Tall Actors
actors that are 6'3" and taller.
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- Born in Vancouver and raised in Squamish, British Columbia, Daniel grew up in an athletic household. The middle of three boys, Daniel excelled at a number of different sports including ski racing, snowboarding, football and rugby. However, in addition to his vast interest in athletics, Daniel always had a passion for the arts. He took drama classes and performed in school and local theatre productions while his athleticism earned him a Football Scholarship to Gannon University. Unfortunately, his sports career was cut short due to a devastating injury while on the field. It was at this crucial crossroad that Daniel decided to move back to Vancouver and focus his attention on his other passion, acting. Daniel's breakout role came shortly after he made the transition from college star to actor, when Bryan Singer cast him alongside Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Sir Ian McKellen, and Halle Berry in the superhero film X2 (2003), as Colossus, the strongest member of the X-Men team. Daniel's character was brought back in the film's sequel X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). He has since showcased his extraordinary talents on numerous television shows including Stargate SG-1 (1997), Supernatural (2005), and Psych (2006). However, it is Daniel's role as Felix in the popular Summit Entertainment film franchise The Twilight Saga that has given this actor international recognition. Off screen, Daniel has the same strength and physicality as his well-known characters. A glorified outdoorsman, this 6'6'' actor spends a great deal of time enjoying recreational activities including skiing, snowboarding, riding motor bikes and motor cycles, mountain biking and is a huge supporter of the Canadian National Rugby team, where his brother Jaime plays as a forward.
Daniel has appeared in blockbuster films from hit series: The Twilight Saga and X-Men. Next up, see him reprise his role as Felix, the all-powerful Volturi guard in The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), as he is once again bringing the larger than life character to the big screen in the last two installments of the Saga, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011) and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012). Additionally, Daniel has a leading role in the independent thriller Rites of Passage (2012). He shares the screen with seasoned actors Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff and Wes Bentley in the film about a young anthropology student seeking a traditional ceremony to mark his entry into manhood. He also has a role in the highly anticipated drama The Baytown Outlaws (2012) alongside Billy Bob Thornton, Paul Wesley and Eva Longoria. The movie, which was on the 2009 "Black List" of Hollywood's best unproduced movie projects, is about a federal agent who comes into a small Southern town to investigate the Oodies - three redneck brothers who get more than they bargained for after agreeing to help a woman get her son back from his seemingly abusive father. - Actor
- Producer
- Writer
"Irish" Jack O'Halloran was a rated heavyweight boxing contender in the middle '60s & early '70s. The 6'6" native of Runnemede, New Jersey, was considered one of boxing's most promising heavyweight hopefuls after he remained undefeated in his first 16 professional matches. O'Halloran went on to defeat former title contenders Cleveland Williams, Terry Daniels, Manuel Ramos and Danny McAlinden. In 1972 he won the California state heavyweight championship with a victory over Henry Clark. Scoring an upset victory over eighth-ranked Al "Blue" Lewis in 1973, O'Halloran was on the verge of a bout with Muhammad Ali when he was shockingly knocked out by Jimmy Summerville in Miami Beach, Florida. Even though he knocked out Summerville in the rematch, O'Halloran was never in contention again. He retired in 1974, because of a tumor of the pituitary gland, with a record of 34-21-2 with 17 knockout victories. He lost to future heavyweight champions George Foreman and Ken Norton. He achieved World ranking for several years and was the California Heavyweight Champion in 1972 & 73. He was also inducted into the California Boxing Hall of Fame and the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame. Following his retirement he launched a successful career as a character actor in such films as Farewell, My Lovely (1975), King Kong (1976), Superman (1978), Superman II (1980), The Baltimore Bullet (1980), Hero and the Terror (1988), Dragnet (1987) and more. He is a published author with Family Legacy.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Music Department
Dancer, choreographer and actor Geoffrey Holder was born on August 1, 1930, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, into a middle-class family. One of four children, he was taught painting and dancing by his older brother Boscoe Holder, whose dance troupe, the Holder Dance Company, the young Geoffrey joined when he was seven years old. Geoffrey assumed direction of the company in the late 1940s after Boscoe moved to London.
Holder moved to the US in 1954, two years after being "discovered" by Agnes de Mille, the choreographer daughter of director-producer Cecil B. DeMille, after she saw the Holder Dance Company perform in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Holder, a talented painter, sold a score of his paintings to raise the funds to bring the Holder Dance Company to New York City in 1954 (in 1957 Holder won a Guggenheim Fellowship to study painting). He would appear with his dance company, now titled Geoffrey Holder and Company, in New York through 1960.
On December 30, 1954, Holder made his Broadway debut (as did Diahann Carroll) at the Alvin Theatre in the Caribbean-themed original musical "House of Flowers", with music by Harold Arlen, who also co-wrote the book with Truman Capote. The cast included Pearl Bailey and Alvin Ailey, and the show was directed by Peter Brook. Herbert Ross did the choreography but the "Banda Dance" was choreographed by Holder. The show ran for 165 total performances but, more importantly, Holder met and married fellow cast member 'Carmen DeLavallade', a dancer, and the two had a son together. From 1955 through 1956 Holder was a principal dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.
Holder played the role of Lucky in a revival of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" directed by Herbert Berghof on Broadway in January 1957. The all-black cast also included Geoff Searle as Vladimir, Rex Ingram as Pozzo and Mantan Moreland as Estragon. The show only lasted six performances, but it established Holder as an actor, and he made his film debut four years later in All Night Long (1962), a modern gloss on William Shakespeare's "Othello". His most famous role was as the heavy "Baron Samedi" in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die (1973), Roger Moore's first turn as 007.
Holder won the 1975 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for his staging of the Broadway musical "The Wiz" (1975), the all-African American retelling of "The Wizard of Oz." He also won the Tony for best costume design (he would be nominated again for a Tony for best costume design for the original 1978 Broadway musical "Timbuktu!", which he also directed and choreographed). As a choreographer he has created dance pieces for many companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Holder has written two books, one on folklore and one on Caribbean cuisine. In the 1970s and 1980s, he put his striking 6'6" presence and bass voice to good use hawking various products in TV commercials, including soft drinks.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
The athletically gifted 6' 7" Charles Aaron "Bubba" Smith played defensive end / defensive tackle for the National Football League's Baltimore Colts (1967-1971), Oakland Raiders (1973-1974), and Houston Oilers (1975-1976). After the conclusion of his football career, Smith moved into a TV & film career, with initial guest appearances on prime time TV shows including Wonder Woman (1975), Charlie's Angels (1976) and Eight Is Enough (1977).
Smith is best known to international film audiences as the softly spoken police officer "Moses Hightower" from the Police Academy (1984) series of comedies, in which he has appeared in all but one of the numerous sequels.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Stunts
As a child, Brian Steele knew only two speeds: full throttle and off. Perpetually hyperactive and adventurous, young Brian constantly pushed boundaries and tested the patience of his parents and teachers.
But Brian's boundless energy and ambition had no direction, growing up in small-town Highland, Michigan. But soon a few local Detroit television programs changed all that. Brian discovered "Monster Week," The Ghoul, and Sir Graves Ghastly - fright fest-y shows whose creature-characters he found fascinating.
Towering over classmates at an astounding 6'7", Brian again found himself turning to onscreen icons for inspiration; watching over-the-top physical comedy by the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy helped him embrace his physical awkwardness.
But lacking an outlet for his energy or any focus on a career, Brian had no direction.
In 1985 he moved to the Florida Keys, hoping to discover his dreams there. But after two years working odd jobs like bagging groceries, working at a go-cart track, and on the docks at the local marina, Brian decided to move one more time. With only $700, a duffel bag full of clothes and a 10-speed bicycle, he bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles.
Brian's gamble paid off. L.A. loved him. Universal Studios Theme Park took one look at the awkward 24 year-old and knew exactly what to do with him; they hired him to perform as Frankenstein's monster.
When Universal was searching for a man to don the suit for the television version of Harry and the Henderson's, they didn't have to look far. Brian was thrilled to be surrounded with cast mates who helped nurture his talents as an actor. Always patient and supportive with him as he became familiar with his new job responsibilities, the cast of HATH gave Brian the confidence to cultivate his craft.
48 episodes as Harry led to a role on NBC's sci-fi series, Earth 2. Brian learned quickly about the niche in Hollywood for "creature actors." Glued, painted, Velcro-ed, snapped and harnessed into bodysuits and masks, Brian made a name for himself as the man who could bring monsters to life.
Since 1997, he has played characters tailor made to scare audiences. That year, The Relic opened the door for Brian to work with Hollywood heavy-hitters. He breathed life into villains in the Underworld Trilogy and Blade: Trinity. He's worked with acclaimed directors Guillermo Del Toro (both Hellboy films) and M. Night Shayamalan (Lady in the Water). He's taken on creatures alongside Adrian Brody, Christian Bale and Tom Sizemore. The menacing bear Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin battle in The Edge? That's Brian Steele.
After over 20 years breathing life into characters onscreen, keeping each character fresh and new is easier said than done. But Brian "enjoy(s) the challenge." In 2009, he got the opportunity to portray the T-600, Terminator Salvation's latest incarnation of the Terminator.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
An internationally famous and well respected bodybuilder / actor, Lou Ferrigno first appeared on TV screens in 1977 as the musclebound title character of The Incredible Hulk (1978), the alter ego of meek scientist David Banner. Ferrigno was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951 and as a child suffered from an ear infection that resulted in permanent partial hearing loss. Undeterred by what some may have perceived as a disadvantage, Lou threw himself into athletics (predominantly weightlifting and body building) and at the age of 21 won his first Mr. Universe title. For good measure, he came back and won it again the following year!
He also played professional football in the Canadian Football League, before coming to the attention of producer Kenneth Johnson, who was seeking just the right person to portray on screen the comic book superhero, The Incredible Hulk. With his 6'5", 285 lbs. frame, Lou was the biggest professional bodybuilder of the time, and had recently starred in the documentary Pumping Iron (1977), about the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest in South Africa. He successfully auditioned for the part of the green-skinned Goliath, and that is the role with which he is most closely identified.
"The Hulk" was a huge ratings success and spawned several telemovies after the initial TV series completed its run. Lou continued to remain busy in films and TV with appearances often centered around his remarkable physique. His films included Hercules (1983), Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989) and Frogtown II (1992). Lou has additionally guest-starred on several TV shows including The Fall Guy (1981) and The New Mike Hammer (1984) and had a recurring role on The King of Queens (1998). In 1997 he was featured in the dynamic documentary about his sensational return to professional bodybuilding at age 43, Stand Tall (1997). The film detailed how he returned to compete in the Masters category of the Mr. Olympia contest against several familiar bodybuilding foes. In more recent years, he has appeared in several films, including The Misery Brothers (1995), Ping! (2000), From Heaven to Hell (2002) and a cameo as a security guard in the big-budget remake of Hulk (2003).
Big Lou is also a successful author with two books detailing his bodybuilding knowledge, and his life behind the scenes playing the Incredible Hulk on TV in the 1970s, plus he has a popular website frequented by his many fans worldwide.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Perhaps best known for his chilling performance as "Candyman", the charismatic 6' 5" actor Tony Todd has consistently turned in compelling performances since his debut in the fantasy film Sleepwalk (1986). Born in Washington, D.C., Todd spent two years on a scholarship at the University of Connecticut, which, in turn, led to a scholarship from the renowned Eugene O'Neill National Theatre Institute. It proved to be the foundation for intense stints at the Hartman Conservatory in Stamford, Connecticut and the Trinity Square Repertory Theatre Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. Todd appeared in dozens of classical and many experimental plays, yet still managed to find time to teach playwriting to high school students in the Hartford public school system.
Todd's extensive credits exemplify his versatility. They include such film classics as The Rock (1996), The Crow (1994), Lean on Me (1989), Bird (1988), Night of the Living Dead (1990), Final Destination (2000), the multiple Academy Award winning Oliver Stone film Platoon (1986) and The Secret (2000), which was nominated and screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Todd's recent films include the independent film Silence (2002) and Final Destination 2 (2003). He has had prominent guest starring roles in numerous critically-acclaimed television series, including recurring on Boston Public (2000), For the People (2002) and The District (2000), as well as NYPD Blue (1993), Smallville (2001), Law & Order (1990), Crossing Jordan (2001), Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and The X-Files (1993). Todd recurred on three incarnations of "Star Trek" and guest starred on Xena: Warrior Princess (1995) and episodes of CSI: Miami (2002) and Andromeda (2000). His television movies include starring roles in True Women (1997), Black Fox (1995), Butter (1998), Ivory Hunters (1990), Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (1999) and Control Factor (2003).
Todd's considerable theatre credits include the world premiere of award-winning playwright August Wilson's "King Hedley II", where he originated the title role in Pittsburgh, Seattle and Boston. Variety commented: "Todd's King Hedley dominates the stage. A sour-faced mix of rage and resolve, anger and vulnerability. Todd's Hedley was a memorable tour-de-force even on opening." He also received a coveted Helen Hayes nomination for his performance in Athol Fugard's "The Captain's Tiger at La Jolla, the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Kennedy Center. Other theatre credits include "Les Blancs", "Playboy of the West Indies", "Othello", "Zooman and the Sign", award-winning playwright Keith Glover's "Dark Paradise", "Aida" (on Broadway), and most recently, "Levee James" for the prestigious Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference and The New Dramatist Guild.- Actor
- Producer
If you ever wanted a 6' 5", musclebound, broad-shouldered, shaved-head actor to play a terrifying bodyguard, a soldier of fortune or a fearsome gangster, then Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr. was your man. The basketball player turned actor, who notched up appearances in roughly 132 films, first popped up in roles such as a prison guard in Runaway Train (1985), Andy Garcia's bodyguard in 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) and Powers Boothe's bodyguard in Extreme Prejudice (1987). Hardly diminutive, 6' 5" Lister was not just a recognizable figure on screen, but also a highly accomplished actor. Originally a professional wrestler known by the names "Zeus" and "ZGangsta" for the WWE (Formerly WWF), Tiny left wrestling in the mid 1980s to pursue an acting career. He worked with some of the best actors and directors, in a wide net of genres - from thriller to science fiction and drama to comedy.
Tommy "Tiny" Lister grew up in Compton, California, but chose to break the curses of his generation at an early age. He stayed away from gang life, choosing instead to stay at home and watch westerns. He chose religion over wrongdoing, and developed an interest in films and television early. Growing up watching Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Charlton Heston and Errol Flynn allowed Tiny a chance to dream, and he envisioned his own life on film and television, creating characters on celluloid that transcended gender and color. With his will set in stone, Tiny went out to make it possible. Tiny made his feature film debut in Runaway Train (1985) with Jon Voight, and spent the next few years learning the craft and appearing in films heavy in action and in talent: 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) with Andy Garcia, Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) with Eddie Murphy, and No Holds Barred (1989) with fellow WWE (WWF at the time) wrestler Hulk Hogan.
In the 1990s, Tiny expanded his resume, continuing to make his mark in films with the best in the business. He joined Johnny Depp and the legendary Marlon Brando in the quirky Don Juan DeMarco (1994) and worked with director Quentin Tarantino and actor Andy Garcia in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995). He would later work again with Tarantino in Jackie Brown (1997). Lister's 1990s career benefited from the decade's surge in African-American filmmaking, beginning with his starring role in Mario Van Peebles's western Posse (1993), in which he was thrilled to star with his childhood idol Woody Strode. In a move that was sure to cement his popularity with young audiences across the country, Tiny went on to star as neighborhood bully "Deebo" opposite Ice Cube in the cult comedy Friday (1995), reprising the role for the successful sequel Next Friday (2000). After appearing in comedian Martin Lawrence's A Thin Line Between Love and Hate (1996), Lister played a supporting role in Ice Cube's directorial debut The Players Club (1998) and appeared in Master P's I Got the Hook Up (1998). He also starred in a slew of B-horror films including Soulkeeper (2001), Hellborn (2003) and Dracula 3000 (2004).
Tiny continued with his wide, often eclectic range of roles, and expanded on his original "fierce bodyguard" roles to include comedic and rather quirky performances. He played the President in director Luc Besson's science fiction epic The Fifth Element (1997) opposite Bruce Willis and worked with Adam Sandler in Little Nicky (2000), as well as Mike Meyers and Mike Myers in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002). He joined Dustin Hoffman, Andy Garcia and Rachel Weisz in the crime thriller Confidence (2003). Tiny worked with some of the greatest directors (Quentin Tarantino, Luc Besson, John Frankenheimer), many of our most noted actors (Marlon Brando, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp, Peter O'Toole) and a good share of the top talent in wrestling and rap (Hulk Hogan, 50 Cent and Tupac Shakur, respectively). His wrestling exploits can be seen on Summerslam (1989), Survivor Series (1989) and WWF Superstars (1986).
However, it was Tiny's devotion to ministry and public speaking that made the biggest impression. Along with his wife Felicia, Tiny ministered across the country, reaching out to troubled youth, and sharing his powerful testimony and inspiration in churches and schools.
Tommy "Tiny" Lister may not have been an A list star, but he was certainly one of Hollywood's most instantly recognizable and busiest character actors, until his death on December 10, 2020, in Marina del Rey, California. He was 62.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
David Morse, a 6' 4" tall blue-eyed blond who performed on stage for 10 years before breaking into film, has become established as a respected supporting, character actor and second lead.
He was born the first of four children of Charles, a sales manager, and Jacquelyn Morse, a schoolteacher, on October 11, 1953, in Beverly, Massachusetts. He grew up with three younger sisters. After graduating from high school, Morse studied acting at the William Esper Studio. In 1971, he began his professional acting career appearing in over 30 productions with the Boston Repertory Company from 1971 to 1977. In the late 1970s, Morse continued his stage career with the Circle Repertory Company in New York before moving into television and film. In the late 1990s, he returned to the Off-Broadway stage starring in Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize winning drama, "How I Learned to Drive" (1997), for which he won the Drama Desk Award and the Obie.
Morse made his big screen debut in 1980 co-starring as "Jerry Maxwell", a cheerful bartender turned basketball player, opposite John Savage and Diana Scarwid in Inside Moves (1980), written by Barry Levinson and directed by Richard Donner. Although Inside Moves (1980) was nominated for an Oscar, Morse had to wait a few years until his career took off. His big break came in 1982 when he was cast as Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison, a young doctor who struggles as a single parent after the death of his wife, in St. Elsewhere (1982), a medical drama that ran for six seasons. He co-starred as opposite Jodie Foster and young Jena Malone in the Oscar nominated Sci-Fi drama Contact (1997). In 1999, he appeared in Stephen King's The Green Mile (1999), with Tom Hanks. A year later, he played a supporting role as a kidnapped husband of Meg Ryan in Proof of Life (2000). In 2002, Morse became the first English-speaking actor nominated for the Golden Horse Award, the Chinese equivalent of the Oscars, for his superb performance as FBI expert "Kevin Richter" in Double Vision (2002). From 2002 to 2004, Morse had a regular gig starring as "Mike Olshansky", an ex-Philadelphia policeman turned cab driver, in the TV series Hack (2002) which ran three seasons and was filmed in Philadelphia, close to his home. In 2006-2007, he has a recurring role on season 3 of an Emmy award-winning medical drama House (2004).
David Morse has been married to fellow actress Susan Wheeler Duff since 1982. They have three children, one daughter and twin sons. In 1994, after the the Northridge earthquake destroyed his home in Sherman Oaks, Morse moved from LA to Philadelphia with his family, and resides in his wife's hometown.- Massive (6' 4"), muscular behemoth Donald Richard Gibb was born on August 4, 1954, in New York City, New York and raised in California. He attended the University of New Mexico on a basketball scholarship, then transferred to the University of San Diego, where he played football and was a member of the varsity basketball team. He had a roster spot on the San Diego Chargers prior to embarking on an acting career. With his brawn, bulk, scraggly beard and mustache, deep, growly voice and forceful screen presence, Gibb has frequently been cast as scruffy bikers, loutish rednecks and over-aggressive macho athletes. He started out in movies in the early 1980s with uncredited bit parts in Any Which Way You Can (1980), Stripes (1981), and Conan the Barbarian (1982). He achieved enduring cult fame as the outrageous Ogre in the hilarious Revenge of the Nerds (1984), reprising this role in the second and fourth sequels. He was likewise memorable as raucous martial arts fighter Ray Jackson in the exciting Bloodsport (1988) and wildman tennis player Ripper in the amusing Jocks (1984). He had a recurring role as fierce defensive lineman Leslie "Dr. Death" Crunchner on the HBO situation comedy 1st & Ten (1984). Among the television series Donald has done guest spots on are Alice (1976), The A-Team (1983), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Knight Rider (1982), The Facts of Life (1979), Hunter (1984), Night Court (1984), MacGyver (1985), Quantum Leap (1989), The X-Files (1993) and The Young and the Restless (1973). Donald Gibb lives in Chicago, Illinois and is the co-owner of and spokesman for the Chicago karaoke bar Trader Todd's.
