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For decades, Dabney Coleman has often appeared as a smarmy, selfish, nervous person, often with money, who is mostly out for himself. He did such a good job in this type of part that he's made a career of it in film.
Dabney Wharton Coleman was born in Austin, Texas, to Mary Wharton (Johns) and Melvin Randolph Coleman. He attended the Virginia Military Institute, and studied law in Texas. Coleman has a well deserved reputation as a fine character actor, and a reliable presence for almost any role in TV and movies. Dabney Coleman's early appearances in the cinema were in The Slender Thread (1965) and Downhill Racer (1969). On TV he starred in That Girl (1966). As the 1970s approached he became a well-known character actor in television and movies, appearing in The Towering Inferno (1974), Midway (1976), and Cinderella Liberty (1973). Television seemed Dabney Coleman's forum in the 1970s as Coleman played the role of Merle Jeeter in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) and Fernwood Tonight (1977). Coleman made appearances in the popular North Dallas Forty (1979) and the Oscar-winning Melvin and Howard (1980). Dabney Coleman also became known for some satirical movies, starring in the comedy How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980) and snatched a lead role for the TV movie Pray TV (1980). Coleman's reputation for playing world-class jerks became cemented in 1980 as the boss to Dolly Parton , Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in 9 to 5 (1980). The next year, Coleman was in very good company working with legends Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond (1981). Coleman's hit streak would not end there.
In 1982 Coleman landed a key role in the classic Tootsie (1982), further cementing his role as an unlikable wealthy boss in some capacity. In 1983 Coleman starred in the Cold War classic WarGames (1983). During this period he also found many parts in lesser known movies like Young Doctors in Love (1982) and Callie & Son (1981). In 1984 he starred in The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) and in 1985 he starred with Tom Hanks in The Man with One Red Shoe (1985). In 1987 the actor won an Emmy for Sworn to Silence (1987). In 1990 Coleman took two lead roles, one in the disastrous Where the Heart Is (1990), and the other in the quirky comedy Short Time (1990). In 1993 Coleman starred in the slapstick comedy Amos & Andrew (1993) (a very funny part) and in a remake of the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) as Milburn Drysdale. Coleman took an extensive line of TV movies, such films as Texan, In the Line of Duty, among others. Coleman took an unusual part in the ABC cartoon, Recess (1997), and then starred in a couple of big money grossers, the Tom Hanks comedy, You've Got Mail (1998), as Chief Quimby in Inspector Gadget (1999), and in Stuart Little (1999), both 1999.
Coleman is still very active.- As a rising talent, Raegan Revord is steadily building an impressive body of work and quickly making a name for herself in Hollywood.
Raegan stars in CBS's hit comedy series Young Sheldon as fan-favorite 'Missy Cooper', the title character's sassy and brash twin sister. Set as a prequel to the Emmy-nominated The Big Bang Theory, the series consistently been one of prime time's most watched comedies.
Off screen, Raegan is a dedicated writer and is authoring a debut YA novel titled Rules for Fake Girlfriends, set to publish in the Fall of 2025 by Wednesday Books.
Raegan is also an avid reader and used Instagram to launch her own book club, Read With Raegan, which has over 63k followers. The online book club is a space where young adults, like Raegan, can come together and celebrate everything there is to love about books, including favorite reads, author interviews, and more. Since it's launch in 2022, the book club had grown into a community of thought-provoking recommendations and conversations.
Raegan's passions also extend into her local community. Her desire to help the less fortunate sparked an idea to create Homeless Helpers, a local initiative aimed at providing small care packages and other necessary items for those who are without homes. Additionally, she is a passionate and outspoken advocate for rescuing animals and is a Junior Ambassador for Children's Hospital Los Angeles. - Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Florence Pugh is an English actress. She is known for Midsommar (2019), Little Women (2019), her MCU debut Black Widow (2021), and Fighting with My Family (2019).
Pugh made her film debut in The Falling (2014). She also appears in Lady Macbeth (2016), Outlaw King (2018), Malevolent (2018), and the AMC Mini-Series The Little Drummer Girl (2018).
In 2018, she was nominated for a BAFTA EE Rising Star Award. In 2020, she was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Amy March in Little Women.- Actor
- Producer
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Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson was born January 3, 1956 in Peekskill, New York, USA, as the sixth of eleven children of Hutton Gibson, a railroad brakeman, and Anne Patricia (Reilly) Gibson (who died in December of 1990). His mother was Irish, from County Longford, while his American-born father is of mostly Irish descent.
Mel and his family moved to Australia in the late 1960s, settling in New South Wales, where Mel's paternal grandmother, contralto opera singer Eva Mylott, was born. After high school, Mel studied at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, performing at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts alongside future film thespians Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush.
After college, Mel had a few stints on stage and starred in a few TV shows. Eventually, he was chosen to star in the films Mad Max (1979) and Tim (1979), co-starring Piper Laurie. The small budgeted Mad Max made him known worldwide, while Tim garnered him an award for Best Actor from the Australian Film Institute (equivalent to the Oscar).
Later, he went on to star in Gallipoli (1981), which earned him a second award for Best Actor from the AFI. In 1980, he married Robyn Moore and had seven children. In 1984, Mel made his American debut in The Bounty (1984), which co-starred Anthony Hopkins.
Then in 1987, Mel starred in what would become his signature series, Lethal Weapon (1987), in which he played "Martin Riggs". In 1990, he took on the interesting starring role in Hamlet (1990), which garnered him some critical praise. He also made the more endearing Forever Young (1992) and the somewhat disturbing The Man Without a Face (1993). 1995 brought his most famous role as "Sir William Wallace" in Braveheart (1995), for which he won two Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.
From there, he made such box office hits as The Patriot (2000), Ransom (1996), and Payback (1999). Today, Mel remains an international superstar mogul, continuously topping the Hollywood power lists as well as the Most Beautiful and Sexiest lists.- Leah Gibson is a Canadian/American award-winning film and TV actress, having worked on over fifty professional productions over the past 15 years. Both touted as leading-lady and established character actor, her diverse body of work encompasses TV series, mini-series, indie films and studio features - most notably, Marvel's JESSICA JONES, Summit Entertainment's TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE, Warner Brother's WATCHMEN, DC Comics' BATWOMAN, leading the Paramount+ action film MERCY, opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Jon Voight, and Paramount+ JOE PICKETT, based on CJ Box's renown book series, in which she won a UBCP Award for Best Supporting Actress.
- Actor
- Producer
Nicholas Edward Gonzalez is an American actor. He is best known for playing the roles of Alex Santiago on the Showtime television series Resurrection Blvd. and Dr. Neil Melendez on the ABC television series The Good Doctor. Born in San Antonio, Texas, Gonzalez is conversant in Spanish, having lived in a bilingual household. He attended Central Catholic High School in San Antonio, where he was an accomplished cross-country and track runner, winning the Texas State Championship in the mile and two-mile. After graduating in 1994 and turning down a presidential appointment to West Point, Gonzalez pursued an English degree at Stanford University in California. He spent two terms at Oxford University in England. The following summer, he returned to Europe on a research grant where he studied at Oxford and Trinity College, Dublin to complete his thesis on James Joyce's Ulysses. While at Stanford he had chanced on acting after taking an improvisational theatre elective and began taking part in student theater. He was approached to do a one-man theater piece called Gas by María Irene Fornés. Alma Martinez, an actress and Stanford professor, encouraged him to become a professional actor. Upon graduating from Stanford in 1998 Gonzalez decided to pursue acting and, with Martinez's help, connected with the theatrical movement in San Francisco. He was once encouraged to use his middle name Edward to conceal his ethnicity and go by "Nicholas Edward" but declined to do so.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
You've seen him. You've heard him. Appearing across platforms such as television, feature film, animation, video games, commercials, talking toys, promotion, narration, and internet; as a result, Mars is affectionately referred to as "That Guy From That Show".
Originally from Warwick, RI, Marsden and his family relocated to Los Angeles and soon he was thrust into the entertainment business. Quickly landing commercials, on-camera and radio. Marsden's first recurring role was on "General Hospital" as Alan Quartermaine Jr.. Soon after, Mars was cast as Eddie Munster on the 80's revamp, "The Munsters Today" with John Schuck and Lee Meriwether, in an 86 episode, three season run! Marsden's career continued to blossom when he joined the cast of the critically respected "Eerie Indiana" (now on Amazon). From there, Marsden continued to work on pilots and series, guest staring and recurring roles, and appearances in feature films through the mid 90s! To name a few, "Blossom","Baywatch" "Tales from the Crypt", "Ally McBeal", "Will & Grace", "Just Shoot Me", and most notably his recurring appearances in "Full House", "Boy Meets World", and ultimately joined the cast of "Step by Step".
In feature films; Jason played a young Billy Crystal in Crystal's directorial debut "Mr. Saturday Night". You might have spotted Jason in "Fun With Dick and Jane", as a Convenience Clerk who botches Jim Carrey's shoplifting attempt. At age 20, Jason landed the job of a lifetime when Sir Ridley Scott cast him in "White Squall", opposite Jeff Bridges along with an ensemble of talent. The film shot in 8 countries around the world in 4 months. Marsden also appeared in Steve Taylor's indie hit, "Blue Like Jazz" and will appear in the upcoming indie horror "The Other People".
