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Lochlyn Munro started his acting career after a serious sports injury ended his dream of playing professional hockey. A talented musician, Lochlyn turned his attention to the performing arts. While playing music in various clubs around Vancouver, British Columbia, Lochlyn studied drama and improvisational comedy with many of the industry's top professionals, including the late Susan Strasberg. Having done a lot of stage work, Lochlyn then jumped into the television and film world with instant success. Lochlyn landed roles on various American projects such as, 21 Jump Street (1987), Wiseguy (1987), and others.
After numerous guest roles and leads on TV shows and Films, Lochlyn landed a role in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). He has gone on to show tremendous range throughout his acting career by creating memorable characters in such films as Dead Man on Campus (1998), A Night at the Roxbury (1998), and Scary Movie (2000). Lochlyn will always remain one to watch in Hollywood as his career continues to follow a bright path.- Actor
- Producer
- Composer
A blond-haired, fair-complexioned actor with a toothy grin and capable of an unsettling glint in his eyes, Gary Busey was born in Goose Creek, Texas, and was raised in Oklahoma. He is the son of Sadie Virginia (Arnett), a homemaker, and Delmar Lloyd Busey, a construction design manager. He has English, as well as Irish, Scottish, and German, ancestry. He graduated from Nathan Hale High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1962 and for a while was a professional musician. A talented drummer, he played in several bands, including those of country-and-western legends Leon Russell, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson.
Busey's first film appearance was as a biker in the low-budget Angels Hard as They Come (1971) and, over the next few years, he landed several film roles generally as a country hick/redneck or surly, rebellious types. His real breakthrough came in the dynamic film The Buddy Holly Story (1978), with Busey taking the lead role as Buddy Holly, in addition to playing guitar and singing all the vocals! His stellar performance scored him a Best Actor nomination and the attention of Hollywood taking overcasting agents. Next up, he joined fellow young actors William Katt and Jan-Michael Vincent as surfing buddies growing up together in the cult surf film Big Wednesday (1978), directed by John Milius. However, a string of appearances in somewhat mediocre films took him out of the spotlight for several years, until he played the brutal assassin Mr. Joshua trying to kill Los Angeles cops Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the runaway mega-hit Lethal Weapon (1987). Further strong roles followed, including alongside Danny Glover once again in Predator 2 (1990). He was back on the beaches, this time tracking bank robbers with FBI agent Keanu Reeves, in Point Break (1991) and nearly stole the show as a psychotic Navy officer in league with terrorists led by Tommy Lee Jones taking over the USS Missouri in the highly popular Under Siege (1992).
The entertaining Busey has continued to remain busy in front of the cameras and has certainly developed a minor cult following among many film fans. Plus, he's also the proud father of accomplished young actor Jake Busey, whose looks make him almost a dead ringer for his famous father.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Antonio Banderas, one of Spain's most famous faces, was a soccer player until breaking his foot at the age of fourteen; he is now an international movie star known for playing Zorro in the eponymous movie series.
He was born José Antonio Domínguez Banderas on August 10, 1960, in Málaga, Andalusia, Spain. His father, Jose Dominguez, was a policeman in the Spanish civil guards. His mother, Doña Ana Banderas Gallego, was a school teacher. Young Banderas was brought up a Roman Catholic. He wanted to play soccer professionally and made much success playing for his school team until the age of 14, albeit his dream ended when he broke his foot. At that time, he developed a passion for theatre after seeing the stage production of "Hair". Banderas began his acting studies at the School of Dramatic Arts in Málaga, and made his acting debut at a small theatre in Málaga. He was arrested by the Spanish police for performance in a play by Bertolt Brecht, because of political censorship under the rule of General Francisco Franco. Banderas spent a whole night at the police station, he had three or four such arrests while he was working with a small theatre troupe that toured all over Spain and was giving performances in small town theatres and on the street.
In 1979, at age 19, he moved to Madrid in pursuit of an acting career. Being a struggling young actor, he also worked as a waiter and took small modeling jobs. At that time, he joined the troupe at the National Theatre of Spain, becoming the youngest member of the company. Banderas' stage performances caught the attention of movie director Pedro Almodóvar, who cast the young actor in his movie debut Labyrinth of Passion (1982). Banderas and Almodovar joined forces in making innovative and sexually provocative movies during the 1980s. In 1984, Banderas made headlines in Spain with his performance as a gay man, making his first male-to-male on-screen kiss in Almodovar's Law of Desire (1987). Banderas' long and fruitful collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar eventually prepared him for international recognition that came with his work in the Academy Award-nominated film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). In 1991, he appeared as an object of Madonna's affection in Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991).
In 1992, Banderas made his Hollywood debut with The Mambo Kings (1992). Because he did not speak English at that time, his dialogue for the movie was taught to him phonetically. Banderas shot to international fame with his sensitive performance as a lover of Tom Hanks' AIDS-infected lawyer in Philadelphia (1993), then played opposite Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994). Banderas further established himself as one of Hollywood's leading men after co-starring in Evita (1996) opposite Madonna in the title role. In 1998, he won acclaim for his portrayal of Zorro, opposite Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones, in The Mask of Zorro (1998). For the role as Zorro, Banderas took training with the Olympic national fencing team in Spain, and practiced his moves with real steel swords, then he used the lighter aluminum swords in the movie. He also took a month-long course of horse-riding before the filming. He later returned to the role in The Legend of Zorro (2005). In 1999, Banderas made his directorial debut in Crazy in Alabama (1999), starring his wife, Melanie Griffith. He received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros opposite Salma Hayek in Frida (2002). He voiced Puss in Boots in the Shrek franchise.
Banderas established himself as internationally known Latin heartthrob with charismatic looks, and was chosen as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world by People magazine in 1996. He won numerous awards and nominations for his works in film, including three ALMA awards and three Golden Globe nominations, among many other. From 1996 to 2014, Banderas was married to American actress Melanie Griffith and the couple have one daughter, Stella (born 1996). Outside of his acting profession, Banderas has been a passionate soccer fan and a staunch supporter of the Real Madrid Football Club. He shares time between his two residencies, one in the United States, and one in the South of Spain.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Robert Downey Jr. has evolved into one of the most respected actors in Hollywood. With an amazing list of credits to his name, he has managed to stay new and fresh even after over four decades in the business.
Downey was born April 4, 1965 in Manhattan, New York, the son of writer, director and filmographer Robert Downey Sr. and actress Elsie Downey (née Elsie Ann Ford). Robert's father is of half Lithuanian Jewish, one quarter Hungarian Jewish, and one quarter Irish, descent, while Robert's mother was of English, Scottish, German, and Swiss-German ancestry. Robert and his sister, Allyson Downey, were immersed in film and the performing arts from a very young age, leading Downey Jr. to study at the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York, before moving to California with his father following his parents' 1978 divorce. In 1982, he dropped out of Santa Monica High School to pursue acting full time. Downey Sr., himself a drug addict, exposed his son to drugs at a very early age, and Downey Jr. would go on to struggle with abuse for decades.
Downey Jr. made his debut as an actor at the age of five in the film Pound (1970), written and directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr.. He built his film repertoire throughout the 1980s and 1990s with roles in Tuff Turf (1985), Weird Science (1985), True Believer (1989), and Wonder Boys (2000) among many others. In 1992, Downey received an Academy Award nomination and won the BAFTA (British Academy Award) for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of Chaplin (1992).
In Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), he appeared as an aspiring film make-up artist whose best friend commits murder. In Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, Downey starred as a tabloid TV journalist who exploits a murderous couple's killing spree to boost his ratings. For the comedy Heart and Souls (1993), Downey starred as a young man with a special relationship with four ghosts. In 1995, Downey starred in Restoration (1995), with Hugh Grant, Meg Ryan and Ian McKellen, directed by Michael Hoffman. Also that year, he starred in Richard III (1995), in which he appears opposite his Restoration (1995) co-star McKellen.
In 1997, Downey was seen in Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man (1998), alongside Kenneth Branagh, Daryl Hannah and Embeth Davidtz; in One Night Stand (1997), directed by Mike Figgis and starring Wesley Snipes and Nastassja Kinski; and in Hugo Pool (1997), directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr. and starring Sean Penn and Patrick Dempsey. In September of 1999, Downey appeared in Black & White (1999), written and directed by James Toback, along with Ben Stiller, Elijah Wood, Gaby Hoffmann, Brooke Shields and Claudia Schiffer. In January of 1999, he starred with Annette Bening and Aidan Quinn in In Dreams (1999), directed by Neil Jordan.
In 2000, Downey co-starred with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire in Wonder Boys (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson. In this dramatic comedy, Downey played the role of a bisexual literary agent. In 2001, Downey made his prime-time television debut when he joined the cast of the Fox-TV series Ally McBeal (1997) as attorney "Larry Paul". For this role, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Comedy Series. In addition, Downey was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
The actor's drug-related problems escalated from 1996 to 2001, leading to arrests, rehab visits and incarcerations, and he was eventually fired from Ally McBeal (1997). Emerging clean and sober in 2003, Downey Jr. began to rebuild his career.
He marked his debut into music with his debut album, titled "The Futurist", on the Sony Classics Label on November 23rd, 2004. The album's eight original songs, that Downey wrote, and his two musical numbers debuting as cover songs revealed his sultry singing voice and his musical talents. Downey displayed his versatility in two different films in October 2003: the musical/drama The Singing Detective (2003), a remake of the BBC hit of the same name, and the thriller Gothika (2003) starring Halle Berry and Penélope Cruz. Downey starred in powerful yet humbling roles inspired by real-life accounts of some of history's most precious kept secrets, including Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly (2006) in 2006 co-starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson, and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) co-starring Nicole Kidman, a film inspired by the life of Diane Arbus, the revered photographer whose images captured attention in the early 1960s. These roles exhibited Downey's momentum from the previous year of 2005, in which he starred in the Academy Award®-nominated feature film Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005), directed by George Clooney and in Shane Black's action comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) co-starring Val Kilmer. In 2007, he co-starred in David Fincher's suspenseful Zodiac (2007), alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, about the notorious serial killer who haunted San Francisco during the 1970s.
In May 2008, Downey achieved critical acclaim and worldwide box office success for his starring role in Iron Man (2008), Jon Favreau's big-screen rendering of the Marvel comic book superhero. The film co-starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges and Terrence Howard. In August of 2008, Downey starred with Ben Stiller and Jack Black in the comedy Tropic Thunder (2008), and went on to receive an Academy Award®-nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his, Kirk Lazarus.
In December 2009, Downey starred in the action-adventure Sherlock Holmes (2009). The film, directed by Guy Ritchie, co-starred Jude Law and Rachel McAdams and earned Downey a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical in January of 2010. In early Summer 2010, Downey re-teamed with director Jon Favreau and reprised his role as "Tony Stark/Iron Man" in the hugely successful sequel to the original film, Iron Man 2 (2010), starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson and Mickey Rourke.
Downey next starred in Due Date (2010), a comedy directed by Todd Phillips, in which he plays the role of an expectant father on a road trip racing to get back in time for the birth of his first child. Due Date (2010), starring The Hangover (2009)'s Zach Galifianakis, was released in November 2010.
Downey was honored by Time Magazine's "Time 100" in 2008, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. His laurels include two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe wins, numerous other award nominations and wins, and tremendous popular and commercial success, particularly in his roles as Sherlock Holmes and Tony Stark (the latter of which he has so far played in Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). For three consecutive years, from 2012 to 2015, Downey has topped the Forbes list of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, making an estimated $80 million in earnings between June 2014 and June 2015.
In 2005, Downey Jr. married Susan Downey, with whom he has two children. Downey also has another son, Indio Falconer Downey, born 1993, from his first marriage to Deborah Falconer, from whom he was officially divorced in 2004.
Robert has jump-started the Team Downey Production Company with wife Susan Downey.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Striking Irish actor Cillian Murphy was born in Douglas, the oldest child of Brendan Murphy, who works for the Irish Department of Education, and a mother who is a teacher of French. He has three younger siblings. Murphy was educated at Presentation Brothers College, Cork. He went on to study law at University College Cork, but dropped out after about a year. During this time, Murphy also pursued an interest in music, playing guitar in various bands. Upon leaving University, Murphy joined the Corcadorca Theater Company in Cork, and played the lead role in "Disco Pigs", amongst other plays.
Various film roles followed, including a film adaptation of Disco Pigs (2001). However, his big film break came when he was cast in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002), which became a surprise international hit. This performance earned him nominations for Best Newcomer at the Empire Awards and Breakthrough Male Performance at the MTV Movie Awards.
Murphy went on to supporting roles in high-profile films such as Cold Mountain (2003) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), and then was cast in two villain roles: Dr. Jonathan Crane, aka The Scarecrow, in Batman Begins (2005) and Jackson Rippner in Red Eye (2005). Although slight in nature for a villain, Murphy's piercing blue eyes helped to create creepy performances and critics began to take notice. Manhola Dargis of the New York Times cited Murphy as a "picture-perfect villain", while David Denby of The New Yorker noted he was both "seductive" and "sinister".
Later that year, Murphy starred as Patrick "Kitten" Braden, an Irish transgender woman in search of her mother in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto (2005), a film adaptation of the Pat McCabe novel. Although the film was not a box office success, Murphy was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical and he won Best Actor for the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards.
The following year, Murphy starred in Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). The film was the most successful independent Irish film and won the Palm D'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Murphy continued to take roles in a number of independent films, and also reprised his role as the Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008). Nolan is known for working with actors in multiple films, and cast Murphy in Inception (2010) as Robert Fischer, the young heir of the multi-billion dollar empire, who was the target of DiCaprio's dream team. His most well-known work is starring as Thomas Shelby in the British TV show Peaky Blinders beginning in 2013.
Murphy continues to appear in high-profile films such as In Time (2011), Red Lights (2012), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), the final film in Nolan's Batman trilogy.
Murphy is married to Yvonne McGuinness, an artist. The couple have two sons, Malachy and Aran.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Willard Carroll "Will" Smith II (born September 25, 1968) is an American actor, comedian, producer, rapper, and songwriter. He has enjoyed success in television, film, and music. In April 2007, Newsweek called him "the most powerful actor in Hollywood". Smith has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, two Academy Awards, and has won four Grammy Awards.
In the late 1980s, Smith achieved modest fame as a rapper under the name The Fresh Prince. In 1990, his popularity increased dramatically when he starred in the popular television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The show ran for six seasons (1990-96) on NBC and has been syndicated consistently on various networks since then. After the series ended, Smith moved from television to film, and ultimately starred in numerous blockbuster films. He is the only actor to have eight consecutive films gross over $100 million in the domestic box office, eleven consecutive films gross over $150 million internationally, and eight consecutive films in which he starred open at the number one spot in the domestic box office tally.
Smith is ranked as the most bankable star worldwide by Forbes. As of 2014, 17 of the 21 films in which he has had leading roles have accumulated worldwide gross earnings of over $100 million each, five taking in over $500 million each in global box office receipts. As of 2014, his films have grossed $6.6 billion at the global box office. He has received Best Actor Oscar nominations for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness.
Smith was born in West Philadelphia, the son of Caroline (Bright), a Philadelphia school board administrator, and Willard Carroll Smith, Sr., a refrigeration engineer. He grew up in West Philadelphia's Wynnefield neighborhood, and was raised Baptist. He has three siblings, sister Pamela, who is four years older, and twins Harry and Ellen, who are three years younger. Smith attended Our Lady of Lourdes, a private Catholic elementary school in Philadelphia. His parents separated when he was 13, but did not actually divorce until around 2000.
Smith attended Overbrook High School. Though widely reported, it is untrue that Smith turned down a scholarship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); he never applied to college because he "wanted to rap." Smith says he was admitted to a "pre-engineering [summer] program" at MIT for high school students, but he did not attend. According to Smith, "My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college."
Smith started as the MC of the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, with his childhood friend Jeffrey "DJ Jazzy Jeff" Townes as producer, as well as Ready Rock C (Clarence Holmes) as the human beat box. The trio was known for performing humorous, radio-friendly songs, most notably "Parents Just Don't Understand" and "Summertime". They gained critical acclaim and won the first Grammy awarded in the Rap category (1988).
Smith spent money freely around 1988 and 1989 and underpaid his income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service eventually assessed a $2.8 million tax debt against Smith, took many of his possessions, and garnished his income. Smith was nearly bankrupt in 1990, when the NBC television network signed him to a contract and built a sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, around him.
The show was successful and began his acting career. Smith set for himself the goal of becoming "the biggest movie star in the world", studying box office successes' common characteristics.
Smith's first major roles were in the drama Six Degrees of Separation (1993) and the action film Bad Boys (1995) in which he starred opposite Martin Lawrence.
In 1996, Smith starred as part of an ensemble cast in Roland Emmerich's Independence Day. The film was a massive blockbuster, becoming the second highest grossing film in history at the time and establishing Smith as a prime box office draw. He later struck gold again in the summer of 1997 alongside Tommy Lee Jones in the summer hit Men in Black playing Agent J. In 1998, Smith starred with Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State.
He turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix in favor of Wild Wild West (1999). Despite the disappointment of Wild Wild West, Smith has said that he harbors no regrets about his decision, asserting that Keanu Reeves's performance as Neo was superior to what Smith himself would have achieved, although in interviews subsequent to the release of Wild Wild West he stated that he "made a mistake on Wild Wild West. That could have been better."
In 2005, Smith was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for attending three premieres in a 24-hour time span.
He has planned to star in a feature film remake of the television series It Takes a Thief.
On December 10, 2007, Smith was honored at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Smith left an imprint of his hands and feet outside the world-renowned theater in front of many fans. Later that month, Smith starred in the film I Am Legend, released December 14, 2007. Despite marginally positive reviews, its opening was the largest ever for a film released in the United States during December. Smith himself has said that he considers the film to be "aggressively unique". A reviewer said that the film's commercial success "cemented [Smith's] standing as the number one box office draw in Hollywood." On December 1, 2008, TV Guide reported that Smith was selected as one of America's top ten most fascinating people of 2008 for a Barbara Walters ABC special that aired on December 4, 2008.
In 2008 Smith was reported to be developing a film entitled The Last Pharaoh, in which he would be starring as Taharqa. It was in 2008 that Smith starred in the superhero movie Hancock.
Men in Black III opened on May 25, 2012 with Smith again reprising his role as Agent J. This was his first major starring role in four years.
On August 19, 2011, it was announced that Smith had returned to the studio with producer La Mar Edwards to work on his fifth studio album. Edwards has worked with artists such as T.I., Chris Brown, and Game. Smith's most recent studio album, Lost and Found, was released in 2005.
Smith and his son Jaden played father and son in two productions: the 2006 biographical drama The Pursuit of Happyness, and the science fiction film After Earth, which was released on May 31, 2013.
Smith starred opposite Margot Robbie in the romance drama Focus. He played Nicky Spurgeon, a veteran con artist who takes a young, attractive woman under his wing. Focus was released on February 27, 2015. Smith was set to star in the Sci-Fic thriller Brilliance, an adaptation of Marcus Sakey's novel of the same name scripted by Jurassic Park writer David Koepp. But he left the project.
Smith played Dr. Bennet Omalu of the Brain Injury Research Institute in the sports-drama Concussion, who became the first person to discover chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a football player's brain. CTE is a degenerative disease caused by severe trauma to the head that can be discovered only after death. Smith's involvement is mostly due to his last-minute exit from the Sci-Fi thriller-drama Brilliance. Concussion was directed by Peter Landesman and-bead filmed in Pittsburgh, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. It received $14.4 million in film tax credits from Pennsylvania. Principal photography started on October 27, 2014. Actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw played his wife. Omalu served as a consultant.
As of November 2015, Smith is set to star in the independent drama Collateral Beauty, which will be directed by David Frankel. Smith will play a New York advertising executive who succumbs to an deep depression after a personal tragedy.
Nobel Peace Prize Concert December 11, 2009, in Oslo, Norway: Smith with wife Jada and children Jaden and Willow Smith married Sheree Zampino in 1992. They had one son, Trey Smith, born on November 11, 1992, and divorced in 1995. Trey appeared in his father's music video for the 1998 single "Just the Two of Us". He also acted in two episodes of the sitcom All of Us, and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and on the David Blaine: Real or Magic TV special.
Smith married actress Jada Koren Pinkett in 1997. Together they have two children: Jaden Christopher Syre Smith (born 1998), his co-star in The Pursuit of Happyness and After Earth, and Willow Camille Reign Smith (born 2000), who appeared as his daughter in I Am Legend. Smith and his brother Harry own Treyball Development Inc., a Beverly Hills-based company named after Trey. Smith and his family reside in Los Angeles, California.
Smith was consistently listed in Fortune Magazine's "Richest 40" list of the forty wealthiest Americans under the age of 40.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Martin Fitzgerald Lawrence is an African-American comedian, producer, writer, director and actor. He is known for his roles in the Bad Boys trilogy, Martin, Def Comedy Jam, Big Momma's House, Open Season, House Party, Boomerang, Wild Hogs, What's Happening Now!!, Nothing to Lose, Life and Blue Streak. He has three daughters.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Mark Hamill is best known for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy - Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) - a role he reprised in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) and Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019). He also starred and co-starred in the films Corvette Summer (1978), The Big Red One (1980), and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014). Hamill's extensive voice acting work includes a long-standing role as the Joker, commencing with Batman: The Animated Series (1992).
Hamill was born in Oakland, California, to Virginia Suzanne (Johnson) and William Thomas Hamill, a captain in the United States Navy. He majored in drama at Los Angeles City College and made his acting debut on The Bill Cosby Show (1969). He then played a recurring role (Kent Murray) on the soap opera General Hospital (1963) and co-starred on the comedy series The Texas Wheelers (1974).
Released on May 25, 1977, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) was an enormous unexpected success and made a huge impact on the film industry. Hamill also appeared in The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) and later starred in the successful sequels Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). For both of the sequels, Hamill was honored with the Saturn Award for Best Actor given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. He reprised the role of Luke Skywalker for the radio dramatizations of both "Star Wars" (1981) and "The Empire Strikes Back" (1983), and then in a starring role in Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017). For the radio dramatization of "Return of the Jedi" (1996), the role was played by a different actor.
He voiced the new Chucky in Child's Play (2019), taking over from Brad Dourif.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Adam Douglas Driver was born in San Diego, California. His mother, Nancy (Needham) Wright, is a paralegal from Mishawaka, Indiana, and his father, Joe Douglas Driver, who has deep roots in the American South, is from Little Rock, Arkansas. His stepfather is a Baptist minister. His ancestry includes Dutch, English, German, Irish and Scottish. Driver was raised in Mishawaka after his parents' divorce, attending Mishawaka High School, where he appeared in plays. After 9/11, he enlisted in the Marines, serving for more than two years before being medically discharged after he suffered an injury, which prevented him from being deployed.
Driver attended the University of Indianapolis (for a year) and then transferred to study drama at Juilliard School in New York City, graduating in 2009. He began acting in plays, appearing on Broadway, before being cast in Lena Dunham's series Girls (2012), as her character's love interest, Adam Sackler. The role gained him attention, and he subsequently began a robust film career, appearing in small roles in J. Edgar (2011) and Lincoln (2012), supporting roles in Frances Ha (2012) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and then to major mesmerizing roles like in the comedy-drama This Is Where I Leave You (2014), Martin Scorsese's Silence (2016) and as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars movie saga beginning with Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015).
Widely regarded as the one of greatest actors of his generation by now both in the United States and internationally as his superb qualities have been expressed further in a sublime range of excellent performances full of unique profoundness, subtlety, charisma and insights such as the ones included in brilliant films like Paterson (2016), Logan Lucky (2017), The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) and The Report (2019). His interpretations in BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Marriage Story (2019) were also nominated in the Academy Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role respectively.- Actor
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Harrison Ford was born on July 13, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, to Dorothy (Nidelman), a radio actress, and Christopher Ford (born John William Ford), an actor turned advertising executive. His father was of Irish and German ancestry, while his maternal grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Minsk, Belarus. Harrison was a lackluster student at Maine Township High School East in Park Ridge Illinois (no athletic star, never above a C average). After dropping out of Ripon College in Wisconsin, where he did some acting and later summer stock, he signed a Hollywood contract with Columbia and later Universal. His roles in movies and television (Ironside (1967), The Virginian (1962)) remained secondary and, discouraged, he turned to a career in professional carpentry. He came back big four years later, however, as Bob Falfa in American Graffiti (1973). Four years after that, he hit colossal with the role of Han Solo in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). Another four years and Ford was Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Four years later and he received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role as John Book in Witness (1985). All he managed four years after that was his third starring success as Indiana Jones; in fact, many of his earlier successful roles led to sequels as did his more recent portrayal of Jack Ryan in Patriot Games (1992). Another Golden Globe nomination came his way for the part of Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive (1993). He is clearly a well-established Hollywood superstar. He also maintains an 800-acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Ford is a private pilot of both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and owns an 800-acre (3.2 km2) ranch in Jackson, Wyoming, approximately half of which he has donated as a nature reserve. On several occasions, Ford has personally provided emergency helicopter services at the request of local authorities, in one instance rescuing a hiker overcome by dehydration. Ford began flight training in the 1960s at Wild Rose Idlewild Airport in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, flying in a Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer, but at $15 an hour, he could not afford to continue the training. In the mid-1990s, he bought a used Gulfstream II and asked one of his pilots, Terry Bender, to give him flying lessons. They started flying a Cessna 182 out of Jackson, Wyoming, later switching to Teterboro, New Jersey, flying a Cessna 206, the aircraft he soloed in. Ford is an honorary board member of the humanitarian aviation organization Wings of Hope.
On March 5, 2015, Ford's plane, believed to be a Ryan PT-22 Recruit, made an emergency landing on the Penmar Golf Course in Venice, California. Ford had radioed in to report that the plane had suffered engine failure. He was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where he was reported to be in fair to moderate condition. Ford suffered a broken pelvis and broken ankle during the accident, as well as other injuries.- Actor
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English film actor, director and author Andy Serkis is known for his performance capture roles comprising motion capture acting, animation and voice work for such computer-generated characters as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001-2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), the eponymous King Kong in the 2005 film, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Captain Haddock / Sir Francis Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015). Serkis earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of serial killer Ian Brady in the British television film Longford (2006), and was nominated for a BAFTA Award for his portrayal of new wave and punk rock musician Ian Dury in the biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010). In 2015, he had a small role in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Serkis has his own motion capture workshop, The Imaginarium Studios in London, which he will use for his directorial debut, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018).
Andrew Clement G. Serkis was born April 20, 1964, in Ruislip Manor, West London, England. He has three sisters and a brother. His father, Clement Serkis, an ethnic Armenian whose original family surname was Serkissian, was a medical doctor working abroad, in Iraq; the Serkis family spent time around the Middle East, and for the first ten years of his life, Andy traveled between Baghdad and London. His mother, Lylie (Weech), who is British-born, was busy working as a special education teacher of handicapped children, so Andy and his four siblings were raised with au pairs in the house. Young Serkis wanted to be an artist; he was fond of painting and drawing, and visualized himself working behind the scenes. He attended St. Benedict's School, a Roman Catholic School for boys at the Benedictine Abbey in London. Serkis studied visual arts at Lancaster University in the north-west of England. There, he became involved in mechanical aspects of the theatre and did stage design and set building for theatrical productions. Then, Serkis was asked to play a role in a student production, and made his stage debut in Barrie Keeffe's play, "Gotcha"; thereafter, he switched from stage design to acting, which was a real calling that transformed his life.
Instead of going to an acting college, Serkis, in 1985, began his professional acting career at the Duke's Playhouse in Lancaster, where he was given an Equity card and performed in fourteen plays, one after another, as an apprentice of Jonathan Petherbridge. After that, he worked in touring theatre companies, doing it for no money, fueled by a sense of enthusiasm, moving to a new town every week. He has thus appeared in a host of popular plays and on almost every renowned British stage. In 1989, he appeared in a stage production of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth", so beginning his long association with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, where he would return many times, to appear in "She Stoops to Conquer", "Your Home in the West" and the "True Nature of Love", among other plays. In the 1990s, Serkis began to make his mark on the London stage, appearing at the Royal Court Theatre as "The Fool" in "King Lear", making his interpretation of "The Fool" as the woman that "Lear", a widower, could relate to - a man, in drag, as a Victorian musician. He also appeared as "Potts" in the hit play, "Mojo", playing in front of full houses and earning huge critical success. In 1987, Serkis made his debut on television, and he acted in several major British TV miniseries throughout the 1990s.
In 1999, Andy Serkis landed the prize role of "Gollum" in Peter Jackson's epic film trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's saga, "The Lord of the Rings". He spent four years in the part and received awards and nominations for his performance as "Gollum", a computer-generated character in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), which won 11 Oscars. "Gollum" was the collaborative team's effort around Serkis's work in performance capture - an art form based on CGI-assisted acting. Serkis's work was an interactive performance in a skin-tight CGI suit with markers allowing cameras to track and register 3D position for each marker. Serkis' every nuance was picked up by several cameras positioned at precisely calculated angles to allow for the software to see enough information to process the image. The images of Serkis' performances were translated into the digital format by animators at Weta Digital studio in New Zealand. There, his image was key-frame animated and then edited into the movie, Serkis did have one scene in "The Return of the King" showing how he originally had the ring, killing another hobbit to posses it after they found it during a fishing trip. He drew from his three cats clearing fur balls out of their throats to develop the constricted voice he produced for "Gollum" and "Sméagol", and it was also enhanced by sound editing in post-production.
Serkis spent almost two years in New Zealand and away from his family, and much of 2002 and 2003 in post-production studios for large periods of time, due to complexity of the creative process of bringing the character of "Gollum" to the screen. Serkis had to shoot two versions for every scene; one version was with him on camera, acting with (chiefly) Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, which served both to show Wood and Astin the moves so that they could precisely interact with the movements of "Gollum", and to provide the CGI artists the subtleties of Gollum's physical movements and facial expressions for their manual finishing of the animated images. In the other version, he'd go the voice off-camera, as Wood and Astin repeated their movements as though "Gollum" were there with them; that take would be the basis for inserting the CGI Gollum used in the released movie. In post-production, Serkis was doing motion-capture wearing a skintight motion capture suit with CGI gear while acting as a virtual puppeteer redoing every single scene in the studio. Additional CGI rotomation was done by animators using the human eye instead of the computer to capture the subtleties of Serkis' performance. Serkis also used this art form in his performance as "Kong" in King Kong (2005), which won him a Toronto Film Critics Association Award (2005) for his unprecedented work helping to realize the main character in "King Kong", and a Visual Effects Society Award (2006) for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Motion Picture.
Apart from his line of CGI-driven characters, Serkis continued with traditional acting in several leading and supporting roles, such as his appearances as "Richard Kneeland" opposite Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 (2004), and "Alley" opposite David Bowie in The Prestige (2006), among other film performances. On television, he starred as 'Vincent Van Gogh' in the sixth episode of Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006), the BBC2 series about artists. Serkis is billed as "Capricorn" in the upcoming adventure film, Inkheart (2008). At the same time, he continued the development of performance capture while expanding his career into computer games. He starred as "King Bothan" in the martial arts drama, Heavenly Sword (2007), a Playstation 3 title, for which he provided a basis for his in-game face and also acts as a dramatic director on the project.
Andy Serkis married actress and singer Lorraine Ashbourne, and the couple have three children: daughter Ruby Serkis (born in 1998), and two sons Sonny Serkis (born in 2000) and Louis Ashbourne Serkis (born on 19 June 2004), who is now also a movie star. Away from acting, Andy Serkis is an accomplished amateur painter. Since his school years at Lancaster, being so close to the Lake District, Serkis developed his other passion in life: mountaineering. He is a pescetarian. Serkis has been active in charitable causes, such as The Hope Foundation, which provides essential life-saving medical aid for children suffering from Leukemia and children from countries devastated by war. In October 2006, he was a presenter at the first annual British Academy Video Games Awards at the Roundhouse, London. Andy Serkis lives with his family in North London, England.- Actor
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English actor, writer, and comedian Simon Pegg was born Simon John Beckingham in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, to Gillian Rosemary (Smith), a civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician. His parents divorced when he was seven. He later took his stepfather's surname "Pegg." He was educated at Brockworth Comprehensive Secondary School in Gloucestershire and went on to Stratford-upon-Avon College to study English literature and performance studies. He then attended the University of Bristol, and earned a bachelor's degree in drama. In the early 2000s, Pegg moved to London and began forging a successful career in stand-up comedy. Television opportunities followed including roles in Six Pairs of Pants (1995), Asylum (1996), and We Know Where You Live (1997). In 1999, Pegg and Jessica Hynes teamed up to write and star in cult sitcom Spaced (1999), directed by Edgar Wright. The series also featured Pegg's best friend Nick Frost. Pegg's breakthrough in film came with the zom-rom-com Shaun of the Dead (2004), which he also co-wrote with director Edgar Wright. Again, the film featured Nick Frost. The trio also scored a hit with police comedy Hot Fuzz (2007). Further film successes followed for Pegg, notably in the iconic role of Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in Star Trek (2009) and alongside Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III (2006) and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011).- Actor
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Nick Frost is an English actor, screenwriter and comedian. He is known for his work in the series of British comedic genre films The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy: Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World's End (2013). He also co-starred in Paul (2011), with frequent collaborator and friend Simon Pegg.
Nicholas John "Nick" Frost is good friends with Simon Pegg and they have appeared alongside each other in several Movies. He resides with his half-Swedish wife, production executive Christina Frostin St Margarets, London. He previously lived in Finsbury Park, which was also the filming location for Shaun of the Dead. In a 2005 interview, Frost stated that he was brought up as a Catholic. He is a supporter of West Ham United, as well as being a rugby player, formerly playing for Barking RFC. On 22 June 2011, Frost's wife gave birth to a son.- Actor
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Martin Freeman is an English actor, known for portraying Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit film trilogy, Tim Canterbury in the original UK version of sitcom mockumentary The Office (2001), Dr. John Watson in the British crime drama Sherlock (2010) and Lester Nygaard in the dark comedy-crime drama TV series Fargo (2014).
His other notable film roles include the romantic comedy Love Actually (2003) and the comic science fiction film The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005).- Actor
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Born in London, England, Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is the second child of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the U.K., and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His maternal grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema and head of the famous Ealing Studios. His older sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, is a documentarian. His father was of Northern Irish and English descent, and his mother was Jewish (from a family from Latvia and Poland). Daniel was educated at Sevenoaks School in Kent, which he despised, and the more progressive Bedales in Petersfield, which he adored. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic School. Daniel made his film debut in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), but then acted on stage with the Bristol Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Companies and did not appear on screen again until 1982, when he landed his first adult role, a bit part in Gandhi (1982). He also appeared on British television that year in Frost in May (1982) and How Many Miles to Babylon? (1982). Notable theatrical performances include Another Country (1982-83), Dracula (1984) and The Futurists (1986).
His first major supporting role in a feature film was in The Bounty (1984), quickly followed by My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A Room with a View (1985). The latter two films opened in New York on the same day, offering audiences and critics evidence of his remarkable range and establishing him as a major talent. The New York Film Critics named him Best Supporting Actor for those performances. In 1986, he appeared on stage in Richard Eyre's "The Futurists" and on television in Eyre's production of The Insurance Man (1986). He also had a small role in a British/French film, Nanou (1986). In 1987, he assumed leading-man status in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), followed by a comedic role in the unsuccessful Stars and Bars (1988). His brilliant performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (1989) won him numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor.
He returned to the stage to work again with Eyre, as Hamlet at the National Theater, but was forced to leave the production close to the end of its run because of exhaustion, and has not appeared on stage since. He took a hiatus from film as well until 1992, when he starred in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), a film that met with mixed reviews but was a great success at the box office. He worked with American director Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence (1993), based on Edith Wharton's novel. Subsequently, he teamed again with Jim Sheridan to star in In the Name of the Father (1993), a critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination. His next project was in the role of John Proctor in father-in-law Arthur Miller's play The Crucible (1996), directed by Nicholas Hytner. He worked with Scorsese again to star in Gangs of New York (2002), another critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Day-Lewis's wife, Rebecca Miller, offered him the lead role in her film The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), in which he played a dying man with regrets over how his wife had evolved and over how he had brought up his teenage daughter. During filming, he arranged to live separate from his wife to achieve the "isolation" needed to focus on his own character's reality. The film received mixed reviews. In 2007, he starred in director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!", titled There Will Be Blood (2007). Day-Lewis received the Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, and a variety of film critics' circle awards for the role. In 2009, Day-Lewis starred in Rob Marshall's musical adaptation Nine (2009) as film director Guido Contini. He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.- Actor
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From small-town Oklahoma native to internationally acclaimed actor and musician, Wes Studi credits his passion and multi-faceted background for his powerful character portrayals that forever changed a Hollywood stereotype. Within a few years of his arrival in Hollywood, Studi caught the attention of the public in Dances with Wolves (1990). In 1992, his powerful performance as "Magua" in The Last of the Mohicans (1992) established him as one of the most compelling actors in the business.
Studi has since appeared in more than 80 film and television productions, including Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Being Flynn (2012), Avatar (2009), Comanche Moon (2008), Streets of Laredo (1995), Mystery Men (1999), Kings (TV Series), The New World (2005), Hell on Wheels (2011), Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007) and Seraphim Falls (2006). He also brought Tony Hillerman's "Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn" to life in a series of PBS specials produced by Robert Redford: Skinwalkers (2002), Coyote Waits (2003), and A Thief of Time (2003).
Studi was born in Nofire Hollow, Oklahoma, the son of Maggie (Nofire), a housekeeper, and Andy Studie, a ranch hand. Studi exclusively spoke his native Cherokee language until beginning school at the age of five. A professional horse trainer, Studi began acting at The American Indian Theatre Company in Tulsa in the mid-80s.
Studi and his wife, Maura Dhu Studi, live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They have a son, Kholan. Studi has a daughter, Leah, and a son, Daniel, from a previous marriage.- Actor
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An oddly fascinating bloke with prominent bony cheeks and rawboned figure, Peter William (Pete) Postlethwaite was born on February 16, 1946 and was a distinguished character actor on stage, TV and film. Growing up the youngest of four siblings in a Catholic family in Warrington, Lancashire (near Liverpool) in middle-class surroundings to working-class parents, he attended St Mary's University (London). However, while completing his studies, he developed an interest in theatre, to the chagrin of his father, who wanted his children to find secure positions in life.
A drama teacher initially at a Catholic girls convent school, he decided to follow his acting instincts full-time and gradually built up an impressive array of classical stage credits via repertory, including the Bristol Old Vic Drama School, and in stints with Liverpool Everyman, Manchester Royal Exchange and the Royal Shakespeare Company. By the 1980s he was ready to branch out into film and TV, giving a startling performance as a wife abuser in the Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988).
By 1993 he had crossed over into Hollywood parts and earned his first Oscar nomination for his superb role as Daniel Day-Lewis' father in In the Name of the Father (1993). Other quality roles came his way with The Usual Suspects (1995), Brassed Off (1996), and Amistad (1997). He did fine work on television in Sharpe's Company (1994), Lost for Words (1999), and The Sins (2000). Postlethwaite worked equally both in the UK and abroad, and avoided the public limelight for the most part, except for occasional displays of political activism.
Postlethwaite lived quietly out of the spotlight in England and continued on in films with roles in The Shipping News (2001), The Limit (2004), Dark Water (2005), The Omen (2006), Ghost Son (2007) and Solomon Kane (2009). In 2010, he was seen in Clash of the Titans (2010), Inception (2010) and The Town (2010).
Postlewaite died on January 2, 2011, at age 64, of pancreatic cancer. He was surrounded by his wife and son, and by his daughter from a prior relationship.- Producer
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The youngest of five, David Arquette was born in Winchester, Virginia and is part of the illustrious Arquette family, whose work has spread over several generations. His parents, Lewis Arquette, an actor, and Brenda Denaut (née Nowak), an acting teacher and therapist, had 4 other children: Rosanna Arquette, Richmond Arquette, Patricia Arquette, and Alexis Arquette, all actors. His paternal grandfather, Cliff Arquette, was also an entertainer. David's mother was from an Ashkenazi Jewish family (from Poland and Russia), while David's father had French-Canadian, Swiss-German, and English ancestry.