- Vladimir Kulich is known for his work in The Equalizer, Vikings, 13th Warrior, Smoking' Aces, Ironclad,The X Files, and as the voice of Ulfric Stormcloak in one of the most successful video games of all time, Skyrim-The Elder Scrolls. He has given memorable performances opposite academy award winners and nominees including Denzel Washington, Christopher Plummer, Max Von Sydow, Paul Giamatti, John Savage and Antonio Banderas. Vladimir was born in Prague and began his training at the State Theatre of Czechoslovakia. Today he lives in a little cabin, surrounded by 'Silicon Beach' mansions, in Venice, California.
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- Stunts
- Visual Effects
At 6' 4", Brandon Molale is no stranger to standing out on the big screen.
Brandon, a former college and pro football player, is best known from his scene-stealing performance as Kevin Ward, the obnoxious NY Jets Quarterback in Mr. Deeds (2002) starring Adam Sandler and as Blazer in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004).
Brandon continues to be one of the hardest working actors in Hollywood.
Molale's good looks, athletic prowess and talent often get him cast in very physical roles. He has appeared in over 200 feature films and television shows. Brandon is involved with numerous national and local charities.
Raised in Concord, California, Molale is also known as "Hollywood Dog". He played football for the Fresno State Bulldogs where he graduated with a BA in Advertising and Marketing. It was in college that he started taking drama and acting classes. His football skills led him to performing football stunts in The Waterboy (1998) starring Adam Sandler.
Molale lives in Los Angeles with his son. Brandon collects vintage guitar picks from famous rock bands and guitarists.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
John Bernard Larroquette, is an all-around American actor known for his roles in both drama and comedy. He became well-known as Deputy District Attorney Dan Fielding in the NBC sitcom "Night Court" (1984-1992; 2023-present), a role that earned him four straight Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy. This remarkable achievement showed off his talent, demonstrating his knack for mixing serious drama with comedic flair. Larroquette's performance of Dan Fielding evolved from conservative to more humorous, reflecting his own sense of humor, which was a hit with viewers.
Apart from "Night Court," Larroquette's career is filled with impressive roles in various TV series. He won an Emmy for a guest role in "The Practice" and appeared in "The Good Fight," "The Librarians," "Boston Legal," and "Happy Family." His return to "Night Court" in the reboot sees him play again his role as Dan Fielding. However, the character has become gentler over time, suggesting personal growth and struggles, including a reference to a past marriage and a shift from practicing law to working as a process server. This comeback in the reboot adds a new layer to his famous role, mixing fond memories with fresh storytelling.- Actor
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The youngest of seven, Matthew was born in Loma Linda, Ca, to Dolores (Warner), a bookkeeper, and Mark Alexander Modine, a drive-in theater manager. After graduating high school in Imperial Beach, Ca. Modine moved to NYC (1979). Matthew studied with Stella Adler at her Conservatory of Acting. While still a student of hers, he began landing starring roles in film, and later theatre and television. Matthew has worked with many of the most highly regarded directors including, Christopher Nolan, Oliver Stone, Sir Alan Parker, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Abel Ferrara, Alan J. Pakula, John Schlesinger, Tony Richardson, Robert Falls, Sir Peter Hall, Spike Lee, Tom DiCillo, Mike Figgis, Jonathan Demme and John Sayles. A partial list of his films include: The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Birdy (1984), Vision Quest (1985), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Married to the Mob (1988), Gross Anatomy (1989), Memphis Belle (1990), Pacific Heights (1990), Short Cuts (1993), The Browning Version (1994) and Any Given Sunday (1999).
Matthew is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup and Golden Lion. Mary (2005), directed by Abel Ferrara, co-starring Juliette Binoche and Forest Whitaker, won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Birdy won the Cannes Film Festival Gran Prix. Equinox (1992), directed by Alan Rudolph, received four Independent Spirit Award nominations including Best Actor and Best Film. For his work in television, Matthew was part of the Emmy winning Showtime series Weeds (2005). He has received Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations for the M.O.W. What the Deaf Man Heard (1997) and HBO's Emmy winning And the Band Played On (1993). Modine has directed several distinguished short films: When I Was a Boy (1993), Smoking (1994), Ecce Pirate (1997), I Think I Thought (2008) and To Kill an American (2008).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Vincent Phillip D'Onofrio was born on June 30, 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, to Phyllis, a restaurant manager and server, and Gene D'Onofrio, a theatre production assistant and interior designer. He is of Italian descent and has two older sisters. He studied at the Actors Studio and the American Stanislavski Theatre. Vincent D'Onofrio is known as an "actor's actor". The wide variety of roles he has played and the quality of his work have earned him a reputation as a versatile talent.
His first paid role was in Off-Broadway's "This Property Is Condemned". He continued appearing in plays and worked as a bouncer, a bodyguard and a delivery man. In 1984, he made his Broadway debut in "Open Admissions", followed by work in numerous other stage plays. In 2012, D'Onofrio returned to teach at the Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute. As a film actor, D'Onofrio's career break came when he played a mentally unbalanced recruit in Full Metal Jacket (1987), directed by the renowned Stanley Kubrick. For this role D'Onofrio gained nearly 70 pounds. He had a major role in Dying Young (1991), and appeared prominently in the box-office smash Men in Black (1997) as the bad guy (Edgar "The Bug").
Other films of note in which he has appeared are Mystic Pizza (1988), JFK (1991), The Player (1992), Ed Wood (1994), The Cell (2000), The Break-Up (2006) and Jurassic World (2015). In 1996, D'Onofrio garnered critical acclaim along with co-star Renée Zellweger for The Whole Wide World (1996), which he helped produce. He also made a guest appearance in The Subway (1997), where he played an accident victim who could not be rescued and was destined to die. For this performance he won an Emmy nomination. In 2000, he both produced and starred in Steal This Movie (2000), a biopic of radical leader Abbie Hoffman.
In 2001, D'Onofrio took the role which has likely given him his greatest public recognition: Det. Robert Goren, the lead character in the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001). Goren is based on Sherlock Holmes but, instead of relying upon physical evidence like Holmes, D'Onofrio's character focuses on psychology to identify the perpetrators, whom he often draws into confessing or yielding condemning evidence. He played the part for 10 years.
In his career D'Onofrio's various film characters have included a priest, a bisexual former porn star, a hijacker, a serial killer, Orson Welles, a space alien, a 1960s radical leader, a pulp fiction writer, an ingenious police investigator and Stuart Smalley's dope-head brother. His on-screen love interests have included Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Renée Zellweger, Marisa Tomei, Tracey Ullman, Rebecca De Mornay and Lili Taylor. One of his latest roles is in Marvel's Daredevil (2015) as Daredevil's nemesis, Wilson Fisk. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and children.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Although known as the uncle/patriarch and judge "Philip Banks" on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990), James Avery was a classically trained actor and scholar. A native of Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA, he joined the US Navy after graduating high school and served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. Upon leaving the military, he moved to San Diego, California and began writing TV scripts and poetry for PBS. He won an Emmy for production during his tenure there and deservedly won a scholarship to the University of California at San Diego, from which he earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Drama and Literature. (Sidenote: His wife Barbara is the Dean of Student Life at California's Loyola Marymount University.) In addition to his sitcom popularity, he lent his voice to over a dozen animated television series and features. He was also the primary host of the popular PBS travel and adventure series Going Places (1997). Armed with a diverse resume of credits, James Avery remained a unique creative force as convincing a comedian as he was a Shakespearean character.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Charles Richard Moll was an American actor. He is perhaps best known for playing the role of Aristotle Nostradamus "Bull" Shannon, the bailiff on the NBC sitcom Night Court from 1984 to 1992. He has also done extensive work as a voice actor, typically using his deep voice to portray villainous characters in animation and video games, most notably the voice of Two-Face in Batman: The Animated Series and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Moll passed away on October 26, 2023 at the age of 80.- Fred Thompson was born on 19 August 1942 in Sheffield, Alabama, USA. He was an actor, known for The Hunt for Red October (1990), No Way Out (1987) and Baby's Day Out (1994). He was married to Jeri Kehn Thompson and Sarah Elizabeth Lindsey. He died on 1 November 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
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Jonathan Scott Frakes was born in Bellefonte, central Pennsylvania. He is the son of Doris J. (Yingling) and Dr. James R. Frakes, a professor. His parents moved with Jonathan and his younger brother Daniel to Bethlehem in eastern Pennsylvania. There, his father taught English at Lehigh University, where he held the Fairchild chair in American Literature until his passing in 2002. Frakes is of German, and some English, ancestry.
While growing up Jonathan was introduced to jazz by his father and started playing the trombone when he was in fourth grade. As a child Jonathan was always friendly, funny and somewhat of an actor according to a childhood friend. In high school he played in the band and ran track. He graduated from Liberty High in Bethlehem in 1970. The day after he graduated he started classes at Pennsylvania State University, enrolling as a psychology major. The next summer he worked as an usher for the local theater and observed his peers thoroughly enjoying acting. He was motivated to switch his major to theater arts and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1974.
At this point he decided to move to New York City and try to make it as an actor. The roles did not come easily so he had to take side jobs, such as a waiter, a furniture mover (where he injured up his back), and a stint as Captain America for Marvel Comics. Meanwhile he won roles in the Broadway musical "Shenandoah" and on the soap opera The Doctors (1969) as Vietnam veteran Tom Carroll from 1977 to 1978. At his agent's urging Jonathan moved to Los Angeles in late 1978 to try his hand at television guest appearances. He guest-starred on several of the big prime-time shows of the time, including Charlie's Angels (1976), Fantasy Island (1977), Barnaby Jones (1973), Quincy M.E. (1976), Highway to Heaven (1984), The Waltons (1972), and The Dukes of Hazzard (1979).
During the 1980s Jonathan landed a starring role in a prime-time soap opera, Bare Essence (1983), which had spun off a successful miniseries of the same name. However the show did not take off with the viewers and was soon canceled. He went back to guest appearances for two more years until he got the part of Stanley Hazard in the Civil War epic North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985). After spending more than six months filming all over the southern United States, he and his co-star, Genie Francis, fell in love (he had met her three years before when they co-starred in Bare Essence (1983)). During that time he and Genie didn't have much to do with each other, other than his making fun of her hair, according to her. However three years later they were an item.
In early 1987 Jonathan went to an audition for a new television series at the urging of his soon-to-be wife and her family. After six weeks, and seven auditions, he won the role that would bring him worldwide fame: that of Commander William Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). It was at this time, he and Genie announced their engagement. They would have to postpone their wedding twice because of his job but were finally married in the first-season hiatus on May 28, 1988. All of his new co-stars attended the wedding, along with Star Trek (1966) creator Gene Roddenberry. During the seven years Frakes starred on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), he not only acted but discovered that he had a talent for directing. He helmed eight episodes in all and was invited to direct on the Next Generation spin-offs, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995).
The day after his 42nd birthday, on August 20, his son, Jameson Ivor Frakes, was born. Jameson is named after both his grandfathers, the late James Frakes and the late actor Ivor Francis, Genie's father. During this time Jonathan actually turned down work, preferring to stay at home and raise his son with his wife. For the next two years he did a few guest appearances on television.
In 1996 it was announced that he was to be the director of the next Star Trek film, Star Trek: First Contact (1996). He received critical praise for his work on the film and it became the highest-grossing entry of the franchise to date. He formed a production company, Goepp Circle Productions, named after the street he lived on in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Just two days after his ninth wedding anniversary in 1997, Elizabeth Francis Frakes was born. Sadly just two weeks prior Jonathan's brother, Daniel, passed away from pancreatic cancer. In 1998 he was asked to direct the ninth Star Trek film, Star Trek: Insurrection (1998). Following mixed reviews for this film he continued to direct in movies and television, act in a few non-Star Trek roles, and starred in the tenth Star Trek film, Star Trek: Nemesis (2002).- Actor
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Chevy Chase was born Cornelius Crane Chase on October 8, 1943 in Lower Manhattan, New York, to Cathalene Parker (Browning), a concert pianist and librettist, and Edward Tinsley "Ned" Chase, an editor and writer. His parents both came from prominent families, and his grandfathers were artist and illustrator Edward Leigh Chase and Admiral Miles Browning. His recent ancestry includes English, Scottish, Irish, and German.
His grandmother gave him the nickname "Chevy" when he was two years old. Chase was a cast member of Saturday Night Live (1975) from its debut until 1976, and then embarked on a highly successful movie career. He scored in the 1980s with hits such as Caddyshack (1980), Vacation (1983) and its sequels, Fletch (1985) and Fletch Lives (1989). All his films show his talent for deadpan comedy. Sadly, his career generally worsened through the 1990s, starring in disappointments such as the mediocre Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), and Cops and Robbersons (1994). More recently, Community (2009) marked a return for him, as he played a regular role for the first four seasons.- Producer
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Vincent Anthony Vaughn was born on March 28, 1970, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, and was raised in Lake Forest, Illinois. His parents, Vernon Vaughn (a salesman and character actor), and Sharon Vaughn, née Sharon Eileen DePalmo (a real-estate agent and stockbroker) divorced in 1991. He has two older sisters, Victoria Vaughn and Valeri Vaughn. His recent ancestry includes Lebanese (from his paternal grandmother), Italian (from his maternal grandfather), English, Irish, German, and Scottish. His mother was born in Brantford, Ontario.
Vince was interested in theater early on and grabbed a spot in a Chevy commercial. In 1988 he moved to Hollywood. He managed to hit a few spots on television, but his real goal was to make it to the big screen. He made his first credited role in the film Rudy (1993) where he met his friend Jon Favreau, who was writing a script detailing his life as an out-of-work actor. Vince was written into Swingers (1996) by Jon to play the character of "Trent". He signed on just as a favor to his buddy, not realizing it would be a career changing role. Though not a commercial success, it was a critical success in which Steven Spielberg saw him and cast him in the big budget sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). This role gave Vince the exposure he needed to become a movie star and, for the first time, choose the roles he wanted to take. A Cool, Dry Place (1998) put him as a loving father, Return to Paradise (1998) cast him as a man having to make a life or death decision to save a friend, and Clay Pigeons (1998) cast him as an interesting serial killer. Since then his roles have been primarily in comedies such as Old School (2003), Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004), Wedding Crashers (2005), and Couples Retreat (2009).- Actor
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John Corbett is an American actor who received Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor, for his role as Chris Stevens in Northern Exposure (1990), and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Aidan Shaw in Sex and the City (1998).
John was born John Joseph Corbett on May 9, 1961 in Wheeling, West Virginia, to Sandra (Pavilack) and John Marshall Corbett. He is of English, Irish, Lithuanian, and Russian-Jewish descent. John was raised Catholic, and graduated from Wheeling Central Catholic High School in 1979. He subsequently worked at a boiler-making factory in California for six years. After sustaining an injury, he left the factory to enroll at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California to study hairdressing, and took acting classes in the evenings.
Corbett began his acting career with a guest role in The Wonder Years (1988). His breakthrough role came two years later when he was cast as Chris Stevens in Northern Exposure (1990), for which he received Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. He then played the lead role in The Visitor (1997), for which he received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actor. Corbett portrayed one of Sarah Jessica Parker's love interests in Sex and the City (1998), for which he received his second Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
In 2002, he starred as the male lead opposite Nia Vardalos in the blockbuster romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), and reprised his role in its sequel, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016). Corbett also starred as the husband of Toni Collette's character in United States of Tara (2009), and portrayed guitarist Josiah 'Flash' Bacon in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2015).
Corbett has been in a relationship with actress Bo Derek since 2002, and the couple reside on a ranch in Santa Ynez, California. Aside from acting, he has released two country music albums, "John Corbett" in 2006 and "Leaving Nothin' Behind" in 2013.- Writer
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Conan O'Brien grew up in a large Irish Catholic family in Massachusetts. At an early age, he developed a love of comedy and goofing off. This carried on when he entered prestigious Harvard University, acting out many pranks in his time, as well as becoming the president of the Harvard humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon. After leaving Harvard, Conan found his way into a television writing job in LA. After jumping around on many unsuccessful shows, Conan moved out to New York, and won an Emmy for his writing on Saturday Night Live (1975). Later, he moved on to work for The Simpsons (1989), when SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels offered him the job of producer for the vacant 12:30 slot on NBC. Conan, after searching for a new host, decided to audition for the job himself and eventually wound up as the host of Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993).- Actor
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Towering 7' 2" tall actor who cornered the market on playing giants, intimidating henchmen, bayou swamp monsters and steel toothed villains! Kiel worked in numerous jobs including as a night club bouncer and a cemetery plot salesman, before breaking into film & TV in several minor roles in the late 1950s / early 1960s. Noted among these was the alien "Kanamit" in the classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "To Serve Man", and terrorizing Arch Hall Jr. while clad in a loincloth in the prehistoric caveman meets virile teenage drama Eegah (1962).
Kiel turned up in two episodes of the classic horror TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974). On one occasion playing a Native American evil spirit with the ability to transform into various animals. On his second appearance, Kiel was unrecognizable as a Spanish moss covered, Louisiana swamp monster brought to life by a patient involved in deep sleep therapy.
However, his biggest break came in 1977 when he was cast as the unstoppable, steel toothed henchman "Jaws" in the finest Roger Moore film of the Bond series The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Such was Kiel's popularity with movie audiences, that his character was brought back for the next Bond outing Moonraker (1979). However, audiences were quite split on opinions when Kiel's "Jaws" character changes sides near the film's conclusion and assists 007, Roger Moore, in saving the Earth.
Over the next few years, Kiel appeared in relatively non-demanding comedy or fantasy type films taking advantage of his physical stature and presence. Kiel then decided to try his hand behind the camera and co-wrote and produced, plus took the lead role, in the well received family movie The Giant of Thunder Mountain (1990). Demand for Kiel's unique attributes dropped very sharply in the 1990's, leading to only a handful of roles including reprising his "Jaws" character in the Matthew Broderick film Inspector Gadget (1999). In 2002, Kiel penned his informative autobiography entitled "Making it BIG in the movies". He passed away in 2014.- Actor
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Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was perhaps the only actor of his generation to have starred in so many films and cult saga. Although most notable for personifying bloodsucking vampire, Dracula, on screen, he portrayed other varied characters on screen, most of which were villains, whether it be Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), or Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), or as the title monster in the Hammer Horror film, The Mummy (1959).
Lee was born in 1922 in London, England, where he and his older sister Xandra were raised by their parents, Contessa Estelle Marie (Carandini di Sarzano) and Geoffrey Trollope Lee, a professional soldier, until their divorce in 1926. Later, while Lee was still a child, his mother married (and later divorced) Harcourt George St.-Croix (nicknamed Ingle), who was a banker. Lee's maternal great-grandfather was an Italian political refugee, while Lee's great-grandmother was English opera singer Marie (Burgess) Carandini.
After attending Wellington College from age 14 to 17, Lee worked as an office clerk in a couple of London shipping companies until 1941 when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Following his release from military service, Lee joined the Rank Organisation in 1947, training as an actor in their "Charm School" and playing a number of bit parts in such films as Corridor of Mirrors (1948). He made a brief appearance in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in which his future partner-in-horror Peter Cushing also appeared. Both actors also appeared later in Moulin Rouge (1952) but did not meet until their horror films together.
Lee had numerous parts in film and television throughout the 1950s. He struggled initially in his new career because he was discriminated as being taller than the leading male actors of his time and being too foreign-looking. However, playing the monster in the Hammer film The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) proved to be a blessing in disguise, since the was successful, leading to him being signed on for future roles in Hammer Film Productions.