During his 35-plus-years as an actor, Jason built an outstanding legacy in Voice Over. Performing in hundreds of animated cartoon series, feature films, video games, toys, and counting! Amongst the most popular, Mars is the voice of Goofy's son, Max, in "A Goofy Movie" and the follow up "Extremely Goofy Movie", Thackery Binx in "Hocus Pocus", "Kovu" the rogue lion in "Lion King 2", Chester McBadbat in "Fairly Odd Parents", Nermal in "The Garfield Show", Conrad 'Duke' Hauser in "GI JOE: Renegades", and appearing in episodes of "Ultimate Spiderman","Batman: Brave and Bold", "Avatar: Legend of Korra" to name a few more. A fan fave is Jason's performance in Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award winning "Spirited Away", as Haku the mysterious boy/dragon. Jason absolutely loves working in animation! Getting to working with the talented voice over artists that he used to listen to while watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid is a dream come true! Notable projects include: futuristic speedster, Impulse/Kid Flash in DC's "Young Justice", "Transformers - Rescue Bots", "Monsters U", "Secret Life of Pets", "DuckTales", and the popular video game, "Skyrim".
Marsden lives in Nashville, TN and produces The Mars Variety Show now on YouTube.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Together with her younger sister, Crystal McKellar, she began acting at a young age in her mother's dance studio. In 1982 the family moved to Los Angeles and a few years later she appeared in her first commercial. A few guest appearances in The Twilight Zone (1985) was followed by her breakthrough in The Wonder Years (1988). She has had good grades in math and French. In her spare time she likes to go skiing, swimming and surfing.- Actress
- Writer
Sarah Alexander was born on 3 January 1971 in London, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for Stardust (2007), Green Wing (2004) and Coupling (2000). She is married to Peter Serafinowicz. They have two children.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Born and raised in New York City, Robert Loggia studied journalism at the University of Missouri before moving back to New York to pursue acting. He trained at the Actors Studio while doing stage work. From the late 1950s he was a familiar face on TV, usually as authoritative figures. Loggia also found work in movies such as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Scarface (1983) and Big (1988). Always in demand, Loggia worked until his death, at 85, from complications of Alzheimer's.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Frankie Adams is a New Zealand-Samoan actress, Best known for playing fan favorite "Bobbie Draper" in the Amazon series The Expanse, Frankie can also be seen in the limited series The Flowers of Alice Hart opposite Sigourney Weaver for Amazon as well as Taika Waititi's Next Goal Wins. Her credits include the NZ limited series The Panthers which premiered at TIFF, Peter Jackson's Mortal Engines for Universal and the lead of director Tusi Tamasese's feature One Thousand Ropes which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the follow-up to his Samoan film The Orator, both of which were shortlisted for the Academy Awards foreign-language category from New Zealand. Frankie's additional credits include the Luc Besson feature Valerian with Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, a recurring role on the award-winning Australian series Wentworth, and five seasons of the long running NZ series Shortland Street.- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
- Director
Sergio Leone was virtually born into the cinema - he was the son of Roberto Roberti (A.K.A. Vincenzo Leone), one of Italy's cinema pioneers, and actress Bice Valerian. Leone entered films in his late teens, working as an assistant director to both Italian directors and U.S. directors working in Italy (usually making Biblical and Roman epics, much in vogue at the time). Towards the end of the 1950s he started writing screenplays, and began directing after taking over The Last Days of Pompeii (1959) in mid-shoot after its original director fell ill. His first solo feature, The Colossus of Rhodes (1961), was a routine Roman epic, but his second feature, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a shameless remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), caused a revolution. It was the first Spaghetti Western, and shot T.V. cowboy Clint Eastwood to stardom (Leone wanted Henry Fonda or Charles Bronson but couldn't afford them). The two sequels, For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), were shot on much higher budgets and were even more successful, though his masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), in which Leone finally worked with Fonda and Bronson, was mutilated by Paramount Pictures and flopped at the U.S. box office. He directed Duck, You Sucker! (1971) reluctantly (as producer he hired Peter Bogdanovich to direct but he left before shooting began), and turned down offers to direct The Godfather (1972) in favor of his dream project, which became Once Upon a Time in America (1984). He died in 1989 after preparing an even more expensive Soviet co-production on the World War II siege of Leningrad.- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Principal is the elder daughter of Ree (née Veal) and Victor Rocco Principal. Her paternal grandparents were Italian, while her mother's family was from Gordon, Georgia, and South Carolina. Her father, a United States Air Force sergeant, was often transferred to different duty stations, so the family constantly moved, and Victoria grew up in London, Florida, Puerto Rico, Massachusetts, and Georgia, among other places. She and her sister attended 17 different schools. Victoria's acting career began when she made a commercial at age five, and she began modeling in high school. She enrolled at Miami-Dade Community College, and wanted to study chiropractic medicine. However, being seriously injured in a car crash at age 18 made her refocus her energy on her love of acting. She moved to New York City, where she worked as a model and actress. She then studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and moved to Los Angeles, California in 1971.
Her first film was as a Mexican mistress in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), starring Paul Newman. Four years later, she became so disappointed with her career that she quit acting and spent the next three years working as an agent. In 1978, she planned on going to law school and later become a studio executive, but Aaron Spelling offered her a year's tuition to accept a role in the pilot of Fantasy Island (1977). She agreed, and soon after that, she landed the role of Pamela Barnes Ewing on CBS' long-running soap opera Dallas (1978). She left the series after nine years, and began her own production company, Victoria Principal Productions. She continues to work as an actress and producer, and has also created a line of skin care products and written three books about beauty and skin-care.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California, to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy. A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the taboo against miscegenation meant that Caucasian actresses were cast as "Oriental" women in lead parts opposite Caucasian leading men. Even when the role called for playing opposite a Caucasian in yellowface, as with Paul Muni's as the Chinese peasant Wang Lung in The Good Earth (1937), Wong was rejected, since she did not fit a Caucasian's imagined ideal look for an Asian woman. The discrimination she faced in the domestic industry caused her to go to Europe for work in English and German films. Her name, which she also spelled Wong Lew Song, translates literally as "Frosted Yellow Willows" but has been interpreted as "Second-Daughter Yellow Butterfly." Her family gave her the English-language name Anna May. She was born on Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles in an integrated neighborhood dominated by Irish and Germans, one block from Chinatown, where her father ran the Sam Kee Laundry.
The Wong family moved back to Chinatown two years after Liu Tsong's birth, but in 1910 they uprooted themselves, moving to a nearby Figueroa Street neighborhood where they had Mexican and East European neighbors. There were two steep hills between the Wongs' new home and Chinatown, but as her biographer, Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, points out, those hills put a psychological as well as physical distance between Liu Tsong and Chinatown. Los Angeles' Chinatown already was teeming with movie shoots when she was a girl. She would haunt the neighborhood nickelodeons, having become enraptured with the early "flickers." Though her traditional father strongly disapproved of his daughter's cinephilia, as it deflected her from scholastic pursuits, there was little he could do about it, as Liu was determined to be an actress. The film industry was in the midst of relocating from the East Coast to the West, and Hollywood was booming. Liu Tsong would haunt movie shoots as she had earlier haunted the nickelodeons. Her favorite stars were Pearl White, of The Perils of Pauline (1914) serial fame, and White's leading man, Crane Wilbur. She was also fond of Ruth Roland.
Educated at a Chinese-language school in Chinatown, she would skip school to watch film shoots in her neighborhood. She made tip money from delivering laundry for her father, which she spent on going to the movies. Her father, if he discovered she had gone to the movies during school hours, would spank her with a bamboo stick. Around the time she was nine years old, she began begging filmmakers for parts, behavior that got her dubbed "C.C.C." for "curious Chinese child."
Liu Tsong's first film role was as an uncredited extra in Metro Pictures' The Red Lantern (1919), starring Alla Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. The part was obtained for her by a friend of her father's (without his knowledge) who worked in the movie industry. Retaining the family surname "Wong" and the English-language "Christian" name bestowed on her by her parents, Liu Tsong Americanized herself as "Anna May Wong" for the movie industry, though she would not receive an on-screen credit for another two years.
The rechristened Anna May Wong appeared in bit parts in movies starring Priscilla Dean, Colleen Moore and the Japanese-born Sessue Hayakawa, the first Asian star of American movies. Due to her father's demands, she had an adult guardian at the studio, and would be locked in her dressing room between scenes if she was the only Asian in the cast. Initially balancing school work and her budding film career, she eventually dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue acting full time. She was aided by the fact that, though still a teenager, she looked more mature than her real age.
Director Marshall Neilan cast the teenage Anna May in a bit part in his film Dinty (1920), then gave her her first credited role in the "Hop" sequence of Bits of Life (1921), the American movie industry's first anthology film. In "Hop" Wong played Toy Ling, the abused wife of Lon Chaney's character Chin Gow, which the Man of a Thousand Faces played in yellowface. She next appeared in support of John Gilbert in Fox's Shame (1921) before being cast in her first major role at the age of 17, the lead in The Toll of the Sea (1922). She played Lotus Flower in this adaptation of the opera "Madame Butterfly," which moved the action from Japan to China. "The Toll of the Sea" was the first feature film shot entirely in Technicolor's two-strip color process. By appearing top-billed in this romantic melodrama, Anna became the first native-born Asian performer to star in a major Hollywood movie. Most portrayals of Asian women were done by Caucasian actresses in "yellow-face," such as the 1915 Madame Butterfly (1915) starring "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford (who was born in Toronto, Canada) in the title role. In "The Toll of the Sea," Anna May's character perpetuates the stereotype of the Asian "lotus blossom," a self-sacrificial woman who surrenders her life for the love of a Caucasian man. The film was a hit, and it showcased Wong in a preternaturally mature and restrained performance. This breakthrough should have launched Anna May Wong as a star, but for one thing: She was Chinese in a country that excluded (by law) Chinese from emigrating to the US, that forbade (by law) Chinese from marrying Caucasians and that generally excluded (by law or otherwise) Chinese from the culture at large, except for bit roles as heavies in the national consciousness.
"The Toll of the Sea" made Anna May Wong a known, and thus a marketable, commodity in Hollywood. She became the #1 actress when a young Asian female part had to be cast, but unfortunately lead roles for Asians were few and far between. Instead of becoming a star, this beautiful woman with a complexion described as "a rose blushing through old ivory" continued to be stuck in supporting roles, as in Tod Browning's melodrama Drifting (1923) and the western Thundering Dawn (1923). She even played an Eskimo in The Alaskan (1924). She appeared as Tiger Lily, "Chieftainess of the Indians," in Paramount's prestigious production of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1924), but the role was very small (the film was shot on Santa Catalina Island, where the cast stayed during the production.
The 170-cm-tall (5'7", although other sources cite her height as 5'4½") beauty was known as the world's best-dressed woman and widely considered to have the loveliest hands in the cinema. Her big breakthrough after her auspicious start with "The Toll of the Sea" finally came when Douglas Fairbanks cast her in a supporting role as a treacherous Mongol slave in his Middle Eastern/Arabian Nights extravaganza The Thief of Bagdad (1924). The $2-million blockbuster production made her known to critics and the movie-going public. For better or worse, a star, albeit of the stereotypical "Dragon Lady" type, was born.
Despite her waxing fame, she was limited to supporting roles, as Caucasian actresses, including most improbably Myrna Loy, continued to be cast as Asian women in lead roles from the 1920s through the 1940s, despite the ready availability of Anna May Wong. She was unable to attract lead parts despite her beauty and proven acting talent, even in films featuring Asian women, but she did carve out a career as a supporting player in everything from A-list movies to two-reel comedies and serials. The characters she played typically were duplicitous or murderous vamps who often reaped the wages of their sin by being raped. It was a demeaning apprenticeship that most Caucasian actresses did not have to go through. Anna wanted was to play modern American women all through her career but was thwarted because of racism. Later, when she journeyed to Europe to escape the typecasting of Hollywood, she told journalist Doris Mackie, "I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain--murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass."
Wong embodied the Caucasian ideal of a foreign exotic beauty, an alien presence despite her American citizenship. The movie magazine "Pictures" published a memoir of hers in 1926 in which she complained, "A lot of people, when they first meet me, are surprised that I speak and write English without difficulty. But why shouldn't I? I was born right here in Los Angeles and went to the public schools here. I speak English without any accent at all. But my parents complain that the same cannot be said of my Chinese. Although I have gone to Chinese schools, and always talk to my father and mother in our native tongue, it is said that I speak Chinese with an English accent!". Many Chinese-Americans considered themselves "Chinese in America," an attitude bolstered by the anti-Chinese, anti-Asian attitude of the US government and the American culture. In her memoir, Wong referred to herself as "Chinese" or "Americanized Chinese," but not as an "American" or "Chinese-American."
Anna May Wong appeared as a dancer in a play within a movie shot in Technicolor for the Ronald Colman vehicle His Supreme Moment (1925), but her Hollywood output generally was undistinguished. In 1926 she seems to have appeared in a "race" film made by Chinese-Americans for a Chinese-American audience, The Silk Bouquet (1926) (aka "The Dragon Horse"). Moving between Poverty Row and the majors, she appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (1927) at Warner Brothers. Warners also cast her in support of Oriental yellowface queen Myrna Loy in The Crimson City (1928). Despite her WASP looks and red hair, Loy in Chinese yellowface had become a major "Oriental" star in American films desiring an exotic element. This indignity may have been what pushed Wong to seek her future somewhere other than Hollywood.
She moved to Europe in 1928, where she made movies in the UK and Germany. She made her debut on the London stage with the young up-and-coming Laurence Olivier in the play "The Circle of Chalk." After receiving a drubbing for her voice and singing from the London critics, she paid a Cambridge University tutor to improve her speech, with the result that she acquired an upper-crust English accent. Later she appeared in Vienna, Austria, in the play "Springtime."
European directors appreciated Wong's unique talents and beauty, and they used her in ways that stereotype-minded Hollywood, hemmed in by American prejudice, would not or could not. Moving to Germany to appear in German films, she became acquainted with German film personalities, including Marlene Dietrich and actress-filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. She learned German and French and began to develop a continental European attitude and outlook. In Europe she was welcomed as a star. According to her biographer Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Wong hobnobbed with "an intellectual elite that included princes, playwrights, artists and photographers who clamored to work with her." Anna May Wong was featured in magazines all over the world, far more than actresses of a similar level of accomplishment. She became a media superstar, and her coiffure and complexion were copied, while "coolie coats" became the rage. According to Hodges, "[S]he was the one American star who spoke to the French people, more than Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford or Mary Pickford, the top American actresses of the time." But, ironically, "[S]he's the one who's now forgotten." Wong was cast in Ewald André Dupont's silent film Piccadilly (1929) as a maid who is fired from her job at a London nightclub after dancing on top of a table, then rehired as a dancer to infuse the club with exotic glamour. Her first talkie was The Flame of Love (1930) (aka "The Road to Dishonour", although some sources claim it was "Song" aka "Wasted Love" in that same year), which was released by British International Pictures. In a time before dubbing, when different versions of a single film were filmed in different languages, Wong played in the English, French and German versions of the movie.
Paramount Pictures offered her a contract with the promise of lead roles in major productions. Returning to the US in 1930, Wong appeared on Broadway in the play "On the Spot." It was a hit, running for 167 performances, and she moved on to Hollywood and Paramount, where she starred in an adaptation of Sax Rohmer's novel "Daughter of Fu Manchu" called Daughter of the Dragon (1931). She was back in stereotype-land, this time as the ultimate "Dragon Lady," who with her father Fu Manchu (played by ethnic Swede Warner Oland, the future Charlie Chan) embodied the evil "Yellow Peril." While "Daughter of the Dragon" may have been B-movie pulp, it enabled Wong to show off her talent by delivering a powerful performance.
Her best role in Hollywood in the early 1930s was in support of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Oscar-winning classic Shanghai Express (1932). However, Hollywood in the 1930s was as racist as it had been in the Roaring Twenties, and MGM refused to cast her in its 1932 production of The Son-Daughter (1932), for which she did a screen-test, as she was "too Chinese to play a Chinese." Helen Hayes played the role in yellow-face. Similarly, she was later kept out of both a lead and supporting role in MGM's prestige production of The Good Earth (1937), its filming of Pearl S. Buck's popular novel, after flunking another screen test for failing to live up to a white man's idea of what "looked" Chinese. MGM screen-tested her for the lead role of O-Lan, the sympathetic wife of Chinese farmer Wang Lung (to be played by Paul Muni, personally cast in the part by Irving Thalberg). She also was considered for the supporting role of Lotus, Wang Lung's concubine. Anna, an ethnic Chinese, lost out on both roles to two Austrian women, Luise Rainer and Tilly Losch, as Albert Lewin, the Thalberg assistant who was casting the film, vetoed Wong and other ethnic Chinese because their looks didn't fit his conception of what Chinese people should look like. Ironically, the year "The Good Earth" came out, Wong appeared on the cover of Look Magazine's second issue, which labeled her "The World's Most Beautiful Chinese Girl." Stereotyped in America as a dragon lady, the cover photo had her holding a dagger. Luise Rainer would win the Best Actress Oscar for her performance of O-Lan in Chinese yellowface.
There were practical considerations for MGM's refusal to cast Wong opposite Muni. It was illegal in many states, including California, for Asians to marry Caucasians, and featuring an interracial couple, even if they were playing the same race, likely would mean the movie would be rejected by many theater chains in regions in which anti-Asian prejudice was particularly severe, such as the South. The new Motion Picture Production Code of 1934 forbid black/white miscegenation and MGM did cast Walter Connelly (a white actor) opposite Soo Yong (a Chines-American actress) as a married couple. Anna May returned to England, reportedly distraught at the injustice perpetrated by MGM and her home country. In England she alternated between films and the stage, but she was obliged to return to the US to fulfill her Paramount contract. She appeared in two Robert Florey-directed pictures, Daughter of Shanghai (1937) as a non-stereotypical Asian-American female lead, and Dangerous to Know (1938). She also appeared in major roles in King of Chinatown (1939) and Island of Lost Men (1939).
Anna May Wong did not appear in films from 1939-41, when she was cast as a supporting player in Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery (1941), an entry in the B-movie series. Her last two starring roles in films were in a pair of anti-Japanese propaganda films, Bombs Over Burma (1942) and Lady from Chungking (1942), both of which were made by Producers Releasing Corp., the lowest of the Poverty Row studios. The major studios, when shooting propaganda films requiring a sympathetic Asian lead, reverted to the old practice of casting Caucasians in yellow-face, no matter how absurd the result.
As her movie career went into eclipse in the 1940s (she would not appear in another motion picture until 1949), she found work on the stage and in radio and then in the new medium of television. Wong wrote a preface to the book "New Chinese Recipes" in 1942, which was one of the first Chinese cookbooks printed in the US. The proceeds from the cookbook were dedicated to United China Relief.
Though Wong was vocal in her opposition to stereotypes and typecasting, and was one of Hollywood's more memorable victims of racism in being denied leading roles in A-list pictures because the racist mores of the times prevented an Asian woman from kissing a Caucasian actor, she was considered socially suspect by her own people. The roles she was forced to accept in order to have an acting career, as well as her status as a single woman, disgusted many Chinese in America and in her ancestral homeland, where actresses were equated with prostitutes and where women were still played by men in classical opera. On a trip to China in 1936, Anna May was welcomed by the country's cultural elite in cosmopolitan Beijing and Shanghai, but she had to abandon a trip to her parents' ancestral village when her progress was blocked by a crowd of protesters. Someone in the crowed denounced her with "Down with Huang Liu Tsong, the stooge that disgraces China. Don't let her go ashore." Upon her return from China, Wong was determined to play Chinese characters more authentically, but her only options were to reject roles she deemed racist or to try to soften them from within the belly of the beast. Ultimately for this proud woman, it was a losing battle.
