My Top 56 Favorite Actors (no order)
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John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II was born on June 9, 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky, to Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. He was raised in Florida. He dropped out of school when he was 15, and fronted a series of music-garage bands, including one named 'The Kids'. When he married Lori A. Depp, he took a job as a ballpoint-pen salesman to support himself and his wife. A visit to Los Angeles, California, with his wife, however, happened to be a blessing in disguise, when he met up with actor Nicolas Cage, who advised him to turn to acting, which culminated in Depp's film debut in the low-budget horror film, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), where he played a teenager who falls prey to dream-stalking demon Freddy Krueger.
In 1987 he shot to stardom when he replaced Jeff Yagher in the role of undercover cop Tommy Hanson in the popular TV series 21 Jump Street (1987). In 1990, after numerous roles in teen-oriented films, his first of a handful of great collaborations with director Tim Burton came about when Depp played the title role in Edward Scissorhands (1990). Following the film's success, Depp carved a niche for himself as a serious, somewhat dark, idiosyncratic performer, consistently selecting roles that surprised critics and audiences alike. He continued to gain critical acclaim and increasing popularity by appearing in many features before re-joining with Burton in the lead role of Ed Wood (1994). In 1997 he played an undercover FBI agent in the fact-based film Donnie Brasco (1997), opposite Al Pacino; in 1998 he appeared in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), directed by Terry Gilliam; and then, in 1999, he appeared in the sci-fi/horror film The Astronaut's Wife (1999). The same year he teamed up again with Burton in Sleepy Hollow (1999), brilliantly portraying Ichabod Crane.
Depp has played many characters in his career, including another fact-based one, Insp. Fred Abberline in From Hell (2001). He stole the show from screen greats such as Antonio Banderas in the finale to Robert Rodriguez's "mariachi" trilogy, Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). In that same year he starred in the marvelous family blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), playing a character that only the likes of Depp could pull off: the charming, conniving and roguish Capt. Jack Sparrow. The film's enormous success has opened several doors for his career and included an Oscar nomination. He appeared as the central character in the Stephen King-based movie, Secret Window (2004); as the kind-hearted novelist James Barrie in the factually-based Finding Neverland (2004), where he co-starred with Kate Winslet; and Rochester in the British film, The Libertine (2004). Depp collaborated again with Burton in a screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and later in Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Dark Shadows (2012).
Off-screen, Depp has dated several female celebrities, and has been engaged to Sherilyn Fenn, Jennifer Grey, Winona Ryder and Kate Moss. He was married to Lori Anne Allison in 1983, but divorced her in 1985. Depp has two children with his former long-time partner, French singer/actress Vanessa Paradis: Lily-Rose Melody, born in 1999 and John Christopher "Jack" III, born in 2002. He married actress/producer Amber Heard in 2015, divorcing a few years later.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Bill Nighy is an award-winning British character actor. He was born William Francis Nighy on December 12, 1949 in Caterham, Surrey, England, to Catherine Josephine (Whittaker), a psychiatric nurse from Glasgow, and Alfred Martin Nighy, who was English-born and managed a garage in Croydon.
At school, he gained 'O'-levels in English Language and English Literature and enjoyed reading, particularly Ernest Hemingway. On leaving school he wanted to become a journalist but didn't have the required qualifications. He eventually went on to work as a messenger boy for the Field magazine. He stayed in Paris for a while because he wanted to write "the great novel", but he only managed to write the title. When he ran out of money, the British consul shipped him home.
Nighy wound up training at Guildford School of Dance and Drama in London, and has since then worked consistently in film, television, and on stage.
Nighy is perhaps best-known to international audiences for his memorable performance as washed-up pop singer Billy Mack in Love Actually (2003), which won him a BAFTA for best supporting actor. He has also made appearances in major franchises: he played vampire leader Viktor in Underworld (2003), Underworld: Evolution (2006) and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009), did the performance capture and voice for Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), and made a brief appearance as Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010).
Nighy's recent film credits include roles in I Capture the Castle (2003), Shaun of the Dead (2004), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), The Constant Gardener (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006), Hot Fuzz (2007), Valkyrie (2008) and The Boat That Rocked (2009). He has also provided voice work for many animated movies in the past few years including Flushed Away (2006), Astro Boy (2009), Rango (2011) and Arthur Christmas (2011).
With supporting turns in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), Wrath of the Titans (2012) and Total Recall (2012), 2012 was a busy year for Nighy. There are no signs of slowing down either, as he next appeared in Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), About Time (2013), and I, Frankenstein (2014).
Nighy has also had an active career on the small screen, beginning with Agony (1979), and his first widely-recognized role was in 1991 mini-series The Men's Room (1991). He has also made a habit of working on television with Harry Potter director David Yates: projects together include State of Play (2003), The Young Visiters (2003), The Girl in the Café (2005) and Page Eight (2011). Nighy won a Golden Globe for his performance in Gideon's Daughter (2005).
Nighy actually began his career on the stage, and has earned acclaim for his work in numerous plays including "The Vertical Hour," "Pravda". "A Map of the World", Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in 1993, and David Hare's Skylight. He received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance in 2001 play "Blue/Orange."
Bill's partner was actress Diana Quick (he asked her to marry him but she said: "don't ask me again"; he called her his wife because anything else would have been too difficult). They have a daughter, Mary Nighy, who is studying at university and contemplating an acting career. She has already begun to appear on TV dramas and radio programs.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Often mistaken for an American because of his skill at imitating accents, actor Tim Roth was born Timothy Simon Roth on May 14, 1961 in Lambeth, London, England. His mother, Ann, was a teacher and landscape painter. His father, Ernie, was a journalist who had changed the family name from "Smith" to "Roth"; Ernie was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an immigrant family of Irish ancestry.
Tim grew up in Dulwich, a middle-class area in the south of London. He demonstrated his talent for picking up accents at an early age when he attended school in Brixton, where he faced persecution from classmates for his comfortable background and quickly perfected a cockney accent to blend in. He attended Camberwell Art College and studied sculpture before he dropped out and pursued acting.
The blonde actor's first big break was the British TV movie Made in Britain (1982). Roth made a huge splash in that film as a young skinhead named Trevor. He next worked with director Mike Leigh on Meantime (1983), which he has counted among his favorite projects. He debuted on the big screen when he filled in for Joe Strummer in the Stephen Frears neo-noir The Hit (1984). Roth gained more attention for his turn as Vincent Van Gogh in Vincent & Theo (1990) and his work opposite Gary Oldman in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990).
He moved to Los Angeles in search of work and caught the eye of young director Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino had envisioned Roth as a possible Mr. Blonde or Mr. Pink in his heist flick Reservoir Dogs (1992), but Roth campaigned for the role of Mr. Orange instead, and ultimately won the part. It proved to be a huge breakthrough for Roth, as audiences found it difficult to forget his performance as a member of a group of jewelry store robbers who is slowly bleeding to death. Tarantino cast Roth again in the landmark film Pulp Fiction (1994). Roth and actress Amanda Plummer played a pair of robbers who hold up a restaurant. 1995 saw the third of Roth's collaborations with Tarantino, a surprisingly slapstick performance in the anthology film Four Rooms (1995). That same year Roth picked up an Academy Award nomination for his campy turn as a villain in the period piece Rob Roy (1995).
Continuing to take on disparate roles, Roth did his own singing (with an American accent to boot) in the lightweight Woody Allen musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996). He starred opposite Tupac Shakur in Shakur's last film, the twisted comedy Gridlock'd (1997). The pair received positive critical notices for their comic chemistry. Standing in contrast to the criminals and baddies that crowd his CV, Roth's work as the innocent, seafaring pianist in the Giuseppe Tornatore film The Legend of 1900 (1998) became something of a fan favorite. Grittier fare followed when Roth made his directorial debut with The War Zone (1999), a frank, critically acclaimed drama about a family torn apart by incest. He made his next high-profile appearance as an actor as General Thade, an evil simian in the Tim Burton remake of Planet of the Apes (2001). Roth was, of course, all but unrecognizable in his primate make-up.
Roth has continued to enjoy a mix of art house and mainstream work, including everything from the lead role in Francis Ford Coppola's esoteric Youth Without Youth (2007) to becoming "The Abomination" in the special effects-heavy blockbuster The Incredible Hulk (2008). Roth took his first major American television role when he signed on to the Fox-TV series Lie to Me (2009)- Actor
- Producer
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One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in Manhattan, New York City, to artists Virginia (Admiral) and Robert De Niro Sr. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, and his other ancestry is Irish, English, Dutch, German, and French. He was trained at the Stella Adler Conservatory and the American Workshop. De Niro first gained fame for his role in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), but he gained his reputation as a volatile actor in Mean Streets (1973), which was his first film with director Martin Scorsese. He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Godfather Part II (1974) and received Academy Award nominations for best actor in Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Cape Fear (1991). He received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980).
De Niro has earned four Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, for his work in New York, New York (1977), opposite Liza Minnelli, Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). Other notable performances include Brazil (1985), The Untouchables (1987), Backdraft (1991), Frankenstein (1994), Heat (1995), Casino (1995) and Jackie Brown (1997). At the same time, he also directed and starred in such films as A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). De Niro has also received the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2010.
As of 2022, De Niro is 79-years-old. He has never retired from acting, and continues to work regularly in mostly film.- Actor
- Director
- Cinematographer
When hunky, twenty-year-old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of little depth. He spent several years trying desperately to sway this image, but this was a double-edged sword. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001), Ned Kelly (2003), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Casanova (2005), Candy (2006), I'm Not There (2007), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
Heath Ledger was born on the fourth of April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally (Ramshaw), a teacher of French, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer who also raced cars. His ancestry was Scottish, English, Irish, and Sephardi Jewish. As the story goes, in junior high school it was compulsory to take one of two electives, either cooking or drama. As Heath could not see himself in a cooking class he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, however the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent. When he was seventeen he and a friend decided to pack up, leave school, take a car and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams were made or, at least, where actors could possibly get their big break. Upon arriving in Sydney with a purported sixty-nine cents to his name, Heath tried everything to get a break.
His first real acting job came in a low-budget movie called Blackrock (1997), a largely unimpressive cliché; an adolescent angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He only had a very small role in the film. After that small role Heath auditioned for a role in a T.V. show called Sweat (1996) about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He was offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. Heath accepted the latter because he felt to really stand out as an actor one had to accept unique roles that stood out from the bunch. It got him small notice, but unfortunately the show was quickly axed, forcing him to look for other roles. He was in Home and Away (1988) for a very short period, in which he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay. Then came his very brief role in Paws (1997), a film which existed solely to cash in on guitar prodigy Nathan Cavaleri's brief moment of fame, where he was the hottest thing in Australia. Heath played a student in the film, involved in a stage production of a Shakespeare play, in which he played "Oberon". A very brief role, this offered him a small paycheck but did nothing to advance his career. Then came Two Hands (1999). He went to the U.S. trying to audition for film roles, showcasing his brief role in Roar (1997) opposite then unknown Vera Farmiga.
Then Australian director Gregor Jordan auditioned him for the lead in Two Hands (1999), which he got. An in your face Aussie crime thriller, Two Hands (1999) was outstanding and helped him secure a role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a young hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama The Patriot (2000).
What followed was a stark inconsistency of roles, Ledger accepting virtually every single character role, anything to avoid being typecast. Some met with praise, like his short role in Monster's Ball (2001), but his version of Ned Kelly (2003) was an absolute flop, which led distributors hesitant to even release it outside Australia. Heath finally had deserved success with his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005). For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in in the film, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills near-by. It was concluded weeks later that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that included pain-killers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight (2008) and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).
Posthumously, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There (2007), which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in 'The Dark Knight (2008). His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production. Ledger received more than thirty posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance as the Joker, the psychopathic clown prince of crime, in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he is the second actor to win an acting award posthumously after Peter Finch who won an Oscar for Network (Best Actor 1977)), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Dustin Lee Hoffman was born in Los Angeles, California, to Lillian (Gold) and Harry Hoffman, who was a furniture salesman and prop supervisor for Columbia Pictures. He was raised in a Jewish family (from Ukraine, Russia-Poland, and Romania). Hoffman graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955, and went to Santa Monica City College, where he dropped out after a year due to bad grades. But before he did, he took an acting course because he was told that "nobody flunks acting." Also received some training at Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. Decided to go into acting because he did not want to work or go into the service. Trained at The Pasadena Playhouse for two years.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Born in London, England, Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is the second child of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the U.K., and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His maternal grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema and head of the famous Ealing Studios. His older sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, is a documentarian. His father was of Northern Irish and English descent, and his mother was Jewish (from a family from Latvia and Poland). Daniel was educated at Sevenoaks School in Kent, which he despised, and the more progressive Bedales in Petersfield, which he adored. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic School. Daniel made his film debut in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), but then acted on stage with the Bristol Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Companies and did not appear on screen again until 1982, when he landed his first adult role, a bit part in Gandhi (1982). He also appeared on British television that year in Frost in May (1982) and How Many Miles to Babylon? (1982). Notable theatrical performances include Another Country (1982-83), Dracula (1984) and The Futurists (1986).
His first major supporting role in a feature film was in The Bounty (1984), quickly followed by My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A Room with a View (1985). The latter two films opened in New York on the same day, offering audiences and critics evidence of his remarkable range and establishing him as a major talent. The New York Film Critics named him Best Supporting Actor for those performances. In 1986, he appeared on stage in Richard Eyre's "The Futurists" and on television in Eyre's production of The Insurance Man (1986). He also had a small role in a British/French film, Nanou (1986). In 1987, he assumed leading-man status in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), followed by a comedic role in the unsuccessful Stars and Bars (1988). His brilliant performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (1989) won him numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor.
He returned to the stage to work again with Eyre, as Hamlet at the National Theater, but was forced to leave the production close to the end of its run because of exhaustion, and has not appeared on stage since. He took a hiatus from film as well until 1992, when he starred in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), a film that met with mixed reviews but was a great success at the box office. He worked with American director Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence (1993), based on Edith Wharton's novel. Subsequently, he teamed again with Jim Sheridan to star in In the Name of the Father (1993), a critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination. His next project was in the role of John Proctor in father-in-law Arthur Miller's play The Crucible (1996), directed by Nicholas Hytner. He worked with Scorsese again to star in Gangs of New York (2002), another critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Day-Lewis's wife, Rebecca Miller, offered him the lead role in her film The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), in which he played a dying man with regrets over how his wife had evolved and over how he had brought up his teenage daughter. During filming, he arranged to live separate from his wife to achieve the "isolation" needed to focus on his own character's reality. The film received mixed reviews. In 2007, he starred in director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!", titled There Will Be Blood (2007). Day-Lewis received the Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, and a variety of film critics' circle awards for the role. In 2009, Day-Lewis starred in Rob Marshall's musical adaptation Nine (2009) as film director Guido Contini. He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.- Actor
- Composer
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Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre, invited by Laurence Olivier, who could see the talent in Hopkins. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967).
From this moment on, he enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. Many successes came later, and Hopkins' remarkable acting style reached the four corners of the world. In 1977, he appeared in two major films: A Bridge Too Far (1977) with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell. In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980). Two good television literature adaptations followed: Othello (1981) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982). In 1987 he was awarded with the Commander of the order of the British Empire. This year was also important in his cinematic life, with 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), acclaimed by specialists. In 1993, he was knighted.
In the 1990s, Hopkins acted in movies like Desperate Hours (1990) and Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). His most remarkable film, however, was The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He also got a B.A.F.T.A. for this role.- Producer
- Actor
- Executive
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt was born on December 18, 1963 in Shawnee, Oklahoma and raised in Springfield, Missouri to Jane Etta Pitt (née Hillhouse), a school counselor & William Alvin "Bill" Pitt, a truck company manager. At Kickapoo High School, Pitt was involved in sports, debating, student government and school musicals. Pitt attended the University of Missouri, where he majored in journalism with a focus on advertising. He occasionally acted in fraternity shows. He left college two credits short of graduating to move to California. Before he became successful at acting, Pitt supported himself by driving strippers in limos, moving refrigerators and dressing as a giant chicken while working for El Pollo Loco.
Pitt's earliest credited roles were in television, starting on the daytime soap opera Another World (1964) before appearing in the recurring role of Randy on the legendary prime time soap opera Dallas (1978). Following a string of guest appearances on various television series through the 1980s, Pitt gained widespread attention with a small part in Thelma & Louise (1991), in which he played a sexy criminal who romanced and conned Geena Davis. This led to starring roles in badly received films such as Johnny Suede (1991) & Cool World (1992).
But Pitt's career hit an upswing with his casting in A River Runs Through It (1992), which cemented his status as an multi-layered actor as opposed to just a pretty face. Pitt's subsequent projects were as quirky and varied in tone as his performances, ranging from his unforgettably comic cameo as stoner roommate Floyd in True Romance (1993) to romantic roles in such visually lavish films as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) and Legends of the Fall (1994), to an emotionally tortured detective in the horror-thriller Se7en (1995). His portrayal of frenetic oddball Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys (1995) won him a Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.
Pitt's portrayal of Achilles in the big-budget period drama Troy (2004) helped establish his appeal as an action star and was closely followed by a co-starring role in the stylish spy-versus-spy flick Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). It was on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith that Pitt, who married Jennifer Aniston in a highly publicized ceremony in 2000, met Angelina Jolie. Pitt left Aniston for Jolie in 2005, a break-up that continues to fuel tabloid stories years after its occurrence.
He continues to wildly vary his film choices, appearing in everything from high-concept popcorn flicks such as Megamind (2010) to adventurous critic-bait like Inglourious Basterds (2009) and The Tree of Life (2011). He has received two Best Actor Oscar nominations, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011). In 2014, he starred in the war film Fury (2014), opposite Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Peña.
Pitt and Jolie have 6 children, 3 adopted & 3 biological.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
British actor Jeremy Irons was born in Cowes, Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England. He is the son of Barbara Anne Brereton (Sharpe) and Paul Dugan Irons, an accountant. Young Jeremy didn't prove very fond of figures. He visited mainland England only once a year. He wound up being grounded when his family settled down in Hertfordshire. At the age of 13 he enrolled in Sherborne School, Dorset, where he could practice his favorite sport, horse-riding. Before becoming an actor, he had considered a veterinarian surgeon's career.
He trained at the Bristol Old Vic School for two years, then joined Bristol Old Vic repertory company where he gained experience working in everything from Shakespeare to contemporary dramas. He moved to London in 1971 and had a number of jobs before landing the role of "John the Baptist" in the hit musical "Godspell". He went on to have a successful early career in the West End theatre and on TV, and debuted on-screen in Nijinsky (1980). In the early 80s, he gained international attention with his starring role in the Granada Television serial adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited (1981), after which he was much in demand as a romantic leading man. He went on to a steady film career. In 1984, he debuted on Broadway opposite: Glenn Close in Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing" and, in the mid-80s, he appeared in three lead roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Once described as 'the thinking woman's pin up', he has made his name in thought provoking films such as David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (1988), for which he won the New York Critics Best Actor Award. He gained a Golden Globe Award in addition to an Oscar for Best Actor in 1990 for his role as Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune (1990) alongside Glenn Close. Among his many achievements, his role as Professor Higgins in Loewe-Lerner's famous musical "My Fair Lady" mustn't be forgotten. It was in London, back in 1987.
He is married to actress Sinéad Cusack, with whom he appeared in Waterland (1992) and in the Royal Shakespeare Company plays. He appeared with his son Samuel Irons and his father-in-law Cyril Cusack in the film Danny the Champion of the World (1989). His son Max Irons is also an actor.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Steve Buscemi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dorothy (Wilson), a restaurant hostess, and John Buscemi, a sanitation worker. He is of Italian (father) and English, Dutch, and Irish (mother) descent. He became interested in acting during his last year of high school. After graduating, he moved to Manhattan to study acting with John Strasberg. He began writing and performing original theatre pieces with fellow actor/writer Mark Boone Junior. This led to his being cast in his first lead role in Parting Glances (1986). Since then, he has worked with many of the top filmmakers in Hollywood, including Quentin Tarantino, Jerry Bruckheimer, and The Coen Brothers. He is a highly respected actor.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Tommy Lee Jones was born in San Saba, Texas, the son of Lucille Marie (Scott), a police officer and beauty shop owner, and Clyde C. Jones, who worked on oil fields. Tommy himself worked in underwater construction and on an oil rig. He attended St. Mark's School of Texas, a prestigious prep school for boys in Dallas, on a scholarship, and went to Harvard on another scholarship. He roomed with future Vice President Al Gore and played offensive guard in the famous 29-29 Harvard-Yale football game of '68 known as "The Tie." He received a B.A. in English literature and graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1969.
Following college, he moved to New York and began his theatrical career on Broadway in "A Patriot for Me" (1969). In 1970, he made his film debut in Love Story (1970). While living in New York, he continued to appear in various plays, both on- and off-Broadway: "Fortune and Men's Eyes" (1969); "Four on a Garden" (1971); "Blue Boys" (1972); "Ulysses in Nighttown" (1974). During this time, he also appeared on a daytime soap opera, One Life to Live (1968) as Dr. Mark Toland from 1971-75. He moved with wife Kate Lardner, granddaughter of short-story writer/columnist Ring Lardner, and her two children from a previous marriage, to Los Angeles.
There he began to get some roles on television: Charlie's Angels (1976) (pilot episode); Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976); and The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977). While working on the movie Back Roads (1981), he met and fell in love with Kimberlea Cloughley, whom he later married. More roles in television--both on network and cable--stage and film garnered him a reputation as a strong, explosive, thoughtful actor who could handle supporting as well as leading roles. He made his directorial debut in The Good Old Boys (1995) on TNT. In addition to directing and starring in the film, he co-wrote the teleplay (with J.T. Allen). The film, based on Elmer Kelton's novel, is set in west Texas where Jones has strong family ties. Consequently, this story of a cowboy facing the end of an era has special meaning for him.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Nicolas Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola in Long Beach, California, the son of comparative literature professor August Coppola (whose brother is director Francis Ford Coppola) and dancer/choreographer Joy Vogelsang. He is of Italian (father) and Polish and German (mother) descent. Cage changed his name early in his career to make his own reputation, succeeding brilliantly with a host of classic, quirky roles by the late 1980s.
Initially studying theatre at Beverly Hills High School (though he dropped out at seventeen), he secured a bit part in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) -- most of which was cut, dashing his hopes and leading to a job selling popcorn at the Fairfax Theater, thinking that would be the only route to a movie career. But a job reading lines with actors auditioning for uncle Francis' Rumble Fish (1983) landed him a role in that film, followed by the punk-rocker in Valley Girl (1983), which was released first and truly launched his career.
His one-time passion for method acting reached a personal limit when he smashed a street-vendor's remote-control car to achieve the sense of rage needed for his gangster character in The Cotton Club (1984).
In his early 20s, he dated Jenny Wright for two years and later linked to Uma Thurman. After a relationship of several years with Christina Fulton, a model, they split amicably and share custody of a son, Weston Cage (b. 1990). He also has a son with his ex-wife, Alice Kim Cage.- Actor
- Producer
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Jack Nicholson, an American actor, producer, director and screenwriter, is a three-time Academy Award winner and twelve-time nominee. Nicholson is also notable for being one of two actors - the other being Michael Caine - who have received an Oscar nomination in every decade from the '60s through the '00s.
Nicholson was born on April 22, 1937, in Neptune, New Jersey. He was raised believing that his grandmother was his mother, and that his mother, June Frances Nicholson, a showgirl, was his older sister. He discovered the truth in 1975 from a Time magazine journalist who was researching a profile on him. His real father is believed to have been either Donald Furcillo, an Italian American showman, or Eddie King (Edgar Kirschfeld), born in Latvia and also in show business. Jack's mother's ancestry was Irish, and smaller amounts of English, German, Scottish, and Welsh.
Nicholson made his film debut in a B-movie titled The Cry Baby Killer (1958). His rise in Hollywood was far from meteoric, and for years, he sustained his career with guest spots in television series and a number of Roger Corman films, including The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).
Nicholson's first turn in the director's chair was for Drive, He Said (1971). Before that, he wrote the screenplay for The Trip (1967), and co-wrote Head (1968), a vehicle for The Monkees. His big break came with Easy Rider (1969) and his portrayal of liquor-soaked attorney George Hanson, which earned Nicholson his first Oscar nomination. Nicholson's film career took off in the 1970s with a definitive performance in Five Easy Pieces (1970). Nicholson's other notable work during this period includes leading roles in Roman Polanski's noir masterpiece Chinatown (1974) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which he won his first Best Actor Oscar.
The 1980s kicked off with another career-defining role for Nicholson as Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Shining (1980). A string of well-received films followed, including Terms of Endearment (1983), which earned Nicholson his second Oscar; Prizzi's Honor (1985), and The Witches of Eastwick (1987). He portrayed another renowned villain, The Joker, in Tim Burton's Batman (1989). In the 1990s, he starred in such varied films as A Few Good Men (1992), for which he received another Oscar nomination, and a dual role in Mars Attacks! (1996).
Although a glimpse at the darker side of Nicholson's acting range reappeared in The Departed (2006), the actor's most recent roles highlight the physical and emotional complications one faces late in life. The most notable of these is the unapologetically misanthropic Melvin Udall in As Good as It Gets (1997), for which he won his third Oscar. Shades of this persona are apparent in About Schmidt (2002), Something's Gotta Give (2003), and The Bucket List (2007). In addition to his Academy Awards and Oscar nominations, Nicholson has seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. He also became one of the youngest actors to receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement award in 1994.
Nicholson has six children by five different women: Jennifer Nicholson (b. 1963) from his only marriage to Sandra Knight, which ended in 1966; Caleb Goddard (b. 1970) with Five Easy Pieces (1970) co-star Susan Anspach, who was automatically adopted by Anspach's then-husband Mark Goddard; Honey Hollman (b. 1982) with Danish supermodel Winnie Hollman; Lorraine Nicholson (b. 1990) and Ray Nicholson (b. 1992) with minor actress Rebecca Broussard; and Tessa Gourin (b. 1994) with real estate agent Jennine Marie Gourin. Nicholson's longest relationship was the 17 nonmonogamous years he spent with Anjelica Huston; this ended when Broussard announced she was pregnant with his child.- Actor
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Gary Oldman is a talented English movie star and character actor, renowned for his expressive acting style. One of the most celebrated thespians of his generation, with a diverse career encompassing theatre, film and television, he is known for his roles as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), Drexl in True Romance (1993), George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), among many others. For much of his career, he was best-known for playing over-the-top antagonists, such as terrorist Egor Korshunov in the 1997 blockbuster Air Force One (1997), though he has reached a new audience with heroic roles in the Harry Potter and Dark Knight franchises. He is also a filmmaker, musician, and author.
Gary Leonard Oldman was born on March 21, 1958 in New Cross, London, England, to Kathleen (Cheriton), a homemaker, and Leonard Bertram Oldman, a welder. He won a scholarship to Britain's Rose Bruford Drama College, in Sidcup, Kent, where he received a B.A. in theatre arts in 1979. He subsequently studied with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and went on to appear in a number of plays throughout the early '80s, including "The Pope's Wedding," for which he received Time Out's Fringe Award for Best Newcomer of 1985-1986 and the British Theatre Association's Drama Magazine Award as Best Actor for 1985. Before fame, he was employed as a worker in assembly lines and as a porter in an operating theater. He also had jobs selling shoes and beheading pigs while supporting his early acting career.
His film debut was Remembrance (1982), though his most-memorable early role came when he played Sex Pistol Sid Vicious in the biopic Sid and Nancy (1986) picking up the Evening Standard Film Award as Best Newcomer. He then received a Best Actor nomination from BAFTA for his portrayal of '60s playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987).
In the 1990s, Oldman brought to life a series of iconic real-world and fictional villains including Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK (1991), the title character in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Drexl Spivey in True Romance (1993), Stansfield in Léon: The Professional (1994), Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element (1997) and Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One (1997). That decade also saw Oldman portraying Ludwig van Beethoven in biopic Immortal Beloved (1994).
Oldman played the coveted role of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), giving him a key part in one of the highest-grossing franchises ever. He reprised that role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Oldman also took on the iconic role of Detective James Gordon in writer-director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), a role he played again in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Prominent film critic Mark Kermode, in reviewing The Dark Knight, wrote, "the best performance in the film, by a mile, is Gary Oldman's ... it would be lovely to see him get a[n Academy Award] nomination because actually, he's the guy who gets kind of overlooked in all of this."
Oldman co-starred with Jim Carrey in the 2009 version of A Christmas Carol in which Oldman played three roles. He had a starring role in David Goyer's supernatural thriller The Unborn, released in 2009. In 2010, Oldman co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli. He also played a lead role in Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood. Oldman voiced the role of villain Lord Shen and was nominated for an Annie Award for his performance in Kung Fu Panda 2.
In 2011, Oldman portrayed master spy George Smiley in the adaptation of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and the role scored Oldman his first Academy Award nomination. In 2014, he played one of the lead humans in the science fiction action film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) alongside Jason Clarke and Keri Russell. Also in 2014, Oldman starred alongside Joel Kinnaman, Abbie Cornish, Michael Keaton, and Samuel L. Jackson in the remake of RoboCop (2014), as Norton, the scientist who creates RoboCop.
Aside from acting, Oldman tried his hand at writing and directing for Nil by Mouth (1997). The movie opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, and won Kathy Burke a Best Actress prize at the festival.
Oldman has three children, Alfie, with first wife, actress Lesley Manville, and Gulliver and Charlie with his third wife, Donya Fiorentino. In 2017, he married writer and art curator Gisele Schmidt.
In 2018 he won an Oscar for best actor for his work on Darkest Hour (2017).- Actor
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American actor, filmmaker and activist Edward Harrison Norton was born on August 18, 1969, in Boston, Massachusetts, and was raised in Columbia, Maryland.
His mother, Lydia Robinson "Robin" (Rouse), was a foundation executive and teacher of English, and a daughter of famed real estate developer James Rouse, who developed Columbia, MD; she passed away of brain cancer on March 6, 1997. His father, Edward Mower Norton, was an environmental lawyer and conservationist, who works for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Edward has two younger siblings, James and Molly.
From the age of five onward, the Yale graduate (majoring in history) was interested in acting. At the age of eight, he would ask his drama teacher what his motivation in a scene was. He attended theater schools throughout his life, and eventually managed to find work on stage in New York as a member of the Signature players, who produced the works of playwright and director Edward Albee. Around the time when he was appearing in Albee's Fragments, in Hollywood, they were looking for a young actor to star opposite Richard Gere in a new courtroom thriller, Primal Fear (1996). The role was offered to Leonardo DiCaprio but he turned it down. Gere was on the verge of walking away from the project, fed up with the wait for a young star to be found, when Edward auditioned and won the role over 2000 other hopefuls. Before the film was even released, his test screenings for the part were causing a Hollywood sensation, and he was soon offered roles in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996). Edward won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Primal Fear (1996). In 1998, Norton gained 30 pounds of muscle and transformed his look into that of a monstrous skinhead for his role as a violent white supremacist in American History X (1998). This performance earned him his second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actor.
He received his third Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor, for his work in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014). His most prominent roles also include the critically acclaimed Everyone Says I Love You (1996), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Fight Club (1999), Red Dragon (2002), 25th Hour (2002), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), The Illusionist (2006), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). He has also directed and co-written films, including his directorial debut, Keeping the Faith (2000). He has done uncredited work on the scripts for The Score (2001), Frida (2002), and The Incredible Hulk (2008).
Alongside his work in cinema, Norton is an environmental and social activist, and is a member of the board of trustees of Enterprise Community Partners, a non-profit organization for developing affordable housing founded by his grandfather James Rouse.- Actor
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Compact Italian-American actor Joe Pesci was born February 9, 1943 in Newark, New Jersey, to Mary (Mesce), a part-time barber, and Angelo Pesci, a bartender and forklift driver. Pesci first broke into entertainment as a child actor, and by the mid-1950s, was starring on the series "Star Time Kids". In the mid-1960s, he released a record under the stage name Joe Ritchie titled "Little Joe Sure Can Sing", and was also playing guitar with several bands, including Joey Dee and The Starliters. He even joined with his friend Frank Vincent to start a vaudeville-style comedy act, but met with limited success (interestingly, Pesci and Vincent would later go on to co-star in several gangster films together, including Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995).
Pesci's first film role was as an uncredited dancer in Hey, Let's Twist! (1961) and then he had to wait another 15 years for a minor role in The Death Collector (1976). His work in the second film was seen by Robert De Niro, who convinced director Martin Scorsese to cast him as Joey LaMotta in the epic boxing film Raging Bull (1980), which really got him noticed in Hollywood. He played opposite Rodney Dangerfield in Easy Money (1983), was with buddy DeNiro again in Once Upon a Time in America (1984), nearly stole the show as con man Leo Getz in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) and scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar playing the psychotic Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas (1990).
His comedic talents shone again in the mega-popular Home Alone (1990), and he put in a terrific performance as co-conspirator David Ferrie in JFK (1991). Pesci was back again as Leo Getz for Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), and was still a bumbling crook in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), and had a minor role in the Robert De Niro-directed A Bronx Tale (1993). He was lured back by Scorsese to play another deranged gangster named Nicky (based on real-life hood Tony Spilotro [aka "The Ant"]) in the violent Casino (1995), and starred in the comedies 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997) and Gone Fishin' (1997), although both failed to fire at the box office.
Pesci returned again as fast-talking con man Leo Getz in Lethal Weapon 4 (1998). In 1999, he announced his retirement from acting and since then, he appeared only occasionally in films, including a cameo appearance in The Good Shepherd (2006). He also appeared in the music documentary I Go Back Home: Jimmy Scott (2016).- Actor
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Alfredo James "Al" 'Pacino established himself as a film actor during one of cinema's most vibrant decades, the 1970s, and has become an enduring and iconic figure in the world of American movies.
He was born April 25, 1940 in Manhattan, New York City, to Italian-American parents, Rose (nee Gerardi) and Sal Pacino. They divorced when he was young. His mother moved them into his grandparents' home in the South Bronx. Pacino found himself often repeating the plots and voices of characters he had seen in the movies. Bored and unmotivated in school, he found a haven in school plays, and his interest soon blossomed into a full-time career. Starting onstage, he went through a period of depression and poverty, sometimes having to borrow bus fare to succeed to auditions. He made it into the prestigious Actors Studio in 1966, studying under Lee Strasberg, creator of the Method Approach that would become the trademark of many 1970s-era actors.
After appearing in a string of plays in supporting roles, Pacino finally attained success off-Broadway with Israel Horovitz's "The Indian Wants the Bronx", winning an Obie Award for the 1966-67 season. That was followed by a Tony Award for "Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie?" His first feature films made little departure from the gritty realistic stage performances that earned him respect: he played a drug addict in The Panic in Needle Park (1971) after his film debut in Me, Natalie (1969). The role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972) was one of the most sought-after of the time: Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Ryan O'Neal, Robert De Niro and a host of other actors either wanted it or were mentioned, but director Francis Ford Coppola wanted Pacino for the role.
Coppola was successful but Pacino was reportedly in constant fear of being fired during the very difficult shoot. The film was a monster hit that earned Pacino his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. However, instead of taking on easier projects for the big money he could now command, Pacino threw his support behind what he considered tough but important films, such as the true-life crime drama Serpico (1973) and the tragic real-life bank robbery film Dog Day Afternoon (1975). He was nominated three consecutive years for the "Best Actor" Academy Award. He faltered slightly with Bobby Deerfield (1977), but regained his stride with And Justice for All (1979), for which he received another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Unfortunately, this would signal the beginning of a decline in his career, which produced flops like Cruising (1980) and Author! Author! (1982).
Pacino took on another vicious gangster role and cemented his legendary status in the ultra-violent cult film Scarface (1983), but a monumental mistake was about to follow. Revolution (1985) endured an endless and seemingly cursed shoot in which equipment was destroyed, weather was terrible, and Pacino fell ill with pneumonia. Constant changes in the script further derailed the project. The Revolutionary War-themed film, considered among the worst films ever made, resulted in awful reviews and kept him off the screen for the next four years. Returning to the stage, Pacino did much to give back and contribute to the theatre, which he considers his first love. He directed a film, The Local Stigmatic (1990), but it remains unreleased. He lifted his self-imposed exile with the striking Sea of Love (1989) as a hard-drinking policeman. This marked the second phase of Pacino's career, being the first to feature his now famous dark, owl eyes and hoarse, gravelly voice.
Returning to the Corleones, Pacino made The Godfather Part III (1990) and earned raves for his first comedic role in the colorful adaptation Dick Tracy (1990). This earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and two years later he was nominated for Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). He went into romantic mode for Frankie and Johnny (1991). In 1992, he finally won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his amazing performance in Scent of a Woman (1992). A mixture of technical perfection (he plays a blind man) and charisma, the role was tailor-made for him, and remains a classic.
The next few years would see Pacino becoming more comfortable with acting and movies as a business, turning out great roles in great films with more frequency and less of the demanding personal involvement of his wilder days. Carlito's Way (1993) proved another gangster classic, as did the epic crime drama Heat (1995) directed by Michael Mann and co-starring Robert De Niro. He directed the film adaptation of Shakespeare's Looking for Richard (1996). During this period, City Hall (1996), Donnie Brasco (1997) and The Devil's Advocate (1997) all came out. Reteaming with Mann and then Oliver Stone, he gave commanding performances in The Insider (1999) and Any Given Sunday (1999).
In the 2000s, Pacino starred in a number of theatrical blockbusters, including Ocean's Thirteen (2007), but his choice in television roles (the vicious, closeted Roy Cohn in the HBO miniseries Angels in America (2003) and his sensitive portrayal of Jack Kevorkian, in the television movie You Don't Know Jack (2010)) are reminiscent of the bolder choices of his early career. Each television project garnered him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie.
Never wed, Pacino has a daughter, Julie Marie, with acting teacher Jan Tarrant, and a set of twins with former longtime girlfriend Beverly D'Angelo. His romantic history includes Jill Clayburgh, Veruschka von Lehndorff, Carole Mallory, Debra Winger, Tuesday Weld, Marthe Keller, Carmen Cervera, Kathleen Quinlan, Lyndall Hobbs, Penelope Ann Miller, and a two-decade intermittent relationship with "Godfather" co-star Diane Keaton. He currently lives with Argentinian actress Lucila Solá, who is 36 years his junior.
As of 2022, Pacino is 82-years-old. He has never retired from acting, and continues to appear regularly in film.- Actor
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Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning actor Woodrow Tracy Harrelson was born on July 23, 1961 in Midland, Texas, to Diane Lou (Oswald) and Charles Harrelson. He grew up in Lebanon, Ohio, where his mother was from. After receiving degrees in theater arts and English from Hanover College, he had a brief stint in New York theater. He was soon cast as Woody on TV series Cheers (1982), which wound up being one of the most-popular TV shows ever and also earned Harrelson an Emmy for his performance in 1989.
While he dabbled in film during his time on Cheers (1982), that area of his career didn't fully take off until towards the end of the show's run. In 1991, Doc Hollywood (1991) gave him his first widely-seen movie role, and he followed that up with White Men Can't Jump (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993) and Natural Born Killers (1994). More recently, Harrelson was seen in No Country for Old Men (2007), Zombieland (2009), 2012 (2009), and Friends with Benefits (2011), along with the acclaimed HBO movie Game Change (2012).
In 2011, Harrelson snagged the coveted role of fan-favorite drunk Haymitch Abernathy in the big-screen adaptation of The Hunger Games (2012), which ended up being one of the highest-grossing movies ever at the domestic box office. Harrelson is set to reprise that role for the sequels, which are scheduled for release in November 2013, 2014 and 2015. Harrelson has received two Academy Award nominations, first for his role as controversial Hustler founder Larry Flynt in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and then for a role in The Messenger (2009). He also received Golden Globe nominations for both of these parts. In 2016, he had a stand-out role as a wise teacher in the teen drama The Edge of Seventeen (2016).
Harrelson was briefly married to Nancy Simon in the 80s, and later married his former assistant, Laura Louie, with whom he has three daughters.- Actor
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Lead and supporting actor of the American stage and films, with sandy colored hair, and pale complexion. He won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Deer Hunter (1978), and has been seen in mostly character roles, often portraying psychologically unstable individuals, though that generalization would not do justice to Walken's depth and breadth of performances.