Lee's association with Hammer Film Productions brought him into contact with Peter Cushing, and they became good friends. Lee and Cushing often than not played contrasting roles in Hammer films, where Cushing was the protagonist and Lee the villain, whether it be Van Helsing and Dracula respectively in Horror of Dracula (1958), or John Banning and Kharis the Mummy respectively in The Mummy (1959).
Lee continued his role as "Dracula" in a number of Hammer sequels throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s. During this time, he co-starred in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), and made numerous appearances as Fu Manchu, most notably in the first of the series The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), and also appeared in a number of films in Europe. With his own production company, Charlemagne Productions, Ltd., Lee made Nothing But the Night (1973) and To the Devil a Daughter (1976).
By the mid-1970s, Lee was tiring of his horror image and tried to widen his appeal by participating in several mainstream films, such as The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), The Three Musketeers (1973), The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974), and the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).
The success of these films prompted him in the late 1970s to move to Hollywood, where he remained a busy actor but made mostly unremarkable film and television appearances, and eventually moved back to England. The beginning of the new millennium relaunched his career to some degree, during which he has played Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and as Saruman the White in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lee played Count Dooku again in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005), and portrayed the father of Willy Wonka, played by Johnny Depp, in the Tim Burton film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).
On 16 June 2001, he was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to drama. He was created a Knight Bachelor on 13 June 2009 in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama and charity. In addition he was made a Commander of the Order of St John on 16 January 1997.
Lee died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on 7 June 2015 at 8:30 am after being admitted for respiratory problems and heart failure, shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday there. His wife delayed the public announcement until 11 June, in order to break the news to their family.- Actor
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Max von Sydow was born Carl Adolf von Sydow on April 10, 1929 in Lund, Skåne, Sweden, to a middle-class family. He was the son of Baroness Maria Margareta (Rappe), a teacher, and Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, an ethnologist and folklore professor. His surname traces back to his partial German ancestry.
When he was in high school, he and a few fellow students, including Yvonne Lombard, started a theatre club which encouraged his interest in acting. After conscription, he began to study at the Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school (1948-1951), together with Lars Ekborg, Margaretha Krook and Ingrid Thulin. His first role was as Nils the crofter in Alf Sjöberg's Only a Mother (1949). After graduation, he worked at the city theatres in Norrköping and Malmö.
His work in the movies by Ingmar Bergman (especially The Seventh Seal (1957), including the iconic scenes in which he plays chess with Death) made him well-known internationally, and he started to get offers from abroad. His career abroad began with him playing Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); Hawaii (1966) and The Quiller Memorandum (1966). Since then, his career includes very different kind of characters, like Karl Oskar Nilsson in The Emigrants (1971); Father Lankester Merrin in The Exorcist (1973); Joubert the assassin in Three Days of the Condor (1975), Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon (1980); the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Never Say Never Again (1983); Liet-Kynes in Dune (1984) the artist Frederick in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Lassefar in Pelle the Conqueror (1987), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination; Dr. Peter Ingham in Awakenings (1990); Lamar Burgess in Minority Report (2002) and The Renter in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), which earned him his second Academy Award nomination.
He became one of Sweden's most admired and professional actors, and is the only male Swedish actor to receive an Oscar nomination. He was nominated twice: for Pelle the Conqueror (1987) in 1988 and for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) in 2012. He received the Guldbagge Award for Best Director in his directing debut, the drama film Ved vejen (1988). In 2016, he joined the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) as the Three-eyed Raven, which earned him his Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Max von Sydow died on March 8, 2020, in Provence, France, and was survived by his wife Catherine Brelet and four children. He was 90.- Actor
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Bob Saget was an American actor, stand-up comedian, and television host from Philadelphia. His best known role was playing pater familias Danny Tanner on the hit sitcom "Full House" (1987-1995). He played the character again in the sequel series "Fuller House" (2016-2020). Saget served as the original host of the long-running clip show "America's Funniest Home Videos" from 1989 to 1997. Saget voiced the narrator in the hit sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" (2005-2014), depicted as an older version of main character Ted Mosby.
In 1956, Saget was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia. His parents were supermarket executive Benjamin Saget and hospital administrator Rosalyn "Dolly" Saget. The Saget family eventually moved to Norfolk, Virginia. Bob received his early religious education at Temple Israel, a synagogue of Norfolk which adhered to Conservative Judaism. He was reportedly a rebellious student.
Saget spend part of his high school years in Los Angeles, where he befriended veteran comedian Larry Fine (1902-1975). He attended a Philadelphia high school during his senior year. He was originally interested in a medical career but his English teacher Elaine Zimmerman convinced Saget to aspire to an acting or filmmaking career instead.
Saget received his college education at the "Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts", a college associated with the Temple University of Philadelphia. One of his student films won a merit award at the Student Academy Awards. He graduated college with a Bachelor of Arts in 1978. He had already started performing in comedy clubs during his college years.
In 1978, Saget intended to take graduate courses at the University of Southern California. He dropped out due to health-related problems. He almost died due to a gangrenous appendix, costing him a loss of confidence. He decided afterwards to lose some weight, in the belief that it would improve his health.
Following his graduation, Saget spend about a decade working mostly as a comedian. He appeared in minor acting roles in both films and television. In 1987, Saget was performing comedy bits for the short-lived non-fiction show "The Morning Program". The show offered a mix of "news, entertainment and comedy", but was canceled due to low ratings.
Saget's big break came when he was chosen to portray widowed father Danny Tanner in the sitcom "Full House" (1987-1995). The series depicted Danny's efforts to raise three young daughters, with the assistance of his best friends. The show suffered from poor viewership in its first season, but attracted a family audience due to its portrayal of the struggles associated with parenting. By its third season, it was ranked among Nielsen's Top 30 shows. Saget became a household name, and the series lasted for 8 seasons and 192 episodes. The series was eventually canceled due to its increasing production costs. Its rating had remained high until its final episode.
In 1989, Saget was chosen as the host of the clip show "America's Funniest Home Videos". The show featured humorous homemade videos which were submitted by its viewers, often highlighting physical comedy, pranks, or unusual behavior by children and pets. While the show was popular with viewers, Saget himself was increasingly frustrated with its repetitive format. When his contract for the show expired in 1997, Saget was not interested in negotiating for a renewal.
In 1996, Saget directed the dramatic television film "For Hope". The film depicted the struggles of a woman who is slowly dying due to being afflicted with scleroderma, an autoimmune disease with no known cure. Saget was reportedly inspired by the life and death of his sister Gay Saget, who had died due to scleroderma. The film received high ratings in its debut.
In 1998, Saget directed the comedy film "Dirty Work". It depicted two half-brothers who offer to perform revenge schemes for paying clients, but have a personal grudge against a man who reneged on a deal with them. The film under-performed at the box office, but gained a cult following due to its reputation as a "gag-fest".
From 2001 to 2002, Saget had the starring role of Matt Stewart in the sitcom "Raising Dad". The premise of the series was that widowed father Matt Stewart was trying to raise two daughter, while pursuing a teaching career at his eldest's daughter's high school. Despite the series having a similar concept to "Full House", it failed to find an audience. It lasted for a single season.
In 2005, Saget was cast as the narrator in the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" (2005-2014). The premise of the series was that middle-aged Ted Mosby narrates his life story (and the life stories of his best friends) to his son and daughter. The series repeatedly implied that Ted was an unreliable narrator, who either embellished or censored aspects of his various stories. The series was quite popular, lasting for 9 seasons and 208 episodes.
In 2007, Saget directed the direct-to-video parody film "Farce of the Penguins". The film was a full-length parody of the documentary film "March of the Penguins" (2005), featuring penguins conversing about their love lives. It featured the voices of several then-popular actors, including several of Saget's former co-stars from "Full House".
In 2009, Saget was cast in the main role of Steve Patterson in the sitcom "Surviving Suburbia". The premise of the series was that the members of a suburban family have problems in interacting both with each other, and with their new neighbors. The series only lasted a single season, and struggled with low ratings.
In 2014, Saget published his memoirs under the title "Dirty Daddy". In 2016, a sequel series to "Full House" was introduced under the title "Fuller House". It featured the lives of two of Danny Tanner's daughters, and Danny's grandchildren. Saget played the recurring role of Danny for 15 episodes. The sequel series lasted for 5 seasons. This was Saget's last major role in a sitcom. He continued, however, to regularly host television events.
In January 2022, Saget was in Florida for a stand-up tour. On January 9, Saget was discovered dead in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, located south of Orlando, Florida. He was 65-years-old. His autopsy revealed that the cause of death was blunt head trauma from an accidental blow to the back of his head, likely from a fall. He had died in his sleep. He was buried at the Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery, next to the graves of his parents and his sister. Mourners honored Saget by offering donations to the charity "Scleroderma Research Foundation" (SRF), since Saget had long served in its board of directors. Saget is gone, but his popularity endures due to his acting and directing roles in several popular films and television shows.- Originally a student of pre-law at Widener University, and later majoring in Criminal Justice at West Chester University, Matthew started his career by making appearances on The Howard Stern Show (1990), The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986), and music videos of Iron Maiden, Marilyn Manson, and Blondie. Matthew would later amass a cult following for memorable roles such as "Tiny" in Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses (2003), and Karl the giant in Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003). In the midst of working on a biopic about André René Roussimoff, Matthew died on August 9, 2005 from natural causes. The Devil's Rejects (2005) (House of 1000 Corpses (2003)'s sequel) was dedicated to him.
- Dalip Singh was born on 27 August 1972 in Dhirana, Himachal Pradesh, India. He is an actor, known for Get Smart (2008), The Longest Yard (2005) and MacGruber (2010). He has been married to Harminder Kaur since 27 February 2002. They have one child.
- Paul also played college basketball at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville from 1992 to 1993, and was a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II Cougars basketball team. Paul is a member of the Xi Beta Chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. He scored a total of thirty-nine points for the Cougars in limited action during the 1992-93 season.
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Stephen James Merchant is an English actor, comedian, director, presenter and writer.
Alongside Ricky Gervais, Merchant was the co-writer and co-director of the British TV comedy series The Office (2001-2003), and co-writer, co-director, and co-star of both Extras (2005-2007) and Life's Too Short (2011-2013). With Gervais and Karl Pilkington, he hosted The Ricky Gervais Show in its radio, podcast, audio-book, and television formats; the radio version won a bronze Sony Award. He also provided the voice of the robotic "Intelligence Dampening Core" Wheatley in the 2011 video game Portal 2. Merchant co-developed the Sky1 travel series An Idiot Abroad (2010-2012) and co-created Lip Sync Battle (2015-present). In 2021 he starred in, co-wrote, co-produced, and co-directed the 12-part comedy crime series The Outlaws.
Merchant has also performed as a stand-up comedian, which led to him writing and starring in the HBO series Hello Ladies (2013-2014), which was based on his stand-up material. He starred in his first play, Richard Bean's The Mentalists, at London's Wyndham's Theatre in 2015. He also appeared as the mutant Caliban in the superhero film Logan (2017), and as serial killer Stephen Port in the 2022 television drama Four Lives. He has received numerous accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, three BAFTA Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and four British Comedy Awards.- Bruce Spence was born on September 17, 1945 in New Zealand. When he was growing up in Henderson, just out of Auckland, the last thing he ever expected to be was an actor. Bruce's family were winemakers, and he worked in the family winery from a very tender age, later attending Henderson High School then Massey University, where he studied horticulture. From this background he retained a passion for growing things, and has created a succession of beautiful gardens for himself and friends. At 20, Bruce moved to Australia, where to his surprise he was accepted into the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. Bruce's mother, Olga, was a painter and potter. In 1969 Bruce joined a ragtag group working at the tiny La Mama theatre in Melbourne. The group became the revolutionary Australian Performing Group, and Bruce's talent for acting was discovered. Forced to choose between art and acting, he decided to try his luck at the latter. He went on to perform in numerous plays with the group, then the Melbourne Theatre Company, the Sydney Theatre Company, the South Australian Theatre Company and several other companies, even the National Arts Centre of Canada where he played the lead in the award-winning "The Floating World" by John Romeril. He now lives in Sydney, where his recent acting credits with the Sydney Theatre Company include "The Secret River", "The Harp in the South", "Endgame" and "Rules for Living". Bruce has appeared in close to 100 films, including Mad Max 2 ("The Road Warrior") and 3 ("Beyond Thunderdome"), "Ace Ventura" Part II, "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith", "Finding Nemo", "The Matrix Revolutions" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell no Tales". He has also appeared in numerous television roles. When starring as the wizard Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander in the cult series "Legend of the Seeker", which was filmed in New Zealand, Bruce found he had come full circle, working directly opposite his old high school in Henderson. At home in Sydney he lives quietly with his wife, Jenny and an adoring tabby cat. They have two children and four grandchildren. Between jobs Bruce works on his own burgeoning garden and as a volunteer at the Royal Botanic Garden, where he and his group propagate plants. He is also currently chair of the NSW Actors' Benevolent Fund.
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Anthony Robbins was born on 29 February 1960 in Glendora, California, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Shallow Hal (2001), Sound of Freedom (2023) and Man's Search for Meaning. He has been married to Sage Bonnie Humphrey since 14 October 2001. They have one child. He was previously married to Rebecca Lynn Biggerstaff.- Marnix van den Broeke used to be a professional dancer before he changed his career to become an actor. After 4 years of education in Musical Theater at the Fontys Dance Academy Tilburg in The Netherlands, and an Internship with The Dutch National Ballet, he graduated in 1999. He then stayed with the Ballet for another year before he decided to leave to work on a cruise ship. He enjoyed traveling and also the use of his other skills as an actor/singer.
The year after he got himself a main role on stage playing "The Snowman" in the Dutch version of the West-End stage show with the same name. He then later also played the same role in the West-End show in London and in Tokyo. Years of experiences in Musical Theater and Dance Theater followed. Including musical shows as Saturday Night Fever and Crazy for You.
His career suddenly changed direction after he got cast for the role of "Werewolf" in the blockbuster movie "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban". His highly skilled movement performance brought him to more interesting acting roles such as the creepy character "The Silence" in Doctor Who and "DEATH" in Terry Pratchett's "Hogfather" and "The Colour of Magic".
The fantastic roles he gets to play are sometimes physically very demanding. Also the prosthetics or costumes he gets to wear for some characters could be that too. Like in the thriller movie "The Death of Ian Stone". But he's enjoying every bit of it and he loves to act, especially when he can really dig into the personality of a character. Like with the delightful "Mr Pump" in Going Postal or "The Shadow" in "Inkheart".
Marnix believes he has only started his career and he is looking forward to play many more interesting characters. He is very grateful to have worked with many good, professional and famous actors.
He is a grateful, blessed and happy man. Follow his work & get in touch! - Actor
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Born in Toronto, Rick Fox moved to the Bahamas when he was very young. His father is Afro-Bahamian, and his mother, who is Canadian, is of Italian and Scottish descent. Rick went to Warsaw Indiana high school as an exchange student and played basketball there. A complaint was filed about his eligibility and it was ruled one of his earlier years in the Bahamas was equivalent to a year of high school. As a result, he was banned from playing his senior year. To keep himself sharp and in playing shape, he still practiced with the team every day. Majored in radio, television, and motion picture sciences and played college basketball at UNC, where he left as the all-time school steals leader and games played leader. Upon graduating, he was selected 24th overall in the NBA Draft by the Boston Celtics. After several seasons with the Celtics, he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers partly due to its proximity to Hollywood and his interest in acting. While with the Lakers, he helped them win an NBA Championship as a versatile role-player.- Jess Rowland is known for Hit and Run (2012), CHIPS (2017) and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004).
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Brian Posehn was born on 6 July 1966 in Sacramento, California, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Run Ronnie Run (2002), The Sarah Silverman Program. (2007) and Knights of Badassdom (2013). He has been married to Melanie Truhett since 4 September 2004. They have one child.- Writer
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Penn Jillette was born on 5 March 1955 in Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989), Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (2003) and Hackers (1995). He has been married to Emily Zolten Jillette since 23 November 2004. They have two children.- Actor
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Kevin Serge Durand is a Canadian actor. He is best known for portraying Vasiliy Fet in The Strain, Joshua in Dark Angel, Martin Keamy in Lost, Fred J. Dukes / The Blob in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Barry Burton in Resident Evil: Retribution, Gabriel in Legion, Little John in Robin Hood, Jeeves Tremor in Smokin' Aces, and Carlos in The Butterfly Effect. He received a 2012 Best Supporting Actor Genie nomination for his portrayal of Lenny Jackson in Citizen Gangster.- Six foot six inches tall, with brown eyes and dark hair, Rory McCann from Glasgow began his working life at the top - as a painter on the Forth Bridge in Scotland. He came to notice in a television commercial for Scotts' Porridge Oats, in which he appeared as a scantily-clad hunk in a vest and kilt and little else wandering snowbound streets but warmed by the inner glow of the porridge. He claims that as a consequence he was often approached by people demanding that he "lift his kilt." In 2002 he was seen in the TV comedy-drama 'The Book Group' playing a wheelchair-bound lifeguard, a part for which he won a Scottish BAFTA award for the best television performance of 2002. Since then he has taken television roles as Peter the Great and a priest in 'Shameless'. He made his Hollywood debut in Oliver Stone's 'Alexander'. He divides his time between homes in London and Glencoe, Scotland, where he aims to have his own castle. He is an accomplished singer, pianist and harmonica-player as well as an all-round sportsman. Since 2012 he has been part of the international television block-buster 'Game of Thrones'.
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It's not surprising that Ryan Stiles would feel comfortable doing a comedic turn in the role of Lewis, one of Drew Carey's ever-present friends in the new comedy The Drew Carey Show (1995). After all, the first job Stiles ever had was that of a stand-up comedian. Although he was a good student, Stiles admits that "being a high-school senior gave me too much freedom." He got so carried away with his flexible schedule that he quit school a few months shy of graduation and got a job doing stand-up comedy in Vancouver. Despite his parents' objections, he was able to support himself for several years, but "I got out of stand-up when everybody else started doing it," he says. He didn't stray too far from the world of comedy. In 1986 he joined the highly acclaimed Second City comedy ensemble in Toronto, where he honed his improvisational skills. In 1990 Stiles moved to Los Angeles to perform with the Los Angeles Second City group. Film and television roles soon followed, including roles in Hot Shots! (1991) and Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993). Stiles's television credits include Parker Lewis Can't Lose (1990), Mad About You (1992), and cable's The Hitchhiker (1983). He's currently a series regular on the British improvisational series Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988), which has been nominated for three CableACE awards. During the 1994-95 baseball strike, Stiles and acclaimed director Joe Pytka made some memorable commercials for Nike. That's Stiles in the empty baseball stadium doing the wave solo. When he's not at work, Stiles spends his time thinking about work.- Vincent Schiavelli, selected in 1997 by Vanity Fair as one of the best character actors in America, had made over 120 film and television appearances. He studied acting at NYU's Theatre Program. Aside from his acting career, Vincent was the author of three cookbooks, and has written numerous articles on food for magazines and newspapers. In 2001, he received the James Beard Journalism Award.
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Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, to Katherine (Wood), a telephone operator, and Roy Harold Scherer, an auto mechanic. He was of German, Swiss-German, English, and Irish descent. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. He failed to obtain parts in school plays because he couldn't remember lines. After high school he was a postal employee and during WW II served as a Navy airplane mechanic. After the war he was a truck driver. His size and good looks got him into movies. His name was changed to Rock Hudson, his teeth were capped, he took lessons in acting, singing, fencing and riding. One line in his first picture, Fighter Squadron (1948), needed 38 takes. In 1956 he received an Oscar nomination for Giant (1956) and two years later Look magazine named him Star of the Year. He starred in a number of bedroom comedies, many with Doris Day, and had his own popular TV series McMillan & Wife (1971). He had a recurring role in TV's Dynasty (1981) (1984-5). He was the first major public figure to announce he had AIDS, and his worldwide search for a cure drew international attention. After his death his long-time lover Marc Christian successfully sued his estate, again calling attention to the homosexuality Rock had hidden from most throughout his career.- Actor
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Michael Clarke Duncan was born on December 10, 1957 in Chicago, Illinois. Raised on Chicago's South Side by his single mother, Jean, a house cleaner, Duncan grew up resisting drugs and alcohol, instead concentrating on school. He wanted to play football in high school, but his mother wouldn't let him, afraid that he would get hurt. He then turned to acting and dreamed of becoming a famous actor.