Like his siblings, Arquette started working at an early age, and his first major role came as Luke Perry's character's best friend in the hit film Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992). But his major break both personally and professionally didn't come until 1996 when he was cast in the slasher flick Scream (1996) starring opposite close friend Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell and more importantly Friends (1994), with Courteney Cox who he married in San Francisco in the summer of 1999. Scream (1996) earned worldwide success and acclaim as did Arquette for his role as lovable simple cop "Dewey". His role proved to be so popular that in the original script his character was meant to die, but due to test audiences response to Dewey the script was changed and he returned for both Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 3 (2000). Usually known for his goofiness in more mainstream roles, his greatest performances and reviews have come for his indie films such as Johns (1996), Dream with the Fishes (1997) and The Grey Zone (2001). David and wife Courteney Cox reside in LA and produce their own DIY show Mix It Up (2003) because of their love for home improvement.- Actor
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Joe Mantegna is an American actor who has made over 200 film and TV appearances. He is also a producer, writer, and director, and is probably best known for his role as Joey Zasa in the Francis Ford Coppola epic The Godfather Part III (1990), in which he stars alongside Al Pacino and Andy Garcia.
Joseph Anthony Mantegna, Jr. was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Mary Anne (Novelli), a shipping clerk, and Joseph Anthony Mantegna, Sr., an insurance salesman. He is of Italian descent. Having obtained a degree in acting from the Goodman School of Drama and taken to the stage early on in life, it is no surprise that Joe has maintained a strong relationship with the playwright -turned- screenwriter-director David Mamet. They have collaborated on several projects. He also stars as SSA David Rossi on the long running TV drama Criminal Minds. (2005-)- Actor
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Judd Asher Nelson was born on November 28, 1959 in Portland, Maine to attorney Leonard Nelson and his wife, Merle Nelson (attorney and state assemblywoman). Judd attended St. Paul's preparatory school in Concord, New Hampshire before majoring in philosophy at the prestigious Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The acting bug bit when he went to watch a friend's audition and was obliged to audition in order to stay. He won the role.
After graduation, Judd headed for New York City and the Stella Adler Conservatory where he was believable in the role as the street-smart Eddie Keaton in the comedy Making the Grade (1984). Judd's next film role was as the stodgy ROTC cadet, Phil Hicks, in the ensemble comedy Fandango (1985). Important and diverse roles in the brat-pack films The Breakfast Club (1985) and St. Elmo's Fire (1985) quickly followed. With his privileged upbringing, Judd could have brought the right degree of preppy-smarmyness, (ala James Spader), to any number of vapid roles, but his intense stare and dark smoldering looks gave him a hint of danger which added to his credibility in films like Billionaire Boys Club (1987), From the Hip (1987) and New Jack City (1991).
While Judd's career has been peppered with under-promoted films and poorly-written television appearances, critics have not been overly kind to this misunderstood actor.- Actor
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Christopher Crosby Farley was born on February 15, 1964, in Madison, Wisconsin, to Mary Anne (Crosby) and Thomas Farley, who owned an oil company. Among his siblings are actors Kevin P. Farley and John Farley. He was of Irish heritage. Farley studied theatre and communications on Marquette University. After finishing university he was in the cast of the Second City Theatre, where he was discovered by the producer of the great comedy show Saturday Night Live (1975), Lorne Michaels. Farley worked on Saturday Night Live (1975) for five years during which he appeared in movies like Wayne's World (1992), Coneheads (1993), Billy Madison (1995) and finally Tommy Boy (1995), with his comic partner and SNL cast member David Spade. The duo later made one more movie called Black Sheep (1996). From that time on, Farley was one of the big comedy stars, and his fame was growing and growing.
After some more time, he made another "lone" movie, Beverly Hills Ninja (1997), which featured former SNL member Chris Rock. Farley was made even more famous, but with his growing fame, his problems grew bigger as well; he didn't want to be the "fat guy who falls down" any longer. Farley had several other problems, too, with alcohol and drug dependency. On December 18th, 1997, he died from a heroin (opiate) and cocaine overdose in his apartment in Chicago, where his body was found by his brother John the next day. Farley's weight of 296 pounds was a contributing factor in his death, but according to his autopsy the alcohol, marijuana and Prozac that was also found in his body, were not. Less than two months prior to his death, he had appeared alongside Chevy Chase on what would be Farley's only SNL show as host. Not unlike his idol John Belushi, he was credited for one more appearance after having left SNL and died at age 33. His death cause was also the same. In the year after Farley's departing, the movie Almost Heroes (1998), where he plays the leading role alongside Matthew Perry was released. He also makes cameo appearances in Dirty Work (1998)- Actor
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Brendan James Fraser was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Canadian parents Carol Mary (Genereux), a sales counselor, and Peter Fraser, a journalist and travel executive. He is of Irish, Scottish, German, Czech, and French-Canadian ancestry. As his parents frequently moved, Brendan can claim affinity with Ottawa, Indianapolis, Detroit, Seattle, London and Rome. His early exposure to theatre, particularly in London, led him to Seattle's Cornish Institute. After graduation he found a minor role as Sailor #1 in River Phoenix's Dogfight (1991), then somewhat more substantial roles in Encino Man (1992) and School Ties (1992). He expresses a preference for playing "fish out of water" men. Five more years of supporting work led finally to the title role in George of the Jungle (1997), a role which fully utilized his charm and beefy good looks, as well as offering him a chance to show off his comic talents. He describes this role as the one which dramatically altered his career. Critical raves for his role in Gods and Monsters (1998) pointed to yet another dimension to his dramatic persona.- Actor
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Steve Buscemi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dorothy (Wilson), a restaurant hostess, and John Buscemi, a sanitation worker. He is of Italian (father) and English, Dutch, and Irish (mother) descent. He became interested in acting during his last year of high school. After graduating, he moved to Manhattan to study acting with John Strasberg. He began writing and performing original theatre pieces with fellow actor/writer Mark Boone Junior. This led to his being cast in his first lead role in Parting Glances (1986). Since then, he has worked with many of the top filmmakers in Hollywood, including Quentin Tarantino, Jerry Bruckheimer, and The Coen Brothers. He is a highly respected actor.- Actor
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Adam Richard Sandler was born September 9, 1966 in Brooklyn, New York, to Judith (Levine), a teacher at a nursery school, and Stanley Alan Sandler, an electrical engineer. He is of Russian Jewish descent. At 17, he took his first step towards becoming a stand-up comedian when he spontaneously took the stage at a Boston comedy club. He found he was a natural comic. He nurtured his talent while at New York University (graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991) by performing regularly in clubs and at universities. During his freshman year, he snagged a recurring role as the Huxtable family's friend Smitty on The Cosby Show (1984). While working at a comedy club in L.A., he was "discovered" by Dennis Miller, who recommended him to Saturday Night Live (1975) producer Lorne Michaels and told him that Sandler had a big talent. This led to his being cast in the show in 1990, which he also wrote for in addition to performing. After Saturday Night Live (1975), Sandler went on to the movies, starring in such hit comedies as Airheads (1994), Happy Gilmore (1996), Billy Madison (1995) and Big Daddy (1999). He has also starred in Mr. Deeds (2002) alongside Winona Ryder; Eight Crazy Nights (2002), an animated movie about the Jewish festival of Chanukah; and Punch-Drunk Love (2002). He also writes and produces many of his own films and has composed songs for several of them, including The Wedding Singer (1998). Sandler has had several of his songs placed on the "Billboard" charts, including the classic "The Chanukah Song".- Actor
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Award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo was born on November 22, 1967, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, of humble means to father Frank Lawrence Ruffalo, a construction painter and Marie Rose (Hebert), a stylist and hairdresser; his father's ancestry is Italian and his mother is of half French-Canadian and half Italian descent. Mark moved with his family to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he lived out most of his teenage years. Following high school, Mark moved with his family to San Diego and soon migrated north, eventually settling in Los Angeles.
Mark first took classes at the Stella Adler Conservatory and subsequently co-founded the Orpheus Theatre Company, an Equity-Waiver establishment, where he worked in nearly every capacity. From acting, writing, directing and producing to running the lights and building sets while building his resume.
Moving into film and TV, Mark's inauspicious movie debut was the drifter role of Christian in the horror opus Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance (1994) and returned to the film series in the role of Joey with Mirror Mirror 3: The Voyeur (1995). He continued on through the 1990's rather indistinctly with more secondary roles in the horror film The Dentist (1996) starring madman Corbin Bernsen; an amusing perf in the obscure dramedy The Last Big Thing (1996); a third billed role in the Jerry Stiller/Anne Meara bickering senior comedy A Fish in the Bathtub (1998); and the war drama Ceremony... The Ritual of Love (1976) directed by Ang Lee.
Bartending for nearly nearly a decade to make ends meet and discouraged enough to give it up, a chance meeting and resulting collaboration with playwright/screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan approaching the millennium changed everything. Ruffalo won NY success in Lonergan's 1996 off-Broadway play "This Is Our Youth," a story about troubled young adults. This led to his male lead in Lonergan's Oscar-winning film drama You Can Count on Me (2000), playing the ne'er-do-well brother of Laura Linney. The performance drew rave reviews and invited comparisons to an early Marlon Brando.
Ruffalo never looked back. Notable roles in The Last Castle (2001), XX/XY (2002), and Windtalkers (2002) followed, although in 2002 Ruffalo was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a type of brain tumor. Though the tumor was benign, the resulting surgery led to a period of partial facial paralysis, from which he fully recovered. In 2003, Ruffalo scored leading roles alongside two popular female stars, playing a police detective opposite Meg Ryan in In the Cut (2003) and the love interest of Gwyneth Paltrow in the comedy View from the Top (2003).
Though both films were high-profile box office disappointments, Ruffalo went on to four notable (if highly disparate) films in 2004 -- We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), 13 Going on 30 (2004), and Collateral (2004) -- which solidified his ability to be both a popular leading man and an acclaimed ensemble player in either comedy or drama.
After 2004, Ruffalo was consistently at work, with leads in popular Hollywood films and independent productions that continued to solidify him as one of film's most consistently strong actors: Just Like Heaven (2005), All the King's Men (2006), Zodiac (2007), Reservation Road (2007), and The Brothers Bloom (2008). He also made his Broadway debut as Moe Axelrod in the play "Awake and Sing!"
In 2010 Ruffalo achieved something of a breakthrough, by directing the indie film Sympathy for Delicious (2010), which won him the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and co-starring as the sperm-donor father to lesbian couple Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right (2010). His role in the idiosyncratic domestic comedy/drama earned him Academy Award, Independent Spirit Award, Screen Actors Guild, and BAFTA nominations for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to earn two more Best Supporting Actor nominations as an Olympic-winning wrestling champion in Foxcatcher (2014) and as a journalist working to uncover the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in Spotlight (2015). In 2017, the actor returned to Broadway in Arthur Miller's "The Price."
High-profile roles in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010) and Longeran's long-delayed film Margaret (2011) followed before Ruffalo's appearance as Dr. Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk, in Joss Whedon's movie blockbuster The Avengers (2012). Garnering highly positive reviews for a role in which actors Eric Bana and Edward Norton could not find success in previous films made Ruffalo a box office action star in addition to a critically-acclaimed actor. He returned to the Banner/Hulk role frequently in such Marvel movies as Iron Man 3 (2013), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Captain Marvel (2019) and Avengers: Endgame (2019),
Reunited with former co-star Gwyneth Paltrow in the sex-addiction comedy-drama Thanks for Sharing (2012), he went on to earn a Golden Globe nomination for playing a bipolar Dad in Infinitely Polar Bear (2014). Ruffalo also took on the lead in Ryan Murphy's adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS-drama play The Normal Heart (2014) and earned a SAG Award and Emmy Nomination. He later took home the Emmy playing twin brothers, one a paranoid schizophrenic, in I Know This Much Is True (2020).
Ruffalo has been married to actress Sunrise Coigney since 2000; the couple has three children, two sons and a daughter.- Actor
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One of Hollywood's most private and guarded leading men, Andy Garcia has created iconic characters while at the same time staying true to his acting roots and personal projects.
Garcia was born Andrés Arturo García Menéndez on April 12, 1956, in Havana, Cuba, to Amelie Menéndez, a teacher of English, and René García Núñez, an attorney and avocado farmer. Garcia's family was relatively affluent. However, when he was two years old, Fidel Castro came to power, and the family fled to Miami Beach. Forced to work menial jobs for a while, the family started a fragrance company that was eventually worth more than a million dollars. He attended Natilus Junior High School and later at Miami Beach Senior High School. Andy was a popular student in school, a good basketball player and good-looking. He dreamed of playing professional baseball. In his senior year, though, he contracted mononucleosis and hepatitis, and unable to play sports, he turned his attention to acting.
He studied acting with Jay W. Jensen. Jensen was a South Florida legend, counting among his numerous students, Brett Ratner, Roy Firestone, Mickey Rourke, and Luther Campbell. Following his positive high school experiences in acting, he continued his drama studies at Florida International University.
Soon, he was headed out to Hollywood. His first break came as a gang member on the very first episode of the popular TV series Hill Street Blues (1981). His role as a cocaine kingpin in 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) put him on the radar of Brian De Palma, who was casting for his gangster classic The Untouchables (1987). At first, he envisioned Garcia as Al Capone's sadistic henchman Frank Nitti, but fearing typecasting as a gangster, Garcia campaigned for the role of "George Stone", the Italian cop who gets accepted into Eliot Ness' famous band of lawmen. Garcia's next notable role came in Black Rain (1989) by acclaimed director Ridley Scott, as the partner of police detective Michael Douglas. He then co-starred with Richard Gere in Internal Affairs (1990), directed by Mike Figgis. In 1989, Francis Ford Coppola was casting for the highly anticipated third installment of his "Godfather" films. The Godfather Part III (1990) included one of the most sought-after roles in decades, the hot-headed son of "Sonny Corleone" and mob protégé of "Michael Corloene", "Vincent Mancini". A plum role for any young rising star, the role was campaigned for by a host of actors. Val Kilmer, Alec Baldwin, Vincent Spano, Charlie Sheen, and even Robert De Niro (who wanted the role changed to accommodate his age) were all beaten out by the up-and-coming Garcia. His performance was Oscar-nominated as Best Supporting Actor, and secured him international stardom and a place in cinematic history. Now a leading man, he starred in such films as Jennifer 8 (1992) and Hero (1992). He won raves for his role as the husband of Meg Ryan in When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) and gave another charismatic gangster turn in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995). He then returned in Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), directed by Sidney Lumet, as well as portraying legendary mobster Lucky Luciano in Hoodlum (1997). In perhaps his most mainstream role, he portrayed a cop in the action film Desperate Measures (1998). Garcia then starred in a few lower-profile projects that didn't do much for his career, but things turned around in 2001, with the first of many projects being his role as a cold casino owner in Ocean's Eleven (2001), directed by Steven Soderbergh. Seeing his removal from Cuba as involuntary, Garcia is proud of his heritage which influences his life and work. One such case is his portrayal of renowned Cuban trumpet player Arturo Sandoval in For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000). He is an extremely private man, and strong believer in old-fashioned chivalry. Married to his wife, Maria Victoria, since 1982, the couple has three daughters. One of the most talented leading men around, Garcia has had a unique career of staying true to his own ideals and thoughts on acting. While some would have used some of the momentum he has acquired at different points in his career to get rich off lightweight projects, Garcia has stayed true to stories and films that aspire to something more. But with a presence and style that never seem old, a respect from directors and film buffs, alike, Andy Garcia will be remembered for a long time in film history.- Actor
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Andy Griffith is best known for his starring roles in two very popular television series, The Andy Griffith Show (1960) and Matlock (1986). Griffith earned a degree in music from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the 1950s, he became a regular on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) and The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1956). He was featured in the Broadway play "No Time for Sergeants" (1955) for which he received a Tony nomination, and he later appeared in the film version. His film debut was in the provocative and prophetic A Face in the Crowd (1957), in which Griffith gave a performance that has been described as stunning.
On The Andy Griffith Show (1960), Griffith portrayed a folksy small-town sheriff who shared simple heartfelt wisdom. The series was one of the most popular television series in history. It generated some successful spin-offs, and the original is still seen in reruns to this day. Griffith created his own production company in 1972, which produced several movies and television series. In 1981, he was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal in Murder in Texas (1981). In 1983, Griffith was stricken with Guillain-Barre syndrome, but he recovered after rehabilitation. In 1986, he produced and starred in the very successful television series Matlock (1986). The series spawned numerous television movies as well. When he accepted the People's Choice Award for this series, he said this was his favorite role. Andy Griffith died at age 86 of a heart attack in his home in Dare County, North Carolina on July 3, 2012.- 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.
- Son of actor John McGiver, Boris McGiver is an American actor born in upstate New York to second-generation Ukrainian and Irish parents (Shmigelsky and McGiver). He is known for Uncle George in SERVANT (Apple TV), Glen Maskins in For Life (ABC), Monsignor Korecki in Evil (CBS), Tom Hammerschmidt in House of Cards (2013), Hersh in Person of Interest (2011), Marimow in The Wire (2002); also for roles in Lincoln (2012), "TURN: Washington's Spies" (2014), Taxi (2004), and John Adams (2008), as well as a slew of others. He came to acting later than most, since his main goal in his youth was to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy. Though accepted to the Academy's class of 1984, he was let go at the last minute due to minor knee problems, which left him less than the perfect physical specimen the Academy demanded of its incoming cadets. That heartbreak, however, led him circuitously back to his nascent attraction to the field of acting. He is a graduate of NYU's Graduate Acting Program, and he credits Ron Van Lieu, the great acting teacher, with helping him begin to understand this beautiful art of acting. Spending a year in Sweden also turned him into a socialist, a label he wears with pride--compassion being its major tenet.
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Paul Ben-Victor is an internationally recognized actor whose career spans four decades on stage, film, and television which includes his iconic performance as the Greek mobster Spiros Vondas on the acclaimed HBO series THE WIRE which has been called the greatest series of all-time.
One of the film world's most beloved performer, he has worked with groundbreaking directors including Martin Scorsese, Tony Scott, Antoine Fuqua, Steven Zaillian, and Clint Eastwood. Paul's recent work includes THE IRISHMAN opposite Al Pacino, PLANE with Gerard Butler, and EMANCIPATION opposite Will Smith. His other feature credits include starring alongside Samuel L. Jackson in THE BANKER, with Kevin Hart and Will Ferrell in GET HARD, Robert DeNiro and Sylvester Stallone in GRUDGE MATCH, along with classics like TOMBSTONE and TRUE ROMANCE further showcase his timeless appeal.
In television, Paul Ben-Victor has played a number of roles that have left a lasting cultural impact in many highly acclaimed series, including his portrayal of studio head Alan Gray in HBO's ENTOURAGE and appearing opposite Matthew McConaughey in the award winning TRUE DETECTIVE. Most recently, he was in PAM AND TOMMY with Lily James and Sebastian Stan and can next be seen in significant roles in the new KRISTEN BELL SHOW for Netflix, the LINCOLN LAWYER for Netflix, RAISING KANAN for Starz, BOOKIE for HBO Max and the international hit THE CHOSEN for Lionsgate. His other television credits include VINYL, IN PLAIN SIGHT, JOHN FROM CINCINNATI, NYPD BLUE, WILL & GRACE, THE MICK, EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS, PREACHER, and GOLIATH among many others.
Additionally, Ben-Victor received critical acclaim for his portrayal of iconic comedian 'Moe Howard' in the ABC biopic THE THREE STOOGES.
Paul has worked on stage at the prestigious Longwharf Theater, the Seattle Repertory Theater, and on Broadway at The American Place Theater in New York. He is also a proud lifetime member of the renowned Actors Studio.- Actor
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Byrne was the eldest of six children born to a family in Dublin, Ireland. His father was a cooper and his mother a hospital worker. He was raised Catholic and educated by the Irish Christian Brothers. He spent five years of his childhood in a seminary training to be a Catholic priest. He later said, "I spent five years in the seminary and I suppose it was assumed that you had a vocation. I have realized subsequently that I didn't have one at all. I don't believe in God. But I did believe at the time in this notion that you were being called." He attended University College Dublin, where he studied archaeology and linguistics, and became proficient in Irish. He played football (soccer) in Dublin with the Stella Maris Football Club.
Byrne worked in archaeology after he left UCD but maintained his love of the Irish language, eventually writing Draíocht (Magic), the first drama in Irish on Ireland's national Irish television station, TG4, in 1996.
He discovered his acting ability as a young adult. Before that he worked at several occupations: archaeologist, cook, bullfighter, schoolteacher of Spanish. He began acting when he was 29 - at first on stage at the Focus Theatre and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, later joining the Royal Court Theatre and the Royal National Theatre in London.