Chinese nationalism had been on the upswing since Yat-sen Sun ended the Manchu Empire in 1911 and was rife in reaction to the war of aggression launched against China by the Empire of Japan. Chinese nationalists, concerned about the portrayal of Chinese people as evil incarnate in American popular culture, were offended by Wong's portrayals of Asians and exotics. Though she would spend the World War II years working for Chinese charities and relief agencies, she was snubbed by Madame Chiang, the sister-in-law of Yat-sen Sun and wife of Kai-Shek Chiang, the army general who led the Nationalist Chinese, during Madame Chiang's 1942-43 propaganda tour of the US. Her biographer Hodges claims this was the beginning of a consensus among Chinese and Chinese-Americans that Wong was an embarrassment. Chinese and Chinese-Americans chose to blame her rather than Hollywood for the demeaning stereotypes she had to play in order to work. The result of this new consensus, according to Hodges, was that "her memory has been washed away."
Anna May's career in motion pictures was virtually finished after the war. She got her own TV series, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951), on the Dumont Network, playing a Chinese detective in a role written expressly for her, a character who was even given her real Chinese name. The half-hour program, which ran weekly from August 27 to November 21, 1951, was the first TV show to star an Asian-American.
Wong's personal relationships typically were with older Caucasian men, but California law forbade marriage between Asians and Caucasians until 1948. One of her white lovers offered to marry her in Mexico, but the couple's intentions became known and he backed off when his Hollywood career was jeopardized. Wong mused about marrying a Chinese man at times, but the Chinese culture held actresses to be on a par with prostitutes, which made her suspect marriage material. She was afraid that the mores of her culture likely meant that marrying a Chinese would force her to quit her career and be an obedient wife.
Anna May Wong appeared in over 50 American, English and German films in her career, making her the first global Chinese-American movie star. She was forced to fight against racism and stereotyping all her professional life, while simultaneously being criticized by Chinese at home and abroad for perpetuating stereotypes in the media. Despite this tremendous burden, the beautiful woman assayed an elegance and sophistication on-screen that made her the paradigm of Asian women for a generation of movie audiences.
Anna May Wong loved reading, and her favorite subjects spanned a wide range, everything from Asian history and Tzu Lao to William Shakespeare. She never married but occupied her time with golf, horses, and skiing. Wong smoked, drank too much, and suffered from depression. She was poised to make a comeback as a character actress on the big screen toward the end of her life, having appeared as Lana Turner's maid in Ross Hunter's sudsy potboiler Portrait in Black (1960). She was cast in the role of Madame Liang in Flower Drum Song (1961), the movie version of Richard Rodgers's and Oscar Hammerstein II's Broadway musical "Flower Drum Song," but before shooting could begin she passed away.
Anna May Wong died of a massive heart attack on February 3, 1961, in Santa Monica, CA, after a long struggle against Laennec's cirrhosis, a disease of the liver. She was 56 years old. Her fame lives on, four decades after her death. She is a part of American popular consciousness, chosen as one of the first movie stars to be featured on a postage stamp. And the interest in her continues: a play about Anna entitled "China Doll--The Imagined Life of an American Actress," written by Elizabeth Wong, had its premiere at Maine's Bowdoin College in 1997. A lecture and film series, "Rediscovering Anna May Wong," was held at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2004, sponsored by "Playboy" publisher Hugh Hefner. That same year New York City's Museum of Modern Art held its own tribute to Wong, "Retrospective of a Chinese-American Screen Actress." Finally she was getting the respect in her own country that was denied her during her career.
A biography by Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, "Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend," was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2004. Hodges considers Anna May's life and career to be amazing, particularly in light of the fact that her star has yet to be eclipsed by any other Asian-American female star, despite the change in attitudes. Finally, in 2004, the British Film Institute restored E.A. Dupont's 1929 silent film "Piccadilly".- Actress
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Nicole Beharie is an American actress.
Her critically acclaimed film debut was in the film American Violet (2008) alongside Alfre Woodard, Tim Blake Nelson and Will Patton. Beharie also played Ernie Davis' girlfriend in the movie The Express (2008). Her upcoming projects include My Last Day Without You (2011) and Steve McQueen's Shame (2011) opposite Michael Fassbender.
Beharie developed a passion for acting and performing as a child. She attended South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville, SC. She was the first student from the Governor's school to be accepted into Juilliard Drama School in NYC.- Chasty Rose Ballesteros is a Canadian actress of Filipino descent who has had roles in Smallville, Supernatural, Psych, Sanctuary, Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, and How I Met Your Mother. Raised in Winnipeg, Ballesteros moved to Vancouver after high school, to pursue a career as a hairstylist and a manager of a hair salon as well as a model and an actress.
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Jeananne Goossen is a dual citizen of the US and Canada, raised in Toronto, New York and various cities in Japan.
Her mother, Tam Goossen, is from Hong Kong and became an activist and municipally elected official in education after immigrating to Toronto. Her father, Ted Goossen, from Manhattan, NY, is a professor of Japanese literature and film, and a renowned translator of Japanese fiction (including the works of Haruki Murakami).
In Toronto Jeananne attended bilingual programs in French, and Japanese language schools in Japan. She spent most of her childhood in the eclectic Toronto area of Kensington Market/Chinatown.
Jeananne turned down opportunities to play college basketball and volleyball to spend time traveling, and to focus on Biochemistry, her major at McGill University in Montreal. Her original sights were on becoming a gynecologist, but she was drawn to the performing arts, and left Montreal to attend York University's prestigious program for a brief period before booking her first role.
The roles of Sonia in The Vow, Tomoe Gozen in SyFy's Riverworld, Courtney True on ABC family's Falcon Beach, and Nula, in her film debut opposite Tom Cavanaugh in the TIFF film Breakfast With Scot, garnered her enough buzz to make the move from Toronto to Los Angeles.
In her first year in LA, she guest starred in a half dozen shows, most notably Nikki in JJ Abram's Alcatraz, and landed the lead role of Jennifer Mason opposite Kevin Bacon in the pilot of The Following. A few months later, Jeananne booked the role of Krista Bell-Hart on the NBC show The Night Shift.
Since then she has made appearances in shows ranging from The Walking Dead, to Nashville, to Criminal Minds.
Jeananne speaks Japanese, French and some Cantonese and Mandarin. She plays guitar and piano and has always been a singer, which led to her role Vita, on Nashville, where she recorded 2 songs available on iTunes.- Barbara Stuart was born on 3 January 1930 in Paris, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Bachelor Party (1984), Airplane! (1980) and One Step Beyond (1959). She was married to Dick Gautier. She died on 15 May 2011 in St. George, Utah, USA.
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Ray Milland became one of Paramount's most bankable and durable stars, under contract from 1934 to 1948, yet little in his early life suggested a career as a motion picture actor.
Milland was born Alfred Reginald Jones in the Welsh town of Neath, Glamorgan, to Elizabeth Annie (Truscott) and Alfred Jones. He spent his youth in the pursuit of sports. He became an expert rider early on, working at his uncle's horse-breeding estate while studying at the King's College in Cardiff. At 21, he went to London as a member of the elite Household Cavalry (Guard for the Royal Family), undergoing a rigorous 19-months training, further honing his equestrian skills, as well as becoming adept at fencing, boxing and shooting. He won trophies, including the Bisley Match, with his unit's crack rifle team. However, after four years, he suddenly lost his means of financial support (independent income being a requirement as a Guardsman) when his stepfather discontinued his allowance. Broke, he tried his hand at acting in small parts on the London stage.
There are several stories as to how he derived his stage name. It is known, that during his teens he called himself "Mullane", using his stepfather's surname. He may later have suffused "Mullane" with "mill-lands", an area near his hometown. When he first appeared on screen in British films, he was billed first as Spike Milland, then Raymond Milland.
In 1929, Ray befriended the popular actress Estelle Brody at a party and, later that year, visited her on the set of her latest film, The Plaything (1929). While having lunch, they were joined by a producer who persuaded the handsome Welshman to appear in a motion picture bit part. Ray rose to the challenge and bigger roles followed, including the male lead in The Lady from the Sea (1929). The following year, he was signed by MGM and went to Hollywood, but was given little to work with, except for the role of Charles Laughton's ill-fated nephew in Payment Deferred (1932). After a year, Ray was out of his contract and returned to England.
His big break did not come until 1934 when he joined Paramount, where he was to remain for the better part of his Hollywood career. During the first few years, he served an apprenticeship playing second leads, usually as the debonair man-about-town, in light romantic comedies. He appeared with Burns and Allen in Many Happy Returns (1934), enjoyed third-billing as a British aristocrat in the Claudette Colbert farce The Gilded Lily (1935) and was described as "excellent" by reviewers for his role in the sentimental drama Alias Mary Dow (1935). By 1936, he had graduated to starring roles, first as the injured British hunter rescued on a tropical island by The Jungle Princess (1936), the film which launched Dorothy Lamour's sarong-clad career. After that, he was the titular hero of Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937) and, finally, won the girl (rather than being the "other man") in Mitchell Leisen's screwball comedy Easy Living (1937). He also re-visited the tropics in Ebb Tide (1937), Her Jungle Love (1938) and Tropic Holiday (1938), as well as being one of the three valiant brothers of Beau Geste (1939).
In 1940, Ray was sent back to England to star in the screen adaptation of Terence Rattigan's French Without Tears (1940), for which he received his best critical reviews to date. He was top-billed (above John Wayne) running a ship salvage operation in Cecil B. DeMille's lavish Technicolor adventure drama Reap the Wild Wind (1942), besting Wayne in a fight - much to the "Duke's" personal chagrin - and later wrestling with a giant octopus. Also that year, he was directed by Billy Wilder in a charming comedy, The Major and the Minor (1942) (co-starred with Ginger Rogers), for which he garnered good notices from Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. Ray then played a ghost hunter in The Uninvited (1944), and the suave hero caught in a web of espionage in Fritz Lang's thriller Ministry of Fear (1944).
