So Good and So Bad
Some all time favorite female villains. At least once in her career each of these women has made you hate her, fear her ... and often still love her. Alphabetically.
Note: Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I did add Linda Fiorentino. I may or may not add the films and roles since in many cases those are spoilers.
Note: Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I did add Linda Fiorentino. I may or may not add the films and roles since in many cases those are spoilers.
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- Actress
- Soundtrack
Dame Judith Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia. She began her acting career in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. There she established herself as one of the greatest theatrical actresses and was a major star on Broadway throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Her notable stage works included the role of Lady Macbeth, which she played first in the 1920s, and gave an Emmy Award-winning television performance in Macbeth (1960). Anderson's long association with Euripides' "Medea" began with her acclaimed Tony Award-winning 1948 stage performance in the title role. She appeared in the television version of Medea (1983) in the supporting character of the Nurse.
Anderson made her Hollywood film debut under director Rowland Brown in a supporting role in Blood Money (1933). Her striking, not conventionally attractive features were complemented with her powerful presence, mastery of timing and an effortless style. Anderson made a film career as a supporting character actress in several significant films including Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), for which she was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She worked with director Otto Preminger in Laura (1944), then with René Clair in And Then There Were None (1945). Her remarkable performance in a supporting role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) fit in a stellar acting ensemble under director Richard Brooks.
Anderson was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1960 Queen's New Year's Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Living in Santa Barbara in her later years, she also had a successful stint on the soap opera Santa Barbara (1984) and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 1984. In the same year, at age 87, she appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) as the High Priestess, and was nominated for a Saturn Award for that role. She was awarded Companion of the Order of Australia in the 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Anderson died at age 94 of pneumonia on January 3, 1992 in Santa Barbara, California.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mary Astor was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke on May 3, 1906 in Quincy, Illinois to Helen Marie Vasconcellos, an American of Portuguese and Irish ancestry from Illinois, and Otto Ludwig Langhanke, a German immigrant. Mary's parents were very ambitious for her and wanted something better for her than what they had, and knew that if they played their cards right, they could make her famous. Recognizing her beauty, they pushed her into various beauty contests. Luck was with Mary and her parents because one contest came to the attention of Hollywood moguls who signed her when she was 14.
Mary's first movie was a bit part in The Scarecrow (1920). It wasn't much, but it was a start. Throughout 1921-1923 she continued her career with bit or minor roles in a number of motion pictures. In 1924, she landed a plum assignment with a role as Lady Margery Alvaney opposite the great John Barrymore in the film Beau Brummel (1924). This launched her career to stardom, as did a lively affair with Barrymore. However, the affair ended before she could star with him again in the classic Don Juan (1926). By now, Mary was the new cinematic darling, with each film packing the theaters.
By the end of the 1920s, the sound revolution had taken a stronghold on the industry, and Mary was one of those lucky actresses who made the successful transition to "talkies" because of her voice and strong screen presence. Mary's career soared to greater heights. Films such as Red Dust (1932), Convention City (1933), Man of Iron (1935), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) kept her star at the top. In 1938, she turned out five feature films that kept her busy and in the spotlight. After that, she churned out films at a lesser rate. In 1941 she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Sandra Kovac in The Great Lie (1941). That same year she appeared in the celebrated film The Maltese Falcon (1941), but her star soon began to fall.
Because of her three divorces, her first husband Kenneth Hawks' death in a plane crash, alcoholism, a suicide attempt, and a persistent heart condition, Mary started to get smaller film roles. She appeared in only five productions throughout the 1950s. Her final fling with the silver screen was as Jewell Mayhew in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).Although it was her final film, she had appeared in a phenomenal 123 motion pictures in her entire career.
Mary lived out her remaining years confined to the Motion Picture Country Home, where she died of a heart attack on September 25, 1987. She was 81.- Actress
- Composer
Nicki Aycox lived a full artistic life since the age of nine, when she fell in love with the family piano and began playing music. By the time she had reached her preteens Nicki was performing Beethoven for audiences all around Oklahoma, until her family had a huge financial setback and was forced to sell her piano. Nicki said that this sad circumstance played a major role in her shift to the theater. Like a lot of kids her age she began performing in her high school theater, and also in drama competitions. She won state titles in different categories, and became very comfortable with being in front of an audience. She once said that she was on stage long before she ever actually sat in an audience. After high school graduation she attended the University of Oklahoma and began serious academic study. Soon, however, she found herself driving to California to enroll in the theater department at Long Beach State. While working two jobs and participating in the theater department, Nicki found little time to study and take a full class load. In her second year at Long Beach State Nicki was able to sign with a small agency in Hollywood, and thus began her career as a professional performer - a career which began relatively quickly compared to most. She was working small bit parts on several popular networks and shows within a year of making the move from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. In the beginning of her career Nicki acted opposite actor Stephen Rae in an HBO film called "Double Tap", as well as appearing in shows like "Third Rock from the Sun", NBC's "Providence", David Kelley's "Ally McBeal", and in the X-Files episode "Rush" in 1999. That role from the TV show led to a role in the second "X-Files" film "I Want to Believe" in 2008. In a time when an unspoken difference between "film" actors and "television" actors existed, Aycox did not allow this rule to apply to her.
Her work during these early years included guest spots on "CSI", and "Dark Angel", a recurring role n NBC's "ED" playing the wild and crazy sister of Julie Bowen. At some points Nicki would be pulling double duty playing roles on different shows. She played the sister of Katherine Morris on CBS's "Cold Case", while shooting the series "LAX" with Heather Locklear. By 2005, Aycox was made a series regular on shows such as FX's "Over There" created by Steven Bochco and Chris Gerolmo. She moved on from there to play a very memorable role as a psychotic serial killer in an episode of "Criminal Minds" titled "The Perfect Storm". The following year Nicki appeared in the Halle Berry film "Perfect Stranger". One of her most widely known roles was that of Meg Masters in "Supernatural".
In the years 2009-2013 Aycox enjoyed success as a series regular as Jamie Allen in the Bruckheimer series "Dark Blue". Next she was cast as Lisa Matthews in the Indie film "Lifted", directed by Oscar nominated director Lexi Alexander. Around this time she also awarded a best actress award by the Buffalo Niagara film festival for her portrayal as a German woman fighting to save her sanity in the World War II film "Christina". Her co-star, Stephen Lang, was also awarded for his role as Inspector Reinheart. Aycox spent her final years reclaiming her love of music, playing the guitar and singing for audiences, as well as continuing her acting career.
Aycox revealed on Instagram that she had been diagnosed with leukemia in March 2021. She passed away on November 16th, 2022.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Anne Bancroft was born on September 17, 1931 in The Bronx, NY, the middle daughter of Michael Italiano (1905-2001), a dress pattern maker, and Mildred DiNapoli (1907-2010), a telephone operator. She made her cinema debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) in 1952, and over the next five years appeared in a lot of undistinguished movies such as Gorilla at Large (1954), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), New York Confidential (1955), Nightfall (1956) and The Girl in Black Stockings (1957). By 1957 she grew dissatisfied with the scripts she was getting, left the film business and spent the next five years doing plays on Broadway. She returned to screens in 1962 with her portrayal of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker (1962), for which she won an Oscar. Bancroft went on to give acclaimed performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Slender Thread (1965), Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) and other movies, but her most famous role would be as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967). Her status as the "older woman" in the film is iconic, although in real life she was only eight years older than Katharine Ross and just six years older than Dustin Hoffman. Bancroft would later express her frustration over the fact that the film overshadowed her other work. Selective for much of her intermittent career, she appeared onscreen more frequently in the '90s and early '00s, playing a range of characters in such films as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), Point of No Return (1993), Home for the Holidays (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Keeping the Faith (2000) and Up at the Villa (2000). She also started to make some TV films, including Deep in My Heart (1999) for which she won an Emmy. Sadly, on June 6, 2005, Bancroft passed away at the age of 73 from uterine cancer. Her death surprised many, as she had not disclosed her illness to the public. Among her survivors was her husband of 41 years, Mel Brooks, and their son Max Brooks, who was born in 1972. Her final film, the animated feature Delgo (2008), was released posthumously in 2008 and dedicated to her memory.- Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was born on January 31, 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama. Her father was a mover and shaker in the Democratic Party who served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from June 4, 1936, to September 16, 1940. Tallulah had been interested in acting and, at age 15, started her stage career in the local theater troupes of Huntsville and the surrounding areas. At age 16, she won a beauty contest and, bolstered by this achievement, moved to New York City to live with her aunt and to try her hand at Broadway. She was offered a role in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), but did not take it after she refused John Barrymore's invitation for a visit to the casting couch. Unfortunately, for the young Miss Bankhead, she did not make any headway on the stages of New York, so she pulled up stakes and moved to London, in 1923, to try her luck there.
For the next several years, she was the most popular actress of London's famed West End, the British equivalent of Broadway. After starring in several well-received plays, she gained the attention of Paramount Pictures executives and returned to the United States to try her hand at the film world. Her first two films, Woman's Law (1927) and His House in Order (1928), did not exactly set the world on fire, so she returned to do more stage work. She tried film work again with Tarnished Lady (1931), where she played Nancy Courtney, a woman who marries for money but ultimately gets bored with her husband and leaves him, only to come back to him when he is broke. The critics gave it a mixed reception. Tallulah's personality did not shine on film as Paramount executives had hoped. She tried again with My Sin (1931) as a woman with a secret past about to marry into money. Later that year, she made The Cheat (1931), playing Elsa Carlyle, a woman who sold herself to a wealthy Oriental merchant who brands her like she was his own property and is subsequently murdered. The next year, she shot Thunder Below (1932), Faithless (1932), Make Me a Star (1932) (she had a cameo role along with several other Paramount stars) and Devil and the Deep (1932). The latter film was a star-studded affair that made money at the box-office due to the cast (Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton and newcomer Cary Grant). The films she was making just did not do her talent any justice, so it was back to Broadway--she did not make another film for 11 years. She toured nationally, performing in all but three states.
She was also a big hit at social affairs, where she often shocked the staid members of that society with her "untraditional" behavior. She chain-smoked and enjoyed more than her share of Kentucky bourbon, and made it a "habit" to take her clothes off and chat in the nude. A friend and fellow actress remarked on one occasion, "Tallulah dear, why are you always taking your clothes off? You have such lovely frocks." She was also famous--or infamous--for throwing wild parties that would last for days. She returned to films in 1943 with a cameo in Stage Door Canteen (1943), but it was Lifeboat (1944) for director Alfred Hitchcock that put her back into the limelight. However, the limelight did not shine for long. After shooting A Royal Scandal (1945) she did not appear on film again until she landed a role in Die! Die! My Darling! (1965). Her film and small-screen work consisted of a few TV spots and the voice of the Sea Witch in the animated film The Daydreamer (1966), so she went back to the stage, which had always been first and foremost in her heart. To Tallulah, there was nothing like a live audience to perform for, because they, always, showed a lot of gratitude. On December 12, 1968, Tallulah Bankhead died at age 66 of pneumonia in her beloved New York City. While she made most of her fame on the stages of the world, the film industry and its history became richer because of her talent and her very colorful personality. Today her phrase, "Hello, Dahling" is known throughout the entertainment world. - Producer
- Actress
- Director
Since melting audiences' hearts at the age of just six in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Drew Barrymore has emerged as one of the most beloved and singularly gifted actresses of her generation. Born in Culver City, California to John Drew Barrymore and Jaid Barrymore, the clutches of fame were near inescapable for young Drew, her father being a member of the esteemed showbiz dynasty fronted by stage star Maurice Barrymore, his thespian wife Georgiana and their three children: Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and John Barrymore.
Tailgating a turbulent adolescence that saw her grapple with insobriety, substance abuse, and cutthroat media vitriol, a diligent Barrymore threw herself into her career throughout the early-mid nineties, first with a succession of 'bad girl' parts in cultish B-pictures like Poison Ivy (1992), Guncrazy (1992) and - fittingly - Bad Girls (1994); then warmly received turns in prestige vehicles such as Boys on the Side (1995), Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and Wes Craven's game-changing Scream (1996). Equal portions of goofball - The Wedding Singer (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), Charlie's Angels (2000) - and gravitas - Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Donnie Darko (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) - came next, with a Golden Globe-grabbing pièce de résistance - her divine incarnation of Edith Bouvier Beale in Grey Gardens (2009) - confirming that her skill set was every bit as forceful and far-reaching as imagined.
Having already set in motion a bunch of lucrative projects via production house Flower Films (co-est. with Nancy Juvonen in '95), Barrymore fastened an additional string to her bow when she spearheaded the sports dramedy Whip It (2009), her glowingly appraised directorial debut. Fresh off a healthy run of movie parts at the launch of the 2010s, her star turn as zombified suburban realtor Sheila Hammond - a tour de force at once dizzy and detailed - on Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet (2017) saw her step with trademark resolve into newer territory still: the flourishing world of small screen entertainment, a metamorphosis she continues to espouse with her role as compère of spirited daytime staple The Drew Barrymore Show (2020).- Actress
- Director
- Producer
Multi-talented, multi-award-winning actress Kathleen (Doyle) Bates was born on June 28, 1948, and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the youngest of three girls born to Bertye Kathleen (Talbot), a homemaker, and Langdon Doyle Bates, a mechanical engineer. Her grandfather was author Finis L. Bates. Kathy has English, as well as Irish, Scottish, and German, ancestry, and one of her ancestors, an Irish emigrant to New Orleans, once served as President Andrew Jackson's doctor.
Kathy discovered acting appearing in high school plays and studied drama at Southern Methodist University, graduating in 1969. With her mind firmly set, she moved to New York City in 1970 and paid her dues by working everything from a cash register to taking lunch orders. Things started moving quickly up the ladder after giving a tour-de-force performance alongside Christopher Walken at Buffalo's Studio Arena Theatre in Lanford Wilson's world premiere of "Lemon Sky" in 1970, but she also had a foreshadowing of the heartbreak to come after the successful show relocated to New York's off-Broadway Playhouse Theatre without her and Walken wound up winning a Drama Desk award.
By the mid-to-late 1970s, Kathy was treading the boards frequently as a rising young actress of the New York and regional theater scene. She appeared in "Casserole" and "A Quality of Mercy" (both 1975) before earning exceptional reviews for her role of Joanne in "Vanities". She took her first Broadway curtain call in 1980's "Goodbye Fidel," which lasted only six performances. She then went directly into replacement mode when she joined the cast of the already-established and highly successful "Fifth of July" in 1981.
Kathy made a false start in films with Taking Off (1971), in which she was billed as "Bobo Bates". She didn't film again until Straight Time (1978), starring Dustin Hoffman, and that part was not substantial enough to cause a stir. Things turned hopeful, however, when Kathy and the rest of the female ensemble were given the chance to play their respective Broadway parts in the film version of Robert Altman's Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). It was a juicy role for Kathy and film audiences finally started noticing the now 34-year-old.
Still and all, it was the New York stage that continued to earn Kathy awards and acclaim. She was pure textbook to any actor studying how to disappear into a role. Her characters ranged from free and life-affirming to downright pitiable. Despite winning a Tony Award nomination and Outer Critic's Circle Award for her stark, touchingly sad portrait of a suicidal daughter in 1983's "'night, Mother" and the Obie and Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for her powerhouse job as a romantic misfit in "Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune," Kathy had no box-office pull, however, and was never a strong consideration when the roles transferred to the screen. Her award-winning stage went to established film stars. First Sissy Spacek took over her potent role as the suicidal Jessie Cates in 'night, Mother (1986), then Michelle Pfeiffer seized the moment to play her dumpy lover character in Frankie and Johnny (1991). It would take Oscar glory to finally rectify the injustice.
It was Kathy's fanatical turn as the drab, chunky, porcine-looking psychopath Annie Wilkes, who kidnaps her favorite author (James Caan) and subjects him to a series of horrific tortures, that finally turned the tide for her in Hollywood. With the 1990 shocker Misery (1990), based on the popular Stephen King novel, Bates and Caan were box office magic. Moreover, Kathy captured the "Best Actress" Oscar and Golden Globe award, a first in that genre (horror) for that category. To add to her happiness she married Tony Campisi, also an actor, in 1991.
Quality film scripts now started coming her way and the 1990s proved to be a rich and rewarding time for her. First, she and another older "overnight" film star, fellow Oscar winner Jessica Tandy, starred together in the modern portion of the beautifully nuanced, flashback period piece Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). She then outdid herself as the detached and depressed housekeeper accused of murdering her abusive husband (David Strathairn) in Dolores Claiborne (1995). Surprisingly, she was left out of the Oscar race for these two excellent performances. Not so, however, for her flashy political advisor Libby Holden in the movie Primary Colors (1998), receiving praise and a "Best Supporting Actress" nomination.
Kathy has continued to work prolifically on TV as a 14-time Emmy winner or nominee thus far. She has also taken to directing a couple of TV-movies on the sly. As most actors, she has been in hit and miss TV shows. On the hit side, she has earned a Golden Globe and Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Jay Leno's manager playing tough politics in The Late Shift (1996) and played to the hilt the cruel-minded orphanage operator, Miss Hannigan, in Annie (1999) for which she also earned an Emmy nom. She has done some eye-catching, offbeat turns on regular series such as Six Feet Under (2001) (for which she also earned a DGA award for helming an episode), The Office (2005), Harry's Law (2011) and especially American Horror Story (2011) for which she won an Emmy as Ethel Darling. She also won an Emmy for a guest episode on the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men (2003).
Interesting millennium filming have included a Catholic school's Mother Superior in the comic drama Bruno (2000); Jesse James' mother in American Outlaws (2001); a quirky, liberal mom in About Schmidt (2002) for which she earned another "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar nomination; a brief but potent turn as Gertrude Stein in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011); Queen Victoria in the adventurous remake of Around the World in 80 Days (2004); wacky parent types in the comedies Failure to Launch (2006) and Relative Strangers (2006); Mother Claus in the seasonal farce Fred Claus (2007); an over-gushy foster mother in the dramedy The Great Gilly Hopkins (2015); and a wrenching performance as the mother of a suspected terrorist in Richard Jewell (2019) for which she earned her third "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar nomination.
Divorced from husband Campisi since 1997, Kathy has been the Executive Committee Chair of the Actors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, and his wife, Catherine Dorothy (Wright), who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved to New York City, which at that time was still the hub of the entertainment industry even though the film colony was moving west. The move there encouraged her to consider acting as a vocation. By the time she was 13 she had already appeared in a stage production of 'Seen but Not Heard'", and had garnered rave reviews from the tough Broadway critics. The play helped her gain entrance to an exclusive acting school.
In 1937, Anne made her first foray into Hollywood to test the waters there in the film industry. As she was thought to be too young for a film career, she packed her bags and returned to the New York stage with her mother, where she continued to act on Broadway and summer stock up and down the East Coast. Undaunted by the failure of her previous effort to crack Hollywood, Anne returned to California two years later to try again. This time her luck was somewhat better. She took a screen test which was ultimately seen by the moguls of Twentieth Century-Fox, and she was signed to a seven-year contract. However, before she could make a movie with Fox, Anne was loaned out to MGM to make 20 Mule Team (1940). At only 17 years of age, she was already in the kind of pictures that other starlets would have had to slave for years as an extra before landing a meaty role. Back at Fox, that same year, Anne played Mary Maxwell in The Great Profile (1940), which was a box-office dud. The following year she played Amy Spettigue in the remake of Charley's Aunt (1941). It still wasn't a great role, but it was better than a bit part. The only other film job Anne appeared in that year was in Swamp Water (1941). It was the first role that was really worth anything, but critics weren't that impressed with Anne, her role nor the movie. In 1942 Anne played Joseph Cotten's daughter, Lucy Morgan, in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The following year she appeared in The North Star (1943), the first film where she received top billing. The film was a critical and financial success and Anne came in for her share of critical plaudits. Guest in the House (1944) the next year was a dismal failure, but Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) was received much better by the public, though it was ripped apart by the critics. Anne starred with John Hodiak, who would become her first husband in 1947 (Anne was to divorce Hodiak in 1954. Her other two husbands were Randolph Galt and David Klee).
In 1946 Anne portrayed Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946), a film that would land her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She had come a long way in so short a time, but for her next two films she was just the narrator: Mother Wore Tights (1947) and Blaze of Noon (1947). It would be 1950 before she landed another decent role--the part of Eve Harrington in All About Eve (1950). This film garnered Anne her second nomination, but she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday (1950). After several films through the 1950s, Anne landed what many considered a plum role--Queen Nefretiri in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Never in her Hollywood career did Anne look as beautiful as she did as the Egyptian queen, opposite Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. After that epic, job offers got fewer because she wasn't tied to a studio, instead opting to freelance her talents. After no appearances in 1958, she made one film in 1959 Season of Passion (1959) and one in 1960 Cimarron (1960).
After Walk on the Wild Side (1962), she took a hiatus from filming for the next four years. She was hardly idle, though. She appeared often on stage and on television. She wasn't particularly concerned with being a celebrity or a personality; she was more concerned with being just an actress and trying hard to produce the best performance she was capable of. After several notable TV appearances, Anne became a staple of two television series, East of Eden (1981) and Hotel (1983). Her final moment before the public eye was as Irene Adler in the TV film Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984). On December 12, 1985, Anne died of a stroke in New York. She was 62.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Meredith Baxter is an American actress from California, better known for television roles. Her most famous roles include Catholic teacher Bridget Fitzgerald in the sitcom "Bridget Loves Bernie" (1972-1973), divorced mother Nancy Lawrence in the family-themed drama "Family" (1976-1980), and architect Elyse Keaton in the sitcom "Family Ties" (1982-1989).
In 1947, Baxter was born in South Pasadena, California. South Pasadena is a small city in Los Angeles County, located within San Gabriel Valley. The larger city of Pasadena is located north of Baxter's hometown. Baxter was the daughter of radio announcer Tom Baxter (John Thomas Baxter, Jr.) and actress Whitney Blake (1926-2002). Baxter's maternal grandfather was Harry C. Whitney, an agent of the United States Secret Service. Harry Whitney had served as a bodyguard to President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924, term 1913-1921).
In 1953, Baxter's parents divorced. Whitney Blake received custody of Baxter and her two older brothers. In 1957, Blake married talent agent Jack Fields. This marriage ended in divorce in 1967. In 1968, Blake married television writer Allan Manings (1924-2010). This marriage lasted until Blake's death in 2002. Baxter reportedly maintained a familial relationship with her second stepfather until his own death.
Baxter received part of her secondary education at James Monroe High School, located in the neighborhood of Sepulveda (later renamed to North Hills) in Los Angeles. She later transferred to Hollywood High School. She graduated in 1965. During her senior year, Baxter also received voice lessons at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Interlochen was an arts education institution located in Michigan.
In 1966, Baxter married Robert Lewis Bush. At the time, she was only 19-years-old. They had two children, son Theodore Justin "Ted" Bush (born1967) and daughter Eva Whitney Bush (born 1969) . The couple separated in 1969, and their divorce was finalized in 1971.
Baxter aspired to an acting career, like her mother. She remained fairly obscure until the early 1970s. Her highest-profile work were guest-star roles in then-popular television series, such as "The Doris Day Show" and "The Partridge Family". Baxter received her big break when cast as the female lead in the sitcom "Bridget Loves Bernie" (1972-1973). The main premise was an interfaith marriage between Catholic teacher Bridget Fitzgerald and Jewish taxi driver Bernie Steinberg. The series was the 5th highest-rated show on television during its single season, though it was controversial due to its subject matter. Jewish organizations protested that the show violated Judaism's prohibition against interfaith marriage, and organized protest campaigns. Baxter herself received threatening house visits by members of the Jewish Defense League, a vigilante organization known for violent crimes. The controversy led to the series' cancellation by the network CBS. Only 24 episodes were ever broadcast. As of 2002, the series remained the highest-rated American show to be canceled after a single season.
Following the series' cancellation, Baxter maintained a relationship with her co-star David Birney (1939-). In 1974, Baxter and Birney married each other. Their marriage lasted until 1989. They had three children: daughter Kathleen Jeanne "Kate" Birney (born 1974) and twins Mollie Elizabeth and Peter David Edwin Birney (born 1984). Several years following the end of their marriage, Baxter claimed that she had been physically abused by Birney during their marriage. Her co-workers were reportedly unaware that she had a problematic family life, or that she had struggled with alcoholism for several years.
During the 1970s, Baxter started regularly appearing in television films. She had a starring role in the horror film "The Cat Creature" (1973), involving a curse by the cat goddess Bastet. The film was scripted by noted horror writer Robert Bloch (1917-1994), and paid tribute to classic horror films of the 1940s. She also had starring role in the romantic drama "The Stranger Who Looks Like Me" (1974), as a grown woman who is searching for the birth parents who had abandoned her.
Baxter had one of her few feature films roles in the political thriller "All the President's Men" (1976), which depicted the early phases of the Watergate scandal. She played the supporting role of Debbie Sloan, the pregnant wife of witness Hugh W. Sloan Jr. (1940-). The real-life Hugh Sloan was the treasurer of the Committee to Re-elect the President, and later testified about the Committee's criminal activities. Sloan was depicted as one of the few honest men involved in Richard Nixon's shady organization. The film earned about 70.6 million dollars at the domestic box office, one of the greatest commercial hits in Baxter's career.
Baxter had another shot at television stardom when cast as Nancy Lawrence in the family-themed drama "Family" (1976-1980). The series depicted a middle-aged couple who still lives with their three grown-up children. The character of Nancy was depicted as a divorced mother who moved back in with her parents. She was trying to raise her own child, while attending law school. Baxter's role was critically acclaimed, and she was twice nominated for the "Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series". The award was instead won by rival actresses Kristy McNichol (1962-) and Nancy Marchand (1928-2000).
"Family" lasted for 5 seasons, and 86 episodes. It maintained solid ratings for most of its run, though a change to its time slot had led to rapid decline in ratings. Afterwards, Baxter was again in high demand for television roles. In 1981, Baxter co-starred in a television production of the play "Vanities" (1976) by Jack Heifner. The play follows the life of three best friends over an 11-year-period (1963-1974), from their high school and college years to adulthood. The friendship dissolves when the women discover that they no longer have any common interests. Joanne has become a conservative housewife and is trapped in an unhappy marriage, Mary owns a gallery specializing in erotic art and has become an advocate of sexual liberation, and Kathy has become a bookworm with a jaded view of life.
Baxter gained her next major role as successful architect Elyse Keaton in the hit "Family Ties" (1982-1989). The main premise of the series was an exploration of the generation gap, between two generations with different political views. The parents of the Keaton family were former hippies, lifelong liberals, and successful professionals. Their only son Alex was a Young Republican who was mainly driven by his own greed and ambition, their eldest daughter Mallory was a typical "material girl" with apolitical views, and their youngest daughter Jennifer was a tomboy mainly interested in athletics,.
"Family Ties" maintained high-ratings for most of its run, though it was not particularly well-liked by critics. The series lasted for 7 seasons, a total of 176 episodes, and a television film. It was considered indicative of the conservative political landscape of the 1980s. Its main legacy was turning actor Michael J. Fox (who played Alex) into a household name. Baxter was at the height of her popularity in the 1980s. However, she later claimed that she had no actual social life for its duration. She went straight from home to the television studio, and from the studio back to home.
In 1986, Baxter played the main role in the television film "Kate's Secret". It was acclaimed for its groundbreaking depiction of eating disorders. The main character Kate Stark (played by Baxter) appears to have an idyllic life. She is married to a man with a successful career, appears to have a loving family, and a close social circle. The truth depicted is less than idyllic. Kate's husband prioritizes his career over their marriage, and there is little actual affection in their relationship. Kate's "loving" mother is a domineering woman who criticizes her daughter for many perceived flaws. Kate's friends have no idea that she is suffering from bulimia nervosa, and Kate systematically hides her problems from everyone. The problems escalate until they become apparent to people surrounding Kate.
In 1989, Baxter received a divorce. At the time, she was 42-years-old. In 1990, the then-recently divorced Baxter managed to overcome her alcoholism. She has reportedly been sober ever since. Also in 1990, Baxter played kidnapper Florence Tulane in the television film "The Kissing Place". She was playing against type, as she had previously mostly played morally upright characters in television.
In 1992, Baxter had another well-received role in a television film. She played the main character in "A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story". The film dramatized the life of Betty Broderick (1947-), a divorced woman who had murdered her ex-husband Daniel T. Broderick III and his second wife Linda Kolkena. The case had attracted much publicity because Daniel Broderick was the president of the San Diego Bar Association, and had apparently used his legal influence to to win sole custody over their children, to sell their house against Betty's wishes, and to bilk Betty out of her rightful share of his income. For this role, Baxter was nominated for the "Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie". The award was instead won by rival actress Gena Rowlands (1930-).
In 1994, Baxter received an award by the "National Breast Cancer Coalition". Baxter had reportedly helped raise awareness of breast cancer and its effects through her then-recent work. In 1999, Baxter herself was diagnosed with breast cancer. She received medical treatment, and she is thought to have fully recovered.
In 1995, Baxter married the novelist (and screenwriter) Michael Blodgett (1939-2007). This was Baxter's third marriage and Blodgett's fourth and last marriage. Baxter became the stepmother of Blodgett's three daughters from previous marriages. The couple received a divorce in 2000. A few years later, Blodgett died due to heart disease.
In 1996, Baxter starred in the short-lived sitcom "The Faculty". The series was set in a typical middle school, with Baxter playing vice-principal Flynn Sullivan. Flynn was depicted as a single mother who was trying to balance her career and her family life. While the series was praised for its dignified main character, most critics found that the show lacked memorable supporting characters and was not particularly humorous in its depiction of school life. The series never had high ratings, and was canceled after a single season. Only 13 episodes were broadcast.
In 1997, Baxter guest-starred in a two-part episode of the politically-themed sitcom "Spin City" (1996-2002). She played Macy Flaherty, the mother of protagonist Mike Flaherty (played by Michael J. Fox) Mike was depicted as the deputy mayor of New York City, skilled in politics but inept in managing his personal life. In this two-part episode, Macy has a brief romantic relationship with mayor Randall Winston (played by Barry Bostwick) , Mike's boss. She is then asked to help cover-up Randall's past relationship with a prostitute, which is thought to be damaging to his political career. The episodes were thought to be memorable for reuniting Baxter with her former co-star Michael J. Fox.
In the early 2000s, Baxter had been reduced to playing one-shot characters in various television series. In 2006, Baxter joined the cast of the police procedural series "Cold Case" (2003-2010). She played the supporting character Ellen Rush, mother of the protagonist Lilly Rush (played by Kathryn Morris). Lilly was depicted as a homicide detective, who specialized in resolving decades-old cold cases. Ellen was depicted as an alcoholic single mother, who had managed to raise two daughters despite her personal problems. In seasons 3 and 4 of the series, Ellen was slowly dying from cirrhosis of the liver and Lilly had to take care of her. The storyline of the character was concluded with Ellen's death, and Baxter left the series in 2007.
In 2009, Baxter publicly came out as a lesbian. She had been dating general contractor Nancy Locke since 2005. Baxter married Locke in 2013, and their marriage is still ongoing (as of 2021). This is Baxter's fourth and (so far) last marriage. Baxter revealed that she had been dating women since 2002, having previously had no same-sex relationships.
In 2011, Baxter published her memoir "Untied", revealing previously unknown details about her personal and family life. Some of the details came as a surprise to longtime co-workers of Baxter, as she had never confided in them about her personal problems. Baxter's former husband David Birney publicly disputed the veracity of the book's narrative. The book became a New York Times bestseller.
In 2014, Baxter briefly joined the cast of the long-running soap opera "The Young and the Restless" (1973-). She played Maureen Russell, a new drinking buddy for prominent character Nikki Newman (played by Melody Thomas Scott). Maureen was described as a charming middle-class woman with social-climbing aspirations. This was the first recurring television role Baxter since departing "Cold Case". For this role, Baxter was nominated for the "Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series". The award was instead won in a tie by three rival actors: Donna Mills (1940-), Fred Willard ( 1933-2020), and Ray Wise (1947-).
From 2014 to 2015, Baxter had a recurring role in the short-lived teen drama "Finding Carter" (2014-2015). The premise of the series was that teenage girl Carter Stevens (played by Kathryn Prescott) reunites with her biological family, after years of being raised by a kidnapper. Carter has trouble acclimating to her new life. Baxter played Grandma Joan (nicknamed Gammy), Carter's wealthy grandmother. The main subplot involving Joan was that she had never accepted her daughter's marriage to a professional writer with no fixed income. The series lasted for 2 seasons, and a total of 36 episodes. So far, this has been Baxter's last recurring role in television.
As of 2021, Baxter is 74-years-old. She has never fully retired from acting, though she infrequently appears in new roles. Several of her past roles are still fondly remembered. Baxter has never won any major acting award, despite multiple nominations over several decades. But she has remained quite popular with the general public.- Actress
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Annette Bening was born on May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, the youngest of four children. Her family moved to California when she was young, and she grew up there. She graduated from San Francisco State University and began her acting career with the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, eventually moving to New York where she acted on the stage (including a Tony-award nomination in 1987 for her work in the Broadway play "Coastal Disturbances") and got her first film roles, in a few TV movies.
As is so often the case, her first big-screen role was in a forgettable movie, this one The Great Outdoors (1988), in which she had little screen time. However, her next work onscreen was in Milos Forman's Valmont (1989), a film adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' "Les Liaisons Dangereuses". Unfortunately, de Laclos' story had also just served as the source of a more Hollywoodized and successful movie version, Dangerous Liaisons (1988), which had been released the previous year, and Foreman's treatment went little noticed. Bening's career turned an important corner the following year when she co-starred with Anjelica Huston and John Cusack in Stephen Frears's powerful, entertaining screen adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel The Grifters (1990), and her artful turn as a con artist gained her the first of several Academy award nominations. On the strength of this performance Warren Beatty cast Bening as Virginia Hill, Bugsy Siegel's fiery actress moll, in his Bugsy (1991), the story of Siegel's founding of Las Vegas. Although the movie itself did not fare well, it resulted in a relationship with Beatty which led to Bening's pregnancy and then her marriage to Beatty in 1992 - it was the second marriage for Bening, who had been separated from her first husband since 1986 but did not finalize her divorce until 1991. The couple then collaborated on the extravagant flop Love Affair (1994), though the next year her career rebounded with her turn as Queen Elizabeth in the highly-regarded 1995 production of Richard III (1995). Notable performances have since included an obsessive, pushy real estate agent in American Beauty (1999), and as the eponymous character in István Szabó's screen adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel Being Julia (2004) - both were duly noted by the Academy, with Oscar nominations.
Bening has great poise and screen presence and, at her best, can turn in a very strong performance. Although her resume often features long stretches of mediocre productions before the next good part turns up, when it does, it proves worth the wait. Bening has four children with Beatty.- Actress
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Julie Benz was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA on May 1, 1972. Julie's father is a Pittsburgh surgeon and her mother is a figure skater. The family settled in nearby Murrysville, when Julie was two, and she started ice skating at age three. She competed in the 1988 U.S. Championships in junior ice dancing with her partner David Schilling, coming in 13th. Her older brother and sister, Jeffrey and Jennifer, were 1987 U.S. Junior Champions in ice dancing and competed internationally. When Julie was 14, she had a bad stress fracture and had to take time off.
By 1989, with her figure skating career over, Julie turned to acting and got involved in the local theater where she got a role in the play "Street Law". Her first movie role was a small credited speaking part in the Black Cat segment of the Dario Argento/George A. Romero co-direction horror flick, Two Evil Eyes (1990), playing in one scene alongside Harvey Keitel. A year later, she got a role on a TV show called Hi Honey, I'm Home (1991).
After graduating from high school, Julie entered New York University to study acting there. After graduation, Julie moved to Los Angeles to further pursue her career and landed some small roles in movies and TV shows including a guest appearance on Married... with Children (1987) and in the Aaron Spelling TV pilot Crosstown Traffic (1995).
In 1996, Julie auditioned for the role of "Buffy" in the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), but lost out to Sarah Michelle Gellar. However, she was offered a small role as a vampire girl in which she did such a good job that her part was expanded to a few more episodes in playing the vampire "Darla". With that, Julie Benz's career had finally taken off. She reprised her role as "Darla" in the Buffy spin-off series Angel (1999) for two years and has had several small roles in various film productions. She also had a small, but memorable, role playing a receptionist in the movie As Good as It Gets (1997).
Even after her role on Angel (1999) wrapped up, Julie continued to find work on television in playing many guest staring roles in numerous popular TV shows from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000), to Supernatural (2005), to playing the lead and supporting roles in various made-for-TV movies. She landed another notable role on the TV-cable series Dexter (2006) playing "Rita", a troubled divorcée and lover of the title character played by Michael C. Hall. Benz played a leading role in the TV series No Ordinary Family (2010) playing Stephanie Powell along with actors Michael Chiklis, Kay Panabaker, Jimmy Bennett, Autumn Reeser, Romany Malco, and Stephen Collins.
In 2013, she had the starring role in the sci-fi / fantasy breakout hit show Defiance (2013).- Actress
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Angela Bettis is an American film and stage actress, film producer, and director best known for her lead roles in the 2002 TV adaptation of the Stephen King novel Carrie, the title character in May (2002), and in Girl, Interrupted.
In addition to her work in film, Bettis also starred in two Broadway productions: The Father in 1996 with Frank Langella, and as Abigail Williams in a 2002 revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible alongside Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.
Her debut role was a lead in the romantic tragedy, Sparrow, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, at the age of 18. She later went on to star in a film called The Last Best Sunday, before supporting Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted and Kim Basinger in Bless the Child.
In 2002, she starred as Abigail Williams in a production of The Crucible on Broadway alongside Laura Linney and Liam Neeson. Bettis is most famous for her work in independent horror films, and especially her working relationship with writer/director Lucky McKee. Her title role in McKee's 2002 film May won her something of a cult following. Since then, she has appeared in McKee's Masters of Horror episode, "Sick Girl", and provided a voice-over for his film The Woods. In 2006, their May roles reversed, when McKee acted for Bettis in her directorial debut, Roman, based on a McKee script. In 2011, she played a major role in McKee's adaptation of Jack Ketchum's The Woman.
Bettis starred as Carrie White in Carrie, a made-for-TV remake of Brian De Palma's 1976 classic, and headlined Tobe Hooper's Toolbox Murders, an in-name-only remake of an obscure 1970s horror film. She also starred in the crime thriller Scar.[2] She had a guest role on the TV show Dexter's fifth season as Emily Birch, the first victim of Jordan Chase.- Actress
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From the age of five, Linda Blair had to get used to the spotlight, first as a child model and then as an actress, when out of 600 applicants she was picked for the role of Regan, the possessed child, in The Exorcist (1973). Linda quickly rose to international fame, won the Golden Globe, and seemed to be set to take the Academy Award for that role, but when it leaked how some parts of the role were not performed by her (the demonic voice was dubbed by Mercedes McCambridge, and eight seconds of a stunt dummy were used) that dream broke, and with that disappointment probably came the first blow to what looked like the beginning of an A-list career.
Over the next few years she had no trouble securing lead roles in a number of pictures, including the highly successful television films Born Innocent (1974) (the #1 TV movie of that year) and Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975), as well as the Exorcist sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). However, when she was peer pressured into buying cocaine at the age of 18, it led to an arrest and subsequent sentencing to three years probation. The much-publicized drug bust caused Linda to be blacklisted in Hollywood, and her career was soon reduced to B-movies and occasional TV guest appearances only.
Although her career never returned to its former glory, Linda proved to be a good sport about embracing the change, and out of the '80s emerged lead roles in two cult classics: the women-in-prison film Chained Heat (1983) and the femme fatale vigilante action film Savage Streets (1984). She continued acting in numerous films throughout the '80s and '90s, including the Exorcist spoof Repossessed (1990). In 1997, she also took to the Broadway stage and starred as "Rizzo" in the revival of "Grease." She received widespread mainstream attention again in the 2000's with the theatrical re-release of the Exorcist, followed by a hosting job on the hit Fox Family TV series Scariest Places on Earth (2000), which ran for six years and followed Linda as she visited notorious "haunted" locations around the world.
Linda was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Elinore, a real estate agent, and James, an executive headhunter. She has a brother, Jimmy, and a sister, Debbie. Linda has been a Hollywood icon for over 40 years, but it is her first love of animals that has ultimately taken center stage in her life. She now runs the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation, a non-profit 501C3 tax deductible organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating abused, neglected, and abandoned animals from the harsh streets of the Los Angeles area, as well as from the overcrowded and overwhelmed city and county animal shelters. She works and lives on the 2-acre rescue sanctuary full-time in California, which was featured on The Today Show in a segment titled "From Devil to Angel." Of course, she also makes frequent appearances at horror fan conventions to celebrate the legacy of The Exorcist (1973) .- Actress
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Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim. In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". Other theatre credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe", Miranda in "The Tempest" and Rose in "The Blind Giant is Dancing", both for the Belvoir Street Theatre Company. In other television roles, Blanchett starred as Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), as Janie Morris in G.P. (1989) and in ABC's popular series Police Rescue (1994). She made her feature film debut in Paradise Road (1997).
Cate married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. She had met him a year earlier on a movie set, and they didn't like each other at first. He thought she was aloof, and she thought he was arrogant, but then they connected over a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later he proposed marriage and they quickly married before she went off to England to play her breakthrough role in films: the title character in Elizabeth (1998) for which she won numerous awards for her performance, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for the role but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a particularly busy year, with starring roles in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001) and playing Elf Queen Galadriel in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. She also gave birth to her first child, son Dashiell, in 2001. In 2004, she gave birth to her second son Roman.
Also, in 2004, she played actress Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for playing a teacher having an affair with an underage student in Notes on a Scandal (2006). In 2007, she returned to the role that made her a star in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). It earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She was nominated for another Oscar that same year as Best Supporting Actress for playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). In 2008, she gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius. She and her husband became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, choosing to spend more time in Australia raising their three sons. She also purchased a multi-million dollar home in Sydney, Australia and named it Bulwarra and made extensive renovations to it. Because of her life in Australia, her film work became sporadic, until Woody Allen cast her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), which won her the Academy Award as Best Actress. She ended her job as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, while her husband continued there for two more years before he too resigned.
In 2015, she adopted her daughter Edith in her father's homeland of the United States. That same year, she and her husband sold their multi-million dollar home in Australia at a profit and moved to America. Reasons varied from her wanting to work more in America to wanting to familiarize herself with her late father's American heritage. She played the title role of Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife in a lesbian affair with a younger woman, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While most actresses might slow down in their forties, Blanchett did the opposite by stretching her boundaries even further, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then making her Broadway debut in 2017 in "The Present", which is her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's play "Platonov" for which she earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2017, she was selected for the highest honor in her birth country: the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).- Actress
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The dark, petulant beauty of this petite American film and musical star worked to her advantage, especially in her early dramatic career. Anne Marie Blythe was born of Irish stock to Harry and Annie (nee Lynch) Blythe on August 16, 1928 in Mt. Kisco, New York. Her parents split while she was young and she, her mother and elder sister, Dorothy, moved to New York City, where the girls attended various Catholic schools. Already determined at an early age to perform, Ann attended Manhattan's Professional Children's School and was already a seasoned radio performer, particularly on soap dramas, while in elementary school. A member of New York's Children's Opera Company, the young girl made an important Broadway debut in 1941 at age 13 as the daughter of the characters played by Paul Lukas and Mady Christians in the classic Lillian Hellman WWII drama "Watch on the Rhine", billed as Anne (with an extra "e") Blyth. She stayed with the show for two years.
While touring with the play in Los Angeles, the teenager was noticed by director Henry Koster at Universal and given a screen test. Signed on at age 16 as Ann (without the "e") Blyth, the pretty, photographic colleen displayed her warbling talent in her debut film, Chip Off the Old Block (1944), a swing-era teen musical starring Universal song-and-dance favorites Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan. She followed it pleasantly enough with other "B" tune-fests such as The Merry Monahans (1944) and Babes on Swing Street (1944). It wasn't until Warner Bros. borrowed her to make self-sacrificing mother Joan Crawford's life pure hell as the malicious, spiteful daughter Veda in the film classic Mildred Pierce (1945) that she really clicked with viewers and set up her dramatic career. With murder on her young character's mind, Hollywood stood up and took notice of this fresh-faced talent.
Although Blyth lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year to another Anne (Anne Revere), she was borrowed again by Warner Bros. to film Danger Signal (1945). During filming, she suffered a broken back in a sledding accident while briefly vacationing in Lake Arrowhead and had to be replaced in the role. After a long convalescence (over a year and a half in a back brace) Universal used her in a wheelchair-bound cameo in Brute Force (1947).
Her first starring role was an inauspicious one opposite Sonny Tufts in Swell Guy (1946), but she finally began gaining some momentum again. Instead of offering her musical gifts, she continued her serious streak with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Little Foxes (1941) in which Blyth played the Bette Davis role of Regina at a younger age. Her attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching creature of the sea opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with a much-older film star, Robert Montgomery, in Once More, My Darling (1949).
At full-throttle as a star in the early 1950s, Blyth transitioned easily among glossy operettas, wide-eyed comedies and all-out melodramas, some of which tended to be overbaked and, thereby, overplayed. When not dishing out the high dramatics of an adopted girl searching for her birth mother in Our Very Own (1950) or a wrongly-convicted murderess in Thunder on the Hill (1951), she was introducing classic standards as wife to Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso (1951) or playing pert and perky in such light confections as Katie Did It (1950). A well-embraced romantic leading lady, she made her last film for Universal playing a Russian countess courted by Gregory Peck in The World in His Arms (1952). MGM eventually optioned her for its musical outings, having borrowed her a couple of times previously. She became a chief operatic rival to Kathryn Grayson at the studio during that time. Grayson, however, fared much better than Blyth, who was given rather stilted vehicles.
Catching Howard Keel's roving eye while costumed to the nines in the underwhelming Rose Marie (1954) and his daughter in Kismet (1955), she also gussied up other stiff proceedings like The Student Prince (1954) and The King's Thief (1955) will attest. Unfortunately, Blyth came to MGM at the tail end of the Golden Age of musicals and probably suffered for it. She was dropped by the studio in 1956. She reunited with old Universal co-star Donald O'Connor in The Buster Keaton Story (1957). Blyth ended her film career on a high note, however, playing the tragic title role in the The Helen Morgan Story (1957) opposite a gorgeously smirking Paul Newman. She had a field day as the piano-sitting, kerchief-holding, liquor-swilling torch singer whose train wreck of a personal life was destined for celluloid. Disappointing for her personally, no doubt, was that her singing voice had to be dubbed (albeit superbly) by the highly emotive, non-operatic songstress Gogi Grant.
Through with films, Blyth's main concentration (after her family) were musical theatre and television. Over the years a number of classic songs were tailored to suit her glorious lyric soprano both in concert form and on the civic light opera/summer stock stages. "The Sound of Music", "The King and I", "Carnival", "Bittersweet", "South Pacific", "Show Boat" and "A Little Night Music" are but a few of her stage credits. During this time Blyth appeared as the typical American housewife for Hostess in its Twinkie, cupcake and fruit pie commercials, a job that lasted well over a decade. She made the last of her sporadic TV guest appearances on Quincy M.E. (1976) and Murder, She Wrote (1984) in the mid-1980s.
Married since 1953 to Dr. James McNulty, the brother of late Irish tenor Dennis Day, she is the mother of five, Blyth continues to be seen occasionally at social functions and conventions.- Actress
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Helena Bonham Carter is an actress of great versatility, one of the UK's finest and most successful.
Bonham Carter was born May 26, 1966 in Golders Green, London, England, the youngest of three children of Elena (née Propper de Callejón), a psychotherapist, and Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker. Through her father, she is the great-granddaughter of former Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith, and her blue-blooded family tree also contains Barons and Baronesses, diplomats, and a director, Bonham Carter's great-uncle Anthony Asquith, who made Pygmalion (1938) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), among others. Cousin Crispin Bonham-Carter is also an actor. Her maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón, was a Spanish diplomat who was awarded the honorific Righteous Among the Nations, by Israel, for helping save Jews during World War II (Eduardo's own father was a Czech Jew). Helena's maternal grandmother, Hélène Fould-Springer, was from an upper-class Jewish family from France, Austria, and Germany, and later converted to her husband's Catholic faith.
Bonham Carter experienced family dramas during her childhood, including her father's stroke - which left him wheelchair-bound. She attended South Hampstead High School and Westminster School in London, and subsequently devoted herself to an acting career. That trajectory actually began in 1979 when, at age thirteen, she entered a national poetry writing competition and used her second place winnings to place her photo in the casting directory "Spotlight." She soon had her first agent and her first acting job, in a commercial, at age sixteen. She then landed a role in the made-for-TV movie A Pattern of Roses (1983), which subsequently led to her casting in the Merchant Ivory films A Room with a View (1985), director James Ivory's tasteful adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel, and Lady Jane (1986), giving a strong performance as the uncrowned Queen of England. She had roles in three other productions under the Merchant-Ivory banner (director Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala): an uncredited appearance in Maurice (1987), and large roles in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) and Howards End (1992).
Often referred to as the "corset queen" or "English rose" because of her early work, Bonham Carter continued to surprise audiences with magnificent performances in a variety of roles from her more traditional corset-clad character in The Wings of the Dove (1997) and Shakespearian damsels to the dark and neurotic anti-heroines of Fight Club (1999). Her acclaimed performance in The Wings of the Dove (1997) earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination, a BAFTA Best Actress nomination, and a SAG Awards Best Actress nomination. It also won her a Best Actress Award from the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics, the Boston Society Film Critics, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Texas Society of Film Critics, and the Southeastern Film Critics Association.
In the late 1990s, Bonham Carter embarked on the next phase of her career, moving from capable actress to compelling star. Audiences and critics had long been enchanted by her delicate beauty, evocative of another time and place. Her late '90s and early and mid 2000s roles included Mick Jackson's Live from Baghdad (2002), alongside Michael Keaton, receiving a nomination for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe; Paul Greengrass' The Theory of Flight (1998), in which she played a victim of motor neurone disease; Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996), in which she played Olivia; opposite Woody Allen in his Mighty Aphrodite (1995); Mort Ransen's Margaret's Museum (1995); Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein (1994); and Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990).
Other notable credits include her appearance with Steve Martin in Novocaine (2001), Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes, in which she played an ape, Thaddeus O'Sullivan's The Heart of Me (2002), opposite Paul Bettany, and Big Fish (2003), her second effort with Tim Burton, in which she appeared as a witch.
In between her films, Helena has managed a few television appearances, which include her portrayal of Jacqui Jackson in Magnificent 7 (2005), the tale of a mother struggling to raise seven children - three daughters and four autistic boys; as Anne Boleyn in the two-parter biopic of Henry VIII starring Ray Winstone; and as Morgan Le Fey, alongside Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson, in Merlin. Earlier television appearances include Michael Mann's Miami Vice (1984) as Don Johnson's junkie fiancée, and as a stripper who wins Rik Mayall's heart in Dancing Queen (1993). Helena has also appeared on stage, in productions of Trelawney of the Wells, The Barber of Seville, House of Bernarda Alba, The Chalk Garden, and Woman in White.
Bonham Carter was nominated for a Golden Globe for the fifth time for her role in partner Tim Burton's film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), for which Burton and co-star Johnny Depp were also nominated. For the role, she was awarded Best Actress at the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2008. Other 2000s work includes playing Mrs Bucket in Tim Burton's massive hit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), providing the voices for the aristocratic Lady Campanula Tottington in Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and for the eponymous dead heroine in Tim Burton's spooky Corpse Bride (2005), and co-starring in Conversations with Other Women (2005) opposite Aaron Eckhart.
After their meeting while filming Planet of the Apes (2001), Bonham Carter and Tim Burton made seven films together. They lived in adjoining residences in London, shared a connecting hallway, and have two children: Billy Ray Burton, born in 2003, and Nell Burton, who was born in 2007. Ironically, a mutual love of Sweeney Todd was part of the initial attraction for the pair. Bonham Carter has said in numerous interviews that her audition process for the role of Mrs. Lovett was the most grueling of her career and that, ultimately, it was Sondheim who she had to convince that she was right for the role.- Actress
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Born in Bristol, England, Veronica is the older sister of the popular child actress Angela Cartwright. In her early career, Veronica was cast in a number of popular movies such as William Wyler's The Children's Hour (1961), Spencer's Mountain (1963) and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). As such, she was cast as "Jemima Boone" in the popular television series Daniel Boone (1964), which ran from 1964 to 66. Her career after "Daniel Boone" may have been influenced by Hitchcock, since she appeared in both the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and the horror classic Alien (1979). On television, she appeared twice as Lumpy's younger sister, "Violet Rutherford" and once as "Peggy MacIntosh" on Leave It to Beaver (1957) and had a small role in the television movie Still the Beaver (1983).
Cartwright also appeared in Robert Kennedy and His Times (1985), Tanner '88 (1988) and had a recurring role on L.A. Law (1986). Her big screen features included The Right Stuff (1983), Flight of the Navigator (1986) and The Witches of Eastwick (1987). Veronica worked on the stage in "Electra", "Talley's Folly", "Homesteaders", "Butterflies are Free" and "The Triplet Connection". Alternating between television and big screen movies in the 90s, Cartwright has appeared in such films as Hitler's Daughter (1990) and Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995).- Actress
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Erika Jane Christensen was born in 1982 in Seattle, Washington, to Kathy (Hendricks), a construction manager, and Steven Christensen, a human resources executive and insurance worker. She was raised in the suburban outskirts of Los Angeles, California. At age 12, Erika knew that she was going to be an actress. Talented in acting, singing and dance, the young Christensen was determined, not just lucky; it wasn't long before she landed her first job: a commercial for national advertising giant, McDonalds. She followed up with a part in Michael Jackson's music video for "Childhood," then landed her big break: a lead role in Universal's Leave It to Beaver (1997). Christensen was only 13 years old, but acclaimed by critics for her "chemistry" and "radiant self-assurance." Guest spots on television followed. Christensen popped up everywhere including prime time heavy hitters like Frasier (1993), Nothing Sacred (1997), The Practice (1997), 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996) and Touched by an Angel (1994). Erika received a nomination by the Hollywood Reporter for the 1998 Young Star Award (Best Performance By A Young Actress in a TV Drama Series) for her outstanding performance in Nothing Sacred (1997). Erika also kept her big screen presence known, in 1999 she worked on a Disney made-for-tv movie called Can of Worms (1999). And in 2000 Erika was able to show the world her acting chops when she took the gritty role of Caroline Wakefield, a teenage daughter of the White House Drug Czar who is herself a drug addict, in the award-winning Steven Soderbergh film, Traffic (2000). Aside from the distinction of playing alongside Hollywood's elite, Erika earned critical acclaim for the realism of the role, and received multiple awards including Female Breakthrough Performance at the MTV Movie Awards, Female Standout Performance at the Young Hollywood Awards, and Outstanding Performance by a Cast Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Erika is of Norwegian (from her paternal grandmother), Danish, English, German, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish descent.- Actress
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Eight time Academy Award-nominated actress Glenn Close was born and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. She is the daughter of Elizabeth Mary H. "Bettine" (Moore) and William Taliaferro Close (William Close), a prominent doctor. Both of her parents were from upper-class families.
Glenn was a noted Broadway performer when she was cast in her award-winning role as Jenny Fields in The World According to Garp (1982) alongside Robin Williams. For this role, a breakthrough in film for Close, she later went on to receive an Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The following year she was cast in the hit comedy The Big Chill (1983) for which she received a second Oscar Nomination, once again for Supporting Actress in the role of Sarah Cooper. In her third film, Close portrayed Iris Gaines a former lover of baseball player Roy Hobbs portrayed by Robert Redford, in one of the greatest sports films of all time, The Natural (1984). For a third time, Close was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Close went on to star in films like The Stone Boy (1984), Maxie (1985) and Jagged Edge (1985). In 1987 Close was cast in the box office hit Fatal Attraction (1987) for which she portrayed deranged stalker Alex Forrest alongside costars Michael Douglas and Anne Archer. For this role she was nominated for the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Actress. The following year Close starred in the Oscar Winning Drama Dangerous Liaisons (1988) for which she portrayed one of the most classic roles of all time as Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, starring alongside John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer. For this role she was nominated once again for the Academy Award and BAFTA Film Award for Best Actress. Close was favorite to win the coveted statue but lost to Jodie Foster for The Accused (1988). Close had her claim to fame in the 1980s. Close starred on the hit Drama series Damages (2007) for which she has won a Golden Globe Award and two Emmy Awards. In her career Close has been Oscar nominated eight times, won three Tonys, an Obie, three Emmys, two Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award.- Actress
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Joan Collins is an English actress from Paddington, London. She is most famous for playing the role of vengeful schemer Alexis Carrington Colby in the soap opera "Dynasty" (1981-1989). In 1997, She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to drama. In 2015, She was promoted to the rank of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to charity.
She was the daughter of talent agent Joseph William Collins (1902-1988) and his wife, dance teacher Elsa Bessant, (1906-1962). Joseph was born in South Africa, and of Jewish descent. As a talent agent, his most famous clients were Shirley Bassey, the Beatles, and Tom Jones. Elsa was born in the United Kingdom to an Anglican family.
Collins was educated at Francis Holland School in London, an independent day school for girls. She made her theatrical debut c. 1942, as a child actress. She had a role in a performance of the play "A Doll's House" (1879) by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). In 1949, She started training as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. In 1950, she signed a contract with a British film studio, the Rank Organisation of businessman Joseph Arthur Rank, 1st Baron Rank (1888-1972).
Collins made her film debut in the short film "Facts and Fancies" (1951), and her feature film debut in "Lady Godiva Rides Again" (1951), where she played an unnamed Beauty Queen Contestant. She had supporting roles as the Greek maid Marina in "The Woman's Angle" (1952) and gangster's moll Lil Carter in "Judgment Deferred" (1952).
Collins had her big break when cast as juvenile delinquent Norma Hart in prison drama "I Believe in You" (1952). She was hailed as Britain's new "bad girl" and started being offered high-profile roles in British films. The next stage in her career started when cast as Princess Nellifer of Egypt in the historical epic "Land of the Pharaohs" (1955), an international production . While the film was not successful at the box office, it became a cult classic and Nellifer was one of her most recognizable roles. Studio executive Darryl Francis Zanuck (1902-1979) was sufficiently impressed to offer her a 7-year-long contract with American studio 20th Century Fox. She took the offer.
Collins' first American film was the historical drama "The Virgin Queen" (1955), where she shared the top-billing with established stars Bette Davis and Richard Todd. She then played the leading role of actress Evelyn Nesbit (1884/1885-1967) in the biographical film "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" (1955). The role was intended for established actress Marilyn Monroe, but she replaced Monroe based on a studio decision.
Collins was placed on loan to studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for her next role, that of gold digger Crystal in "The Opposite Sex" (1956). She received the top billing in the refugee-themed film "Sea Wife" (1956), and enjoyed box-office success with the interracial-love themed drama "Island in the Sun" (1957). In the drama film "The Wayward Bus" (1957), she received top-billing over her co-star Jayne Mansfield. Her next films included the spy thriller "Stopover Tokyo" (1957), the Western "The Bravados" (1958), the comedy "Rally Round the Flag, Boys" (1959), the caper film "Seven Thieves" (1960), and the biblical epic Esther and the King (1960).
By 1960, Collins was one of 20th Century Fox's biggest stars, but she demanded a release from her studio contract. She had campaigned for the title role in the upcoming production of "Cleopatra", but the studio chose to cast Elizabeth Taylor in the role. Collins felt slighted. As a freelance actress for most of the 1960s, she had few film roles. Among her most notable roles was playing the leading lady in "The Road to Hong Kong" (1962), the last film in the long-running "Road to ..." series. The male leads for the entire series were Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, but their usual leading lady Dorothy Lamour was considered too old for the role. Collins replaced Lamour.
Collins started appearing frequently on television guest star roles. Among her most notable television roles was the villainous Siren in "Batman", and pacifist spokeswoman Edith Keeler in "Star Trek: The Original Series". "Road to ..." played in only one episode of Star Trek, the time-travel episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" (1967). However the episode is regarded among the best episodes in the entire Star Trek franchise, with Collins considered one of the most memorable guest stars in the original series.
In 1970, Collins returned to her native United Kingdom. She started appearing frequently in British thriller and horror films of the decade. Among her films was revenge-themed drama "Revenge" (1971),science fiction film "Quest for Love" (1972), horror anthology "Tales from the Crypt" (1972), psychological horror "Fear in the Night" (1972), thriller "Dark Places", horror anthology "Tales That Witness Madness" (1973), and horror film "I Don't Want to Be Born" (1975).
Collins appeared in a few comedies in-between horror films, but none was particularly successful. She returned to the United States in order to play a role in the giant monster film "Empire of the Ants" (1977). She then returned to mostly appearing in thriller roles. She was catapulted back to stardom with the lead role of nymphomaniac Fontaine Khaled in the erotic drama "The Stud" (1978), an adaptation of a novel written by her younger sister Jackie Collins. The film was a surprise box office hit, earning 20 million dollars at the worldwide box office. "Road to ..." returned to the role of Fontaine in the sequel film ''The Bitch'' (1979), which was also a hit.
Collins found herself in high demand in both stage and film. But she gained more notoriety with the television role of Alexis Carington in "Dynasty". She started appearing in the role in the second season of the soap opera. Her performance is credited with the subsequent rise of the show's Nielsen's ratings. She became a household name, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983.
By 1985, "Dynasty" was the number-one show in the United States, beating out rival soap opera "Dallas". Collins was nominated six times for a Golden Globe Award for her role, winning once in 1983. She was also once nominated for an Emmy as Best Actress in a Drama Series. Collins was viewed as a sex symbol at the time, and in 1983 appeared in a 12-page photo layout for Playboy magazine. She was 50-years-old, unusually old for a Playboy model.
Collins appeared in a total of 195 episodes of "Dynasty". The series was canceled with the last episode of its 9th season, due to falling ratings. New ABC entertainment president Bob Iger (1951-) is credited with ending the series as soon as possible. The show had a cliffhanger ending, and several of its subplots were not resolved. Collins returned to the role of Alexis in the sequel mini-series "Dynasty: The Reunion" (1991). The miniseries only lasted for 2 episodes, but resolved several subplots and was a ratings hit.
Throughout the 1990s., Collins returned to guest star roles in television. She appeared in (among others) "Roseanne", "Egoli: Place of Gold", and "The Nanny", She had the recurring role of Christina Hobson in the short-lived soap opera "Pacific Palisades" (1997). She appeared in 7 of its 13 episodes. Her next notable soap opera role was that of so-called "rich bitch" Alexandra Spaulding in 2002 episodes of the long-running series "Guiding Light". Collins was the third actress to play this role. following Beverlee McKinsey and Marj Dusay.
In film, Collins played Pearl Slaghoople, Wilma Flintstone's mother, in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas" (2000). It was the second live-action film based on the popular animated series "The Flintstones". In 2006, she toured the United Kingdom with "An Evening with Joan Collins", an one-woman show where she narrated the highs and lows of her career and life. She later toured the word with both this show and its sequel "Joan Collins Unscripted".
Collins had a notable guest star-role as Ruth Van Rydock in the television film "Agatha Christie's Marple: They Do It with Mirrors" (2009). The film was an adaptation of the 1952 novel by Agatha Christie, where Ruth is an old school friend of Jane Marple, who assigned Jane to investigate a home for juvenile delinquents.
Collins played herself in three episodes of the sitcom "Happily Divorced" (2011-2013). She had the recurring role of Crystal Hennessy-Vass in the sitcom "Benidorm" (2007-2018). She had another recurring role as Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Oxford in the soap opera "The Royals" (2015-2018).
Collins had two different roles in the horror anthology series "American Horror Story". She played wealthy grandmother Evie Gallant, and witch Bubbles McGee. She appeared in a total of four episodes in 2018.
By 2024, Collins was 90-years-old. She has never retired from acting, and she continues to appear in new roles.- Actress
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Academy Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard was born on September 30, 1975 in Paris. Cotillard is the daughter of Jean-Claude Cotillard, an actor, playwright and director, and Niseema Theillaud, an actress and drama teacher. Her father's family is from Brittany.
Raised in Orléans, France, she made her acting debut as a child with a role in one of her father's plays. She studied drama at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Orléans. After small appearances and performances in theater, Cotillard had occasional and minor roles in TV series such as Highlander (1992) and Extrême limite (1994), but her career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s. While still a teenager, Cotillard made her cinema debut at the age of 18 in the film L'histoire du garçon qui voulait qu'on l'embrasse (1994), and had small but noticeable roles in films such as Arnaud Desplechin's My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument (1996) and Coline Serreau's comedy The Green Planet (1996).
In 1996, she had her first lead role in the TV film Chloé (1996), playing the title role - a teenage runaway who is forced into prostitution. Cotillard co-starred opposite Anna Karina, the muse of the Nouvelle Vague.
In 1997, she won her first film award at the Festival Rencontres Cinématographiques d'Istres in France, for her performance as the young imprisoned Nathalie in the short film Affaire classée (1997). Her first prominent screen role was Lilly Bertineau in Gérard Pirès's box-office hit Taxi (1998), a role which she reprised in two sequels: Taxi 2 (2000) and Taxi 3 (2003), this role earned her first César award nomination (France's equivalent to the Oscar) for Most Promising Actress in 1999.
In 1999, Cotillard starred as Julie Bonzon in the Swiss war drama War in the Highlands (1998). For her performance in the film, she won the Best Actress award at the Autrans Film Festival in France. In 2001, Marion starred in Pretty Things (2001) as the twin sisters Marie and Lucie, and was nominated for her second César award for Most Promising Actress.
Cotillard's breakthrough in France came in 2003, when she starred in Yann Samuell's dark romantic comedy Love Me If You Dare (2003), in which she played Sophie Kowalsky, the daughter of Polish immigrants who lives a love-hate relationship with her childhood friend. The film was a box-office hit in France, became a cult film abroad and led Cotillard to bigger projects.
Her first Hollywood movie was Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003), in which she played Joséphine, the wife of William Bloom (played by Billy Crudup). A few years later, Marion starred in Ridley Scott's A Good Year (2006) playing Fanny Chenal, a French café owner who falls in love with Russell Crowe's character. In 2004, she won the Chopard Thophy of Female Revelation at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, Cotillard won the César award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance of Tina Lombardi in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (2004).
In 2007, Cotillard received international recognition for her iconic portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose (2007). Director Olivier Dahan cast Cotillard to play the legendary French singer because to him, her eyes were like those of "Piaf". The fact that she can sing also helped Cotillard land the role of "Piaf", although most of the singing in the film is that of Piaf's. The role won Cotillard the Academy Award for Best Actress along with a César, a Lumière Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe. That made her only the second actress to win an acting Oscar performing in a language other than English next to Sophia Loren (Two Women (1960)). Only two male performers (Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful (1997) and Robert De Niro for The Godfather Part II (1974)) have won an Oscar for solely non-English parts. Trevor Nunn called her portrayal of "Piaf" "one of the greatest performances on film ever". At the Berlin International Film Festival, where the film premiered, Cotillard was given a 15-minute standing ovation. When she won the César, Alain Delon presented the award and announced the winner as "La Môme Marion" (The Kid Marion), he also praised her at the stage saying: "Marion, I give you this César. I think this César is for a great great actress, and I know what I'm talking about".
Cotillard has worked much more frequently in English-language movies following her Academy Award recognition. In 2009, she acted opposite Johnny Depp in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009), and later that year played Luisa Contini in Rob Marshall's musical Nine (2009) and received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. Time magazine ranked her as the fifth best performance by a female in 2009. The following year, she took on the main antagonist role, Mal, in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), and in 2011 she had memorable parts in Midnight in Paris (2011) and Contagion (2011) and reteamed with Christopher Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
In 2011 and 2012 respectively, Cotillard appeared on the top of Le Figaro's list of the highest paid actors in France, it was the first time in nine years that a female topped the list. Cotillard was also the highest paid foreign actress in Hollywood.
In 2012, Cotillard received wide-spread critical acclaim for her role as the legless orca trainer Stéphanie in Rust and Bone (2012). The film was a box office hit in France and received a ten-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Cotillard won the Globe de Cristal (France's equivalent to the Golden Globe), the Étoile d'Or award and was nominated for the Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA, Critics' Choice and César Awards for her performance in the film. Cate Blanchett wrote an op-ed for Variety praising Cotillard's performance in "Rust and Bone", the two actresses competed for the Academy Awards for Best Actress in 2008, Cate was nominated for her performance in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and Marion for her performance in La Vie En Rose (2007) and Cotillard won the Oscar.
She had her first leading role in an American movie in 2013, in James Gray's The Immigrant (2013), in which she played Ewa Cybulska, a Polish immigrant who wants to experience the American dream. Cotillard received wide-spread acclaim for her performance in the film at the 66th Cannes Film Festival, where the film premiered, and also won several critics awards. In 2014, Cotillard played Sandra in the Belgian film Two Days, One Night (2014) by the Dardenne brothers. Her performance was unanimously praised at the 67th Cannes Film Festival, earned several critics awards, Cotillard won her first European Award for Best Actress and also received her second Oscar nomination and her sixth César award nomination.
In 2015, she played Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Fassbender in Justin Kurzel's Macbeth (2015) and voiced two animated movies: The Little Prince (2015) in which she voiced The Rose, and April and the Extraordinary World (2015), in which she voiced the lead role, Avril. Her 2016 included Nicole Garcia's From the Land of the Moon (2016), Xavier Dolan's It's Only the End of the World (2016), Justin Kurzel's Assassin's Creed (2016), in which she worked again with her Macbeth co-star Michael Fassbender; and Robert Zemeckis's Allied (2016), with Brad Pitt.- Actress
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Gladys Cooper was the daughter of journalist William Frederick Cooper and his wife Mabel Barnett. As a child she was very striking and was used as a photographic model beginning at six years old. She wanted to become an actress and started on that road in 1905 after being discovered by Seymour Hicks to tour with his company in "Bluebell in Fairyland". She came to the London stage in 1906 in "The Belle of Mayfair", and in 1907 took a departure from the legitimate stage to become a member of Frank Curzon's famous Gaiety Girls chorus entertainments at The Gaiety theater. Her more concerted stage work began in 1911 in a production of Oscar Wilde's comedy "The Importance of Being Earnest" which was followed quickly with other roles. From the craze for post cards with photos of actors - that ensued between about 1890 and 1914 - Cooper became a popular subject of maidenly beauty with scenes as Juliet and many others. During World War I her popularity grew into something of pin-up fad for the British military.
In the meantime she sampled the early British silent film industry starting in 1913 with The Eleventh Commandment (1913). She had roles in a few other movies in 1916 and 1917. But in the latter year she joined Frank Curzon to co-manage the Playhouse Theatre. This was a decidedly new direction for a woman of the period. She took sole control from 1927 until other stage commitments in 1933. She was also doing plays, some producing of her own, and a few more films in the early 1920s. It was actually about this time that she achieved major stage actress success. She appeared in W. Somerset Maugham's "Home and Beauty" in London in 1919 and triumphed in her 1922 appearance in Arthur Wing Pinero's "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray". It was ironic that writer Aldous Huxley criticized her performance in "Home and Beauty" as "too impassive, too statuesque, playing all the time as if she were Galatea, newly unpetrified and still unused to the ways of the living world." On the other hand, Maugham himself applauded her for "turning herself from an indifferent actress (at the start of her career) to an extremely competent one". She also debuted the role of Leslie Crosbie (the Bette Davis role in the 1940 film) in Maugham's "The Letter" in 1927.
In 1934 Cooper made her first sound picture in the UK and came to Broadway with "The Shining Hour" which she had been doing in London. She and it were a success, and she followed it with several plays through 1938, including "Macbeth". About this time Hollywood scouts caught wind of her, and she began her 30 odd years in American film. That first film was also Alfred Hitchcock's first Hollywood directorial effort, Rebecca (1940). Hers was a small and light role as Laurence Olivier's gregarious sister, but she stood out all the same. Two years later she bit into the much more substantial role as Bette Davis' domineering and repressive mother in the classic Now, Voyager (1942) for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress - the first of three. Though aristocratic elderly ladies were roles she revisited in various guises, Cooper was busy through 1940s Hollywood.
She returned to London stage work from 1947 and stayed for some early episodic British TV into 1950 before once again returning to the US, but was busy on both sides of the Atlantic until her death. Through the 1950s and into the 1960s Cooper did a few films but was an especially familiar face on American TV in teleplays, a wide range of prime-time episodic shows, and popular weird/sci-fi series: several Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone, and Outer Limits. When Enid Bagnold's "The Chalk Garden" opened in London in 1955, Cooper debuted as Mrs. St. Maugham and brought it to Broadway in October of that year where it ran through March of 1956. Her last major film was My Fair Lady (1964) as Henry Higgins' mother. The year before she had played the part on TV. In the film, the portrait prop of a fine lady over Higgins' fireplace is that of Cooper painted in 1922. She wrote an autobiography (1931) followed by two biographies (1953 and 1979). In 1967 she was honored as a Dame Commander of the Order of British Empire (DBE) for her great accomplishments in furthering acting.- Actress
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Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; Crawford worked a variety of menial jobs. She was a good dancer, though, and -- perhaps seeing dance as her ticket to a career in show business -- she entered several contests, one of which landed her a spot in a chorus line. Before long, she was dancing in big Midwestern and East Coast cities. After almost two years, she packed her bags and moved to Hollywood. Crawford was determined to succeed, and shortly after arriving she got her first bit part, as a showgirl in Pretty Ladies (1925).
Three films quickly followed; although the roles weren't much to speak of, she continued toiling. Throughout 1927 and early 1928, she was cast in small parts, but that ended with the role of Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), which elevated her to star status. Crawford had cleared the first big hurdle; now came the second, in the form of talkies. Many stars of the silents saw their careers evaporate, either because their voices weren't particularly pleasant or because their voices, pleasing enough, didn't match the public's expectations (for example, some fans felt that John Gilbert's tenor didn't quite match his very masculine persona). But Crawford wasn't felled by sound. Her first talkie, Untamed (1929), was a success. As the 1930s progressed, Crawford became one of the biggest stars at MGM. She was in top form in films such as Grand Hotel (1932), Sadie McKee (1934), No More Ladies (1935), and Love on the Run (1936); movie patrons were enthralled, and studio executives were satisfied.
By the early 1940s, MGM was no longer giving her plum roles; newcomers had arrived in Hollywood, and the public wanted to see them. Crawford left MGM for rival Warner Bros., and in 1945 she landed the role of a lifetime. Mildred Pierce (1945) gave her an opportunity to show her range as an actress, and her performance as a woman driven to give her daughter everything garnered Crawford her first, and only, Oscar for Best Actress. The following year she appeared with John Garfield in the well-received Humoresque (1946). In 1947, she appeared as Louise Graham in Possessed (1947); again she was nominated for a Best Actress from the Academy, but she lost to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (1947). Crawford continued to choose her roles carefully, and in 1952 she was nominated for a third time, for her depiction of Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear (1952). This time the coveted Oscar went to Shirley Booth, for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). Crawford's career slowed after that; she appeared in minor roles until 1962, when she and Bette Davis co-starred in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Their longstanding rivalry may have helped fuel their phenomenally vitriolic and well-received performances. (Earlier in their careers, Davis said of Crawford, "She's slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie", and Crawford said of Davis, "I don't hate [her] even though the press wants me to. I resent her. I don't see how she built a career out of a set of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words, and what have you got? She's phony, but I guess the public really likes that.")
Crawford's final appearance on the silver screen was in the flop Trog (1970). Turning to vodka more and more, she was hardly seen afterward. On May 10, 1977, Joan died of a heart attack in New York City. She was 71 years old. She had disinherited her adopted daughter Christina and son Christopher; the former wrote a tell-all book called "Mommie Dearest", The Sixth Sense published in 1978. The book cast Crawford in a negative light and was cause for much debate, particularly among her friends and acquaintances, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crawford's first husband. (In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred in Mommie Dearest (1981) which did well at the box office.) Crawford is interred in the same mausoleum as fellow MGM star Judy Garland, in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.- Actress
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Actress Joan Cusack was born on October 11, 1962 in New York City and is the daughter of Nancy (née Carolan) and Dick Cusack. Her father was an advertising executive, writer and actor, and her mother was a mathematics teacher. Her siblings - Susie Cusack, John Cusack, Ann Cusack and Bill Cusack are also actors. Her family is of Irish descent.
Raised in Evanston, Illinois, Cusack was actively encouraged to explore her creativity by her parents, and as a child, she joined the Piven Theater Workshop. She went on to learn and perform improvisation at the Story Theater and The Ark. Later, she attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating with a bachelor's degree in English. Whilst at university, Cusack took some small film roles, but her big break came after graduation, when she joined the cast of the legendary "Saturday Night Live". However, she only stayed for one season before moving onto explore other projects.
Cusack produced a memorable turn in the acclaimed Broadcast News (1987), and she earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Working Girl (1988). Other notable films include Addams Family Values (1993), Corrina, Corrina (1994), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) and In & Out (1997), which earned her a second Oscar nomination. One of her most well-known roles was Rosalie Mullins, the principal of Horace Green Elementary School in School of Rock (2003). She also provided, superbly, the voice of Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl in Toy Story 2 (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010) and Toy Story 4 (2019). On television, she scored a role on Shameless (2011), with her work garnering her an Emmy nomination.
Joan Cusack is married to an attorney, Dick Burke. They have two sons - Dylan and Miles.- Actress
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Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.
After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Bad Sister (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville" and her performance in "Bad Sister" didn't impress.
In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was The Man Who Played God (1932). She became a star after this appearance, known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.
In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.
Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award win for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler, and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.
She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.
She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.
In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.
Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.
Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.- Actress
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Dame Judi Dench was born Judith Olivia Dench in York, England, to Eleanora Olive (Jones), who was from Dublin, Ireland, and Reginald Arthur Dench, a doctor from Dorset, England. She attended Mount School in York, and studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and at Old Vic Theatre. She is a ten-time BAFTA winner including Best Actress in a Comedy Series for A Fine Romance (1981) in which she appeared with her husband, Michael Williams, and Best Supporting Actress in A Handful of Dust (1988) and A Room with a View (1985). She received an ACE award for her performance in the television series Mr. and Mrs. Edgehill (1985). She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1970, a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1988 and a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 2005.- Actress
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Catherine Fabienne Deneuve was born October 22, 1943 in Paris, France, to actor parents Renée Simonot and Maurice Dorléac. She made her movie debut in 1957, when she was barely a teenager and continued with small parts in minor films, until Roger Vadim gave her a meatier role in Vice and Virtue (1963). Her breakthrough came with the excellent musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which she gave an unforgettable performance as a romantic middle-class girl who falls in love with a young soldier but gets imprisoned in a loveless marriage with another man; the director was the gifted Jacques Demy, who also cast Deneuve in the less successful The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). She then played a schizophrenic killer in Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) and a married woman who works as a part-time prostitute every afternoon in Luis Buñuel's masterpiece Belle de Jour (1967). She also worked with Buñuel in Tristana (1970) and gave a great performance for François Truffaut in Mississippi Mermaid (1969), a kind of apotheosis of her "frigid femme fatale" persona. In the seventies she didn't find parts of that caliber, but her magnificent work in Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980) as a stage actress in Nazi-occupied Paris revived her career. She was also very good in the epic drama Indochine (1992), for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress). Although the elegant and always radiant Deneuve has never appeared on stage, she is universally hailed as one of the "grandes dames" of French cinema, joining a list that includes such illustrious talents as Simone Signoret, Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani and the younger Juliette Binoche.- Actress
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Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator then as a cabaret singer. In 1923, she married and, although she and Rudolf Sieber lived together only 5 years, they remained married until his death. She was in over a dozen silent films in increasingly important roles. In 1929, she was seen in a Berlin cabaret by Josef von Sternberg and, after a screen test, captured the role of the cabaret singer in The Blue Angel (1930) (and became von Sternberg's lover). With the success of this film, von Sternberg immediately took her to Hollywood, introducing her to the world in Morocco (1930), and signing an agreement to produce all her films. A series of successes followed, and Marlene became the highest paid actress of her time, but her later films in the mid-part of the decade were critical and popular failures. She returned to Europe at the end of the decade, with a series of affairs with former leading men (she had a reputation of romancing her co-stars), as well as other prominent artistic figures. In 1939, an offer came to star with James Stewart in a western and, after initial hesitation, she accepted. The film was Destry Rides Again (1939) - the siren of film could also be a comedienne and a remarkable comeback was reality. She toured extensively for the allied effort in WW II (she had become a United States citizen) and, after the war, limited her cinematic life. But a new career as a singer and performer appeared, with reviews and shows in Las Vegas, touring theatricals, and even Broadway. New success was accompanied by a too close acquaintance with alcohol, until falls in her performance eventually resulted in a compound fracture of the leg. Although the last 13 years of her life were spent in seclusion in her apartment in Paris, with the last 12 years in bed, she had withdrawn only from public life and maintained active telephone and correspondence contact with friends and associates.- Actress
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An icy, elegant blonde with a knack for playing complex and strong-willed female leads, enormously popular actress Faye Dunaway starred in several films which defined what many would come to call Hollywood's "second Golden Age." During her tenure at the top of the box office, she was a more than capable match for some of the biggest macho stars of the 1970s. Then an overwrought turn in the disastrous biopic Mommie Dearest (1981) effectively derailed her career - but, at the same time, made her a bit of a camp favorite in the gay community - though she's been afforded infrequent opportunities worthy of her talent since that unfortunate halt.
Born prematurely on Jan. 14, 1941 in Bascom, FL, Dorothy Faye Dunaway was the daughter of MacDowell Dunaway, Jr., a career Army officer, and his wife, Grace April Smith. After a stint as a teenaged beauty queen in Florida, she intended to pursue education at the University of Florida, but switched to acting, earning her degree from Boston University in 1962. She was given the enviable task of choosing between a Fulbright Scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts or a role in the Broadway production of "A Man For All Seasons" as a member of the American National Theatre and Academy. She picked the latter, enjoying a fruitful stage career for the next two years, which was capped by appearances in "After the Fall" and "Hogan's Goat." The latter - an off-Broadway production in 1967 - required Dunaway to tumble down a flight of steps in every performance, earning her a screen debut in the wan counterculture comedy The Happening (1967). Just five months after its release, however, she was wowing audiences across the country as Depression-era bank robber Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn's controversial Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Her turn as the naïve but trigger-happy and sexually aggressive Parker earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, and provided a direct route to the front of the line for Hollywood leading ladies in an unbelievably short amount of time.
Dunaway followed this success with another hit, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), in which her coolly sensual insurance investigator generated considerable sparks with playboy and jewel thief Steve McQueen. She then bounced between arthouse efforts like Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), directed by her ex-boyfriend, photographer Jerry Schatzberg, and the revisionist Western 'Doc' (1971), as well as big-budget efforts like Little Big Man (1970), which cast her as a predatory preacher's wife with designs on Dustin Hoffman's reluctant Native American hero. Dunaway also balanced these projects with several well-regarded theatrical productions, including a 1972-73 stint as Blanche Du Bois in "A Streetcar Named Desire," and notable TV-movies like The Woman I Love (1972), which cast her as the Duchess of Windsor, and TV broadcasts of Hogan's Goat (1971) and After the Fall (1974). But her turn as the duplicitous Lady De Winter in Richard Lester's splashy, slapstick take on The Three Musketeers (1973) and its sequel The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974) preceded a long period of critical and box office hits, starting with her masterful performance in Chinatown (1974).
Dunaway's turn as Evelyn Mulwray, the mysterious woman who draws detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) into a dark and complicated web of murder, incest, and catastrophic business deals, seemed the epitome of every femme fatale to ever stride across a chiaroscuro-lit scene in classic noir. But Dunaway also found the horribly wounded core of her character as well, and turned Evelyn from a pastiche to a full-blown and emotionally resonant human being. Critics and award groups rushed to nominate Dunaway for the role, and she netted her second Academy Award nod, as well as Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. Dunaway had fought hard for her performance - her battles with director Roman Polanski were no secret - but sadly, she lost the Oscar to Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). However, it would be Dunaway's performance which stood the test of time.
High-gloss turns in The Towering Inferno (1974) and Sydney Pollack's political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975) preceded one of her best television performances; that of Depression-era radio preacher Aimee Semple MacPherson in The Disappearance of Aimee (1976). Even more startling was her sterling role in Network (1976), Paddy Chayefsky's blistering take on the television industry. Dunaway pulled out all the stops as an executive on the rise who stops at nothing to advance her career - even bedding veteran producer William Holden. Critics again rose in unison to praise Dunaway, and she finally netted an Oscar for the role, as well as a Golden Globe.
Surprisingly, Dunaway's career began to falter after her Oscar win. She was effective as a fashion photographer who experiences disturbing visions in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), but was wasted in thankless roles as the dissatisfied ex of washed-up boxer Jon Voight in The Champ (1979) and wife to Frank Sinatra's detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). And then came Mommie Dearest (1981), director Frank Perry's biopic of actress Joan Crawford based on the tell-all book by her daughter Christina Crawford. Crawford herself had praised Dunaway in the early stages of her career, and while some critics gave positive reviews to her performance - in particular, the extent to which she physically transformed herself into Crawford - most fixated on the hysterical dialogue and garish scenes of child abuse. Clips of Dunaway as Crawford bellowing "No more wire hangers!" became immediate laugh-getters on late-night television, and a substantial gay following rose up in response to the film's high camp value. Dunaway, however, found none of the response amusing, and later admitted her regret in taking the role. Whether laughable or pure genius, no one could deny that Dunaway threw her everything into the role. The film's continued cult success proved she had succeeded in becoming Crawford.
The fallout from "Mommie Dearest" obscured Dunaway's follow-up projects, which included the title role in the TV-movie Evita Peron (1981) and a return to Broadway in 1982's "The Curse of an Aching Heart". Discouraged, she moved to London with her second husband, photographer Terry O'Neill, who had also served as a producer on "Mommie Dearest." For the next few years, Dunaway appeared sporadically in films, most of which underscored her newly minted status as a camp icon. The Wicked Lady (1983) was an absurd, near-softcore period drama by Michael Winner, with Dunaway as an 18th-century highway robber. Fans of her early dramatic work were similarly aghast by her turn as a shrieking witch battling Helen Slater's Girl of Steel in Supergirl (1984). Only a Golden Globe-winning appearance in the cumbersome miniseries Ellis Island (1984) offered any respite from the negative press which now continued to follow her.
