican parents, who believed that it was an unrealistic career route for a Hispanic. Lopez gained her first regular high-profile job as a Fly Girl dancer on In Living Color in 1991, where she remained a regular until she decided to pursue an acting career in 1993. She received her first leading role in the Selena biopic of the same name in 1997. Lopez became the first Latina actress to earn over US$1 million for a role the following year, with the film Out of Sight. She ventured into the music industry in 1999 with her debut studio album, On the 6.

With the simultaneous release of her second studio album J.Lo and her film The Wedding Planner in 2001, Lopez became the first person to have a number one album and film in the same week. Her 2002 remix album, J to tha L–O! The Remixes, became the first in history to debut at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, while her fifth studio album, Como Ama una Mujer (2007), received the highest first-week sales for a Spanish album in the United States. With past record sales of over 60 million and a cumulative film gross of over US$2 billion, Lopez is regarded as the most influential Hispanic performer in the United States, as well as its highest paid Latin entertainer. Along with Pitbull and Claudia Leitte, she recorded "We Are One (Ole Ola)", which served as the official song of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham (/ˈlinə ˈdʌnəm/ LEE-nə DUN-um; born May 13, 1986) is an American actress, writer, producer, and director. She is best known as the creator, writer and star of the HBO series Girls (2012–present).

Early life

Dunham was born in New York City. Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter, and her mother, Laurie Simmons, is an artist and photographer, and a member of the Pictures group, known for her use of dolls and doll-house furniture in her photographs of setup interior scenes. Her father is Protestant and her mother is Jewish; Dunham has described herself as feeling "very culturally Jewish, although that's the biggest cliché for a Jewish woman to say”.

She has a younger sister, Grace, a 2014 graduate of Brown University, who appeared in Dunham's first film, Creative Nonfiction, and starred in her second film, Tiny Furniture. The sisters were raised in Brooklyn, New York and spent summers in Salisbury, Connecticut.

Dunham attended Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, where she met Tiny Furniture actress and future Girls co-star Jemima Kirke. She attended The New School for a year before transferring to Oberlin College, where she graduated in 2008 with a degree in creative writing.

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Shrader Lawrence (born August 15, 1990) is an American actress. Lawrence began her career in television, playing her first major role as a lead cast member on the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007–09). After transitioning into film, she gave her breakout performance in the independent drama Winter's Bone (2010). Her first major commercial success was playing Mystique in the fourth installment of the superhero franchise X-Men (2011–16).

Lawrence gained international fame for playing Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games film series (2012–15), which established her as the highest-grossing action heroine at that point. As a dramatic actress, she has collaborated with director David O. Russell on multiple films. Her starring role in Russell's romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook (2012) earned her the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, making her the second-youngest Best Actress Oscar winner ever. Lawrence also received Golden Globe Awards for her performances in Russell's comedy-dramas American Hustle (2013) and Joy (2015).

Kate Winslet

Kate Elizabeth Winslet, CBE (born 5 October 1975), is an English actress and singer. She is the recipient of an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, four Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Grammy Award and three BAFTA Awards. She is the youngest person to receive six Academy Award nominations with seven nominations in total, and is one of the few actresses to win three of the four major American entertainment awards (EGOT). In addition, she has won awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association among others, and an Honorary César Award in 2012.

Brought up in Berkshire, Winslet studied drama from childhood, and began her career in British television in 1991. She made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures (1994), for which she received praise. She garnered her first Academy Award nomination for her role as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1995) before achieving global stardom with the epic romance Titanic (1997), which was the highest-grossing film of all time at that point and earned her a second Academy Award.nomination Winslet's performances in Iris (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), Revolutionary Road (2008), and Steve Jobs (2015) continued to draw praise from film critics and earned her another three Academy Award nominations. In 2008, the critic David Edelstein described her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation".