Brad Pitt

William Bradley "Brad" Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and producer. He has received a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and three Academy Award nominations in acting categories, and received three further Academy Award nominations, winning one, as producer under his own company Plan B Entertainment.

Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the road movie Thelma & Louise (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget productions came with the dramas A River Runs Through It (1992) and Legends of the Fall (1994), and Interview with the Vampire (1994). He gave critically acclaimed performances in the crime thriller Seven and the science fiction film 12 Monkeys (both 1995), the latter earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination. Pitt starred in the cult film Fight Club (1999) and the major international hit Ocean's Eleven (2001) and its sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). His greatest commercial successes have been Troy (2004), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), and World War Z (2013). Pitt received his second and third Academy Award nominations for his leading performances in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011). He produced The Departed (2006) and 12 Years a Slave (2013), both of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and also The Tree of Life, Moneyball, and The Big Short (2015), all of which garnered Best Picture nominations.

Marion Cotillard

Marion Cotillard (French pronunciation: ​[ma.ʁjɔ̃ kɔ.ti.jaʁ]; born 30 September 1975) is a French actress, singer-songwriter, environmentalist and spokesperson for Greenpeace. She has received worldwide acclaim and awards for her performances in films such as A Very Long Engagement (2004), La Vie en Rose (2007), Nine (2009), Inception (2010), Midnight in Paris (2011), Rust and Bone (2012), The Immigrant (2013) and Two Days, One Night (2014). In 2015, she starred as Lady Macbeth in Justin Kurzel's Macbeth, a new film adaptation of Shakespeare's play. She is also known for being the face of Lady Dior handbags since 2008.

In 2007, Cotillard starred as French singer Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, for which she received critical acclaim and won several awards, including the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, César Award, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. She is the first and (as of 2016) only actor to win an Academy Award for a performance in the French language. In 2010, she received a Golden Globe and a Critics' Choice Award nomination for her performance in the musical film Nine.

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation (commonly known as Paramount Studios or simply Paramount, and formerly known as Famous Players-Lasky Corporation) is a film studio, television production company and motion picture distributor, consistently ranked as one of the "Big Six" film studios of Hollywood. It is a subsidiary of U.S. media conglomerate Viacom. Paramount is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

In 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital-form only.

Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world, and America's oldest running studio, founded in 1912.

History

1911–1920: Early history

Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world after the French studios Gaumont Film Company (1895) and Pathé (1896), followed by the Nordisk Film company (1906), and Universal Studios (1912). It is the last major film studio still headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.

Alliance

An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called allies. Alliances form in many settings, including political alliances, military alliances, and business alliances. When the term is used in the context of war or armed struggle, such associations may also be called allied powers, especially when discussing World War I or World War II.

A formal military alliance is not required for being perceived as an ally—co-belligerence, fighting alongside someone, is enough. According to this usage, allies become so not when concluding an alliance treaty but when struck by war.

When spelled with a capital "A", the word "Allies" usually denotes the countries who fought together against the Central Powers in World War I (the Allies of World War I), or those who fought against the Axis Powers in World War II (the Allies of World War II). The term has also been used by the United States Army to describe the countries that gave assistance to the South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes seven countries and territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, often Mauritania and Western Sahara form the Maghreb, while Egypt and Sudan comprise the Nile Valley (so named after the Nile River, which has two tributaries; the White Nile and Blue Nile). Egypt is a transcontinental country because of the Sinai Peninsula, which geographically lies in West Asia. North Africa also includes a number of Spanish possessions (Ceuta and Melilla and tiny Spanish islets off the coast of Morocco). The Canary Islands and the Portuguese Madeira Islands, in the North Atlantic Ocean northwest of the African mainland, are sometimes included in considerations of the region.

The distinction between North Africa and much of Sub-Saharan Africa is historically and ecologically significant because of the effective barrier created by the Sahara Desert for much of modern history. From 3500 BC, following the abrupt desertification of the Sahara due to gradual changes in the Earth's orbit, this barrier has culturally separated the North from the rest of the continent. As the seafaring civilizations of the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims and others facilitated communication and migration across the Mediterranean Sea, the cultures of North Africa became much more closely tied to Southwestern Asia and Europe than Sub-Saharan Africa. The Islamic influence in the area is also significant, and North Africa is a major part of the Islamic world.