Byrne came to prominence in the final season of the Irish television show The Riordans, later starring in the spin-off series, Bracken. He made his film debut in 1981 as Lord Uther Pendragon in John Boorman's King Arthur epic, Excalibur.
Byrne was featured as therapist Dr. Paul Weston in the critically acclaimed HBO series In Treatment (2008).
In his return to theater in 2008, he appeared as King Arthur in Lerner and Loewe's Camelot with the New York Philharmonic, which was featured in a PBS broadcast in the Live From Lincoln Center series in May of 2008.
Byrne did not visit America until he was 37. In 1988, Byrne married actress Ellen Barkin with whom he has two children. The couple separated amicably in 1993 and divorced in 1999. Byrne resides in Brooklyn, New York.
In November 2004, Byrne was appointed a UNICEF Ireland Ambassador.
In 2007 Byrne was presented with the first of the newly created Volta awards at the 5th Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. This was for lifetime achievement in acting. He also received the Honorary Patronage of the University Philosophical Society, of Trinity College, Dublin, on February 20, 2007. He was awarded an honorary degree in late 2007 by the National University of Ireland, Galway, in recognition of his "outstanding contribution to Irish and international film".- Actor
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Gérard Darmon was born on 29 February 1948 in Paris, France. He is an actor and writer, known for Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002), Betty Blue (1986) and The Good Thief (2002). He was previously married to Mathilda May.- Actor
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Aidan Gillen is an Irish actor. He is best known for portraying Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011), CIA operative Bill Wilson in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Stuart Alan Jones in the Channel 4 series Queer as Folk (1999), John Boy in the RTÉ Television series Love/Hate (2010), and Tommy Carcetti in the HBO series The Wire (2002).
In 2011, Gillen began playing Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish on the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011), for which he received his second Irish Film & Television Award nomination.
In 2015 he starred in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015) the second film in the Maze Runner trilogy.
He also appeared in the fourth season of Peaky Blinders as Aberama Gold,and reprises his role in the fifth season too.- Actor
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Multi talented and award winning actor Neal McDonough has been blessed to have an incredible career in the film industry.
He is now producing films alongside his wife Ruvé for the McDonough company. Films such as THE WARRANT, BREAKERS LAW, REDSTONE, BOON, BLACK SPARTANS ,and most recently the hit film THE SHIFT for Angel Studios.
McDonough is about to start filming THE LAST RODEO which he has written with his partner Derek Presley.
The McDonough company will be producing this film with Jon Avnet directing.
After that they will going into production on their next western he has written called THE WICKED AND THE RIGHTEOUS .
McDonough is well known for performances in productions, such as BAND OF BROTHERS, MINORITY REPORT, WALKING TALL and STAR-TREK FIRST CONTACT. He also started in many stage productions, and most recently playing Whitey Bulger on stage in FINDING WHITEY at the Wilbur theater in Boston.
He also recently played Daddy Warbucks in ANNIE and numerous other stage productions as well.
His voice over career is what really started him. The voice of many cartoons, including Bruce Banner in the INCREDIBLE HULK and in many video games such as CALL OF DUTY ZOMBIES.
He has also been the long term voice of FIDELITY AND CADILLAC.
But he's most proud of his relationship with God, his wife, Ruvé, and their five children.
McDonough trained at Syracuse University and studied at LAMDA in London.- Actor
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Ian Tracey was born on 26 June 1964 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is an actor and director, known for Continuum (2012), Open Range (2003) and Timecop (1994).- Currie Graham was born on 15 February 1965 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is an actor, known for Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), Pompeii (2014) and NYPD Blue (1993).
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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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Imperioli was born Michael Imperioli in Mt. Vernon, New York on March 26, 1966. His film work began in the late 1980s. An early part that brought him recognition was in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990), as Spider, a local kid who works for the gangsters and has a run-in with a psychopathic mob soldier played by Joe Pesci. He worked throughout the 1990s in the New York independent film industry, especially as a regular in Spike Lee's movies, appearing in Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996) and Summer of Sam (1999), generally playing working-class Italian-Americans from the "outer boroughs." While rooted in the New York movie scene, Imperioli also worked in Hollywood in the mid-'90s, in the formulaic movies Bad Boys (1995) and Last Man Standing (1996).
In 1999, Imperioli was cast in The Sopranos (1999) as Christopher Moltisanti, a low-ranking soldier in the Soprano crime organization whose family connections to street boss Tony Soprano move him up the ladder in the organization. Imperioli's multi-layered portrayal of such an unappealing character is a real highlight of the series and earned him an Emmy and a SAG award.
Imperioli has long been active in the New York theater scene as well, having written, directed, produced or starred in numerous plays. He was a founder, along with Lili Taylor (his then-girlfriend and co-star in Household Saints (1993)) of the downtown theater company Machine Full. He has also written several episodes of "The Sopranos" and was a writer on Lee's "Summer of Sam," which he also executive-produced. Although most famous for his prominent part in "The Sopranos," Imperioli has worked on other television programs as well, including Law & Order (1990), New York Undercover (1994) and NYPD Blue (1993). He is married and has two children and one stepdaughter.- Actor
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James Gandolfini was born in Westwood, New Jersey, to Santa (Penna), a high school lunchlady, and James Joseph Gandolfini, Sr., a bricklayer and head school janitor. His parents were both of Italian origin. Gandolfini began acting in the New York theater. His Broadway debut was in the 1992 revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire" with Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin. James' breakthrough role was his portrayal of Virgil the hitman in Tony Scott's True Romance (1993), but the role that brought him worldwide fame and accolades was as complex Mafia boss Tony Soprano in HBO's smash hit series The Sopranos (1999). He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2013 while vacationing in Italy.- Actor
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Steven Van Zandt (né Lento; born November 22, 1950), also known as Little Steven or Miami Steve, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, producer, actor, activist and author. He is best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, in which he plays guitar and mandolin. He is also known for his roles in several television drama series, including as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos (1999-2007) and as Frank Tagliano in Lilyhammer (2012-2014). Van Zandt has his own solo band called Little Steven and The Disciples of Soul, intermittently active since the 1980s. In 2014, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the E Street Band. Van Zandt has produced music, written songs, and had his own songs covered by Bruce Springsteen, Meat Loaf, Nancy Sinatra, Pearl Jam, Artists United Against Apartheid, and the Iron City Houserockers, among others.- Tony Sirico was born in New York City on July 29, 1942 to a family of Italian descent. He grew up in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of East Flatbush and Bensonhurst. His brother, Father Robert Sirico, is a Catholic priest and co-founder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. The Institute has been described as an "American research and educational institution, or think tank," in Grand Rapids, Michigan, whose stated mission is "to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles."
Sirico was convicted of several crimes and was arrested 28 times, including for disorderly conduct, assault, and robbery, before taking up acting. On February 27, 1970, he was arrested at a restaurant, and found with a .32 caliber revolver on his person. In 1971, he was indicted for extortion, coercion, and felony weapons possession, convicted, and sentenced to four years in prison, of which he served 20 months at Sing Sing.
Tony Sirico died on July 8, 2022, from undisclosed causes, aged 79. - Actor
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Steven Ralph Schirripa is an American actor. He is best known for portraying Bobby Baccalieri on The Sopranos and Detective Anthony Abetemarco on Blue Bloods. Schirripa is a producer and host of two Investigation Discovery series: Karma's A B*tech! and Nothing Personal. He was a regular cast member of The Secret Life of the American Teenager and the voice of Roberto in the Open Season series.- Actor
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Joseph R. Gannascoli (born February 15, 1959) is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Vito Spatafore on the HBO series The Sopranos. Prior to acting, Gannascoli was a professional chef. Gannascoli was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. In the 1980s, he attended St. John's University for two years, majoring in communications. He began his cooking career at Manhattan Market in 1981, before leaving to work at Commander's Palace in New Orleans, and then at various restaurants around the country.- Actor
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"Go home and get your shine box....", so said ill-fated Billy Batts in Goodfellas (1990). However, Billy Batts is better known to a legion of crime-film fans as the talented actor, musician, and comedian Frank Vincent. He was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, but was raised in the Greenville section of Jersey City, New Jersey. Frank studied music at St. Pauls Grammar School and became a keen drummer at a young age, while his father introduced him to the dramatic arts. Vincent went on to became quite an accomplished musician and played with some of the key 1960s recording artists including Trini López, Del Shannon and Paul Anka. In 1975 Vincent appeared before the camera for the first time in the low-budget The Death Collector (1976) where he was noticed by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese, who cast Frank in three iconic American films: the first saw Frank play the insolent Salvi in Raging Bull (1980), secondly as the aforementioned made man Billy Batts in Goodfellas (1990) being bumped off by Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, and once again as Frank Marino in Casino (1995). Frank Vincent appeared in over fifty movies, and set the pace as one of the cinema's most versatile and resourceful character actors. With the recognition of his talents, various new opportunities work followed, and Frank lent his skills to contributing and appearing on video games, in television commercials and even rock-music clips with artists including DMX, T-Boz and Hype Williams. He also had the role of Phil Leotardo in the legendary gangster TV series The Sopranos (1999).
Frank Vincent was also the proud recipient of the Italian American Entertainer of the Year Award, and was also acknowledged with a Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Back East Picture Show.- Actor
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Pastore was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York City, and grew up in New Rochelle, New York. Following his graduation from high school, he enlisted as a sailor in the United States Navy and then attended Pace University for three years, before eventually going into the acting industry after befriending Matt Dillon and Kevin Dillon. On June 3, 2015, during an appearance on Good Day New York, Pastore said he was in the club business for close to 30 years, and got into acting in his forties.- Actor
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Federico Castelluccio is a driven and talented individual maintaining careers, as a professional artist, established actor and director. Born in Naples, Italy, Federico moved with his family to Paterson, New Jersey, in 1968. In 1982 he was awarded a full scholarship to the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he earned a BFA in painting and media arts.
As an actor, Federico began studying acting in New York City with renowned teachers, such as, Donald Buka, Molly McCarthy and Charlie Laughton. He performed with several repertory companies in New York,, doing classic, contemporary and original plays. Federico has been in many off, and off, off Broadway plays, as well as regional theatre and Shakespeare festivals.
Early on in his career, while doing "Savage in Limbo", a play by John Patrick Shanley, Federico was approached by agents from Barry-Haft- Brown, who saw his work and asked if they could represent him. Federico signed and almost immediately started booking, TV shows, Films and commercial spots. Some of his early, day player roles, were on, "As The World Turns", "The Guiding Light" and "Another World".
After pounding the "proverbial pavement", for nearly twelve years, Federico was called in to audition for a new HBO series, at the time, called The Sopranos. In the first season, Federico originally auditioned for the New York Boss, Johnny Sack. In the second season and at the height of the show's popularity, Castelluccio was brought in to read for the role of Furio Giunta. He auditioned for casting directors, then for David Chase and producers and finally a screen test with James Gandolfini. After three intense and nerve wracking auditions, Federico won the role and the rest, as they say, is TV history.
With Federico's unmistakable presence as Furio, his old world Neapolitan charm, coupled with the ruthless and dangerous street aspect, made for a multi-dimensional, complex character, who quickly became popular and well loved with fans all over the world. Federico's portrayal of Furio left an indelible mark in the consciousness of the viewing public.
Because of Castelluccio's outstanding work and convincing Italian accent on The Sopranos, people in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, thought Castelluccio was an Italian actor, ( from Italy) who spoke broken English. In fact, most people and fans who watched the show, were surprised to hear Federico speak in his normal voice. This presented a problem for him, since roles with Italian accents were limiting and far and few between. So, Castelluccio had to essentially reintroduce himself to Hollywood, by taking meetings with casting directors, producers, agents, etc... he redirected the path of his acting career and showed versatility by taking on roles where he could speak in different types of accents, as well as his normal English/American speaking voice.
Castelluccio has been making his mark by writing, directing and producing film projects. His 2016 feature film directorial debut, "The Brooklyn Banker," written by, Michael Ricigliano, starring Troy Garity, David Proval, Paul Sorvino and Arthur Nascarella, is based on the award winning short film "Lily of the Feast". Other films written and directed by Castelluccio include the shorts, "Keep You Enemies Closer" starring Peter Greene, William Sadler and Manny Perez. "Forget Me Not", with Yvonne Maria Schaefer and Peter Greene. And the award winning short film "Tracks of Color",starring Manny Perez, Elizabeth Rodriguez and David Castro.
Federico began his career as an actor in 1986. Some of his film credits include Made (2001) with Jon Favreau, Fire (1996) with Robert Klein and Diary of a Hitman (1991) with Danny Aiello. In television, Federico's credits include NYPD Blue (1993). Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006) received two awards - one for best dramatic directing and best dramatic ensemble headed by Robert Downey Jr., Chazz Palminteri and Rosario Dawson. Federico's recent film projects include the biographical _Cantante, El (2006)_ starring Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez; Aftermath (2002), a crime-thriller starring Anthony Michael Hall and Chris Penn and directed and written by Thomas Farone; Il male oscuro (1990), filmed in southern Italy, a short film that Federico executive-produced and in which he acted; Capers (2008), a comedy, is due for release in 2007 and stars Danny Masterson. Lucky Days (2006) recently completed filming in New York City. In television, Federico was seen as the lead role in Dragon Dynasty (2006), which aired on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Castelluccio's most recent acting credits include, "Toy Gun", directed by Marco Serafini, "Exit 0"(Zero), directed by E. B. Hughes, "Sarah Q." directed by John Gallagher, He will be filming the upcoming feature " "The Fifth Borough" in the fall of 2018.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Federico Castelluccio, is an internationally renowned realist painter, art collector and connoisseur of old master baroque painting. He was born in Naples, Italy and moved to the US in 1968. From an early age it was evident that Federico had talent and an innate ability for drawing and painting and was determined to pursue a life in art. In 1982 he received a full presidential scholarship to the School of Visual Arts, in New York City, earning a BFA in painting and media arts. At age 17, prior to commencing his studies at SVA, an opportunity arose to paint a portrait for veteran actor, George Burns. Burns loved the painting and was impressed by Federico's ability to capture his likeness and felt compelled to help the young artists career, by introducing him to executives at PBS, NBC and ABC, all of whom hired the Federico to create paintings and illustrations for their TV programs and publications, .
Castelluccio has received many awards for his paintings and has appeared on national talk shows and radio programs regarding his art. He has been featured in numerous magazines and art publications, including American Artist and People Magazine. Various documentaries have been made on his work, including "Night of Hearts", which focuses on the process, making of and journey of a large figurative painting entitled "Vita". Federico was privately commissioned by art benefactor Christine E. Lynn and presented the painting to the Boca Raton Community Hospital in Florida. "Vita" was unveiled on November 16th, 2006 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
Federico has traveled extensively to Europe for the sole purpose of drawing and painting. He has spent time working in France, Italy and Germany, inspired all along by the European old masters and contemporary realists. Castelluccio's focus has been mainly on painting the figure and still life, as well as, trompe l'oeil and landscape. He works strictly from life and has drawn praise for his paintings and for his exceptional quality and high level of technical ability.
Castelluccio's paintings have been exhibited in prestigious galleries throughout the United States and Europe. His works are held in the collections of Palazzo Chigi, in Ariccia, Italy, Yale University Museum of Art, in New Haven, Connecticut, Kresge Art Museum, in East Lansing, Michigan and Tisch Fine Art Collection, NY. His works can be found in major private collections throughout the United States, South America and Europe. In addition, many well known actors and celebrities own Federico's original work, including, Whoopi Goldberg, Caroline Rhea and Joe Pantoliano, to name a few.
The Kresge Art Museum showed Castelluccio's paintings in an exhibit titled "Masters of Illusion". The show highlighted paintings on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts, including paintings by 19th Century Trompe l'oeil masters, John Frederick Peto and William Harnett. One of Castelluccio's paintings titled, "Torn Titian Taped" was acquired after the exhibit and now hangs in the permanent collection of The Kresge Art Museum, in Michigan.
Castelluccio has lectured at art schools, public events and universities, including Michigan State University and a lecture on Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, at Stony Brook State University, New York. In 2009 he was Master of Ceremony, Honoring Nelson Shanks, at the
Federico is a passionate collector and connoisseur of Old master paintings, early European sculpture and Roman, Greek and Egyptian Antiquities. His collection of 17th century Italian, Baroque paintings, has been highly regarded by scholars, experts and professionals in the art world. He sometimes incorporates from his collection in his own work.
Castelluccio is a serious artist. His fine-art paintings have drawn praise for their high level of technical ability, finding influence in the Renaissance and 17th-century Italian and Dutch baroque masters. Over the years he has exhibited his paintings in galleries in New York City, Washington DC and Santa Fe, New Mexico. His works are held in the collection of the Yale Fine Art Museum and Kresge Art Museum as well as private collections throughout the United States, South America and Europe. In 2006 Federico and Paul Sorvino were privately commissioned for artwork to be donated for permanent installation to a new wing of the Boca Raton Community Hospital in Florida.- Actor
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Ray Abruzzo was born in Queens, New York, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for The Sopranos (1999), Transparent (2014) and The Practice (1997).- Paul Schulze was born on 12 June 1962 in Livonia. Michigan, USA. He is an actor, known for Rambo (2008), Panic Room (2002) and 24 (2001).
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David Proval launched his acting career with a starring role in Mean Streets (1973), directed by Martin Scorsese, and has been working nonstop ever since. Notable features in which he has appeared include The Phantom (1996), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) Four Rooms (1995) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). He is currently set to appear in the independent film White Boy (2002).- Actor
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John Heard was a very talented actor who established himself as a respected thespian in the late 1970s and early '80s, though he is perhaps better known for his turn as Peter McCallister, Kevin McCallister's (Macaulay Culkin) father in the Home Alone (1990) movies.
John was born in Washington, D.C., to Helen (Sperling), who acted in community theatre, and John Heard, who worked for the U.S. government. John established himself with roles in the movies Between the Lines (1977), Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) (a.k.a. "Head Over Heels"), and Heart Beat (1981) (in which he played Jack Kerouac to Nick Nolte's Neal Cassady and Sissy Spacek's Carolyn Cassady), before giving a tour de force performance as a hideously wounded (both physically and psychologically) Vietnam veteran in Cutter's Way (1981) (a.k.a. "Cutter and Bone") opposite Jeff Bridges. He also shined as Reverend Dimmesdale (one of America's first religious hypocrites) in the 1979 PBS version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1979).
Both "Chilly Scenes of Winter" and "Cutter's Way" (originally released as "Head Over Heels" and "Cutter and Bone", respectively) had been re-released under new titles after failing in their first go-rounds, such was the quality of the films. The two re-releases helped redefine the practice by which major studios handled smaller, art house quality pictures by releasing them carefully to select theaters with bespoke marketing campaigns so they reached the proper audience. (Studios would later develop their own art film-independent film subsidiaries to handle such pictures, so they didn't "fall through the cracks" like the first releases of the two Heard films.)
By the early 1980s, Heard seemed on his way to establishing himself as a major American actor, if not on the path to movie stardom. At the time, there was a joke that involved confusing Heard with John Hurt and William Hurt because of the similarity of their last names. At the time these contemporaries were considered equal in terms of their star power.
In the early '80s, it would not have been unreasonable to predict that Heard would become an Oscar winner or a multiple nominee. He continued to work on A-List projects, playing the not-so-sympathetic son to Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (1985) (for which Page won her own Oscar) and Tom Hanks's adult rival in Big (1988), but by the latter part of the decade he had failed to establish himself as a leading man and was playing supporting roles. Also appearing on television, he was nominated for an Emmy for his turn as a corrupt police detective on The Sopranos (1999).
John Heard died on July 21, 2017, in Palo Alto, California.- Actor
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A third-generation actor, Spencer is the son of actress Kathleen Nolan, a former two-term president of the Screen Actors Guild. Father is Richard Heckenkamp, former head of Film Artists Associates, a talent agency. Spencer was raised in New York and Los Angeles and attended Duke and Fordham Universities before embarking on his theatrical studies with acclaimed teacher Sanford Meisner.- Actor
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Bob Gunton is an American actor, primarily known for portraying strict and authoritarian characters in popular films. His better known roles include Chief George Earle in "Demolition Man" (1993), Prison Warden Samuel Norton in "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994), medical school dean Dr. Walcott in "Patch Adams" (1998), and politician Cyrus Vance in "Argo" (2012).