On the strength of his previous role as "Major Kirby", Billy Wilder chose to cast Ray against type in the ground-breaking drama The Lost Weekend (1945) as dipsomaniac writer "Don Birnam". Ray gave the defining performance of his career, his intensity catching critics, used to him as a lightweight leading man, by surprise. Crowther commented "Mr. Milland, in a splendid performance, catches all the ugly nature of a 'drunk', yet reveals the inner torment and degradation of a respectable man who knows his weakness and his shame" (New York Times, December 3, 1945). Arrived at the high point of his career, Ray Milland won the Oscar for Best Actor, as well as the New York Critic's Award. Rarely given such good material again, he nonetheless featured memorably in many more splendid films, often exploiting the newly discovered "darker side" of his personality: as the reporter framed for murder by Charles Laughton's heinous publishing magnate in The Big Clock (1948); as the sophisticated, manipulating art thief "Mark Bellis" in the Victorian melodrama So Evil My Love (1948) (for which producer Hal B. Wallis sent him back to England); as a Fedora-wearing, Armani-suited "Lucifer", trawling for the soul of an honest District Attorney in Alias Nick Beal (1949); and as a traitorous scientist in The Thief (1952), giving what critics described as a "sensitive" and "towering" performance. In 1954, Ray played calculating ex-tennis champ "Tony Wendice", who blackmails a former Cambridge chump into murdering his wife, in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954). He played the part with urbane sophistication and cold detachment throughout, even in the scene of denouement, calmly offering a drink to the arresting officers.
With Lisbon (1956), Ray Milland moved into another direction, turning out several off-beat, low-budget films with himself as the lead, notably High Flight (1957), The Safecracker (1958) and Panic in Year Zero! (1962). At the same time, he cheerfully made the transition to character parts, often in horror and sci-fi outings. In accordance with his own dictum of appearing in anything that had "any originality", he worked on two notable pictures with Roger Corman: first, as a man obsessed with catalepsy in The Premature Burial (1962); secondly, as obsessed self-destructive surgeon "Dr. Xavier" in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)-the Man with X-Ray Eyes, a film which, despite its low budget, won the 1963 Golden Asteroid in the Trieste Festival for Science Fiction.
As the years went on, Ray gradually disposed of his long-standing toupee, lending dignity through his presence to many run-of-the-mill television films, such as Cave in! (1983) and maudlin melodramas like Love Story (1970). He guest-starred in many anthology series on television and had notable roles in Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969) and the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) (as Quorum member Sire Uri). He also enjoyed a brief run on Broadway, starring as "Simon Crawford" in "Hostile Witness" (1966), at the Music Box Theatre.
In his private life, Ray was an enthusiastic yachtsman, who loved fishing and collecting information by reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica. In later years, he became very popular with interviewers because of his candid spontaneity and humour. In the same self-deprecating vein he wrote an anecdotal biography, "Wide-Eyed in Babylon", in 1976. A film star, as well as an outstanding actor, Ray Milland died of cancer at the age of 79 in March 1986.- Actor
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Karl Glusman was born on 3 January 1988 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Love (2015), Devs (2020) and Watcher (2022). He was previously married to Zoë Kravitz.- Actor
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Al Weaver was born on 3 January 1981 in Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for Colette (2018), Press (2018) and Peterloo (2018).- Actor
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Matt Ross was born on 3 January 1970 in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Captain Fantastic (2016), American Psycho (2000) and Face/Off (1997).- Actor
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He was the working class boy from Manchester whose intensity and natural honesty made him British television's most bankable actor. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His first starring role on TV was as Sgt John Mann in Redcap (1964). His first great success, though, was as Detective Inspector Regan in The Sweeney (1975). Violent and uncompromising, the series changed the portrayal of police work on British television and was one of the defining dramas of the 1970s.
For Inspector Morse (1987), Thaw was yet again cast as a policeman, but this time a more cultured character than Regan. The leisurely-paced series, set in beautiful Oxfordshire, was Thaw's most popular and long-running project. It established him as British television's most bankable actor, and during the 1990s he had many other starring vehicles. He was also a favourite of film director Richard Attenborough, who cast him in Cry Freedom (1987) and Chaplin (1992).
John Thaw was a quiet, private man. His marriage to actress Sheila Hancock was generally regarded as one of the strongest in showbusiness. When he died at the age of 60, the BBC website was inundated with tributes from the viewing public. His "Inspector Morse" co-star Kevin Whately simply described him as the country's finest screen actor.- Writer
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Dan Harmon was born on January 3, 1973 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He is best known as the creator, writing, and producer for Community (2009) and Rick and Morty (2013). He also is known for writing and producing earlier works such as Computerman (2003), and Laser Fart (2004). He was previously married to Erin McGathy.- Handsome, rugged American leading man John Russell (whose credits are often confused with those of child actor Johnny Russell) attended the University of California, where he was a student athlete. Serving in the US Marine Corps in WW II, he earned a battlefield commission and decorations for valor at Guadalcanal. His dark good looks brought him to the attention of a talent scout after the war and he began playing second leads and occasional heavies in major productions. In the 1950s, he branched into television and starred in several popular series, most notably Lawman (1958). His appearances were sporadic after the 1960s, though he was a memorable villain in Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider (1985).
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John Ales was born on 3 January 1969 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for True Story (2021), Euphoria (2019) and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2015). He has been married to Wendy Gazelle since 17 March 2001. They have one child.- Actor
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Kurt Yaeger became an amputee, broke his pelvis in half, bladder torn in half, broke seven vertebra, and a number of other injuries in a motorcycle accident. After two years of recovery he shot multiple films and tv shows then landed Greg the Peg on the hit series Sons of Anarchy (2008) which helped solidify his return as an actor, who just happens to be missing a leg.
His new feature The Beanie Bubble (2023), with Zach Galifianakis and Elizabeth Banks, is out soon. Kurt recently shot a hyper-athletic portrayal of Dylan Conner, the Ship's Engineer on Netflix's Another Life (2019) 2021, followed up by roles in SEAL Team (2017) , The Good Doctor (2017), & an Apple show yet to be listed.. CBS All Access brought Kurt into the new series Tell Me a Story (2018) right after he starred in the UK hit comedy film The Festival (2018). He's also known for roles in [link= Quarry (2016), Pure Genius (2016), NCIS: Los Angeles (2009), Shooter (2016), and Shameless (2011).
Yaeger is a highly respected member of the SAG/AFTRA committee Performers with Disabilities, and advocates for the inclusion of actors with disabilities in roles not specified for disabled characters. Yaeger is an amputee and speaks with network executives, show runners, writers, and casting agents about ways to increase inclusion though representation in the creative process, from the beginning of all projects.
Yaeger is also a former professional X Games athlete. Kurt came back, was the first amputee in the X Games, and the first amputee to successfully pull a backflip, and still rides to this day. Remaining athletic after losing his leg is important so he can play any character at anytime. He ran up the Empire State Building, 86 floors in 20 minutes and 19 seconds; completed multiple 55-mile triathlons; and won several adventure challenges where he's pitting against able body athletes.
Motorcycles are Yaeger's second passion. As an amputee, he hosted the BMW GS Trophy Challenge for several years, and rides motorcycles off-road all around the world: Thailand, Madagascar, the Canadian Rockies, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Europe, and the United States. He works with several motorcycle manufactures and companies to create motorcycle-related content.- Actor
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Tom Bower grew up in Denver, Colorado, and thought he would have a career as an athlete, having played varsity baseball, basketball, golf, ran track, and just assumed a professional career would follow. Didn't quite work out that way, and so his hobby of acting seemed to be the next course of action. He immediately set off for New York City, following graduation and a season of summer stock at America's oldest summer stock theater, Elitche Garden's Summer Theatre, in Denver. Tom, at the ripe old age of 17, wasn't quite ready to take the city and Broadway by storm, but he was about to have a real adventure starting off with his enrollment at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Robert Redford, was in his class but no one really knew he was at that time, and Tom was even less well known. After a year and a half at the Academy, he shifted gears and began studying at John Cassavetes Shadows Workshop, and Tom's first film work ever was in Cassavetes first film "Shadows", shot in 1957. Returning home to Denver each summer, Tom married his first wife and had a couple of kids. Straight jobs were necessary to provide for a young family and after running the gamut of all kinds of employment endeavors, Tom broke into the field of private investigation and that became his calling card for the next 15 years. During that time, he got divorced, and later married his true love Ursula, with whom he is now celebrating 47 years of wedded bliss. They have 4 Grandchildren and a wonderful life in Los Angeles. Some 166 feature films and television shows later along with 87 or so theatrical productions behind him, Tom now splits his time between acting and producing. He's also been the founder of three legitimate theatre companies including the MET Theatre, which included such associates as James Gammon, Tim Scott, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Holly Hunter, and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Beth Henley. Film work has afforded Tom and Urs the opportunity of travel to such far off places as China, Morocco, Poland, South Africa, Germany and oo-la-la, Paris, France, the U.K., Italy and Canada. Still going strong, Tom just completed filming "Light of My Life", a movie written, directed and starred in by Academy Award winner Casey Affleck. "We've just now returned from the 45th Anniversary reunion of the Waltons and the 1 year anniversary of Waltons creator, Earl Hamner's passing, which was held in Earl's home town of Schuyler, Virginia. Also home of the Waltons Museum. Life goes on".- Brooke Williams was born on 3 January 1984 in Christchurch, New Zealand. She is an actress, known for Spartacus (2010), Slow West (2015) and 12 Monkeys (2015).
