Ray Donovan

Ray Donovan is an American television crime drama series created by Ann Biderman for Showtime. The twelve-episode first season premiered on June 30, 2013. The pilot episode broke records of viewership, becoming the biggest premiere of all time on Showtime. A third season premiered on July 12, 2015. Showtime renewed the show for a fourth season.

Plot

The show takes place in Los Angeles, California, where Irish-American Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber), originally from South Boston, works for the powerful law firm Goldman & Drexler, representing the rich and famous. Donovan is a "fixer": in criminal slang, a person who arranges for bribes or payoffs of corrupt police or government officials, or other criminals, to enable a criminal to avoid punishment. Ray experiences his own problems when his father, Mickey Donovan (Jon Voight), is unexpectedly released from prison, and the FBI attempts to bring down Ray and his associates.

Episodes

Cast and characters

Main cast

Liev Schreiber

Isaac Liev Schreiber (/ˈliːᵻv/; born October 4, 1967) is an American actor and producer. He became known during the late 1990s and early 2000s, having appeared in several independent films, and later mainstream Hollywood films, including the Scream trilogy of horror films, Phantoms, The Sum of All Fears, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Salt, Taking Woodstock, and Goon.

Schreiber is also a respected stage actor, having performed in several Broadway productions. In 2005, he won a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor for his performance in the play Glengarry Glen Ross. That year, he made his debut as a film director and writer with Everything Is Illuminated, based on the novel of the same name. He also plays the eponymous lead character on the Showtime series Ray Donovan. He narrates the HBO series 24/7, as well as various PBS programs.

Early life

Schreiber was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Heather (née Milgram) and Tell Carroll Schreiber, a stage actor and director. His father is from a wealthy Protestant society family from Bucks County, Pennsylvania; Tell's family had lived in the United States for many generations, and his ancestry includes German, Swiss-German, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Irish, Norwegian, Belgian (Flemish), Scottish, and Welsh. Schreiber's mother, who now lives on an ashram in Virginia, was born into a Brooklyn working-class household of communists; her family was Jewish (descended from immigrants from Poland and Ukraine).

Donovan

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Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch; 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music (notably calypso). He has lived in Scotland, London and California, and, since at least 2008, in County Cork, Ireland, with his family. Emerging from the British folk scene, Donovan reached fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965 with live performances on the pop TV series, Ready Steady Go!.

Having signed with Pye Records in 1965, he recorded singles and two albums in the folk vein, but after a new contract with US CBS/Epic Records his popularity spread to other countries. After extricating himself from his original management contract, he began a long and successful collaboration with Mickie Most, a leading British independent record producer, with hits in the UK, the US and other countries.

His most successful singles were the early UK hits "Catch the Wind", "Colours" and "Universal Soldier" in 1965. "Sunshine Superman" topped the US Billboard Hot 100 chart (number two in Britain), and "Mellow Yellow" reached US number two the following year, with "Hurdy Gurdy Man" in the Top 5 in both countries in 1968. He was the first artist to be signed to CBS/Epic Records by the new administrative vice-president, Clive Davis. Donovan and Most collaborated on hit albums and singles between 1965 and 1970. He became a friend of pop musicians including Joan Baez, Brian Jones and The Beatles. He taught John Lennon a finger-picking guitar style in 1968. Donovan's commercial fortunes waned after parting with Most in 1969, and he left the industry for a time.

Jon Voight

Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight (/vɔɪt/; born December 29, 1938) is an American actor. He is the winner of one Academy Award, having been nominated for four. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards and nominated for ten. He is the father of actress Angelina Jolie and actor James Haven.

Voight came to prominence in the late 1960s with his performance as a would-be gigolo in Midnight Cowboy (1969). During the 1970s, he became a Hollywood star with his portrayals of a businessman mixed up with murder in Deliverance (1972); a paraplegic Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor; and a penniless ex-boxing champion in the remake of The Champ (1979).

Although his output slowed during the 1980s, Voight received critical acclaim for his performance as a ruthless bank robber in Runaway Train (1985). During the 1990s, he most notably starred as an unscrupulous showman attorney in The Rainmaker (1997). Voight gave critically acclaimed biographical performances during the 2000s, appearing as sportscaster Howard Cosell in Ali (2001), as Nazi officer Jürgen Stroop in Uprising (2001), and as Pope John Paul II in the eponymous miniseries (2005). Voight also appears in Showtime's Ray Donovan TV series as Mickey Donovan.

Season One

Season One may refer to:

See also