Walken was born in Astoria, Queens, New York. His mother, Rosalie (Russell), was a Scottish emigrant, from Glasgow. His father, Paul Wälken, was a German emigrant, from Horst, who ran Walken's bakery. Christopher learned his stage craft, including dancing, at Hofstra University & ANTA, and picked up a Theatre World award for his performance in the revival of the Tennessee Williams play "The Rose Tattoo". Walken then first broke through into cinema in 1969 appearing in Me and My Brother (1968), before appearing alongside Sean Connery in the sleeper heist movie The Anderson Tapes (1971). His eclectic work really came to the attention of critics in 1977 with his intense portrayal of Diane Keaton suicidal younger brother in Annie Hall (1977), and then he scooped the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award in 1977 for his role as Nick in the electrifying The Deer Hunter (1978). Walken was lured back by The Deer Hunter (1978) director Michael Cimino for a role in the financially disastrous western Heaven's Gate (1980), before moving onto surprise audiences with his wonderful dance skills in Pennies from Heaven (1981), taking the lead as a school teacher with telepathic abilities in the Stephen King inspired The Dead Zone (1983) and then as billionaire industrialist Max Zorin trying to blow up Silicon Valley in the 007 adventure A View to a Kill (1985). Looking at many of Walken's other captivating screen roles, it is easy to see the diversity of his range and even his droll comedic talents with humorous appearances in Biloxi Blues (1988), Wayne's World 2 (1993), Joe Dirt (2001), Mousehunt (1997) and America's Sweethearts (2001). Most recently, he continued to surprise audiences again with his work as a heart broken and apologetic father to Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can (2002).- Actor
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American actor and producer Harvey Keitel was born on May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Miriam (Klein) and Harry Keitel. An Oscar and Golden Globe Award nominee, he has appeared in films such as Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), Ridley Scott's The Duellists (1977) and Thelma & Louise (1991), Peter Yates' Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992), Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), James Mangold's Cop Land (1997), Paolo Sorrentino's Youth (2015). He is regarded as one of the greatest method actors ever. Along with actors Al Pacino and Ellen Burstyn, he is the current co-president of the Actors Studio.
Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some Off-Broadway productions. During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a starring role as "J.R.", in Scorsese's first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967). Since then, Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on several projects. Keitel had the starring role in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), which also proved to be Robert De Niro's breakthrough film. Keitel re-teamed with Scorsese for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which he had a villainous supporting role, and appeared with Robert De Niro again in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), playing the role of Jodie Foster's pimp.- Actor
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Adrien Nicholas Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, the only child of retired history professor Elliot Brody and Hungarian-born photographer Sylvia Plachy. He accompanied his mother on assignments for the Village Voice, and credits her with making him feel comfortable in front of the camera. Adrien attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York.
Despite a strong performance in The Thin Red Line (1998), time constraints forced the director to edit out much of Adrien's part. In spite of his later work with Spike Lee and Barry Levinson, he never became the star many expected he would become until Roman Polanski called on him to play a celebrated Jewish pianist in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. He pulled off a brilliant performance in The Pianist (2002), drawing on the heritage and rare dialect of his Polish-born grandmother, as well as his father, who lost family members during the Holocaust, and his mother, who fled Communist Hungary as a child during the 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union.- Actor
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Quirky, inventive and handsome American actor Michael Keaton first achieved major fame with his door-busting performance as fast-talking ideas man Bill Blazejowski, alongside a nerdish morgue attendant (Henry Winkler), in Night Shift (1982). He played further comedic roles in Mr. Mom (1983), Johnny Dangerously (1984), and Beetlejuice (1988), earned further acclaim for his dramatic portrayal of Bruce Wayne / Batman in Tim Burton's Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), and since then, has moved easily between film genres, ranging from drama and romantic comedy to thriller and action.
Keaton was born Michael John Douglas on September 5, 1951 in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, to Leona Elizabeth (Loftus), a homemaker, and George A. Douglas, a civil engineer and surveyor. He is of Irish, as well as English, Scottish, and German, descent. Michael studied speech for two years at Kent State, before dropping out and moving to Pittsburgh. An unsuccessful attempt at stand-up comedy led Keaton to working as a TV cameraman in a cable station, and he came to realize he wanted to work in front of the cameras. Keaton first appeared on TV in several episodes of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1968).
He left Pittsburgh and moved to Los Angeles to begin auditioning for TV. He began cropping up in popular TV shows including Maude (1972) and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979). Around this time, Keaton decided to use an alternative surname to remove confusion with better-known actor Michael Douglas. He looked into the "K"'s for surnames and thought it was inoffensive to chose 'Keaton'. His next break was scoring a co-starring role alongside Jim Belushi in the short-lived comedy series Working Stiffs (1979), which showcased his comedic talent and led to his co-starring role in Night Shift (1982). Keaton next scored the lead in the comedy hits Mr. Mom (1983), Johnny Dangerously (1984) , Gung Ho (1986), the Tim Burton horror-comedy Beetlejuice (1988), and The Dream Team (1989).
Keaton's career was given another major boost when he was again cast by Tim Burton, this time as the title comic book superhero, millionaire playboy/crime-fighter Bruce Wayne, in Batman (1989). Burton cast him because he thought that Keaton was the only actor who could portray someone who has the kind of darkly obsessive personality that the character demands. To say there were howls of protest by fans of the caped crusader comic strip is an understatement! Warner Bros. was deluged with thousands of letters of complaint commenting that comedian Keaton was the wrong choice for the Caped Crusader, given his prior work and the fact that he lacked the suave, handsome features and tall, muscular physicality often attributed to the character in the comic books. However, their fears were proven wrong when Keaton turned in a sensational performance, and he held his own on screen with opponent Jack Nicholson, playing the lunatic villain, "The Joker". Keaton's dramatic work earned widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike, and Batman (1989) became one of the most successful films of the year.
Keaton remained active during the 1990s, appearing in a wide range of films. Keen to diversify his work, Keaton starred as a psychotic tenant in Pacific Heights (1990), as a hard-working cop in One Good Cop (1991), and then donned the black cape and cowl once more for Batman Returns (1992). He remained in demand during the 1990s, appearing in a wide range of films, including the star-studded Shakespearian Much Ado About Nothing (1993), the drama My Life (1993), another Ron Howard comedy The Paper (1994), with sexy Andie MacDowell in Multiplicity (1996), twice in the same role, dogged Elmore Leonard character Agent Ray Nicolette, in Jackie Brown (1997) and Out of Sight (1998). He also played a killer in the mediocre thriller Desperate Measures (1998).
In the 2000s, Keaton appeared in several productions with mixed success, including Live from Baghdad (2002), First Daughter (2004), and Herbie Fully Loaded (2005). He also provided voices for characters in the animated films Cars (2006), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Minions (2015).
He returned to major film roles in the 2010s, co-starring in The Other Guys (2010), RoboCop (2014) and Need for Speed (2014). Also that year, Keaton starred alongside Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, and Naomi Watts in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), a film by 21 Grams (2003) and Biutiful (2010) director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. In the film, Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a screen actor, famous for playing the iconic titular superhero, who puts on a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver short story, to regain his former glory. Keaton's critically praised lead performance earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, the Critics' Choice Award for Best Actor and Best Actor in a Comedy, and nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award, British Academy Film Award, and Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 2015, he played a journalist in Spotlight (2015), which, like Birdman, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2016, he starred as Ray Kroc, the developer of McDonald's, in the drama The Founder (2016).
He is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University.- Actor
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Geoffrey Roy Rush was born on July 6, 1951, in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, to Merle (Bischof), a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. His mother was of German descent and his father had English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. He was raised in Brisbane, Queensland, after his parents split up.
Rush attended Everton Park State High School during his formative years. His early interest in the theatre led to his 1971 stage debut at age 20 in "Wrong Side of the Moon" with the Queensland Theatre Company.
Known for his classical repertory work over the years, he scored an unexpected hit with his Queensland role as Snoopy in the musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". A few years later he moved to France to study but subsequently returned to his homeland within a short time and continued work as both actor and director with the Queensland company ("June and the Paycock," "Aladdin," "Godspell," "Present Laughter," "The Rivals"). In the 1980s Rush became a vital member of the State Theatre Company of South Australia and showed an equally strong range there in such productions as "Revenger's Tragedy," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Mother Courage...and Her Children," "Blood Wedding," "Pal Joey," "Twelfth Night" and as The Fool in "King Lear".
Rush made an inauspicious debut in films with the feature Hoodwink (1981), having little more than a bit part, and didn't carry off his first major role until playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek in a movie production of Twelfth Night (1986). Yet, he remained a durable presence on stage with acclaimed productions in "The Diary of a Madman" in 1989 and "The Government Inspector" in 1991.
Rush suffered a temporary nervous breakdown in 1992 due to overwork and anguish over his lack of career advancement. Resting for a time, he eventually returned to the stage. Within a few years film-goers finally began taking notice of Geoffrey after his performance in Children of the Revolution (1996). This led to THE role of a lifetime as the highly dysfunctional piano prodigy David Helfgott in Shine (1996). Rush's astonishing tour-de-force performance won him every conceivable award imaginable, including the Oscar, Golden Globe, British Film Award and Australian Film Institute Award.
"Shine" not only put Rush on the international film map, but atypically on the Hollywood "A" list as well. His rather homely mug was made fascinating by a completely charming, confident and captivating demeanor; better yet, it allowed him to more easily dissolve into a number of transfixing historical portrayals, notably his Walsingham in Elizabeth (1998) and Leon Trotsky in Frida (2002). He's also allowed himself to have a bit of hammy fun in such box office escapism as Mystery Men (1999), House on Haunted Hill (1999), The Banger Sisters (2002), Finding Nemo (2003) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). More than validating his early film success, two more Oscar nominations came his way in the same year for Quills (2000) (best actor) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) (support actor) in 2000. Geoffrey's amazing versatility continued into the millennium with his portrayal of the manic, volatile comedy genius Peter Sellers in the biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004). He also merited attention as Lionel Logue in The King's Speech (2010), Basil Hunter in The Eye of the Storm (2011), Hans Hubermann in The Book Thief (2013), artist/sculptor Alberto Giocometti in Final Portrait (2017) and Michael Kingley Storm Boy (2019).
Rush's intermittent returns to the stage have included productions of "Marat-Sade," "Uncle Vanya," "Oleanna," "Hamlet" and "The Small Poppies". In 2009 he made his Broadway debut in "Exit the King" co-starring Susan Sarandon. His marriage (since 1988) to Aussie classical actress Jane Menelaus produced daughter Angelica (1992) and son James (1995). Menelaus, who has also performed with the State Theatre of South Australia, has co-starred on stage with Rush in "The Winter's Tale" (1987), "Troilus and Cressida" (1989) and "The Importance of Being Earnest" (as Gwendolyn to his Jack Worthing). She also had featured roles in a few of his films, including Quills (2000) and The Eye of the Storm (2011).- Actor
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Jude Law is an English actor. Law has been nominated for two Academy Awards and continues to build a prolific body of work that spans from early successes such as Gattaca (1997) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to more recent turns as Dr. John Watson in Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), as Hugo's father in Hugo (2011) and in the titular role in Dom Hemingway (2013).
David Jude Law was born on December 29, 1972 in Lewisham, London, England, to Margaret Anne (Heyworth) and Peter Robert Law, both of whom taught at comprehensive schools; his father later became a headmaster. Law has said that he was named after both the book Jude the Obscure and the song Hey Jude.
In 1992, Jude began his stage career. He starred in many plays throughout London, and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award of "Outstanding Newcomer" After doing the play "Indiscretions" in London, he moved and did it again on Broadway. This time, he was alongside Kathleen Turner. He then received a Tony Nomination for "Outstanding Supporting Actor". He was then rewarded the Theatre World Award. After Broadway, Jude started on the big screen, in many independent films. His first big-named movie was Gattaca (1997), with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. He also had a good role in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). Jude's latest rise to fame has been because of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), in which he plays Matt Damon's obsession. The film did very well at the box office, and critics loved Jude's acting.
Following the success of Gattaca (1997) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Law's feature film career continued to gain momentum throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s with roles in such films as Enemy at the Gates (2001), Road to Perdition (2002), I Heart Huckabees (2004), The Aviator (2004) and many others. Law is one of three actors, along with Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp, to take over acting responsibilities in the Terry Gilliam project The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) following Heath Ledger's death.
Law is a partner in the production company "Natural Nylon". His partners include Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor and his ex-wife Sadie Frost.
Law has been active in many charitable activities and supports several different foundations and causes, doing work for organizations including the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Make Poverty History, Breast Cancer Care and others. Law is also a peace advocate, and in 2011, participated in street protests against the rule of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus.
Law married Sadie Frost in 1997 and the couple had two sons (Rafferty and Rudy) and a daughter (Iris) before divorcing in 2003. Law and Alfie (2004) co-star Sienna Miller were engaged to be married in 2005 and separated in 2006 (they would later rekindle their relationship in 2009, splitting once again in 2011). Law and American model Samantha Burke had a brief relationship in 2008 that resulted in the birth of Law's fourth child, daughter Sophia. Law's fifth child, with an ex-girlfriend, Catherine Harding, was born in 2015.- Producer
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Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s, as the hunky lead actor in movies such as Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997), to then become a leading man in Hollywood blockbusters, made by internationally renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Irmelin DiCaprio (née Indenbirken) and former comic book artist George DiCaprio. His father is of Italian and German descent, and his mother, who is German-born, is of German, Ukrainian and Russian ancestry. His middle name, "Wilhelm", was his maternal grandfather's first name. Leonardo's father had achieved minor status as an artist and distributor of cult comic book titles, and was even depicted in several issues of American Splendor, the cult semi-autobiographical comic book series by the late 'Harvey Pekar', a friend of George's. Leonardo's performance skills became obvious to his parents early on, and after signing him up with a talent agent who wanted Leonardo to perform under the stage name "Lenny Williams", DiCaprio began appearing on a number of television commercials and educational programs.
DiCaprio began attracting the attention of producers, who cast him in small roles in a number of television series, such as Roseanne (1988) and The New Lassie (1989), but it wasn't until 1991 that DiCaprio made his film debut in Critters 3 (1991), a low-budget horror movie. While Critters 3 (1991) did little to help showcase DiCaprio's acting abilities, it did help him develop his show-reel, and attract the attention of the people behind the hit sitcom Growing Pains (1985), in which Leonardo was cast in the "Cousin Oliver" role of a young homeless boy who moves in with the Seavers. While DiCaprio's stint on Growing Pains (1985) was very short, as the sitcom was axed the year after he joined, it helped bring DiCaprio into the public's attention and, after the sitcom ended, DiCaprio began auditioning for roles in which he would get the chance to prove his acting chops.
Leonardo took up a diverse range of roles in the early 1990s, including a mentally challenged youth in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead (1995) and a drug addict in one of his most challenging roles to date, Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries (1995), a role which the late River Phoenix originally expressed interest in. While these diverse roles helped establish Leonardo's reputation as an actor, it wasn't until his role as Romeo Montague in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) that Leonardo became a household name, a true movie star. The following year, DiCaprio starred in another movie about doomed lovers, Titanic (1997), which went on to beat all box office records held before then, as, at the time, Titanic (1997) became the highest grossing movie of all time, and cemented DiCaprio's reputation as a teen heartthrob. Following his work on Titanic (1997), DiCaprio kept a low profile for a number of years, with roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and the low-budget The Beach (2000) being some of his few notable roles during this period.
In 2002, he burst back into screens throughout the world with leading roles in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002), his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. With a current salary of $20 million a movie, DiCaprio is now one of the biggest movie stars in the world. However, he has not limited his professional career to just acting in movies, as DiCaprio is a committed environmentalist, who is actively involved in many environmental causes, and his commitment to this issue led to his involvement in The 11th Hour, a documentary movie about the state of the natural environment. As someone who has gone from small roles in television commercials to one of the most respected actors in the world, DiCaprio has had one of the most diverse careers in cinema. DiCaprio continued to defy conventions about the types of roles he would accept, and with his career now seeing him leading all-star casts in action thrillers such as The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), DiCaprio continues to wow audiences by refusing to conform to any cliché about actors.
In 2012, he played a mustache twirling villain in Django Unchained (2012), and then tragic literary character Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013) and Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
DiCaprio is passionate about environmental and humanitarian causes, having donated $1,000,000 to earthquake relief efforts in 2010, the same year he contributed $1,000,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society.- Actor
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Ted Danson is well known for his role as Sam Malone in the television series Cheers (1982). During the show's 11-year run, he was nominated nine times for an Emmy Award as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and won twice, in 1990 and 1993. The role also earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series in 1989 and 1990. He and his wife, actress Mary Steenburgen, starred in and were executive producers of the CBS comedy series Ink (1996).
Edward Bridge "Ted" Danson III was born in San Diego, California, to Jessica Harriet (MacMaster) and Edward Bridge Danson, Jr., who was an archaeologist and museum director. He has English, Scottish, and German ancestry. He was raised just outside Flagstaff, Ariz. Danson attended Stanford University, where he became interested in drama during his second year. In 1972, he transferred to Carnegie-Mellon University (formerly Carnegie Tech) in Pittsburgh. After graduation, he was hired as an understudy in Tom Stoppard's Off Broadway production of "The Real Inspector Hound." Danson moved to Los Angeles in 1978 and studied with Dan Fauci at the Actor's Institute, where he also taught classes. Danson lives with his family in Los Angeles. He is a founding member of the American Oceans Campaign (AOC), an organization established to alert Americans to the life-threatening hazards created by oil spills, offshore development, toxic wastes, sewage pollution and other ocean abuses.
In 1984, Danson received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in the television movie Something About Amelia (1984), in which he starred opposite Glenn Close. He also starred opposite Lee Remick in The Women's Room (1980). In 1986, he made his debut as a television producer with When the Bough Breaks (1986), in which he also starred. He later starred in the mini-series Gulliver's Travels (1996) and Thanks of a Grateful Nation (1998). Danson's numerous feature film credits include The Onion Field (1979), in which he made his debut as Officer Ian Campbell, Body Heat (1981), Three Men and a Baby (1987), Three Men and a Little Lady (1990), Cousins (1989), Dad (1989), Made in America (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Mumford (1999), and Jerry and Tom (1998).- Jean Reno was born Juan Moreno y Herrera-Jiménez in Casablanca, Morocco, to Spanish parents (from Andalucía) who moved to North Africa to seek work. His father was a linotypist. Reno settled in France at 17. He began studying drama and has credits in French television and theater as well as films. His first two marriages both ended in divorce, and he had two children with each of them. He keeps homes in Paris and Los Angeles.
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Samuel L. Jackson is an American producer and highly prolific actor, having appeared in over 100 films, including Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Unbreakable (2000), Shaft (2000), Formula 51 (2001), Black Snake Moan (2006), Snakes on a Plane (2006), and the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999-2005), as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Samuel Leroy Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., to Elizabeth (Montgomery) and Roy Henry Jackson. He was raised by his mother, a factory worker, and his grandparents. At Morehouse College, Jackson was active in the black student movement. In the seventies, he joined the Negro Ensemble Company (together with Morgan Freeman). In the eighties, he became well-known after three movies made by Spike Lee: Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991). He achieved prominence and critical acclaim in the early 1990s with films such as Patriot Games (1992), Amos & Andrew (1993), True Romance (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), and his collaborations with director Quentin Tarantino, including Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), and later Django Unchained (2012). Going from supporting player to leading man, his performance in Pulp Fiction (1994) gave him an Oscar nomination for his character Jules Winnfield, and he received a Silver Berlin Bear for his part as Ordell Robbi in Jackie Brown (1997). Jackson usually played bad guys and drug addicts before becoming an action hero, co-starring with Bruce Willis in Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).
