- published: 08 May 2010
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Ronald Alfred Pickup (born 7 June 1940) is an English actor who has been active in television and film since 1964.
Pickup was born in Chester, living in St Chads Road, Cheshire, the son of Daisy (née Williams) and Eric Pickup, who was a lecturer. Pickup was educated at the King's School, Chester, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, and became an Associate Member of RADA.
His television work began with an episode during the first series of Doctor Who (as a physician in part 4 of The Reign of Terror) in 1964, for which he was paid £30. In 1973, he starred in the BBC drama series The Dragon's Opponent, playing Charles Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk, a World War II bomb disposal expert. In 1982 Pickup had the starring role as composer Giuseppe Verdi in the acclaimed The Life of Verdi, written and directed by Renato Castellani.
In 1983 he appeared opposite Penelope Keith in Moving and as Friedrich Nietzsche in Wagner; existing in several versions Wagner has also been released as a film. Pickup portrayed Jan Tyranowski in the TV movie Pope John Paul II in 1984, and Prince Yakimov, a hapless, down-at-heel Russo-British aristocrat, opposite Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh in the BBC serial Fortunes of War (1987) based on a novel cycle by Olivia Manning. He was the voice of Aslan in the BBC adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1988) and subsequent Chronicles of Narnia serials derived from the books by C.S. Lewis. Pickup starred in the short lived sit-com Not with a Bang which was broadcast in 1990, and appeared opposite Michael Caine in Jekyll & Hyde the same year. In 1992 he appeared alongside Dervla Kirwan in the television adaptation of Melvyn Bragg's book "A Time To Dance."
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier of Brighton, Kt, OM (/ˈlɒrəns kɜːr ɒˈlɪvieɪ/; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles.
His family had no theatrical connections, but Olivier's father, a clergyman, decided that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Coward's Private Lives, and he appeared in his first film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, building it into a highly respected company. There his most celebrated roles included Shakespeare's Richard III and Sophocles's Oedipus. In the 1950s Olivier was an independent actor-manager, but his stage career was in the doldrums until he joined the avant garde English Stage Company in 1957 to play the title role in The Entertainer, a part he later played on film. From 1963 to 1973 he was the founding director of Britain's National Theatre, running a resident company that fostered many future stars. His own parts there included the title role in Othello (1964) and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1970).
Sir Patrick Stewart OBE (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor whose career has included roles on stage, television, and film. Beginning his career with a long run with the Royal Shakespeare Company, his first major screen roles were in BBC-broadcast television and film during the mid-late 1970s, including Hedda and the miniseries I, Claudius. In the 1980s, he began working in American television and film, with roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and its successor films; as Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men series of superhero movies; and voice roles including CIA deputy director Avery Bullock in American Dad! and narrating the film Ted and its sequel. He currently stars in the Starz TV series Blunt Talk. In 1993, TV Guide named him the best dramatic television actor of the 1980s.
Patrick Stewart was born on 13 July 1940 in Mirfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to Gladys (née Barrowclough), a weaver and textile worker, and Alfred Stewart, a Regimental Sergeant Major in the British Army. He has two older brothers, Geoffrey (b. 28 January 1925, Mirfield) and Trevor (b. 10 August 1935, Mirfield).
Albert Einstein (/ˈaɪnstaɪn/;German: [ˈalbɛɐ̯t ˈaɪnʃtaɪn]; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). Einstein's work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. Einstein is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"). He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "services to theoretical physics", in particular his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, a pivotal step in the evolution of quantum theory.
Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on general relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the large-scale structure of the universe.