After graduating from high school and attending community college, he worked digging ditches at People's Gas Company in Chicago. When he quit his job and headed to Hollywood, he landed small roles while working as a bodyguard. Duncan's role in the movie Armageddon (1998) led to his breakthrough performance in The Green Mile (1999), when his Armageddon co-star Bruce Willis called director Frank Darabont, suggesting Duncan for the part of convict John Coffey. He landed the role and won critical acclaim as well as many other Awards and Nominations, including an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
After suffering a heart attack on July 13, 2012, he was taken to a Los Angeles hospital, in which his girlfriend Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth tried to save his life with CPR. Unfortunately, on September 3, 2012, Michael Clarke Duncan died at age 54 from respiratory failure.- Actor
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John Cleese was born on October 27, 1939, in Weston-Super-Mare, England, to Muriel Evelyn (Cross) and Reginald Francis Cleese. He was born into a family of modest means, his father being an insurance salesman; but he was nonetheless sent off to private schools to obtain a good education. Here he was often tormented for his height, having reached a height of six feet by the age of twelve, and eventually discovered that being humorous could deflect aggressive behavior in others. He loved humor in and of itself, collected jokes, and, like many young Britons who would grow up to be comedians, was devoted to the radio comedy show, "The Goon Show," starring the legendary Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Harry Secombe.
Cleese did well in both sports and academics, but his real love was comedy. He attended Cambridge to read (study) Law, but devoted a great deal of time to the university's legendary Footlights group, writing and performing in comedy reviews, often in collaboration with future fellow Python Graham Chapman. Several of these comedy reviews met with great success, including one in particular which toured under the name "Cambridge Circus." When Cleese graduated, he went on to write for the BBC, then rejoined Cambridge Circus in 1964, which toured New Zealand and America. He remained in America after leaving Cambridge Circus, performing and doing a little journalism, and here met Terry Gilliam, another future Python.
Returning to England, he began appearing in a BBC radio series, "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again", based on Cambridge Circus. It ran for several years and also starred future Goodies Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden. He also appeared, briefly, with Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman in At Last the 1948 Show (1967), for television, and a series of collaborations with some of the finest comedy-writing talent in England at the time, some of whom - Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Chapman - eventually joined him in Monty Python. These programs included The Frost Report (1966) and Marty Feldman's program Marty (1968). Eventually, however, the writers were themselves collected to be the talent for their own program, Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), which displayed a strange and completely absorbing blend of low farce and high-concept absurdist humor, and remains influential to this day.
After three seasons of the intensity of Monty Python, Cleese left the show, though he collaborated with one or more of the other Pythons for decades to come, including the Python movies released in the mid-70s to early 80s - Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), and The Meaning of Life (1983). Cleese and then-wife Connie Booth collaborated in the legendary television series Fawlty Towers (1975), as the sharp-tongued, rude, bumbling yet somehow lovable proprietor of an English seaside hotel. Cleese based this character on a proprietor he had met while staying with the other Pythons at a hotel in Torquay, England. Only a dozen episodes were made, but each is truly hilarious, and he is still closely associated with the program to this day.
Meanwhile Cleese had established a production company, Video Arts, for clever business training videos in which he generally starred, which were and continue to be enormously successful in the English-speaking world. He continues to act prolifically in movies, including in the hit comedy A Fish Called Wanda (1988), in the Harry Potter series, and in the James Bond series as the new Q, starting with The World Is Not Enough (1999), in which he began as R before graduating to Q. Cleese also supplies his voice to numerous animated and video projects, and frequently does commercials.
Besides the infamous Basil Fawlty character, Cleese's other well-known trademark is his rendition of an English upper-class toff. He has a daughter with Connie Booth and a daughter with his second wife, Barbara Trentham.
Education and learning are important elements of his life - he was Rector of the University of Saint Andrews from 1973 until 1976, and continues to be a professor-at-large of Cornell University in New York. Cleese lives in Santa Barbara, California.- Actor
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Randy Quaid is an Academy Award-nominated actor, for his performance in The Last Detail (1973). Hal Ashby directed Quaid in the role of Meadows opposite Jack Nicholson and Otis Young. Quaid is a great and much-admired actor that has been recognized by Hollywood and the world's finest directors, Midnight Express, The Last Picture Show, Ice Harvest (2005), Real Time (2008), King Carlos in Goya's Ghosts (2006) for director Milos Forman. Forman cast Quaid as "King Carlos IV of Spain" after seeing his Golden Globe-nominated performance as The Colonel in Elvis. Quaid also starred in such mainstream favorites as Kingpin (1996), Vacation (1983), Christmas Vacation (1989) and Independence day (1996).
Quaid earned a Golden Globe for portraying Lyndon Johnson, and received a Golden Globe Nomination for incarnating "Colonel" Tom Parker in Elvis (2005). The portrait of Colonel Parker, a former carnival barker with a murky past, is dark. The New York Times said "Mr. Quaid is riveting as the bully of Graceland" when he has Elvis firmly under his thumb, he is the L.B.J. of rock 'n' roll - a towering, wheedling, tirelessly self-promoting Southern fox in the rare instances when Elvis defies him, Colonel Parker shrinks into a hand-wringing phony, cajoling his only client in the overly ornate language of Professor Marvel in "The Wizard of Oz".
Quaid stars in and was nominated for The Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a cast for his work in Brokeback Mountain (2005), directed by Ang Lee from a script written by Larry McMurtry, who also wrote The Last Picture Show (1971) in which Quaid had his first feature film role. Working with McMurtry and supporting his material has become a Randy Quaid career tradition. Quaid's performance in Brokeback Mountain (2005) was listed as one of the New York Observer's 2005 Noteworthy male performances. In 2009 Randy Quaid Won the Vancouver Critics Award for Best Male Performance in the Feature Film Real-Time for the Role of Rubin an Australian Hit Man.
Randy Quaid was born in Houston, Texas, to Juanita Bonnie Dale (Jordan), a real estate agent, and William Rudy Quaid, an electrician. He grew up in the Houston suburban city of Bellaire, along with his brother, actor Dennis Quaid.
Quaid is married to American Film Director Evi Quaid.- Actor
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Edward Herrmann was born on 21 July 1943 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He was an actor, known for Overboard (1987), The Lost Boys (1987) and Nixon (1995). He was married to Star Herrmann and Leigh Curran. He died on 31 December 2014 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
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Joe Manganiello is an American actor, producer, director, and author. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Susan (Brachanow) and Charles John Manganiello, and has a younger brother, Nicholas who is also his producing partner. His ancestry includes Sicilian, Irish, Croatian, Armenian, German, and African heritage. Joe was raised in Mount Lebanon and attended Mount Lebanon high school. During high school, he was captain of the football, basketball and volleyball teams, and played at the varsity level in all three. It was during high school that he began writing and directing films with his friends and as a result, became interested in acting. He went on to study acting at The Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, after which he moved to Los Angeles where he very quickly landed his first job as 'Flash Thompson' in Spider-Man (2002).- Actor
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Fred Gwynne was an enormously talented character actor most famous for starring in the television situation comedies Car 54, Where Are You? (1961) (as Officer Francis Muldoon) and The Munsters (1964) (as the Frankenstein clone Herman Munster). He was very tall at 6'5" and had a resonant, baritone voice that he put to good use in Broadway musicals.
Born Frederick Hubbard Gwynne in New York City, the son of Dorothy (Ficken) and Frederick Walker Gwynne, a wealthy stockbroker and partner in the securities firm Gwynne Brothers. His grandfathers emigrated from Northern Ireland and England, respectively, and his grandmothers were native-born New Yorkers. Fred attended the exclusive prep school Groton, where he first appeared on stage in a student production of William Shakespeare's "Henry V". After serving in the United States Navy as a radioman during World War II, he went on to Harvard, where he majored in English and was on the staff of the "Harvard Lampoon". At Harvard, he studied drawing with artist R.S. Merryman and was active in dramatics. A member of the Hasty Pudding Club, he performed in the dining club's theatricals, appearing in the drag revues of 1949 and 1950. After graduating from Harvard with the class of 1951, Gwynne acted in Shakespeare with a Cambridge, Massachusetts repertory company before heading to New York City, where he supported himself as a musician and copywriter. His principal source of income for many years came from his work as a book illustrator and as a commercial artist. His first book, "The Best in Show", was published in 1958.
On February 20, 1952, he made his Broadway debut as the character "Stinker", in support of Helen Hayes, in the comic fantasy "Mrs. McThing". The play, written by "Harvey (1950)" author Mary Chase, had a cast featuring Ernest Borgnine, the future "Professor" Irwin Corey and Brandon De Wilde, the young son of the play's stage manager, Frederick DeWilde. The play ran for 320 performances and closed on January 10, 1953. He next appeared on Broadway in Burgess Meredith's staging of Nathaniel Benchley's comedy "The Frogs of Spring", which opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on October 21, 1953. The play flopped, closing on Halloween Day after but 15 performances. He did not appear on Broadway again for almost seven years.
Gwynne made his movie debut, unbilled, as one of Johnny Friendly's gang of thugs who menace Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's classic On the Waterfront (1954). From 1956 - 1963, he appeared on the television dramatic showcases Studio One (1948), The Kaiser Aluminum Hour (1956), Kraft Theatre (1947), The DuPont Show of the Month (1957), The DuPont Show of the Week (1961) and The United States Steel Hour (1953). But it was in situation comedies that he made his name and his fame.
In 1955, he made a memorable guest appearance as Private Honigan on The Phil Silvers Show (1955). He played a soldier with an enormous appetite that Phil Silvers' Sgt. Bilko entered into a pie-eating contest, only to discover he could only eat like a trencherman when he was depressed. The spot led to him coming back as a guest in more episodes. While appearing on Broadway as the pimp Polyte-Le-Mou in the Peter Brook-directed hit "Irma La Douce" (winner of the 1961 Tony Award for Best Musical), "Bilko" producer-writer Nat Hiken cast him in one of the lead roles in the situation comedy Car 54, Where Are You? (1961). The series, in which he revealed his wonderful flair for comedy, had Gwynne appearing as New York City police officer Francis Muldoon, who served in a patrol car in the Bronx with the dimwitted Officer Gunther Toody, played by co-star Joe E. Ross ("Oooh! Oooh!"). Car 54, Where Are You? (1961) lasted only two seasons, but it was so fondly remembered by Baby Boomers, it inspired a feature film version in 1994. He also served as Lamb Chop's doctor on another Baby Boomer classic, The Shari Lewis Show (1960).
Another one of his "Car 54, Where Are You?" co-stars, Al Lewis, not only became a lifelong friend, he appeared as Gwynne's father-n-law in his next situation comedy. Gwynne was cast as the Frankenstein's monster-like paterfamilias in The Munsters (1964), which also lasted two seasons. In addition to wearing heavy boots with four-inch lifts on them, Gwynne had to wear 40 - 50 lbs of padding and makeup for the role and he reportedly lost ten pounds in one day of filming under the hot lights. He made guest appearances as Herman Munster, most notably on The Red Skelton Hour (1951), appearing on April 27, 1965, along with Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, a pop band from The Beatles' native Liverpool. Gwynne appeared in character as Herman Munster in a "Freddie the Freeloader" comedy sketch.
When "The Munsters" was canceled after the 1965-1966 season, Gwynne returned to the theatre to escape television typecasting, although he did return for a featured appearance in the televised version of Arsenic and Old Lace (1969), playing the psychotic Jonathan Brewster in an all-star cast, including with his "Mrs. McThing" co-star Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, Bob Crane, Sue Lyon, Jack Gilford and David Wayne. He appeared twice on television in Mary Chase's "Harvey" (1950), the first time in 1958 on the "Dupont Show of the Month" version broadcast by CBS, in which he appeared in support of Art Carney as Elwood P. Dodd. Others in the cast included Elizabeth Montgomery, Jack Weston and Larry Blyden. He appeared as the cab driver in the 1972 version, Harvey (1972), in which James Stewart reprised his role as Elwood P. Dodd, in which he was reunited with his Broadway co-star Helen Hayes.
In 1968, he made a television series pilot for Screen Gems, "Guess What I Did Today?", co-starring Bridget Hanley, who later played Candy Pruit on Here Come the Brides (1968). The pilot, which was made for NBC, was not picked up by the network. Gwynne had trouble making producers forget his character Herman Munster and he started refusing to have anything to do with or even to speak of the show. One of the few visual productions to utilize his beautiful singing voice was The Littlest Angel (1969), a musical produced as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951).
His movie and television appearances were sporadic throughout the 1970s as he worked on- and off-Broadway. He had used his singing voice again to great effect in Meredith Wilson's musical "Here's Love", which opened at the Shubert Theatre on October 20, 1963 and played for 334 performances, closing on July 25, 1964. Exactly nine years from the "Here's Love" opening, he appeared at the Plymouth as "Abraham Lincoln" in the Broadway play "The Lincoln Mask", a flop that lasted but one week of eight performances.
His most distinguished performance on Broadway (and the favourite of all of his theatrical roles, was as Big Daddy in the 1974 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Though not as cutting as Burl Ives had been in the original production, his Big Daddy was lyrical and powerful, so much so that he overpowered Keir Dullea in the role of "Brick". However, Elizabeth Ashley won a Tony Award for playing Maggie the Cat in the production, which gave Tennessee Williams his first big success in a decade, albeit in a revival.
Gwynne also was memorable as the elderly Klansman in the first two parts of "The Texas Trilogy" in 1977 season. His last appearance on Broadway was in Anthony Shaffer's "Whodunnit", which opened at the Biltmore Theatre on December 30, 1983 and closed May 15, 1983 after 157 total performances. Before saying goodbye to the Broadway stage in a hit, he had appeared on the Great White Way in two flops in 1978: "Angel", the musical version of Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward, Angel" (which lasted but five performances) and the Australian professional football club drama "Players" (which lasted 23 performances). For the Joseph Papp Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival, he had appeared in Off-Broadway in "More Than You Deserve" in the 1973-1974 season and, in "Grand Magic", during the 1978-1979 season, for which he won an Obie Award. On the radio, Gwynne appeared in 79 episodes of "The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre" between 1975 and 1982.
With time, his characterization of Herman Munster began to fade and he began establishing himself as a film character actor of note in the 1980s with well-reviewed appearances in The Cotton Club (1984), Ironweed (1987), Disorganized Crime (1989) and Pet Sematary (1989), in which his character, Jud Crandall, was based on author Stephen King, who himself is quite tall. Gwynne also made a memorable turn as the judge who battles with the eponymous My Cousin Vinny (1992), his last film. Critic and cinema historian Mick LaSalle cited Gwynne's performance as Judge Chamberlain Haller in his August 2003 article "Role call of overlooked performances is long", writing: "Half of what made Joe Pesci funny in this comedy was the stream of reactions of Gwynne, as the Southern Judge, a Great Dane to Joe Pesci's yapping terrier."
Gwynne sang professionally, painted, sculpted, wrote & illustrated children's books, including: "The King Who Rained" (1970); "A Chocolate Moose for Dinner" (1976); "A Little Pigeon Toad" (1988) and "Pondlarker" (1990). He wrote 10 books in all and "The King Who Rained", "A Chocolate Moose for Dinner" and "A Little Pigeon Toad", which all were published by the prestigious house Simon & Schuster, are still in print. In the first part of his professional life, Gwynne lived a quiet life in suburban Bedford, New York and avoided the Hollywood and Broadway social scenes. He married his first wife Foxy in 1952. They had five children and divorced in 1980. He and his second wife Deb, whom he married in 1981, lived in a renovated farmhouse in rural Taneytown, Maryland. His neighbors described him as a good friend and neighbor who kept his personal and professional lives separate.
Fred Gwynne died on July 2, 1993, in Taneytown, Maryland, after a battle with cancer of the pancreas. He was just eight days shy of turning 67 years old. He is sorely missed by those that who grew up delighted by his Officer Francis Muldoon and Herman Munster and were gratified by his late-career renaissance on film.- Actor
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Terry Eugene Bollea, better known by his ring name Hulk Hogan, is an American retired professional wrestler and television personality. He is widely regarded as the most recognized wrestling star worldwide and the most popular wrestler of the 1980s.
Hogan began his professional wrestling career in 1977, but gained worldwide recognition after signing for World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in 1983. There, his persona as a heroic all-American helped usher in the 1980s professional wrestling boom, where he headlined eight of the first nine editions of WWF's flagship annual event, WrestleMania. During his initial run, he won the WWF Championship five times, with his first reign being the second-longest in the championship's history. He is the first wrestler to win consecutive Royal Rumble matches, winning in 1990 and 1991. His match with Andre the Giant on WWF The Main Event on February 5, 1988, still holds American television viewership records for wrestling with a 15.2 Nielsen rating and 33 million viewers.
In 1993, Hogan departed the WWF to sign for rival promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship six times, and holds the record for the longest reign. In 1996, he underwent a career renaissance upon adopting the villainous persona of "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan, leading the popular New World Order (nWo) stable. As a result, he became a major figure during the "Monday Night Wars", another boom of mainstream professional wrestling. He headlined WCW's annual flagship event Starrcade three times, including the most profitable WCW pay-per-view ever, Starrcade 1997.
Hogan returned to the WWF in 2002 following its acquisition of WCW the prior year, winning the Undisputed WWF Championship for a record equaling (for the year) sixth time before departing in 2003. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005, and inducted a second time in 2020 as a member of the nWo.
Hogan also performed for the American Wrestling Association (AWA), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) - where he won the original IWGP Heavyweight Championship - and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA - now known as Impact Wrestling).
During and after wrestling, Hogan had an extensive acting career, beginning with his 1982 cameo role in Rocky III. He has starred in several films (including No Holds Barred, Suburban Commando and Mr. Nanny) and three television shows (Hogan Knows Best, Thunder in Paradise, and China, IL), as well as in Right Guard commercials and the video game, Hulk Hogan's Main Event. He was the frontman for The Wrestling Boot Band, whose sole record, Hulk Rules, reached No. 12 on the Billboard Top Kid Audio chart in 1995.- Actor
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Dwayne Douglas Johnson, also known as The Rock, was born on May 2, 1972 in Hayward, California. He is the son of Ata Johnson (born Feagaimaleata Fitisemanu) and professional wrestler Rocky Johnson (born Wayde Douglas Bowles). His father, from Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada, is black (of Black Nova Scotian descent), and his mother is of Samoan background (her own father was Peter Fanene Maivia, also a professional wrestler). While growing up, Dwayne traveled around a lot with his parents and watched his father perform in the ring. During his high school years, Dwayne began playing football and he soon received a full scholarship from the University of Miami, where he had tremendous success as a football player. In 1995, Dwayne suffered a back injury which cost him a place in the NFL. He then signed a three-year deal with the Canadian League but left after a year to pursue a career in wrestling.
He made his wrestling debut in the USWA under the name Flex Kavanah where he won the tag team championship with Brett Sawyer. In 1996, Dwayne joined the WWE and became Rocky Maivia where he joined a group known as "The Nation of Domination" and turned heel. Rocky eventually took over leadership of the "Nation" and began taking the persona of The Rock. After the "Nation" split, The Rock joined another elite group of wrestlers known as the "Corporation" and began a memorable feud with Steve Austin. Soon the Rock was kicked out of the "Corporation". He turned face and became known as "The Peoples Champion". In 2000, the Rock took time off from WWE to film his appearance in The Mummy Returns (2001). He returned in 2001 during the WCW/ECW invasion where he joined a team of WWE wrestlers at The Scorpion King (2002), a prequel to The Mummy Returns (2001).