With Jackson's permission, his likeness was used for the Ultimate version of the Marvel Comics character, Nick Fury. He later did a cameo as the character in a post-credits scene from Iron Man (2008), and went on to sign a nine-film commitment to reprise this role in future films, including major roles in Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and minor roles in Thor (2011) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). He has also portrayed the character in the second and final episodes of the first season of the TV show, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013). He has provided his voice to several animated films, television series and video games, including the roles of Lucius Best / Frozone in Pixar's film The Incredibles (2004), Mace Windu in Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008), Afro Samurai in the anime television series Afro Samurai (2007), and Frank Tenpenny in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004).- Actor
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Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born on December 4, 1949 in Los Angeles, California, the son of well-known film and TV star Lloyd Bridges and his long-time wife Dorothy Dean Bridges (née Simpson). He grew up amid the happening Hollywood scene with big brother Beau Bridges. Both boys popped up, without billing, alongside their mother in the film The Company She Keeps (1951), and appeared on occasion with their famous dad on his popular underwater TV series Sea Hunt (1958) while growing up. At age 14, Jeff toured with his father in a stage production of "Anniversary Waltz". The "troublesome teen" years proved just that for Jeff and his parents were compelled at one point to intervene when problems with drugs and marijuana got out of hand.
He recovered and began shaping his nascent young adult career appearing on TV as a younger version of his father in the acclaimed TV- movie Silent Night, Lonely Night (1969), and in the strange Burgess Meredith film The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go (1970). Following fine notices for his portrayal of a white student caught up in the racially-themed Halls of Anger (1970), his career-maker arrived just a year later when he earned a coming-of-age role in the critically-acclaimed ensemble film The Last Picture Show (1971). The Peter Bogdanovich- directed film made stars out off its young leads (Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd) and Oscar winners out of its older cast (Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman). The part of Duane Jackson, for which Jeff received his first Oscar-nomination (for "best supporting actor"), set the tone for the types of roles Jeff would acquaint himself with his fans -- rambling, reckless, rascally and usually unpredictable).
Owning a casual carefree handsomeness and armed with a perpetual grin and sly charm, he started immediately on an intriguing 70s sojourn into offbeat filming. Chief among them were his boxer on his way up opposite a declining Stacy Keach in Fat City (1972); his Civil War-era conman in the western Bad Company (1972); his redneck stock car racer in The Last American Hero (1973); his young student anarchist opposite a stellar veteran cast in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1973); his bank-robbing (also Oscar-nominated) sidekick to Clint Eastwood in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974); his aimless cattle rustler in Rancho Deluxe (1975); his low-level western writer who wants to be a real-life cowboy in Hearts of the West (1975); and the brother of an assassinated President who pursues leads to the crime in Winter Kills (1979). All are simply marvelous characters that should have propelled him to the very top rungs of stardom...but strangely didn't.
Perhaps it was his trademark ease and naturalistic approach that made him somewhat under appreciated at that time when Hollywood was run by a Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino-like intensity. Neverthless, Jeff continued to be a scene-stealing favorite into the next decade, notably as the video game programmer in the 1982 science-fiction cult classic Tron (1982), and the struggling musician brother vying with brother Beau Bridges over the attentions of sexy singer Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). Jeff became a third-time Oscar nominee with his highly intriguing (and strangely sexy) portrayal of a blank-faced alien in Starman (1984), and earned even higher regard as the ever-optimistic inventor Preston Tucker in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).
Since then Jeff has continued to pour on the Bridges magic on film. Few enjoy such an enduring popularity while maintaining equal respect with the critics. The Fisher King (1991), American Heart (1992), Fearless (1993), The Big Lebowski (1998) (now a cult phenomenon) and The Contender (2000) (which gave him a fourth Oscar nomination) are prime examples. More recently he seized the moment as a bald-pated villain as Robert Downey Jr.'s nemesis in Iron Man (2008) and then, at age 60, he capped his rewarding career by winning the elusive Oscar, plus the Golden Globe and Screen Actor Guild awards (among many others), for his down-and-out country singer Bad Blake in Crazy Heart (2009). Bridges next starred in Tron: Legacy (2010), reprising one of his more famous roles, and received another Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his role in the Western remake True Grit (2010). In 2014, he co-produced and starred in an adaptation of the Lois Lowry science fiction drama The Giver (2014).
Jeff has been married since 1977 to non-professional Susan Geston (they met on the set of Rancho Deluxe (1975)). The couple have three daughters, Isabelle (born 1981), Jessica (born 1983), and Hayley (born 1985). He hobbies as a photographer on and off his film sets, and has been known to play around as a cartoonist and pop musician. His ancestry is English, and smaller amounts of Scots-Irish (Northern Irish), Irish, Swiss-German, and German.- Actor
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Intense was the word for Ray Liotta. He specialized in psychopathic characters who hide behind a cultivated charm. Even in his nice-guy roles in Field of Dreams (1989) and Operation Dumbo Drop (1995), you get the impression that something is smoldering inside of him. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, and was adopted by Mary (Edgar), a township clerk, and Alfred Liotta, an auto parts store owner. He studied acting at the University of Miami, where he became friends with Steven Bauer (Scarface (1983), Thief of Hearts (1984)). He spent his first years acting in TV: Another World (1964), a TV movie and several short-lived series. He broke into movies with the black comedy Something Wild (1986), which garnered him rave reviews. Originally unable to get a reading, he was recommended for the part by Melanie Griffith (then married to Bauer).
Following the success Something Wild (1986), he received more offers in the "psycho" vein, but refused them to avoid being typecast. Instead, he made "little movies" like Dominick and Eugene (1988), which earned him standing as an actor's actor, and Field of Dreams (1989), whose success always surprised him. When he heard Martin Scorsese was casting Goodfellas (1990), he lobbied hard for the part of Henry Hill. The film's huge success brought him wide popularity and garnered him star billing in future films such as Article 99 (1992), Unlawful Entry (1992), and Unforgettable (1996).
Liotta died on May 26, 2022, aged 67, in his sleep while filming on location in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.- Actor
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Having made over one hundred films in his legendary career, Willem Dafoe is internationally respected for bringing versatility, boldness, and daring to some of the most iconic films of our time. His artistic curiosity in exploring the human condition leads him to projects all over the world, large and small, Hollywood films as well as Independent cinema.
In 1979, he was given a role in Michael's Cimino's Heaven's Gate, from which he was fired. Since then, he has collaborated with directors who represent a virtual encyclopedia of modern cinema: James Wan, Robert Eggers, Sean Baker, Kenneth Branagh, Kathryn Bigelow, Sam Raimi, Alan Parker, Walter Hill, Mary Harron, Wim Wenders, Anton Corbijn, Zhang Yimou, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, William Friedkin, Werner Herzog, Lars Von Trier, Abel Ferrara, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Anthony Minghella, Theo Angelopoulos, Robert Rodriguez, Phillip Noyce, Hector Babenco, John Milius, Paul Weitz, The Spierig Brothers, Andrew Stanton, Josh Boone, Dee Rees and Julian Schnabel.
Dafoe has been recognized with four Academy Award nominations: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Platoon, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Shadow Of The Vampire, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Florida Project, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, and most recently, Best Leading Actor for At Eternity's Gate, for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination. Among his other nominations and awards, he has received two Los Angeles Film Critics Awards, a New York Film Critics Circle Award, a National Board of Review Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup, as well as a Berlinale Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.
Willem was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Muriel Isabel (Sprissler), a nurse, and William Alfred Dafoe, a surgeon. He is of mostly German, Irish, Scottish, and English descent. He and his wife, director Giada Colagrande, have made three films together: Padre, A Woman, and Before It Had A Name.
His natural adventurousness is evident in roles as diverse as Marcus, the elite assassin who is mentor to Keanu Reeves in the neo-noir John Wick; in his voice work as Gil the Moorish Idol in Finding Nemo and Ryuk the Death God in Death Note; as Paul Smecker, the obsessed FBI agent in the cult classic The Boondock Saints; and as real life hero Leonhard Seppala, who led the 1925 Alaskan dog sled diphtheria serum run in Ericson Core's Togo. That adventurous spirit continues with upcoming films including Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, Abel Ferrara's Siberia, and Paul Schrader's The Card Counter.
Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He created and performed in all of the group's work from 1977 thru 2005, both in the U.S. and internationally. Since then, he worked with Richard Foreman in Idiot Savant at The Public Theatre (NYC), with Robert Wilson on two international productions: The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic and The Old Woman opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov and developed a new theatre piece, directed by Romeo Castellucci, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil. He recently completed work on Marina Abramovic's opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas.- Actor
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Highly talented, lightly built American actor who always looks unsettled and jumpy has become a favourite of cult/arthouse film aficionados with his compelling performances in a broad range of cinematic vehicles.
Turturro was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian-American parents, Katherine (Incerella), a jazz singer, and Nicholas Turturro, a construction worker and carpenter, who was born in Giovinazzo. His brother, also named Nicholas Turturro, is an actor, and actress Aida Turturro is his cousin.
Turturro has become a regular in the thought provoking films of Spike Lee and the off the wall comedies of Joel Coen & Ethan Coen. His wonderful performances include as the highly agitated "Pino" in Do the Right Thing (1989), as an intellectual playwright in Barton Fink (1991), a pedophile tenpin bowler in The Big Lebowski (1998), a confused boyfriend in Jungle Fever (1991) and as the voice of Harvey the dog in Summer of Sam (1999).
Turturro has continued to appeal to audiences despite his unconventional looks and the often annoying onscreen mannerisms of his characters which he used to great effect in films such as his blue collar tale of warring brothers in the construction business, Mac (1992), as the irate, dumped game show contestant, Herbie Stempel, in Robert Redford's dynamic Quiz Show (1994). One of modern American cinema's gems of acting, Turturro remains in strong demand for his high calibre thespian talents.- Actor
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Benicio Del Toro emerged in the mid-1990s as one of the most watchable and charismatic character actors to come along in years. A favorite of film buffs, Del Toro gained mainstream public attention as the conflicted but basically honest Mexican policeman in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000).
Benicio was born on February 19, 1967 in San Germán, Puerto Rico, the son of lawyer parents Fausta Genoveva Sanchez Rivera and Gustavo Adolfo Del Toro Bermudez. His mother died when he was young, and his father moved the family to a farm in Pennsylvania. A basketball player with an interest in acting, he decided to follow the family way and study business at the University of California in San Diego. A class in acting resulted in his being bitten by the acting bug, and he subsequently dropped out and began studying with legendary acting teacher Stella Adler in Los Angeles and at the Circle in the Square Acting School in New York City. Telling his parents that he was taking courses in business, Del Toro hid his new studies from his family for a little while.
During the late 1980s, he made several television appearances, most notably in an episode of Miami Vice (1984) and in the NBC miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story (1990). Del Toro's big-screen career got off to a slower start, however--his first role was Duke the Dog-Faced Boy in Big Top Pee-wee (1988). However, things looked better when he landed the role of Dario, the vicious henchman in the James Bond film Licence to Kill (1989). Surprising his co-stars at age 21, Del Toro was the youngest actor ever to portray a Bond villain. However, the potential break was spoiled as the picture turned out to be one of the most disappointing Bond films ever; this was lost amid bigger summer competition.
Benicio gave creditable performances in many overlooked films for the next several years, such as The Indian Runner (1991), Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) and Money for Nothing (1993). His roles in Fearless (1993) and China Moon (1994) gained him more critical notices, and 1995 proved to be the first "Year of Benicio" as he gave a memorable performance in Swimming with Sharks (1994) before taking critics and film buffs by storm as the mumbling, mysterious gangster in The Usual Suspects (1995), directed by Bryan Singer. Del Toro won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role in the Oscar-winning film.
Staying true to his independent roots, he next gave a charismatic turn as cold-blooded gangster Gaspare Spoglia in The Funeral (1996) directed by Abel Ferrara. He also appeared as Benny Dalmau in Basquiat (1996), directed by artist friend Julian Schnabel. That year also marked his first truly commercial film, as he played cocky Spanish baseball star Juan Primo in The Fan (1996), which starred Robert De Niro. Del Toro took his first leading man role in Excess Baggage (1997), starring and produced by Alicia Silverstone. Hand-picked by Silverstone, Del Toro's performance was pretty much the only thing critics praised about the film, and showed the level of consciousness he was beginning to have in the minds of film fans.
He took a leading role with his good friend Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), co-written and directed by the legendary Terry Gilliam. Gaining 40 pounds for the role of Dr. Gonzo, the drug-addicted lawyer to sportswriter Raoul Duke, Benicio immersed himself totally in the role. Using his method acting training so far as to burn himself with cigarettes for a scene, this was a trying time for Del Toro. The harsh critical reviews proved tough on him, as he felt he had given his all for the role and been dismissed. Many saw the crazed, psychotic performance as a confirmation of the rumors and overall weirdness that people seemed to place on Del Toro.
Taking a short break after the ordeal, 2000 proved to be the second "Year of Benicio". He first appeared in The Way of the Gun (2000), directed by friend and writer Christopher McQuarrie. Then he went to work for actor's director Steven Soderbergh in Traffic (2000). A complex and graphic film, this nonetheless became a widespread success and Oscar winner. His role as conflicted Mexican policeman Javier Rodriguez functions as the movie's real heart amid an all-star ensemble cast, and many praised this as the year's best performance, a sentiment validated by a Screen Actor's Guild Award for "Best Actor". He also gave a notable performance in Snatch (2000) directed by Guy Ritchie, which was released several weeks later, and The Pledge (2001) directed by Sean Penn. Possessing sleepy good looks reminiscent of James Dean or Marlon Brando, Del Toro has often jokingly been referred to as the "Spanish Brad Pitt".
With his newfound celebrity, Del Toro has become a sort of heartthrob, being voted one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" as well as "Most Eligible Bachelors." A favorite of film fans for years for his diverse and "cool guy" gangster roles, he has become a mainstream favorite, respected for his acting skills and choices. So far very careful in his projects and who he works with, Del Toro can boast an impressive resume of films alongside some of the most influential and talented people in the film business.- Actor
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Christoph Waltz is an Austrian-German actor. He is known for his work with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, receiving acclaim for portraying SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained (2012). For each performance, he won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Additionally, he received the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Landa.
Christoph Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria, into a theatrical family, his mother Elisabeth Urbancic, an Austrian-born costume designer, and Johannes Waltz, a German-born stage builder. He has three siblings. His maternal grandmother was Viennese Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was fellow Burgtheater actor Emmerich Reimers. His maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychologist and psychiatrist who wrote the 1949 book "Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness".
Waltz attended the Theresianium and Billrothstrasse in Vienna. Upon graduation, he attended the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar before going to New York to the Lee Strasberg Institute. While in New York, Christoph met his first wife, and moved back to Vienna, then to London.
During the 80s, Christoph worked primarily in theatre, commuting from his home in London to Germany. Slowly Waltz began to work in TV, taking one-off roles in series, and TV movies. Film roles soon followed. Attempts to break into English-speaking film and TV were, however, unsuccessful. Waltz has expressed his gratitude to have been able to make a living and support his family through acting. For thirty years he worked steadily, tirelessly, in this manner.
It was not until he met Quentin Tarantino that his career in Hollywood took off. The role of Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) catapulted Waltz from a lifetime working in German TV/film to the new life of an international superstar and Academy Award-winning actor. He won 27 awards for his performance as Hans Landa, including the Cannes prix d'interpretation Masculin for 2009, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, the BAFTA Best Supporting Actor award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (which he won again for 2012's Django Unchained (2012)).
He also has portrayed computer genius Qohen Leth in the film The Zero Theorem (2013), American plagiarist Walter Keane in the biographical film _Big Eyes (2014), and 007's nemesis and head of SPECTRE Ernst Stavro Blofeld in _Spectre (2015)_. In Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, Waltz portrayed SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa, aka "The Jew Hunter". Clever, courteous, and multilingual - but also self-serving, cunning, implacable, and murderous. Waltz played gangster Benjamin Chudnofsky in The Green Hornet (2011). That same year, he starred in Water for Elephants (2011), Roman Polanski's Carnage (2011), and a remake of The Three Musketeers (2011). He played German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), a role Tarantino wrote specifically for Waltz.
Waltz resides in Berlin and Los Angeles. His wife is costume builder Judith Holste.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Kevin Spacey Fowler, better known by his stage name Kevin Spacey, is an American actor of screen and stage, film director, producer, screenwriter and singer. He began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s before obtaining supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s that culminated in his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the neo-noir crime thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), and an Academy Award for Best Actor for midlife crisis-themed drama American Beauty (1999).
His other starring roles have included the comedy-drama film Swimming with Sharks (1994), psychological thriller Seven (1995), the neo-noir crime film L.A. Confidential (1997), the drama Pay It Forward (2000), the science fiction-mystery film K-PAX (2001)
In Broadway theatre, Spacey won a Tony Award for his role in Lost in Yonkers. He was the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 until stepping down in mid-2015. Since 2013, Spacey has played Frank Underwood in the Netflix political drama series House of Cards. His work in House of Cards earned him Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award nominations for Best Actor.
As enigmatic as he is talented, Kevin Spacey for years kept the details of his private life closely guarded. As he explained in a 1998 interview with the London Evening Standard, "the less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen. It allows an audience to come into a movie theatre and believe I am that person". In October 2017, he ended many years of media speculation about his personal life by confirming that he had had sexual relations with both men and women but now identified as gay.
There are, however, certain biographical facts to be had - for starters, Kevin Spacey Fowler was the youngest of three children born to Kathleen Ann (Knutson) and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, in South Orange, New Jersey. His ancestry includes Swedish (from his maternal grandfather) and English. His middle name, "Spacey," which he uses as his stage name, is from his paternal grandmother. His mother was a personal secretary, his father a technical writer whose irregular job prospects led the family all over the country. The family eventually settled in southern California, where young Kevin developed into quite a little hellion - after he set his sister's tree house on fire, he was shipped off to the Northridge Military Academy, only to be thrown out a few months later for pinging a classmate on the head with a tire. Spacey then found his way to Chatsworth High School in the San Fernando Valley, where he managed to channel his dramatic tendencies into a successful amateur acting career. In his senior year, he played "Captain von Trapp" opposite classmate Mare Winningham's "Maria" in "The Sound of Music" (the pair later graduated as co-valedictorians). Spacey claims that his interest in acting - and his nearly encyclopedic accumulation of film knowledge - began at an early age, when he would sneak downstairs to watch the late late show on TV. Later, in high school, he and his friends cut class to catch revival films at the NuArt Theater. The adolescent Spacey worked up celebrity impersonations (James Stewart and Johnny Carson were two of his favorites) to try out on the amateur comedy club circuit.
He briefly attended Los Angeles Valley College, then left (on the advice of another Chatsworth classmate, Val Kilmer) to join the drama program at Juilliard. After two years of training he was anxious to work, so he quit Juilliard sans diploma and signed up with the New York Shakespeare Festival. His first professional stage appearance was as a messenger in the 1981 production of "Henry VI".
Festival head Joseph Papp ushered the young actor out into the "real world" of theater, and the next year Spacey made his Broadway debut in Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts". He quickly proved himself as an energetic and versatile performer (at one point, he rotated through all the parts in David Rabe's "Hurlyburly"). In 1986, he had the chance to work with his idol and future mentor, Jack Lemmon, on a production of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night". While his interest soon turned to film, Spacey would remain active in the theater community - in 1991, he won a Tony Award for his turn as "Uncle Louie" in Neil Simon's Broadway hit "Lost in Yonkers" and, in 1999, he returned to the boards for a revival of O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh".
Spacey's film career began modestly, with a small part as a subway thief in Heartburn (1986). Deemed more of a "character actor" than a "leading man", he stayed on the periphery in his next few films, but attracted attention for his turn as beady-eyed villain "Mel Profitt" on the TV series Wiseguy (1987). Profitt was the first in a long line of dark, manipulative characters that would eventually make Kevin Spacey a household name: he went on to play a sinister office manager in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), a sadistic Hollywood exec in Swimming with Sharks (1994), and, most famously, creepy, smooth-talking eyewitness Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects (1995).
The "Suspects" role earned Spacey an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and catapulted him into the limelight. That same year, he turned in another complex, eerie performance in David Fincher's thriller Se7en (1995) (Spacey refused billing on the film, fearing that it might compromise the ending if audiences were waiting for him to appear). By now, the scripts were pouring in. After appearing in Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996), Spacey made his own directorial debut with Albino Alligator (1996), a low-key but well received hostage drama. He then jumped back into acting, winning critical accolades for his turns as flashy detective Jack Vincennes in L.A. Confidential (1997) and genteel, closeted murder suspect Jim Williams in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). In October 1999, just four days after the dark suburban comedy American Beauty (1999) opened in US theaters, Spacey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Little did organizers know that his role in Beauty would turn out to be his biggest success yet - as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged corporate cog on the brink of psychological meltdown, he tapped into a funny, savage character that captured audiences' imaginations and earned him a Best Actor Oscar.