In 1945, Gunton was born Santa Monica, California. His parents were labor union executive Robert Patrick Gunton Sr. and his wife Rose Marie Banovetz. Gunton was raised in California and attended Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California. His college years were spent in the Paulist Seminary St Peter's College, in Baltimore, Maryland, and the University of California, Irvine.
Gunton joined the United States Army in 1969, when 24-years-old. He served until 1971. He served as a radio telephone operator with the 2nd Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. He was assigned to the Fire Support Base Ripcord during the Vietnam War. When the base was evacuated during a siege by North Vietnamese Army (NVA), Gunton manage to retrieve important radios that were in danger of falling in enemy hands. He was awarded with a Bronze Star commendation for his deed.
Gunton was primarily known for theatrical roles in the late 1970s and 1980s. He played Raoul in the Broadway musical "King of Hearts" (1978). For this role he was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. The award was instead won by rival actor Ken Jennings (1947-).
From 1979 to 1983, Gunton played the role of President of Argentina Juan Perón (1895-1974, term 1946-1955, 1973-1974) in "Evita". He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
In 1980, Gunton acted in the play How I Got That Story. He won both the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Male Performer and the Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actor. He was also nominated Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play.
In 1985, Gunton played the King in the musical "Big River". The musical was an adaptation of the novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884) by Mark Twain. For this role Gunton was again nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical.
From 1987 to 1990, Gunton played protagonist Sweeney Todd in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street". He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. While critically acclaimed for this role, Gunton won none of these awards.
In the 1990s, Gunton started focusing more on film roles. More often playing antagonists than heroes or supporting characters,. In 2007, Gunton joined the main cast of the popular action drama television series "24", playing politician Ethan Kanin. He played the role until the end of the series in 2010. In 2015, Gunton joined the main cast of the superhero series "Daredevil". He played the super-villain Leland Owlsley (codenamed "the Owl in the comics).
By 2020 Gunton was 74-years-old. He has never retired, and continues to appear regularly in film and television.- Actor
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Malcolm Goodwin was born in Brooklyn, New York. Malcolm studied at Julia Richman Talent Unlimited Program in New York City, later training at SUNY Purchase College Acting Conservatory, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Theatre Arts and Film. In 2011 he appeared in the music video for the song "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO, and has had many roles in films and TV shows such as American Gangster (2007), Detroit 1-8-7 (2010), Leatherheads (2008), The Longshots (2008), and Crazy on the Outside (2010). In 2015 Malcolm secured the role of Det. Clive Babineaux on iZombie (2015).- Domenick Lombardozzi was born on 25 March 1976 in Bronx, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Cold Pursuit (2019), The Family (2013) and Find Me Guilty (2006).
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Chosen as one of Variety's "Top Ten Actors to Watch" and part of the new breed of leading men in Hollywood, Laz Alonso is starring in Amazon Prime's series THE BOYS. He can also be seen playing opposite Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba in their new series LA'S FINEST. He previously starred opposite Debra Messing and Josh Lucas in NBC's THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA. Laz's extensive television credits also include leading roles in NBC's DECEPTION and A&E's BREAKOUT KINGS.
Theatrically, Laz recently played Carlos Jones in Guy Ritche's CASH TRUCK, opposite Jason Statham, Josh Hartnett and Holt McCallany. Previously he portrayed Congressman John Conyers, in the Annapurna critically acclaimed film DETROIT, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. He also starred opposite Paula Patton and Omar Epps in the independent Thriller TRAFFIK. Alonso previously starred opposite Patton in the hit romantic comedy JUMPING THE BROOM for Columbia Pictures, for which he received a NAACP IMAGE AWARD for Outstanding Actor In A Motion Picture . He has also been nominated for a BET Best Actor Award. Prior to that, he played the heroic role of "Tsu'Tey" in the highest grossing film of all time, James Cameron's AVATAR. Laz played the lead villain role of "Fenix Calderon" in Universal's FAST AND FURIOUS, which reunited the original cast and relaunched the successful franchise. His past movie credits include lead roles in the Sony/Screen Gems' hits STOMP THE YARD and THIS CHRISTMAS, a co-starring role in Sam Mendes' hit JARHEAD, for Universal Pictures opposite Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx, Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, and a supporting role in Rod Lurie's remake of the Sam Peckinpah classic STRAW DOGS. Laz also starred in Spike Lee's MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, in which he played "Hector Negron", based on a true story of a black and Puerto Rican WWII Buffalo Soldier that witnessed something that he carried inside for over 30 years until his past meets him again.
Laz has also executive produced and starred opposite Danny Glover in Alan Jacobs' DOWN FOR LIFE, which ended up with a much-coveted position in the Toronto Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim. He has directed a mini documentary that premiered at Art Basel titled I AM, which highlighted a Washington DC artist who paints homeless people in prestigious settings.
Born and raised in Washington DC, Laz always knew he wanted to be an actor. He graduated from the prestigious Howard University School of Business, earning a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing. After college, he worked on Wall Street as an investment banker at MERRILL LYNCH and began his acting career simultaneously, doing NY off-Broadway theater. He credits his ability to tackle so many different types of roles by his theater training. He now splits his time between Los Angeles and New York City.
WINNER BEST ACTOR NAACP IMAGE AWARDS- Actor
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Michael Manning Weatherly, Jr. was born on July 8, 1968 in New York City, to Patricia Ruth (Hetherington) and Michael Manning Weatherly, Sr. Raised in Fairfield, CT, he left college to pursue a career in acting. He also had a great passion for music, and played in a band while pursuing his acting career. He began acting professionally and landed his first job as Theo Huxtable's roommate on The Cosby Show (1984) and a role in the independent film Trigger Happy (2001) opposite Rosario Dawson. This led to numerous guest spots on television and brought him to Los Angeles, where he landed a regular role in the FOX series Significant Others (1998). He met director Whit Stillman, who cast him in The Last Days of Disco (1998) opposite Chloë Sevigny. Michael also starred as Christina Applegate's ex-husband on the series Jesse (1998) and had roles in The Specials (2000) opposite Rob Lowe, Venus and Mars (2001) opposite Lynn Redgrave and Gun Shy (2000) opposite Liam Neeson and Sandra Bullock.
In 1995 he married actress Amelia Heinle, who appeared with him in The City (1995) and Loving (1983). Unfortunately, their marriage ended in divorce in 1997, despite the birth of their son August in 1996. Michael resides in Los Angeles. Weatherly married internist Dr. Bojana Jankovic on September 30, 2009. The couple live in Los Angeles with their two children, a daughter Olivia, and a son Liam.- Actor
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Freddy Rodríguez was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Planet Terror (2007), Poseidon (2006) and Harsh Times (2005). He has been married to Maria Elsie Rivera since 23 December 1995. They have two children.- Actor
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Jack Davenport was born in 1973 and is the son of actors Maria Aitken and Nigel Davenport. He studied Literature and Film Studies at the University of East Anglia. His first break happened after he wrote to John Cleese to ask to be a runner on Fierce Creatures (1997) where he ended up playing a zoo keeper. His first major role however was that of public school educated barrister Miles in the BBC television series This Life (1996). Recent projects include the stylish Ultraviolet (1998) where he played a modern-day vampire hunter, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) as Matt Damon's love interest, and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) as the Keira Knightley's intended mate.- Actor
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Steve Carell, one of America's most versatile comics, was born Steven John Carell on August 16, 1962, in Concord, Massachusetts. He is the son of Harriet Theresa (Koch), a psychiatric nurse, and Edwin A. Carell, an electrical engineer. His mother was of Polish descent and his father of Italian and German ancestry (Steve's grandfather had changed the surname from "Caroselli" to "Carell"). Steve was educated at The Fenn School, an all-boys private school in Concord, Massachusetts, then at Middlesex School in Concord. After graduating from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, he moved to Chicago where he taught an improvisational comedy class and performed with The Second City troupe, alongside Stephen Colbert.
Carell made his film debut as "Tesio" in Curly Sue (1991). In 1996, he became a cast member of The Dana Carvey Show (1996), and provided the voice for Gary, opposite Colbert in "The Ambiguously Gay Duo". This animated short series produced by Robert Smigel continued on Saturday Night Live (1975), but Carell has joked that he auditioned for SNL and lost the job to Will Ferrell. Carell made a number of guest appearances on such shows as Come to Papa (2004), Just Shoot Me! (1997), and Watching Ellie (2002), before landing a regular stint as a correspondent on The Daily Show (1996) from 1999 until 2005.
Carell played Evan Baxter opposite Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty (2003), and Uncle Arthur opposite Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell in Bewitched (2005). He broke out as a leading man after starring in the summer box-office hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), which he also co-wrote; the film was chosen as one of the Top Ten movies of 2006 by the American Film Institute. He next starred in the critically acclaimed Little Miss Sunshine (2006), an indie dark comedy which became a surprise hit and earned four Oscar nominations, and won two (Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin and Best Screenplay for Michael Arndt). In 2007, Carell reprised his role as Evan Baxter, filling Jim Carrey's leading-man shoes as a politician asked by God to build a giant ark in Evan Almighty (2007), the second installment of the "Almighty" franchise, co-starring Lauren Graham and Morgan Freeman. In 2008, he re-united with Jim Carrey in the highly successful animation hit Horton Hears a Who! (2008), then appeared as Agent Maxwell Smart in the popular comedy Get Smart (2008).
Throughout this time, Carell maintained a successful career in television, starring as Michael Scott in the American remake of the Britain's existential comedy, The Office (2005). He received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in Television Comedy for this leading role in 2006, and earned both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations each consecutive show until he departed in 2011.
In 2010, Carell announced he was leaving "The Office" to concentrate on his film career, and has made steady appearance in such films as Date Night (2010), Despicable Me (2010), Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011), and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012). Carell's most recent roles are the comedies Despicable Me 2 (2013), Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014), and the drama Foxcatcher (2014), and the more serious Beautiful Boy (2018) and Vice (2018).
Steve Carell has been enjoying a happy family life with his wife, actress Nancy Carell, whom he met when she was a student in an improv class he was teaching at The Second City comedy troupe in Chicago. The couple have two children, daughter Elizabeth (born in May 2001), and son John (born in June 2004). Steve Carell lives with his family in Los Angeles, California.- A native of Illinois, Tom Irwin attended Illinois State University. After graduation, he joined the prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago. The renowned ensemble of artists - among them Laurie Metcalf, John Malkovich, Gary Sinise and Joan Allen - still work together as often as possible. Irwin has been involved in over 50 Steppenwolf productions as an actor or director. Highlights include: "The Grapes of Wrath", also Royal National Theatre; "Balm in Gilead", also Off-Broadway; "My Thing of Love", also Broadway; "Frank's Wild Years", with Tom Waits; "Space", also Off-Broadway. In the summer of 2002 he co-starred with Madonna in "Up for Grabs" at the Wyndam's Theatre in London. He has been on the faculty of The Goodman School of Drama at Depaul University and Columbia College in Chicago.
In addition to his filmography credits, he has starred in many telefilms and was a series regular on My Life and Times (1991) and My So-Called Life (1994). Tom makes his home in Los Angeles. - Actor
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John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II was born on June 9, 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky, to Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. He was raised in Florida. He dropped out of school when he was 15, and fronted a series of music-garage bands, including one named 'The Kids'. When he married Lori A. Depp, he took a job as a ballpoint-pen salesman to support himself and his wife. A visit to Los Angeles, California, with his wife, however, happened to be a blessing in disguise, when he met up with actor Nicolas Cage, who advised him to turn to acting, which culminated in Depp's film debut in the low-budget horror film, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), where he played a teenager who falls prey to dream-stalking demon Freddy Krueger.
In 1987 he shot to stardom when he replaced Jeff Yagher in the role of undercover cop Tommy Hanson in the popular TV series 21 Jump Street (1987). In 1990, after numerous roles in teen-oriented films, his first of a handful of great collaborations with director Tim Burton came about when Depp played the title role in Edward Scissorhands (1990). Following the film's success, Depp carved a niche for himself as a serious, somewhat dark, idiosyncratic performer, consistently selecting roles that surprised critics and audiences alike. He continued to gain critical acclaim and increasing popularity by appearing in many features before re-joining with Burton in the lead role of Ed Wood (1994). In 1997 he played an undercover FBI agent in the fact-based film Donnie Brasco (1997), opposite Al Pacino; in 1998 he appeared in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), directed by Terry Gilliam; and then, in 1999, he appeared in the sci-fi/horror film The Astronaut's Wife (1999). The same year he teamed up again with Burton in Sleepy Hollow (1999), brilliantly portraying Ichabod Crane.
Depp has played many characters in his career, including another fact-based one, Insp. Fred Abberline in From Hell (2001). He stole the show from screen greats such as Antonio Banderas in the finale to Robert Rodriguez's "mariachi" trilogy, Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). In that same year he starred in the marvelous family blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), playing a character that only the likes of Depp could pull off: the charming, conniving and roguish Capt. Jack Sparrow. The film's enormous success has opened several doors for his career and included an Oscar nomination. He appeared as the central character in the Stephen King-based movie, Secret Window (2004); as the kind-hearted novelist James Barrie in the factually-based Finding Neverland (2004), where he co-starred with Kate Winslet; and Rochester in the British film, The Libertine (2004). Depp collaborated again with Burton in a screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and later in Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Dark Shadows (2012).
Off-screen, Depp has dated several female celebrities, and has been engaged to Sherilyn Fenn, Jennifer Grey, Winona Ryder and Kate Moss. He was married to Lori Anne Allison in 1983, but divorced her in 1985. Depp has two children with his former long-time partner, French singer/actress Vanessa Paradis: Lily-Rose Melody, born in 1999 and John Christopher "Jack" III, born in 2002. He married actress/producer Amber Heard in 2015, divorcing a few years later.- Actor
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Geoffrey Roy Rush was born on July 6, 1951, in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, to Merle (Bischof), a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. His mother was of German descent and his father had English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. He was raised in Brisbane, Queensland, after his parents split up.
Rush attended Everton Park State High School during his formative years. His early interest in the theatre led to his 1971 stage debut at age 20 in "Wrong Side of the Moon" with the Queensland Theatre Company.
Known for his classical repertory work over the years, he scored an unexpected hit with his Queensland role as Snoopy in the musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". A few years later he moved to France to study but subsequently returned to his homeland within a short time and continued work as both actor and director with the Queensland company ("June and the Paycock," "Aladdin," "Godspell," "Present Laughter," "The Rivals"). In the 1980s Rush became a vital member of the State Theatre Company of South Australia and showed an equally strong range there in such productions as "Revenger's Tragedy," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Mother Courage...and Her Children," "Blood Wedding," "Pal Joey," "Twelfth Night" and as The Fool in "King Lear".
Rush made an inauspicious debut in films with the feature Hoodwink (1981), having little more than a bit part, and didn't carry off his first major role until playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek in a movie production of Twelfth Night (1986). Yet, he remained a durable presence on stage with acclaimed productions in "The Diary of a Madman" in 1989 and "The Government Inspector" in 1991.
Rush suffered a temporary nervous breakdown in 1992 due to overwork and anguish over his lack of career advancement. Resting for a time, he eventually returned to the stage. Within a few years film-goers finally began taking notice of Geoffrey after his performance in Children of the Revolution (1996). This led to THE role of a lifetime as the highly dysfunctional piano prodigy David Helfgott in Shine (1996). Rush's astonishing tour-de-force performance won him every conceivable award imaginable, including the Oscar, Golden Globe, British Film Award and Australian Film Institute Award.
"Shine" not only put Rush on the international film map, but atypically on the Hollywood "A" list as well. His rather homely mug was made fascinating by a completely charming, confident and captivating demeanor; better yet, it allowed him to more easily dissolve into a number of transfixing historical portrayals, notably his Walsingham in Elizabeth (1998) and Leon Trotsky in Frida (2002). He's also allowed himself to have a bit of hammy fun in such box office escapism as Mystery Men (1999), House on Haunted Hill (1999), The Banger Sisters (2002), Finding Nemo (2003) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). More than validating his early film success, two more Oscar nominations came his way in the same year for Quills (2000) (best actor) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) (support actor) in 2000. Geoffrey's amazing versatility continued into the millennium with his portrayal of the manic, volatile comedy genius Peter Sellers in the biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004). He also merited attention as Lionel Logue in The King's Speech (2010), Basil Hunter in The Eye of the Storm (2011), Hans Hubermann in The Book Thief (2013), artist/sculptor Alberto Giocometti in Final Portrait (2017) and Michael Kingley Storm Boy (2019).
Rush's intermittent returns to the stage have included productions of "Marat-Sade," "Uncle Vanya," "Oleanna," "Hamlet" and "The Small Poppies". In 2009 he made his Broadway debut in "Exit the King" co-starring Susan Sarandon. His marriage (since 1988) to Aussie classical actress Jane Menelaus produced daughter Angelica (1992) and son James (1995). Menelaus, who has also performed with the State Theatre of South Australia, has co-starred on stage with Rush in "The Winter's Tale" (1987), "Troilus and Cressida" (1989) and "The Importance of Being Earnest" (as Gwendolyn to his Jack Worthing). She also had featured roles in a few of his films, including Quills (2000) and The Eye of the Storm (2011).- Actor
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Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Copeland Bloom was born on January 13, 1977 in Canterbury, Kent, England. His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine Bloom (née Copeland), was born in Kolkata, India, to an English family then-resident there. The man he first knew as his father, Harry Bloom, was a legendary political activist who fought for civil rights in South Africa. But Harry died of a stroke when Orlando was only four years old. After that, Orlando and his older sister, Samantha Bloom, were raised by their mother and family friend, Colin Stone. When Orlando was 13, Sonia revealed to him that Colin is actually the biological father of Orlando and his sister; the two were conceived after an agreement by his parents, since Harry, who suffered a stroke in 1975, was unable to have children.
Orlando attended St. Edmund's School in Canterbury but struggled in many courses because of dyslexia. He did embrace the arts, however, and enjoyed pottery, photography and sculpturing. He also participated in school plays and was active at his local theater. As a teen, Orlando landed his first job: he was a clay trapper at a pigeon shooting range. Encouraged by his mother, he and his sister began studying poetry and prose, eventually giving readings at Kent Festival. Orlando and Samantha won many poetry and Bible reciting competitions. Then Orlando, who always idolized larger-than-life characters, gravitated towards serious acting. At the age of 16, he moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and gaining a scholarship to train with the British American Drama Academy. Like many young actors, he also auditioned for a number of television roles to further his career, landing bit parts in British television shows Casualty (1986), Midsomer Murders (1997) and Smack the Pony (1999). He also appeared in the critically acclaimed movie Wilde (1997).
He then attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It was there, in 1998, that Orlando fell three stories from a rooftop terrace and broke his back. Despite fears that he would be permanently paralyzed, he quickly recovered and returned to the stage. As fate would have it, seated in the audience one night in 1999 was a director named Peter Jackson. After the show, he met with Orlando and asked him to audition for his new set of movies. After graduating from Guildhall, Orlando began work on the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, spending 18 months in New Zealand bringing to life "Legolas", a part which made him a household name. Today, he is one of the busiest and most sought-after actors in the industry.- Actor
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Jonathan Pryce was born on 1 June 1947 in Holywell, Flintshire, Wales, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for The Two Popes (2019), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and The Wife (2017). He has been married to Kate Fahy since April 2015. They have three children.- Mackenzie Crook, one of British comedy's best-known faces, who collected Star Wars figurines as a child, is now immortalized in plastic as a six-inch-high pirate action figure. He was born Paul Mackenzie Crook on September 29, 1971, in Maidstone, Kent, England, UK. His father worked for British Airways. His mother was a hospital manager. He went to grammar school in Dartford, and did his first plays there. In the summers, he spent time with his uncle in Zimbabwe.
Young Mackenzie Crook expressed his creativity through painting and even copied a pre-Raphaelite's painting on to the back of his biker's jacket. He also joined a local youth theater. At the age of 18, he failed to secure a place at art college and turned to writing comedy sketches. Crook ended up working at Pizza Hut, and at hospitals. However, the principal of the youth theater believed in his potential and became his manager, guiding Crook to a career as a stand-up comedian. In 1996, he made his film debut in The Man Who Fell in Love with a Traffic Cone! (1996). In 1997, Crook was scouted by Bob Mortimer at the Edinburgh Festival. Soon he made his debut on television as a stand-up comedian on The 11 O'Clock Show (1998), then worked on other TV shows playing grotesques and exaggerated characters.