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Born on January 3, 1937 in Los Angeles, California, Glen A. Larson was the man behind some of the world's best-known prime-time television series. His highly successful productions (successful both financially and popularly, less often critically) include Knight Rider (1982), The Fall Guy (1981), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Battlestar Galactica (1978), and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979). The hallmark of Larson's style is family entertainment. Always humorous with the firmly tongue-in-cheek, his series are textbook examples of the genre for any would-be prime-time producer: simple storylines, likable, charismatic lead characters combined with very little violence, no bad language and well-crafted "motif"-laced soundtracks. People like Larson's series because they are fun and relaxing and a wonderful escape from the real world. Glen A. Larson died at age 77 from esophageal cancer in his home in Santa Monica, California on November 14, 2014.- Actress
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Ren Hanami grew up in Huntington Beach, California with roots in Hawaii. Her parents were Alice Akimi Hanna of Japanese descent originally from the sugar plantation on Kekaha, Hawaii, and James Arthur Hanna, a rocket scientist who worked on Navstar, the first GPS satellite. Hanna descended from the Clan Hannay and Sorbie Tower in south west Scotland. (en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbie_Tower)tt4591680
Hanami is a 2021 Inductee into the Asian Hall of Fame and is Co-Chair of its Trauma Advocacy Initiative. She is known for being the long time National Chair of the SAG-AFTRA Asian Pacific American Media Committee and advocate for representation of Asian Pacific Islanders in entertainment. #RepresentationMatters. Hanami is an award-winning actress and singer known for Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), Star Trek: Picard (2020) and Disney's Bunk'd (2015). She is also an award-winning writer and director known for Like Last Night (2017) and Lizard Lesson (2016). She began her show business career as a singer and dancer at Disneyland and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater and a Certificate in Feature Film Writing from U.C.L.A. Hanami's self-produced CDs are "Akimi: Songs For My Mom," "Alien" and "Private Island." Her soprano voice can be heard singing "You've Got A Friend," on Maki Mae's Asian Hall of Fame album "Down By The Water."- Alex D. Linz was born on 3 January 1989 in Santa Barbara, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Home Alone 3 (1997), One Fine Day (1996) and Tarzan (1999).
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William Boyett was born on 3 January 1927 in Akron, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for When a Stranger Calls (1979), Newsies (1992) and Turner & Hooch (1989). He was married to Joan Amelia Reynolds and Willagene Wither. He died on 29 December 2004 in Mission Hills, California, USA.- Writer
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English writer, scholar and philologist, Tolkien's father was a bank manager in South Africa. Shortly before his father died (1896) his mother took him and his younger brother to his father's native village of Sarehole, near Birmingham, England. The landscapes and Nordic mythology of the Midlands may have been the source for Tolkien's fertile imagination to write about 'the Shire' and 'hobbits' in his later book the Hobbit (1937). After his mother's death in 1904 he was looked after by Father Francis Xavier Morgan a RC priest of the Congregation of the Oratory. Tolkien was educated at King Edward VI school in Birmingham. He studied linguistics at Exeter College, Oxford, and took his B.A. in 1915. In 1916 he fought in World War I with the Lancashire Fusiliers. It is believed that his experiences during the Battle of the Somne may have been fueled the darker side of his subsequent novels. Upon his return he worked as an assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary (1918-20) and took his M.A. in 1919. In 1920 he became a teacher in English at the University of Leeds. He then went on to Merton College in Oxford, where he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon (1925-45) and Merton professor of English Language and Literature (1945-59). His first scholarly publication was an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925). He also wrote books on Chaucer (1934) and Beowulf (1937). In 1939 Tolkien gave the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland titled: "On Fairy-Stories". Tolkien will however be remembered most for his books the Hobbit (1937) and the Lord of the Rings (1954-55). The Hobbit began as a bedtime story for his children". He wrote Lord of the Rings over a period of about 14 years.
Tolkien also discussed parts of his novels with fellow Oxfordian and fantasy writer CS Lewis during their 'meetings'. He was trying to create a fantasy world so that he could explain how he had invented certain languages, and in doing so created 'Middle-earth'. However among his peers at Oxford his works were not well received as they were not considered 'scholarly'. It was after LOTR was published in paperback in the United States in 1965 that he developed his legendary cult following and also imitators. Tolkien was W. P. Ker lecturer at Glasgow University in 1953. In 1954 both the University of Liege and University College, Dublin, awarded him honorary doctorates. He received the CBE in 1972. He served as vice-president of the Philological Society and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an honorary fellow of Exeter College. Despite the immense popularity of his books today Tolkien did not greatly benefit from their sales. His son Christopher Tolkien was able to publish some of his works posthumously after his manuscripts were found.- Alisen Down was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada. After graduating high school, she attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, California and from there went to England to study with the British American Academy in Oxford.
Since then has had lead, recurring and guest star roles on several Television series and movies, such as "Cold Squad" for which she won both a Leo and a Gemini award, "DaVinci's Inquest", "The Dead Zone", "Stargate SG-1" and "Stargate Universe", "Smallville", "Flashpoint", "Shattered", "The 'L' Word","The Life" for which she was nominated for another Gemini, "The Killing", "Murdoch Mysteries", CBC's "Cracked", R.L. Stein's "The Haunting Hour", "Lost Girl" as Trick's Wife, 'Isabeau', and "Supernatural" among many others. She also had a two year run on "Mysterious Ways" as 'Miranda' for NBC and PAX which earned her a Leo nomination and recurred for 2 seasons on "Battlestar Galactica" as 'Jean Barolay'. Alisen starred for three years in "Robson Arms" as 'Sault Ste. Marie', a character that was nominated for another two Leos. Alisen was a series lead in Fox's highly anticipated "Gracepoint" and starred for 4 seasons on SyFy's "12 Monkeys", recently named a "show you should be watching" by Entertainment Weekly. - Lovable, laid-back Jesse White made acting seem fun and easy. He was born Jesse Marc Weidenfeld in Buffalo, New York, and was raised in Akron, Ohio. He made his first amateur appearance on the local stage at age 15. Before breaking into professional theater in the 1940s, he held many different jobs, including selling beauty supplies and lingerie. Jesse got his start in vaudeville and burlesque, and eventually reached Broadway in 1943. The following year, he played the rascally, gruff-mannered asylum attendant in Harvey, starring Frank Fay. This role made him famous and he went on to appear with James Stewart in the movie version (Harvey (1950)). The 1950s was a decade of transition to the new medium of television. As a television regular, he did something that had never been done before - he appeared regularly in two series at the same time. In Private Secretary (1953) and The Danny Thomas Show (1953). This record stood for 13 years until Leo G. Carroll appeared simultaneously on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966)).
One of Jesse's earliest television appearances is a 1961 episode of the sci-fi series Once Upon a Time (1961) in which he played, prophetically enough, The Repairman. Jesse would make guest appearances on dozens of television series, and appear in 60 movies, almost always playing a lovable rascal. Some of his last movie appearances were in the sci-fi movies Pajama Party (1964) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966). Then the 50-year-old Jesse seized a terrific career opportunity. From 1968-1989, he would be television's second and longest running Maytag Repairman in a long series of commercials. For this, he made several hundred thousand dollars a year, for just a few days filming. Even though he was semi-retired during this time, Jesse appeared in a dozen movies, his last film being Matinee (1993), which was an homage to some of the 1950s-1960s sci-fi films of which he had been a part. Jesse always seemed to be having as much fun acting as the fans did watching him.
Jesse White died of a heart attack on January 9, 1997, only six days after his 80th birthday. He was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California. - Music Artist
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Jisoo was born on January 3, 1995 in Gunpo. She's a member of Blackpink.
She became a YG Entertainment trainee in August 2011 & trained for 5 years. In August 2016, she became a member of Blackpink, as a lead vocalist & visualist in the group.
Before she becoming a YG trainee, she was known by many for her beauty. She was quite popular in school because of her looks & talents. She used to study at the School Of Performing Arts High School. She eventually transferred schools when her family moved to Seoul.
In 2012, she was revealed through the "Who's That Girl?" teaser by YG Entertainment. That was followed w/ 2 photos in January 2013.- Seol In-ah was born on 3 January 1996 in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. She is an actress, known for Beautiful Love, Wonderful Life (2019), Sunny Days (2018) and Strong Girl Bong-soon (2017).
- The actress was born Marilyn Watts in Santa Monica, California, 17 years before she put her foot on the bottom step of the show biz ladder, dancing in the back row of the chorus in "Earl Carroll's Revue" at the famed showman's theater-restaurant in Hollywood. Modeling for photographers led to wider exposure and ultimately to TV roles and bit parts in low-budget movies. As a Universal-International contract player, she was in most every type of B picture that the studio made. She gave up acting in the early '60s to concentrate on marriage and motherhood during 17 tumultuous years as the wife of actor Richard Long. Since his 1974 death, she's played supporting parts in her friend Clint Eastwood's movies, just as he played a supporting role in one of hers (Tarantula (1955)).
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Kate Levering was born on 3 January 1979 in Sacramento, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Chlorine (2013), Drop Dead Diva (2009) and Breaking the Girls (2012). She has been married to Reza Jahangiri since 20 April 2013. They have two children.- Actor
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This fair-haired, craggy-faced English character actor was born Edmund Jeremy James Walker, scion of Yorkshire landed gentry. After national service with the Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch, Kemp adopted his mother's maiden name as his stage moniker and studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He then made the rounds of repertory theatre and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Old Vic for two seasons. On the London stage from 1958, he tended to specialise in portraying military or aristocratic types. That same year, Kemp won the Carleton Hobbs Bursary award which led to a six-month contract with the BBC's Radio Drama Company.