No longer relegated to offbeat supporting parts, Spacey seems poised to redefine himself as a Hollywood headliner. He says he's finished exploring the dark side - but, given his attraction to complex characters, that mischievous twinkle will never be too far from his eyes.
In February 2003 Spacey made a major move back to the theatre. He was appointed Artistic Director of the new company set up to save the famous Old Vic theatre, The Old Vic Theatre Company. Although he did not undertake to stop appearing in movies altogether, he undertook to remain in this leading post for ten years, and to act in as well as to direct plays during that time. His first production, of which he was the director, was the September 2004 British premiere of the play Cloaca by Maria Goos (made into a film, Cloaca (2003)). Spacey made his UK Shakespearean debut in the title role in Richard II in 2005. In 2006 he got movie director Robert Altman to direct for the stage the little-known Arthur Miller play Resurrection Blues, but that was a dismal failure. However Spacey remained optimistic, and insisted that a few mistakes are part of the learning process. He starred thereafter with great success in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten along with Colm Meaney and Eve Best, and in 2007 that show transferred to Broadway. In February 2008 Spacey put on a revival of the David Mamet 1988 play Speed-the-Plow in which he took one of the three roles, the others being taken by Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly.
In 2013, Spacey took on the lead role in an original Netflix series, House of Cards (2013). Based upon a British show of the same name, House of Cards is an American political drama. The show's first season received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination to include Outstanding lead actor in a drama series. In 2017, he played a memorable role as a villain in the action thriller Baby Driver (2017).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Sean Penn is a powerhouse film performer capable of intensely moving work, who has gone from strength to strength during a colourful film career, and who has drawn much media attention for his stormy private life and political viewpoints.
Sean Justin Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the second son of actress Eileen Ryan (née Annucci) and director, actor, and writer Leo Penn. His brother was actor Chris Penn. His father was from a Lithuanian Jewish/Russian Jewish family, and his mother is of half Italian and half Irish descent.
Penn first appeared in roles as strong-headed or unruly youths such as the military cadet defending his academy against closure in Taps (1981), then as fast-talking surfer stoner Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).
Fans and critics were enthused about his obvious talent and he next contributed a stellar performance alongside Timothy Hutton in the Cold War spy thriller The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), followed by a teaming with icy Christopher Walken in the chilling At Close Range (1986). The youthful Sean then paired up with his then wife, pop diva Madonna in the woeful, and painful, Shanghai Surprise (1986), which was savaged by the critics, but Sean bounced back with a great job as a hot-headed young cop in Colors (1988), gave another searing performance as a US soldier in Vietnam committing atrocities in Casualties of War (1989) and appeared alongside Robert De Niro in the uneven comedy We're No Angels (1989). However, the 1990s was the decade in which Sean really got noticed by critics as a mature, versatile and accomplished actor, with a string of dynamic performances in first-class films.
Almost unrecognisable with frizzy hair and thin rimmed glasses, Penn was simply brilliant as corrupt lawyer David Kleinfeld in the Brian De Palma gangster movie Carlito's Way (1993) and he was still in trouble with authority as a Death Row inmate pleading with a caring nun to save his life in Dead Man Walking (1995), for which he received his first Oscar nomination. Sean then played the brother of wealthy Michael Douglas, involving him in a mind-snapping scheme in The Game (1997) and also landed the lead role of Sgt. Eddie Walsh in the star-studded anti-war film The Thin Red Line (1998), before finishing the 1990s playing an offbeat jazz musician (and scoring another Oscar nomination) in Sweet and Lowdown (1999).
The gifted and versatile Sean had also moved into directing, with the quirky but interesting The Indian Runner (1991), about two brothers with vastly opposing views on life, and in 1995 he directed Jack Nicholson in The Crossing Guard (1995). Both films received overall positive reviews from critics. Moving into the new century, Sean remained busy in front of the cameras with even more outstanding work: a mentally disabled father fighting for custody of his seven-year-old daughter (and receiving a third Oscar nomination) for I Am Sam (2001); an anguished father seeking revenge for his daughter's murder in the gut-wrenching Clint Eastwood-directed Mystic River (2003) (for which he won the Oscar as Best Actor); a mortally ill college professor in 21 Grams (2003) and a possessed businessman in The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004).
Certainly Sean Penn is one of Hollywood's most controversial, progressive and gifted actors.- Actor
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Robert Downey Jr. has evolved into one of the most respected actors in Hollywood. With an amazing list of credits to his name, he has managed to stay new and fresh even after over four decades in the business.
Downey was born April 4, 1965 in Manhattan, New York, the son of writer, director and filmographer Robert Downey Sr. and actress Elsie Downey (née Elsie Ann Ford). Robert's father is of half Lithuanian Jewish, one quarter Hungarian Jewish, and one quarter Irish, descent, while Robert's mother was of English, Scottish, German, and Swiss-German ancestry. Robert and his sister, Allyson Downey, were immersed in film and the performing arts from a very young age, leading Downey Jr. to study at the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York, before moving to California with his father following his parents' 1978 divorce. In 1982, he dropped out of Santa Monica High School to pursue acting full time. Downey Sr., himself a drug addict, exposed his son to drugs at a very early age, and Downey Jr. would go on to struggle with abuse for decades.
Downey Jr. made his debut as an actor at the age of five in the film Pound (1970), written and directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr.. He built his film repertoire throughout the 1980s and 1990s with roles in Tuff Turf (1985), Weird Science (1985), True Believer (1989), and Wonder Boys (2000) among many others. In 1992, Downey received an Academy Award nomination and won the BAFTA (British Academy Award) for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of Chaplin (1992).
In Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), he appeared as an aspiring film make-up artist whose best friend commits murder. In Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, Downey starred as a tabloid TV journalist who exploits a murderous couple's killing spree to boost his ratings. For the comedy Heart and Souls (1993), Downey starred as a young man with a special relationship with four ghosts. In 1995, Downey starred in Restoration (1995), with Hugh Grant, Meg Ryan and Ian McKellen, directed by Michael Hoffman. Also that year, he starred in Richard III (1995), in which he appears opposite his Restoration (1995) co-star McKellen.
In 1997, Downey was seen in Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man (1998), alongside Kenneth Branagh, Daryl Hannah and Embeth Davidtz; in One Night Stand (1997), directed by Mike Figgis and starring Wesley Snipes and Nastassja Kinski; and in Hugo Pool (1997), directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr. and starring Sean Penn and Patrick Dempsey. In September of 1999, Downey appeared in Black & White (1999), written and directed by James Toback, along with Ben Stiller, Elijah Wood, Gaby Hoffmann, Brooke Shields and Claudia Schiffer. In January of 1999, he starred with Annette Bening and Aidan Quinn in In Dreams (1999), directed by Neil Jordan.
In 2000, Downey co-starred with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire in Wonder Boys (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson. In this dramatic comedy, Downey played the role of a bisexual literary agent. In 2001, Downey made his prime-time television debut when he joined the cast of the Fox-TV series Ally McBeal (1997) as attorney "Larry Paul". For this role, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Comedy Series. In addition, Downey was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
The actor's drug-related problems escalated from 1996 to 2001, leading to arrests, rehab visits and incarcerations, and he was eventually fired from Ally McBeal (1997). Emerging clean and sober in 2003, Downey Jr. began to rebuild his career.
He marked his debut into music with his debut album, titled "The Futurist", on the Sony Classics Label on November 23rd, 2004. The album's eight original songs, that Downey wrote, and his two musical numbers debuting as cover songs revealed his sultry singing voice and his musical talents. Downey displayed his versatility in two different films in October 2003: the musical/drama The Singing Detective (2003), a remake of the BBC hit of the same name, and the thriller Gothika (2003) starring Halle Berry and Penélope Cruz. Downey starred in powerful yet humbling roles inspired by real-life accounts of some of history's most precious kept secrets, including Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly (2006) in 2006 co-starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson, and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) co-starring Nicole Kidman, a film inspired by the life of Diane Arbus, the revered photographer whose images captured attention in the early 1960s. These roles exhibited Downey's momentum from the previous year of 2005, in which he starred in the Academy Award®-nominated feature film Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005), directed by George Clooney and in Shane Black's action comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) co-starring Val Kilmer. In 2007, he co-starred in David Fincher's suspenseful Zodiac (2007), alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, about the notorious serial killer who haunted San Francisco during the 1970s.
In May 2008, Downey achieved critical acclaim and worldwide box office success for his starring role in Iron Man (2008), Jon Favreau's big-screen rendering of the Marvel comic book superhero. The film co-starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges and Terrence Howard. In August of 2008, Downey starred with Ben Stiller and Jack Black in the comedy Tropic Thunder (2008), and went on to receive an Academy Award®-nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his, Kirk Lazarus.
In December 2009, Downey starred in the action-adventure Sherlock Holmes (2009). The film, directed by Guy Ritchie, co-starred Jude Law and Rachel McAdams and earned Downey a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical in January of 2010. In early Summer 2010, Downey re-teamed with director Jon Favreau and reprised his role as "Tony Stark/Iron Man" in the hugely successful sequel to the original film, Iron Man 2 (2010), starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson and Mickey Rourke.
Downey next starred in Due Date (2010), a comedy directed by Todd Phillips, in which he plays the role of an expectant father on a road trip racing to get back in time for the birth of his first child. Due Date (2010), starring The Hangover (2009)'s Zach Galifianakis, was released in November 2010.
Downey was honored by Time Magazine's "Time 100" in 2008, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. His laurels include two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe wins, numerous other award nominations and wins, and tremendous popular and commercial success, particularly in his roles as Sherlock Holmes and Tony Stark (the latter of which he has so far played in Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). For three consecutive years, from 2012 to 2015, Downey has topped the Forbes list of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, making an estimated $80 million in earnings between June 2014 and June 2015.
In 2005, Downey Jr. married Susan Downey, with whom he has two children. Downey also has another son, Indio Falconer Downey, born 1993, from his first marriage to Deborah Falconer, from whom he was officially divorced in 2004.
Robert has jump-started the Team Downey Production Company with wife Susan Downey.- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Javier Bardem belongs to a family of actors that have been working on films since the early days of Spanish cinema.
He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, to actress Pilar Bardem (María del Pilar Bardem Muñoz) and businessman José Carlos Encinas Doussinague. His maternal grandparents were actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, and his uncle is screenwriter Juan Antonio Bardem. He got his start in the family business, at age six, when he appeared in his first feature, "El picaro" (1974) (A.K.A. The Scoundrel). During his teenage years, he acted in several TV series, played rugby for the Spanish National Team, and toured the country with an independent theatrical group. Javier's early film role as a sexy stud in the black comedy, Jamón, Jamón (1992) (aka Ham Ham) propelled him to instant popularity and threatened to typecast him as nothing more than a brawny sex symbol. Determined to avert a beefcake image, he refused similar subsequent roles and has gone on to win acclaim for his ability to appear almost unrecognizable from film to film. With over 25 movies and numerous awards under his belt, it is Javier's stirring, passionate performance as the persecuted Cuban writer, Reynaldo Arenas, in Before Night Falls (2000) that will long be remembered as his breakthrough role. He received five Best Actor awards and a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal.- Actor
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Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor, singer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer and producer. Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as superhero, period, and romance characters. He is best known for his long-running role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series, as well as for his lead roles in the romantic-comedy fantasy Kate & Leopold (2001), the action-horror film Van Helsing (2004), the drama The Prestige and The Fountain (2006), the epic historical romantic drama Australia (2008), the film version of Les Misérables (2012), and the thriller Prisoners (2013). His work in Les Misérables earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and his first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy in 2013. In Broadway theatre, Jackman won a Tony Award for his role in The Boy from Oz. A four-time host of the Tony Awards themselves, he won an Emmy Award for one of these appearances. Jackman also hosted the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009.
Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, to Grace McNeil (Greenwood) and Christopher John Jackman, an accountant. He is the youngest of five children. His parents, both English, moved to Australia shortly before his birth. He also has Greek (from a great-grandfather) and Scottish (from a grandmother) ancestry.
Jackman has a communications degree with a journalism major from the University of Technology Sydney. After graduating, he pursued drama at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, immediately after which he was offered a starring role in the ABC-TV prison drama Correlli (1995), opposite his future wife Deborra-Lee Furness. Several TV guest roles followed, as an actor and variety compere. An accomplished singer, Jackman has starred as Gaston in the Australian production of "Beauty and the Beast." He appeared as Joe Gillis in the Australian production of "Sunset Boulevard." In 1998, he was cast as Curly in the Royal National Theatre's production of Trevor Nunn's Oklahoma. Jackman has made two feature films, the second of which, Erskineville Kings (1999), garnered him an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Actor in 1999. Recently, he won the part of Logan/Wolverine in the Bryan Singer- directed comic-book movie X-Men (2000). In his spare time, Jackman plays piano, golf, and guitar, and likes to windsurf.- Actor
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Christian Michael Leonard Slater was born on August 18, 1969 in New York City, to Michael Hawkins, a well-known soap actor, and Mary Jo Slater (née Lawton), a casting agent. Christian started in show business early, appearing on the soap opera The Edge of Night (1956) in 1976 at the age of 7. He went on to star in many Broadway shows in the early-1980s. He rose to fame in Hollywood after landing the role of Binx Davey in The Legend of Billie Jean (1985). He moved to Los Angeles in 1987 to pursue a further acting career after dropping out of high school. After having a starring role in the cult classic Heathers (1988), he became somewhat known as the Hollywood bad-boy, having many run-ins with the law. He is also well-known for having dated stars such as Winona Ryder, Christina Applegate, Samantha Mathis and was at one time engaged to actress/model Nina Huang. In 2000, he married Ryan Haddon, the daughter of 1970s model Dayle Haddon. The couple have two children, Jaden Christopher (b. 1999) and Eliana Sophia (b. 2001). As of early 2005, they separated and later divorced, but remain dedicated to bring up their children.- Actor
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- Editorial Department
Christian Charles Philip Bale was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK on January 30, 1974, to English parents Jennifer "Jenny" (James) and David Bale. His mother was a circus performer and his father, who was born in South Africa, was a commercial pilot. The family lived in different countries throughout Bale's childhood, including England, Portugal, and the United States. Bale acknowledges the constant change was one of the influences on his career choice.
His first acting job was a cereal commercial in 1983; amazingly, the next year, he debuted on the West End stage in "The Nerd". A role in the 1986 NBC mini-series Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986) caught Steven Spielberg's eye, leading to Bale's well-documented role in Empire of the Sun (1987). For the range of emotions he displayed as the star of the war epic, he earned a special award by the National Board of Review for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor.
Adjusting to fame and his difficulties with attention (he thought about quitting acting early on), Bale appeared in Kenneth Branagh's 1989 adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V (1989) and starred as Jim Hawkins in a TV movie version of Treasure Island (1990). Bale worked consistently through the 1990s, acting and singing in Newsies (1992), Swing Kids (1993), Little Women (1994), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), The Secret Agent (1996), Metroland (1997), Velvet Goldmine (1998), All the Little Animals (1998), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999). Toward the end of the decade, with the rise of the Internet, Bale found himself becoming one of the most popular online celebrities around, though he, with a couple notable exceptions, maintained a private, tabloid-free mystique.
Bale roared into the next decade with a lead role in American Psycho (2000), director Mary Harron's adaptation of the controversial Bret Easton Ellis novel. In the film, Bale played a murderous Wall Street executive obsessed with his own physicality - a trait for which Bale would become a specialist. Subsequently, the 10th Anniversary issue for "Entertainment Weekly" crowned Bale one of the "Top 8 Most Powerful Cult Figures" of the past decade, citing his cult status on the Internet. EW also called Bale one of the "Most Creative People in Entertainment", and "Premiere" lauded him as one of the "Hottest Leading Men Under 30".
Bale was truly on the Hollywood radar at this time, and he turned in a range of performances in the remake Shaft (2000), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), the balmy Laurel Canyon (2002), and Reign of Fire (2002), a dragons-and-magic commercial misfire that has its share of defenders.
Two more cult films followed: Equilibrium (2002) and The Machinist (2004), the latter of which gained attention mainly due to Bale's physical transformation - he dropped a reported 60+ pounds for the role of a lathe operator with a secret that causes him to suffer from insomnia for over a year.
Bale's abilities to transform his body and to disappear into a character influenced the decision to cast him in Batman Begins (2005), the first chapter in Christopher Nolan's definitive trilogy that proved a dark-themed narrative could resonate with audiences worldwide. The film also resurrected a character that had been shelved by Warner Bros. after a series of demising returns, capped off by the commercial and critical failure of Batman & Robin (1997). A quiet, personal victory for Bale: he accepted the role after the passing of his father in late 2003, an event that caused him to question whether he would continue performing.
Bale segued into two indie features in the wake of Batman's phenomenal success: The New World (2005) and Harsh Times (2005). He continued working with respected independent directors in 2006's Rescue Dawn (2006), Werner Herzog's feature version of his earlier, Emmy-nominated documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997). Leading up to the second Batman film, Bale starred in The Prestige (2006), the remake of 3:10 to Yuma (2007), and a reunion with director Todd Haynes in the experimental Bob Dylan biography, I'm Not There (2007).
Anticipation for The Dark Knight (2008) was spun into unexpected heights with the tragic passing of Heath Ledger, whose performance as The Joker became the highlight of the sequel. Bale's graceful statements to the press reminded us of the days of the refined Hollywood star as the second installment exceeded the box-office performance of its predecessor.
Bale's next role was the eyebrow-raising decision to take over the role of John Connor in the Schwarzenegger-less Terminator Salvation (2009), followed by a turn as federal agent Melvin Purvis in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009). Both films were hits but not the blockbusters they were expected to be.
For all his acclaim and box-office triumphs, Bale would earn his first Oscar in 2011 in the wake of The Fighter (2010)'s critical and commercial success. Bale earned the Best Supporting Actor award for his portrayal of Dicky Eklund, brother to and trainer of boxer "Irish" Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg. Bale again showed his ability to reshape his body with another gaunt, skeletal transformation.
Bale then turned to another auteur, Yimou Zhang, for the epic The Flowers of War (2011), in which Bale portrayed a priest trapped in the midst of the Rape of Nanking. Bale earned headlines for his attempt to visit with Chinese civil-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, which was blocked by the Chinese government.
Bale capped his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012); in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, Bale made a quiet pilgrimage to the state to visit with survivors of the attack that left theatergoers dead and injured. He also starred in the thriller Out of the Furnace (2013) with Crazy Heart (2009) writer/director Scott Cooper, and the drama-comedy American Hustle (2013), reuniting with David O. Russell.
Bale will re-team with The New World (2005) director Terrence Malick for two upcoming projects: Knight of Cups (2015) and an as-yet-untitled drama.
In his personal life, he devotes time to charities including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Foundation. He lives with his wife, Sibi Blazic, and their two children.- Actor
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Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was perhaps the only actor of his generation to have starred in so many films and cult saga. Although most notable for personifying bloodsucking vampire, Dracula, on screen, he portrayed other varied characters on screen, most of which were villains, whether it be Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), or Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), or as the title monster in the Hammer Horror film, The Mummy (1959).
Lee was born in 1922 in London, England, where he and his older sister Xandra were raised by their parents, Contessa Estelle Marie (Carandini di Sarzano) and Geoffrey Trollope Lee, a professional soldier, until their divorce in 1926. Later, while Lee was still a child, his mother married (and later divorced) Harcourt George St.-Croix (nicknamed Ingle), who was a banker. Lee's maternal great-grandfather was an Italian political refugee, while Lee's great-grandmother was English opera singer Marie (Burgess) Carandini.
After attending Wellington College from age 14 to 17, Lee worked as an office clerk in a couple of London shipping companies until 1941 when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Following his release from military service, Lee joined the Rank Organisation in 1947, training as an actor in their "Charm School" and playing a number of bit parts in such films as Corridor of Mirrors (1948). He made a brief appearance in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in which his future partner-in-horror Peter Cushing also appeared. Both actors also appeared later in Moulin Rouge (1952) but did not meet until their horror films together.
Lee had numerous parts in film and television throughout the 1950s. He struggled initially in his new career because he was discriminated as being taller than the leading male actors of his time and being too foreign-looking. However, playing the monster in the Hammer film The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) proved to be a blessing in disguise, since the was successful, leading to him being signed on for future roles in Hammer Film Productions.