Dunaway returned to the United States in 1987 following her divorce from O'Neill, and attempted to rebuild her career and reputation by appearing in several independent dramas. She was widely praised for her performance as a once-glamorous woman felled by alcohol in Barbet Schroeder's Barfly (1987), and served as executive producer and star of Cold Sassy Tree (1989), a TV adaptation of the popular novel by Olive Ann Burns about an independent-minded woman who romances a recently widowed store owner (Richard Widmark). Dunaway was exceptionally busy for the remainder of the decade in both major Hollywood features and independent fare, though her strong women now occasionally sported an unfortunate shrill side. She was Robert Duvall's frosty wife in the dystopian thriller The Handmaid's Tale (1990) and contributed a vocal cameo as Evelyn Mulwray in The Two Jakes (1990), the ill-fated sequel to "Chinatown". Other notable performances came as the unhappy wife of psychiatrist Marlon Brando in Don Juan DeMarco (1994), as the daughter of imprisoned Klansman Gene Hackman in The Chamber (1996), and as a bartender caught in the middle of a hostage standoff in Kevin Spacey's Albino Alligator (1996). She later received Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations as the matron of a wealthy Jewish family in turmoil in The Twilight of the Golds (1996). Perhaps her best turn of the decade was as a seductive murderess who attempts to sway the unflappable Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) in It's All in the Game (1993), which earned her a 1994 Emmy. She won her third Golden Globe as modeling agency head Wilhelmina Cooper in the biopic Gia (1998), starring Angelina Jolie as doomed model Gia Carangi.
The 1990s were also not without incident for Dunaway. She was embroiled in an ugly lawsuit against Andrew Lloyd Webber after he closed a Los Angeles production of his musical version of "Sunset Blvd." with claims that she was unable to sing to his standards. The suit was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. A national tour of Terrence McNally's "Master Class", about the legendary opera diva Maria Callas, ended with her involvement in a suit over legal rights to the play. The project was expected to become her next great film role but remained uncompleted more than a decade after the 1996 tour. Her attempt at sitcom stardom in It Had to Be You (1993), co-starring Robert Urich, was met with universal disinterest, and the project was announced as being retooled without Dunaway prior to its cancellation.
Dunaway's schedule remained busy from 2000 onward, mostly in television and small independent features. She co-starred with Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix as the wife of career criminal James Caan in The Yards (2000), then made her directorial debut with the short The Yellow Bird (2001), based on the play by Tennessee Williams. Younger audiences had their first taste of Dunaway's particular star power as Ian Somerhalder's mother in The Rules of Attraction (2002), Roger Avary's amped-up adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel, before Dunaway turned up the heat as a merciless celebrity judge on the reality series The Starlet (2005).
Dunaway penned her memoirs, Looking For Gatsby, in 1995, one year before receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Attached throughout her professional career to intriguing men ranging from Lenny Bruce to Marcello Mastroianni, she was twice married; her first husband was singer Peter Wolf of the popular seventies rock group, The J. Geils Band. Liam O'Neill, her son by second husband Terry, followed in her footsteps with minor acting roles beginning in 2004. His father later dropped a bombshell in 2003 by revealing that Liam was not their biological son, but was adopted - a claim that Dunaway had previously denied.
A series of occasional roles in little-seen films followed, but Dunaway was unexpectedly thrust back into the public eye at the 2017 Academy Awards. Reunited with Warren Beatty on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of "Bonnie and Clyde," the pair were tapped to present the Best Picture award to close the night. Before proceeding onstage, Beatty was mistakenly handed a backup envelope for Best Actress in a Leading Role, which had already been won by Emma Stone for La La Land (2016). Unsure what to do when he opened the envelope and discovered the error, Beatty stalled for time and showed the card to Dunaway; misunderstanding his intent, the actress announced that the Best Picture Oscar went to "La La Land." During producer Jordan Horowitz's acceptance speech, he was informed that the actual Best Picture winner was Moonlight (2016). During the onstage chaos that ensued, Beatty delivered a heartfelt explanation and apology for the snafu while undergoing good-natured ribbing from host Jimmy Kimmel.
After her break from acting and the memorable Oscars moment, Dunaway is now back in the saddle as an actress working more frequently in her 70s. Over the past year, she has appeared in three films, starring in The Bye Bye Man (2017), The Case for Christ (2017), and Inconceivable (2017), with more projects expected to be on the way. The icon also fronts Gucci's summer 2018 ad campaign for their Sylvie handbag and has a Broadway show scheduled for 2019.- Actress
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Linda Fiorentino is an American actress. She has starred in the films Vision Quest (1985), Gotcha! (1985), After Hours (1985), Jade (1995), Men in Black (1997) and Dogma (1999). For her performance in The Last Seduction (1994), she won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, the London Film Critics' Circle Award for Actress of the Year, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.- Born in Birmingham, Alabama, to Episcopal minister Robert Fletcher and his wife Estelle, both of whom were deaf, Louise Fletcher was introduced to performing at a young age by the aunt who taught her to speak. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, she took a trip out west with her roommates, finding herself in Los Angeles without enough money to return home. She took a temporary job as a receptionist and signed up for acting classes at night. Soon she was working regularly in television and film, but after marrying producer Jerry Bick and having two sons, the actress took a long hiatus to raise her children.
Returning to work in 1974 in Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974), Fletcher came to the attention of director Milos Forman, who was casting the difficult role of the nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). She won the role -- and then the Academy Award -- portraying deadly, inflexible Nurse Ratched, who has since become a cultural icon. Numerous film roles followed, including co-starring turns with Peter Falk in The Cheap Detective (1978) and with Richard Burton in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). Fletcher has appeared in a number of science fiction and horror classics such as Firestarter (1984), Brainstorm (1983), and Flowers in the Attic (1987).
Though she earned an Emmy Award nomination for her recurring role on Picket Fences (1992), Fletcher is perhaps best known to recent television audiences as Kai Winn from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) and as Nora Bloom from the cult classic VR.5 (1995). - Michelle Renee Forbes Guajardo is an American actress who has appeared on television and in independent films. Forbes first gained attention for her dual role in daytime soap opera Guiding Light (1952), for which she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination. She is also a Saturn Award winner with three nominations.
Forbes is known for her recurring appearances on genre and drama shows such as Ensign Ro Laren in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and her regular role as medical examiner Julianna Cox on Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) during the 1990s, while building her career with recurring roles throughout the 2000s in Battlestar Galactica (2004), 24 (2001), In Treatment (2008), Durham County (2007), Prison Break (2005) and her series regular role as Maryann Forrester on True Blood (2008). She has appeared in significant roles in movies such as Escape from L.A. (1996), Kalifornia (1993), Swimming with Sharks (1994) and Columbus (2017).
She starred in the 2011-2012 AMC television series The Killing (2011), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. On June 18, 2019 it was announced that Forbes would join USA Network's action drama series Treadstone (2019), a prequel/sequel to the Bourne franchise. - Actress
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Isabelle Fuhrman is a critically acclaimed actress who can next be seen in Kevin Costner's HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA, opposite Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Danny Houston, Giovanni Ribisi and Luke Wilson.
In 2021, Fuhrman starred as Alex Dall in Lauren Hadaway's directorial debut, THE NOVICE. Her performance garnered awards buzz, with critics calling Fuhrman's turn "a Daniel Day-Lewis transformation" and "the year's best performance". For THE NOVICE, she won the Tribeca Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. Both viewers and critics applauded Fuhrman for her dedication to the part, calling it "riveting," "explosive," "decisive," "defining," "searing," "human" and "honest."
In 2022, Fuhrman returned to her iconic role as 'Esther' in ORPHAN: FIRST KILL and made cinema history for reprising a role she played as a child, 13 years after the original film's release. The prequel received high marks from film critics, with Fuhrman's performance again being lauded.
Fuhrman started her impressive acting career at the young age of seven in Atlanta, GA and made her screen debut in the drama HOUNDDOG opposite Dakota Fanning. She was only ten when she was cast as the star of the 2009 cult horror classic ORPHAN, after an exhaustive nationwide search of young actresses to portray the lead in the Warner Bros. collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way and Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment. Her breakout performance was hailed as "awards-worthy," "mind-blowing," and "one of the most momentous examples of acting from a child performer in years." Holding her own against Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard in the film, Fuhrman displayed impressive range and this elevated her to the forefront of her craft. Never to shy away from meaty roles, Fuhrman signed onto the blockbuster franchise THE HUNGER GAMES at just 14, she joined the cast of Showtime's critically acclaimed series, MASTERS OF SEX, playing Virginia's (Lizzy Caplan's) whip-smart sparring partner of a daughter, she voiced award-winning Studio Ghibli's FROM UP ON POPPY HILL, and even led an an-female cast in Erica Schmidt's off-Broadway adaptation of MAC BETH. All while balancing her studies at Stanford University's EPGY OHS and two intensive courses at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Fuhrman's upcoming releases include Julia Stiles' directorial debut WISH YOU WERE alongside Jennifer Grey and Kelsey Grammar, Andy Tennant's UNIT 234, opposite Don Johnson, LITTLEMOUTH, opposite Dennis Quaid and Josh Hutcherson, and Justine Batreman's-directed FACE.
In addition to her work in front of the screen, Fuhrman has her own production company, WHAT IF? Productions, which she started in 2019 and has been writing and developing her own projects.
Fuhrman currently resides in Los Angeles and is an ultra marathon runner, triathlete, skilled guitar player, western-horseback rider, singer, gourmet cook and certified holistic birth doula.- Actress
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Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.
Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on February 6, 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), both of Jewish descent. Her siblings were Eva Gabor and Magda Gabor. Zsa Zsa studied at a Swiss finishing school, was second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, and began her stage career in Vienna in 1934. In 1941, the year she obtained her first divorce, she followed younger sister Eva to Hollywood.
A radiant, beautiful blonde, Zsa Zsa began to appear on television series and occasional films. Her first film was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Lovely to Look At (1952), co-starring Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton. She next made a comedy called We're Not Married! (1952) at 20th Century Fox with Ginger Rogers. It was far from a star billing; she appeared several names down the cast as a supporting actress. But in 1952 she broke into films big time with her starring role opposite José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge (1952), although it has been said that throughout filming, director John Huston gave her a very difficult time.
In the following years, Zsa Zsa slipped back into supporting roles in films such as Lili (1953) and 3 Ring Circus (1954). Her main period of film work was in the 1950s, with other roles in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), with Yvonne De Carlo, and The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1958) with Anna Neagle; again, these were supporting roles. By the 1960s, Zsa Zsa was appearing more as herself in films. She now appeared to follow her own persona around, and cameo appearances were the order of the day in films such as Pepe (1960) and Jack of Diamonds (1967). This continued throughout the 1970s.
She was memorable as herself in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), in which she humorously poked fun at a 1989 incident where she was convicted of slapping a police officer (Paul Kramer) during a traffic stop. She spent three days in jail and had to do 120 hours of community service. Such infamous incidents contributed to her becoming one of the most all-time recognizable of Hollywood celebrities, and sometimes ridiculed as a result. She was also memorable to British television viewers on The Ruby Wax Show (1997).
In 2002, Gabor was reported to be in a coma in a Los Angeles hospital after a horrifying car accident. The 85-year-old star was injured when the car she was traveling in hit a utility pole in West Hollywood, California. The reports about her coma eventually proved to be inaccurate.
Zsa Zsa's life, spanning two continents, nine husbands, and 11 decades, came to an end on December 18, 2016, when she died of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. She was 99.- Actress
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Ava Lavina Gardner was born on December 24, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina, to Mary Elizabeth (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner. Born on a tobacco farm, where she got her lifelong love of earthy language and going barefoot, Ava grew up in the rural South. At age 18, her picture in the window of her brother-in- law's New York photo studio brought her to the attention of MGM, leading quickly to Hollywood and a film contract based strictly on her beauty. With zero acting experience, her first 17 film roles, 1942-1945, were one-line bits or little better. After her first starring role in B-grade Whistle Stop (1946), MGM loaned her to Universal for her first outstanding film The Killers (1946). Few of her best films were made at MGM which, keeping her under contract for 17 years, used her popularity to sell many mediocre films. Perhaps as a result, she never believed in her own acting ability, but her latent talent shone brightly when brought out by a superior director, as with John Ford in Mogambo (1953) and George Cukor in Bhowani Junction (1956).
After three failed marriages, dissatisfaction with Hollywood life prompted Ava to move to Spain in 1955; most of her subsequent films were made abroad. By this time, stardom had made the country girl a cosmopolitan, but she never overcame a deep insecurity about acting and life in the spotlight. Her last quality starring film role was in The Night of the Iguana (1964), her later work being (as she said) strictly "for the loot". In 1968, tax trouble in Spain prompted a move to London, where she spent her last 22 years in reasonable comfort. Her film career did not bring her great fulfillment, but her looks may have made it inevitable; many fans still consider her the most beautiful actress in Hollywood history. Ava Gardner died at age 67 of bronchial pneumonia on January 25, 1990 in Westminister, London, England.- Actress
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Emmy Award-winning Sarah Michelle Gellar was born on April 14, 1977 in New York City, the daughter of Rosellen (Greenfield), who taught at a nursery school, and Arthur Gellar, who worked in the garment industry. She is of Russian Jewish and Hungarian Jewish descent.
Eating in a local restaurant, Sarah was discovered by an agent when she was four years old. Soon after, she was making her first movie An Invasion of Privacy (1983). Besides a long list of movies, she has also appeared in many TV commercials and on the stage. Her breakthrough came with the television series Swans Crossing (1992). In 1997, she became known to the cinema audience when she appeared in two movies: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream 2 (1997). But she is most commonly known for her title role in the long-running television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997). She also won an Emmy Award for her performance as Kendall Hart on the soap opera All My Children (1970).
Sarah has since starred in many films, including Simply Irresistible (1999), Cruel Intentions (1999), and the live-action Scooby-Doo (2002) movies as the lovable Daphne Blake. She also provided her voice to several movies, including Small Soldiers (1998), Happily N'Ever After (2006) and TMNT (2007), starred in the box office hit The Grudge (2004), and co-starred with Robin Williams and James Wolk in the television series The Crazy Ones (2013).
She resides in Los Angeles, California, with her husband, Freddie Prinze Jr.. They have been married since 2002, and have two children.- Actress
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When Ruth Gordon convinced her father, a sea captain, to let her pursue acting she came to New York and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She acted in a few silents made at Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1915. She made her Broadway debut in "Peter Pan" as Nibs the same year. The next 20 years she spent on stage, even appearing at the Old Vic in London in the successful run of "The Country Wife" in 1936. Nearly 25 years after her film debut, she returned to movies briefly. Her most memorable role during this period in the early 1940s was as Mary Todd in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940).
She left Hollywood to return to theater. Back in New York, she married Garson Kanin in 1942 (her first husband Gregory Kelly, a stage actor, died in 1927). She began writing plays, and, later, her husband and she collaborated on screenplays for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, whose screen relationship was modeled on their own marriage. She returned to film acting during the 1960s. It is during this last period of her career that she became a movie star, with memorable roles in Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Harold and Maude (1971). She wrote several books during the mid-1970s and appeared on TV. She won an Emmy for her role on Taxi (1978) in 1979.- Actress
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French actress and model Eva Gaëlle Green was born on July 6, 1980, in Paris, France. Her father, Walter Green, is a dentist who appeared in the 1966 film Au hasard Balthazar (1966). Her mother, Marlène Jobert, is an actress turned children's book writer. Eva's mother was born in Algeria, of French, Spanish, and Sephardic Jewish heritage (during that time, Algeria was part of France), and Eva's father is of Swedish, French, and Breton descent. She has a fraternal twin sister, Joy. Eva left French school at 17. She switched to the American School in France for one year. She left the American School and studied acting at Saint Paul Drama School in Paris for three years, then had a 10-week polishing course at the Weber Douglas Academy of dramatic Art in London. She returned to Paris as an accomplished young actress, and played on stage in several theater productions: "La Jalousie en Trois Fax" and "Turcaret". There, she caught the eye of director Bernardo Bertolucci. Green followed a recommendation to work on her English. She studied for two months with an English coach before doing The Dreamers (2003) with Bernardo Bertolucci. During their work, Bertolucci described Green as being "so beautiful it's indecent".
Green won critical acclaim for her role in The Dreamers (2003). After "The Dreamers", Green played the love interest of cult French gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin (2004), opposite Romain Duris. In 2005, she co-starred, opposite Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson, in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), produced and directed by Ridley Scott. The film brought her a wider international exposure. She turned down the femme fatale role in The Black Dahlia (2006), that went to Hilary Swank, because she didn't want to end up typecast after her role in "The Dreamers". Instead, Eva accepted the prestigious role of "Vesper Lynd", one of three Bond girls, opposite Daniel Craig, in Casino Royale (2006) and became the fifth French actress to play a James Bond girl, after Claudine Auger in Thunderball (1965), Corinne Cléry in Moonraker (1979), Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Enough (1999). She achieved international recognition for the film, one of the highest-grossing Bond movies ever.
Since then, Green has starred in the films Dark Shadows (2012), 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016). She also starred as Vanessa Ives in Showtime's horror drama Penny Dreadful (2014). Her performance in the series earned her a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series - Drama at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.
Since her school years, Green has been a cosmopolitan multilingual and multicultural person. Yet, since her father always lived in France with them and her mother, she and her twin sister can't speak Swedish. She developed a wide scope of interests beyond her acting profession and became an aspiring art connoisseur and an avid museum visitor. Her other activities, outside of acting, include playing and composing music, cooking at home, walking her terrier, and collecting art. She shares time between her two residencies, one is in Paris, France, and one in London, England.- Actress
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Margaret Hamilton was born December 9, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Jennie (Adams) and Walter Hamilton. She later attended Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and practiced acting doing children's theater while a Junior League of Cleveland member. Margaret had already built her resume with several performances in film before she came to her most memorable and astronomically successful role, Almira Gulch / The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939). The character is considered to be one of the screen's greatest and most memorable villains of all time.- Actress
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Daryl Christine Hannah was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of Susan Jeanne (Metzger), a schoolteacher and later a producer, and Donald Christian Hannah, who owned a tugboat/barge company. Her stepfather was music journalist/promoter Jerrold Wexler. Her siblings are Page Hannah, Don Hannah and Tanya Wexler. She has Scottish, Norwegian, Danish, Irish, English, and German ancestry.
Daryl graduated from the University of Southern California School of Theatre. She practiced ballet with Maria Tallchief and studied drama at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. In her twenties, she played keyboard and sang backup for Jackson Browne. Hannah, a tall (5' 10") blond beauty, with haunting blue-green eyes, was a natural for show biz.
She started with small roles, such as a student in The Fury (1978) and as Kim Basinger's kid sister in Hard Country (1981). Daryl's breakout role was as the acrobatic, beautiful replicant punk android Pris in Blade Runner (1982); Pris was the vixen who wanted to live beyond her allotted years and risked the wrath of the title character. Showing her versatility, from there she portrayed a mermaid, Madison, who falls in love with Tom Hanks's character in Ron Howard's zany comedy Splash (1983), and a Cro-Magnon in The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986). Hannah played Roxanne in the eponymous Steve Martins contemporary take on the Cyrano de Bergerac story, and co-starred as Elle Driver in Quintin Tarantino's box office hit Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004).
Hannah has been a consistent, strong supporter of independent cinema, both acting in and producing many films, starring in such indie films as John Sayles's Casa de los babys (2003) as well as his political satire Silver City (2004). She worked on several films with the revered Robert Altman, including The Gingerbread Man (1998), as well as several films with the Polish Brothers including Northfork (2003) and Jackpot (2001). Daryl starred in the experimental improvised Michael Radford film Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000) and made As a filmmaker, Hannah wrote, directed, and produced an award winning short film, entitled The Last Supper (1995). Hannah also directed, produced and shot the documentary Strip Notes (2002) which was inspired while researching her role for Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000) that was shown on HBO and UK's Channel 4.
Daryl is in the process of shooting a documentary on Human Trafficking and has traveled undercover to South East Asia to document this atrocity and has become and advocates raising awareness and ending slavery. She has made over 40 video blogs for various websites including her popular dhlovelife.com. She designed dhlovelife.com (online since 2005) her website dedicated to sharing solutions on how to live more harmoniously with the planet and all other living things. Daryl has been passionate, committed and effective advocate for a more ethical relationship with each other and all life on the Planet. She has produced, hosted and shot numerous environmental awareness/ health documentaries, TV appearances and is a frequent speaker on both the conservative and progressive news.
Hannah has been a greening consultant for events such as the Virgin Music Festival, attended by over 150,000 people. Her many speaking engagements include keynote speeches at the UN Climate Change Summit, UN Global Business Conference on the environment, Natural and Organic Products Expo, LOHAS and numerous national and international universities, conferences and events. She has written articles on self sufficiency and sustainability for many magazines and has done a plethora of interviews on the topic in thousands of publications. The site features weekly five-minute inspirational video blogs which Daryl produces and films. There are daily news updates, alerts, community and access to goods and services. She is a member of the World Future Council, sits on the boards of the Sylvia Earle Alliance, Mission Blue, Eco America, Environmental Media Association (EMA), The Somaly Mam Foundation, and the Action Sports Environmental Coalition, She is the founder of the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance (SBA).- Actress
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Alyson Hannigan was born in Washington, D.C. to Emilie (Posner), a real estate agent, and Al Hannigan, a truck driver. She began her acting career in Atlanta at the young age of 4 in commercials sponsoring such companies as McDonald's, Six Flags, and Oreos. She is a seasoned television actress, guest starring in Picket Fences (1992), Roseanne (1988), Touched by an Angel (1994) and the The Torkelsons (1991) before starring in her most notorious roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) as "Willow Rosenberg" and How I Met Your Mother (2005) as "Lily Aldrin."- Actress
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Salma Hayek was born on September 2, 1966 in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Her father is of Lebanese descent and her mother is of Mexican/Spanish ancestry. After having seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) in a local movie theater, she decided she wanted to become an actress. At age 12, she was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans, Louisiana. After attending Mexico City's prestigious university Universidad Iberoamericana, she felt ready to pursue acting seriously.
She soon landed the title role in Teresa (1989), a hugely successful soap opera which earned her the star status in her native Mexico. However, anxious to make films and to explore her talent as well as passion, she left both Teresa (1989) and Mexico in 1991. Heartbroken fans spread rumors that she was having a secret affair with Mexico's president and left to escape his wife's wrath. She made her way to Los Angeles. She approached Hollywood with naive enthusiasm and quickly learned that Latina actresses were typecast as the mistress maid or local prostitute. By late 1992, she had landed only small roles. She appeared on Street Justice (1991), The Sinbad Show (1993), Nurses (1991), and as a sexy maid on Dream On (1990). She also had only one line in My Crazy Life (1993). Feeling under-appreciated by Anglo filmmakers, she vented her frustrations on Paul Rodriguez's late-night Spanish-language talk show.
Robert Rodriguez and his wife Elizabeth Avellan happened to be watching and were immediately smitten with her. He soon gave her big break -- to star opposite Antonio Banderas in the cult classic Desperado (1995), bringing her into Hollywood prominence. The moviegoers were as dazzled with her as he had been. Afterwards, she was cast again by Rodriguez to star in the cult classic From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). Her first star billing came later that year with Fools Rush In (1997) opposite Matthew Perry. It was a modest hit and her star continued to rise in both commercial and films such as Breaking Up (1997) with an unknown Russell Crowe, 54 (1998), Dogma (1999) and In the Time of the Butterflies (2001), the small artistic film which won her an ALMA award as best actress and the summer blockbuster Wild Wild West (1999). Her production company Ventanarosa produced the Mexican feature film El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1999), which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and selected as Mexico's official Oscar entry for best foreign film.
The new millennium started out quietly as she prepared to produce and star in her dream role of Frida Kahlo, the legendary Mexican painter whom she had been admiring her entire life and whose story she wanted to bring to the big screen ever since she arrived in Hollywood. Frida (2002) was full of passion and enthusiasm, with performances from her and Alfred Molina as Kahlo's cheating husband Diego Rivera. It also featured an entourage of stars such as Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd, Geoffrey Rush, Edward Norton and Valeria Golino.
It was a box office hit and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including best actress for Hayek. It won awards for make-up and score by Elliot Goldenthal. Later that year, she expanded her horizons, directing The Maldonado Miracle (2003), which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2003, she starred in the finale of Rodriguez's Desperado trilogy Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), again opposite Banderas. She also starred in After the Sunset (2004) opposite Pierce Brosnan, and Ask the Dust (2006) opposite Colin Farrell. She then starred in Bandidas (2006), which also featured Penélope Cruz, and Lonely Hearts (2006) opposite Jared Leto.- Actress
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Lena Headey is a Bermudian-British actress. Headey is best known for her role as "Cersei Lannister" in Game of Thrones (2011) (2011-2019) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), Possession (2002), and The Remains of the Day (1993). Headey stars as "Queen Gorgo", a heroic Spartan woman in the period film, 300 (2006), by director Zack Snyder.
Headey was born in Hamilton, Bermuda, to British parents Sue and John Headey. Her father, a Yorkshire police cadet, was stationed in the Bermuda Police Service. She was raised there until age five, when her family returned to England. She was brought up in Yorkshire before moving to London in her teens. Headey had not gone to drama school before she became an actress. At the age of seventeen, Headey's performance in a one-off show in the company of six school friends caught the attention of a casting agent, who took a photo and asked her to audition. Eventually, Headey was cast in Waterland (1992), which became her big-screen debut. She honed her natural acting talent while filming and also took archery classes and horse training. She also took boxing classes in clubs in south London, where a former boxer had been teaching her to spar. During her film career, spanning over 15 years, Headey has shown her range in a variety of roles, playing characters from Amazon-type warriors and action-minded women in The Cave (2005) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), to a lesbian florist in Imagine Me & You (2005).
Headey's film career has taken her all over the world. She was in India for the filming of The Jungle Book (1994), then in St. Petersburg, Russia, for filming Onegin (1999), and in Norway for filming of Aberdeen (2000). In 2005 Headey was filming in Romania and in Mexico, then spent four months in Prague, Czech Republic, where a forest was designed and built for filming The Brothers Grimm (2005), with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. During 2006 Headey was in Canada for the filming of 300 (2006), then went to locations in Bulgaria for shooting The Contractor (2007), and Germany and in Czech Republic for the filming of The Red Baron (2008).
She also played Gina McVey in the horror thriller The Broken (2008), and Elizabeth in Tell Tale (2009). In addition to her film-work, Heady appeared as Sarah Connor in a TV spin-off of the popular "Terminator" film franchise, the FOX's television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008).
Outside of her acting profession, Headey continued taking boxing lessons in London. She is a vegetarian and also remains loyal to yoga, which she discovered during her work in India. She has never been back to her birthplace in Bermuda; she shares her time between her homes in London, England, and Los Angeles, California.- Actress
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Natasha Henstridge was born on August 15, 1974 in Springdale, Newfoundland, Canada. Known for movies like Species (1995) and The Whole Nine Yards (2000), she started her career as a model in Paris, France at the tender age of 15. After leaving home to begin her modeling career in the highly-competitive Paris fashion world, she landed her first cover of French Cosmopolitan and graced the covers of many international fashion magazines, appearing in commercials for Oil of Olay, Lady Stetson and Old Spice. Seeking a greater challenge, Natasha pursued her love of acting and, at only 19, landed the starring role of the science-fiction thriller Species (1995), opposite Sir Ben Kingsley and Forest Whitaker. The film became a worldwide hit critically and commercially and Natasha received praise for her performance as the genetically-modified Sil, including an MTV Award. Not since the Hitchcock era had someone redefined the "femme fatale" for a new generation. This began a recognized film career that has spanned over 35 movies to date.
From conquering comedy with Bruce Willis in The Whole Nine Yards (2000) to taking the action-heroine lead in John Carpenter's science-fiction thriller Ghosts of Mars (2001), Natasha has proved herself to be a versatile and fearless actress. She won the Best Actress Gemini Award (Canada's equivalent of an Emmy Award) for her hard-hitting portrayal of a policeman's wife in the miniseries Would Be Kings (2008) and starred with Geena Davis in the Golden Globe-winning series Commander in Chief (2005). Her television credits include leading roles in hit series and She Spies (2002) and Eli Stone (2008), and voicing Miss Ellen on South Park (1997). Recently, she returned to movies, starring with Paul Sorvino and Joe Mantegna in the forthcoming period drama The Bronx Bull (2016), playing the wife of legendary boxer Jake LaMotta. Natasha is the youngest actress to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Temecula Film Festival, and recently was honored with the Queen Elizabeth II Award from her homeland of Canada.
Natasha is married to actor and platinum-selling recording artist Darius Campbell and they live in Los Angeles, California with her two children Tristan, 14, and Asher, 11. They enjoy skiing and traveling the world, and are involved in humanitarian efforts including St Jude Children's Research Hospital, World Vision and Fresh2o water charity. Natasha also divides her time between the two coasts, as she continues to be in demand as a model, while pursuing a blossoming career as an actress.- Actress
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Bryce Dallas Howard was born on March 2, 1981, in Los Angeles, California. She was conceived in Dallas, Texas (the reason for her middle name). Her father, Ron Howard, is a former actor turned Oscar-winning director. Her mother is actress and writer Cheryl Howard (née Alley). Her famous relatives include her uncle, actor Clint Howard, and her grandparents, actors Rance Howard and Jean Speegle Howard. She also has two younger twin sisters, Jocelyn and Paige Howard (also an actress), born in 1985, and a brother, Reed Howard, born in 1987. Her ancestry includes German, English, Scottish, and Irish.