He shot to fame as Gareth Keenan, a quirky geek with a funny haircut in a TV hit comedy, The Office (2001), and earned himself a British Comedy Award nomination. He also was a member of the main cast of the BBC show "TV to Go" (2001)_. After that, Crook shared the screen with Al Pacino in The Merchant of Venice (2004), with Heath Ledger in The Brothers Grimm (2005), and with Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (2004). Depp bonded with Crook during the making of 'Neverland' and it was Depp who recommended him for the part of Ragetti, his best-known role, in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006). Crook is also billed as Ragetti in the third installment of the 'Pirates' franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007).
After having spent about a decade on a stand-up comedian circuit, Crook made a perfect tool out of that character-actor face and added experience to his effortless style. It is in the 'Pirates' trilogy that Mackenzie Crook had showed his funniest and widest variety of emotions, effortlessly shifting his facial expression from a deep philosophical pensiveness to a grotesque excitement, and from a comically exaggerated fear to such a gleeful exuberance while removing his wooden eyeball. For that particular scene he was wearing two contact lenses sandwiched on top of each other.
In 2004, Crook appeared as Billy Bibbit opposite Christian Slater in the West End stage production of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," which initially opened at Gielgud Theatre and then was shown at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival. At the same time, Crook has been writing a script for his own future project; he describes it as a period production that is set in London around the same period as the 'Pirates' movies.
Mackenzie Crook has been enjoying a happy family life with his wife, Lindsay, a former advertising executive and club owner, and their son Jude (born in 2003). He is fond of gardening and is also focused on maintaining an organic way of life. He resides with his family in Peter Sellers' old art-deco house in Muswell Hill, North London, England. - Lee Arenberg has the remarkable ability to morph himself into frightening aliens, twisted psychotherapists, lascivious entertainment executives and everything in between. Most frequently referred to as a character actor, Arenberg maintains a flourishing acting career--almost 20 years spanning television, stage and film. Arenberg has appeared in more than 30 movies, including Cradle Will Rock (1999), RoboCop 3 (1993), Waterworld (1995), Bob Roberts (1992), The Apocalypse (1997), Cross My Heart (1987) and the fantasy adventure feature Dungeons & Dragons (2000). Bitten by the acting bug at age eight when he portrayed David in his Hebrew school play, "Killing Goliath", Arenberg notes that the parable "could be the title of any actor's chances in this game." A native Angeleno, Lee attended Santa Monica high school with "brat packers" Sean Penn, Robert Downey Jr. and Emilio Estevez, and co-wrote a play with Estevez which was directed by Penn. Lee's first professional job was in 1986 at the Mark Taper Forum in "Ghetto", a play directed by Gordon Davidson. Within weeks he was cast in three films, including the role of Norton in the feature Tapeheads (1988)opposite Tim Robbins and John Cusack. Guest appearances on television began in 1987 with the hit sitcom Perfect Strangers (1986), and have continued with memorable roles such as the parking space-stealing New Yorker on Seinfeld (1989) and as the murderous rock promoter opposite Katey Sagal and Sam Kinison in Tales from the Crypt (1989), as well as roles on Arli$$ (1996), Friends (1994), Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995). Arenberg can also be seen in the role of the notoriously huge studio head, Bobby G., on the controversial syndicated comedy Action (1999) opposite series star Jay Mohr. Arenberg names his family and friends as his inspirations, and states that having grown up on Los Angeles' Westside, he was able to see actors as the parents of friends and classmates, not as just as movie stars. "It also gave me an honest assessment of the industry and what I was getting myself into," he laughs. He credits "fear of failure" as his main motivation, and admires the talents and creativity of such legendary actors Paul Muni, Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff. Lee also credits much of his development as an actor to his participation in the Actors' Gang, one of Los Angeles' oldest theater companies. The Actors' Gang was founded by Lee in 1981 with Tim Robbins and other friends from UCLA. After 20 years as an actor in the group, Lee recently made his writing and directing debut with Foursome, a play about golf, sex and witchcraft. In his leisure time, Arenberg enjoys golf, cooking, blues harmonica, video games and pitching for his softball team Bubblin' Crude, which is made up of other actors, many of whom are friends from high school. He is involved with St. Jude's Children's Hospital and other children's health causes, and animal rights organizations, participating regularly in fund raising efforts on behalf of those charitable causes.
- Kevin McNally was born on April 27, 1956, in Bristol, England. He grew up in Birmingham where he attended Redhill and Mapledene Junior schools and Central Grammar School for Boys. At the age of 16, he got his first job at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. A year later he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1975 he won the Best Actor Bancroft Gold Medal for his stage performance. McNally's most notable stage performances in London's West End include his appearance as Alan Bennett opposite Maggie Smith in 'The Lady in the Van' and opposite Juliette Binoche in 'Naked'. He also starred as Richard in Terry Johnson's 'Dead Funny' at the Savoy Theatre.
Since 1976 McNally has been involved in numerous TV productions beginning with his portrayal of the Roman ruler Castor, son of Tiberius, in the acclaimed BBC history series I, Claudius (1976) and his portrayal of Drake Carne in the popular series Poldark (1975). His career on television ascended after his work in Masada (1981) and in the cult TV series Doctor Who: The Twin Dilemma (1984). During the 1980s and 1990s McNally established himself as a reputable and versatile actor on both the British and American TV. He played a broad variety of leading and supporting characters ranging from the Soviet politician Kirov in Stalin (1992) to homicide detective Jack Taylor in Chiller (1995), and from an insecure son, Alan Hook, in TV series Dad (1997) to a convicted murderer James Hopkin in Bloodlines (2005). His portrayal of Frank Worsley in Shackleton (2002) as well as the role of Harry Woolf in Life on Mars (2006) are among his best known works for television.
In 1977 McNally made his big screen debut as HMS Ranger Crewman in the James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). After having played bit parts in more than twenty feature films, McNally shot to international fame as pirate Joshamee Gibbs, his best known film role, in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006). He returned in the role Joshamee Gibbs in the third installment of the 'Pirates' franchise Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007).
Kevin McNally has been enjoying a happy family life with Scottish actress Phyllis Logan and his two children. He resides with his family in Chiswick, London, England. - Actor
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Guy is known the world over for his portrayal of Lieutenant Gruber, one of the original and enduring characters of over 90 episodes of 'Allo 'Allo! which is one of the most successful comedy series the B.B.C. has ever produced and is still shown in more than 80 countries.
Guy was born in Manhattan to an American father and an English mother. He was educated in England and trained for the stage at the Webber Douglas Academy in London where he won the Rodney Millington Award for his performance as The Emcee in Cabaret. In a career of some 50 years he has become a household name in the U.K. both in theatre and television. In recent years he has spent much of his time working in the film industry in Los Angeles but is now based in London where he juggles two careers - actor and writer/producer. With his producing partner David Mansell he runs Einstein Films, with several movies in development.
Guy made his first London appearance in the highly acclaimed Cowardy Custard at the Mermaid Theatre. Other London credits include Off the Peg, Nickleby and Me, Toad of Toad Hall, The Frogs, Wealth, The Biograph Girl and Don't Dress for Dinner. He has also appeared several times in cabaret at The Ritz. He has worked with many of the leading English repertory companies including Coventry, Leicester, Brighton, Windsor, Oxford and The Bristol Old Vic, and did six major tours with Jonathan Lynn's Cambridge Theatre Company in a repertoire mainly of the classics including The Master Builder, The Relapse, An Inspector Calls and Uncle Vanya. He twice toured Australia with the stage show of 'Allo 'Allo which also enjoyed a record-breaking U.K. tour and long West End runs both at the Prince of Wales and the London Palladium.
Television work in London includes: I Claudius, Dr. Who, Life at Stake, Z Cars, Softly Softly, The Secret Army, You Rang M'Lord?, The Brittas Empire, Doctors and of course 'Allo 'Allo! In LA: Seinfeld, Martial Law, Diagnosis Murder (with Dick van Dyke), Zoe, Babylon 5, When Billie Beat Bobbie (with Holly Hunter and Goldie Hawn), That's My Bush (with the writers of South Park), The Agency and Startrek: Enterprise.
Guy's experience and contacts in all aspects of film-making are widespread. Movies include: The Disappearance of Kevin Johnson, Great Harry and Jane, Lost Highway (written and directed by David Lynch), Leprechaun 4, Bug, Return to the Secret Garden, The Second Front (with Todd Field), Megiddo (with Michael York), Vlad (with Billy Zane), Provoked, The Loss Adjuster (with Luke Goss) and Pirates of the Caribbean (with Johnny Depp).- Producer
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Matthew Paige Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Kent Damon, a stockbroker, realtor and tax preparer, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Matt has an older brother, Kyle, a sculptor. His father was of English and Scottish descent, and his mother is of Finnish and Swedish ancestry. The family lived in Newton until his parents divorced in 1973, when Damon and his brother moved with his mother to Cambridge. He grew up in a stable community, and was raised near actor Ben Affleck.
Damon attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and he performed in a number of theater productions during his time there. He attended Harvard University as an English major. While in Harvard, he kept on skipping classes to pursue acting projects, which included the TNT original film, Rising Son (1990), and prep-school drama, School Ties (1992). It was until his film, Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), was expected to be a big success that he decided to drop out of university completely. Arriving in Hollywood, Matt managed to get his first break with a part in the romantic comedy, Mystic Pizza (1988). However, the film did not do too well and his film career failed to take off. Not letting failure discourage him from acting, he went for another audition, and managed to get a starring role in School Ties (1992). Up next for Matt was a role as a soldier who had problems with drug-addiction in the movie, Courage Under Fire (1996). Matt had, in fact, lost forty pounds for his role which resulted in health problems.
The following year, he garnered accolades for Good Will Hunting (1997), a screenplay he had originally written for an English class at Harvard University. Good Will Hunting (1997) was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, one of which, Matt won for Best Original Screenplay along with Ben Affleck. In the year 1998, Matt played the title role in Steven Spielberg's film, Saving Private Ryan (1998), which was one of the most acclaimed films in that year. Matt had the opportunity of working with Tom Hanks and Vin Diesel while filming that movie. That same year, he starred as an earnest law student and reformed poker player in Rounders (1998), starring opposite Edward Norton and John Malkovich. The next year, Matt rejoined his childhood friend, Ben Affleck and fellow comedian, Chris Rock, in the comedy Dogma (1999).
Towards the end of 1999, Matt played "Tom Ripley", a working-class young man who tastes the good life and will do anything to live it. Both Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow also starred in the movie. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) earned mixed reviews from critics, but even so, Matt earned praise for his performance. Matt lent his voice to the animated movie, Titan A.E. (2000) in the year 2000, which also earned mixed reviews from the public. He also starred in two other movies, All the Pretty Horses (2000) and the golf comedy-drama, The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), starring alongside Will Smith. In the year 2003, he signed on to star in The Informant! (2009) by Steven Soderbergh and the Farrelly Brothers' Stuck on You (2003). He also starred in Gerry (2002), a film he co-wrote with his friends, Gus Van Sant and Casey Affleck. One of Matt's most recognizable work to date is his role in the "Bourne" movie franchise. He plays an amnesiac assassin, "Jason Bourne", in The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Another praised role is that as "Linus Caldwell" in the "Ocean's" movie franchise. He had the opportunity to star opposite George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Don Cheadle in Ocean's Eleven (2001). The successful crime comedy-drama eventually had two other sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). Among other highly acclaimed movies that Matt has been a part of are Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm (2005), George Clooney's Syriana (2005), Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006) and Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd (2006).
In his personal life, Matt is now happily married to Argentine-born Luciana Barroso, whom he met in Miami, where she was working as a bartender. They married in a private civil ceremony on December 9, 2005, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. The couple have four daughters Alexia, Luciana's daughter from a previous relationship, as well as Isabella, Gia and Stella. Matt is a big fan of the Boston Red Sox and he tries to attend their games whenever possible. He has also formed great friendships with his Ocean's co-stars, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, whom he works on charity projects with. He and actor Ben Affleck have remained lifelong friends and collaborators.- Actor
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Jude Law is an English actor. Law has been nominated for two Academy Awards and continues to build a prolific body of work that spans from early successes such as Gattaca (1997) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to more recent turns as Dr. John Watson in Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), as Hugo's father in Hugo (2011) and in the titular role in Dom Hemingway (2013).
David Jude Law was born on December 29, 1972 in Lewisham, London, England, to Margaret Anne (Heyworth) and Peter Robert Law, both of whom taught at comprehensive schools; his father later became a headmaster. Law has said that he was named after both the book Jude the Obscure and the song Hey Jude.
In 1992, Jude began his stage career. He starred in many plays throughout London, and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award of "Outstanding Newcomer" After doing the play "Indiscretions" in London, he moved and did it again on Broadway. This time, he was alongside Kathleen Turner. He then received a Tony Nomination for "Outstanding Supporting Actor". He was then rewarded the Theatre World Award. After Broadway, Jude started on the big screen, in many independent films. His first big-named movie was Gattaca (1997), with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. He also had a good role in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). Jude's latest rise to fame has been because of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), in which he plays Matt Damon's obsession. The film did very well at the box office, and critics loved Jude's acting.
Following the success of Gattaca (1997) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Law's feature film career continued to gain momentum throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s with roles in such films as Enemy at the Gates (2001), Road to Perdition (2002), I Heart Huckabees (2004), The Aviator (2004) and many others. Law is one of three actors, along with Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp, to take over acting responsibilities in the Terry Gilliam project The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) following Heath Ledger's death.
Law is a partner in the production company "Natural Nylon". His partners include Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor and his ex-wife Sadie Frost.
Law has been active in many charitable activities and supports several different foundations and causes, doing work for organizations including the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Make Poverty History, Breast Cancer Care and others. Law is also a peace advocate, and in 2011, participated in street protests against the rule of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus.
Law married Sadie Frost in 1997 and the couple had two sons (Rafferty and Rudy) and a daughter (Iris) before divorcing in 2003. Law and Alfie (2004) co-star Sienna Miller were engaged to be married in 2005 and separated in 2006 (they would later rekindle their relationship in 2009, splitting once again in 2011). Law and American model Samantha Burke had a brief relationship in 2008 that resulted in the birth of Law's fourth child, daughter Sophia. Law's fifth child, with an ex-girlfriend, Catherine Harding, was born in 2015.- Actor
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Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport to Marilyn (Loucks), a lawyer and judge, and Gordon Stowell Hoffman, a Xerox employee, and was mostly of German, Irish, English and Dutch ancestry. After becoming involved in high school theatrics, he attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a B.F.A. degree in Drama in 1989.
He made his feature film debut in the indie production Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole (1991) as Phil Hoffman, and his first role in a major release came the next year in My New Gun (1992). While he had supporting roles in some other major productions like Scent of a Woman (1992) and Twister (1996), his breakthrough role came in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997).
He quickly became an icon of indie cinema, establishing a reputation as one of the screen's finest actors, in a variety of supporting and second leads in indie and major features, including Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998), Flawless (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), Almost Famous (2000) and State and Main (2000). He also appeared in supporting roles in such mainstream, big-budget features as Red Dragon (2002), Cold Mountain (2003) and Mission: Impossible III (2006).
Hoffman was also quite active on the stage. On Broadway, he has earned two Tony nominations, as Best Actor (Play) in 2000 for a revival of Sam Shepard's "True West" and as Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) in 2003 for a revival of Eugene O'Neill (I)'s "Long Day's Journey into Night". His other acting credits in the New York theater include "The Seagull" (directed by Mike Nichols for The New York Shakespeare Festival), "Defying Gravity", "The Merchant of Venice" (directed by Peter Sellars), "Shopping and F*@%ing" and "The Author's Voice" (Drama Desk nomination).
He was the Co-Artistic Director of the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York, for which he directed "Our Lady of 121st Street" by Stephen Adly Guirgis. He also directed "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Jesus Hopped the A Train" by Guirgis for LAByrinth, and "The Glory of Living" by Rebecca Gilman at the Manhattan Class Company.
Hoffman consolidated his reputation as one of the finest actors under the age of 40 with his turn in the title role of Capote (2005), for which he won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award as Best Actor. In 2006, he was awarded the Best Actor Oscar for the same role.
On February 2, 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in an apartment in Greenwich village, New York. Investigators found Hoffman with a syringe in his arm and two open envelopes of heroin next to him. Mr. Hoffman was long known to struggle with addiction. In 2006, he said in an interview with "60 Minutes" that he had given up drugs and alcohol many years earlier, when he was age 22. In 2013, he checked into a rehabilitation program for about 10 days after a reliance on prescription pills resulted in his briefly turning again to heroin.- James Robert Rebhorn (September 1, 1948 - March 21, 2014) was an American actor who appeared in over 100 films, television series, and plays. At the time of his death, he had recurring roles in the current series White Collar and Homeland.
An early performance was in Butterflies are Free at the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire in 1974. Rebhorn played Peter Latham in Forty Carats at the GasLight Dinner Theatre in Salt Lake City in the 1970s. He was known both for portraying WASP stereotypes, lawyers, politicians, doctors, and military men, as well as portraying individuals with criminal behavior. He has delivered equally notable performances in a variety of other roles, including that of a brutal serial killer on NBC's Law & Order (he would later return to the show in the recurring role of defense attorney Charles Garnett), Ellard Muscatine in Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Fred Waters in Blank Check (1994), Clyde Frost, the father of famed bull rider Lane Frost, in 8 Seconds (1994), Lt. Tyler in White Squall (1996), and a shipping magnate in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). One of his best known performances came in the popular 1996 film Independence Day, where he played Secretary of Defense Albert Nimzicki. He acted in Scent of a Woman (1992), and also played an expert witness in My Cousin Vinny (1992). He appeared in Carlito's Way the following year. Rebhorn also played an FBI Agent in the 1994 film Guarding Tess.
Rebhorn played several roles on television, including an abusive stepfather, Bradley Raines, on the soap opera Guiding Light from 1983 to 1985, and an abusive father, Henry Lange, on sister soap As The World Turns from 1988 to 1991. An earlier daytime role was as John Brady in Texas from 1981 to 1982. In 1994 he played the role of super villain John McFlemp in the episode "Farewell, My Little Viking" of the Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete & Pete. In 1998, he played the District Attorney in the two-part series finale of Seinfeld. He also appeared in a supporting roles in The Game, Meet the Parents, and Regarding Henry. In 2004, he appeared in the TV miniseries Reversible Errors. His role in the short-lived and controversial NBC drama The Book of Daniel cast him as the father of the title character. More recently, he appeared in the Showtime series Homeland as Carrie's bipolar father.
Rebhorn also appeared as a judge in Baby Mama. In the 2009 movie The Box, Rebhorn portrayed a NASA scientist. He had recurring roles on the USA series White Collar as Special Agent Reese Hughes, and also as Frank Mathison, the father of the protagonist Carrie Mathison, on Homeland. Rebhorn recently co-starred in the Comedy Central sitcom Big Lake. He played Max Kenton's uncle in the 2011 movie Real Steel. He starred as Oren in the miniseries Coma. Rebhorn starred as Gary Pandamiglio in the 2012 Mike Birbiglia comedy Sleepwalk with Me. He co-starred in the 2013 romantic comedy The Perfect Wedding. His stage career included seven Broadway productions, as well as numerous appearances with New York City's Roundabout Theatre Company. - 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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Judd Hirsch is an American actor from New York City. His main claim to fame is playing taxicab driver Alex Reiger in the hit sitcom Taxi (1978). For this role, Hirsch twice won the "Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series." He has since had a long career.
In 1935, Hirsch was born in The Bronx, New York City. His parents were electrician Joseph Sidney Hirsch and his wife Sally Kitzis. Joseph was born in New York to immigrant parents. Hirsch's paternal grandfather Benjamin Hirsch was German-Jewish, while his wife Rosa was born to a Dutch-Jewish family in England. Hirsch's maternal ancestors were Russian-Jews.
Hirsch spend his early years moving between the Bronx and Brooklyn. He received his secondary education at the DeWitt Clinton High School, an all-boys school located in The Bronx. He graduated in 1952, at the age of 17. He received his tertiary education at the City College of New York, a public college located in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. He graduated with a degree in physics.
Following his college graduation, Hirsch served his term in the United States Army. Retuning to civilian life, he was hired as an engineer by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation (1886-1997). He eventually decided to switch to an acting career. He studied acting at the HB Studio, located in Greenwich Village.