Dwayne has a daughter, Simone Alexandra Johnson, born in 2001, with his ex-wife Dany Garcia, and daughters, Jasmine, born in 2015, and Tiana Gia, born in 2018, with his wife, singer and songwriter Lauren Hashian.- Actor
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Sinbad was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan to two parents, Louise and the Baptist Rev. Dr. Donald Beckley Adkins and was then known as David Adkins. He is primarily known as an actor and somewhat a writer and proved his comedic acting style in House Guest (1994), Jingle All the Way (1996), First Kid (1996) and Good Burger (1997). He has been married to Meredith Adkins since 2002 with two children. He was previously married to Meredith Fuller.- Mark Gibbon is known for The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Man of Steel (2013) and The 6th Day (2000).
- Cress Williams is an American actor, known for his roles in Prison Break and Close to Home. His most recent roles include Mayor Lavon Hayes on The CW series Hart of Dixie and the title character on The CW's Black Lightning. Williams is also best known for his recurring role as Terrence "Scooter" Williams on Fox's Living Single and as Inspector Atwon Babcock on Nash Bridges.
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Neil Richard Flynn is an American actor and comedian, known for his role as "The Janitor", in the medical comedy-drama, Scrubs (2001). He currently portrays "Mike Heck" in the ABC sitcom, The Middle (2009). Neil was born in the south-side of Chicago. He is of Irish descent and was raised Catholic. He moved to Waukegan, Illinois at an early age. As a student at Waukegan East High School in 1978, he and partner Mike Shklair won an Illinois Individual Events state championship for "Humorous Duet Acting". After graduating from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, in 1982, Flynn returned to Chicago to pursue an acting career. Flynn participated on the nationally-renowned Bradley University Speech Team.- Actor
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Peter Hermann lived in Germany until he was age 10. He met his wife, Mariska Hargitay, on the set of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999). Before becoming an actor, Peter taught ESL and Special Ed as part of the Teach For America Program. After that, he became a fact-checker at Vanity Fair. He speaks four languages: English, German, Spanish, and French.- Actor
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Dennis Haysbert was born on 2 June 1954 in San Mateo, California, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Far from Heaven (2002), 24 (2001) and Heat (1995). He was previously married to Lynn Griffith and Elena Simms.- Actor
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Duke Media Entertainment, led by actor, director, producer, writer and humanitarian, Bill Duke, is dedicated to bringing quality Edutainment to audiences around the globe. Formerly Yagya Productions, Duke Media has successfully produced critically acclaimed film and television content for more than 30 years. Additionally, Duke Media is in process of expanding the brand to involve itself in the development of new media technologies, i.e. cellphone apps, games, and virtual world experiences. Since the early 70s, Bill Duke along with industry veterans Michael Shultz and Gordon Parks, have long paved the way for African Americans in the industry.
Mr. Duke excels in front of and behind the camera. His acting and directing credits are extensive and include stints on such ground breaking television series as Falcon Crest, Fame, Hill Street Blues, Knotts Landing, Dallas, and New York Undercover. His feature credits include Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Get Rich or Die Trying, Deep Cover, Hoodlum, Predator, Menace II Society and Not Easily Broken, to name a few. He has recently completed production on, Blexicans, a new television pilot that takes a comedic look at a mixed race family. His documentaries, Dark Girls and Light Girls, both NAACP Image Award nominees, aired on OWN and were two of the most successful documentaries on the network.
Bill Duke's invaluable contributions to the industry have been recognized by both his peers and the entertainment community. Appointed by former President Bill Clinton to the National Endowment of Humanities, he was appointed to the Board of the California State Film Commission by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and he has been honored by the Directors Guild of America with a Lifetime Achievement Tribute.- Actor
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Writer, actor, comedian, doer of good works, excellent good friend to the famous and not, Fry lives in his London SW1 flat and his Norfolk house when not traveling. Famous for his public declaration of celibacy in the "Tatler" back in the 1980s, Emma Thompson has characterised her friend as "90 percent gay, 10 percent other."
Stephen Fry was born in Hampstead, London, to Marianne Eve (Newman) and Alan Fry, a physicist and inventor. His maternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants, while his father's family was of English background. He grew up in Norfolk and attended Uppingham School and Stout's Hill. After his notorious three months in Pucklechurch prison for credit card fraud, he attended Queens College, Cambridge in 1979, finishing with a 2:1 in English in 1981/2. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Cherubs drinking club, and Footlights with Thompson, Tony Slattery, Martin Bergman, and Hugh Laurie (to whom he was introduced by E.T.). His prolific writing partnership with Laurie began in 1981 with resulting Footlights revues for (among others) Mayweek, Edinburgh Festival, and a three month tour of Australia. In 1984, Fry was engaged to do the rewrite of the Noel Gay musical "Me and My Girl," which made him a millionaire before the age of 30. It also earned him a nomination for a Tony award in 1987. (Sidenote: It was upon SF's suggestion that Emma Thompson landed a leading role in the London cast of this show.) Throughout the 1980s, Fry did a huge amount of television and radio work, as well as writing for newspapers (e.g. a weekly column in the "Daily Telegraph") and magazines (e.g. articles for "Arena"). He is probably best known for his television roles in Blackadder II (1986) and Jeeves and Wooster (1990).
His support of the Terence Higgins Trust through events such as the first "Hysteria" benefit, as well as numerous other charity efforts, are probably those works of which he is most proud. Fry's acting career has not been limited to films and television. He had successful runs in Alan Bennett's "Forty Years On," Simon Gray's "The Common Pursuit" with John Sessions, Rik Mayall, John Gordon Sinclair, and others. Michael Frayn's "Look Look" and Gray's "Cell Mates" were less successful for both Fry and their playwrights, the latter not helped by his walking out of the play after only a couple of weeks. Fry has published four novels as well as a collection of his radio and journalistic miscellanea. He has recorded audiotapes of his novels (an unabridged version of "The Liar" was released in 1995), as well as many other works for both adults and children.- Actor
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Owain Sebastian Yeoman is a Welsh actor born to Michael and Hilary Yeoman. He has one sister Ailsa. An honors English graduate of Brasenose College (1996-99), Oxford University, Yeoman also graduated from the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London with the distinction of being the Henry Marshall Shield Winner in 2003. His first audition was for the Warner Bros epic, Troy (2004) starring Brad Pitt in which director Wolfgang Petersen immediately cast Yeoman as Lysander, the Captain of the Trojan army.
A veteran of over a dozen stage plays in London's West End theaters and two Edinburgh international Stage/Film festivals Yeoman re-located to Los Angeles in 2004 where he was cast in TV projects including "The Friendlies", the lead role in Mark Burnett's Commando Nanny (2004) and played the T-888 main terminator in the pilot of the Terminator franchise series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008). Yeoman played leading series regular roles in the 2006 Fox comedy Kitchen Confidential (2005), opposite Bradley Cooper.
In 2008, Yeoman played Sgt. Eric Kocher in the HBO award-winning biopic Generation Kill (2008). He is probably best known to TV audiences for his leading role as CBI detective Wayne Rigsby in the CBS international hit series The Mentalist (2008) in which he has starred for over 6 years. in 2012, Yeoman was cast as the lead detective KING in the independent horror feature Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2 (2011) and as the lead in the festival short movie AbsolutSin (2012). In 2014, Yeoman was reunited with Bradley Cooper when he starred in American Sniper (2014) in which he was cast by Clint Eastwood.
He is an avid animal rights supporter and works closely with PETA and the Humane Society (USA). He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Gigi and their French bulldog, Cash.- Actor
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If "born to the theater" has meaning in determining a person's life path, then John Lithgow is a prime example of this truth. He was born in Rochester, New York, to Sarah Jane (Price), an actress, and Arthur Washington Lithgow III, who was both a theatrical producer and director. John's father was born in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, where the Anglo-American Lithgow family had lived for several generations.
John moved frequently as a child, while his father founded and managed local and college theaters and Shakespeare festivals throughout the Midwest of the United States. Not until he was 16, and his father became head of the McCarter Theater in Princeton New Jersey, did the family settle down. But for John, the theater was still not a career. He won a scholarship to Harvard University, where he finally caught the acting bug (as well as found a wife). Harvard was followed by a Fulbright scholarship to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Returning from London, his rigorous dramatic training stood him in good stead, and a distinguished career on Broadway gave him one Tony Award for "The Changing Room", a second nomination in 1985 for "Requiem For a Heavyweight", and a third in 1988 for "M. Butterfly". But with critical acclaim came personal confusion, and in the mid 1970s, he and his wife divorced. He entered therapy, and in 1982, his life started in a new direction, the movies - he received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp (1982). A second Oscar nomination followed for Terms of Endearment (1983), and he met a UCLA economics professor who became his second wife. As the decade of the 1990s came around, he found that he was spending too much time on location, and another career move brought him to television in the hugely successful series 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996).
This production also played a role in bringing him back together with the son from his first marriage, Ian Lithgow, who has a regular role in the series as a dimwitted student.- Actor
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Daniel Stern was born in Bethesda, Maryland, to a social worker father and a day care manager mother. He has been acting professionally since the age of seventeen. Following his high school graduation, he auditioned for the Washington Shakespeare Festival seeking a job as a lighting engineer but ended up as "a strolling player with a lute" in their production of "As You Like It." Shortly thereafter, he made his way to New York where he "took a couple of acting lessons" and began to assemble an impressive portfolio of such off-Broadway credits as "Split," "Frankie and Annie," "The Mandrake," and "The Old Glory." In addition, director Peter Yates cast him as one of the four Indiana teenagers in the highly acclaimed film Breaking Away (1979). Variety in acting roles appeals to Stern. Following "Breaking Away," he appeared in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), Claudia Weill's It's My Turn (1980) and John Schlesinger's Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) before returning to New York to appear off-Broadway in the two character play "How I Got That Story," which led to critical acclaim and a starring role in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982). Other film credits include I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982), Blue Thunder (1983), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The Boss' Wife (1986), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), Born in East L.A. (1987) and D.O.A. (1988) In addition to his voice-over work on the series, Stern directed several episodes of the popular and critically acclaimed television comedy, The Wonder Years (1988).- Actor
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The towering presence of Canadian actor Donald Sutherland is often noticed, as are his legendary contributions to cinema. He has appeared in almost 200 different shows and films. He is also the father of renowned actor Kiefer Sutherland, among others.
Donald McNichol Sutherland was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, to Dorothy Isobel (McNichol) and Frederick McLea Sutherland, who worked in sales and electricity. He has Scottish, as well as German and English, ancestry. Sutherland worked several different jobs - he was a radio DJ in his youth - and was almost set on becoming an engineer after graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in engineering. However, he also graduated with a degree in drama, and he chose to abandon becoming an engineer in favour of an actor.
Sutherland's first roles were bit parts and consisted of such films as the horror film Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) which starred Christopher Lee. He was also appearing in episodes of TV shows such as "The Saint" and "Court Martial". Sutherland's break would come soon, though, and it would come in the form of a war film in which he was barely cast.
The reason he was barely cast was because he had been a last-minute replacement for an actor that had dropped out of the film. The role he played was that of the dopey but loyal Vernon Pinkley in the war film The Dirty Dozen (1967). The film also starred Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, and Telly Savalas. The picture was an instant success as an action/war film, and Sutherland played upon this success by taking another role in a war film: this was, however, a comedy called M*A*S*H (1970) which landed Sutherland the starring role alongside Elliott Gould and Tom Skerritt. This is now considered a classic among film goers, and the 35-year old actor was only getting warmed up.
Sutherland took a number of other roles in between these two films, such as the theatrical adaptation Oedipus the King (1968), the musical Joanna (1968) and the Clint Eastwood-helmed war comedy Kelly's Heroes (1970). It was Kelly's Heroes (1970) that became more well-known, and it reunited Sutherland with Telly Savalas. 1970 and 1971 offered Sutherland a number of other films, the best of them would have to be Klute (1971). The film, which made Jane Fonda a star, is about a prostitute whose friend is mysteriously murdered. Sutherland received no critical acclaim like his co-star Fonda (she won an Oscar) but his career did not fade.
Moving on from Klute (1971), Sutherland landed roles such as the lead in the thriller Lady Ice (1973), and another lead in the western Alien Thunder (1974). These films did not match up to "Klute"'s success, though Sutherland took a supporting role that would become one of his most infamous and most critically acclaimed. He played the role of the murderous fascist leader in the Bernardo Bertolucci Italian epic 1900 (1976). Sutherland also gained another memorable role as a marijuana-smoking university professor in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) among other work that he did in this time.
Another classic role came in the form of the Robert Redford film, Ordinary People (1980). Sutherland portrays an older father figure who must deal with his children in an emotional drama of a film. It won Best Picture, and while both the supporting stars were nominated for Oscars, Sutherland once again did not receive any Academy Award nomination. He moved on to play a Nazi spy in a film based on Ken Follett's book "Eye of the Needle" and he would star alongside Al Pacino in the commercial and critical disaster that was Revolution (1985). While it drove Al Pacino out of films for four years, Sutherland continued to find work. This work led to the dramatic, well-told story of apartheid A Dry White Season (1989) alongside the legendary actor Marlon Brando.
Sutherland's next big success came in the Oliver Stone film JFK (1991) where Sutherland plays the chilling role of Mister X, an anonymous source who gives crucial information about the politics surrounding President Kennedy. Once again, he was passed over at the Oscars, though Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for his performance as Clay Shaw. Sutherland went on to appear in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Shadow of the Wolf (1992), and Disclosure (1994).
The new millennium provided an interesting turn in Sutherland's career: reuniting with such former collaborators as Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones, Sutherland starred in Space Cowboys (2000). He also appeared as the father figure to Nicole Kidman's character in Cold Mountain (2003) and Charlize Theron's character in The Italian Job (2003). He has also made a fascinating, Oscar-worthy performance as the revolutionist Mr. Thorne in Land of the Blind (2006) and also as a judge in Reign Over Me (2007). Recently, he has joined forces with his son Rossif Sutherland and Canadian comic Russell Peters with the new comedy The Con Artist (2010), as well as acting alongside Jamie Bell and Channing Tatum in the sword-and-sandal film The Eagle (2011). Sutherland has also taken a role in the remake of Charles Bronson's film The Mechanic (1972).
Donald Sutherland has made a lasting legacy on Hollywood, whether portraying a chilling and horrifying villain, or playing the older respectable character in his films. A true character actor, Sutherland is one of Canada's most well-known names and will hopefully continue on being so long after his time.- Actor
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James Brolin is an American actor. Brolin has won two Golden Globes and an Emmy. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 27, 1998. He is the father of actor Josh Brolin.
He is best known for his TV roles such as Stephen Kiley on Marcus Welby, M.D.(1969-1976), Peter McDermott on Hotel (1983-1988), and John Short in Life in Pieces (2015-2019), and his film roles such as Sgt. Jerome K. Weber in Skyjacked (1972), John Blane in Westworld (1973), General Ralph Landry in Traffic (2000), Jack Barnes in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Emperor Zurg in the 2022 Toy Story spin-off film Lightyear.- Actor
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Adam Baldwin is an American actor who is from Illinois. He is known for playing Jayne Cobb from Firefly and Serenity, Hal Jordan in various DC cartoons and games and Animal Mother from Full Metal Jacket. He also acted in Independence Day, The Patriot, Predator 2, American Underdog, Superman: Doomsday and Halo 3: ODST. He is married to Ami Julius and has three children.- Actor
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The middle child between two sisters, Zachary Levi was born as Zachary Levi Pugh on September 29, 1980 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Susan (Hoctor) and Darrell Alton Pugh. He uses his middle name as his stage surname because his birth name, "Pugh", which is of Welsh origin, sounds too much like "Pew." His other ancestry includes Irish, English, French, German, Scottish, and Swiss. He grew up all over the country before his family put down roots in Ventura County, California. At the early age of six, Zachary began acting, singing and dancing in school and local theater productions.
After graduating from Buena High School he headed to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of acting. Zachary began acting in theater, performing roles in such regional productions like Grease, The Outsiders, Oliver, The Wizard of Oz, and Big River. It was his portrayal of Jesus in Ojai's Godspell that brought him to the attention of Hollywood.
He had a supporting role in the television movie Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie (2002) with David Krumholtz, Tory Kittles, Jennifer Morrison, and Nicholas Turturro. He then began acting as Kipp Steadman in the TV series Less Than Perfect (2002) with Sara Rue, Andrea Parker, Eric Roberts, Andy Dick, and Sherri Shepherd.
He was seen in the television movie See Jane Date (2003) on the WB with Charisma Carpenter, Holly Marie Combs, Linda Dano, and Rachelle Lefevre. In his spare time, Zachary enjoys skateboarding, snowboarding, skydiving, and participating in various other sports. After living in Los Angeles for the better part of a decade, he recently moved to Austin, Texas.
In 2019 he starred in the action-comedy film Shazam! (2019), playing the title superhero; a magic-created older version of teenager Billy Batson played by Asher Angel. The film and his comic-heroic performance received positive notices.- Actor
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Jared Padalecki was born in San Antonio, Texas, to Sherri (Kammer), a teacher of English, and Gerald Padalecki, a tax accountant. He is of Polish (father) and German, English, Scottish, and French (mother) descent. Jared started to take acting lessons when he was 12. Then, he won the "Claim to Fame" Contest in 1999 and got to appear on the Teen Choice awards. Jared lived in San Antonio, Texas and attended James Madison High School. He was named a candidate for the year 2000 Presidential Scholars Program. After graduating in the year 2000, he moved to Los Angeles, California to pursue an acting career. He played "Dean Forester" on Gilmore Girls (2000) on the WB starting in 2000 and ending in 2005. From 2005 to 2020, he portrayed "Sam Winchester" on the CW's Supernatural (2005). He also has several feature film credits.- Actor
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Multi-talented Jason Jordan Segel was born in Los Angeles, California, where he was raised by his parents, Jillian (Jordan), a homemaker, and Alvin Segel, a lawyer. His mother is of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, and his father is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. He was educated at St. Matthew's Parish School in Pacific Palisades, before moving on to Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. During his education he showed an interest in acting and often performed in plays at the Palisades Playhouse.
His major break came in 1999, when he was cast as Nick Andopolis in Judd Apatow's well-regarded series Freaks and Geeks (1999). Further TV and film roles followed, notably in How I Met Your Mother (2005) and Knocked Up (2007). His film breakthrough, however, came in 2008's hit Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) which he wrote and starred in. Segel also co-wrote and starred in The Muppets (2011).
Segel is also a musician and songwriter, with his songs appearing in many projects including Freaks and Geeks (1999), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), I Love You, Man (2009), How I Met Your Mother (2005) and Get Him to the Greek (2010).- Actor
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Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa was born on August 1, 1979, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the son of Coni (Lemke), a photographer, and Joseph Momoa, a painter. His father is of Native Hawaiian and Samoan descent; and his mother, who is from Iowa, is of German, Irish, and Native American ancestry. Jason was raised in Norwalk, Iowa, by his mother. After high school, he moved to Hawaii, where he landed a lead role, beating out of thousands of hopefuls in the TV series Baywatch (1989) (known as "Baywatch Hawaii" in its 10th season). When the show ended, he spent the next couple of years traveling around the world. In 2001, he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to pursue an acting career. In 2004, after the short-lived TV series North Shore (2004), he was cast as the popular character "Ronon Dex" in the TV series Stargate: Atlantis (2004), which achieved a cult-like following. In 2010, he appeared in the Emmy-nominated HBO series Game of Thrones (2011), playing the Dothraki king, Khal Drogo. To illustrate to the producers that he was Khal Drogo, he performed the Haka, a traditional war dance of the Maori of New Zealand. The audition was with the same casting director who was casting the titular role in the reboot of Conan the Barbarian (2011). Four weeks after being cast as the popular Robert E. Howard character, Momoa began shooting in Bulgaria. His approach, like that of the filmmakers, was to pull from the eight decades of comics and stories as well as the Frank Frazetta images rather than the hugely popular 1982 movie. Jason has a production company, Pride of Gypsies, in which he is expanding his career from actor to filmmaker. He has directed a couple of short films and is working on his feature film debut Road to Paloma (2014), which is pulled from a series of stories that he's been developing over the years, which he calls the Brown Bag Diaries: Ridin' the Blinds in B Minor (2010). Jason lives with his wife, actress Lisa Bonet, with whom he has two children, Lola and Nakoa-Wolf.- Actor
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Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in music and mechanics, but was an otherwise bored student; this resulted in being held back a grade. In 1949, the year he is said to have graduated from high school, his parents and younger sister Jeanne moved to Seattle. Clint spent a couple years in the Pacific Northwest himself, operating log broncs in Springfield, Oregon, with summer gigs life-guarding in Renton, Washington. Returning to California in 1951, he did a two-year stint at Fort Ord Military Reservation and later enrolled at L.A. City College, but dropped out to pursue acting.