Howard was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, because her parents decided to raise their four children as far away from the trappings of showbiz milieu as possible. During most of her childhood, she really did not have much access to a TV. She attended Greenwich Country Day School, and Byram Hills High School in Armonk, New York. At that time, she discovered existentialism and devoured books by Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. She attended the prestigious Steppenwolf School and Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts camp at Catskills, together with her friend, Natalie Portman. She applied to drama school as Bryce Dallas, dropping her last name to eschew special treatment because of association with her renowned father. From 1999-2003, she studied at the Stella Adler Conservatory and at the New York University Tisch School of Arts and graduated with a BFA degree in Drama in 2003. At that time, she performed in Broadway productions of classical plays by George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare and Anton Chekhov.
Young Howard appeared in three of her father's films as an extra, including her appearance as a child together with her mother in Apollo 13 (1995). She made her feature-film debut as Heather, a supporting role in Book of Love (2004) by director Alan Brown. Director M. Night Shyamalan was impressed by her performance in a Broadway play and cast her, without an audition, as a female lead in his two thrillers: The Village (2004) and Lady in the Water (2006). Howard replaced Nicole Kidman in the Dogville (2003) sequel, Manderlay (2005). She starred as Rosalind in As You Like It (2006), a reprise of her stage role that made such an impression on Shyamalan. She also played Gwen Stacy in the third installment of the Spider-Man franchise, Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the female lead, Claire, in the sequel Jurassic World (2015). Both films broke the records for highest openings weekends at the time of their release. Among Bryce's other major films are Terminator Salvation (2009), The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), The Help (2011), and 50/50 (2011).
Howard became a devoted vegan, after Joaquin Phoenix showed her Earthlings (2005), a documentary about animal cruelty. After seeing that, she has consumed no animal products, not even milk or eggs. Her other activities outside of the acting profession include playing basketball and writing.
On June 17, 2006, in Connecticut, she married her long-time boyfriend, actor Seth Gabel, whom she met at New York University and had dated for five years. On February 16, 2007, Bryce and her husband, Seth, became parents of their first child, a son named Theodore Norman Howard Gabel. Their second child, a daughter named Beatrice Jean Howard Gabel, was born on January 19, 2012.- Actress
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Anjelica Huston was born on July 8, 1951 to director and actor John Huston and Russian prima ballerina Enrica 'Ricki' Soma. Huston spent most of her childhood overseas, in Ireland and England, and in 1968 first dipped her toe into the world of show business, taking on the lead role of her father's movie A Walk with Love and Death (1969). However, before it was released, her mother died in a car accident, at 39, and Huston relocated to the United States, where the very tall, exotically-beautiful young woman modeled for several years.
While modeling, Huston made sporadic cameo appearances in a couple films, but decided to pursue it as a career in the early '80s. She prepared herself by reaching out to acting coach Peggy Feury and began to get roles. The first notable part was in Bob Rafelson's remake of the classic noir movie The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) (in which Jack Nicholson, with whom Huston had been living since 1973, was the star). After a few more years of on-again, off-again supporting work, her father perfectly cast her as calculating, imperious Maerose, the daughter of a Mafia don whose love is scorned by a hit man (Nicholson again) in his film adaptation of Richard Condon's Mafia-satire novel Prizzi's Honor (1985). Huston won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance, making her the first person in Academy Award history to win an Oscar when a parent and a grandparent (her father and grandfather Walter Huston) had also won one.
Huston thereafter worked prolifically, including notable roles in Francis Ford Coppola's Gardens of Stone (1987), Barry Sonnenfeld's film versions of the Charles Addams cartoons The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), in which she portrayed Addams matriarch Morticia, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). Probably her finest performance on-screen, however, was as Lilly, the veteran, iron-willed con artist in Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990), for which she received another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress. A sentimental favorite is her performance as the lead in her father's final film, an adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead (1987) -- with her many years of residence in Ireland, Huston's Irish accent in the film is authentic.
Endowed with her father's great height and personal boldness, and her mother's beauty and aristocratic nose, Huston certainly cuts an imposing figure, and brings great confidence and authority to her performances. She clearly takes her craft seriously and has come into her own as a strong actress, emerging from under the shadow of her father, who passed away in 1987. Huston married the sculptor Robert Graham in 1992. The couple lived in Venice Beach until Graham's death in 2008.- Katharine Isabelle was born Katharine Isobel Murray in Vancouver, British Columbia to Graeme Murray, an art director and production designer who has won two Emmy Awards for his special effects work on the television series The X-Files (1993) and Gail Murray, an amateur Vancouver writer and producer. Isabelle is the sister of journalist and former child actor Joshua Murray.
Breaking into acting in 1989 with parts in the films Cousins (1989), Cold Front (1989) and The Madonna (1989) episode of MacGyver (1985), Isabelle quickly proved herself as a skilled actress.
In 1992, she played the role of Erica Sanderson in Knight Moves (1992). American audiences took notice of her as Lindsay Clark in the teen thriller Disturbing Behavior (1998).
In 2000, Isabelle landed the lead role in the cult-favorite Ginger Snaps (2000), where her stand-out performance will leave a mark in the minds of viewers.
Continuing her busy career, she portrayed Tia in Bones (2001), Paige Fleming in Turning Paige (2001) and Tanya Francke in Insomnia (2002), opposite Al Pacino.
Throughout the 2000s, Isabelle appeared in several horror and slasher films, including Carrie (2002), Spooky House (2001), Freddy vs. Jason (2003), opposite Robert Englund as well as Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004) and Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004).
She was also in varied independent films, among which Falling Angels (2003), On the Corner (2003), The Last Casino (2004), Everything's Gone Green (2006), the short film Favourite People List (2009), and Frankie & Alice (2010).
Isabelle has guest-starred in numerous popular television series throughout her career, some notable ones being The X-Files (1993), Da Vinci's Inquest (1998), Smallville (2001) and Supernatural (2005).
In 2008, she received the Gemini Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series for her role as Norma Carlyle in the praised TV adaptation The Englishman's Boy (2008).
In 2012, Isabelle starred in the controversial horror film American Mary (2012) which earned her special mention at the Austin Fantastic Fest in addition to a Festival Trophy Award for Best Actress, a Special Award for Best Actress, a Fright Meter Award for Best Actress and a Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Leading Actress.
Followed appearances in 13 Eerie (2013), Torment (2013) and Lawrence & Holloman (2013) for which she obtained a Leo Award nomination for Best Supporting Performance by a Female in a Motion Picture.
She also caught the eye of many with her magnetic portrayal of Margot Verger in the second and third seasons of the critically acclaimed NBC TV series Hannibal (2013).
In 2014, she reunited with American Mary (2012) creators Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska in See No Evil 2 (2014).
In 2015, Isabelle starred in the thriller film 88 (2015) and the horror film The Girl in the Photographs (2015). That year, she could also be seen in the indie film How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town (2015), alongside Jewel Staite, Lauren Lee Smith and Ennis Esmer. - Actress
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Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award-winning actress who rose to fame after her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999), playing the title role in the "Lara Croft" blockbuster movies, as well as Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010) and Maleficent (2014). Off-screen, Jolie has become prominently involved in international charity projects, especially those involving refugees. She often appears on many "most beautiful women" lists, and she has a personal life that is avidly covered by the tabloid press.
Jolie was born Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, California. In her earliest years, Angelina began absorbing the acting craft from her actor parents, Jon Voight, an Oscar-winner, and Marcheline Bertrand, who had studied with Lee Strasberg. Her good looks may derive from her ancestry, which is German and Slovak on her father's side, and French-Canadian, Dutch, Polish, and remote Huron, on her mother's side. At age eleven, Angelina began studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she was seen in several stage productions. She undertook some film studies at New York University and later joined the renowned Met Theatre Group in Los Angeles. At age 16, she took up a career in modeling and appeared in some music videos.
In the mid-1990s, Jolie appeared in various small films where she got good notices, including Hackers (1995) and Foxfire (1996). Her critical acclaim increased when she played strong roles in the made-for-TV movies True Women (1997), and in George Wallace (1997) which won her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination. Jolie's acclaim increased even further when she played the lead role in the HBO production Gia (1998). This was the true life story of supermodel Gia Carangi, a sensitive wild child who was both brazen and needy and who had a difficult time handling professional success and the deaths of people who were close to her. Carangi became involved with drugs and because of her needle-using habits she became, at the tender age of 26, one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS. Jolie's performance in Gia (1998) again garnered a Golden Globe Award and another Emmy nomination, and she additionally earned a SAG Award.
Angelina got a major break in 1999 when she won a leading role in the successful feature The Bone Collector (1999), starring alongside Denzel Washington. In that same year, Jolie gave a tour de force performance in Girl, Interrupted (1999) playing opposite Winona Ryder. The movie was a true story of women who spent time in a psychiatric hospital. Jolie's role was reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), the role which won Nicholson his first Oscar. Unlike "Cuckoo", "Girl" was a small film that received mixed reviews and barely made money at the box office. But when it came time to give out awards, Jolie won the triple crown -- "Girl" propelled her to win the Golden Globe Award, the SAG Award and the Academy Award for best leading actress in a supporting role.
With her newfound prominence, Jolie began to get in-depth attention from the press. Numerous aspects of her controversial personal life became news. At her wedding to her Hackers (1995) co-star Jonny Lee Miller, she had displayed her husband's name on the back of her shirt painted in her own blood. Jolie and Miller divorced, and in 2000, she married her Pushing Tin (1999) co-star Billy Bob Thornton. Jolie had become the fifth wife of a man twenty years her senior. During her marriage to Thornton, the spouses each wore a vial of the other's blood around their necks. That marriage came apart in 2002 and ended in divorce. In addition, Jolie was estranged from her famous father, Jon Voight.
In 2000, Jolie was asked to star in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). At first, she expressed disinterest, but then decided that the required training for the athletic role was intriguing. The eponymous character was drawn from a popular video game. Lara Croft was a female cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. When the movie was released, critics were unimpressed with the final product, but critical acclaim wasn't the point of the movie. The public paid $275 million for theater tickets to see a buffed up Jolie portray the adventuresome Lara Croft. Jolie's father Jon Voight appeared in the movie, and during filming there was a brief rapprochement between father and daughter.
One of the Lara Croft movie's filming locations was Cambodia. While there, Jolie witnessed the natural beauty, culture and poverty of that country. She considered this an eye opening experience, and so began the humanitarian chapter of her life. Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world and came to be formally appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some of her experiences were written and published in her popular book "Notes from My Travels" whose profits go to UNHCR.
Jolie has stated that she now plans to spend most of her time in humanitarian efforts, to be financed by her actress salary. She devotes one third of her income to savings, one third to living expenses and one third to charity. In 2002, Angelina adopted a Cambodian refugee boy named Maddox, and in 2005, adopted an Ethiopian refugee girl named Zahara. Jolie's dramatic feature film Beyond Borders (2003) parallels some of her real life humanitarian experiences although, despite the inclusion of a romance between two westerners, many of the movie's images were too depressingly realistic -- the movie was not popular among critics or at the box office.
In 2004, Jolie began filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) with co-star Brad Pitt. The movie became a major box office success. There were rumors that Pitt and Jolie had an affair while filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jolie insisted that because her mother had been hurt by adultery, she herself could never participate in an affair with a married man, therefore there had been no affair with Pitt at that time. Nonetheless, Pitt separated from his wife Jennifer Aniston in January 2005 and, in the months that followed, he was frequently seen in public with Jolie, apparently as a couple. Pitt's divorce was finalized later in 2005.
Jolie and Pitt announced in early 2006 that they would have a child together, and Jolie gave birth to daughter Shiloh that May. They also adopted a three-year-old Vietnamese boy named Pax. The couple, who married in 2014 and divorced in 2019, continue to pursue movie and humanitarian projects, and now have a total of six children. She was appointed Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George at the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to United Kingdom foreign policy and the campaign to end warzone sexual violence.- Actress
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Carolyn Sue Jones was born in 1930, in Amarillo, Texas, to homemaker Chloe (or Cloe) Jeanette Southern (1906-1979), and Julius Alfred Jones (1897-1979), a barber. Her sister was Bette (later Mrs. Moriarty). Carolyn was an imaginative child, much like her mother; she and her mother shared the same birthday (April 28).
In 1934, her father abandoned the family and her mother moved them in with her own parents, also in Amarillo. As a child, Carolyn suffered from severe asthma. Although she loved movies, she was often too sick to attend, so she listened to her favorites, Danny Kaye and Spike Jones and read as many movie fan magazines as she could. She dreamed of attending the famed Pasadena Playhouse and received many awards at school for speech, poetry, and dramatics. In 1947, she was accepted as a student at the Pasadena Playhouse, and her grandfather agreed to pay for her classes. She worked in summer stock to supplement her income, graduating in 1950.
She gave herself a complete head-to-toe makeover, including painful cosmetic nose surgery to make herself ready for movie roles. Working as an understudy at the Players Ring Theater, she stepped in when the star left to get married. She was seen by a talent scout from Paramount and given a screen test, which went well. She made her first appearance in The Turning Point (1952). She did some other work during her 6-month contract, but when it ended, Paramount, suffering from television's impact, let it lapse. She quipped, "They let me and 16 secretaries go!"
She started working in television but kept busy on stage as well. There, she met a fellow Texan, a young man named Aaron Spelling, and they became a couple. She made a breakthrough in the 3-D movie House of Wax (1953) and garnered excellent reviews. Aaron was still struggling, so he felt he wasn't able to propose to Carolyn; she finally proposed to him. They were married in April 1953. Neither was earning much, but they really enjoyed each other and their life. Many saw them as an ideal couple. She decided against having children as she felt she could not juggle the demands of both a career and a family.
Columbia Pictures saw her and wanted to test her for the part of prostitute Alma Burke in From Here to Eternity (1953), but she got extremely sick with pneumonia and the part went to Donna Reed, nine years older, who won an Academy Award. Jones did, however, achieve success in the science-fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), a subtle allegory of the times (McCarthyism). And the famous filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock cast her in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) opposite James Stewart and Doris Day. Meanwhile, Aaron had little success as an actor and Carolyn pushed him to become a writer, even threatening to leave him. She constantly promoted his scripts whenever she could and he was ultimately hired by Dick Powell. Carolyn, meanwhile, was successful once more in The Bachelor Party (1957) (famous line, "Just say you love me--you don't have to mean it!"). For this role, she surprised cast members by dyeing her hair black and cutting it short. This stunning look served her well for a number of roles. For her eight minutes on screen, she received glowing reviews and was nominated for an Academy Award but lost. However, she did win the Golden Globe Award and the Laurel Award for Marjorie Morningstar (1958). She followed this with an impressive appearance in King Creole (1958), generally regarded as Elvis Presley's best film. She then gave arguably her best performance ever in Career (1959), but the film was not commercially successful. She played a serious role in this, leaving the kooky role she might have played to Shirley MacLaine.
As Aaron's career soared, the marriage started to fail. They separated in October 1963 and amicably divorced in August 1965, with Carolyn asking for no alimony. They remained friends. She worked at various roles including two episodes of Burke's Law (1963) for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. Soon, she got the part for which she will best be remembered, that of Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1964). She spent two years in this role. Her costume was designed to copy the cartoon drawings and no doubt inspired such imitators as Cassandra Peterson (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark). The show went head-to-head with The Munsters (1964) and Bewitched (1964).
The show was a hit and she received all the fame she had craved. However, the network decided to cancel the show, despite its success, after only two years. Typecast as Morticia but without the income that a few more years would have provided, she found life difficult and roles few. While acting on the road, she married her voice coach, Herbert Greene, a well-known and respected Broadway conductor and musical director, and they moved together to Palm Springs, California. After seven years, she left him and returned to Hollywood, determined to try to restart her career. She was surprisingly successful and performed in several shows, including Wonder Woman (1975), where she played Hippolyta, the mother of Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) and Wonder Girl (Debra Winger). She also appeared in the landmark miniseries Roots (1977). She appeared in four episodes of Fantasy Island (1977) and one episode of The Love Boat (1977), two shows produced by her former husband, Aaron Spelling. In 1979, both of Jones's parents died; her mother from pancreatic cancer. She took on the role of Myrna Clegg on the soap Capitol (1982) from 1982 to 1983, despite having been diagnosed with colon cancer in 1981. She underwent aggressive treatment for the cancer, but it returned during her time on the show and she was told it was terminal.
She played some scenes despite being confined to a wheelchair and working in great pain. Knowing time was short, she married her boyfriend of five years, Peter Bailey-Britton, in September 1982. She died on August 3, 1983, aged 53. She had told her sister Bette that she wanted her epitaph to be "She gave joy to the world." She certainly had many friends who loved her greatly, and many fans who enjoyed her wonderful performances.- Actress
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- Casting Department
Catherine Keener is an American actress, Oscar-nominated for her roles in the independent films Being John Malkovich (1999) and Capote (2005). Acclaimed in her community for her quirky roles in independent film and mainstream such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Keener got her start as a casting director in New York City.
Catherine Ann Keener was born in Miami, Florida, and was raised in Hialeah, FL. She is the daughter of Evelyn (Jamiel) and James Keener, who owned an auto shop. She is of Lebanese (mother) and English, Scottish, and German (father) descent. Keener attended Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She began taking acting classes when she was unable to sign up for a photography class. After graduating, Keener managed a McDonalds in New York City before becoming an assistant casting director and soon relocating to Los Angeles.
Not long after, Keener told her superior of her aspirations for acting and she landed a one-worded role as a waitress in About Last Night (1986). Two years later, she landed a role in a film called Survival Quest (1988), where she met her future husband, Dermot Mulroney. After struggling for years in the industry, Keener landed a role in an independent film, opposite the unknown Brad Pitt, in Johnny Suede (1991). Her ascent in independent film began as she starred in Living in Oblivion (1995) and Walking and Talking (1996) before her mainstream break with Being John Malkovich (1999) in 1999, which earned Keener her first Oscar nomination. Since then, Catherine Keener has starred in several critically acclaimed films.- Actress
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Maria Doyle Kennedy was born on 25 September 1964 in Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland. She is an actress and director, known for The Tudors (2007), The Commitments (1991) and Orphan Black (2013). She has been married to Kieran Kennedy since 11 June 1988. They have four children.- Actress
- Producer
Persis Khambatta was born on October 2, 1948 in Bombay, India. When aged 16, as Femina Miss India, she entered Miss Universe 1965, dressed in off-the-rack clothes she bought at the last minute. Khambatta became a model for companies such as Revlon. Her biggest acting break was getting the role of Lieutenant Ilia, the bald Deltan alien in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). This led to roles in Nighthawks (1981), Megaforce (1982) and Warrior of the Lost World (1983). She was considered for the title role in the James Bond film Octopussy (1983), but was passed over in favor of Maud Adams. Khambatta became the first citizen of India to present an Academy Award in 1980. She was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actress for her Star Trek role. Khambatta also made guest appearances in many popular American television series. In the early 1980s, she was seriously injured in a car crash in Germany and had to have heart bypass surgery.
A year before her death, she wrote and published a coffee table book titled "Pride of India" which featured former Miss Indias; it was dedicated to Mother Teresa, and part of the royalties went to the Missionaries of Charity. On August 17, 1998, Persis Khambatta was taken to the Marine Hospital in South Mumbai, complaining of chest pains. She died of a heart attack on August 18, 1998 at the age of 49; her funeral was held in Mumbai.- Actress
- Producer
- Music Department
Elegant Nicole Kidman, known as one of Hollywood's top Australian imports, was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were there on educational visas.
Kidman is the daughter of Janelle Ann (Glenny), a nursing instructor, and Antony David Kidman, a biochemist and clinical psychologist. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Nicole's father pursued his research on breast cancer, and then, three years later, made the pilgrimage back to her parents' native Sydney in Australia, where Nicole was raised. Young Nicole's first love was ballet, but she eventually took up mime and drama as well (her first stage role was a bleating sheep in an elementary school Christmas pageant). In her adolescent years, acting edged out the other arts and became a kind of refuge -- as her classmates sought out fun in the sun, the fair-skinned Kidman retreated to dark rehearsal halls to practice her craft. She worked regularly at the Philip Street Theater, where she once received a personal letter of praise and encouragement from audience member Jane Campion (then a film student). Kidman eventually dropped out of high school to pursue acting full-time. She broke into movies at age 16, landing a role in the Australian holiday favorite Bush Christmas (1983). That appearance touched off a flurry of film and television offers, including a lead in BMX Bandits (1983) and a turn as a schoolgirl-turned-protester in the miniseries Vietnam (1987) (for which she won her first Australian Film Institute Award). With the help of an American agent, she eventually made her US debut opposite Sam Neill in the at-sea thriller Dead Calm (1989).
Kidman's next casting coup scored her more than exposure. While starring as Tom Cruise's doctor/love interest in the racetrack romance Days of Thunder (1990), she won over the Hollywood hunk hook, line and sinker. After a whirlwind courtship (and decent box office returns), the couple wed on December 24, 1990. Determined not to let her new marital status overshadow her fledgling career, the actress pressed on. She appeared as a catty high school senior in the Australian film Flirting (1991), then as Dustin Hoffman's moll in the gangster flick Billy Bathgate (1991). She reunited with Cruise for Far and Away (1992), the story of young Irish lovers who flee to America in the late 1800s, and starred opposite Michael Keaton in the tear-tugger My Life (1993). Despite her steady employment, critics and moviegoers still had not quite warmed to Kidman as a leading lady. She tried to spice up her image by seducing Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (1995), but achieved her real breakthrough with Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995). As a fame-crazed housewife determined to eliminate any obstacle in her path, Kidman proved that she had an impressive range and deadly comic timing. She took home a Golden Globe and several critics' awards for the performance. In 1996, Kidman stepped into a corset to work with her countrywoman and onetime admirer, Jane Campion, on the adaptation of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1996). A few months later, she tore across the screen as a nuclear weapons expert in The Peacemaker (1997), adding "action star" to her professional repertoire.
She and Cruise then disappeared into a notoriously long, secretive shoot for Stanley Kubrick's sexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut (1999). The couple's on-screen shenanigans prompted an increase in public speculation about their sex life (rumors had long been circulating that their marriage was a cover-up for Cruise's rumored homosexuality); tired of denying tabloid attacks, they successfully sued The Star for a story alleging that they needed a sex therapist to coach them through love scenes. Family life has always been a priority for Kidman. Born to social activists (mother was a feminist; father, a labor advocate), Nicole and her little sister, Antonia Kidman, discussed current events around the dinner table and participated in their parents' campaigns by passing out pamphlets on street corners. When her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, 17-year-old Nicole stopped working and took a massage course so that she could provide physical therapy (her mother eventually beat the cancer). She and Cruise adopted two children: Isabella Jane (born 1993) and Connor Antony (born 1995). Despite their rock-solid image, the couple announced in early 2001 that they were separating due to career conflicts. Her marriage to Cruise ended mid-summer of 2001.- Music Artist
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An out-of-wedlock child, Eartha Kitt was born in the cotton fields of South Carolina. Kitt's mother was a sharecropper of African-American and Cherokee Native American descent. Her father's identity is unknown. Given away by her mother, she arrived in Harlem at age nine. At 15, she quit high school to work in a Brooklyn factory. As a teenager, Kitt lived in friends' homes and in the subways. However, by the 1950s, she had sung and danced her way out of poverty and into the spotlight: performing with the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe on a European tour, soloing at a Paris nightclub and becoming the toast of the Continent. Orson Welles called her "the most exciting girl in the world". She also spoke out on hard issues. She took over the role of Catwoman for the third and final season of the television series Batman (1966), replacing Julie Newmar. Eartha Kitt died of colon cancer in her home in Weston, Connecticut, on Christmas Day 2008.- Mariana Klaveno (b. 25th October) is an American actress best known for her role as Lorena in HBO's True Blood. She also starred in the feature film While the Children Sleep (released as The Sitter on DVD) in the role of Abby Read in 2007.
She's guest starred in TV show episodes of Standoff, ER, and others.
She appeared in the HBO Series True Blood, alongside Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, in the fifth episode of season one as the vampire Lorena, who turned Bill Compton into a vampire. Her character became a regular with starring credits in the second half of season two and into season three.
She was nominated along with the starring cast of True Blood for the "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series" at the 16th Annual Screen Actors Guild awards in January 2010.
Mariana Klaveno grew up in Endicott, Washington on the family owned and operated farm, with her three older siblings. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, she pursued her B.A. in theatre at the University of Washington in Seattle. She trained there with Jon Jory, erstwhile Artistic Director of Actor's Theatre of Louisville.
After graduating with honors, Mariana moved to Los Angeles and continued her training with noted acting coach, Cameron Thor.
After a chance meeting with acclaimed Producer\Director J.J.Abrams, he cast Mariana in Alias, her network television debut.
However, it wasn't until her standout guest performance as a modern day Bonnie Parker on Standoff opposite Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt, that people really began to stop and take notice. Guest star roles followed on ER, K-Ville and Laws of Chance.
She also starred in the television movie Final Approach (2007).
For the 2010 LA Shorts Film Festival - held at Laemmle Sunset 5 Theaters on Sunset Blvd - Mariana was one of the judges, along with fellow True Blood co-star Carrie Preston.
Mariana currently resides in Los Angeles. - Producer
- Actress
- Writer
A graduate of New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, Clare earned her BFA in just three years.
While in New York, Clare appeared in numerous stage plays including one turn as Helen Keller in the stage version of "The Miracle Worker", the lead role in "Light Up the Sky" at the acclaimed Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, "Beyond Therapy" at the John Houseman Theater, and "Beginnings" at Circle in the Square. She began appearing in small and bit parts in films like In & Out (1997) and Vig (1998).
Clare first rose to attention as the hard-nosed cheerleader "Courtney" in the blockbuster hit Bring It On (2000) appearing alongside Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku.
Immediately following, Clare was cast in a recurring role as "Glory", the vain hell-goddess on the television hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) which gained Clare additional acclaim as one of Buffy's most popular adversaries.
Clare has worked in both major studio and independent films, the most notable being Roger Avary's feature adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction (2002), as well as the villainous lesbian seductress "Lucy In the Sky" in the film D.E.B.S. (2003). She was also cast in lead roles in The Skulls III (2004), the independent film The Scare Hole (2004), and an amusing small part in LA DJ: The Movie (2004) that she shot with good friend, Thomas Ian Nicholas.
She also appeared on television in a few guest appearances on Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996), The Random Years (2002), and Tru Calling (2003). She continues to work for both stage and movie roles, most recently with the horror flick The Gravedancers (2006).
Clare is also active in various charities dating back to 1992 when she helped the Ohio's Recreation Unlimited and in 1993 when she served as a summer camp counselor at a YMCA camp for children with physical disabilities. During summer months from 1992 to 1997, she taught young adults with development disabilities at the Young Adult Institute in New York. She worked during the summer of 2000 at LA's Camp Laurel and participated in a 2002 bicycle race to raise money for Children International. Also in 2002, Clare rode her bicycle in the annual AIDS Ride, whereas participants ride over a seven day period that takes them from San Francisco to Los Angeles. In 2006, while on a trip to Australia and New Zealand with her husband, film producer Brian R. Keathley, Clare delivered school supplies to the small village of Tufi, Papua New Guinea.
Inspired by her trip to Papua New Guinea, Clare is in the process of launching her own charity (2012), named Giver (named after her two girls Gavin + River). Giver will focus specifically on kids living in impoverished nations. Clare is currently the official spokesperson for Kids 4 Kids, an organization that provides financial aid and toys for kids surviving with cancer.
Clare resides in Sherman Oaks with her husband and four children and has recently begun a career in directing.- Actress
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Alice Maud Krige was born on June 28, 1954 in Upington, South Africa where her father, Dr. Louis Krige, worked as a young physician. The Kriges later moved to Port Elizabeth where Alice grew up in what she describes as a "very happy family", a family that also included two brothers (both of whom became physicians) and her mother, Pat, a clinical psychologist. Interestingly, Alice also grew up without television, something which the actress calls a "huge black hole in my education" (South Africa did not start getting television until 1976, a year after Alice left the country to pursue an acting career in London).
While growing up, she had no dreams or aspirations of pursuing an acting career, in fact as a child she had wanted to become a dancer, but her father disapproved. Instead, she prepared to follow in the footsteps of her mother by attending Rhodes University in Grahamstown where she pursued an undergraduate degree in psychology and literature (graduating in 1975). However, as luck or fate would have it, Alice decided to "take up a bit of timetable" by enrolling in a drama class in order to make use of a free credit. This decision would prove to be a life-altering one, resulting in an honors degree in drama from Rhodes, a move to London and a new career path. As Alice explains, "I really got into it and it took over my life... it became my life-calling, all consuming."
After arriving in England, she began three years of study at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. Her first professional acting performance was a tiny television role in a 1979 BBC Play for Today. In 1980, Alice made her feature film debut as Sybil Gordon in the Academy Award winning Best Picture, Chariots of Fire (1981). She then appeared in the television adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1980), which was followed by her memorable, dual role as the avenging spirit in Ghost Story (1981). Also in 1981, she debuted in a West End theatre production of Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, for which she received the honors of both a Plays and Players Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Newcomer. It was this early success in theatre that she decided to focus her career on next by spending some time working with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company.
During her two seasons with the RSC (1982-83), Alice performed in such productions as "King Lear", "The Tempest", "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Cyrano de Bergerac". After her stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she returned to work in film and television. Her career could best be described as an eclectic mix of both mediums. She appeared in a diverse range of films, such as King David (1985), Barfly (1987), Haunted Summer (1988), Spies Inc. (1992) and See You in the Morning (1989). Her work in television included critically acclaimed miniseries, such as Ellis Island (1984) and Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985), as well as a healthy dose of what Alice herself calls, "kitchen sink dramas".