Hirsch started his acting career with theatrical roles. In the 1970s, he frequently appeared in television films. He also had guest star roles in television series, such as Medical Story (1975), Visions (1976), and Rhoda (1974). He achieved stardom with the leading role of Alex Reiger in "Taxi" (1978-1983). Alex was a rather jaded character, bitter following his divorce and the loss of custody over his only child. He resonated with audiences of this period. He won the Emmy Award for Lead Actor In a Comedy Series in both 1981 and 1983.
Hirsch had the supporting role of psychiatrist Dr. Tyrone C. Berger in the family drama film Ordinary People (1980). In the film, he treats patient Conrad Jarrett (played by Timothy Hutton) who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, survivor's guilt, and suicidal ideation following the accidental death of his brother. The film was critically acclaimed, and Hirsch was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The award was instead won by his co-star Timothy Hutton.
Hirsch had the co-starring role of police lieutenant Al Menetti in the missing person investigation-themed film Without a Trace (1983). The film was inspired by the real-life disappearance of Etan Patz (1972-1979), which was later determined to be a murder case. The film earned about 9,6 million dollars at the domestic box office. It was the 81st highest-grossing film of 1983.
Hirsch had a major role as vice principal Roger Rubell in the black comedy film Teachers (1984). The film deals with internal conflicts in a high school which is faced with a lawsuit by a recent graduate. The film was moderately successful at the box office, though it is mostly remembered for featuring the hit song "Understanding" by Bob Seger (1945-).
Hirsch had the leading role of pater familias Arthur Pope in the drama film Running on Empty (1988). In the film, Pope and his wife are wanted by the FBI for their involvement in the bombing of a napalm laboratory during the 1970s. They are hiding undercover identities while trying to raise their sons. The film was a box office flop but received critical acclaim. It is mainly remembered for a well-received early role for River Phoenix (1970-1993) as Arthur's eldest son.
Hirsch was cast in the leading role of teacher John Lacey in the American sitcom Dear John (1988). It was an adaptation of the British sitcom Dear John.... (1986). Both series deal with adult men trying to rebuilt their lives after their wives leave them for other men, and kick them out of their family home. The American series lasted for 4 seasons and a total of 90 episodes. For this role, Hirsch won the 1988 "Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Television Series Musical or Comedy".
Hirsch had the supporting role of Julius Levinson in the science fiction film Independence Day (1996). Julius was depicted as the aging father of the engineer David Levinson (played by Jeff Goldblum), one of the film's co-protagonists. The film earned about 817 million dollars the worldwide box office, the highest-grossing film in Hirsch's career. He returned to this role in the sequel Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), which was moderately successful.
Hirsch co-starred in the sitcom George & Leo (1997) with Bob Newhart (1929-). He played magician Leo Wagonman, who was trying to hide after successfully robbing a casino. The series only lasted a single season and a total of 22 episodes. It was canceled due to low ratings.
Hirsch had the supporting role of a Princeton University professor in the biographical film A Beautiful Mind (2001). The film was based on the life of mathematician John Nash (1928-2015), an expert on game theory. The film earned about 317 million dollars at the worldwide box office, and won the "Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama" It was one of the most acclaimed films in Hirsch's career.
In 2005 Hirsch received a major television role as retired city planner Alan Eppes in the police procedural series Numb3rs (2005). The series concerned two brothers who collaborate in investigating FBI cases. Alan was depicted as their meddling father, who keeps reminding them to also take care of their personal lives and problems. The series lasted 6 seasons, and 118 episodes. Hirsch's role was well-received by audiences.
In 2016, Hirsch guest starred in two episodes of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007). He played anthropologist Dr. Alfred Hofstadter, the father of main character Leonard Hofstadter (played by Johnny Galecki). The character had been frequently mentioned in the series since its first season, but had never appeared before. While the series previously mentioned that Alfred neglected his son during Leonard's childhood, in the guest appearances he turned out to have a friendly relationship with his grown-up son. Alfred seemed impressed that Leonard had a loving relationship with his wife, something which Alfred had never experienced.
In 2017, Hirsch was cast in the main role of donut shop owner Arthur Przybyszewski in the sitcom Superior Donuts (2017). The series depicted Arthur as a veteran business owner with old-fashioned ideas, who reluctantly recognizes that he has to modernize his shop in order to stay in business. The series lasted 2 seasons and a total of 34 episodes. It was reportedly canceled due to a decline in its ratings. The final episode resolves the series' main plot, with Arthur deciding to sell his shop and to finally retire.
As of 2021, Hirsch is 86-years-old. He has never retired from acting, though he mostly plays guest-star roles in television. He remains a popular actor.- Actor
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Born and raised in New York City, Robert Loggia studied journalism at the University of Missouri before moving back to New York to pursue acting. He trained at the Actors Studio while doing stage work. From the late 1950s he was a familiar face on TV, usually as authoritative figures. Loggia also found work in movies such as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Scarface (1983) and Big (1988). Always in demand, Loggia worked until his death, at 85, from complications of Alzheimer's.- 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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Brent Spiner, whose primary claim to fame is his portrayal of the beloved android Data on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), was born and raised in Houston, Texas. His parents, Sylvia (Schwartz) and Jack Spiner, owned and operated a furniture store, and were both from Jewish immigrant families (from Austria, Hungary, and Russia). Jack died of kidney failure at age 29, when Brent was 10 months old. When he was 6 years old, his mother married Sol Mintz, who adopted Brent and his older brother Ron. Although his mother divorced Mintz after 7 years of marriage, Brent retained his adopted father's last name until 1975, when he took back his birth name.
Spiner first began pursuing his interest in acting while in high school. There his inspirational drama teacher, Cecil Pickett, gave a great start to the careers of a remarkable group of aspiring young actors (and directors), including Spiner, Cindy Pickett (Cecil's daughter), Randy Quaid, Dennis Quaid, Trey Wilson, Robert Wuhl and Thomas Schlamme, all of whom later attained success in Hollywood. After graduation, Spiner followed his mentor to the University of Houston and other local colleges, while also launching his professional acting career in theater (The Houston Music Theater and other regional theater) and in film (My Sweet Charlie (1970), which was shot on location in Texas). After a couple of false starts in New York and Hollywood, Spiner eventually established himself as a stage actor in New York, appearing in a number of off-Broadway and Broadway plays, such as "A History of the American Film" (1978), "Leave It to Beaver is Dead" (1979), "Sunday in the Park with George" (1984), and "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1985). While in New York, he had a bit part in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980) and starred in an independent film called Rent Control (1981). The play "Little Shop of Horrors "brought Spiner to Los Angeles in 1984, where he eventually took up permanent residence.
In 1986, after a number of character parts in television series and movies, such as Robert Kennedy and His Times (1985), Crime of Innocence (1985), Manhunt for Claude Dallas (1986), and Family Sins (1987), Spiner snagged the role that would bring him international fame: Data, the endearing android, whom Spiner played "by tapping into his inner child." Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), the sequel to the original television series Star Trek (1966), became hugely popular, moving to the big screen for four films (so far) after its 7-year run on television. Aside from these films, Spiner has made cameo appearances in a number of films directed by his friend and old schoolmate Thomas Schlamme, such as Miss Firecracker (1989), Crazy from the Heart (1991), and Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long (1995), and has appeared in small roles in more recent films, such as Dude, Where's My Car? (2000) and The Master of Disguise (2002). Arguably his most popular film portrayal was Dr. Brakish Okun in Independence Day (1996), a role that elicited his unique eccentricity and sense of humor. He reprised the character in the sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence (2016).- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Leland Orser was born on 6 August 1960 in San Francisco, California, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Taken (2008), Se7en (1995) and Alien: Resurrection (1997). He has been married to Jeanne Tripplehorn since 14 October 2000. They have one child. He was previously married to Roma Downey.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
A legendary actor with 50 celebrated years of film, television and producing experience, Michael Douglas is known for his era-defining roles and enduring cultural impact.
In addition to his career accomplishments, Douglas has remained a steadfast public servant, activist and philanthropist dedicated to peace and human welfare, democracy, gun control advocacy, support of the arts and support of nuclear disarmament. In 1998, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Douglas as a Messenger of Peace for his commitment on disarmament issues, including nuclear non-proliferation and halting the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons.
Since his earliest acting work on Hail, Hero! (1969) and The Streets of San Francisco (1972) Douglas has played some of the most memorable and enigmatic American anti-heroes of the last half century. He is most known for his iconic screen roles, like his Academy Award-winning turn as Gordon Gekko Wall Street (1987) as well as the critically and commercially acclaimed films Fatal Attraction (1987), The American President (1995), Basic Instinct (1992), Traffic (2000) and Romancing the Stone (1984). He is also a prolific producer with credits on politically relevant and socially influential motion pictures like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The China Syndrome (1979), Traffic (2000) the television series: The Kominsky Method (2018) and an upcoming limited series where Douglas portrays Benjamin Franklin (2024) during his nine years in France lobbying for French aid for the American Revolution.
With a passion for complex protagonists and darkly humorous undercurrents, Douglas has received numerous accolades for his work, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, AFI Life Achievement Award, two French César Awards for Career Achievement and, most recently, the Palme d'or d'honneur for lifetime achievement at the 76th Annual Festival de Cannes as well as the Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Cinema at the Goa Film Festival in India.
Michael Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to actors Diana Douglas (Diana Love Dill) and Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch). His paternal grandparents were Belarusian Jewish immigrants, while his mother was born in Bermuda, the daughter of a local Attorney General, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill; Diana's family had long been established in both Bermuda and the United States. Douglas's parents divorced when he was six, and he went to live with his mother and her new husband. Only seeing Kirk on holidays, Michael attended Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he was about a year younger than all of his classmates.
Douglas attended the elite preparatory Choate School and spent his summers with his father on movie sets. Although accepted at Yale, Douglas attended the University of California, Santa Barbara. Deciding he wanted to be an actor in his teenage years, Michael often asked his father about getting a "foot in the door" Kirk was strongly opposed to Michael pursuing an acting career, saying that it was an industry with many downs and few ups, and that he wanted all four of his sons to stay out of it. Michael, however, was persistent, and made his film debut in his father's film Cast a Giant Shadow (1966).
After receiving his B.A. degree in 1968, Douglas moved to New York City to continue his dramatic training, studying at the American Place Theatre with Wynn Handman, and at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where he appeared in workshop productions of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (1976) and Thornton Wilder's Happy Journey (1963). A few months after he arrived in New York, Douglas got his first big break, when he was cast in the pivotal role of the free-spirited scientist who compromises his liberal views to accept a lucrative job with a high-tech chemical corporation in the CBS Playhouse production of Ellen M. Violett's drama, The Experiment, which was televised nationwide on February 25, 1969.
Douglas' convincing portrayal won him the leading role in the adaptation of John Weston's controversial novel, Hail, Hero! (1969), which was the initial project of CBS's newly organized theatrical film production company, Cinema Center Films. Douglas starred as a well-meaning, almost saintly young pacifist determined not only to justify his beliefs to his conservative parents but also to test them under fire in the jungles of Indochina. His second feature, Adam at Six A.M. (1970) concerned a young man's search for his roots. Douglas next appeared in the film version of Ron Cowen's play Summertree (1971), produced by 'Kirk Douglas'' Bryna Company, and then Napoleon and Samantha (1972), a sentimental children's melodrama from the Walt Disney studio.
In between film assignments, he worked in summer stock and off-Broadway productions, among them "City Scenes," Frank Gagliano's surrealistic vignettes of contemporary life in New York, John Patrick Shanley's short-lived romance "Love is a Time of Day" and George Tabori's "Pinkville," in which he played a young innocent brutalized by his military training. He also appeared in the made-for-television thriller, "When Michael Calls," broadcast by ABC-TV on February 5, 1972 and in episodes of the popular series "Medical Center" and "The F.B.I."
Impressed by Douglas' performance in a segment of The F.B.I. (1965), producer 'Quinn Martin' signed the actor for the part of Karl Malden's sidekick in the police series "The Streets of San Francisco", which premiered in September 1972 and became one of ABC's highest-rated prime-time programs in the mid-1970s. Douglas earned three successive Emmy Award nominations for his performance and he directed two episodes of the series.
During the annual breaks in the shooting schedule for The Streets of San Francisco (1972), Douglas devoted most of his time to his film production company, Big Stick Productions, Ltd., which produced several short subjects in the early 1970s. Long interested in producing a film version of Ken Kesey's grimly humorous novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Douglas purchased the movie rights from his father and began looking for financial backing. After a number of major motion picture studios turned him down, Douglas formed a partnership with Saul Zaentz, a record industry executive, and the two set about recruiting the cast and crew. Douglas still had a year to go on his contract for "The Streets of San Francisco," but the producers agreed to write his character out of the story so that he could concentrate on filming "Cuckoo's Nest."
A critical and commercial success, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress, and went on to gross more than $180 million at the box office. Douglas suddenly found himself in demand as an independent producer. One of the many scripts submitted to him for consideration was Mike Gray's chilling account of the attempted cover-up of an accident at a nuclear power plant. Attracted by the combination of social relevance and suspense, Douglas immediately bought the property. Deemed not commercial by most investors, Douglas teamed up with Jane Fonda and her own motion picture production company, IPC Films.
A Michael Douglas-IPC Films co-production, The China Syndrome (1979) starred Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda, and Michael Douglas and received Academy Award nominations for Lemmon and Fonda, as well as for Best Screenplay. The National Board of Review named the film one of the best films of the year.
Despite his success as a producer, Douglas resumed his acting career in the late 1970s, starring in Michael Crichton's medical thriller Coma (1978) with Genevieve Bujold, Claudia Weill's feminist comedy It's My Turn (1980) starring Jill Clayburgh, and Peter Hyams' gripping tale of modern-day vigilante justice, "The Star Chamber" (1983). Douglas also starred in Running (1979), as a compulsive quitter who sacrifices everything to take one last shot at the Olympics, and as Zach the dictatorial director/choreographer in Richard Attenborough's screen version of the Broadway's longest running musical A Chorus Line (1985).
Douglas' career as an actor/producer came together again in 1984 with the release of the tongue-in-cheek romantic fantasy "Romancing the Stone." Douglas had begun developing the project several years earlier, and with Kathleen Turner as Joan Wilder, the dowdy writer of gothic romances, Danny DeVito as the feisty comic foil Ralphie and Douglas as Jack Colton, the reluctant soldier of fortune. "Romancing the Stone" was a resounding hit and grossed more than $100 million at the box office. Douglas was named Producer of the Year in 1984 by the National Association of Theater Owners. Douglas, Turner and DeVito teamed up in 1985 for the successful sequel The Jewel of the Nile (1985).
It took Douglas nearly two years to convince Columbia Pictures executives to approve the production of Starman (1984), an unlikely tale of romance between an extraterrestrial, played by Jeff Bridges, and a young widow, played by Karen Allen. Starman (1984) was the sleeper hit of the 1984 Christmas season and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for Jeff Bridges. In 1986 Douglas created a television series based on the film for ABC which starred Robert Hays.
After a lengthy break from acting, Douglas returned to the screen in 1987 appearing in two of the year's biggest hits. He starred opposite Glenn Close in the phenomenally successful psychological thriller, "Fatal Attraction," which was followed by his performance as ruthless corporate raider Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), earning him the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Douglas next starred in Ridley Scott's thriller Black Rain (1989) and then teamed up again with Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito in the black comedy The War of the Roses (1989).
In 1988, Douglas formed Stonebridge Entertainment, Inc., which produced Flatliners (1990), directed by Joel Schumacher and starred Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and William Baldwin and Radio Flyer (1992) starring Lorraine Bracco and directed by Richard Donner. Douglas followed with David Seltzer's adaptation of Susan Isaacs' best-selling novel, "Shining Through," opposite Melanie Griffith. In 1992 he starred with Sharon Stone in the erotic thriller from Paul Verhoeven Basic Instinct (1992), one of the year's top grossing films.
Douglas gave one of his most powerful performances opposite Robert Duvall in Joel Schumacher's controversial drama Falling Down (1993). That year he also produced the hit comedy "Made in America" starring Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Danson and Will Smith. In 1994-95 he starred with Demi Moore in Barry Levinson's "Disclosure," based on the best seller by Michael Crichton. In 1995, Douglas portrayed the title role in Rob Reiner's romantic comedy The American President (1995) opposite Annette Bening, and in 1997, starred in The Game (1997) directed by David Fincher and co-starring Sean Penn.
Douglas formed Douglas/Reuther Productions with partner Steven Reuther in May 1994. The company, under the banner of Constellation Films, produced The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), starring Douglas and Val Kilmer, and John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997), based on John Grisham's best selling novel, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Matt Damon,Claire Danes, Danny DeVito, Jon Voight, Mickey Rourke, Mary Kay Place, Virginia Madsen, Andrew Shue, Teresa Wright, Johnny Whitworth and Randy Travis.
Michael Douglas and Steve Reuther also produced John Woo's action thriller Face/Off (1997) starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, which proved to be one of '97's major hits.
In 1998, Michael Douglas starred with Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen in the mystery thriller A Perfect Murder (1998), and formed a new production company, Furthur Films. 2000 was a milestone year for Douglas. "Wonder Boys" opened in February 2000 to much critical acclaim. Directed by Curtis Hanson and co-starring Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr. and Katie Holmes, Douglas starred in the film as troubled college professor Grady Tripp. Michael was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Film Award for his performance.
"Traffic" was released by USA Films on December 22, 2000 in New York and Los Angeles and went nationwide in January 2001. Douglas played the role of Robert Wakefield, a newly appointed drug czar confronted by the drug war both at home and abroad. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and co-starring Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, Amy Irving, Dennis Quaid and Catherine Zeta-Jones, "Traffic" was named Best Picture by New York Film Critics, won Best Ensemble Cast at the SAG Awards, won four Academy Awards (Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Benicio del Toro) and has been recognized on more than 175 top ten lists.
In 2001, Douglas produced and played a small role in USA Films' outrageous comedy "One Night at McCool's" starring Liv Tyler, Matt Dillon, John Goodman and Paul Reiser and directed by Harald Zwart. "McCool's" was the first film by Douglas' company Furthur Films. Also in 2001, Douglas starred in "Don't Say A Word" for 20th Century Fox. The psychological thriller, directed by Gary Fleder, also starred Sean Bean, Famke Janseen and Brittany Murphy.
In 2002, Douglas appeared in a guest role on the hit NBC comedy "Will & Grace," and received an Emmy Nomination for his performance.
Douglas starred in two films in 2003. MGM/BVI released the family drama "It Runs in the Family," which Douglas produced and starred with his father Kirk Douglas, his mother Diana Douglas his son Cameron Douglas, Rory Culkin and Bernadette Peters. He also starred in the Warner Bros. comedy "The-In Laws," with Albert Brooks, Candice Bergen and Ryan Reynolds.
In 2004, Douglas, along with his father Kirk, filmed the intimate HBO documentary "A Father, A Son... Once Upon a Time in Hollywood". Directed by award-winning filmmaker Lee Grant, the documentary examines the professional and personal lives of both men, and the impacts they each made on the motion picture industry.
In 2005, Douglas produced and starred in "The Sentinel", which was released by 20th Century Fox in April 2006. Based on the Gerald Petievich novel and directed by Clark Johnson, "The Sentinel" is a political thriller set in the intriguing world of the Secret Service. Douglas stars with Keifer Sutherland, Eva Longoria and Kim Bassinger. Douglas then filmed "You, Me & Dupree," starring with Owen Wilson, Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon. The comedy, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, was released by Universal Pictures during the summer of 2006. In 2007 Douglas made "King of California," co-starring Evan Rachel Wood and is written and directed by Michael Cahill, and produced by Alexander Payne and Michael London.
Michael had two films released in early 2009, "Beyond A Reasonable Doubt" directed by Peter Hyams and "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" starring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner and directed by Mark Waters. He followed with the drama "Solitary Man" directed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, co-starring Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Mary Louise-Parker, and Jenna Fischer, produced by Paul Schiff and Steven Soderbergh. In 2010, Douglas reprised his Oscar-winning role as Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps," earning a Golden Globe for his performance. Again directed by Oliver Stone, he co-starred with Shia Labeouf, Cary Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella and Susan Sarandon.
In 2011, Douglas had a cameo role in Steven Soderbergh's action thriller "Haywire."