His screen career had actually begun four years earlier but had not amounted to much until the early 60s. Kemp spent a year as PC Steele in the original cast of the long-running police series Z Cars (1962) and his consequent popularity ensured that a number of juicy (mainly military) roles came his way on both the small and the big screen: Squadron Leader Tony Shaw in the wartime POW drama Colditz (1972), the aristocratic German fighter ace Willi von Klugermann mentoring The Blue Max (1966), the spy Colonel Kurt Von Ruger in Darling Lili (1970), Brigadier General Armin von Roon in The Winds of War (1983) (and its sequel) and General Horatio Gates in the miniseries George Washington (1984). He was also a memorably crusty Robert Picard, Patrick Stewart's conservative older brother in Family (1990).
Though once described as "a sinister-looking bloke with a smile like a razor", Kemp was a confident, natural performer with a larger-than-life personality. He was not averse to occasionally spoofing his screen personae, which he did to brilliant effect in The Prisoner of Zenda (1979) (as Prince Michael) and in Top Secret! (1984) (as the East German General Streck, featuring in some of the film's funniest scenes).
Jeremy Kemp retired from acting in 1998 and died after a long illness on July 19 2019 at the age of 84.- Rebecca Broussard was born on 3 January 1963 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. She is an actress, known for Die Hard (1988), Mars Attacks! (1996) and The Two Jakes (1990). She has been married to Alex Kelly since 2001. She was previously married to Richard Perry.
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Blue Kimble is an American Actor & Producer from Atlanta, GA. Kimble had a career as a professional football player prior to entering the film industry. He has been cast in many major productions including "Hunger Games Catching Fire", "Fast and Furious 5", BETs "The Game", "Devious Maids", and BETs "Being Mary Jane". More recently, he starred as Tommy Debarge in TVOne's "The Debarge Story". He filmed his 2nd season of "Monogamy" as Sawyer and promoting his hit show on BET+, "Ruthless" by Tyler Perry as Andrew.- Juani Feliz is an actress born in the Dominican Republic and raised in the Bronx. Juani got bit by the acting bug after getting involved in her first school play at the age of 14 and landing her first TV and film roles a year later. Her acting career took a backseat when she left NY to attend Harvard College. Wanting to explore the sciences in college, she studied Biomedical Engineering at Harvard. Right out of college, Feliz worked at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Boston, where she worked on a clinical trial for a melanoma cancer vaccine and helped develop biomaterials and drug delivery systems. During this time she also completed a Master's degree at Harvard.
Despite having a blooming career in bioengineering, Juani yearned to return to acting. She moved back to NYC in 2016 to restart her acting career. Since her return, Juani has made it on the big screen with her roles in The Purge: Election Year and Canal Street. She has worked on various TV shows like Blue Bloods, Power, Shades of Blue, One Dollar and was one of 12 actors chosen to be a part of the 2017 ABC Discovers: NY Talent Showcase. Before the pandemic, Juani filmed her first network pilot as a series regular on the ABC romantic dramedy Until The Wedding and filmed for a major supporting role in the upcoming feature film Quiet In My Town.
Currently, Juani can be seen as Alejandra Lopez in FX's Fleishman Is In Trouble, as Carmen in Ava DuVernay's HBO Max series DMZ , and as Isabela in the first and second season of Tracy Oliver and Amy Poehler's Amazon comedy Harlem. She also recently guest-starred in episodes of The Rookie: Feds, The Good Doctor and NCIS: Hawaii. On the film side, Juani just wrapped filming as a lead in the indie thriller Birthrite and she will next be seen in Alex Garland's A24 action epic Civil War.
Juani's on-screen presence has started to garner the attention of Latin America. She was recently nominated for the 2023 "Best Actor/Actress Abroad" award in the Dominican Republic's biggest award show, Premios Soberano. Last year, Juani was named one of People en Español's "50 Mas Bellos" ("50 Most Beautiful") of 2022. Juani's goal is to play roles and tell stories that break the mold and defy stereotypes of Latina women in America, just as she has been able to do in real life. She hopes to use her artistic platform to inspire strength, confidence and possibility in women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and anyone that finds themselves fighting adversity in pursuit of their dreams. - Director
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John Sturges was an American film director, mostly remembered for his outstanding Western films. In 1992, Sturges was awarded a Golden Boot Award for his lifelong contribution to the Western genre.
Sturges was born in the village of Oak Park, Illinois, within the Chicago metropolitan area. By 1930, the village had a population of 64,000 people.
Sturges started his film career in 1932, as a film editor. During World War II, he started directing documentaries and training films for the United States Army Air Forces.
Sturges made his directing debut in 1946, in the drama film "The Man Who Dared" (1946) by the studio Columbia Pictures. The film's protagonist frames himself for murder, in order to prove that innocent people may be convicted by circumstantial evidence. His next film project was the film noir "Shadowed" (1946), about a corpse being found in a golf club, and how an innocent man finds his life threatened by a gang leader. Sturges' last film of the year was the crime drama "Alias Mr. Twilight" (1946), about an elderly con-artist who uses his earnings to provide for his beloved granddaughter.
Sturges was entrusted with directing the third film in the then -popular Rusty film series, about the adventures of a German shepherd. The film was called "For the Love of Rusty" (1947), and introduced the new dog actor Flame. Flame portrayed Rusty in four of the eight Rusty films.
Sturges' next film project was "Keeper of the Bees" (1947), the third film adaptation of the 1925 novel by Gene Stratton-Porter (1863-1924). The film involved aging beekeeper Michael Worthington (played by Harry Davenport ) who recruits a nomadic painter and an orphan girl as his new employees. Despite a high-profile cast, the film is considered a lost film.
Sturges' last film of the year was the war documentary "Thunderbolt" (1947), concerning Operation Strangle (March 19-May 11, 1944). The aerial operation had American aircraft attacking German supply routes in Central Italy, in order to force the Germans to withdraw. The documentary included actual combat footage from the operation, and part of its profits was used to finance the Army Air Force Relief Society.
Sturges returned to the film noir genre with the film "The Sign of the Ram" (1948). The film's villain protagonist Leah St. Aubyn (played by Susan Peters) was depicted as an invalid woman with an obsessive desire to control and dominate the life of her family and friends, and going to extremes in order to achieve her goal.
Sturges next directed the historical drama "Best Man Wins", an adaptation of the short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865) by Mark Twain (1835-1910). The film depicts professional gambler Jim Smiley (played by Edgar Buchanan) trying to use his jumping frog Daniel Webster to win bets. He hopes to use his earnings to win back the love of his ex-wife, and to buy the love of his estranged son.
Sturges' first Western was "The Walking Hills" (1949), which used film noir tropes in a new setting. The film involves treasure hunters searching for a lost wagon train carrying gold bars. But many of the characters are hiding secrets, and a there is a manhunt for a wanted fugitive in the area.
Sturges had a critically successful film with the biographical film "The Magnificent Yankee", which dramatized the life of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, but won neither.
Sturges next projects included the film noir "The Capture" (1950), the film noir "Mystery Street" (1950), and the sports drama "Right Cross" (1950). His crime drama "Kind Lady" (1951) was a remake of a 1935 film with the same title, directed by George B. Seitz. In the film, wealthy art collector Mary Herries (played by Ethel Barrymore) allows painter Henry Springer Elcott (played by Maurice Evans) to move into her London house. But her new house-guest is planning to rob her.
Sturges' film noir "The People Against O'Hara" (1951) was a film noir with elements from courtroom drama. It was a box office hit, and had Sturges working with lead actor Spencer Tracy. Sturges was one of seven film directors who co-directed the anthology film "It's a Big Country", concerning life in the United States.
Sturges' biographical film "The Girl in White" (1952) dramatized the life of female surgeon Emily Dunning Barringer (1876-1961). The real-life Barringer was "the world's first female ambulance surgeon and the first woman to secure a surgical residency". Sturges returned to the film noir genre with "Jeopardy" (1953), an adaptation of a radio play by Maurice Zimm.
Sturges directed the sports comedy "Fast Company" (1953), about an exceptional race horse, and a struggle over its ownership. He returned to the Western genre with the American Civil War-themed film "Escape from Fort Bravo" (1953). In the film the prisoners confined in a Union prison camp attempt to escape. This color film used the Anscocolor process.
Sturges had a career highlight with the thriller film "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955), which combined elements from both film noir and the Western. It involves a town hiding a secret, and mysterious stranger John J. Macreedy (played by Spencer Tracy) trying to uncover the elusive truth. Sturges was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, but the award was won instead by rival director Delbert Mann (1920-2007).
Sturges' next film project was the treasure-hunting themed adventure "Underwater!" (1955). His historical drama "The Scarlet Coat" (1955) dramatized the plot of military officer Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) to surrender West Point to the British Army during the American Revolutionary War. The film also dramatized the life of British spy John André (1750-1780).The film's American counterspy John Bolton was loosely based on historical spymaster Benjamin Tallmadge (1754-1835).
Sturges returned to the Western genre with popular films such as "Backlash" (1956), "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957), "The Law and Jake Wade" (1958), "Last Train from Gun Hill" (1959). He also directed the adventure drama "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958), an adaptation of the 1952 novella by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). For this film, Sturges once again worked with leading actor Spencer Tracy.
Sturges' World War II-themed war film "Never So Few" (1959), featured a cast of rising actors, such as Frank Sinatra, Gina Lollobrigida, and Steve McQueen,. Sturges had another career highlight with a film remake, the Western "The Magnificent Seven" (1960). It was a loose adaptation of the Japanese film "Seven Samurai" (1954) by Akira Kurosawa. The film under-performed in the United States, but was a smash hit in Europe, and very profitable for the film studio United Artists. It sold 89,118,696 tickets sold in overseas territories, and broke box office records in the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. Kurosawa himself liked this adaptation, and the film received three sequels, two remakes of its own, and a television series adaptation.