This eclectic trend continued into the 1990s. In addition to numerous roles in television (including appearances on Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) and Becker (1998), Alice also appeared in the films Sleepwalkers (1992), Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream That One Calls Human Life (1995), Donor Unknown (1995), Amanda (1996), Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997), Habitat (1997), The Commissioner (1998) and Molokai (1999). However, one notable standout was the film Star Trek: First Contact (1996) for which she won a 1997 Saturn Award for her portrayal of the Borg Queen. This is without a doubt the most commercial, mainstream film with which she has been involved. However, due to the amount of make-up and prosthetics that the role required, Alice claims that even today she is still most recognized from her role in Ghost Story (1981).
One obvious and lasting impact of her experience with Star Trek: First Contact has been her initiation into the world of Star Trek/sci-fi conventions. These weekend-long conventions take place all over the United States and Europe (primarily in the United Kingdom and Germany). They feature "guests", such as Alice, who give presentations, sign autographs, etc. The new millennium finds her with several new projects to her credit, which include such works as The Little Vampire (2000), the Star Trek: Voyager (1995) series finale "Endgame", Attila (2001), Dinotopia (2002), Reign of Fire (2002), Children of Dune (2003), The Mystery of Natalie Wood (2004) and a recurring guest role in the HBO series Deadwood (2004). Current projects include a film about the life of Julius Caesar, the horror film Silent Hill (2006), Lonely Hearts (2006) and The Contract (2006). In addition, she continues to make sporadic convention appearances and was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in literature from Rhodes University.
Alice Krige is married to writer/director Paul Schoolman, and lives what she describes as an "itinerant" lifestyle. Although she and her husband maintain a permanent home in the United States, they spend much of their time living and working abroad.- Actress
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Hedy Lamarr, the woman many critics and fans alike regard as the most beautiful ever to appear in films, was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of Gertrud (Lichtwitz), from Budapest, and Emil Kiesler, a banker from Lemberg (now known as Lviv). Her parents were both from Jewish families. Hedwig had a calm childhood, but it was cinema that fascinated her. By the time she was a teenager, she decided to drop out of school and seek fame as an actress, and was a student of theater director Max Reinhardt in Berlin. Her first role was a bit part in the German film Geld auf der Straße (1930) (aka "Money on the Street") in 1930. She was attractive and talented enough to be in three more German productions in 1931, but it would be her fifth film that catapulted her to worldwide fame. In 1932 she appeared in a Czech film called Ekstase (US title: "Ecstasy") and had made the gutsy move to appear nude. It's the story of a young girl who is married to a gentleman much older than she, but she winds up falling in love with a young soldier. The film's nude scenes created a sensation all over the world. The scenes, very tame by today's standards, caused the film to be banned by the U.S. government at the time.
Hedy soon married Fritz Mandl, a munitions manufacturer and a prominent Austrofascist. He attempted to buy up all the prints of "Ecstasy" he could lay his hands on (Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, had a copy but refused to sell it to Mandl), but to no avail (there are prints floating around the world today). The notoriety of the film brought Hollywood to her door. She was brought to the attention of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, who signed her to a contract (a notorious prude when it came to his studio's films, Mayer signed her against his better judgment, but the money he knew her notoriety would bring in to the studio overrode any moral concerns he may have had). However, he insisted she change her name and make good, wholesome films.
Hedy starred in a series of exotic adventure epics. She made her American film debut as Gaby in Algiers (1938). This was followed a year later by Lady of the Tropics (1939). In 1942, she played the plum role of Tondelayo in the classic White Cargo (1942). After World War II, her career began to decline, and MGM decided it would be in the interest of all concerned if her contract were not renewed. Unfortunately for Hedy, she turned down the leads in both Gaslight (1940) and Casablanca (1942), both of which would have cemented her standing in the minds of the American public. In 1949, she starred as Delilah opposite Victor Mature's Samson in Cecil B. DeMille's epic Samson and Delilah (1949). This proved to be Paramount Pictures' then most profitable movie to date, bringing in $12 million in rental from theaters. The film's success led to more parts, but it was not enough to ease her financial crunch. She made only six more films between 1949 and 1957, the last being The Female Animal (1958).
Hedy retired to Florida. She died there, in the city of Casselberry, on January 19, 2000.- Actress
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Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born into an unconventional a family at the turn of the 20th century. Her parents, James "Shamus" Sullivan and Edith "Biddy" Lanchester, were socialists - very active members of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in a rather broad sense - and did not believe in the institution of marriage and being tied to any conventions of legality, for that matter. Her mother had actually been committed to an asylum in 1895 by her father and older brothers because of her unmarried state with James. The incident received worldwide press as the "Lanchester Kidnapping Case."
Elsa had a great desire to become a classical dancer and to that end at age 10 her mother enrolled her at the famed Isadora Duncan's Bellevue School in Paris in 1912. But the uncertainties of WW1 brought her home after only two years. At age 12, she was sent to a co-educational boarding school in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, England, to teach dance classes in exchange for her education and board. In 1918, she was hired as a dance teacher at Margaret Morris's school on the Isle of Wight.
Next to dance, she loved the music halls of the period, so in 1920 she debuted in a music hall act as an Egyptian dancer. About the same time she founded the Children's Theater in Soho, London and taught there for several years. She made her stage debut in 1922 in the West End play "Thirty Minutes in a Street." In 1924 she and her partner, Harold Scott, opened a London nightclub called the Cave of Harmony. They performed one-act plays by Pirandello and Chekhov and sang cabaret songs. She would later collect and record these and many others. The spot was frequented by literati like Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells and also James Whale, working in London theater and soon to be directing on Broadway and Hollywood's most famous horror films. Lanchester kept busy including, on her own admission, posing nude for artists. During a 1926 comic performance in the Midnight Follies at London's Metropole, a member of the British Royal family walked out as she sang, "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father." She closed her nightclub in 1928 as her film career began in earnest.
Perhaps not beautiful in the more conventional sense, Lanchester was certainly pretty as a young woman with a turned-up nose that gave her a pert, impish expression, all the more striking with her large, expressive dark eyes and full lips. She had a lithe figure that she carried with the assuredness of her dancing background. Her voice was bright and distinctive, and had a delightful rush and trill that had an almost Scottish burr quality. What clicked on stage would do the same in the movies.
Her first film appearance was actually in an amateur movie by friend and author Evelyn Waugh called The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama (1925). Her formal film debut was in the British movie One of the Best (1927). She continued stage work and became associated in 1927 with a rather self-possessed but keenly dedicated actor, Charles Laughton. He appeared with her in three of four films Lanchester did in 1928. (Three of these were written for her by H.G. Wells). They did a few plays as well and wed in 1929. According to Lanchester, after two years, she discovered Laughton was homosexual but they remained married until his death in 1962. Lanchester declared in a 1958 interview that she kept to a separate career path from her husband. They appeared together on occasion, moving through 1931 with several smart play-like films including Potiphar's Wife (1931) with Laurence Olivier. She had done the play "Payment Deferred" in London in 1930 and followed it to Broadway in 1931.
MGM offered her a contract in 1932. In 1933 Alexander Korda was casting his The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and decided that Laughton was the perfect choice - and his wife would be just as perfect as one of Henry's six wives. Her versatility pointed to a part with some comedic elements and fitting more into a caricature. She looked most like Hans Holbein's famous portrait of Anne of Cleves (Henry's fourth wife who was actually somewhat more homely than the painter depicted). In costume Lanchester was charming if not striking. Her interpretation of Anne was a perfect integration with herself, and her scene with Laughton informally playing cards on the marriage bed and deciding on annulment is a high point of the movie.
Of course, it would be hard to mention her film career of the 1930s without mentioning the one role that would forever dog her, Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Having come to Hollywood with Laughton in 1932 (but not permanently until 1939), Lanchester did only a few films up to 1935 and was disappointed enough with Hollywood's reception to return to London for a respite. She was quickly called back by an old friend from London, stage and film associate James Whale, now the noted director of Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933). He wanted her for two parts in Bride: author Mary Shelley and the bride. A central joke of the movie build-up was the tag lines: "WHO will be The Bride of Frankenstein? WHO will dare?"
Indeed, it was no honeymoon for her. For some ten days, Lanchester was wrapped in yards of bandage and covered in heavy makeup. The stand-on-end hairdo was accomplished by combing it over a wire mesh cage. Lanchester was in real agony with her eyes kept taped wide open for long takes - and it showed in her looks of horror. Her monster's screaming and hissing sounds (based on the sounds of Regents Park swans in London) were taped and then run backward to spook-up the effect. She was delightfully melodramatic and picturesque as Wollstonecraft, and her bride would become iconic. Many have considered Bride of Frankenstein (1935) the best of the golden age horror movies.
Lanchester stood out in her next movie with Laughton the next year, Korda's dark Rembrandt (1936), but she only did a few more films for the remainder of the decade. Through the 1940s she was doubly busy - a couple of films per year while regenerating her beloved musical revue sketches. She performed for 10 years at the Turnabout Theater in Hollywood, using old London music hall/cabaret songs and others written for her. Later she would have to split her time further doing a similar act at a supper club called The Bar of Music. By the later 1940s she had become rather matronly, and the roles would settle appropriately. But she always lent her sparkle, as with her charming maid Matilda in The Bishop's Wife (1947). She would be nominated for best supporting actress in Come to the Stable (1949).
She entered the 1950s busy with road touring of her nightclub act with pianist J. Raymond Henderson (who went by "Ray" and who is sometimes confused with popular songwriter Ray Henderson). There was a series of tours to complement Laughton's famous reading tours, called Elsa Lanchester's Private Music Hall which ended in 1952; Elsa Lanchester--Herself which ended in 1961; and once more in 1964 at the Ivar Theater. She was equally busy with a stock of film roles and a large share of TV playhouse theater. She made ten movies with Laughton, the last of which, Witness for the Prosecution (1957) garnered her second supporting actress nomination. But her dizzy Aunt Queenie Holroyd of Bell Book and Candle (1958) is a fond remembrance of that time.
With the two decades from the 1960s to early 1980s, Lanchester was a fixture on episodic TV and an institution in Disney and G-rated fare - perhaps a bit ironic for the unconventional Lanchester. She wrote two autobiographies: "Charles Laughton and I" (1938) and "Elsa Lanchester: Herself" (1983), both recalling her nearly 100 roles before the camera. Lanchester remained humorously reflective in regard to her film career, describing it as "...large parts in lousy pictures and small parts in big pictures." It was the mix of silly, bawdy, and outrageous in her revues that was her great joy: "I was content because I was fully aware that I did not like straight acting but preferred performing direct to an audience. You might call what I do vaudeville. Making a joke, especially impromptu, and getting a big laugh is just plain heaven."- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Juliet Landau is an actress, director, producer and writer. As an actress, highlights include her role as "Drusilla" on Joss Whedon 's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) & spin-off Angel (1999), and co-starring in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994) as "Loretta King". She played the recurring role of Rita Tedesco on Amazon's number one series, Bosch (2014) in season 5. She's recurring as "Cordelia" on TNT's Claws (2017) .
Juliet just helmed her visionary feature film directorial debut, A Place Among the Dead (2020). Modern Films is distributing it worldwide. Release date is Nov, 9th, 2020. Starring Juliet Landau with Gary Oldman, Ron Perlman, Robert Patrick, Lance Henriksen, Joss Whedon and Anne Rice (appearing for the first time ever in a movie).
Also in the works and partially completed is The Undead Series (2016). Think Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012)... This is Vampires in Coffins Getting Blood!... The only series ever to gather the A-list of the genre together. Every one of the talented artists in A Place Among the Dead (2020) came back to participate in her series, as did Tim Burton, Willem Dafoe and many other notables.
Other acting work includes starring opposite Whoopi Goldberg in Theodore Rex (1995) as well as starring in over 20 other films, appearing in many more, guest-starring frequently on television, extensive voiceover work in features, tv, video games and garnering rave reviews for her roles in the theater.
Juliet's previous directorial efforts include two short subjects. Take Flight: Gary Oldman Directs Chutzpah (2009). explored Gary Oldman's creative process and was produced by Gary. Dream Out Loud featured interviews with Guillermo del Toro, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rian Johnson. Both projects were produced with her husband Deverill Weekes, under the Miss Juliet Productions banner.
Landau co-wrote two issues of the Angel (1999) comic book for IDW Publishing . She is now penning the companion coffee table book to The Undead Series (2016) called Book Of The Undead.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Jessica Lange was born in 1949, in Cloquet, Minnesota, USA, where her father worked as a traveling salesman. She obtained a scholarship to study art at the University of Minnesota, but instead went to Paris to study drama. She moved to New York, working as a model, until producer Dino De Laurentiis cast her as the female lead in King Kong (1976). The film attracted much unfavorable comment and, as a result, Lange was off the screen for three years. She was given a small but showy part in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979), before giving a memorable performance in Bob Rafelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), as an adulterous waitress. The following year, she won rave reviews for her exceptional portrayal of actress Frances Farmer in Frances (1982) and a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her work in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie (1982) (as a beautiful soap-opera actress). She was also outstanding as country singer Patsy Cline in Karel Reisz's Sweet Dreams (1985) and as a lawyer who defends her father and discovers his past in Music Box (1989). Other important films include Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991) (as a frightened housewife) and Tony Richardson's Blue Sky (1994), for which she won a Best Actress Academy Award as the mentally unbalanced wife of a military officer. She made her Broadway debut in 1992, playing "Blanche" in Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire".- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 into a prominent family of the upper middle class living in the Regent's Park neighborhood of London. Her father was socialist politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a member of both the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party. Edgar served as Honorary Treasurer of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (term 1915), and Mayor of Poplar (term 1924-1925). He was the second Communist mayor in British history, the first being Joe Vaughan (1878-1938). Lansbury's mother was Irish film actress Moyna Macgill (1895-1975), originally from Belfast. During the first five years of Angela's life, the Lansbury family lived in a flat located in Poplar. In 1930, they moved to a house located in the Mill Hill neighborhood of north London. They spend their weekends vacationing in a farm located in Berrick Salome, a village in South Oxfordshire.
In 1935, Edgar Lansbury died from stomach cancer. Angela reportedly retreated into "playing characters", as a coping mechanism to deal with the loss. The widowed Moyna Macgill soon became engaged to Leckie Forbes, a Scottish colonel. Moyna moved into his house in Hampstead.
From 1934 to 1939, Angela was a student at South Hampstead High School. During these years, she became interested in films.. She regularly visited the local cinema, and imagined herself in various roles. Angela learned how to play the piano, and received a musical education at the Ritman School of Dancing.
In 1940, Lansbury started her acting education at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, located in Kensington, West London. She made her theatrical debut in the school's production of the play "Mary of Scotland" (1933) by Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959). The play depicted the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, reigned 1542-1567), and Lansbury played one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting.
Also in 1940, Lansbury's paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, died from stomach cancer. When the Blitz started, Moyna Macgill had reasons to fear for the safety of her family and few remaining ties to England. Macgill moved to the United States to escape the Blitz, taking her three youngest children with her. Isolde was already a married adult, and was left behind in England.
Macgill secured financial sponsorship from American businessman Charles T. Smith. She and her children (including Angela) moved into Smith's house in Mahopac, New York, a hamlet in Putnam County. Lansbury was interested in continuing her studies, and secured a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing. From 1940 to 1942, Lansbury studied acting at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art, located in New York City. She appeared in performances organized by the school.
In 1942, Lansbury moved with her family to a flat located in Morton Street, Greenwich Village. She soon followed her mother in her theatrical tour of Canada. Lansbury secured her first paying job in Montreal, singing at the nightclub Samovar Club for a payment of 60 dollars per week. Lansbury was 16 years old at the time, but lied about her age and claimed to be 19 in order to be hired.
Lansbury returned to New York City in August, 1942, but Moyna Macgill soon moved herself and her family again. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Moyna was interested in resurrecting her film career. Their first home there was a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills.
Lansbury helped financially support her family by working for the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. Her weekly wages were only 28 dollars, but she had a secure income while her mother was unemployed. Through her mother, Lansbury was introduced to screenwriter John Van Druten (1901-1957), who had recently completed his script of "Gaslight" (1944). He suggested that young Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, the film's conniving cockney maid. This helped secure Lansbury's first film role at the age of 17, and a seven-year contract with the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She earned 500 dollars per week, and chose to continue using her own name instead of a stage name.
In 1945, Lansbury married actor Richard Cromwell (1910-1960), who was 15 years older than she. The troubled marriage ended in a divorce in 1946. The former spouses remained friends until Cromwell's death.
In 1946, Lansbury started a romantic relationship with aspiring actor Peter Shaw (1918-2003), who was 7 years older than her. Shaw had recently ended his relationship with actress Joan Crawford (c. 1908-1977). The new couple started living together, while planning marriage. They wanted to be married in the United Kingdom, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. They were married in 1949, in a Church of Scotland ceremony at St. Columba's Church, located in Knightsbridge, London. After their return to the United States, they settled into Lansbury's home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu. In 1951, both Lansbury and Shaw became naturalized citizens of the United States, while retaining their British citizenship.
Meanwhile, Lansbury continued appearing in MGM films. She appeared in 11 MGM films between 1945 and 1952. MGM at times loaned Lansbury to other film studios. She appeared in United Artists' "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" (1947), and Paramount Pictures' "Samson and Delilah" (1949). In 1948, Lansbury made her debut in radio roles, followed by her television debut in 1950.
In 1952, Lansbury requested the termination of her contract with MGM, instead of its renewal. She felt unsatisfied with her film career as an MGM contract player. She then joined the East Coast touring productions of two former Broadway plays. By 1953, Lansbury had two children of her own and was also raising a stepson. She and her family moved into a larger house, located on San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica. In 1959, she and her family moved into a house in Malibu. The married couple were able to send their children to a local public school.
Meanwhile she continued her film career as a freelance actress, but continued to be cast in middle-aged roles. She regained her A-picture actress through well-received roles in the drama film "The Long, Hot Summer" (1958) and the comedy film "The Reluctant Debutante" (1958). She also appeared regularly in television roles, and became a regular on game show "Pantomime Quiz" (1947-1959).
In 1957, Lansbury made her Broadway debut in a performance of "Hotel Paradiso". The play was an adaptation of the 1894 "L'Hôtel du libre échange" ("Free Exchange Hotel"), written by Maurice Desvallières (1857-1926) and Georges Feydeau (1862-1921). Lansbury's role as "Marcel Cat" was critically well received. She continued appearing in Broadway over the next several years, most notably cast as the verbally abusive mother in "A Taste of Honey". She was cast as the mother of co-star Joan Plowright (1929-), who was only four years younger.
In the early 1960s, Lansbury was cast as an overbearing mother in "Blue Hawaii" (1961). The role of her son was played by Elvis Presley (1935-1977), who was only 10 years than her. The film was a box office hit, it finished as the 10th-top-grossing film of 1961 and 14th for 1962 on the "Variety" national box office survey. It gained Lansbury renewed fame, at a difficult point of her career.
Lansbury gained critical praise for a sympathetic role in the drama film "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960), and the role of a manipulative mother in the drama film "All Fall Down" (1962). Based on her success in "All Fall Down", she was cast in a similar role in the Cold War-themed thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). She was cast as Eleanor Iselin, the mother of her co-star Laurence Harvey (1928-1973), who was only 3 years younger than she. This turned out to be one of the most memorable roles in her career. She received critical acclaim and was nominated for a third time for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Patty Duke (1946-2016).
Lansbury made a comeback in the starring role of Mame Dennis in the musical "Mame" (1966), by Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert Edwin Lee (1918-1994). The play was an adaptation of the novel "Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade" (1955) by Patrick Dennis (1921-1976), and focused on the life and ideas of eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis. The musical received critical and popular praise, and Lansbury won her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury gained significant fame from her success, becoming a "superstar".
Her newfound fame led to other high-profile appearances by Lansbury. She starred in a musical performance at the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted the 1968 Tony Awards. The Hasty Pudding Club, a social club for Harvard students. elected her "Woman of the Year" in 1968.
Lansbury's next theatrical success was in 1969 "The Madwoman of Chaillot" (1945) by Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944). The play concerns an eccentric Parisian woman's struggles with authority figures. Lansbury was cast in the starring role of 75-year-old Countess Aurelia, despite her actual age of 44. The show was well received and lasted for 132 performances. Lansbury won her second Tony Award for this role.
In 1970, Lansbury's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. Lansbury and her husband decided to buy Knockmourne Glebe, an 1820s Irish farmhouse, located near the village of Conna in rural County Cork.
Her film career reached a new height. She was cast in the starring role of benevolent witch Eglantine Price in Disney's fantasy film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971). The film was a box-office hit; it was critically well received, and introduced Lansbury to a wider audience of children and families.
In 1972, Lansbury returned to the British stage, performing in London's West End with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1973, Lansbury appeared in the role of Rose in London performances of the musical "Gypsy" (1959) by Arthur Laurents. It was quite successful. In 1974, "Gypsy" went on tour in the United States. with the same cast. For her role, Lanbury won the Sarah Siddons Award and her third Tony Award. The musical had its second tour in 1975.
Tired from musicals. Lansbury next sought Shakespearean roles in the United Kingdom. From 1975 to 1976, she appeared as Queen Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of Hamlet. In November 1975, Lansbury's mother Moyna Macgill died at the age of 79. Lansbury arranged for her mother's remains to be cremated, and the ashes scattered near her own County Cork home.
In 1976, Lansbury returned to the American stage. In 1978, Lansbury temporarily replaced Constance Towers (1933-) in the starring role of Anna Leonowens (1831-1915) in The King and I. While Towers was on a break from the role, Lansbury appeared in 24 performances.
In 1978, Lansbury appeared in her first film role in seven years, as the novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in the mystery film "Death on the Nile" (1978). The film was an adaptation of the 1937 novel by Agatha Christie (1890-1976); Otterbourne was loosely based on real-life novelist Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). The film was a modest box-office hit, and Lansbury befriended her co-star Bette Davis (1908-1989).
In 1979, Lansbury was cast in the role of meat pie seller Mrs. Lovett in the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (1979), by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler (1912-1987). The musical was loosely based on the penny dreadful serial novel "The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance" (1846-1847), which first depicted fictional serial killer Sweeney Todd. Lansbury remained in the role for 14 months, and was then replaced by Dorothy Loudon (1925-2003). Lansbury won her fourth Tony Award for this role. She returned to the role for 10 months in 1980.
Lansbury's next prominent film role was that of Miss Froy in "The Lady Vanishes" (1979), a remake of the 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). She was next cast in the role of amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple in the mystery film "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980), an adaptation of the novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" (1962) by Agatha Christie. The novel was loosely inspired by the life of Gene Tierney (1920-1991). The film was a modest commercial success. There were plans for at least two sequels, but they ended in development hell.
In 1982, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, She appeared at the time in the new play "A Little Family Business" and a revival of "Mame", but both shows were commercial failures. In film, Lansbury voiced the witch Mommy Fortuna in the animated fantasy film "The Last Unicorn" (1982). The film was critically well received, but was not a box-office hit.
Lansbury played Ruth in the musical comedy "The Pirates of Penzance" (1983), a film adaptation of the 1879 comic opera by William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). The film was a box office bomb, earning about 695,000 dollars.
Lansbury's next film role was that of Granny in the gothic fantasy film "The Company of Wolves" (1984), based on a 1979 short story by Angela Carter (1940-1992). Lansbury was cast as the grandmother of protagonist Rosaleen (played by Sarah Patterson), in a tale featuring werewolves and shape-shifting. The film was critically well received, but barely broke even at the box office.
At about that time, Lansbury appeared regularly in television films and mini-series. Her most prominent television role was that of Jessica Fletcher in the detective series "Murder, She Wrote" (1984-1996). Jessica was depicted as a successful mystery novelist from Maine who encounters and solves many murders. The character was considered an American counterpart to Miss Marple. The series followed the "whodunit" format and mostly avoided depictions of violence or gore.
The series was considered a television landmark for having an older female character as the protagonist. It was aimed primarily at middle-aged audiences, but also attracted both younger viewers and senior citizen viewers. Ratings remained high for most of its run. Lansbury rejected pressure from network executives to put her character in a relationship, as she believed that Fletcher should remain a strong single female.
In 1989, Lansbury co-founded the production company Corymore Productions, which started co-producing the television series with Universal Television. This allowed Lansbury to have more creative input on the series. She was appointed an executive producer. By the time the series ended in 1996, it tied with the original "Hawaii Five-O" (1968-1980) as the longest-running detective drama series in television history.
Her popularity from "Murder, She Wrote" made Lansbury a much-sought figure for advertisers. She appeared in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company.
Lansbury's highest-profile film role in decades was voicing the character of singing teapot Mrs. Potts in Disney's animated fantasy film "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). Lansbury performed the film's title song, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Lansbury lived most of the year in California. In 1991, she had Corymore House, a farmhouse at Ballywilliam, County Cork, built as her new family home. She spend Christmases and summers there.
Following the end of "Murder, She Wrote", Lansbury returned to a career as a theatrical actress. She temporarily retired from the stage in 2001, to take care of her husband Peter Shaw, whose health was failing. Shaw died in 2003, from congestive heart failure at the couple's Brentwood, California home. Their marriage had lasted for 54 years (1949-2003).
Lansbury felt at the time that she could not take on any more major acting roles, but that she could still make cameos. She moved back to New York City in 2006, buying a condominium in Manhattan. Her first prominent film role in years was that of Aunt Adelaide in the fantasy film "Nanny McPhee" (2005). She credits her performance in the film with pulling her out of depression, a state of mind which had lasted since her husband's death.
Lansbury returned to performing on the Broadway stage in 2007, after an absence of 23 years. In 2009, she won her fifth Tony Award. She shared the record for most Tony Award victories with Julie Harris (1925-2013). In the 2010s, she continued regularly appearing in theatrical performances. In 2014, she returned to the London stage, after an absence of nearly 40 years.
In 2015, Lansbury received her first Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress. At age 89, she was among the oldest first-time winners. Also in 2015, November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
In 2017, she was cast as Aunt March in the mini-series "Little Women". The mini-series was an adaptation of the 1868-1869 novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). The series lasted for 3 episodes, and was critically well received.
In 2018, Lansbury gained her next film role in Disney's fantasy film "Mary Poppins Returns" (2018), a sequel to "Mary Poppins". Lansbury was cast in the role of the Balloon Lady, a kindly old woman who sells balloons at the park. The films was a commercial hit, earning about 350 million dollars at the worldwide box office.
In 2019, Lansbury performed at a one-night benefit staging of Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). a farce satirizing Victorian morals. She was cast in the role of society lady Lady Bracknell, mother to Gwendolen Fairfax.
By 2020, Lansbury was 95 years old, one of the oldest-living actresses. She has never retired from acting, and remains a popular icon.- Actress
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Piper Laurie was a three-time Oscar nominee, nominated by BAFTA as well as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for best performance by an actress in 'The Hustler' with Paul Newman.
Laurie was born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, to Charlotte Sadie (Alperin) and Alfred Jacobs, a furniture dealer. She had an elder sister. Her family was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent.
Young Rosetta had been studying acting with Benno and Betomi Schnider for three years when she auditioned for Universal Studios, who signed her to a long term contract and was renamed Piper Laurie. She made more than twenty films, appearing opposite such actors as Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson and Tyrone Power.
Disgusted with the lack of serious roles, Laurie finally broke her lucrative Hollywood contract, moved to New York, lived on a budget, worked on live television and theater, and within two years changed her life and her career.
She stopped working for fifteen years after 'The Hustler' to devote her energies to the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, feeling acting was less important. When she accepted work again she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for 'Carrie' with Sissy Spacek, and again as Best Supporting Actress in 'Children of a Lesser God' with Marlee Matlin. She won the Golden Globe for her role in the David Lynch cult favorite 'Twin Peaks' and was nominated for an Emmy for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in 'Twin Peaks'.
She was nominated a total of twelve times for the Emmy, including one for the original and celebrated live broadcast of 'The Days of Wine and Roses' with Cliff Robertson, directed by John Frankenheimer, as well as for her comedic performance in 'Frasier'. She won an Emmy for her performance in 'Promise' opposite James Woods and James Garner. She was Harvard's Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, and she also received an SFECA award for her performance as Dolly in the film 'The Grass Harp'.
In 2010, she played an elderly grandma who learns to smoke a bong in the feature film 'Hesher', with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Natalie Portman. Most recently she appeared as Grandma Hershe in White Boy Rick, starring Matthew McConaughey, and as Rose Muller in 'Snapshots', directed by Melanie Mayron. In 2013, she made her musical stage debut in 'A Little Night Music' as Madame Armfeldt.
Laurie performed on Broadway in the Tony-nominated Lincoln Center production of 'Mornings at Seven' directed by Dan Sullivan at the Lyceum Theatre. She also appeared on Broadway in the 20th Anniversary production of 'The Glass Menagerie', in which she played Laura Wingfield, with Maureen Stapleton (only 7 years older) as her mother, Amanda, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.