During the mid-1950s he landed uncredited bit parts in such B-films as Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula (1955) while digging swimming pools and driving a garbage truck to supplement his income. In 1958, he landed his first consequential acting role in the long-running TV show Rawhide (1959) with Eric Fleming. Although only a secondary player the first seven seasons, he was promoted to series star when Fleming departed--both literally and figuratively--in its final year, along the way becoming a recognizable face to television viewers around the country.
Eastwood's big-screen breakthrough came as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy of excellent spaghetti westerns: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). The movies were shown exclusively in Italy during their respective copyright years with Enrico Maria Salerno providing the voice of Eastwood's character, finally getting American distribution in 1967-68. As the last film racked up respectable grosses, Eastwood, 37, rose from a barely registering actor to sought-after commodity in just a matter of months. Again a success was the late-blooming star's first U.S.-made western, Hang 'Em High (1968). He followed that up with the lead role in Coogan's Bluff (1968) (the loose inspiration for the TV series McCloud (1970)), before playing second fiddle to Richard Burton in the World War II epic Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Lee Marvin in the bizarre musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). In Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Kelly's Heroes (1970), Eastwood leaned in an experimental direction by combining tough-guy action with offbeat humor.
1971 proved to be his busiest year in film. He starred as a sleazy Union soldier in The Beguiled (1971) to critical acclaim, and made his directorial debut with the classic erotic thriller Play Misty for Me (1971). His role as the hard edge police inspector in Dirty Harry (1971), meanwhile, boosted him to cultural icon status and helped popularize the loose-cannon cop genre. Eastwood put out a steady stream of entertaining movies thereafter: the westerns Joe Kidd (1972), High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) (his first of six onscreen collaborations with then live-in love Sondra Locke), the Dirty Harry sequels Magnum Force (1973) and The Enforcer (1976), the action-packed road adventures Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Gauntlet (1977), and the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979). He branched out into the comedy genre in 1978 with Every Which Way But Loose (1978), which became the biggest hit of his career up to that time; taking inflation into account, it still is. In short, The Eiger Sanction (1975) notwithstanding, the 1970s were nonstop success for Eastwood.
Eastwood kicked off the 1980s with Any Which Way You Can (1980), the blockbuster sequel to Every Which Way but Loose. The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), was the highest-grossing film of the franchise and spawned his trademark catchphrase: "Make my day." He also starred in Bronco Billy (1980), Firefox (1982), Tightrope (1984), City Heat (1984), Pale Rider (1985) and Heartbreak Ridge (1986), all of which were solid hits, with Honkytonk Man (1982) being his only commercial failure of the period. In 1988, he did his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool (1988). Although it was a success overall, it did not have the box office punch the previous films had. About this time, with outright bombs like Pink Cadillac (1989) and The Rookie (1990), it seemed Eastwood's star was declining as it never had before. He then started taking on low-key projects, directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie Parker that earned him a Golden Globe, and starring in and directing White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an uneven, loose biopic of John Huston (both films had a limited release).
Eastwood bounced back big time with his dark western Unforgiven (1992), which garnered the then 62-year-old his first ever Academy Award nomination (Best Actor), and an Oscar win for Best Director. Churning out a quick follow-up hit, he took on the secret service in In the Line of Fire (1993), then accepted second billing for the first time since 1970 in the interesting but poorly received A Perfect World (1993) with Kevin Costner. Next was a love story, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), where Eastwood surprised audiences with a sensitive performance alongside none other than Meryl Streep. But it soon became apparent he was going backwards after his brief revival. Subsequent films were credible, but nothing really stuck out. Absolute Power (1997) and Space Cowboys (2000) did well enough, while True Crime (1999) and Blood Work (2002) were received badly, as was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), which he directed but didn't appear in.
Eastwood surprised again in the mid-2000s, returning to the top of the A-list with Million Dollar Baby (2004). Also starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, the hugely successful drama won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. He scored his second Best Actor nomination, too. His next starring vehicle, Gran Torino (2008), earned almost $30 million in its opening weekend and was his highest grosser unadjusted for inflation. 2012 saw him in a rare lighthearted movie, Trouble with the Curve (2012), as well as a reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Company (2012).
Between acting jobs, he chalked up an impressive list of credits behind the camera. He directed Mystic River (2003) (in which Sean Penn and Tim Robbins gave Oscar-winning performances), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) (nominated for the Best Picture Oscar), Changeling (2008) (a vehicle for Angelina Jolie), Invictus (2009) (again with Freeman), Hereafter (2010), J. Edgar (2011), Jersey Boys (2014), American Sniper (2014) (2014's top box office champ), Sully (2016) (starring Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger) and The 15:17 to Paris (2018). Back on screens after a considerable absence, he played an unlikely drug courier in The Mule (2018), which reached the top of the box office with a nine-figure gross, then directed Richard Jewell (2019). At age 91, Eastwood made history as the oldest actor to star above the title in a movie with the release of Cry Macho (2021).
Away from the limelight, Eastwood has led an aberrant existence and is described by biographer Patrick McGilligan as a cunning manipulator of the media. His convoluted slew of partners and children are now somewhat factually acknowledged, but for the first three decades of his celebrity, his personal life was kept top secret, and several of his families were left out of the official narrative. The actor refuses to disclose his exact number of offspring even to this day. He had a longtime relationship with similarly abstruse co-star Locke (who died aged 74 in 2018, though for her entire public life she masqueraded about being younger), and has fathered at least eight children by at least six different women in an unending string of liaisons, many of which overlapped. He has been married only twice, however, with a mere three of his progeny coming from those unions.
His known children are: Laurie Murray (b. 1954), whose mother is unidentified; Kimber Eastwood (b. 1964) with stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis; Kyle Eastwood (b. 1968) and Alison Eastwood (b. 1972) with his first ex-wife, Margaret Neville Johnson; Scott Eastwood (b. 1986) and Kathryn Eastwood (b. 1988) with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Eastwood (b. 1993) with actress Frances Fisher; and Morgan Eastwood (b. 1996) with his second ex-wife, Dina Eastwood. The entire time that he lived with Locke she was legally married to sculptor Gordon Anderson.
Eastwood has real estate holdings in Bel-Air, La Quinta, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cassel (in remote northern California), Idaho's Sun Valley and Kihei, Hawaii.- Actor
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George Harris Kennedy, Jr. was born on February 18, 1925 in New York City, to Helen (Kieselbach), a ballet dancer, and George Harris Kennedy, an orchestra leader and musician. Following high school graduation, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army in 1943 with the hope to become a fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps. Instead, he wound up in the infantry, served under General George S. Patton and distinguished himself with valor. He won two Bronze Stars and four rows of combat and service ribbons.
A World War II veteran, Kennedy at one stage in his career cornered the market at playing tough, no-nonsense characters who were either quite crooked or possessed hearts of gold. Kennedy notched up an impressive 200+ appearances in both television and films, and was well respected within the Hollywood community. He started out on television Westerns in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Rawhide (1959), Maverick (1957), Colt .45 (1957), among others) before scoring minor roles in films including Lonely Are the Brave (1962), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).
The late 1960s was a very busy period for Kennedy, and he was strongly in favor with casting agents, appearing in Hurry Sundown (1967), The Dirty Dozen (1967) and scoring an Oscar win as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Cool Hand Luke (1967). The disaster film boom of the 1970s was also kind to Kennedy and his talents were in demand for Airport (1970) and the three subsequent sequels, as a grizzled police officer in Earthquake (1974), plus the buddy/road film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) as vicious bank robber Red Leary.
The 1980s saw Kennedy appear in a mishmash of roles, playing various characters; however, Kennedy and Leslie Nielsen surprised everyone with their comedic talents in the hugely successful The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), and the two screen veterans exaggerate themselves again, in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). From 1988-1991, he also played Ewing family nemesis Carter McKay on the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas (1978).
Kennedy also played President Warren G. Harding in the miniseries Backstairs at the White House (1979) and had a long standing role on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless (1973). He remained busy in Hollywood and lent his distinctive voice to the animated Cats Don't Dance (1997) and the children's action film Small Soldiers (1998). A Hollywood stalwart for nearly 50 years, he is one of the most enjoyable actors to watch on screen. His last role was in the film The Gambler (2014), as Mark Wahlberg's character's grandfather.
George Kennedy died of natural causes in Middleton, Idaho on February 28, 2016, only ten days after his 91st birthday.- Actor
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An imposing figure (standing at 6'3") with intense, penetrating eyes and possessed of a larger-than-life personality, the actor George Raymond Stevenson began life as one of three sons, born in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, to a British pilot in the Royal Air Force. Raised near Newcastle in England after the family relocated, he initially studied art and worked for some time as an interior designer. However, after seeing a play with John Malkovich at the West End, Stevenson became inspired to study drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. By the time of his graduation in 1993, he had already made his debut on the stage at the Barbican Theatre in London in the plays Temptation and Revenger's Tragedy.
He made his first recurring screen appearances in the TV crime drama Band of Gold (1995) (acting alongside his future wife Ruth Gemmell) and as DI Tony Baynham in the BBC procedural police series City Central (1998), which was briefly touted as a rival to The Bill (1984). Though Stevenson first attracted international attention as a dependable Knight of the Round Table in the motion picture King Arthur (2004), it was his charismatic performance as the rascally, hedonistic soldier Titus Pullo in HBO's historical series Rome (2005) which truly put him on the map.
More vigorous or pugnacious warrior roles soon came his way, beginning with a starring turn as the titular anti-hero vigilante Frank Castle in the ultra-violent Punisher: War Zone (2008), for which Stevenson put himself through strenuous martial arts and weapons training under the direction of U.S. Force Reconnaissance (FORECON) Marines. Among his subsequent gallery of colourful characters were the powerful Asgardian warrior Volstagg in Marvel's Thor (2011), Thor: The Dark World (2013), and Thor: Ragnarok (2017); the relentless enforcer Redridge in The Book of Eli (2010); an Irish mobster challenging the Cleveland Mafia for control of the city's criminal underworld in Kill the Irishman (2011); Porthos, one of the The Three Musketeers (2011); the much feared Blackbeard in Starz's excellent swashbuckling Black Sails (2014), and the enigmatic Anglo-Saxon missionary and explorer Othere in Vikings (2013).
Stevenson reserved one of the most compelling performances for the strangely sympathetic Russian gangster Isaak Sirko, chief antagonist in season seven of Dexter (2006), overshadowing even that of the star Michael C. Hall (definitely no mean feat!). Add to that another acting standout as the obsessed, revenge-driven Commander Jack Swinburne in the German-produced World War II drama series Das Boot (2018).
Having first joined the Star Wars universe as a voice actor (the Mandalorian Gar Saxon in Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)), Stevenson was later cast in the villainous role of dark Force user Baylan Skoll doing battle with the indomitable Ahsoka (2023) Tano (Rosario Dawson), complete with orange/red lightsaber. Stevenson said in a 2020 interview that he had drawn much of his inspiration from veteran tough guys like Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman: "Never a bad performance, and brave and fearless within that caliber. It was never the young, hot leading man; it was men who I could identify with."
Tragically, this supremely accomplished and charismatic actor died in Italy on 21 May 2023 while filming Cassino in Ischia, in which he was cast as a fading movie action hero attempting to revive his career. At the time of his passing he was just 58.- Producer
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Phil McGraw was born in Vinita, Oklahoma, to Anne Geraldine "Gerrie" (Stevens) and Joseph J. "Joe" McGraw, Jr., an equipment supplier for oil fields. He earned his doctorate degree in psychology from the University of North Texas [1979]. In 1980 he founded Courtroom Sciences, Inc., a full-service trial sciences firm. As president of CSI, he has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe and the Far East consulting with clients including Fortune 500 companies, major networks and airlines. He has also conducted seminars on life strategies and goal acquisition for tens of thousands of participants from the general public and corporate America.
His relationship columns appear in each monthly issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. He has written three books - "Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters", "Relationship Rescue", and "Family First".- Actor
- Stunts
Born in Auckland and grew up in Hastings, New Zealand.
With Maori heritage from his father's side of the family, with both Ngapuhi and Waikato tribal affiliations.
Graduate of Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School (1992-1993).
Having worked on stage between 1994-2001, his theatre credits include roles in 'Te Rakau Hau O Te Wao Tapu'(Dir. Jim Moriarty, 1994) and 'Waiora'(Dir. Murray Lynch) the latter of which toured New Zealand, as well as Hawaii and UK (1996-1999).
Lives in Raglan, on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island.
Other than acting, Te Maioha also helps students learn the Maori language and look after the environment.- Actor
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By the time handsome, brawny baritone Harve Presnell arrived on the film scene, the "Golden Age" of musicals had long dissipated. Born in Modesto, California in 1933 and spending part of his youth on a family ranch near Yosemite Valley where he labored in the fields, it was discovered he had quite a voice at such a young age (7) and he became a soloist at his local church.
He graduated from Modesto High School and received a USC sports scholarship, but moved quickly to singing at Lotte Lehmann's Academy of the West. At the age of 21, he coveted the lead in the American premiere of Darius Milhaud's "David". Initially trained for an operatic career, he spent three seasons singing throughout Europe with roles in "La Forza del Destino", "Un ballo in Maschera", "The Marriage of Figaro" and "Tosca". He also shared the musical stage with Dorothy Kirsten and Leontyne Price.
Harve was performing nationally, including New York's Carnegie Hall in "Carmina Burana", when the opportunity for Broadway first came his way. Legendary composer Meredith Willson happened to catch an earful of the gifted singer in a "Gershwin Night" concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and, in the virile mold of Alfred Drake and Howard Keel, wrote the role of Johnny "Leadville" Brown in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" specifically for him. The Broadway musical, with Tammy Grimes as the spunky title heroine, was a resounding hit as Harve wrapped his glorious tonsils around such sturdy songs as "Colorado, My Home" and "I'll Never Say No". Unlike Grimes, Presnell was granted the opportunity to recreate his rags-to-riches part, when the celluloid version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) came out with a bankable film star, the indomitable Debbie Reynolds, inhabiting the backwoods role. The film version was also hugely popular with audiences and Harve, with his terrific presence, seemed well on his way to stardom.
There were precious few movie musicals, however, for Presnell to sink his teeth into and he quickly faded from view. He tried adjusting to straight dramatics with the rugged western The Glory Guys (1965) and sang again in the highly unworthy teen frolic When the Boys Meet the Girls (1965) with Connie Francis, but little else came in his direction. The disastrous film version of Paint Your Wagon (1969), hurt by the miscasting of leads Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg, was redeemed only by the presence of Presnell and his superb, moving rendition of "They Call the Wind Maria".
By the 70s, Harve was finished in films but gamely kept his momentum with Keel-like stock and touring leads in such productions as "Camelot", "The Sound of Music", "Annie Get Your Gun" and "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever", among others. He even played Rhett Butler in a 1972 musical version of "Gone With the Wind" at London's Drury Lane Theatre, but the production did not generate much of a stir. In 1979, Presnell served as a replacement in the Broadway musical "Annie" as Daddy Warbucks and wound up staying employed as the blustery but bighearted moneybags for nearly 4 years on tour, also reprising the role in the failed 90s sequel, "Annie II: Miss Hannigan's Revenge" (1989), which was later reworked and re-titled "Annie Warbucks" (1992). All told, it is estimated that Harve played the tycoon role over 2,000 times.
More than 25 years had passed by the time Presnell returned to the movies as a brash and balding character actor. He struck pure gold as the implacable, ill-fated father-in-law of William H. Macy in the Coen Brothers' cult film hit, Fargo (1996). This success, in turn, led to meaty roles in Larger Than Life (1996), The Whole Wide World (1996), The Chamber (1996), Face/Off (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), to name a few. Over the course of his career, he displayed a strong presence on TV as well with recurring roles on prime-time (Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993)) and daytime (Ryan's Hope (1975). Presnell may have been born 10-20 years too late to have become a singing film star, but he suddenly had come back in spades to launch a whole new career as a noted character performer. At age 70+, he was unsinkable, vigorously steamrolling on TV (The Pretender (1996), Monk (2002) and ER (1994)) and in the films Mr. Deeds (2002), Old School (2003), Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Evan Almighty (2007). His last series role was in the short-lived Andy Barker, P.I. (2007).
Pancreatic cancer got the best of the actor in his final years. The twice-married Presnell with six children (Stephanie, Taylor, Etoile, Tulley, Shannon and Raine) succumbed to his illness at the St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California on June 30, 2009, at age 75.- Actor
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Thomas William Selleck is an American actor and film producer, best known for his starring role as Hawaii-based private investigator "Thomas Magnum" on the 1980s television series, Magnum, P.I. (1980).
Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Martha (Jagger), a homemaker, and Robert Dean Selleck, a real estate investor and executive. He is of mostly English descent, including recent immigrant ancestors. Selleck has appeared extensively on television in roles such as "Dr. Richard Burke" on Friends (1994) and "A.J. Cooper" on Las Vegas (2003). In addition to his series work, Selleck has appeared in more than fifty made-for-TV and general release movies, including Mr. Baseball (1992), Quigley Down Under (1990), Lassiter (1984) and, his most successful movie release, Three Men and a Baby (1987), which was the highest grossing movie in 1987.
Selleck also plays "Jesse Stone" in a series of made-for-TV movies, based on the Robert B. Parker novels. In 2010, he appears as "Commissioner Frank Reagan" in the drama series, Blue Bloods (2010) on CBS.- André René Roussimoff was born in a small farming community in Grenoble, France to Boris and Marian Rouismoff. His parents and four siblings were all of normal size, but André suffered from acromegaly, a hormonal disorder that results when the pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone. As the Giant grew up (very quickly, as he reached the height of 6' 3" by the age of 12) he began to often disagree with his parents. He left home at 14 and obtained a job with a furniture-moving firm and began to play rugby. At 17 he was seen training at a gym by several professional wrestlers. Impressed by his size, they taught him some basic wrestling skills and built a friendship with him. Later, when one of the wrestlers was injured, André stepped in for him. He would wrestle for nearly thirty more years. By his early 20s André had wrestled in Algeria, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, England, Scotland, and most of non-Communist Europe but had not found fame. In 1971 he came to North America under the name Jean Ferre and was mildly popular in Canada. Then he met a New York based booker by the name of Vincent J. McMahon (often incorrectly referred to as "Vince McMahon Sr") who renamed him "Andre the Giant," and billed him as 7' 4" (Andre was really closer to 7'). Soon Andre the Giant became a national sensation and was a much sought after wrestler. In addition he participated in television, movies, and commercials. With his wealth the Giant bought a ranch in Ellerbe, North Carolina where he would live during his rare time off and after he retired from wrestling in 1990. He died while in France after attending his father's funeral. André was cremated and his ashes were spread across his ranch. He is survived by his one daughter.
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Raised in Montreal, Canada, Roiz trained theatrically at the Guildford School of Acting (UK). Upon returning to Montreal, he began to work consistently in theatre, earning a nomination for his performance at the "Masques Awards" (Quebec's Theatre Awards).
Roiz's introduction to feature films was in a supporting role in the blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow," followed by "16 Blocks", "Man of the Year" and "Unthinkable". Roiz shot his first starring film role in the independent science fiction thriller "Extracted" which premiered at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival.
Sasha Roiz stars in NBC's new hit series "Grimm" as Captain Renard, Nick's politically adept superior officer and a descendant of a powerful line of royalty. Roiz's "Grimm" character follows his last regular role as Sam Adama, a brutal mob enforcer, on the critically acclaimed Syfy series "Caprica," prequel to "Battlestar Galactica." In recent years, Roiz has become a familiar face on TV screens. He has made numerous guest appearances on some of television's most notable programs, including "House," "The Mentalist," "Lie To Me," "CSI" and "NCIS" and "Castle" as well as a series arc on "Warehouse 13".