Lee's association with Hammer Film Productions brought him into contact with Peter Cushing, and they became good friends. Lee and Cushing often than not played contrasting roles in Hammer films, where Cushing was the protagonist and Lee the villain, whether it be Van Helsing and Dracula respectively in Horror of Dracula (1958), or John Banning and Kharis the Mummy respectively in The Mummy (1959).
Lee continued his role as "Dracula" in a number of Hammer sequels throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s. During this time, he co-starred in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), and made numerous appearances as Fu Manchu, most notably in the first of the series The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), and also appeared in a number of films in Europe. With his own production company, Charlemagne Productions, Ltd., Lee made Nothing But the Night (1973) and To the Devil a Daughter (1976).
By the mid-1970s, Lee was tiring of his horror image and tried to widen his appeal by participating in several mainstream films, such as The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), The Three Musketeers (1973), The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974), and the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).
The success of these films prompted him in the late 1970s to move to Hollywood, where he remained a busy actor but made mostly unremarkable film and television appearances, and eventually moved back to England. The beginning of the new millennium relaunched his career to some degree, during which he has played Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and as Saruman the White in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lee played Count Dooku again in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005), and portrayed the father of Willy Wonka, played by Johnny Depp, in the Tim Burton film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).
On 16 June 2001, he was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to drama. He was created a Knight Bachelor on 13 June 2009 in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama and charity. In addition he was made a Commander of the Order of St John on 16 January 1997.
Lee died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on 7 June 2015 at 8:30 am after being admitted for respiratory problems and heart failure, shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday there. His wife delayed the public announcement until 11 June, in order to break the news to their family.- Actor
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Marcello Mastroianni was born in Fontana Liri, Italy in 1924, but soon his family moved to Turin and then Rome. During WW2 he was sent to a German prison camp, but he managed to escape and hide in Venice. He debuted in films as an extra in Marionette (1939), then started working for the Italian department of "Eagle Lion Films" in Rome and joined a drama club, where he was discovered by director Luchino Visconti. In 1957 Visconti gave him the starring part in his Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptation White Nights (1957) and in 1958 he was fine as a little thief in Mario Monicelli's comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958). But his real breakthrough came in 1960, when Federico Fellini cast him as an attractive, weary-eyed journalist of the Rome jet-set in La Dolce Vita (1960); that film was the genesis of his "Latin lover" persona, which Mastroianni himself often denied by accepting parts of passive and sensitive men. He would again work with Fellini in several major films, like the exquisite 8½ (1963) (as a movie director who finds himself at a point of crisis) and the touching Ginger & Fred (1986) (as an old entertainer who appears in a TV show). He also appeared as a tired novelist with marital problems in Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte (1961), as an impotent young man in Mauro Bolognini's Bell' Antonio (1960) , as an exiled prince in John Boorman's Leo the Last (1970), as a traitor in Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Allonsanfan (1974) and as a sensitive homosexual in love with a housewife in Ettore Scola's A Special Day (1977). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times, for Divorce Italian Style (1961), A Special Day (1977), and Oci ciornie (1987). During the last decade of his life he worked with directors, like Theodoros Angelopoulos, Bertrand Blier and Raúl Ruiz, who gave him three excellent parts in Three Lives and Only One Death (1996). He died of pancreatic cancer in 1996.- Actor
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Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command.
However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983), Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).
As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema.
Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Bianca Jagger, Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John. In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.- Actor
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Paul Reubens was born Paul Rubenfeld on August 27, 1952 in Peekskill, New York, to Judy (Rosen), a teacher, and Milton Rubenfeld, a car salesman who had flown for the air forces of the U.S., U.K., and Israel, becoming one of the latter country's pioneering pilots. Paul grew up in Sarasota, Florida, where his parents owned a lamp store. During winters, The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus called Sarasota home, and young Paul counted such big-top families as the Wallendas and the Zacchinis among his neighbors. When he was 11-years-old, he joined the local Asolo Theater, and during the next six years, he appeared in a variety of plays. After graduating from Sarasota High School in 1970, he attended Boston University for one year before deciding to seek his fortune as Paul Reubens in Hollywood, where he enrolled as an acting major at the California Institute of the Arts and accepted a string of pay-the-rent jobs ranging from pizza chef to Fuller Brush salesman.
In the mid 1970s, his acting career grew slowly and steadily with small roles in theater productions, gigs at local comedy clubs and four guest appearances on The Gong Show (1976). During this time of education/employment, he joined an improvisational comedy troupe called The Groundlings. The popular gang of yuksters, whose roster has included Conan O'Brien, Lisa Kudrow, the late Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, and Julia Sweeney, wrung laughs from audiences with skits starring scads of imaginative, self-created characters. Among Reubens's contributions to this comedic community were a philandering husband named Moses Feldman, an Indian chief named Jay Longtoe, and, the character he became best known for, Pee-Wee Herman, who debuted in 1978.
Pee-Wee was a funny man-child of indeterminate age and sexuality who created a sarcastic enthusiasm for the popular culture of the '50s and '60s. The geeky character's wardrobe consisted of a gray suit, a white short-sleeved shirt accessorized with a red clip-on bow tie, and white patent-leather loafers. He wore his jet-black hair military short with a defiant tuft in front, and he accentuated his lily-white complexion with pink cheeks and red lipstick. Reubens drew inspiration for Pee-Wee's geeky behavior from a youth he had attended summer camp with, and derived his creation's boyish voice from a character he played as a child actor. Pee-Wee appeared for only 10 minutes of The Groundlings show, but he nonetheless built up a considerable following and turned out to be a star of the '80s and early '90s. The Pee-Wee Herman Show (1981), ran for five sellout months at the Los Angeles's Roxy nightclub, and HBO taped the performance and aired it as a special.
Now a genuine comedy-circuit star, he became a frequent guest of David Letterman and a favorite at Caroline's in New York. In 1984, he sold out Carnegie Hall. He later auditioned for the cast of Saturday Night Live (1975), but when that didn't turn out as planned, he started writing a feature-length screenplay for Pee-Wee to star in, and asked friend Tim Burton to direct. Released to wildly divergent reviews, Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), followed its star cross-country in a madcap search for his beloved, stolen bike. The $7 million picture ended up grossing $45 million. That following year, CBS which had been losing children's audiences to cable programming, was interested in finding something to shore up its Saturday Morning lineup. The network company signed him to act/produce and to direct its live-action children's program called Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986). They doled out an eye-popping budget of $325,000 per episode - the same price as a prime- time sitcom. Reubens received complete creative control, albeit with three minor exceptions. During its five-year-run on CBS, he never appeared in general as himself. He even granted printed interviews in full Pee-Wee regalia.
The image of Pee-Wee was broken on July 26, 1991. On his summer vacation, Reubens was visiting his parents in Sarasota and sought escape from boredom by catching a showing of the X-rated film, Nurse Nancy. He fell victim to a police sting operation and was arrested for sex charges when detectives allegedly saw him playing with his private parts. He was released on $219 bail and nobody realized what had happened until somebody recognized him beneath his long hair and goatee. The media went berserk: 'Kids show star arrested for indecent exposure'. Because of his behavior, CBS dropped the Playhouse and related merchandise was released from its shelves. He agreed to pay a $50 fine plus $85 in court costs to Sarasota County, and he produced a 30 second public service message for the Partnership For Drug-Free America commercial. As part of the deal, the county sealed all legal papers relating to the actor's arrest and didn't leave Reubens with a criminal record. The scandal marked the near death of Pee-Wee Herman. Reubens appeared as his favorite character for the last time at that Autumn's MTV Music Video Awards. The enthusiastic reception was not surprising, as he had received 15 thousand supportive letters during his arrest. Regardless, he had recently made a promise not to play Pee-Wee anymore and used his arrest as an chance to portray other roles. A new feature length film by Netflix available beginning March 18, 2016 allowed Reubens to show Pee-Wee fans his character again in Pee-wee's Big Holiday (2016).
Reubens has landed a series of offbeat character roles. One year after he was taken into custody, he appeared in Burton's Batman Returns (1992) as the Penguin's unloving father, and as a vampire henchman in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992). Subsequent jobs have included a voice over for Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), a healthy stint as Andrew J. Lansing III on Murphy Brown (1988), and roles in the feature films, Dunston Checks In (1996), Matilda (1996), Buddy (1997) and Mystery Men (1999). He also signed to emcee a new game show based on the popular 'You Don't Know Jack' CD-ROM version.- Actor
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Actor, raconteur, art collector and connoisseur of haute cuisine are just some of the attributes associated with Vincent Price. He was born Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, to Marguerite Cobb "Daisy" (Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, who was President of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, also named Vincent, invented Dr. Price's Baking Powder, which was tartar-based. His family was prosperous, as he said, "not rich enough to evoke envy but successful enough to demand respect." His uniquely cultivated voice and persona were the result of a well-rounded education which began when his family dispatched him on a tour of Europe's cultural centres. His secondary education eventually culminated in a B.A. in English from Yale University and a degree in art history from London's Courtauld Institute.
Famously, his name has long been a byword for Gothic horror on screen. However, Vincent Price was, first and foremost, a man of the stage. It is where he began his career and where it ended. He faced the footlights for the first time at the Gate Theatre in London. At the age of 23, he played Prince Albert in the premiere of Arthur Schnitzler 's 'Victoria Regina' and made such an impression on producer Gilbert Miller that he launched the play on Broadway that same year (legendary actress Helen Hayes played the title role). In early 1938, he was invited to join Orson Welles 's Mercury Theatre on a five-play contract, beginning with 'The Shoemaker's Holiday'. He gave what was described as "a polished performance". Thus established, Vincent continued to make sporadic forays to the Great White Way, including as the Duke of Buckingham in Shakespeare's 'Richard III' (in which a reviewer for the New Yorker found him to be "satisfactorily detestable") and as Oscar Wilde in his award-winning one man show 'Diversions and Delights', which he took on a hugely successful world-wide tour in 1978. While based in California, Vincent was instrumental in the success of the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, starring in several of their bigger productions, including 'Billy Budd' and 'The Winslow Boy'. In 1952, Vincent joined the national touring company of 'Don Juan in Hell' in which he was cast as the devil. Acting under the direction of Charles Laughton and accompanied by noted thespians Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead, he later recalled this as one of his "greatest theatrical excitements".
As well as acting on stage, Vincent regularly performed on radio network programs, including Lux Radio Theatre, CBS Playhouse and shows for the BBC. He narrated or hosted assorted programs ranging from history (If these Walls Could Speak) to cuisine (Cooking Price-Wise). He wrote several best-selling books on his favourite subjects: art collecting and cookery. In 1962, he was approached by Sears Roebuck to act as a buying consultant "selling quality pictures to department store customers". As if that were not enough, he lectured for 15 years on art, poetry and even the history of villainy. He recorded numerous readings of poems by Edgar Allan Poe (nobody ever gave a better recital of "The Raven"!), Shelley and Whitman. He also served on the Arts Council of UCLA, was a member of the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, a former chairman of the Indian Arts & Crafts Board and on the board of trustees of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
And besides all of that, Vincent Price remained a much sought-after motion picture actor. He made his first appearance on screen as a romantic lead in Service de Luxe (1938), a frothy Universal comedy which came and went without much fanfare. After that, he reprized his stage role as Master Hammon in an early television production of 'The Shoemaker's Holiday'. For one reason or another, Vincent was henceforth typecast as either historical figures (Sir Walter Raleigh, Duke of Clarence, Mormon leader Joseph Smith, King Charles II, Cardinal Richelieu, Omar Khayyam) or ineffectual charmers and gigolos. Under contract to 20th Century Fox (1940-46), Laura (1944) provided one of his better vehicles in the latter department, as did the lush Technicolor melodrama Leave Her to Heaven (1945) which had Vincent showcased in a notably powerful scene as a prosecuting attorney. His performance was singled out by the L.A. Times as meriting "attention as contending for Academy supporting honors".
His first fling with the horror genre was Dragonwyck (1946), a Gothic melodrama set in the Hudson Valley in the early 1800's. For the first time, Vincent played a part he actually coveted and fought hard to win. His character was in effect a precursor of those he would later make his own while working for Roger Corman and American-International. As demented, drug-addicted landowner Nicholas Van Ryn, he so effectively terrorized Gene Tierney's Miranda Wells that the influential columnist Louella Parsons wrote with rare praise: "The role of Van Ryn calls for a lot of acting and Vincent admits he's a ham and loves to act all over the place, but the fact that he has restrained himself and doesn't over-emote is a tribute to his ability". If Vincent was an occasional ham, he proved it with his Harry Lime pastiche Carwood in The Bribe (1949). Much better was his starring role in a minor western, The Baron of Arizona (1950), in which he was convincingly cast as a larcenous land office clerk attempting to create his own desert baronetcy.
With House of Wax (1953) , Vincent fine-tuned the character type he had established in Dragonwyck, adding both pathos and comic elements to the role of the maniacal sculptor Henry Jarrod. It was arduous work under heavy make-up which simulated hideous facial scarring and required three hours to apply and three hours to remove. He later commented that it "took his face months to heal because it was raw from peeling off wax each night". However, the picture proved a sound money maker for Warner Brothers and firmly established Vincent Price in a cult genre from which he was henceforth unable to escape. The majority of his subsequent films were decidedly low-budget affairs in which the star tended to be the sole mitigating factor: The Mad Magician (1954), The Fly (1958) (and its sequel), House on Haunted Hill (1959), the absurd The Tingler (1959) (easily the worst of the bunch) and The Bat (1959). With few exceptions, Vincent's acting range would rarely be stretched in the years to come.
Vincent's association with the genial Roger Corman began when he received a script for The Fall of the House of Usher, beginning a projected cycle of cost-effective films based on short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. As Roderick Usher, Vincent was Corman's "first and only choice". Though he was to receive a salary of $50,000 for the picture, it was his chance "to express the psychology of Poe's characters" and to "imbue the movie versions with the spirit of Poe" that clinched the deal for Vincent. He made another six films in this vein, all of them box office winners. Not Academy Award stuff, but nonetheless hugely enjoyable camp entertainment and popular with all but highbrow audiences. Who could forget Vincent at his scenery chewing best as the resurgent inquisitor, luring Barbara Steele into the crypt in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)? Or as pompous wine aficionado Fortunato Luchresi in that deliriously funny wine tasting competition with Montresor Herringbone (Peter Lorre) in Tales of Terror (1962)? Best still, the climactic battle of the magicians pitting Vincent's Erasmus Craven against Boris Karloff's malevolent Dr. Scarabus in The Raven (1963) (arguably, the best offering in the Poe cycle). The Comedy of Terrors (1963) was played strictly for laughs, with the inimitable combo of Price and Lorre this time appearing as homicidal undertakers.
For the rest of the 60s, Vincent was content to remain in his niche, playing variations on the same theme in City in the Sea (1965) and Witchfinder General (1968) (as Matthew Hopkins). He also spoofed his screen personae as Dr. Goldfoot and as perennial villain Egghead in the Batman (1966) series. He rose once more to the occasion in the cult black comedy The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) (and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)) commenting that he had to play Anton Phibes "very seriously so that it would come out funny". The tagline, a parody of the ad for Love Story (1970), announced "love means never having to say you're ugly".
During the 70s and 80s, Vincent restricted himself mainly to voice-overs and TV guest appearances. His final role of note was as the inventor in Edward Scissorhands (1990), a role written specifically for him. The embodiment of gleeful, suave screen villainy, Vincent Price died in Los Angeles in October 1993 at the age of 82. People magazine eulogized him as "the Gable of Gothic." Much earlier, an English critic named Gilbert Adair spoke for many fans when he said "Every man his Price - and mine is Vincent."- Actor
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Alan Cumming was born on January 27, 1965, in Aberfeldy, Scotland, to Mary (Darling), an insurance company secretary, and Alex Cumming. His family lived nearby in Dunkeld, where his father was a forester for Atholl Estate. The family (including his brother, Tom) moved to Fassfern near Fort William, before moving to the east coast of Scotland in 1969, where Alan's father took up the position of Head Forester of Panmure Estate; it was there that Alan grew up. He went to Monikie Primary School and Carnoustie High School, where he began appearing in plays, and soon after that began working with with the Carnoustie Theatre Club and Carnoustie Musical Society.
In 1981, he left high school with 8 'O' Grades and 4 Highers, but because he was too young to enter any university or drama school he worked for just over a year as a sub-editor at D.C. Thomson Publishers in Dundee. There he worked on the launch of a new magazine, "Tops", and was also the "Young Alan" who answered readers' letters. In September 1982 he began a three-year course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. He graduated in 1985 with a B.A. (Dramatic Studies) and awards for verse speaking and direction. He also had formed a cabaret double act with fellow student Forbes Masson called Victor and Barry, which went on to become hugely successful with tours (including two Perrier Pick of the Fringe seasons in London and a month-long engagement at the Sydney Opera House as part of an Australian tour), records ("Hear Victor and Barry and Faint", "Are We Too Loud?") and many TV appearances throughout the UK. Before graduating Alan made his professional theater and film debuts in "Macbeth" at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow and in Gillies MacKinnon's "Passing Glory". After graduating, Alan worked extensively in Scottish theater and television, including a stint on the soap opera Take the High Road (1980) before moving to London when "Conquest of the South Pole", a play by German playwright Manfred Karge, transferred from the Traverse Theatre in, Edinburgh to the the Royal Court in London, earning him his first Olivier award nomination for Most Promising Newcomer of 1988. Alan performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and then the Royal National Theatre, where he starred in "Accidental Death of an Anarchist", which he also adapted with director Tim Supple. The production was nominated for Best revival at the 1991 Olivier awards and Alan won for Comedy Performance of the Year.
His film career began with Ian Sellar's Prague (1992), in which he starred with Sandrine Bonnaire and Bruno Ganz. The film premiered at the 1992 Cannes film festival and went on to win him Best Actor award at the Atlantic Film Festival and a Scottish BAFTA Best Actor nomination. In the same year he made two films for the BBC - The Last Romantics (1992) and Bernard and the Genie (1991), the latter winning him the Top Television Newcomer award at 1992 British Comedy Awards. In the 1992 Olivier awards he was also nominated for Comedy Performance of the Year for "La Bete". In 1993 he played Hamlet for the English Touring Theare to great critical acclaim ("An actor knocking on the door of greatness" - Daily Mail; ranked first and second--with his performance in "Cabaret"--in the Daily Telegraph's performances of the year) and then immediately went on to play the Emcee in Sam Mendes' revival of "Cabaret" at the same venue (London's Donmar Warehouse). He received a 1994 Olivier award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical for "Cabaret", and for Hamlet he received the 1994 TMA Best Actor award and a Shakespeare Globe award nomination.
In 1994, he made his first Hollywood film, Circle of Friends (1995), and his performance as the oleaginous Sean Walsh along with those in two films released in quick succession (Emma (1996) and GoldenEye (1995)) brought him to the attention of American producers, and he appeared in several Hollywood films, such as Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) and Buddy (1997). He returned to the UK in 1997 to work with Stanley Kubrick and the Spice Girls before returning stateside in 1998 to reprise his role in "Cabaret" on Broadway. The show and his portrayal were a sensation, and he received the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics' Circle, Theatre World, FANY, New York Press and New York Public Advocate's awards for his performance. Since then he has alternated between theater and films, and also between smaller independent films and more mainstream fare. His theater work includes 2001's "Design for Living" on Broadway and the hugely successful off-Broadway "Elle" by Jean Genet, which he adapted and played the lead in 2002. His films include Julie Taymor's Titus (1999), Urbania (2000), the "Spy Kids" trilogy, Josie and the Pussycats (2001), X2 (2003), Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Son of the Mask (2005) and the Showtime movie musical Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical (2005).
He wrote, directed, produced and acted in The Anniversary Party (2001) with Jennifer Jason Leigh, which premiered at the Cannes Film festival in 2002 and went on to win a National Board of Review award and two Independent Spirit award nominations. More recently he has produced the documentary Show People (2004) and the films Sweet Land (2005) and Full Grown Men (2006) (and appears in both) and acted in Gray Matters (2006) opposite Heather Graham and Bam Bam and Celeste (2005), opposite Margaret Cho. In 2006, he returned to Broadway as Macheath in "The Threepenny Opera". He has also found the time to write a novel, "Tommy's Tale", in 2002.- Actor
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With an authoritative voice and calm demeanor, this ever popular American actor has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern US cinema. Morgan was born on June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mayme Edna (Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber. The young Freeman attended Los Angeles City College before serving several years in the US Air Force as a mechanic between 1955 and 1959. His first dramatic arts exposure was on the stage including appearing in an all-African American production of the exuberant musical Hello, Dolly!.