Off-Broadway, she appeared in Molly Kazan's 'Rosemary and the Alligators' and in Larry Kramer's 'The Destiny of Me'. She toured in a one-person play about Zelda Fitzgerald, written by Bill Luce. In 2010 she directed Jim Brochu in his one-man show 'Zero Hour', for which he received the Drama Desk Award for best solo performance on or off Broadway, playing Zero Mostel.
Laurie was divorced from Wall Street Journal's movie critic, Pulitzer Prize-winner Joe Morgenstern. They had a daughter. Laurie's autobiography, Learning to Live Out Loud, was published by Crown in 2011 to rave reviews and is now available as an audio book on audible.com.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Rachelle Lefevre was born in Canada. While waiting tables, Lefevre was discovered by a Canadian film producer who, in turn, helped the aspiring actress land her first acting gig. Lefevre then moved to Los Angeles and earned a recurring role on the television show What About Brian (2006). When Lefevre was working at a Montreal sushi restaurant as a teen, a regular customer heard about her acting aspirations and put her in touch with a casting director. This eventually led to a role on a Canadian sitcom.
She appeared on several episodes of David E. Kelley's Boston Legal (2004), which led to a lead role in his 2008 U.S. adaptation of BBC hit Life on Mars (2008).
Her father's family is French, though Lefevre grew up speaking mostly English; she eventually moved to Los Angeles in 2004 due to a lack of English-speaking parts in Montreal.
Landed her biggest film role to date in Catherine Hardwicke's adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, the first in a series of popular teen novels about vampires.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Jennifer Jason Leigh was born Jennifer Lee Morrow in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of writer Barbara Turner and actor Vic Morrow. Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother was of Austrian Jewish ancestry. She is the sister of Carrie Ann Morrow and half-sister of actress Mina Badie.
Jennifer's parents divorced when she was two. Jennifer worked in her first film at the age of nine, in a nonspeaking role for the film Death of a Stranger (1973). At 14 she attended summer acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg and later landed a role in the Disney TV movie The Young Runaways (1978). She received her Screen Actors Guild membership for an episode of the TV series Baretta (1975) when she was 16. Jennifer performed in several TV movies and dropped out of Pacific Palisades High School six weeks short of graduation for her major role in the film Eyes of a Stranger (1981). Her first major success came as the female lead in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).
Jennifer was married to writer/director Noah Baumbach from 2005 to 2013, and the two have a son.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lotte Lenya was a Tony Award-winning and Academy award-nominated actress and singer. While best remembered in the U.S. for her supporting role as Rosa Klebb in the classic Bond film From Russia with Love (1963), she is celebrated in Germany for her ground-breaking performances in the plays of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht and her recordings of songs from those works.
She was born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blaumauer on October 18, 1898, in Vienna, Austria (at that time Austro-Hungarian Empire), into a working class family. Young Lenya was fond of dancing. In 1914 she moved to Zurich, Switzerland. There she began using her stage name, Lotte Lenya. In Swizerland she studied classical dance, singing and acting and made her stage debut at the Schauspielhaus. In 1921 she moved to Berlin and blended in the city's cosmopolitan cultural milieu. In 1924 she met composer Kurt Weill, and they married in 1926. She performed in several productions of 'The Threepenny Opera', which became an important step in her acting career.
In 1933, with the rise of Nazism in Germany, Lotte Lenya escaped from the country. At the same time, being stressed by the circumstances of life, she divorced from Kurt Weil, to be reunited with him two years later. In 1935 both emigrated to the United States and remarried in 1937. After Kurt Weill's death, she dedicated her efforts to keeping Weill's music played in numerous productions worldwide. In 1957 she won a Tony award for her role as Jenny, performed in English, in a Broadway production of 'The Threepenny Opera'.
Lotte Lenya shot to international fame with her portrayal of Contessa Magda Terbilli-Gozales, Vivien Leigh's friend in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961). The role brought Lenya an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. She gained additional fame after she appeared as Rosa Klebb, former head of operations for SMERSH/KGB, and now a sadistic Spectre agent with poisonous knife in her shoe, in From Russia with Love (1963). She died of cancer on November 27, 1981, in New York. She is entombed with Kurt Weill in a mausoleum, in Mount Repose Cemetery, in Haverstraw, New York, USA.- Actress
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Juliette Lewis has been recognized as one of Hollywood's most talented and versatile actors of her generation since she first stunned audiences and critics alike with her Oscar-nominated performance as "Danielle Bowden" in Cape Fear (1991). To date, she has worked with some of the most revered directors in the industry, including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Lasse Hallström, Oliver Stone, and Garry Marshall. Whether lending dramatic authenticity or a natural comedic flair to her roles, Lewis graces the screen with remarkable range and an original and captivating style.
Lewis was born in Los Angeles, Californa, to Glenis (Duggan) Batley, a graphic designer, and Geoffrey Lewis, an actor. By the age of six, she knew she wanted to be a performer. At twelve, Lewis landed her first leading role in the Showtime miniseries Home Fires (1987). After appearing in several TV sitcoms including The Wonder Years (1988), she made her move to film, starring with Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) and with Jennifer Jason Leigh in the drama Crooked Hearts (1991). At 16, Lewis starred opposite Brad Pitt in the critically acclaimed television movie Too Young to Die? (1990), catching the attention of Martin Scorsese, who cast her in his thriller Cape Fear (1991). Her powerful scenes with Robert De Niro captured the quiet complexities of adolescence and earned her an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe nomination for "Best Supporting Actress". Her auditorium scene with De Niro went down in movie history as one of cinema's classic scenes.
Lewis next worked with Woody Allen in Husbands and Wives (1992), playing a self-assured college coed with a penchant for older men and, particularly, her married professor. She quickly followed suit with a succession of starring roles in a variety of blockbusters and critically acclaimed projects including Kalifornia (1993), Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), and Natural Born Killers (1994), Oliver Stone's controversial media satire about two mass murderers who become legendary folk heroes. Lewis's other credits include the Nora Ephron comedy Mixed Nuts (1994), with Steve Martin and Adam Sandler; the sci-fi action film Strange Days (1995) with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett; Quentin Tarantino's vampire tale From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) with George Clooney; The Evening Star (1996) with Shirley MacLaine; the Garry Marshall-directed The Other Sister (1999), and Todd Phillips' Old School (2003), co-starring opposite Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell as well as Starsky & Hutch (2004). In addition to her film career, Lewis has continued to add roles to her growing list of television credits with a performance in Showtime's My Louisiana Sky (2001), for which she secured an EMMY nomination, and a starring role in the Mira Nair-directed HBO's film Hysterical Blindness (2002), alongside Uma Thurman and Gena Rowlands.
After a six-year hiatus from film to pursue her burgeoning music career exclusively, Lewis announced her return to acting with a handful of upcoming movies. Juliette starred alongside Elliot Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig and Jimmy Fallon in the comedy Whip It (2009). The film was released by Fox Searchlight on October 2nd, 2009. Directed by Drew Barrymore, the film tells the story of an ex-beauty pageant contestant that leaves her crowns behind after joining a roller derby team. Lewis plays "Iron Maven", the star of a top derby team. Next, she joined the cast of the acclaimed European animated thriller Metropia (2009), as the voice of "Nina". She also appeared in the romantic comedy The Switch (2010), opposite Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, and Patrick Wilson. The film tells the story of a single mother (Aniston) who decides to have a child using a sperm donor. Juliette plays "Debbie Epstein", the best friend of Aniston's character. Lewis also appears in Sympathy for Delicious (2010), Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut. The film follows a paralyzed DJ, struggling to survive on the streets of LA who turns to faith healing and mysteriously develops the ability to cure the sick. Juliette plays "Ariel", costarring alongside Orlando Bloom, Mark Ruffalo, and Laura Linney. The film took home the US Dramatic Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Most recently, Juliette Lewis appears in the indie-drama Conviction (2010), which stars Hilary Swank, Melissa Leo, Minnie Driver, and Sam Rockwell. She plays "Roseanna Perry" in the true story of an unemployed single mother (Swank) who saw her brother begin serving a life sentence in 1983 for murder and robbery. The role has won Lewis praise from audiences and critics, alike, for her performance, with USA Today saying, "Juliette Lewis has an indelible role" and the San Francisco Chronicle saying "Her character work should be studied in schools. Just remarkable". In addition to Conviction (2010), Lewis also makes a cameo in Todd Phillips's comedy, Due Date (2010), starring Robert Downey Jr., Michelle Monaghan, and Zach Galifianakis.
Beginning in 2004, Juliette took a hiatus from acting to embark on a musical journey. After six years, two full length albums and countless high profile tours and festival gigs with her band, 'Juliette & the Licks', Juliette set out on a solo career. Releasing "Terra Incognita" last fall, the album has taken her all across the world from Europe to Japan to Turkey, Australia, North America and Canada. For more information on Juliette Lewis' music, please visit her MySpace page. Juliette Lewis resides in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Born to immigrants in New York City, Lucy Liu has always tried to balance an interest in her cultural heritage with a desire to move beyond a strictly Asian-American experience. Her mother, Cecilia, a biochemist, is from Beijing & her father, Tom Liu, a civil engineer, is from Shanghai. Once relegated to "ethnic" parts, the energetic actress is finally earning her stripes as an across-the-board leading lady.
She graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1986 & enrolled in NYU. However, she was discouraged by the dark and sarcastic atmosphere, so she transferred to the University of Michigan after her freshman year. She graduated w/ a degree in Asian Languages & Cultures, managing to squeeze in some additional training in dance, voice, fine arts & acting. During her senior year, she auditioned for a small part in a production of Alice in Wonderland and walked away with the lead. Encouraged by the experience, she decided to take the plunge into professional acting. She moved to L.A., splitting her time between auditions & food service day jobs. She eventually scored a guest appearance as a waitress on Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990). That performance led to more walk-on parts in shows like NYPD Blue (1993), ER (1994) & The X-Files (1993). In 1996, she was cast as an ambitious college student on Rhea Perlman's ephemeral sitcom Pearl (1996).
She first appeared on the big screen as an ex-girlfriend in Jerry Maguire (1996) (she had previously filmed a scene in the indie Bang (1995), but it was shelved for 2 years). She then waded through a series of supporting parts in small films before landing her big break on Ally McBeal (1997). She initially auditioned for the role of Nelle Porter, which went to Portia de Rossi. However, writer-producer David E. Kelley was so impressed w/ her that he promised to write a part for her in an upcoming episode. The part turned out to be that of growling, ill-tempered lawyer Ling Woo, which she filled w/ such aplomb that she was signed on as a regular cast member.
The "Ally" win gave her film career a much-needed boost-in 1999, she was cast as a dominatrix in the Mel Gibson action flick Payback (1999) & as a hitchhiker in the ill-received boxing saga Play It to the Bone (1999). The following year brought even larger roles: first as the kidnapped Princess Pei Pei in Jackie Chan's western Shanghai Noon (2000), then as one-third of the comely crime-fighting trio in Charlie's Angels (2000).
When she's not hissing at clients or throwing well-coiffed punches, she keeps busy w/ an eclectic mix of off-screen hobbies. She practices the martial art of Kali-Eskrima-Silat (knife-and-stick fighting), skis, rock climbs, rides horses &plays the accordion. In 1993, she exhibited a collection of multimedia art pieces at the Cast Iron Gallery in SoHo (New York), after which she won a grant to study & create art in China. Her hectic schedule doesn't leave much time for romantic intrigue, but she says she prefers to keep that side of her life uncluttered.- Actress
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Ida was born in London to a show business family. In 1932, her mother took Ida with her to an audition and Ida got the part her mother wanted. The picture was Her First Affaire (1932). Ida, a bleached blonde, went to Hollywood in 1934 playing small, insignificant parts. Peter Ibbetson (1935) was one of her few noteworthy movies and it was not until The Light That Failed (1939) that she got a chance to get better parts. In most of her movies, she was cast as the hard, but sympathetic woman from the wrong side of the tracks. In The Sea Wolf (1941) and High Sierra (1940), she played the part magnificently. It has been said that no one could do hard-luck dames the way Lupino could do them. She played tough, knowing characters who held their own against some of the biggest leading men of the day - Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Colman, John Garfield and Edward G. Robinson. She made a handful of films during the forties playing different characters ranging from Pillow to Post (1945), where she played a traveling saleswoman to the tough nightclub singer in The Man I Love (1946). But good roles for women were hard to get and there were many young actresses and established stars competing for those roles. She left Warner Brothers in 1947 and became a freelance actress. When better roles did not materialize, Ida stepped behind the camera as a director, writer and producer. Her first directing job came when director Elmer Clifton fell ill on a script that she co-wrote Not Wanted (1949). Ida had joked that as an actress, she was the poor man's Bette Davis. Now, she said that as a director, she became the poor man's Don Siegel. The films that she wrote, or directed, or appeared in during the fifties were mostly inexpensive melodramas. She later turned to television where she directed episodes in shows such as The Untouchables (1959) and The Fugitive (1963). In the seventies, she made guest appearances on various television show and appeared in small parts in a few movies.- Nancy Marchand's mother, a pianist, sent her shy daughter to acting classes in hopes of breaking her out of her shell. As a student at Carnegie Tech (Carnegie Mellon University), she studied the works of William Shakespeare and the other great playwrights and, upon graduation, set off for New York City. She received acclaim in the part of the tavern hostess in Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" at the City Center in 1951. Her list of theater works include "The Cocktail Hour" and "The Balcony" (an Obie for both), "White Lies and Black Comedy" (Tony nominations for both), "The Octette Bridge Club" and "Morning's at Seven". She worked at many of the great theaters in the United States, including the Brattle Theatre, Long Wharf, Lincoln Center Repertory Company and the Goodman Theatre. During her illustrious theater career, she won the role of Mrs. Pynchon in the TV series Lou Grant (1977) with Ed Asner, for which she won four Emmys. Her last accolade was her role as Livia Soprano in HBO's The Sopranos (1999), for which she won a Golden Globe.
- Margo Martindale was born July 18, 1951 in Jacksonville, Texas, to Margaret (Pruitt) and William Everett Martindale, a lumber company owner and dog handler. She is the youngest of three children, and the only daughter. Margo attended Lon Marris College, and later transferred to University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and did a summer study at Harvard University. She made her film debut appearance in Days of Thunder (1990), she played the minor role of Donna. Notable roles include: Sister Colleen, Susan Sarandon's fellow nun in Dead Man Walking (1995). She played a brief but memorable role as the selfish mother to Hilary Swank's character in Million Dollar Baby (2004).
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Mercedes McCambridge was a highly talented radio performer who won a best supporting Actress Oscar for her film debut.
Mercedes McCambridge was born in Joliet, Illinois, to Marie (Mahaffry) and John Patrick McCambridge, a farmer. She was of mostly Irish (with a small amount of English and German) ancestry. Despite a career full of supporting roles, she later became something of a cult figure. Her memorable voice-over for the demon child in The Exorcist (1973) has secured her place in movie history. Ironically, she took Warner Bros. to court over her being uncredited for the role, which was probably the most important in the film.
Mercedes enjoyed a quiet retirement starting from the early 1980s. She was a special guest star at the 70th Annual Anniversary Academy Awards in 1998 along with many other Oscar winners. Mercedes also made special television appearances to discuss her role in The Exorcist (1973) at the 30th Anniversary of the film's release.
She died in La Jolla in California on 2nd March 2004 from natural causes.- Actress
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As a testament to her passion and talent, former 1950s pig-tailed moppet star Patty McCormack has remained a consistent presence on film and TV for over five decades. While the lovely and talented blonde suffered her share of hard knocks and obvious stereotypes in adjusting to an adult career, she did not fade away into oblivion or self destruct as other vulnerable child stars before her did.
Born Patricia Ellen Russo in Brooklyn, New York, to Frank Russo, a firefighter, and the former Elizabeth McCormack, a roller skating pro, the young girl found herself modeling at age 4. Two years later, she had progressed to films with bits in Two Gals and a Guy (1951) and Here Comes the Groom (1951). Soon thereafter she made her Broadway debut (at age 6) in the short-lived play "Touchstone" starring Ossie Davis.
While simultaneously appearing in the live television series Mama (1949) [aka "I Remember Mama"], the by-now 8-year-old returned to Broadway a second time and created the role that would make her a cult sensation -- "Rhoda Penmark", the tiny, braided little demon with murderous intentions in "The Bad Seed". Starring Nancy Kelly as her put-upon, overly-trusting mother, the show became a certifiable hit. The two actors were invited to recreate their famous roles in the film version, The Bad Seed (1956), and achieved equally fine results. No child before her had ever been given such a deliberately evil, twisted role and Patty chewed up the scenery with courteous malevolence. Though the film today may come off as extremely stagy and overly mannered to some, its fascination cannot be denied. Audiences took readily to Patty and her wicked ways and the young actress earned both Oscar and Golden Globe "Best Supporting Actress" nominations.
The film would be a hard act to follow or forget. So strongly identified with the role, Patty found it difficult for audiences to see her any other way. She tried finding some variance as a pioneer girl in All Mine to Give (1957), a testy child star in Kathy O' (1958) and a tomboy in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960) but the memory of "Rhoda Penmark" would not be so easily wiped away. She suffered typical teen angst in the film The Explosive Generation (1961) with William Shatner and had to make do as a young adult in such low-level movies as The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968), Maryjane (1968) and The Young Animals (1968).
By the 1970s Patty, who had spent so much time as a child doing live television, found herself again relying on the medium for steadier work. Billed now as a more grown-up "Patricia McCormack", she also appeared in a variety of legit stage productions and, on occasion, found roles in independent films. Appearing in more than 250 episodes of some of the most successful programs around, audiences may remember her giving sensible, wifely support to Jeffrey Tambor on The Ropers (1979), the short-lived spin-off of the Three's Company (1976) sitcom, or from her recurring role as "Evelyn Michaelson" on Dallas (1978). More recently on film and TV, she played "Adrianna"'s mother, "Liz LaCerva", on HBO's hit The Sopranos (1999) and appeared in guest form on NYPD Blue (1993), Cold Case (2003), Grey's Anatomy (2005), Entourage (2004) and What About Brian (2006). She also played former "First Lady" "Pat Nixon" in the film Frost/Nixon (2008).
In 1995, Patty's devoted fans reveled when she felt comfortable enough to embrace again her "Bad Seed" behavior by starring in the low-budget horror feature Mommy (1995) and its sequel Mommy's Day (1997) [aka "Mommy 2"]. She came full circle as a most pernicious homemaker who created violent, Rhoda-worthy ends for those unlucky enough to cross her path.
Patti's millennium films, a variety of comedy, drama and, of course, horror films, would include The Medicine Show (2001), Choosing Matthias (2001), Shallow Ground (2004), Frost/Nixon (2008) (as First Lady Pat Nixon), Soda Springs (2012), Buttwhistle (2014), Chicanery (2017) and a lead in the lowbudget mystery House of Deadly Secrets (2018). As for TV, in addition to guest parts on such shows as "The D.A.," "N.Y.P.D. Blue," "Grey's Anatomy," "Entourage," "Criminal Minds," "Shark," "Private Practice," "Citizen Jane," "Desperate Housewives," "Prime Suspect," "Hawaii Five-0, she had recurring roles on The Sopranos (1999), Have You Met Miss Jones? (2012), Hart of Dixie (2011) and the daytime series General Hospital (1963) as Dr. Monica Quartermaine. She also played the small role of a doctor in a remake of her cult film The Bad Seed (2018).
A mother herself with two children, Robert and Danielle, Patty was once married to Bob Catania, a restaurateur. She was also an eight-year companion to screenwriter and playwright Ernest Thompson of On Golden Pond (1981) fame.- Actress
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Laurie Metcalf was born June 16, 1955 in Carbondale, Illinois, the oldest of three children of Libby (Mars), a librarian, and James Metcalf, a budget director. She was raised in Edwardsville, Illinois. Laurie attended Illinois State University, where she obtained her bachelor of arts in theater in 1977. In her class were the immeasurable talents of John Malkovich, Glenne Headly, and Joan Allen. Laurie began acting at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Her acting career in film and television began with a minor and uncredited role in Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978). In 1988, Laurie found her most memorable and successful role to date, Jacqueline "Jackie" Harris in the television series Roseanne (1988). For her performance in the series, she was nominated for two Golden Globes and won three Primetime Emmy awards.- Actress
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Rachel Miner wanted to be an actress from age two. She began working with an acting coach at eight, got an agent at nine and, by ten, had not only worked for Woody Allen, but was cast as "Michelle Bauer" on Guiding Light (1952) (a part that started as recurring and evolved into a contract role lasting nearly five years (1990-1995) and earning her three Young Artist Awards and an Emmy nomination).
Born into a show business family, she represents the third generation of Miners to take to the theatre, film and television. Her father, Peter Miner, was an Emmy-winning director and noted New York acting teacher (at T. Schreiber Studio), directing teacher (at Columbia University) and acting coach. Her mother, Diane Miner Diane Miner, a writer and off-off-Broadway director, taught and coached acting with her husband. Her grandparents were producer/director Worthington Miner and actress Frances Fuller. Her brother is actor Peter Miner.
Rachel has played roles, ranging from addicts, prostitutes, murderers and murder victims to innocent brides or understanding veterinary techs in dozens of films and television series, with recurring roles as an ambitious, amoral secretary (in Showtime's Californication (2007) and a kick-ass demon (in the CW's Supernatural (2005). Whether terrorized by a psychopath or playing one, there seems little that daunts this fearless young actress.
In addition to her film and television work, Rachel has several noteworthy theatrical credits. At fourteen, she appeared in Laura Cahill's "The Way at Naked Angels" (1994). She made her Broadway debut at seventeen, playing "Margo Frank" to Natalie Portman's "Anne" in Wendy Kesselman's adaptation of "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1996/97), directed by James Lapine. She originated the role of "Rivkele" in Donald Margulies' adaptation of Sholom Asch's "God of Vengeance" (2000), directed by Gordon Edelstein at ACT (A Contemporary Theatre) in Seattle. She also originated the role of "Sandy" in Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge" (2001), directed by Robert Falls at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago (and reprised in 2002 at The Public Theatre in New York).- Actress
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Dame Helen Mirren was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital in West London. Her mother, Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda (Rogers), was from a working-class English family, and her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov, was a Russian-born civil servant, from Kuryanovo, whose own father was a diplomat. Mirren attended St. Bernards High School for girls, where she would act in school productions. After high school, she began her acting career in theatre working in many productions including in the West End and Broadway.- Actress
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Mo'Nique received a standing ovation when she stepped on stage for the first time in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, giving her confidence to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian. After numerous stand-up performances, she took a leap forward with one of the starring roles in The Parkers (1999).
Mo'Nique's huge international breakthrough came with her performance in the independent feature film Precious (2009), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and over 30 other major awards for best acting including the most important ones like the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, the New York Film Critics Circle Award, the Chicago Film Critics Association Award, the Independent Spirit Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the National Society of Film Critics Award, the BAFTA Film Award and Sundance Film Festival's Special Jury Prize.- Actress
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Demi Moore was born 1962 in Roswell, New Mexico. Her father Charles Harmon left her mother Virginia Guynes (née King) before Demi was born. Her stepfather Danny Guynes didn't add much stability to her life either. He frequently changed jobs and made the family move a total of 40 times. The parents kept on drinking, arguing and beating, until Guynes finally committed suicide. Demi quit school at the age of 16 to work as a pin-up girl. At 18 she married rock musician Freddy Moore; the marriage lasted four years. At 19 she became a regular on the soap opera General Hospital (1963). From the first salaries she started partying and sniffing cocaine. That lasted more than 3 years, until director Joel Schumacher threatened to fire her from the set of St. Elmo's Fire (1985) when she turned up high. She got a withdrawal treatment and returned clean after a week, and stayed clean. With determination and a skill for publicity stunts, like the nude appearance on cover of Vanity Fair while pregnant, she made her way to fame. Since the huge commercial success of Ghost (1990) and the controversial pictures Indecent Proposal (1993) and Disclosure (1994) she's one of Hollywood's most sought-after and most expensive actresses.- Actress
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Agnes was born of Anglo-Irish ancestry near Boston, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (her mother was a mezzo-soprano) who encouraged her to perform in church pageants. Aged three, she sang 'The Lord is my Shepherd' on a public stage and seven years later joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera as a dancer and singer for four years. In keeping with her father's dictum of finishing her education first (then being permitted to do whatever she wished with her career), Agnes attended Muskingum College (Ohio), and, subsequently, the University of Wisconsin. She graduated with an M.A. in English and public speaking and later added a doctorate in literature from Bradley University to her resume. When her family moved to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, where her father had a pastorate, Agnes taught public school English and drama for five years. In between, she went to Paris to study pantomime with Marcel Marceau.
In 1928, she began training at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts and graduated with honors the following year. In order to supplement her income , Agnes had turned to radio early on. She had her first job in 1923 as a singer for a St. Louis radio station. Her love for that medium remained with her all her life. From the 1930s to the 50s, she appeared on numerous serials, dramas and children's programs. She was Min Gump in "The Gumps" (1934), the 'dragon lady' in "Terry and the Pirates" (1937), Margot Lane of classic comic strip fame in "The Shadow", Mrs.Danvers in "Rebecca" and the bed-ridden woman about to meet her end in "Sorry, Wrong Number". Acting on the airwaves was so important to her that she would insist on its continuation as a precondition of a later contract with MGM. Significantly, through her radio work on "The Shadow"and "March of Time" in 1937, she met and befriended fellow actor Orson Welles. Welles soon invited her to join him and Joseph Cotten as charter members of his Mercury Theatre on the Air. Agnes was involved in the famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast of 1938 which attracted nationwide attention and resulted in a lucrative $100,000 per picture deal with RKO in Hollywood. The Mercury players (the other principals were Ray Collins, Everett Sloane, Paul Stewart and George Coulouris) packed up and went west.
An ebullient and versatile character actress, Agnes was impossible to typecast: she could play years older than her age, appear as heroine or villainess, tragedienne or comedienne. In her first film, the iconic Citizen Kane (1941), she played the titular character's mother. She received her greatest critical acclaim for her emotive second screen performance as Aunt Fanny Minafer in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). In addition to being voted the year's best female performer by the New York Film Critics she was also nominated for an Academy Award. Through the years, Agnes would be nominated three more times: for her touching portrayal of the jaded but sympathetic Baroness Conti in Mrs. Parkington (1944); for her role as the title character's Aunt Aggie in Johnny Belinda (1948) and for playing Velma, the hard-boiled, suspicious housekeeper of Bette Davis in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), co-starring her old friend Joseph Cotten. Other notable film appearances included Jane Eyre (1943), with Orson Welles, The Woman in White (1948) as Countess Fusco), The Lost Moment (1947) (as a 105-year old woman) and Dark Passage (1947), a classic film noir in which she had third billing behind Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as the treacherous , malevolent Madge Rapf. She had a rare starring role in the campy horror flick The Bat (1959), giving (according to the New York Times of December 17) 'a good, snappy performance'.
On Broadway, she appeared in such acclaimed plays as "All the King's Men" and "Candlelight". She enjoyed success with "Don Juan in Hell", touring nationally: the first time (1951-2) with Charles Laughton and Cedric Hardwicke, the second time (though receiving fewer critical plaudits) with Ricardo Montalban and Paul Henreid in 1973. She also starred with Joseph Cotten in "Prescription Murder" (1962). While not a great critical success, this was much liked by audiences and it introduced a famous detective named Lieutenant Columbo. From 1954, she also toured the U.S. and Europe with her own a one-woman show entitled "The Fabulous Redhead". Agnes performed numerous times on television before landing the role of Endora on Bewitched (1964). One particularly interesting part came her way through the director Douglas Heyes who remembered her from "Sorry, Wrong Number". He cast her in the starring - and indeed, only role in The Invaders (1961). As the lonely old woman confronted by tiny alien invaders in her remote farmhouse, Agnes never utters a single word and cleverly acts her scenes as a pantomime of unspoken terror.
Of course, the genial Agnes Moorehead has been immortalized as Elizabeth Montgomery's flamboyant witch-mother, Endora, although that was not a role the actress wished to be remembered for (in spite of several Emmy Award nominations). Indeed, she had thought this whole witchcraft theme to be rather far-fetched and was somewhat taken aback by the show's huge popularity. Agnes had a special clause inserted in her contract which limited her appearances to eight out of twelve episodes which gave her the opportunity to also work on other projects. Commenting on the acting profession in one of her many interviews (New York Times, May 1, 1974), she found the key to success in being " sincere in your work " and to "just go right on whether audiences or critics are taking your scalp off or not".- Actress
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Julia Chalene Newmeyer was born on August 16, 1933, in Los Angeles, California, the eldest of three children. Her father, Don, was a one-time professional football player (LA Buccaneers, 1926), her mother, Helene Jesmer, was a star of the Follies of 1920 and later became a fashion designer under the professional name of Chalene. From an early age, Julie studied piano, dance, and classical ballet. She graduated from high school at the age of 15, and spent a year touring Europe with her mother and brother. She became prima ballerina for the Los Angeles Opera. She attended UCLA studying classical piano, philosophy, and French.
Newmar went to New York and tried out for Broadway musicals; in 1955, she made her Broadway debut as the ballerina in "Silk Stockings". She won acclaim for her role as Stupefyin' Jones in "Li'l Abner". Though audiences and critics alike were stupefied by her good looks, that was not the compliment Newmar wanted.