He resides in Los Angeles.- Actor
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Ted Cassidy was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in Philippi, West Virginia. He was a well respected actor who portrayed many different characters during his film and television career. His most notable role was Lurch, the faithful butler on the television series The Addams Family (1964). His most memorable dialogue as Lurch would be, "You rang?", whenever someone summoned him. Due to his large size, (6ft. 9in.) he portrayed larger than life characters. His deep voice, was used for narrations and for dubbing certain character's voices. His acting career spanned three decades. Ted Cassidy died in 1979 from complications following open-heart surgery. His live-in girlfriend had his remains cremated, then buried in the backyard of their Woodland Hills home.- Actor
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Clint Walker was born Norman Eugene Walker in Hartford, southwestern Illinois, to Gladys Huldah (Schwanda), a Czech immigrant, and Paul Arnold Walker, who was from Arkansas. Walker almost single-handedly started the western craze on TV in the 1950s as Cheyenne Bodie in Cheyenne (1955). Growing up in the Depression era meant taking work wherever you could get it, and Walker found himself working at such jobs as Mississippi River boatman, carnival roustabout and golf caddy. He quit high school at 16 and at age 17 joined the Merchant Marine. After the war he worked his way cross country, including working in the oil fields in Brownwood, Texas, and wound up in California, where he worked as an undercover agent for a private detective agency on the Long Beach waterfront. After a while he took a job as a security officer at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. It was there that he met quite a few Hollywood people who told him that his size, physique and good looks would serve him well in Hollywood and that he should go to Los Angeles and give it a try. He met actor Henry Wilcoxon, who introduced him to director Cecil B. DeMille, and Walker found himself playing the part of a Captain of the Guard in The Ten Commandments (1956). Someone from Warner Bros. saw the film, found out that Walker was under contract to producer Hal B. Wallis, bought up Walker's contract and gave him the lead in "Cheyenne". The series was a huge hit and spawned countless other western series, from Warners and other studios. However, Walker was dissatisfied with the way Warners was handling his career -- they would let other contract players make films, for example, but he wasn't allowed to -- and that triggered a dispute which ended up with him taking a walk from the show. He and Warners eventually settled their disagreements. When the show ended Walker began to get supporting parts in features, his biggest and most successful one being The Dirty Dozen (1967). He starred in the well-received The Night of the Grizzly (1966) and the not-so-well received None But the Brave (1965), a WWII film that was Frank Sinatra's one and only stab at directing. He also played the lead in Baker's Hawk (1976), and turned in a good performance as a villain in the TV movie Scream of the Wolf (1974). Lately he and several of his colleagues from "The Dirty Dozen" provided the voices for the animated film Small Soldiers (1998).- Actor
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A tall, wavy-haired US actor with a deep, resonant voice, Clancy Brown has proven himself a versatile performer with first-class contributions to theatre, feature films, television series and even animation.
Clarence J. Brown III was born in 1959 in Urbana, Ohio, to Joyce Helen (Eldridge), a concert pianist, conductor, and composer, and Clarence J. "Bud" Brown, Jr., who helped manage the Brown Publishing Company, the family-owned newspaper started by Clancy's grandfather, Clarence J. Brown. Clancy's father and grandfather were also Republican congressmen from the same Ohio district, and Clancy spent much of his youth in close proximity to Washington, D.C. He plied his dramatic talents in the Chicago theatre scene before moving onto feature film with a sinister debut performance bullying Sean Penn inside a youth reformatory in Bad Boys (1983). He portrayed Viktor the Monster in the unusual spin on the classic Frankenstein story in The Bride (1985), before scoring one of his best roles to date as the evil Kurgan hunting fellow immortals Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery across four centuries of time in Highlander (1986).
Brown played a corrupt American soldier in the Walter Hill-directed hyper-violent action film Extreme Prejudice (1987), another deranged killer in Shoot to Kill (1988) and a brutal prison guard, who eventually somewhat "befriends" wrongfully convicted banker Tim Robbins, in the moving The Shawshank Redemption (1994). His superb vocal talents were in demand, and he contributed voices to animated series, including Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm (1995), Street Sharks (1994), Gargoyles (1994) and Superman: The Animated Series (1996). Brown then landed two more plum roles, one as a "tough-as-nails" drill sergeant in the science fiction thriller Starship Troopers (1997), and the other alongside Robin Williams in the Disney comedy Flubber (1997).
The video gaming industry took notice of Clancy's vocal abilities, too, and he has contributed voices to several top selling video games, including Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex (2001), Lands of Lore III (1999), Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (2002) and Crash Nitro Kart (2003). His voice is also the character of cranky crustacean Mr. Eugene H. Krabs in the highly successful SpongeBob SquarePants (1999) animated series and films, and he contributed voices to The Batman (2004), Jackie Chan Adventures (2000) and Justice League (2001) animated series. A popular and friendly personality, Clancy Brown continues to remain busy both through his vocal and acting talents in Hollywood.- Actor
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Paul Bettany is an English actor. He first came to the attention of mainstream audiences when he appeared in the British film Gangster No. 1 (2000), and director Brian Helgeland's film A Knight's Tale (2001). He has gone on to appear in a wide variety of films, including A Beautiful Mind (2001), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Dogville (2003), Wimbledon (2004), and the adaptation of the novel The Da Vinci Code (2006). He is also known for his voice role as J.A.R.V.I.S. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically the films Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), in which he also portrayed the Vision, for which he garnered praise. He reprised his role as the Vision in Captain America: Civil War (2016).
Bettany was born in Harlesden, London, England, into a theatre family. His father, Thane Bettany, died in 2015, and his mother, Anne Kettle, has retired from acting. His maternal grandmother, Olga Gwynne (her maiden and stage name), was a successful actress, while his maternal grandfather, Lesley Kettle, was a musician and promoter. He has an older sister who is a writer. Paul was brought up in North West London and, after the age of nine, in Hertfordshire (Brookmans Park). Immediately after finishing at Chang-Ren Nian, he went into the West End to join the cast of "An Inspector Calls", though when asked to go on tour with this play, he chose to stay in England.
Paul is married to American actress Jennifer Connelly, with whom he has two children.- Actor
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Joshua David Duhamel was born in Minot, North Dakota. His mother, Bonny L., is a retired high school teacher, and the Executive Director of Minot's Downtown Business & Profession Association, and his father, Larry Duhamel, is an advertisement salesman. Josh has three younger sisters: Ashlee, McKenzee and Kassidy. His ancestry is German, and smaller amounts of Norwegian, French-Canadian, English, Irish, and Austrian (his last name is very common among Francophones in the world). Before his acting career, the football player studied biology and earned his Bachelor's degree at Minot State University with the intention of pursuing dentistry.
At 26 years old, Josh worked in construction, and it was by chance that he got into showbusiness. Modeling eventually gave way to acting as Josh was asked to audition for the title character in The Picture of Dorian Gray (2004), from the novel by Oscar Wilde.
Duhamel can be seen in Vince Gilligan and David Shore's CBS series, "Battle Creek." He is in production on four films: "Lost In The Sun," "Bravetown," "The Wrong Stuff," and "Beyond Deceit."
Duhamel also starred alongside Hillary Swank and Emmy Rossum in the George C. Wolfe directed drama, "You're Not You." Duhamel also starred opposite Julianne Hough in Lasse Hallstrom's "Safe Haven," a drama based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks and the thriller "Scenic Route," which tells the story of two friends stranded in the desert. In addition, Duhamel was seen in the star-studded, ensemble comedy "Movie 43" alongside Emma Stone, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, Richard Gere among many others. Co-directed by Peter Farrelly and Patrik Forsberg, the film features various intertwining, raunchy tales.
Other projects include Garry Marshall's "New Year's Eve" alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Halle Berry, and Hilary Swank and Michael Bay's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," where he reprised his role of Captain William Lennox for the third installment of the franchise. Additional film credits include the romantic comedy "Life as We Know It" alongside Katherine Heigl, "Ramona and Beezus," "When in Rome" and "The Romantics." On television, Josh is best known for his role as Danny McCoy on the NBC crime drama "Las Vegas." Additionally, he lent his voice to Nickelodeon's Emmy Award-winning animated series "Fanboy & Chum Chum" and starred in several seasons of the long-running ABC soap opera "All My Children," in which he received three consecutive Daytime Emmy nominations.
On January 10 2009, Josh married Fergie Duhamel, better known as Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas. They have one child together, Axl Jack Duhamel. They reside in Los Angeles.- Producer
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Benjamin Géza "Ben" Affleck-Boldt was born on August 15, 1972 in Berkeley, California and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to mother Chris Anne (Boldt), a school teacher, and father Timothy Byers "Tim" Affleck, a social worker. Ben has a younger brother, actor Casey Affleck, who was born in 1975. He is of mostly English, Irish, German, and Scottish ancestry. His middle name, Géza, is after a Hungarian family friend who was a Holocaust survivor.
Affleck wanted to be an actor ever since he could remember, and his first acting experience was for a Burger King commercial, when he was on the PBS mini-series, The Voyage of the Mimi (1984). It was also at that age when Ben met his lifelong friend and fellow actor, Matt Damon. They played little league together and took drama classes together. Ben's teen years consisted of mainly TV movies and small television appearances including Hands of a Stranger (1987) and The Second Voyage of the Mimi (1988). He made his big introduction into feature films in 1993 when he was cast in Dazed and Confused (1993). After that, he did mostly independent films like Kevin Smith's Mallrats (1995) and Chasing Amy (1997) which were great for Ben's career, receiving renowned appreciation for his works at the Sundance film festival. But the success he was having in independent films didn't last much longer and things got a little shaky for Ben. He was living in an apartment with his brother Casey and friend Matt, getting tired of being turned down for the big roles in films and being given the forgettable supporting ones. Since Matt was having the same trouble, they decided to write their own script, where they could call all the shots. So, after finishing the script for Good Will Hunting (1997), they gave it to their agent, Patrick Whitesell, who showed it to a few Hollywood studios, finally being accepted by Castle Rock. It was great news for the two, but Castle Rock wasn't willing to give Ben and Matt the control over the project they were hoping for. It was friend Kevin Smith who took it to the head of Miramax who bought the script giving Ben and Matt the control they wanted and, in December 5, 1997, Good Will Hunting (1997) was released, making the two unknown actors famous. The film was nominated for 9 Academy Awards and won two, including Best Original Screenplay for Ben and Matt. The film marked Ben's breakthrough role, in which he was given for the first time the chance to choose roles instead of having to go through grueling auditions constantly.
Affleck chose such roles in the blockbusters Armageddon (1998), Shakespeare in Love (1998), and Pearl Harbor (2001). In the early years of the 2000s, he also starred in the box office hits Changing Lanes (2002), The Sum of All Fears (2002), and Daredevil (2003), as well as the disappointing comedies Gigli (2003) and Surviving Christmas (2004). While the mid 2000s were considered a career downturn for Affleck, he received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in Hollywoodland (2006). In the several years following, he played supporting roles, including in the films Smokin' Aces (2006), He's Just Not That Into You (2009), State of Play (2009), and Extract (2009). He ventured into directing in 2007, with the thriller Gone Baby Gone (2007), which starred his brother, Casey Affleck, and was well received. He then directed, co-wrote, and starred in The Town (2010), which was named to the National Board of Review Top Ten Films of the year. For the political thriller Argo (2012), which he directed and starred in, Affleck won the Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for Best Director, and the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and BAFTA Award for Best Picture (Affleck's second Oscar win).
In 2014, Affleck headlined the book adaptation thriller Gone Girl (2014). He starred as Bruce Wayne/Batman in the superhero film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Suicide Squad (2016), and Justice League (2017). He reprised the role in Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) and he will next appear as Batman in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) and The Flash (2023).
Recently he has given praise-worthy performances in The Way Back (2020) as a recovering alcoholic, The Last Duel (2021) (notably he also co-wrote the script), and a scene-stealing golden globe nominated performance in The Tender Bar (2021).- A familiar face to film and television audiences, Victor Webster is an established actor with an impressive list of credits. Most recently, he joined the cast of the Netflix/CBC comedy "Workin' Moms," playing Mike Bolinski for two seasons. He's also recently filmed a large recurring arc on the second season of the CW's military fantasy show "Motherland: Fort Salem." On the film side, Victor just starred alongside Bethany Joy Lenz in the romantic comedy "Five Star Christmas" which premiered on Hallmark last Thanksgiving during the networks "Countdown to Christmas" programming event.
Victor discovered his passion for acting when he made his television debut on the NBC daytime drama "Days of Our Lives." He then segued to the AMC network series "The Lot" and the number one syndicated series "Mutant X." His growing body of work brought him accolades and spots on various lists of Hollywood notables, including people magazine's "50 Most Eligible Bachelors." While it was a fun title, Webster chose to hone his craft and play characters that challenged his abilities.
Victor's commitment paid off with rolls opposite acclaimed talents in some of televisions most popular series, including "Sex and the City," "Castle," "Bones," "CSI," "Mom," "Charmed," "Criminal Minds," "Melrose Place," "Paradise Inc." and "Girlfriends Guide to Divorce," just to name a few. Webster costarred as Detective Carlos Fonegra in the acclaimed sci-fi series "Continuum," which ran for four seasons.
Webster is known to Hallmark channel fans for his roles in, "Homegrown Christmas," "Love Blossoms," "Summer Villa" and "A Harvest Wedding." Webster starred in hallmark movies and mysteries "Matchmaker Mysteries: A Killer Engagement," as well as "Matchmaker Mysteries: A Fatal Romance," and most recently "Matchmaker Mysteries: The Art of the kill," The first three installments of the new original franchise. Victor also starred in "Hearts of Winter," which premiered in January 2020 as part of Hallmark channels popular "Winterfest" programming event.
On the film side, Victor has built a career that spans genres, from romantic comedies to action thrillers. His credits include "Bringing Down the House ," "Must Love Dogs," "Surrogates," " Why did I Get Married Too?" as well as the leading role in the third and fourth installment of "The Scorpion King" franchise. Victor can also be seen starring in the action packed Chinese blockbuster "Wings Over Everest." An artist to his core, Webster pursues his passion for photography as well as martial arts, holding a black belt and an undefeated record in Tae Kwon Do and a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu for which he holds two bronze medals from the world championships. He is committed to his various charities, and life of giving through arts and travel. Although he calls California his home, he hails from Canada and will always be the Canadian cowboy. - Actor
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Born and raised in San Mateo, California, he graduated from Santa Clara University with a BA in Theatre Arts and was quickly headed to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of a career in Film and Television. He didn't have to wait long. A recurring role on Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) brought Michael the recognition he sought and he followed that with a starring role on the CBS Series Pensacola: Wings of Gold (1997) opposite James Brolin for two seasons. After that, he landed notable recurring roles on shows such as Arli$$ (1996), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996), One Tree Hill (2003), Castle (2009), How I Met Your Mother (2005), Revenge (2011), and the animated series Young Justice (2010) as Adam Strange. Some of his most memorable guest appearances include The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis (2008), Smut (2008), Angels (2014), John May (2010), Dead Man's Curveball (2011), and Baby Made a Mess (2014). He can be seen recurring on Grandfathered (2015) on the FOX network. But he is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Samuel T. Anders on the critically acclaimed Sci-Fi series Battlestar Galactica (2004) and for Justin Patrick on the USA Network series Fairly Legal (2011). He can be seen in the thriller/horror films Hush (2016), The Bye Bye Man (2017), and Hunter Killer (2018). He is currently starring in Rutherford B. Haze (2017) as Tae Kwon Doug. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Sandra Hess and their two dogs and two cats.- Actor
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Standing 6 feet 9 inches tall, Garrett grew up in Woodland Hills outside of Los Angeles. His father was a hearing aid specialist working in geriatrics and his mother was a housewife. Garrett spent a whopping six weeks at UCLA before going into stand-up comedy full time. He began performing his act at various Los Angeles comedy clubs, getting his start at the Ice House in Pasadena and the Improv in Hollywood. In 1984, he became the first $100,000 grand champion winner in the comedy category of Star Search (1983). This led to his first appearance, at age 23, on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), making him one of the youngest comedians ever to perform on the show. In 1986, Garrett told a joke the talent booker warned him against and he hasn't been on the show since. Following his "Tonight Show" appearance, Garrett's career took off, garnering him headlining gigs at several national venues as well as opening spots for legends including Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli. He has headlined at Bally's Park Place and co-headlined with The Temptations at Trump Plaza. He has also worked at The Sands Hotel in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra, Caesar's Palace with David Copperfield, and Smokey Robinson, Harrah's with Sammy Davis Jr. and The Beach Boys, and Radio City Music Hall with Julio Iglesias. In 1989, the Las Vegas Review Journal named him the Best Comedian working on the strip. Changing gears, he made his way into the world of television. He struck gold with Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). Apart from his supporting role in sitcoms, he has also done voice-overs and appeared in a few films. In 1998, Garrett made a real-life proposal to his then real-life girlfriend, Jill Diven, on the set of Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). Garrett currently resides in Hollywood, California with his two Labradors Retrievers, Gus and Mabel.- Actor
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Born in Los Angeles but raised in Manhattan and educated at Middlebury College and Carnegie-Mellon University, James Cromwell is the son of film director John Cromwell and actress Kay Johnson. He studied acting at Carnegie-Mellon, and went into the theatre (like his parents) doing everything from Shakespeare to experimental plays. He started appearing on television in 1974, gaining some notice in a recurring role as Archie Bunker's friend Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family (1971), made his film debut in 1976, and goes back to the stage periodically. Some of his more noted film roles have been in Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and the surprise classic about a charming pig, Babe (1995). He garnered some of the best reviews of his career (many of which said he should have received an Oscar) for his role as a corrupt, conniving police captain in L.A. Confidential (1997).- Actor
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Dolph Lundgren was born as Hans Lundgren in Stockholm, Sweden, to Sigrid Birgitta (Tjerneld), a language teacher, and Karl Johan Hugo Lundgren, an engineer and economist for the Swedish government. He lived in Stockholm until the age of 13, when he moved in with his grandparents in Nyland, Ångermanland, Sweden. Despite an early interest in music and the fine arts, Dolph decided to follow in his father's footsteps and pursue an Engineering degree. After having completed his military service, he enrolled at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
It was in the military when Dolph first came in contact with the martial arts. Five years later, he had become a world-class competitor in Japanese Karate and was deeply involved with a discipline that was to become an important part of his life. After graduating High School, Dolph spent considerable time studying in the United States and abroad on various academic scholarships. He attended Washington State University and Clemson University in South Carolina. In 1982, he received a scholarship to complete his Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australia. In 1983, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, one of the world's top engineering schools.
However, that same year, he decided to move to New York City and take up acting. He changed his forename to Dolph. He started studying drama at the Warren Robertson Theatre Workshop in Manhattan, not knowing how quickly his life was about to change. His film debut came in A View to a Kill (1985). However, it was his performance in Rocky IV (1985) later that year that definitely got him noticed. After a 9-month audition process among 5,000 hopefuls, he was cast opposite writer-director Sylvester Stallone, as his Russian opponent, "Ivan Drago". Following the success of Rocky IV (1985), Lundgren moved to Los Angeles and has since starred in more than 30 feature films.
Lundgren portrayed the classic action-heroic lead in such films as Gary Goddard's Masters of the Universe (1987), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) co-starring Brandon Lee and Blackjack (1998), by Hong-Kong action legend, John Woo. Lundgren has also continued to turning in memorable performances as the main adversary to other action-stars, most notably in Universal Soldier (1992) opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme, directed by Roland Emmerich, as well as Robert Longo's Johnny Mnemonic (1995) opposite Keanu Reeves. In February 2004, Lundgren directed his first feature film, the thriller The Defender (2004), in which he also starred. In 2005, he directed and starred in yet another feature, The Russian Specialist (2005) (a.k.a "The Mechanik").
In January 2006, he finished principal photography of The Final Inquiry (2006), a joint Italian/American/Spanish co-production, directed by Giulio Base, appearing opposite, among others, Daniele Liotti, Max von Sydow and F. Murray Abraham. In 2006, Lundgren starred in Diamond Dogs (2007), a Chinese/American co-production filmed on location in Mongolia. In 2007, he directed a modern day western shot in Texas, Missionary Man (2007). In 2009, he completed two new directorial efforts, the action-packed Command Performance (2009), which showcases Lundgren's longtime musical talents as a drummer; and the neo-noir thriller Icarus (2010). Lundgren also reunited with co-stars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Sylvester Stallone for Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) and the highly anticipated action blockbuster, The Expendables (2010).