Throughout the 1970s, he continued his work on stage, winning Drama Desk and Clarence Derwent Awards and receiving a Tony Award nomination for his performance in The Mighty Gents in 1978. In 1980, he won two Obie Awards, for his portrayal of Shakespearean anti-hero Coriolanus at the New York Shakespeare Festival and for his work in Mother Courage and Her Children. Freeman won another Obie in 1984 for his performance as The Messenger in the acclaimed Brooklyn Academy of Music production of Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus and, in 1985, won the Drama-Logue Award for the same role. In 1987, Freeman created the role of Hoke Coleburn in Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisy, which brought him his fourth Obie Award. In 1990, Freeman starred as Petruchio in the New York Shakespeare Festival's The Taming of the Shrew, opposite Tracey Ullman. Returning to the Broadway stage in 2008, Freeman starred with Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher in Clifford Odets' drama The Country Girl, directed by Mike Nichols.
Freeman first appeared on TV screens as several characters including "Easy Reader", "Mel Mounds" and "Count Dracula" on the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) show The Electric Company (1971). He then moved into feature film with another children's adventure, Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow! (1971). Next, there was a small role in the thriller Blade (1973); then he played Casca in Julius Caesar (1979) and the title role in Coriolanus (1979). Regular work was coming in for the talented Freeman and he appeared in the prison dramas Attica (1980) and Brubaker (1980), Eyewitness (1981), and portrayed the final 24 hours of slain Malcolm X in Death of a Prophet (1981). For most of the 1980s, Freeman continued to contribute decent enough performances in films that fluctuated in their quality. However, he really stood out, scoring an Oscar nomination as a merciless hoodlum in Street Smart (1987) and, then, he dazzled audiences and pulled a second Oscar nomination in the film version of Driving Miss Daisy (1989) opposite Jessica Tandy. The same year, Freeman teamed up with youthful Matthew Broderick and fiery Denzel Washington in the epic Civil War drama Glory (1989) about freed slaves being recruited to form the first all-African American fighting brigade.
His star continued to rise, and the 1990s kicked off strongly with roles in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and The Power of One (1992). Freeman's next role was as gunman Ned Logan, wooed out of retirement by friend William Munny to avenge several prostitutes in the wild west town of Big Whiskey in Clint Eastwood's de-mythologized western Unforgiven (1992). The film was a sh and scored an acting Oscar for Gene Hackman, a directing Oscar for Eastwood, and the Oscar for best picture. In 1993, Freeman made his directorial debut on Bopha! (1993) and soon after formed his production company, Revelations Entertainment.
More strong scripts came in, and Freeman was back behind bars depicting a knowledgeable inmate (and obtaining his third Oscar nomination), befriending falsely accused banker Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). He was then back out hunting a religious serial killer in Se7en (1995), starred alongside Keanu Reeves in Chain Reaction (1996), and was pursuing another serial murderer in Kiss the Girls (1997).
Further praise followed for his role in the slave tale of Amistad (1997), he was a worried US President facing Armageddon from above in Deep Impact (1998), appeared in Neil LaBute's black comedy Nurse Betty (2000), and reprised his role as Alex Cross in Along Came a Spider (2001). Now highly popular, he was much in demand with cinema audiences, and he co-starred in the terrorist drama The Sum of All Fears (2002), was a military officer in the Stephen King-inspired Dreamcatcher (2003), gave divine guidance as God to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty (2003), and played a minor role in the comedy The Big Bounce (2004).
2005 was a huge year for Freeman. First, he he teamed up with good friend Clint Eastwood to appear in the drama, Million Dollar Baby (2004). Freeman's on-screen performance is simply world-class as ex-prize fighter Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris, who works in a run-down boxing gym alongside grizzled trainer Frankie Dunn, as the two work together to hone the skills of never-say-die female boxer Hilary Swank. Freeman received his fourth Oscar nomination and, finally, impressed the Academy's judges enough to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance. He also narrated Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005) and appeared in Batman Begins (2005) as Lucius Fox, a valuable ally of Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman for director Christopher Nolan. Freeman would reprise his role in the two sequels of the record-breaking, genre-redefining trilogy.
Roles in tentpoles and indies followed; highlights include his role as a crime boss in Lucky Number Slevin (2006), a second go-round as God in Evan Almighty (2007) with Steve Carell taking over for Jim Carrey, and a supporting role in Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (2007). He co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the breakout hit The Bucket List (2007) in 2007, and followed that up with another box-office success, Wanted (2008), then segued into the second Batman film, The Dark Knight (2008).
In 2009, he reunited with Eastwood to star in the director's true-life drama Invictus (2009), on which Freeman also served as an executive producer. For his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the film, Freeman garnered Oscar, Golden Globe and Critics' Choice Award nominations, and won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor.
Recently, Freeman appeared in RED (2010), a surprise box-office hit; he narrated the Conan the Barbarian (2011) remake, starred in Rob Reiner's The Magic of Belle Isle (2012); and capped the Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Freeman has several films upcoming, including the thriller Now You See Me (2013), under the direction of Louis Leterrier, and the science fiction actioner Oblivion (2013), in which he stars with Tom Cruise.- Actor
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Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), all American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was Brando. It was if the shadow of John Barrymore, the great American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom, dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and Fredric March. Only the luster of Spencer Tracy's reputation hasn't dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However, neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by the force of his personality. Brando did.
Marlon Brando, Jr. was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr., a calcium carbonate salesman, and his artistically inclined wife, the former Dorothy Julia Pennebaker. "Bud" Brando was one of three children. His ancestry included English, Irish, German, Dutch, French Huguenot, Welsh, and Scottish; his surname originated with a distant German immigrant ancestor named "Brandau." His oldest sister Jocelyn Brando was also an actress, taking after their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was a visual artist. Both Brando sisters contrived to leave the Midwest for New York City, Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to escape the vocational doldrums forecast for him by his cold, distant father and his disapproving schoolteachers by striking out for The Big Apple in 1943, following Jocelyn into the acting profession. Acting was the only thing he was good at, for which he received praise, so he was determined to make it his career - a high-school dropout, he had nothing else to fall back on, having been rejected by the military due to a knee injury he incurred playing football at Shattuck Military Academy, Brando Sr.'s alma mater. The school booted Marlon out as incorrigible before graduation.
Acting was a skill he honed as a child, the lonely son of alcoholic parents. With his father away on the road, and his mother frequently intoxicated to the point of stupefaction, the young Bud would play-act for her to draw her out of her stupor and to attract her attention and love. His mother was exceedingly neglectful, but he loved her, particularly for instilling in him a love of nature, a feeling which informed his character Paul in Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris") when he is recalling his childhood for his young lover Jeanne. "I don't have many good memories," Paul confesses, and neither did Brando of his childhood. Sometimes he had to go down to the town jail to pick up his mother after she had spent the night in the drunk tank and bring her home, events that traumatized the young boy but may have been the grain that irritated the oyster of his talent, producing the pearls of his performances. Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning co-star in Viva Zapata! (1952) told Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it."
Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the "emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture.
Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in "I Remember Mama," a great success. As a young Broadway actor, Brando was invited by talent scouts from several different studios to screen-test for them, but he turned them down because he would not let himself be bound by the then-standard seven-year contract. Brando would make his film debut quite some time later in Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950) for producer Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic soldier, Brando brought new levels of realism to the screen, expanding on the verisimilitude brought to movies by Group Theatre alumni John Garfield, the predecessor closest to him in the raw power he projected on-screen. Ironically, it was Garfield whom producer Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to play the lead in a new Tennessee Williams play she was about to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Burt Lancaster was next approached, but couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had directed to great effect in Maxwell Anderson's play "Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with Karl Malden, who was to remain a close friend for the next 60 years.
During the production of "Truckline Café," Kazan had found that Brando's presence was so magnetic, he had to re-block the play to keep Marlon near other major characters' stage business, as the audience could not take its eyes off of him. For the scene where Brando's character re-enters the stage after killing his wife, Kazan placed him upstage-center, partially obscured by scenery, but where the audience could still see him as Karl Malden and others played out their scene within the café set. When he eventually entered the scene, crying, the effect was electric. A young Pauline Kael, arriving late to the play, had to avert her eyes when Brando made this entrance as she believed the young actor on stage was having a real-life conniption. She did not look back until her escort commented that the young man was a great actor.
The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be attributed to his youthful ignorance. Brando ultimately was dissatisfied with his performance, though, saying he never was able to bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter, broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred, smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.
For his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley because Jessica Tandy was too shrill. He thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness and nymphomania. Brando's appearance as Stanley on stage and on screen revolutionized American acting by introducing "The Method" into American consciousness and culture. Method acting, rooted in Adler's study at the Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavsky's theories that she subsequently introduced to the Group Theatre, was a more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the actor with the character's emotions. Adler took first place among Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from an unsophisticated Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.
Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Brando denounced Strasberg in his autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me" (1994), saying that he was a talentless exploiter who claimed he had been Brando's mentor. The Actors Studio had been founded by Strasberg along with Kazan and Stella Adler's husband, Harold Clurman, all Group Theatre alumni, all political progressives deeply committed to the didactic function of the stage. Brando credits his knowledge of the craft to Adler and Kazan, while Kazan in his autobiography "A Life" claimed that Brando's genius thrived due to the thorough training Adler had given him. Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience
Interestingly, Elia Kazan believed that Brando had ruined two generations of actors, his contemporaries and those who came after him, all wanting to emulate the great Brando by employing The Method. Kazan felt that Brando was never a Method actor, that he had been highly trained by Adler and did not rely on gut instincts for his performances, as was commonly believed. Many a young actor, mistaken about the true roots of Brando's genius, thought that all it took was to find a character's motivation, empathize with the character through sense and memory association, and regurgitate it all on stage to become the character. That's not how the superbly trained Brando did it; he could, for example, play accents, whereas your average American Method actor could not. There was a method to Brando's art, Kazan felt, but it was not The Method.
After A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which he received the first of his eight Academy Award nominations, Brando appeared in a string of Academy Award-nominated performances - in Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953) and the summit of his early career, Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954). For his "Waterfront" portrayal of meat-headed longshoreman Terry Malloy, the washed-up pug who "coulda been a contender," Brando won his first Oscar. Along with his iconic performance as the rebel-without-a-cause Johnny in The Wild One (1953) ("What are you rebelling against?" Johnny is asked. "What have ya got?" is his reply), the first wave of his career was, according to Jon Voight, unprecedented in its audacious presentation of such a wide range of great acting. Director John Huston said his performance of Marc Antony was like seeing the door of a furnace opened in a dark room, and co-star John Gielgud, the premier Shakespearean actor of the 20th century, invited Brando to join his repertory company.
It was this period of 1951-54 that revolutionized American acting, spawning such imitators as James Dean - who modeled his acting and even his lifestyle on his hero Brando - the young Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. After Brando, every up-and-coming star with true acting talent and a brooding, alienated quality would be hailed as the "New Brando," such as Warren Beatty in Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961). "We are all Brando's children," Jack Nicholson pointed out in 1972. "He gave us our freedom." He was truly "The Godfather" of American acting - and he was just 30 years old. Though he had a couple of failures, like Désirée (1954) and The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), he was clearly miscast in them and hadn't sought out the parts so largely escaped blame.
In the second period of his career, 1955-62, Brando managed to uniquely establish himself as a great actor who also was a Top 10 movie star, although that star began to dim after the box-office high point of his early career, Sayonara (1957) (for which he received his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination). Brando tried his hand at directing a film, the well-reviewed One-Eyed Jacks (1961) that he made for his own production company, Pennebaker Productions (after his mother's maiden name). Stanley Kubrick had been hired to direct the film, but after months of script rewrites in which Brando participated, Kubrick and Brando had a falling out and Kubrick was sacked. According to his widow Christiane Kubrick, Stanley believed that Brando had wanted to direct the film himself all along.
Tales proliferated about the profligacy of Brando the director, burning up a million and a half feet of expensive VistaVision film at 50 cents a foot, fully ten times the normal amount of raw stock expended during production of an equivalent motion picture. Brando took so long editing the film that he was never able to present the studio with a cut. Paramount took it away from him and tacked on a re-shot ending that Brando was dissatisfied with, as it made the Oedipal figure of Dad Longworth into a villain. In any normal film Dad would have been the heavy, but Brando believed that no one was innately evil, that it was a matter of an individual responding to, and being molded by, one's environment. It was not a black-and-white world, Brando felt, but a gray world in which once-decent people could do horrible things. This attitude explains his sympathetic portrayal of Nazi officer Christian Diestl in the film he made before shooting One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Edward Dmytryk's filming of Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions (1958). Shaw denounced Brando's performance, but audiences obviously disagreed, as the film was a major hit. It would be the last hit movie Brando would have for more than a decade.
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) generated respectable numbers at the box office, but the production costs were exorbitant - a then-staggering $6 million - which made it run a deficit. A film essentially is "made" in the editing room, and Brando found cutting to be a terribly boring process, which was why the studio eventually took the film away from him. Despite his proved talent in handling actors and a large production, Brando never again directed another film, though he would claim that all actors essentially direct themselves during the shooting of a picture.
Between the production and release of One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando appeared in Sidney Lumet's film version of Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending," The Fugitive Kind (1960) which teamed him with fellow Oscar winners Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward. Following in Elizabeth Taylor's trailblazing footsteps, Brando became the second performer to receive a $1-million salary for a motion picture, so high were the expectations for this re-teaming of Kowalski and his creator (in 1961 critic Hollis Alpert had published a book "Brando and the Shadow of Stanley Kowalski"). Critics and audiences waiting for another incendiary display from Brando in a Williams work were disappointed when the renamed The Fugitive Kind (1960) finally released. Though Tennessee was hot, with movie versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) burning up the box office and receiving kudos from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, The Fugitive Kind (1960) was a failure. This was followed by the so-so box-office reception of One-Eyed Jacks (1961) in 1961 and then by a failure of a more monumental kind: Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), a remake of the famed 1935 film.
Brando signed on to Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) after turning down the lead in the David Lean classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) because he didn't want to spend a year in the desert riding around on a camel. He received another $1-million salary, plus $200,000 in overages as the shoot went overtime and over budget. During principal photography, highly respected director Carol Reed (an eventual Academy Award winner) was fired, and his replacement, two-time Oscar winner Lewis Milestone, was shunted aside by Brando as Marlon basically took over the direction of the film himself. The long shoot became so notorious that President John F. Kennedy asked director Billy Wilder at a cocktail party not "when" but "if" the "Bounty" shoot would ever be over. The MGM remake of one of its classic Golden Age films garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination and was one of the top grossing films of 1962, yet failed to go into the black due to its Brobdingnagian budget estimated at $20 million, which is equivalent to $120 million when adjusted for inflation.
Brando and Taylor, whose Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20th Century-Fox due to its huge cost overruns (its final budget was more than twice that of Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)), were pilloried by the show business press for being the epitome of the pampered, self-indulgent stars who were ruining the industry. Seeking scapegoats, the Hollywood press conveniently ignored the financial pressures on the studios. The studios had been hurt by television and by the antitrust-mandated divestiture of their movie theater chains, causing a large outflow of production to Italy and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s in order to lower costs. The studio bosses, seeking to replicate such blockbuster hits as the remakes of The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), were the real culprits behind the losses generated by large-budgeted films that found it impossible to recoup their costs despite long lines at the box office.
While Elizabeth Taylor, receiving the unwanted gift of reams of publicity from her adulterous romance with Cleopatra (1963) co-star Richard Burton, remained hot until the tanking of her own Tennessee Williams-renamed debacle Boom! (1968), Brando from 1963 until the end of the decade appeared in one box-office failure after another as he worked out a contract he had signed with Universal Pictures. The industry had grown tired of Brando and his idiosyncrasies, though he continued to be offered prestige projects up through 1968.
Some of the films Brando made in the 1960s were noble failures, such as The Ugly American (1963), The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). For every "Reflections," though, there seemed to be two or three outright debacles, such as Bedtime Story (1964), Morituri (1965), The Chase (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Candy (1968), The Night of the Following Day (1969). By the time Brando began making the anti-colonialist picture Burn! (1969) in Colombia with Gillo Pontecorvo in the director's chair, he was box-office poison, despite having worked in the previous five years with such top directors as Arthur Penn, John Huston and the legendary Charles Chaplin, and with such top-drawer co-stars as David Niven, Yul Brynner, Sophia Loren and Taylor.
The rap on Brando in the 1960s was that a great talent had ruined his potential to be America's answer to Laurence Olivier, as his friend William Redfield limned the dilemma in his book "Letters from an Actor" (1967), a memoir about Redfield's appearance in Burton's 1964 theatrical production of "Hamlet." By failing to go back on stage and recharge his artistic batteries, something British actors such as Burton were not afraid to do, Brando had stifled his great talent, by refusing to tackle the classical repertoire and contemporary drama. Actors and critics had yearned for an American response to the high-acting style of the Brits, and while Method actors such as Rod Steiger tried to create an American style, they were hampered in their quest, as their king was lost in a wasteland of Hollywood movies that were beneath his talent. Many of his early supporters now turned on him, claiming he was a crass sellout.
Despite evidence in such films as The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) that Brando was in fact doing some of the best acting of his life, critics, perhaps with an eye on the box office, slammed him for failing to live up to, and nurture, his great gift. Brando's political activism, starting in the early 1960s with his championing of Native Americans' rights, followed by his participation in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's March on Washington in 1963, and followed by his appearance at a Black Panther rally in 1968, did not win him many admirers in the establishment. In fact, there was a de facto embargo on Brando films in the recently segregated (officially, at least) southeastern US in the 1960s. Southern exhibitors simply would not book his films, and producers took notice. After 1968, Brando would not work for three years.
Pauline Kael wrote of Brando that he was Fortune's fool. She drew a parallel with the latter career of John Barrymore, a similarly gifted thespian with talents as prodigious, who seemingly threw them away. Brando, like the late-career Barrymore, had become a great ham, evidenced by his turn as the faux Indian guru in the egregious Candy (1968), seemingly because the material was so beneath his talent. Most observers of Brando in the 1960s believed that he needed to be reunited with his old mentor Elia Kazan, a relationship that had soured due to Kazan's friendly testimony naming names before the notorious House un-American Activities Committee. Perhaps Brando believed this, too, as he originally accepted an offer to appear as the star of Kazan's film adaptation of his own novel, The Arrangement (1969). However, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Brando backed out of the film, telling Kazan that he could not appear in a Hollywood film after this tragedy. Also reportedly turning down a role opposite box-office king Paul Newman in a surefire script, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Brando decided to make Burn! (1969) with Pontecorvo. The film, a searing indictment of racism and colonialism, flopped at the box office but won the esteem of progressive critics and cultural arbiters such as Howard Zinn. He subsequently appeared in the British film The Nightcomers (1971), a prequel to "Turn of the Screw" and another critical and box office failure.
Kazan, after a life in film and the theater, said that, aside from Orson Welles, whose greatness lay in film making, he only met one actor who was a genius: Brando. Richard Burton, an intellectual with a keen eye for observation if not for his own film projects, said that he found Brando to be very bright, unlike the public perception of him as a Terry Malloy-type character that he himself inadvertently promoted through his boorish behavior. Brando's problem, Burton felt, was that he was unique, and that he had gotten too much fame too soon at too early an age. Cut off from being nurtured by normal contact with society, fame had distorted Brando's personality and his ability to cope with the world, as he had not had time to grow up outside the limelight.