Newmar wanted to be known for her comedy, as she told the New York Times: "Tell me I'm funny, and it's the greatest compliment in the world." She had beauty, brains and a fantastic sense of humor. Promoting her various Broadway and off-Broadway show appearances, she often posed as a pin-up girl. Making the transition to television, Newmar appeared in Rod Serling's science-fiction series The Twilight Zone (1959), playing Miss Devlin (devil). As physical perfection, Julie was perfect to play Rhoda the Robot in My Living Doll (1964); the sitcom had an enthusiastic cult following. In 1966, urged on by her friends, she tried out for and was cast as Catwoman (a character she had never heard of) in the wildly popular television series Batman (1966) On account of a movie commitment, Newmar was unavailable to play Catwoman in the third season. (Her role was taken over by Eartha Kitt.)
Newmar was very busy in the 1960s and 1970s, making guest appearances in many television series and several television movies. She toured the country in stage productions of "Damn Yankees" and "Dames at Sea", among others. Becoming an entrepreneur, in 1977, Newmar turned up in People magazine wearing her new invention, Nudemar pantyhose. In the 1980s, she appeared in nine films while she was busy raising her son and working in the real-estate business. Newmar went back to UCLA to take a few real-estate courses. In 1991, she toured in a stage production of "The Women". Still very active, and very beautiful, she occasionally has appeared at fan conventions.- Swedish-born Lena Olin already had a successful career as an actress before she came to Hollywood. She acted at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm and was directed by Ingmar Bergman. She was born in Stockholm, to actors Britta Holmberg and Stig Olin, who appeared in six of Bergman's films. Lena also belongs to the Bergman "family". As a young actress, she played in the great classics of William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. She made her international debut as a movie actress in After the Rehearsal (1984) (aka "After the Rehearsal"), directed by Bergman. In western Europe, she became well-known in the political movie The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) as "Sabina", in a story about the Prague spring (1968). After coming to the US, she played mostly distinguished, exotic temptresses, intelligent women and crude vamps. Bergman had developed Lena's artistic gift to play different human emotions and express them in a subtle way. Sydney Pollack, director of Out of Africa (1985), rewrote the screenplay for Havana (1990) especially for her. This explains why this film recalls associations with the classic Casablanca (1942), starring Ingrid Bergman, also from Sweden. Olin received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Enemies, A Love Story (1989). She went on to have a choice role in Chocolat (2000), which received a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. She made a move to the smaller screen and played the role for one season as the deliciously evil "Irina Derevko", the mother to Jennifer Garner's "Sydney Bristow" in the series Alias (2001). Olin received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.
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Betsy Palmer was probably best known for playing Jason Voorhees' mother in the horror film Friday the 13th (1980), but her career as an actress began many years before.
Palmer was born Patricia Betsy Hrunek in East Chicago, Indiana, to Marie (née Love), who launched the Chicago Business College, and Rudolph Vincent Hrunek, a Czech-born industrial chemist. Palmer played a young female officer opposite Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts (1955), and appeared in another war film the same year, The Long Gray Line (1955). Throughout the late 1950s, Palmer was recognized as a news reporter on Today (1952) on NBC, then became largely involved in television. She remained in made-for-TV films and notable guest appearances, before playing the murderous avenging mother, Mrs. Voorhees, in the horror film Friday the 13th (1980). She also continued working in television, and appearing in low-budget films like The Fear: Resurrection (1999). Palmer spent her later years between her home in New York City and Sedona, Arizona.
Betsy Palmer died of natural causes on a Friday, May 29, 2015, at a hospice care center in Danbury, Connecticut.- Actress
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Lara Parker was born, Mary Lamar Rickey, in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Memphis. She attended Central High School in Memphis, and won a scholarship to Vassar College. At Vassar, Lara began a major in philosophy, which she completed at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), receiving her BA. She attended graduate school at the University of Iowa and completed all course work on a Masters in speech and drama.
It was during the summer when Lara was supposed to write her thesis, she acted at the Millbrook Playhouse, in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. She did 5 leading roles in 6 weeks. Rather than returning to Iowa, she decided to try her luck in New York. During only her second week in the city, she was cast as Angelique, the witch, in the daytime horror serial, Dark Shadows (1966). It was a role she held for 5 years.
It culminated with the film, Night of Dark Shadows (1971). While still in New York, Lara appeared on Broadway, in the play, "Woman is My Idea", as well as 2 off-Broadway plays: "Lulu" and "A Gun Play".
In 1972, Lara moved to Los Angeles, and began working in film and prime-time television, performing many guest starring roles, and occasionally returning to daytime television.
After retiring from acting, she changed her focus back to what her original interests were. She became a high school and college English teacher, and obtained her MFA in creative writing (from Antioch University). Parker authored four novels based on "Dark Shadows" (see book section, below).
Parker lived in California with her husband, Jim Hawkins and their daughter, Caitlin Hawkins. She died at age 84 from cancer in October 2023.- Actress
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Michelle Pfeiffer was born in Santa Ana, California to Dick and Donna Pfeiffer. She has an older brother and two younger sisters - Dedee Pfeiffer, and Lori Pfeiffer, who both dabbled in acting and modeling but decided against making it their lives' work. She graduated from Fountain Valley High School in 1976, and attended one year at the Golden West College, where she studied to become a court reporter. But it was while working as a supermarket checker at Vons, a large Southern California grocery chain, that she realized her true calling. She was married to actor/director Peter Horton ("Gary" of Thirtysomething (1987)) in 1981. They were later divorced, and she then had a three year relationship with actor Fisher Stevens. When that didn't work out, Pfeiffer decided she didn't want to wait any longer before having her own family, and in March of 1993, she adopted a baby girl, Claudia Rose. On November 13th of the same year, she married lawyer-turned-writer/producer David E. Kelley, creator of Picket Fences (1992), Chicago Hope (1994), The Practice (1997), and Boston Public (2000). On August 5, 1994 their son, John Henry was born.- Actress
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Welsh-born stage veteran Dame Siân Phillips is forever identified on television as the tarantula mother/empress Livia in the classic BBC miniseries I, Claudius (1976) (for which she won a BAFTA-TV award), and as the Reverend Mother in the science fiction epic film Dune (1984). Her broad range of roles went from endearing to downright deadly.
She was born Jane Elizabeth Ailwên Phillips on May 14, 1933, in Wales, to Sally (Thomas), a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker and policeman. Brought brought up bilingual in both English and Welsh, she performed on the Welsh radio station at age 11. She toured extensively for the Arts Council in Wales in original Welsh plays and in translations from the English classics before becoming an award-winning television actress in her late teens.
Siân attended the University of Wales and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), making her London debut in the title role of "Hedda Gabler" (1957). After a brief marriage, she met and married actor Peter O'Toole in 1959 and appeared frequently with him on stage, including "Ride a Cock Horse" (1965) and "Man and Superman" (1965), and in the movies Becket (1964), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) (which earned her a National Society of Film Critics award and a Golden Globe Award nomination for "Best Supporting Actress"), Murphy's War (1971) and Under Milk Wood (1971). They had two daughters, actresses Kate O'Toole and Pat O'Toole.
While her husky resonant voice served her well as an announcer, newsreader and narrator at different stages of her career, her severely chiseled looks and arch, regal bearing entitled her to perform some of the more notable classics, with critically-acclaimed turns in "Saint Joan", "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Duchess of Malfi", being just a few. Siân's occasional patricians have also graced such well-mounted films as Young Cassidy (1965), Nijinsky (1980) and The Age of Innocence (1993).
After 20 years of marriage, Siân divorced O'Toole, known for his carousing and hard-living ways. She quickly remarried a much younger actor, Britisher Robin Sachs, but they too would divorce in 1991. Despite her personal turmoil, she continued to delve into her stage work, beginning a new phase of her career in musicals. Her participation in such productions as "Pal Joey" (her musical debut), "Gigi" and "A Little Night Music" ultimately led to her acclaimed one-woman cabaret show "Marlene", a tribute to legendary Marlene Dietrich, which opened to rave reviews in London in 1997. Two years later, she won a Tony Award nomination for this role on Broadway.
Over the years, Siân has distinguished herself regularly in such quality miniseries as Oresteia (1979), Crime and Punishment (1979), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) (as Clementine Churchill), Smiley's People (1982) (as Lady Smiley), The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987) (as the Duchess of Windsor), A Killing on the Exchange (1987), The Snow Spider (1988), The Chestnut Soldier (1991), The Borrowers (1992) and its sequel The Return of the Borrowers (1993) (as Mrs. Driver) and Aristocrats (1999).
She has continued to work into the millennium with elderly roles on stage with "My Old Lady", "Calendar Girls", "Crossing Borders" (a cabaret show), "Les Liaisons Dangereuses", "The Importance of Being Earnest", "Playing for Time" and "Les Blancs", while in movies she appeared in The Gigolos (2006), Love Song (2012), Miss Dalí (2018), Be Happy! (2019), Dream Horse (2020) and was the narrator and grandmother in a rather radical retelling, animated version of A Christmas Carol (2020). Siân was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama. She was also awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2016 Queen's New Years Honours for her services to drama.- Actress
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The daughter of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer and American actress Tammy Grimes, Amanda Plummer was born in New York City on March 23, 1957. Her breakthrough role came when she starred opposite Robin Williams in The Fisher King (1991). However, Plummer may be best remembered for her work in the Quentin Tarantino classic Pulp Fiction (1994). Tarantino wrote the parts of two robbers who hold up a restaurant specifically for Plummer and her partner-in-screen-crime Tim Roth. Since that stand-out role, Plummer has continued to appear in a wide variety of films, including The Prophecy (1995), Freeway (1996), and My Life Without Me (2003). Plummer has also appeared in the films Butterfly Kiss (1995) as "Eunice" by Michael Winterbottom, My Life Without Me (2003) by Isabel Coixet, Pax (1994) by Eduardo Guedes, Daniel (1983) by Sidney Lumet, Ken Park (2002) by Larry Clark and, lately, The Making of Plus One (2010) and Inconceivable (2008), both by Mary McGuckian.
She has often performed on stage. Her highly acclaimed work on Broadway has garnered her a Tony award and two Tony Award nominations as well as the Outer Critics Circle Award and Drama Desk Award. She was honored with three Emmy awards, and one Emmy nomination, a Saturn Award, a DVDX nomination, a CableAce Award and a Golden Globe nomination. In 1988, she was honored with the Anti-Defamation League Award for Woman of Achievement.
On stage, Plummer appeared as Alma in Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke" with Kevin Anderson, directed by Michael Wilson. At the Stratford Theater in Ontario, she was Joan of Arc in an original adaptation of "The Lark" by Jean Anouilh, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
She appeared as Polly in "The Gnadiges Fraulein" with Elizabeth Ashley, and as Kyra in the world premiere of "One Exception", both by Tennessee Williams, at the Hartford Stage.
On Broadway, she appeared as Jo in "A Taste of Honey" (nominated for a Tony Award, and Drama Desk Award, and received the Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World Awards); as Agnes in "Agnes of God" with Geraldine Page (Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle, and Boston Critics Awards); as Eliza in "Pygmalion" with Peter O'Toole and John Mills (Tony Award nomination); as Laura in "The Glass Menagerie" with Jessica Tandy; and as Dolly in "You Never Can Tell" by George Bernard Shaw.
Among her off-Broadway shows are "A Lie of the Mind" as Beth, directed and written by Sam Shepard with Harvey Keitel, Aidan Quinn and Geraldine Page, "Killer Joe" by Tracy Letts, "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More" by Tennessee Williams, and "A Taste of Honey" with Valerie French. In England, at the Guilford Theatre, she appeared as Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion," and at the Royal Court Theatre performed in "This Is a Chair," directed by Stephen Daldry and written by Carol Churchill.
Her regional work includes Juliet in "Romeo & Juliet" (Hollywood Dramalogue Award) and Sonya in "Uncle Vanya," Frankie in "A Member of the Wedding," "Two Rooms," and "The Wake of Jamey Foster" by Beth Henley.
In television, she is the recipient of three Emmy Awards, one Emmy nomination, a Cable Ace Award, and a Golden Globe nomination. She appeared as Lucky in the filmed workshop, "Core Sample - Goli Otok" with Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave, directed by Lenka Udovicki, the artistic director of The Ulysses Theater on Brijuni, Croatia, and also in Lucky McKee's film Red (2008).- Actress
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Parker Posey was born two months premature in Baltimore, Maryland, to Lynda (Patton) and Chris Posey. The family moved to Monroe, La. and then Laurel, Mississippi, where Chris became owner of Laurel's own Posey Chevrolet. Parker attended high school at R. H. Watkins High School in Laurel, and college at the prestigious SUNY Purchase. While at SUNY she roomed with Sherry Stringfield of TV's ER (1994).- American character actress Anne Ramsey was born Anne Mobley in Omaha, Nebraska to Eleanor (Smith), a national treasurer of the Girl Scouts, and Nathan Mobley, an insurance executive. Her uncle was U.S. Ambassador David S. Smith. An ancestor was Mayflower Pilgrim William Brewster. She attended Rosemary Hall (then an elite girls' school in Greenwich, Connecticut) and Bennington College, and was active in numerous on- and off-Broadway productions. After she married actor Logan Ramsey, the couple founded Philadelphia's Theatre of the Living Arts. In the early 1970s she began her lengthy film career. In 1971 she starred opposite her husband in The Sporting Club (1971), then settled into bit parts.
Eventually, she was noticed for her trademark brusque, gruff, usually comedic roles, after which she received more film offers, notably Goin' South (1978), Any Which Way You Can (1980), The Goonies (1985), and Deadly Friend (1986). Unfortunately, in the mid-1980s she discovered she was suffering from throat cancer and was forced to have parts of both her tongue and jawbone removed, which obviously affected how she spoke and the effects of which are evident in Throw Momma from the Train (1987). She received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Danny DeVito's inimitably nightmarish mother in Throw Momma from the Train (1987) which she managed to finish by bravely soldiering on even as her cancer remorselessly worsened. She died in 1988, aged 59, just weeks after Throw Momma from the Train (1987) was released. - Actress
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Lee Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Gertrude Margaret (Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin Remick, a department store owner. She had Irish and English ancestry. Remick was educated at Barnard College, studied dance and worked on stage and TV, before making her film debut as a sexy Southern majorette in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). Her next role was also southern: Eula Varner in The Long, Hot Summer (1958). She emerged as a real star in the role of an apparent rape victim in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). And she won an Academy Award nomination for her role as the alcoholic wife of Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses (1962). After more work in TV and movies, she moved to England in 1970, making more movies there. In 1988 she formed a production company with partners James Garner and Peter K. Duchow.- Actress
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Miranda Richardson was born in Southport, Lancashire, England on March 3, 1958, to Marian Georgina (Townsend) and William Alan Richardson, a marketing executive. She has one sister, eight years her senior. Her parents and sister are not involved in the performing arts. At an early age she performed in school plays, having shown a talent and desire to "turn herself into" other people. She has referred to it as "an emotional fusion; you think yourself into them". This mimicry could be of school friends or film stars.
She left school (Southport High School for Girls) at the age of 17, and originally intended becoming a vet. She also considered studying English literature in college, but decided to concentrate on drama and enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School (as did many well-known British actors). After three years she graduated and moved into repertory theatre. She became affiliated with the Library Theatre in Manchester in 1979, where she became an assistant stage manager. She obtained her Equity card, and after several regional productions, first appeared on the London stage (Moving at Queens Theatre) in 1981. British television roles soon followed, and then film.
Since then, Miranda has moved into the international arena, and has made films in America, France and Spain. Television work (on both sides of the Atlantic) continues, as does some stage work. Her roles are diverse, but powerful and engaging. She has been quoted as stating "what I basically like is doing things I haven't done before" and this continually comes through in the variety of roles she has played in her career. She is also selective in the roles she takes, being uninterested in performing in the standard Hollywood fare, and preferring more offbeat roles. She was approached to play the Glenn Close role in Fatal Attraction (1987), but found it "regressive in its attitudes". Her attitude is summed up by a quote from an interview that appeared in the New York Times (Dec 27 1992): "I would rather do many small roles on TV, stage or film than one blockbuster that made me rich but had no acting. And if that's the choice I have to make, I think I've already made it".
According to "1994 Current Biography Yearbook", she resides in South London with her two Siamese cats, Otis and Waldo. She has now moved to West London. Her hobbies include drawing, walking, gardening, fashion, falconry, and music. She, by her own admission, is a loner and lives rather modestly. An actor who studied with Ms Richardson at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre in the late 1970s described her as "a strong minded, specially gifted, rather pretty young woman who enjoys wearing jewelry. She wore toe rings, which in the late 1970s and especially in England, were a rarity and considered rather racy." He also remarked on her drive, even then, to be an actress of the highest caliber.- Actress
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Mayte Michelle Rodríguez was born on July 12, 1978 in San Antonio, Texas to Carmen Milady Pared Espinal, a housewife, and Rafael Rodríguez Santiago, a U.S. Army solider. Known for tough-chick roles, Michelle is proof that there is a cross between beauty and brawn. Michelle always knew she was destined to become a star, she just didn't know how to get there. Michelle lived in San Antonio until the age of 8 when her parents divorced & moved to the Dominican Republic where she lived for two years before moving to Puerto Rico. At 11, Michelle's family relocated for the last time to Jersey City, New Jersey. Although she has been working since 1999 as an extra in such films as Summer of Sam (1999) and Cradle Will Rock (1999), it only took a magazine ad announcing an open casting call in New York for Michelle to decide to finally step into the spotlight. The role was the female lead, the movie was Girlfight (2000). Despite the lack of experience in film and boxing, Michelle auditioned, along with another 350 girls. After various trials inside an actual boxing ring and five arduous months of training in Brooklyn's Gleason's Gym, she was finally chosen to portray the role of Diana Guzman. As soon as the independent film began making the rounds at various film festivals, Michelle began gaining critical acclaim for her performance earning her awards like the Deauville Festival of American Cinema award for Best Actress and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society for Female Breakthrough performance. As Girlfight (2000) continued to gain notoriety with its September 2000 release, Michelle was already hard at work with films like 3 A.M. (2001), the blockbuster hit The Fast and the Furious (2001), and Resident Evil (2002). With Hollywood calling her name, the future for this feisty Jersey girl is as strong as the punches she throws.- Actress
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Rebecca Alie Romijn was born on November 6, 1972 in Berkeley, California. Her father was Dutch-born and worked as a custom-furniture maker. Her mother was American-born, with Dutch and English ancestry, and was a teacher of English. Rebecca attended Berkeley High School where her nickname was the "Jolly Blond Giant", then she attended the University of California at Santa Cruz where she majored in Music, but left in 1995.
She was a natural for modeling, and has posed for Sports Illustrated, Christian Dior and Victoria's Secret, to name but a few. Rebecca first met John Stamos in 1994, at a Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and had her first date with him at Disneyland. They married in September 1998, but have since gotten divorced.
Rebecca's favorite foods are fillet mignon, tuna sashimi and Häagen-Dazs Cappuccino Commotion ice cream. But to keep her weight at a svelte 130 pounds, she stays fit with a rigorous stretching and strengthening routine (her firm body tone is evident when compared to photos of her earlier modeling, where she was very slim but not toned). Rebecca's most famous movie role, so far, was as the shapeshifting Mystique in X-Men (2000), based on the long-running comic book series about teenage mutant superheroes (that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created in 1962). To play Mystique every day, Rebecca had to start out nude, and then two female makeup artists would apply blue body paint and other stick-on parts for 8 hours a day. Rebecca told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) that things like tissue paper would stick to her hips; and, one day, the long hours of wearing sticky paint makeup made her so upset that director Bryan Singer told her to have a glass of white wine and relax. Notwithstanding those technical difficulties, X-Men (2000) was a box-office bonanza, and Rebecca's future in films was assured.- Actress
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Theresa Russell, named one of the "100 sexiest stars in film history" (Empire Magazine), was born in San Diego, California. She was discovered by a photographer at the age of 12, and made her film debut in Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon (1976), opposite Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Robert Mitchum, at the age of 19. Her resume of nearly fifty films has centered on ground-breaking roles in acclaimed independent films, such as Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980), directed by Nicolas Roeg (whom she would later marry); Eureka (1983); Insignificance (1985); Aria (1987) and Ken Russell's Whore (1991). Her legendary star turn in the thriller, Black Widow (1987), co-starring Debra Winger, stands as one of the most iconic female crime dramas in cinema history. She has had roles in major film and television projects, including the feature films, Straight Time (1978), opposite Dustin Hoffman and Kathy Bates; The Razor's Edge (1984), opposite Bill Murray; Physical Evidence (1989) with Burt Reynolds; Kafka (1991), directed by Steven Soderbergh, playing opposite Jeremy Irons; Impulse (1990), directed by Sondra Locke; The Believer (2001), opposite Ryan Gosling; Luckytown (2000), with Kirsten Dunst and James Caan; Being Human (1994), opposite Robin Williams; Wild Things (1998), with Denise Richards, Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon; Jolene (2008), opposite Jessica Chastain; the block-buster Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the mini-series Blind Ambition (1979), with Martin Sheen; Empire Falls (2005), with Ed Harris, Paul Newman and Helen Hunt; and Lifetime's Liz & Dick (2012), opposite Lindsay Lohan, portraying Elizabeth Taylor's mother.
Along with her then-partner, legendary jazz musician, Michael Melvoin, she has performed in jazz clubs throughout the United States. She is the mother of two sons (Statten Roeg and Maximillian Roeg).- Actress
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Amy Ryan was born on May 3, 1968 in Queens, New York City, New York, USA as Amy Beth Dziewiontkowski. She is an actress, known for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), Gone Baby Gone (2007) and Escape Plan (2013). She has been married to Eric Slovin since August 23, 2011. They have one child.- Actress
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It was after the 1968 Democratic convention and there was a casting call for a film with several roles for the kind of young people who had disrupted the convention. Two recent graduates of Catholic University in Washington DC, went to the audition in New York for Joe (1970). Chris Sarandon, who had studied to be an actor, was passed over. His wife Susan got a major role.
That role was as Susan Compton, the daughter of ad executive Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick). In the movie Dad Bill kills Susan's drug dealer boyfriend and next befriends Joe (Peter Boyle)-- a bigot who works on an assembly line and who collects guns.
Five years later, Sarandon made the film where fans of cult classics have come to know her as Janet, who gets entangled with transvestite Dr. Frank n Furter in The The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). More than 15 years after beginning her career Sarandon at last actively campaigned for a great role, Annie in Bull Durham (1988), flying at her own expense from Rome to Los Angeles. "It was such a wonderful script ... and did away with a lot of myths and challenged the American definition of success", she said. "When I got there, I spent some time with Kevin Costner, kissed some ass at the studio and got back on a plane". Her romance with the Bull Durham (1988)) supporting actor, Tim Robbins, had produced two sons by 1992 and put Sarandon in the position of leaving her domestic paradise only to accept roles that really challenged her. The result was four Academy Award nominations in the 1990s and best actress for Dead Man Walking (1995). Her first Academy Award nomination was for Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980).- Actress
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Shaw was already an accomplished theater actress when director Jim Sheridan awarded her a role in his film, My Left Foot (1989). The film is a telling of Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis), an Irishman disgruntled with his confinement to a body horribly crippled by cerebral palsy but who found incredible success as an artist and writer. Shaw portrayed Eileen Cole, the doctor largely responsible for Christy's education and physical rehabilitation. Since, Shaw has received several accolades for her film and television performances.- Actress
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Cornelia Otis Skinner was born on 30 May 1899 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for The Uninvited (1944), The Swimmer (1968) and Stage Door Canteen (1943). She was married to Alden Sanford Blodget. She died on 9 July 1979 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actress
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Actress J. Smith-Cameron was born Jean Isabel Smith in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, the daughter of an architect. She was known simply as J. Smith by her fellow students at Florida State University School of Theatre program in the mid-1970s. Despite her age, she made for a completely believable teenage Anne Frank in "The Diary of Anne Frank", was a touching and memorable Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker", was wonderfully bizarre as Honey in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and demonstrated great skill and versatility in an all-female version of "The Taming of the Shrew". Smith's older sister, actress Jo Ann Smith (who later became a teacher), also attended FSU at the same time and performed in a production of the classic Iranian allegory, "The Butterfly" ("Shaparak Khanoom") by Bijan Mofid and directed by his actor/brother, Ardavan Mofid.
She made her film debut while studying at FSU, starring in the acclaimed low-budget production of Gal Young Un (1979), directed by Victor Nunez, who later directed Ulee's Gold (1997). The film, shot in Florida, starred and featured several fellow FSU alumni, including David Peck, Marc H. Glick, Tim McCormack, Gil Lazier (FSU acting teacher), and Randy Ser (who later won an Emmy as production designer for the Whitney Houston version of Cinderella (1997)). The film was not released until 1979, several years after her college graduation. Following college, she added the hyphenated Cameron to her moniker as both a tribute to her great-grandmother and to avoid confusion once she joined Actors' Equity.
As "J. Smith-Cameron", she made her Broadway debut as the crazy, suicidal "Babe" in Beth Henley's "Crimes of the Heart" (as a replacement). She went on to make an award-worthy New York impression with a Tony nomination for "Our Country's Good" (1991), winning an Outer Critics Circle award for "Lend Me a Tenor" (1989), and an Obie for her no-holds-barred performance in "As Bees in Honey Drown" (1997). Other stage successes have included "Wild Honey", "The Memory of Water", "Night Must Fall", "Tartuffe", and "After the Night and the Music".
Her TV and film work has become stronger and more frequent with each decade. She has shown that, even in the smallest role, she can draw attention to herself, as evinced by her hysterically funny bit as a sexual compulsive in the gay film Jeffrey (1995). She has played various wife and/or mother parts, some more stable than others, in such films as Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Harriet the Spy (1996) and The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999). She also had strong roles in TV guest spots on such shows as The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (1987), in a recurring role, plus such East Coast-based television series as "The Equalizer", "Homicide: Life on the Street", "Spin City", and "Law & Order".
She met and married playwright/film writer Kenneth Lonergan. They have a daughter, Nellie, who was featured as Mabel, the secretary, in Lonergan's Oscar-nominated breakthrough play-turned-film You Can Count on Me (2000), which made film stars out of Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo, and was particularly effective in Margaret (2011). Other film projects have included The First Wives Club (1996), In & Out (1997), Bittersweet Place (2005), Man on a Ledge (2012), Like Sunday, Like Rain (2014), and, most recently, True Blood (2008) (as a shape-shifter), as a tormented mother in Rectify (2013), and as "Gerri" in the social drama Succession (2018).- Sly, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister were the key words that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion pictures, making her one of the most talented character actresses ever seen on the screen. She was educated at the University of Minnesota and later married director Herbert J. Biberman. Her husband went to find work in Hollywood and she reluctantly followed him there. Although she had extensive experience in stage work, she had no intention of becoming an actress in film. Her mind was changed after she was discovered by director Mervyn LeRoy, who offered her a key role in his film Anthony Adverse (1936); she accepted the part and was awarded the very first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. LeRoy originally cast her as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but she felt she was not right for that role. Instead, she co-starred opposite Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), a film that won Best Picture in 1937. Sondergaard's most-remembered role was that of the sinister and cunning wife of a husband murdered by Bette Davis' character in The Letter (1940). Sondergaard continued her career rise in films such as Juarez (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Black Cat (1941), and Anna and the King of Siam (1946). Unfortunately, she was blacklisted when she refused to testify during the McCarthy-inspired "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. She eventually returned to films in the 1960s and made her final appearance in the 1983 film Echoes (1982). Gale Sondergaard passed away of an undisclosed illness at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 86.
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As a kid, Sissy Spacek climbed trees, rode horses, swam, and played in the woods. She was born Mary Elizabeth Spacek on December 25, 1949, in Quitman, Texas, to Virginia Frances (Spilman) and Edwin Arnold Spacek, Sr., a county agricultural agent. Her father's family was of Czech and German origin.
Sissy attended Quitman High School and was homecoming queen. After graduating, she embarked on an acting career, gaining interest in the profession through her cousin, actor Rip Torn. Sissy relocated to New York, and through him, enrolled in the New York branch of the Actors Studio. She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute while also pursuing work as a model and singer, appearing in West Village showcases such as the Bitter End for $10 a night. Sissy eventually broke into film and one of her first roles was as Holly in the classic Badlands (1973). The art director on that film was Jack Fisk, with whom she would marry in 1974 and ultimately collaborate on eight films. Sissy followed this landmark film with a star-making and Oscar nominated performance in Carrie (1976), in which she played a humiliated prom queen who goes postal with her telekinesis. Sissy has had an enduring and award winning career in movies and television, which includes an Oscar as Best Actress for Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). The parents of two grown daughters, Sissy and Jack live on a large horse ranch in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Even though she continued to appear in film and television during the late 1980s and 1990s, Sissy devoted most of those years to her family. Then, in 2001, Sissy returned to the big screen in a major way with a powerful performance in In the Bedroom (2001), which not only earned her a sixth Best Actress Oscar nomination, but a win for Best Actress at the Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, and numerous critics association awards. Sissy continues to work steadily as an actress, but in 2012, her credits expanded even further to include a memoir, My Extraordinary Ordinary Life.