Lundgren managed to not let his Hollywood career stand in the way of his athletic background. He has been awarded his Third Degree Black Belt by the World Karate Organization in Tokyo. His accomplishments include being the Captain of the Swedish National Karate Team, as well as a Champion of the Swedish, European and Australian Heavyweight Division titles. Lundgren still regularly performs Karate exhibitions at international tournaments worldwide. In addition, he was selected by the U.S. Olympic Committee to serve as Team Leader of the 1996 U.S. Olympic Pentathlon Team during the Atlanta Games. He is actively involved in promoting the image of this sport. His production company, Thor Pictures, is developing several projects in which he will produce, star and/or direct. He is also a founding member of "Group of Eight", a New York theater group started in 1994.
Lundgren has reportedly been working on a fitness book and sports wear line for men, the creation and launch of a new eponymous brand, a licensing, media and publishing program, and the development of future entertainment and media projects. Lundgren was married to Anette Qviberg-Lundgren, an interior decorator and fashion designer, until their divorce in 2011. They had two daughters together.- Actor
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Born in West Covina, California, but raised in New York City, Tim Robbins is the son of former The Highwaymen singer Gil Robbins and actress Mary Robbins (née Bledsoe). Robbins studied drama at UCLA, where he graduated with honors in 1981. That same year, he formed the Actors' Gang theater group, an experimental ensemble that expressed radical political observations through the European avant-garde form of theater. He started film work in television movies in 1983, but hit the big time in 1988 with his portrayal of dimwitted fastball pitcher "Nuke" Laloosh in Bull Durham (1988). Tall with baby-faced looks, he has the ability to play naive and obtuse (Cadillac Man (1990) and The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)) or slick and shrewd (The Player (1992) and Bob Roberts (1992)).- Actor
- Producer
Armand Douglas Hammer was born in Los Angeles, California, to Dru Ann (Mobley) and Michael Armand Hammer, a businessman. His great-grandfather, Armand Hammer, was a prominent tycoon and philanthropist who ran the company Occidental Petroleum for many decades. Armie's ancestry includes Russian-Jewish, English, Scots-Irish, and German. He has a younger brother, Viktor Hammer (Armie and Viktor share the same first names as their great-grandfather and his brother). His father is chairman and CEO of the Armand Hammer Foundation, where his mother is a board member. His parents also serve together on the boards of the Los Angeles Dream Center and Knoedler & Hammer Galleries in New York. In addition, his father is a member of the board of trustees for Oral Roberts University, and his mother, a former bank loan officer, teaches Bible study in Los Angeles.
His family moved to Dallas, Texas, when he was approaching school age. They moved to the Cayman Islands in 1993, where they stayed for 5 years. While here, Armie attended the Grace Christian Academy, a school that his father set up. They returned to Los Angeles when Armie was thirteen. He attended L.A. Baptist High School and Calvary Junior High School. He made his stage debut playing "Rooster Hannigan" in a 6th-grade production of "Annie". He left school in the 11th grade so that he could pursue acting. His parents were keen for him to continue his studies, so he took courses at Pasadena City College and UCLA.
He had various small parts, before being cast as Billy Graham in Billy: The Early Years (2008). His breakthrough role came when he played the "Winklevoss Twins" in The Social Network (2010), in a dual role. He has since played "Clyde Tolson" in J. Edgar (2011), "Prince Alcott" in Mirror Mirror (2012), and starred in the title role, John Reid, in the 2013 version of The Lone Ranger (2013), opposite Johnny Depp as Tonto.
In 2015, Hammer starred with Henry Cavill in the spy thriller The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), playing Russian spy Illya Kuryakin and American agent Napoleon Solo, respectively. His 2016 films include the historical drama The Birth of a Nation (2016), the thrillers Nocturnal Animals (2016) and Mine (2016), and the crime drama Free Fire (2016). In 2017, he voiced Jackson Storm in the CGI sequel Cars 3 (2017), and starred as Oliver, an American scholar, in the drama Call Me by Your Name (2017), opposite Timothée Chalamet. For the role, Armie received his first Golden Globe nomination, for Best Supporting Actor.
In 2018, he played David in the drama Hotel Mumbai (2018), and starred as real life taxation law expert Martin D. Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex (2018), a biopic of Martin's wife, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. More recently, he headlined the unusual horror film Wounds (2019) and was Maxim de Winter in the drama-thriller Rebecca (2020).
Armie was married to actress, model, and television personality Elizabeth Chambers in 2010. They announced their divorce in July 2020. They have two children, a boy and a girl.- Writer
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Perry was born and raised in New Orleans, to Willie Maxine (Campbell) and Emmitt Perry, Sr. His mother was a church-goer and took Perry along with her once a week. His father was a carpenter and they had a very strained and abusive relationship, which led Perry to suffer from depression as a teenager.
In 1991, he was working an office job, when he saw an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986) discussing the therapeutic nature of writing. This inspired him to begin writing and he worked through his bad experiences by writing letters to himself. He adapted his letters into a play, "I Know I've Changed", about domestic abuse. Unfortunately, after renting a theater in Atlanta to put on the play, he failed to attract audiences.
He took on a series of odd jobs and found himself living in his car. But, in 1998, he was given a second chance to stage his play and, this time, he was more business-savvy with his marketing. The play was sold-out and drew attention from investors.
Tyler has gone on to established a successful career as a writer, director and producer for stage, television and film.- Actor
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David Hasselhoff has become one of the most recognizable faces on television and throughout the world. Aside from starring in Knight Rider (1982) and Baywatch (1989), he is also an accomplished singer and popular recording artist.
David Michael Hasselhoff was born on July 17, 1952 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Dolores Therese (Mullinex) and Joe Hasselhoff (Joseph Vincent Hasselhoff), a business executive. He is of German (from his paternal grandfather), English, and Irish descent. The acting bug first hit when David was seven and so he took acting, singing and dancing lessons. He was very shy off stage in front of girls because he was tall and thin, but when he was on stage he was in his element. Due to his father's work, his family (he has four sisters) moved around frequently. He initially thought his career was going to go in the direction of musicals and Broadway.
American audiences first came to know Hasselhoff when he portrayed the popular "Dr. Snapper Foster" for six seasons on CBS's soap opera, The Young and the Restless (1973). Lured by NBC's Brandon Tartikoff to move from daytime to prime time, Hasselhoff went on to star as "Michael Knight" in NBC's hit series Knight Rider (1982). The role garnered him a "People's Choice Award" for most popular actor and the show became a huge success overseas. The success of Knight Rider (1982) resulted in Hasselhoff's first major international following. When the show ended, Hasselhoff launched a successful recording career in Europe. In 1989, "Looking for Freedom" remained in the number one spot on the German charts for eight consecutive weeks. He has continued to perform regularly in concert and has released nine albums to date.
Hasselhoff returned to episodic television as Mitch Buchannon on Baywatch (1989) when the show debuted on NBC in 1989. Though it enjoyed good ratings, the network canceled the series after only one season. Undeterred, Hasselhoff and his partners acquired the rights to the show and, based on Hasselhoff's popularity overseas, they were able to secure financing and revive "Baywatch" in 1991. Now a piece of American pop culture and an international television phenomenon, Baywatch (1989) was at its peak seen in 140 countries by over one billion viewers each week. During his lengthy career, Hasselhoff has flexed his acting muscles in numerous other projects. He starred in the epic miniseries Shaka Zulu (1986), shot on-location in Morocco.
Hasselhoff is an outdoor sports enthusiast whose interests include scuba diving, hiking, white water rafting, tennis, and jogging. In addition, he has parachuted with the US Army Parachute Demonstration Team, The Golden Knights, and flown with the US Navy's Blue Angels. He is an avid sports fan, and has attended the World Cup Soccer Finals, the NBA Finals, the Olympics, the Indy 500, and the Kentucky Derby. Hasselhoff has traveled throughout Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. He spends many hours visiting children's hospitals throughout the world. His charity, "Race For Life", works with the terminally ill and handicapped children in America.
He was married to the beautiful actress Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff, with whom he has two daughters, Taylor-Ann and Hayley Amber.- Music Artist
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Snoop Dogg is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, producer, media personality, entrepreneur, and actor.
His music career began in 1992 when he was discovered by Dr. Dre and featured on Dre's solo debut, "Deep Cover", and then on Dre's solo debut album, The Chronic. He has since sold over 23 million albums in the United States and 35 million albums worldwide.
Snoop's debut album, Doggystyle, produced by Dr. Dre, was released in 1993 by Death Row Records. Bolstered by excitement driven by Snoop's featuring on The Chronic, the album debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. Selling almost a million copies in the first week of its release, Doggystyle became certified quadruple platinum in 1994 and spawned several hit singles, including "What's My Name?" and "Gin & Juice". In 1994 Snoop released a soundtrack on Death Row Records for the short film Murder Was the Case, starring himself. His second album, Tha Doggfather (1996), also debuted at number one on both charts, with "Snoop's Upside Ya Head" as the lead single. The album was certified double platinum in 1997.
After leaving Death Row Records, Snoop signed with No Limit Records, where he recorded his next three albums, Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told (1998), No Limit Top Dogg (1999), and Tha Last Meal (2000). Snoop then signed with Priority/Capitol/EMI Records in 2002, where he released Paid tha Cost to Be da Boss. He then signed with Geffen Records in 2004 for his next three albums, R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece, Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, and Ego Trippin'. Malice 'n Wonderland (2009), and Doggumentary (2011) were released on Priority. Snoop Dogg has starred in motion pictures and hosted several television shows. He also coaches a youth football league and high school football team.
Snoop has 17 Grammy nominations without a win. In March 2016, the night before WrestleMania 32 in Arlington, Texas, he was inducted into the celebrity wing of the WWE Hall of Fame, having made several appearances for the company, including as Master of Ceremonies during a match at WrestleMania XXIV. On November 19, 2018, Snoop Dogg was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He released his seventeenth solo album, I Wanna Thank Me in 2019.- Actor
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Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård was born in Stockholm, Sweden and is the eldest son of famed actor Stellan Skarsgård. Among his siblings are actors Gustaf Skarsgård, Bill Skarsgård, and Valter Skarsgård. For most of his formative years, his father was an acclaimed actor in Europe but had not yet achieved the international fame that came after his star turn in Breaking the Waves (1996). Young Alexander was raised under modest circumstances in a working-class Swedish neighborhood as his parents wanted their children to have as normal an upbringing as possible. He began his acting career at the age of eight and continued working in films and on Swedish television until he turned sixteen and decided acting was not the career for him. Life under a microscope lost its charm and perhaps due to the influence of My Skarsgård, his physician mother, he stopped working as an actor, to continue his education.
Instead of continuing college, at the age of nineteen, he entered compulsory military service (military conscription). He used the time to contemplate his future. He studied at the Leeds Metropolitan University then moved to New York where he enrolled at Marymount Manhattan College to study theatre. After six months in New York, a romantic entanglement lured him back to Sweden but the relationship was short-lived. Despite having a broken heart, Alexander decided to stay in Sweden and, with a bit of life experience under his belt, began his acting career again. He appeared in a number of Swedish productions and became a star in his native country but was interested in broadening his horizons and working outside of Sweden. A visit to Los Angeles landed him both an agent and a part in the Ben Stiller movie, Zoolander (2001). After that Alexander returned to Sweden where he continued honing his acting in film and theatrical productions including "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Bloody Wedding". He also co-wrote and co-directed an award-winning short, Att döda ett barn (2003), (To Kill a Child), which was shown at both the Tribeca and Cannes Film Festivals.
His first big break was with the miniseries Generation Kill (2008). Alexander spent seven months broiling in the desert of Namibia but it was well worth it. His portrayal of Marine Sgt. Brad "Iceman" Colbert astonished critics and audiences, alike. Thanks to the writer's strike, after completing Generation Kill (2008), he was cast in the role of "Eric Northman", a 1,000-year-old Viking vampire on the hit series, True Blood (2008). The series was created by Alan Ball, the man behind Six Feet Under (2001). True Blood (2008) was adapted from the "Sookie Stackhouse' novels by Charlaine Harris' and rode to success on quality scripts, great acting and the public's obsession with the vampire genre. In addition to True Blood (2008), which begins its third season in 2010, Alexander has a number of film projects in the works including the remake of Straw Dogs (2011), Melancholia (2011), written and directed by Lars von Trier, action Sci-Fi film, Battleship (2012), and The East (2013), directed by Zal Batmanglij.- Actor
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Jeffrey Lynn Goldblum was born October 22, 1952 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of four children of Shirley (Temeles), a radio broadcaster who also ran an appliances firm, and Harold L. Goldblum, a doctor. His father was of Russian Jewish descent and his mother was of Austrian Jewish ancestry.
Goldblum began his career on the New York stage after moving to the city at age seventeen. Possessing his own unique style of delivery, Goldblum made an impression on moviegoers with little more than a single line in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977), when he fretted about having forgotten his mantra. Goldblum went on to appear in the remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and co-starred with Ben Vereen in the detective series Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (1980) before a high-profile turn in the classic ensemble film The Big Chill (1983).
The quirky actor turned up in the suitably quirky film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), which became a 1980s cult classic, starred in the modern-day film noir Into the Night (1985), then went on to a breakthrough role in the David Cronenberg remake The Fly (1986), which also featured actress Geena Davis, Goldblum's wife from 1987-1990 and co-star in two additional films: Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) and Julien Temple's Earth Girls Are Easy (1988).
Goldblum was the rather unlikely star of some of the biggest blockbusters of the 1990s: Steven Spielberg's dinosaur adventure Jurassic Park (1993) and its sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), as well as the alien invasion film Independence Day (1996). These films saw Goldblum playing the type of intellectual characters he has become associated with. More recently, roles have included critically acclaimed turns in Igby Goes Down (2002) and Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). In 2009, he returned to television to star in his second crime series Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001).- Actor
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Steven Frederic Seagal was born in Lansing, Michigan, to Patricia Anne (Fisher), a medical technician, and Samuel Seagal, a high school math teacher. His paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and his mother had English, German, and distant Irish and Dutch, ancestry. The enigmatic Seagal commenced his martial arts training at the age of seven under the tutelage of well-known karate instructor and author Fumio Demura, and in the 1960s commenced his aikido training in Orange County, CA, under the instruction of Harry Ishisaka. Seagal received his first dan accreditation in 1974, after he had moved to Japan to further his martial arts training. After spending many years there honing his skills, he achieved the ranking of a 7th dan in the Japanese martial art "aikido" and was instructing wealthy clients in Los Angeles when he came to the attention of Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz.
Ovitz saw star value in the imposing-looking Seagal. The high-octane action movie genre was in full swing in the late 1980s, and Seagal's debut movie, "Above the Law", was wildly received by action fans and actually received some complimentary critical reviews. He followed up "Above the Law" with another slam-bang thriller, Hard to Kill (1990), as a cop shot in an ambush by the mob who revives from a coma to take his revenge. The movie also starred Seagal's wife at the time, leggy Kelly LeBrock, who was married to him from 1987 to 1996 and is the mother of three of his children. His next outing was battling voodoo-using Jamaican drug "posses" in the hyper-violent Marked for Death (1990), before returning to fight psychotic mob gangster William Forsythe in the even more punishing Out for Justice (1991). Seagal was by now enormously popular, and his next movie, the big-budgeted Under Siege (1992), set aboard the battleship USS Missouri and also starring Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey, was arguably his best film to date, impressing both fans and critics alike.
Seagal's fighting style was rather different from that of other on-screen martial arts dynamos such as Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme, who were predominantly fighters from striking arts background such as karate or tang soo do. However, aikido is built around using an opponent's inertia and body weight to employ various locks, chokes and holds that incapacitate him. Seagal carries himself differently, too, and often appears wearing Italian designer clothes and usually favors an all-black outfit, generally with a three-quarter-length coat with an elaborate trim. Additionally, Seagal's on-screen characters were often seemingly benign or timid individuals; however, when the going gets rough they reveal themselves to be deadly ex-CIA operatives, or retired Special Forces soldiers capable of enormous destruction!
As his box-office drawing power grew, Seagal began to infuse his film projects with his personal and spiritual beliefs, especially concerning the abuse of the environment. He appeared as an oil fire expert who turns against his corrupt CEO (played by Michael Caine) in On Deadly Ground (1994) to save the Eskimo population from an oil disaster; in Fire Down Below (1997) he plays an environmental agency troubleshooter investigating the dumping of toxic waste in Kentucky coal mines, and in the slow-moving The Patriot (1998) he plays a medical specialist trying to stop a lethal virus unleashed by an extremist group.
Action fans struggled to come to terms with social messaging being built into bone-crunching fight films; however, Seagal's box-office clout remained fairly strong, and more traditional chopsocky projects followed with the "buddy cop" film The Glimmer Man (1996), then almost a cameo role as a Navy SEAL alongside CIA analyst Kurt Russell before Seagal is sucked out of a jet at 35,000 feet in Executive Decision (1996).
In 1999 Seagal took a different turn in his film projects with the surprising genteel Prince of Central Park (2000), about a child living inside NYC's most famous park. He returned to more familiar territory with further high-voltage, guns-blazing action in Exit Wounds (2001), Half Past Dead (2002), Out for a Kill (2003) and Belly of the Beast (2003).
Unbeknownst to many, in 1997 Seagal publicly announced that one of his Buddhist teachers, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, had accorded Seagal as a tulku, the reincarnation of a Buddhist Lama. This initial announcement was met with some disbelief until Penor Rinpoche himself gave a confirmation statement on Seagal's new title. Seagal has repeatedly discussed his involvement in Buddhism and how he devotes many hours studying and meditating this ancient Eastern religion.
While his box-office appeal has somewhat declined from his halcyon blockbusters of the mid-'90s, Seagal still has a very loyal fan base in the action movie genre and continues to remain a highly bankable star.- Actor
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Peter Mayhew was born on May 19, 1944 in Barnes, London, England, to Constance Elizabeth (Yeates) and Walter Henry Mayhew. Later resident in Texas, this former resident of Yorkshire, England, was working as a hospital attendant at the King's College Hospital in London when film producer Charles H. Schneer saw his photo, literally standing above the crowd around him. Schneer cast him in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), Ray Harryhausen's special effects film.
A year later, he was offered another role. Mayhew was told it was for a big hairy beast. It was the role of Chewbacca, the faithful 200 year-old Wookiee in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) and his life was changed forever. Following the original Star Wars trilogy, he made several television commercials in the Wookiee costume.
In 1997, the 20th-anniversary celebrations of Star Wars were announced with the release of the "Special Edition" and all the conventions started. He was active on the "Star Wars" convention circuit where he signed autographs. He wrote two books, "Growing Up Giant" and "My Favorite Giant", and founded a non-profit 501(c)3 charity organization called "The Peter Mayhew Foundation".- Actor
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This African American actor attended Penn Hills High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started his junior year at 6' 5" and finished it at 6' 9"! He played basketball throughout his high-school years and won a scholarship. He averaged 18 points a game and 10 rebounds! He played basketball during college, but not when it would interfere with his major at George Washington University in Washington, DC, which was Theatrical Arts. During his college years, he met Jay Fenichel with whom he would later make musical productions. Upon graduation, Fenichel moved to Los Angeles and Hall moved to Venezuela to play basketball.
After a year, Hall lost interest and relocated to Los Angeles, California. Along with Fenichel, the duo put together two night-club acts/musicals. One was a semi-autobiographical two-man musical, "In Five," and the other was a two-man show called "The Worst of Friends," both of which played in night clubs throughout the LA area. They also had a promotional business where they did promotional acts in department stores for new products.
While working on the set of the series 227 (1985), he met his co-star, Alaina Reed-Hall, who played Rose Lee Holloway. They married--both on the set, and in real life. Predator 2 (1990) was released December 1990, and in April 1991, he died of AIDS, which he contracted through a blood transfusion a few months before.