Sturges' next film project included the law-firm drama "By Love Possessed" (1961), which included controversial themes such as rape, suicide, and embezzlement. Sturges next Western film was "Sergeants 3", loosely based on the poem "Gunga Din" (1890) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). This film is mostly remembered as the " last film to feature all five members of the Rat Pack".
Sturges' next film was more sexually explicit: "A Girl Named Tamiko" (1962). Lead character Ivan Balin (played by Laurence Harvey) is a man who desperately wants to emigrate to the United States, and uses his sex-appeal to seduce women who may help him achieve his goal. His next war film was "The Great Escape" (1963) about prisoners of war trying to escape from Stalag Luft III. It was one of the highest-grossing films of its year of release.
Sturges directed his first science fiction film at age 55, and that film was "The Satan Bug" (1965). The film depicted the manufacture of bio-weapons, and their potential release against American major cities. Sturges also directed the Western comedy "The Hallelujah Trail" (1965), about a predicted harsh winter threatening the whiskey supply of a frontier town. He next directed a more serious Western, "Hour of the Gun" (1967). It was his second film about the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1881), but attempted to be more historically accurate than previous film depictions of the events.
Sturges' next film project was the Cold War thriller "Ice Station Zebra" (1968), loosely based on the missing experimental Corona satellite capsule (Discoverer II) which fell to Norway in 1959, and the efforts to recover it before it fell on Soviet hands. The film was mildly controversial, since it dramatized events that were still classified secret at the time of production. Sturges used former American agents as technical advisers.
Sturges' second science fiction film was Marooned (1969), depicting a potentially deadly accident affecting the Apollo program. Released at a time of high public interest on the Apollo program, it attracted an audience but was a box office flop. The film's visual effects expert won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
Sturges partially directed the auto racing film "Le Mans" (1971), but quit before the film was completed. He was replaced by fellow director Lee H. Katzin (1935-2002). Sturges returned to the Western genre with the peasant-revolt themed "Joe Kidd" (1972). It featured bounty hunter Joe Kidd (played by Clint Eastwood) hunting down a Mexican revolutionary who is campaigning for land reform. The film is considered an example of the Revisionist Western, a more cynical take on the genre.
Sturges last Western was the Italian-produced "Chino" (1973). He returned to the film noir genre with the neo-noir "McQ" (1974), with lead character Lon "McQ" McHugh (played by John Wayne) being an aging police detective who is trying find out who was behind a failed attempt on his life. Sturges' last film was the war film "The Eagle Has Landed" (1976), depicting a German plot by Abwehr leader Wilhelm Canaris (1887-1945) to kidnap Winston Churchill. His last film was a box office hit in its own right.
Sturges retired from film directing at the age of 66. He continued living in retirement until his death in 1992. He was 82-years-old, and several of his film were finding retrospective critical acclaim.- Actor
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Charles 'Bud' Tingwell was born on 3 January 1923 in Coogee, New South Wales, Australia. He was an actor and director, known for Breaker Morant (1980), Murder She Said (1961) and Ned Kelly (2003). He was married to Audrey Wilson. He died on 15 May 2009 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.- Actor
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Derrick O'Connor was born in Dublin, Ireland, and raised in London. He was a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Scottish National Theatre, with many leading stage performances in Edinburgh, Stratford-on-Avon and London's West End. His long and successful career includes numerous starring roles in U.S., British and Australian film and television. O'Connor supports independent filmmaking as an important platform for emerging talent, to ensure a healthy future for the film industry. Projects he has worked on include Seascape (1994) and The First Vampire: Don't Fall for the Devil's Illusions (2004).
O'Connor was seen most recently by American audiences in the feature films Daredevil (2003), End of Days (1999), How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and Lethal Weapon 2 (1989). His many American TV guest appearances include Alias (2001), Tracey Ullman's Tracey Takes On... (1996) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). British film credits include Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985), Time Bandits (1981) and Jabberwocky (1977), John Boormans Hope and Glory (1987), Harold Pinter's Butley (1974) and Dealers (1989).
O'Connor died in 2018, aged 77.- Actress
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Kerry Armstrong was born on 3 January 1958 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is an actress and producer, known for Lantana (2001), SeaChange (1998) and Razzle Dazzle (2007).- Actress
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Classic comedienne Zasu Pitts, of the timid, forlorn blue eyes and trademark woebegone vocal pattern and fidgety hands, was born to Rulandus and Nellie (Shay) Pitts, the third of four children on January 3, 1894. Her aged New York-native father, who lost a leg back in the Civil War era, had settled the family in Kansas by the time ZaSu was born but relocated to Santa Cruz, California, when she was 9, seeking a warmer climate and better job opportunities. She attended Santa Cruz High and somehow rose above her excessively shy demeanor to join the school's drama department. She went on to cultivate what was once deemed her negative qualities by making a career out of her unglamorous looks and wallflower tendencies in scores and scores of screwball comedy treasures.
Pitts made her stage debut in 1915 and was discovered two years later by pioneer screenwriter Frances Marion, who got her work, though in small, obscure parts, in vehicles for such Paramount stars as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Mary cast her in another of her films to greater effect and the rest is history. She grew in popularity following a series of Universal one-reeler comedies and earned her first feature-length lead in King Vidor's Better Times (1919). She met and married matinée idol Tom Gallery in 1920 and paired up with him in several films, including Bright Eyes (1921), Heart of Twenty (1920), Patsy (1921), and A Daughter of Luxury (1922).
Their daughter Ann was born in 1922. In 1924 the actress, now a reputable comedy farceur, was given the greatest tragic role of her career in Erich von Stroheim's epic classic Greed (1924), an over-four-hour picture cut down by the studio to less than two. The surprise casting initially shocked Hollywood but showed that she could draw tears and pathos as well as laughs with her patented doleful demeanor. The movie has grown tremendously in reputation over time, although it failed initially at the box office due to its extensive cutting.
Trading off between comedy shorts and features, she earned additional kudos in such heavy dramas as Sins of the Fathers (1928), The Wedding March (1928), also helmed by Von Stroheim, and War Nurse (1930). Still, by the advent of sound, which was an easy transition for Pitts, she was fully secured in comedy. One bitter and huge disappointment for her was when she was replaced in the war classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) by Beryl Mercer after her initial appearance drew unintentional laughs from preview audiences. She decided, however, to make the most of a not-so-bad situation. She had them rolling in the aisles in such wonderful and wacky entertainment as The Dummy (1929), Finn and Hattie (1931), The Guardsman (1931), Blondie of the Follies (1932), Sing and Like It (1934), and Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). She also excelled deliciously in her comedy partnerships with stunning blonde comedienne Thelma Todd (in short films) and gangly comedian Slim Summerville (in features).
Breezing through the 1940s in assorted films, she found work in vaudeville and on radio as well, trading quivery banter with Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, and Rudy Vallee, among others. She also tackled Broadway, making her debut in the mystery "Ramshackle Inn" in 1944. The play, which was written especially for her, fared quite well and, as a result, took the show on the road frequently in later years. Postwar films continued to give Pitts the chance to play comic snoops and flighty relatives in such quality fare as Life with Father (1947), but into the 1950s she started focusing on TV. This culminated in her best known series role, playing second banana to cruise line social director Gale Storm in The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna (1956) [aka "Oh, Susannah"]. As Nugie, the shipboard beautician and partner-in-crime, she made the most of her timid, twitchy mannerisms.
Sadly, ill health dominated Pitts' later years when she was diagnosed with cancer in the mid-1950s. She bravely carried on, continuing to work until the very end, making brief appearances in The Thrill of It All (1963) and the all-star comedy epic It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963). Having married a second time after her divorce from Gallery, the beloved sad sack comedienne passed away at age 69 on June 6, 1963, leaving behind a gallery of scene-stealing worrywarts for all to enjoy.- Yngvild Støen Grotmol was born in Norway and grew up in Oslo with her parents and her older sister.
in her younger years, she and her family moved to San Francisco, where her parents, Dr. Randi Støen and Dr. Tom Grotmol did medical research at UCSF for a couple of years.
Yngvild was drawn to the arts early and played the violin and the piano. She loved singing and being on stage in school plays.
When she was 15, she moved to the The Dominican Republic as an exchange student where she learned Spanish. Yngvild studied at the music high school Foss Videregående skole, in Oslo, with jazz singing as her main instrument.
The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in NYC, was the first acting school Yngvild attended. She also studied acting at Rose Bruford in England and three years at The Nordic Institute of scene and studio in Oslo. She studied linguistics, psychology, and theatre history at the University of Oslo.
Yngvild is an accomplished actress across all genres, drama as well as comedy, and she has worked in theatre, musicals, cabarets, films and TV-series.
She is know through out Scandinavia from series and movies like Seks som oss, Upperdog and Cybergullet and her first lead came in the sit-com Schmokk.
In 2020 Yngvild was nominated in the category "best supporting actress" for the feature film Alle utlendinger har lukka gardiner in the Amanda awards, where she was nominated for the Amanda awards.
Yngvild played one of the main characters in Jarl Emsell Larsen's award-winning Norwegian TV-series "Øyevitne" (2014). In Denmark she's known for her character in the award-winning TV-series Herrens Veje (ride upon the storm) where they made history in filming the first lesbian love scene on Danish TV.
In 2022 Yngvild starred in the very controversial Norwegian Netflix-series The Lørenskog disappearance, the series was one of the most watched shows in Scandinavia as well as many other countries across the world.
Recently you can see her as Gudrid in the hit Netflix-series Vikings Valhalla season 2 which premiered January 2023.
Yngvild and is also a professional singer, musician and frequently does voice-acting, voice-over for animated movies and audio-books.