Truman Capote, who eviscerated Brando in print in the mid-'50s and had as much to do with the public perception of the dyslexic Brando as a dumbbell, always said that the best actors were ignorant, and that an intelligent person could not be a good actor. However, Brando was highly intelligent, and possessed of a rare genius in a then-deprecated art, acting. The problem that an intelligent performer has in movies is that it is the director, and not the actor, who has the power in his chosen field. Greatness in the other arts is defined by how much control the artist is able to exert over his chosen medium, but in movie acting, the medium is controlled by a person outside the individual artist. It is an axiom of the cinema that a performance, as is a film, is "created" in the cutting room, thus further removing the actor from control over his art. Brando had tried his hand at directing, in controlling the whole artistic enterprise, but he could not abide the cutting room, where a film and the film's performances are made. This lack of control over his art was the root of Brando's discontent with acting, with movies, and, eventually, with the whole wide world that invested so much cachet in movie actors, as long as "they" were at the top of the box-office charts. Hollywood was a matter of "they" and not the work, and Brando became disgusted.
Charlton Heston, who participated in Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington with Brando, believes that Marlon was the great actor of his generation. However, noting a story that Brando had once refused a role in the early 1960s with the excuse "How can I act when people are starving in India?," Heston believes that it was this attitude, the inability to separate one's idealism from one's work, that prevented Brando from reaching his potential. As Rod Steiger once said, Brando had it all, great stardom and a great talent. He could have taken his audience on a trip to the stars, but he simply would not. Steiger, one of Brando's children even though a contemporary, could not understand it. When James Mason' was asked in 1971 who was the best American actor, he had replied that since Brando had let his career go belly-up, it had to be George C. Scott, by default.
Paramount thought that only Laurence Olivier would suffice, but Lord Olivier was ill. The young director believed there was only one actor who could play godfather to the group of Young Turk actors he had assembled for his film, The Godfather of method acting himself - Marlon Brando. Francis Ford Coppola won the fight for Brando, Brando won - and refused - his second Oscar, and Paramount won a pot of gold by producing the then top-grossing film of all-time, The Godfather (1972), a gangster movie most critics now judge one of the greatest American films of all time. Brando followed his iconic portrayal of Don Corleone with his Oscar-nominated turn in the high-grossing and highly scandalous Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris"), the first film dealing explicitly with sexuality in which an actor of Brando's stature had participated. He was now again a top ten box office star and once again heralded as the greatest actor of his generation, an unprecedented comeback that put him on the cover of "Time" magazine and would make him the highest-paid actor in the history of motion pictures by the end of the decade. Little did the world know that Brando, who had struggled through many projects in good faith during the 1960s, delivering some of his best acting, only to be excoriated and ignored as the films did not do well at the box office, essentially was through with the movies.
After reaching the summit of his career, a rarefied atmosphere never reached before or since by any actor, Brando essentially walked away. He would give no more of himself after giving everything as he had done in Last Tango in Paris (1972)," a performance that embarrassed him, according to his autobiography. Brando had come as close to any actor to being the "auteur," or author, of a film, as the English-language scenes of "Tango" were created by encouraging Brando to improvise. The improvisations were written down and turned into a shooting script, and the scripted improvisations were shot the next day. Pauline Kael, the Brando of movie critics in that she was the most influential arbiter of cinematic quality of her generation and spawned a whole legion of Kael wannabes, said Brando's performance in Last Tango in Paris (1972) had revolutionized the art of film. Brando, who had to act to gain his mother's attention; Brando, who believed acting at best was nothing special as everyone in the world engaged in it every day of their lives to get what they wanted from other people; Brando, who believed acting at its worst was a childish charade and that movie stardom was a whorish fraud, would have agreed with Sam Peckinpah's summation of Pauline Kael: "Pauline's a brilliant critic but sometimes she's just cracking walnuts with her ass." He probably would have done so in a simulacrum of those words, too.
After another three-year hiatus, Brando took on just one more major role for the next 20 years, as the bounty hunter after Jack Nicholson in Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks (1976), a western that succeeded neither with the critics or at the box office. Following The Godfather and Tango, Brando's performance was disappointing for some reviewers, who accused him of giving an erratic and inconsistent performance. In 1977, Brando made a rare appearance on television in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. In 1978, he narrated the English version of Raoni (1978), a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the indigenous Indian tribes of north central Brazil.
Later in his career, Brando concentrated on extracting the maximum amount of capital for the least amount of work from producers, as when he got the Salkind brothers to pony up a then-record $3.7 million against 10% of the gross for 13 days work on Superman (1978). Factoring in inflation, the straight salary for "Superman" equals or exceeds the new record of $1 million a day Harrison Ford set with K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand, and his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage.
Before cashing his first paycheck for Superman (1978), Brando had picked up $2 million for his extended cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) in a role, that of Col. Kurtz, that he authored on-camera through improvisation while Coppola shot take after take. It was Brando's last bravura star performance. He co-starred with George C. Scott and John Gielgud in The Formula (1980), but the film was another critical and financial failure. Years later though, he did receive an eighth and final Oscar nomination for his supporting role in A Dry White Season (1989) after coming out of a near-decade-long retirement. Contrary to those who claimed he now only was in it for the money, Brando donated his entire seven-figure salary to an anti-apartheid charity. He then did an amusing performance in the comedy The Freshman (1990), winning rave reviews. He portrayed Tomas de Torquemada in the historical drama 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), but his performance was denounced and the film was another box office failure. He made another comeback in the Johnny Depp romantic drama Don Juan DeMarco (1994), which co-starred Faye Dunaway as his wife. He then appeared in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), co-starring Val Kilmer, who he didn't get along with. The filming was an unpleasant experience for Brando, as well as another critical and box office failure.
Brando had first attracted media attention at the age of 24, when "Life" magazine ran a photo of himself and his sister Jocelyn, who were both then appearing on Broadway. The curiosity continued, and snowballed. Playing the paraplegic soldier of The Men (1950), Brando had gone to live at a Veterans Administration hospital with actual disabled veterans, and confined himself to a wheelchair for weeks. It was an acting method, research, that no one in Hollywood had ever heard of before, and that willingness to experience life.- Actor
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- Additional Crew
Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. His father, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, was a Kenyan-born medical doctor, of Gujarati Indian descent, and his mother, Anna Lyna Mary (Goodman), was an English actress. Ben began to act in stage plays during the 1960s. He soon became a successful stage actor, and also began to have roles in films and television. His birth name was Krishna Bhanji, but he changed his name to "Ben Kingsley" soon after gaining fame as a stage actor, fearing that a foreign name could hamper his acting career.
Kingsley first earned international fame for his performance in the drama movie Gandhi (1982). His performance as Mohandas K. Gandhi earned him international fame. He won many awards - including an Academy Award for Best Actor. He also won Golden Globe, BAFTA and London Film Critics' Circle Awards. After acting in Gandhi (1982), Ben was recognized as one of the finest British actors.
After his international fame for appearing in Gandhi (1982), Kingsley appeared in many other famous movies. His success as an actor continued. His performance as Itzhak Stern in the drama movie Schindler's List (1993) earned him a BAFTA nomination for best supporting actor. Schindler's List (1993) won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. During the late 1990s, Kingsley acted in many successful movies. He played Sweeney Todd in the television movie The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1997), for which he was nominated for the Screen Actors' Guild Award. His other notable role was as Otto Frank in the television movie Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001), for which he won the Screen Actors' Guild Award.
In 2002, Kingsley was appointed Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Years Honours for his services to drama. In 2013, he received the BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Filmed Entertainment. That same year, he also received the Fellowship Award at the Asian Awards in London, England.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Liam Neeson was born on June 7, 1952 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, to Katherine (Brown), a cook, and Bernard Neeson, a school caretaker. He was raised in a Catholic household. During his early years, Liam worked as a forklift operator for Guinness, a truck driver, an assistant architect and an amateur boxer. He had originally sought a career as a teacher by attending St. Mary's Teaching College, Newcastle. However, in 1976, Neeson joined the Belfast Lyric Players' Theater and made his professional acting debut in the play "The Risen People". After two years, Neeson moved to Dublin's Abbey Theater where he performed the classics. It was here that he was spotted by director John Boorman and was cast in the film Excalibur (1981) as Sir Gawain, his first high-profile film role.
Through the 1980s Neeson appeared in a handful of films and British TV series - including The Bounty (1984), A Woman of Substance (1984), The Mission (1986), and Duet for One (1986) - but it was not until he moved to Hollywood to pursue larger roles that he began to get noticed. His turn as a mute homeless man in Suspect (1987) garnered good reviews, as did supporting roles in The Good Mother (1988) and High Spirits (1988) - though he also starred in the best-to-be-forgotten Satisfaction (1988), which also featured a then-unknown Julia Roberts - but leading man status eluded him until the cult favorite Darkman (1990), directed by Sam Raimi. From there, Neeson starred in Under Suspicion (1991) and Ethan Frome (1992), was hailed for his performance in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992), and ultimately was picked by Steven Spielberg to play Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List (1993). The starring role in the Oscar-winning Holocaust film brought Neeson Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor.
Also in 1993, he made his Broadway debut with a Tony-nominated performance in "Anna Christie", in which he co-starred with his future wife Natasha Richardson. The next year, the two also starred opposite Jodie Foster in the movie Nell (1994), and were married in July of that year. Leading roles as the 18th century Scottish Highlander Rob Roy (1995) and the Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins (1996) followed, and soon Neeson was solidified as one of Hollywood's top leading men. He starred in the highly-anticipated Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) as Qui-Gon Jinn, received a Golden Globe nomination for Kinsey (2004), played the mysterious Ducard in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), and provided the voice for Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
Neeson found a second surprise career as an action leading man with the release of Taken (2008) in early 2009, an unexpected box office hit about a retired CIA agent attempting to rescue his daughter from being sold into prostitution. However, less than two months after the release of the film, tragedy struck when his wife Natasha Richardson suffered a fatal head injury while skiing and passed away days afterward. Neeson returned to high-profile roles in 2010 with two back-to-back big-budget films, Clash of the Titans (2010) and The A-Team (2010), and returned to the action genre with Unknown (2011), The Grey (2011), Battleship (2012) and Taken 2 (2012), as well as the sequel Wrath of the Titans (2012).
Neeson was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1999 Queen's New Year's Honours List for his services to drama. He has two sons from his marriage to Richardson: Micheal Richard Antonio Neeson (born June 22, 1995) and Daniel Jack Neeson (born August 27, 1996).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
In 1976, if you had told fourteen-year-old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be Tom Cruise, one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to join the priesthood. Nonetheless, this sensitive, deeply religious youngster who was born in 1962 in Syracuse, New York, was destined to become one of the highest paid and most sought after actors in screen history.
Tom is the only son (among four children) of nomadic parents, Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and he has German, Irish, and English ancestry. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey with his mother and her new husband. While in high school, Tom wanted to become a priest but pretty soon he developed an interest in acting and abandoned his plans of becoming a priest, dropped out of school, and at age 18 headed for New York and a possible acting career. The next 15 years of his life are the stuff of legends. He made his film debut with a small part in Endless Love (1981) and from the outset exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences.
With handsome movie star looks and a charismatic smile, within 5 years Tom Cruise was starring in some of the top-grossing films of the 1980s including Top Gun (1986); The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). By the 1990s he was one of the highest-paid actors in the world earning an average 15 million dollars a picture in such blockbuster hits as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination for best actor. Tom Cruise's biggest franchise, Mission Impossible, has also earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Tom Cruise has also shown lots of interest in producing, with his biggest producer credits being the Mission Impossible franchise.
In 1990 he renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. A kind and thoughtful man well known for his compassion and generosity, Tom Cruise is one of the best liked members of the movie community. He was married to actress Nicole Kidman until 2001. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has indeed come a long way from the lonely wanderings of his youth to become one of the biggest movie stars ever.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
John Gavin Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois, to Joe Anne (Choisser), who owned a local newspaper, and Daniel Leon Malkovich, a state conservation director. His paternal grandparents were Croatian. In 1976, Malkovich joined Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, newly founded by his friend Gary Sinise. After that, it would take seven years before Malkovich would show up in New York and win an Obie in Sam Shepard's play "True West". In 1984, Malkovich would appear with Dustin Hoffman in the Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman", which would earn him an Emmy when it was made into a made-for-TV movie the next year. His big-screen debut would be as the blind lodger in Places in the Heart (1984), which earned him an Academy Award Nomination for best supporting actor. Other films would follow, including The Killing Fields (1984) and The Glass Menagerie (1987), but he would be well remembered as Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Playing against Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close in a costume picture helped raise his standing in the industry. He would be cast as the psychotic political assassin in Clint Eastwood's In the Line of Fire (1993), for which he would be nominated for both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe. In 1994, Malkovich would portray the sinister Kurtz in the made-for-TV movie Heart of Darkness (1993), taking the story to Africa as it was originally written. Malkovich has periodically returned to Chicago to both act and direct.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Actor Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes was born on December 22, 1962 in Suffolk, England, to Jennifer Anne Mary Alleyne (Lash), a novelist, and Mark Fiennes, a photographer. He is the eldest of six children. Four of his siblings are also in the arts: Martha Fiennes, a director; Magnus Fiennes, a musician; Sophie Fiennes, a producer; and Joseph Fiennes, an actor. He is of English, Irish, and Scottish origin.
A noted Shakespeare interpreter, he first achieved success onstage at the Royal National Theatre. Fiennes first worked on screen in 1990 and then made his film debut in 1992 as Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1992), opposite Juliette Binoche. 1993 was his "breakout year". He had a major role in the controversial Peter Greenaway film The Baby of Mâcon (1993), with Julia Ormond, which was poorly received. Later that year he became known internationally for portraying the amoral Nazi concentration camp commandant Amon Goeth in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993). For this he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. He did not win, but did win the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award for the role, as well as Best Supporting Actor honors from numerous critics groups, including the National Society of Film Critics, and the New York, Chicago, Boston, and London Film Critics associations. His portrayal as Göth also earned him a spot on the American Film Institute's list of Top 50 Film Villains. To look suitable to represent Goeth, Fiennes gained weight, but he managed to shed it afterwards. In 1994, he portrayed American academic Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show (1994). In 1996, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Count Almásy the World War II epic romance, and another Best Picture winner, Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996), in which he starred with Kristin Scott Thomas. He also received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, as well as two Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award nominations, one for Best Actor and another shared with the film's ensemble cast.
Since then, Fiennes has been in a number of notable films, including Strange Days (1995), Oscar and Lucinda (1997), the animated The Prince of Egypt (1998), István Szabó's Sunshine (1999), Neil Jordan-directed films The End of the Affair (1999) and The Good Thief (2002), Red Dragon (2002), Maid in Manhattan (2002), The Constant Gardener (2005), In Bruges (2008), The Reader (2008), co-starring Kate Winslet, Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar®-winning The Hurt Locker (2008), Clash of the Titans (2010), Mike Newell's screen adaptation of Charles Dickens'Great Expectations (2012), with Helena Bonham Carter and Jeremy Irvine, and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).
He is also known for his roles in major film franchises such as the Harry Potter film series (2005-2011), in which he played the evil Lord Voldemort. His nephew, Hero Fiennes Tiffin played Tom Riddle, the young Lord Voldemort, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009). Ralph also appears in the James Bond series, in which he has played M, starting with the 2012 film Skyfall (2012).
In 2011, Fiennes made his directorial debut with his film adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy political thriller Coriolanus (2011), in which he also played the title character, opposite Gerard Butler and Vanessa Redgrave. Fiennes has won a Tony Award for playing Prince Hamlet on Broadway.
In 2015, Fiennes played a music producer in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (2015), starring opposite Tilda Swinton and Matthias Schoenaerts, and in 2016, Fiennes starred in Joel and Ethan Coen's Hail, Caesar! (2016).
Since 1999, Fiennes has served as an ambassador for UNICEF UK.- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Legendary actor Christopher Plummer, perhaps Canada's greatest thespian, delivered outstanding performances as Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), the chilling villain in The Silent Partner (1978), the iconoclastic Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), the empathetic psychiatrist in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the kindly and clever mystery writer in Knives Out (2019), and as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). It was this last role that finally brought him recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, when he was nominated as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, one of three Academy Award nominations he received in the 2010s, along with All the Money in the World (2017) (as J. Paul Getty) and Beginners (2010); he won for the latter role. He will also likely always be remembered as Captain Von Trapp in the atomic bomb-strength blockbuster The Sound of Music (1965), a film he publicly despised until softening his stance in his autobiography "In Spite of Me" (2008).
Christopher Plummer was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer on December 13, 1929 in Toronto, Ontario. He was the only child of Isabella Mary (Abbott), a secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and John Orme Plummer, who sold securities and stocks. Christopher was a great-grandson of John Abbott, who was Canada's third Prime Minister (from 1891 to 1892), and a great-great-great-grandson of Presbyterian clergyman John Bethune. He had Scottish, English, Anglo-Irish, and Cornish ancestry. Plummer was raised in Senneville, Quebec, near Montreal, at his maternal grandparents' home.
Aside from the youngest member of the Barrymore siblings (which counted Oscar-winners Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore in their number), Plummer was the premier Shakespearean actor to come out of North America in the 20th century. He was particularly memorable as Hamlet, Iago and Lear, though his Macbeth opposite Glenda Jackson was -- and this was no surprise to him due to the famous curse attached to the "Scottish Play" -- a failure.
Like another great stage actor, Richard Burton, early in his career Plummer failed to connect with the screen in a way that would make him a star. Dynamic on stage, he didn't succeed as a younger leading man in films. Perhaps if he had been born earlier, and acted in the studio system of Hollywood's golden age, he could have been carefully groomed for stardom. As it was, he shared the English stage actors' disdain -- and he was equally at home in London as he was on the boards of Broadway or on-stage in his native Canada -- for the movies, which did not help him in that medium, as he has confessed. As he aged, Plummer excelled at character roles. He was always a good villain, this man who garnered kudos playing Lucifer on Broadway in Archibald Macleish's Pulitzer Prize-winning "J.B.".
Plummer won two Emmy Awards out of seven nominations stretching 46 years from 1959 and 2011, and one Genie Award in six nominations from 1980 to 2009. For his stage work, Plummer has racked up two Tony Awards on six nominations, the first in 1974 as Best Actor (Musical) for the title role in "Cyrano" and the second in 1997, as Best Actor (Play), in "Barrymore". Surprisingly, he did not win (though he was nominated) for his masterful 2004 performance of "King Lear", which he originated at the Stratford Festival in Ontario and brought down to Broadway for a sold-out run. His other Tony nominations show the wide range of his talent, from a 1959 nod for the Elia Kazan-directed production of Macleish's "J.B." to recognition in 1994 for Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land", with a 1982 Best Actor (Play) nomination for his "Iago" in William Shakespeare's "Othello".
Until the 2009 Academy Awards were announced, it could be said about Plummer that he was the finest actor of the post-World War II period to fail to get an Academy Award. In that, he was following in the footsteps of the late great John Barrymore, whom Plummer so memorably portrayed on Broadway in a one-man show that brought him his second Tony Award. In 2010, Plummer finally got an Oscar nod for his portrayal of another legend, Lev Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). Two years later, the first paragraph of his obituary was written when the 82-year-old Plummer became the oldest person in Academy history to win an Oscar. He won for playing a senior citizen who comes out as gay after the death of his wife in the movie Beginners (2010). As he clutched his statuette, the debonaire thespian addressed it thus: "You're only two years older than me darling, where have you been all of my life?"
Plummer then told the audience that at birth, "I was already rehearsing my Academy acceptance speech, but it was so long ago mercifully for you I've forgotten it." The Academy Award was a long time in coming and richly deserved.
Plummer gave many other fine portrayals on film, particularly as he grew older and settled down into a comfortable marriage with his third wife Elaine. He continued to be an in-demand character actor in prestigious motion pictures. If he were English rather than Canadian, he would have been knighted. (In 1968, he was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor and one which required the approval of the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.) If he lived in the company town of Los Angeles rather than in Connecticut, he likely would have several more Oscar nominations before winning his first for "The Last Station".
As it is, as attested to in his witty and well-written autobiography, Plummer was amply rewarded in life. In 1970, Plummer - then a self-confessed 43-year-old "bottle baby" - married his third wife Elaine Taylor, a dancer, who helped wean him off his dependency on alcohol. They lived happily with their dogs on a 30-acre estate in Weston, Connecticut. He thanked her from the stage during the 2012 Oscar telecast, quipping that she "deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for coming to my rescue every day of my life." Although he spent the majority of his time in the United States, he remained a Canadian citizen. He died in his Weston, Connecticut home on February 5, 2021 at age 91.
His daughter, with actress Tammy Grimes, is actress Amanda Plummer.