"Behind the Candelabra," based on the life of '70's/80's musical icon Liberace and his partner Scott Thorson, directed by Steven Soderbergh and costarring Matt Damon, premiered on HBO in May 2013. Douglas won an Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award for Best Actor in a television movie or mini series for his performance as the famed entertainer. He followed with the buddy comedy "Last Vegas," directed by John Turtletaub co-starring Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline and the romantic comedy "And So It Goes," co-starring Diane Keaton directed by Rob Reiner.
Douglas recently starred in and produced the thriller "Beyond The Reach," directed by Jean-Baptiste Leonetti and costarring Jeremy Irvine. He and portrayed Dr. Hank Pym in Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) opposite Paul Rudd. The franchise was his first venture into the realm of comic book action adventure.
In 2017, he starred in the spy thriller "Unlocked" starring with Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, John Malkovich and directed by Michael Apted.
In 1998 Douglas was made a United Nations Messenger of Peace by Kofi Annan. His main concentrations are nuclear non-proliferation and the control of small arms. He is on the Board of Ploughshares Foundation and The Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Michael Douglas was recipient of the 2009 AFI Lifetime Achievement as well as the Producers Guild Award that year. In Spring '10 he received the New York Film Society's Charlie Chaplin Award.
Douglas has hosted 11 years of "Michael Douglas and Friends" Celebrity Golf Event which has raised over $6 million for the Motion Picture and Television Fund. Douglas is very passionate about the organization, and each year he asks his fellow actors and to come out and show that "we are an industry that takes care of own".
Douglas is married to Catherine Zeta-Jones. The couple has one son, Dylan, and one daughter, Carys. Douglas also has one son, Cameron, from a previous marriage.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Sean Penn is a powerhouse film performer capable of intensely moving work, who has gone from strength to strength during a colourful film career, and who has drawn much media attention for his stormy private life and political viewpoints.
Sean Justin Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the second son of actress Eileen Ryan (née Annucci) and director, actor, and writer Leo Penn. His brother was actor Chris Penn. His father was from a Lithuanian Jewish/Russian Jewish family, and his mother is of half Italian and half Irish descent.
Penn first appeared in roles as strong-headed or unruly youths such as the military cadet defending his academy against closure in Taps (1981), then as fast-talking surfer stoner Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).
Fans and critics were enthused about his obvious talent and he next contributed a stellar performance alongside Timothy Hutton in the Cold War spy thriller The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), followed by a teaming with icy Christopher Walken in the chilling At Close Range (1986). The youthful Sean then paired up with his then wife, pop diva Madonna in the woeful, and painful, Shanghai Surprise (1986), which was savaged by the critics, but Sean bounced back with a great job as a hot-headed young cop in Colors (1988), gave another searing performance as a US soldier in Vietnam committing atrocities in Casualties of War (1989) and appeared alongside Robert De Niro in the uneven comedy We're No Angels (1989). However, the 1990s was the decade in which Sean really got noticed by critics as a mature, versatile and accomplished actor, with a string of dynamic performances in first-class films.
Almost unrecognisable with frizzy hair and thin rimmed glasses, Penn was simply brilliant as corrupt lawyer David Kleinfeld in the Brian De Palma gangster movie Carlito's Way (1993) and he was still in trouble with authority as a Death Row inmate pleading with a caring nun to save his life in Dead Man Walking (1995), for which he received his first Oscar nomination. Sean then played the brother of wealthy Michael Douglas, involving him in a mind-snapping scheme in The Game (1997) and also landed the lead role of Sgt. Eddie Walsh in the star-studded anti-war film The Thin Red Line (1998), before finishing the 1990s playing an offbeat jazz musician (and scoring another Oscar nomination) in Sweet and Lowdown (1999).
The gifted and versatile Sean had also moved into directing, with the quirky but interesting The Indian Runner (1991), about two brothers with vastly opposing views on life, and in 1995 he directed Jack Nicholson in The Crossing Guard (1995). Both films received overall positive reviews from critics. Moving into the new century, Sean remained busy in front of the cameras with even more outstanding work: a mentally disabled father fighting for custody of his seven-year-old daughter (and receiving a third Oscar nomination) for I Am Sam (2001); an anguished father seeking revenge for his daughter's murder in the gut-wrenching Clint Eastwood-directed Mystic River (2003) (for which he won the Oscar as Best Actor); a mortally ill college professor in 21 Grams (2003) and a possessed businessman in The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004).
Certainly Sean Penn is one of Hollywood's most controversial, progressive and gifted actors.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Philip Baker Hall was born in Toledo, Ohio, to Berdene (McDonald) and William Alexander Hall, a factory worker who was originally from Montgomery, Alabama. He did not start acting until he was 30 years old. Known to film fans for his turn as Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's one-man show film Secret Honor (1984), he shot to cult fame when he turned in another electrifying performance, as Sydney, the veteran gambler, in Paul Thomas Anderson's debut feature, Hard Eight (1996). However, it was his work in the same director's star-studded Magnolia (1999) that really caught the mass film public's attention; his performance as the legendary quiz show presenter "Jimmy Gator" was highly acclaimed. These acclaimed smaller films led to Hall's casting in multiple blockbuster hits of the 1990s and 2000s, including The Sum of All Fears (2002) and Dogville (2003), directed by Lars von Trier.- Actor
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George starred as Athelstan in the internationally successful television series Vikings (2013) for 3 seasons. The success of his character and the show led to a spin-off series in collaboration with the release of Season 3, called Vikings: Athelstan's Journal (2015). George also lead Versailles (2015) - Canal Plus' hit series (BBC2) - as King Louis XIV and starred in the Netflix hit show Hang the DJ (2017) - his episode was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Single Drama 2018.
Recently, George can be seen leading in feature film The Gallery (2022) opposite Anna Popplewell, as Gavin in the feature film Rubikon (2022) and leading in The Land of Dreams (2022) - a musical film produced by Italy's Leone Film Group for the International market.
George started his career by playing the cynical revolutionary 'Grantaire' in the Academy Award winning 2012 movie-musical adaptation of Les Misérables (2012), directed by Tom Hooper. Other film credits include leads in Indies No Postage Necessary (2017) and How You Look at Me (2019).
On stage George starred in the West End huge success "Company" directed by Marianne Elliott (lead by Rosalie Craig and Patti LuPone) and in "Tartuffe" at The Theatre Royal Haymarket with Paul Anderson. He played the lead in Jamie Lloyd's "The Pitchfork Disney" at The Shoreditch Town Hall and the lead in "Platinum" at The Hampstead Theatre Downstairs directed by Adam Penford.
George created a short film about A.I. called Lara (2020), which was an attempt to see whether one person could make a film entirely on their own, without any help from anyone else. Lara (2020) went on to win multiple awards at various film festivals both nationally and internationally.
He studied Acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, from which he graduated in 2011.- Actor
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- Producer
Allan Hawco (Actor, Writer, Executive Producer) is one of the country's most recognizable stars, whose wide range of talents appeal to audiences of all ages. He has the unique ability to connect to the audience as an actor and from behind the scenes, as a writer and producer. He was born on Bell Island, and raised in The Goulds in Newfoundland.
Allan is well-known for his roles as co-creator, show-runner, writer, executive producer and star in the hit CBC television drama/comedy Republic of Doyle, under his own production company Take the Shot Productions. Allan played the lead, Jake Doyle, the roguish and irreverent private investigator. In addition to its six season run on CBC, Republic of Doyle was sold to markets around the world, including syndication across the US.
In addition to Republic of Doyle (2010-2014), Allan starred in some of the most acclaimed television productions in Canada including Murdoch Mysteries (2013), ZOS: Zone of Separation (The Movie Network, 2008), political thrillers H20 (CBC, 2004) and Trojan Horse (CBC, 2007), as well as World War II drama Above & Beyond (CBC, 2006). Allan also starred opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the CBC miniseries, The Book of Negroes (2015).
Allan's feature film credits include major roles in Director Bruce McDonald's Award Winning film Weirdos; and Director/Actor Paul Gross' Hyena Road. Prior credits include a starring role in Love & Savagery (2009), directed by John Smith, and in Sir Richard Attenborough's Closing the Ring (2007) with Christopher Plummer and Shirley MacLaine. Recently Allan starred as Liam in Michael Melski's,The Child Remains (2017).
Allan's major accolades include such awards as the Gascon Thomas Award from the National Theatre School, an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Canadian Television Hall of Fame, a Gemini nomination for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series (Republic of Doyle) and an ACTRA nomination for Best Male Actor (Love & Savagery).
Beyond television and film, Allan has maintained his roots in theatre as the co-founder of the Toronto-based 'Company Theatre'. There, he garnered rave reviews as the star in its inaugural production of Tom Murphy's Whistle in the Dark, as well as critical acclaim for both his roles in Festen and Belleville. The Company Theatre has gone on to stage numerous productions, such as John, Domesticated, The Seagull, Speaking in Tongues, The Test, Marion Bridge, and the Dora Award winning Through the Leaves. Allan is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.
Take The Shot Productions, is in production for season 3 of the award winning Television show Frontier, starring Jason Momoa, a Netflix Worldwide and Discovery Channel Canada series filmed on location in St. John's, N.L., Northern England, Scotland, and Cornwall, U.K. Frontier was created and written by Rob and Peter Blackie. Acclaimed directors on the series include Brad Peyton and John Vatcher. In addition to producing the series, Allan also plays the leading character Douglas Brown in Season 1, 2, and 3 serves as Executive Producer to the show.
Allan's upcoming project Caught is another highly anticipated show by his production company. Allan's new series Caught, in which he stars alongside Paul Gross, Eric Johnson, Tori Anderson and Enuka Okuma will air on CBC Monday February 26th, 2018. Allan plays the lead David Slaney, as well as serving as the Showrunner and Executive Producer. Caught is adapted from Lisa Moore's acclaimed novel of the same name.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Music Department
Victor Garber has been in some of the most memorable projects of the past four decades. Victor has recently appeared in The Slap (2015), The Flash (2014), Motive (2013) and Web Therapy (2011). He is currently staring in Greg Berlanti's new DC Comics Superhero series "DC's Legends of Tomorrow" for Warner Bros/CW. He has shared in two Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award® nominations for Outstanding Motion Picture Cast, the latest for Milk (2008), and previously as a member of the cast of Titanic (1997) as well as winning with the cast of Argo (2012). Garber received three Emmy® nods for his role on Alias (2001) and has also earned Emmy® nominations for Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001), and his guest roles on Frasier (1993) and Will & Grace (1998). He is also an accomplished stage actor, whose extensive credits encompass lead roles in both plays and musicals, and has earned four Tony Award® nominations, for his work in Damn Yankees (1994-1995), Lend Me a Tenor (1989-1990), Little Me (1982) and Deathtrap (1978-1982. Victor also starred in the 1998 Tony Award winning Best Play, Art.- Actor
- Director
Abdelhafid Metalsi is known for Munich (2005), Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2008) and Captain Sharif (2013).- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
Marco Antonio Muñiz (born September 16, 1968), known professionally as Marc Anthony, is an American singer, actor, and producer. Anthony is also the top selling tropical salsa artist of all time. The two-time Grammy Award and six-time Latin Grammy Award winner has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide. He is best known for his Latin salsa numbers and ballads. Anthony has won numerous awards and his achievements have been honored through various recognitions. He was the recipient of the 2009 Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Chair's Award. He also received the "2009 CHCI Chair's Lifetime Achievement Award" on September 16, 2009. He holds the Guinness World Record for best-selling tropical/salsa artist and the most number-one albums on the Billboard Tropical Albums year-end charts.
Marco Antonio Muñiz, known by his stage name Marc Anthony, was born in New York City to parents from Guayama, Puerto Rico. His mother Guillermina was a housewife, his father, Felipe Muñiz, a musician and hospital lunchroom worker. Anthony's parents named him after Mexican singer Marco Antonio Muniz. Anthony grew up in East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem and El Barrio, and is the youngest of eight children. He was raised Roman Catholic.
His musical education began at home, where he learned to sing in both Spanish and English under the guidance of his father, Felipe, himself a professional guitarist. As a child, Anthony listened to a variety of musical genres and performers, including rock, rhythm and blues, pop stars José Feliciano (Puerto Rico), Air Supply (United States), as well as salsa legends Héctor Lavoe (Puerto Rico), Willie Colón (Puerto Rico), and Rubén Blades (Panama), among others. According to Anthony, renowned Puerto Rican percussionist and bandleader Tito Puente in particular wielded a profound personal and professional influence throughout his life.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Jimmy L. Smits is an American actor. He is best known for playing attorney Victor Sifuentes on the 1980s-1990s legal drama L.A. Law, NYPD Detective Bobby Simone on the 1990s-2000s police drama NYPD Blue, Matt Santos on the political drama The West Wing, and for appearing in Switch (1991), My Family (1995), and as ADA Miguel Prado in Dexter. He also appeared as Bail Organa in Star Wars. From 2012 to 2014, he joined the main cast of Sons of Anarchy as Nero Padilla. Smits also portrayed Elijah Strait in the NBC drama series Bluff City Law.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Dennis Franz was born Dennis Franz Schlacta in Maywood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and is the son of Eleanor (Mueller) and Franz Ferdinand Schlachta, who were postal workers. He has two sisters, Marlene (born 1938) and Heidi (born 1935). He graduated from Southern Illinois University and was immediately drafted into the military. He served eleven months in Vietnam in a reconnaissance unit, and after his service he suffered depression for some time afterwards. In 1972 he joined the Organic Theatre Company. Robert Altman discovered him at an auditions and urged him to go to Los Angeles, where he became part of Altman's resident company. He met Joanie Zeck on April Fool's Day 1982 and aided her in raising her two daughters, Krista (born 1976) and Tricia (born 1974). They married thirteen years later in Carmel, California.- Actor
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Ciarán Hinds was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on February 9, 1953. He was one of five children and the only son. His father was a doctor who hoped to have Ciarán follow in his footsteps, but that was not to be. It was his mother Moya, an amateur actress, who was the real influence behind his decision to become an actor. Though he did enroll in Law at Queens' University of Belfast, he left that in order to train in acting at RADA. He began his stage career at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre as a pantomime horse in the production of "Cinderella". Staying with the company for several years, he starred in a number of productions, including playing the lead roles in "Arsenic and Old Lace" and "Faust". His stage career has included working with The Field Day Company and a number of world tours. He has starred in a number of productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including a world tour in the title role of "Richard III". Hinds' film career began in 1981 in the movie Excalibur (1981), which boasted a cast rich in talented actors including Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne and Patrick Stewart. In-between his movie work, he's amassed a large number of television credits. Playing such classic characters as "Mr. Rochester" in Jane Eyre (1997), and "Captain Wentworth" in Persuasion (1995) has increased his popularity and most definitely given him much increased recognition. As for his personal life, you won't be likely to see his name in the weekly tabloids. He likes to keep his private life private. It is known that he is in a long-term, committed relationship with a French-Vietnamese actress named Hélène Patarot and they have a daughter together and live in Paris. He is in very high demand and his reputation as a quality, professional actor is sure to keep him busy for as long as he chooses.- Actor
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J.K. Simmons is an American actor.
He was born Jonathan Kimble Simmons in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, to Patricia (Kimble), an administrator, and Donald William Simmons, a music teacher. He attended the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; University of Montana, Missoula, MT (BA in Music).
He had originally planned to be a singer and studied at the University of Montana to become a composer.
He starred as Captain Hook and Mr. Darling opposite gymnastics champ Cathy Rigby in the Broadway and touring revivals of Peter Pan.
He played Benny South-street in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls and can be heard on the cast recording.
He did a commercial voice-over work, including the voice of the yellow M&M in the candy's TV ads.
He appeared as police psychiatrist Emil Skoda on Law & Order (1990), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001).
As of 2011, has made five films with director Sam Raimi: For Love of the Game (1999); The Gift (2000); Spider-Man (2002); Spider-Man 2 (2004); and Spider-Man 3 (2007).
He won many awards from 2005 to 2007 in Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2014 won Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. 2015 won a Golden Globe for his Best Performance as an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture, BAFTA Film Awards Best Supporting Actor, Independent Spirit Awards Best Supporting Male.- 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.- Actor
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British actor Mark Strong, who played Jim Prideaux in the 2011 remake of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), is often cast as cold, calculating villains. But before he became a famous actor, he intended to pursue a career in law.
Strong was born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia in London, England, to an Austrian mother and an Italian father. His father left the family not long after he was born, and his mother worked as an au pair to raise the boy on her own. Strong's mother had his name legally changed, by deed poll, when he was young in order to help him better assimilate with his peers. He became Mark Strong.
Strong attended Wymondham College in Norfolk, and studied at the university level in Munich with the intent of becoming a lawyer. After a year, he returned to London to study English and Drama at Royal Holloway. He went on to further master his craft of at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Although Americans are most familiar with Strong's roles as Sinestro in Green Lantern (2011), mob boss Frank D'Amico in Kick-Ass (2010), and Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes (2009), British audiences know him from his long history as a television actor. He also starred in as numerous British stage productions, including plays at the Royal National Theatre and the RSC.
His most prominent television parts include Prime Suspect 3 (1993) and Prime Suspect: The Last Witness (2003) as Inspector Larry Hall, and starring roles in the BBC Two dramas Our Friends in the North (1996) and The Long Firm (2004), the latter of which netted Strong a BAFTA nomination. He also played Mr. Knightley in the 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's classic tale Emma (1996).
Strong resides in London with his wife Liza Marshall, with whom he has two sons, the younger of which is the godson of his longtime friend Daniel Craig.- Actor
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Marco Giallini was born on 4 April 1963 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He is an actor, known for Perfect Strangers (2016), Rocco Schiavone (2016) and A.C.A.B. - All Cops Are Bastards (2012). He was previously married to Loredana Giallini .- Manny Montana was born in Long Beach, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Ironheart (2025), Mayans M.C. (2018) and The Mule (2018). He has been married to Adelfa Marr since 2016. They have one child.
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Matthew Lillard was born in Lansing, Michigan, to Paula and Jeffrey Lillard. He lived with his family in Tustin, California, from first grade to high school graduation. The summer after high school, he was hired as an extra for Ghoulies Go to College (1990). Matthew was the MC of the Nickelodeon program SK8 TV (1990) in 1989. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasedena, California. Along with a friend, Matthew started the Mean Street Ensemble theater company that functioned until 1991, when Matthew moved to New York to attend the theater school Circle in the Square.
Manager Bill Treusch got Matthew auditions for Serial Mom (1994). Matthew was cast as Chip and began another theater company called the Summoners.- Actor
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Born and raised in Los Angeles, Lesure served in the Air Force Academy before attending the University of Southern California, where he received his bachelor's degree in theater. During his time at USC, he also studied abroad at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. While there, he performed in the productions Hair and The Island. In addition, he was able to fulfill a life long dream - becoming an amateur boxer. Lesure has also worked in a professional theater company in Los Angeles, where he played the role of Macduff in William Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Lesure made his series debut on the comedy For Your Love, co-starring actress Holly Robinson-Peete. He has also appeared in recurring roles on the series The New Adventures of Old Christine, Lipstick Jungle, The Division and Alias. His other television credits include guest-starring roles on Lost, Sherri and Seinfeld. He also gave a memorable performance as a resolute military officer on the acclaimed series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
On the big screen, Lesure has appeared in various independent films, as well as such high-profile features as The Ring 2, starring Naomi Watts; Our Family Wedding, alongside America Ferrera; and Crimson Tide, starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman.
Lesure earned a 2006 MIB Prism Award for Outstanding Male Actor in a TV Drama for his work in Las Vegas. A sports enthusiast, he has twice been named MVP of the Basketball Entertainment League. Noted for his charity work, Lesure is the recipient of the Celebrity Honoree and Distinguished Support Awards from the Sickle Cell Disease Foundation.
He resides in Los Angeles, CA.- Actor
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From Timothy Olyphant's first screen appearances, such as his two-minute bit in The First Wives Club (1996), to "Nicko", whose presence at times dwarfed the island in A Perfect Getaway (2009), he has been a force to be reckoned with.
Born in Hawaii, Timothy David Olyphant was raised in Modesto, California. He is the son of Katherine Lyon (Gideon) and John Vernon Bevan Olyphant, a college teacher who was also an executive at E & J Gallo Winery. He has an older brother, Andy, who is in A&R for Warner Bros. Records, and a younger brother, Matt Olyphant, who was the lead singer for the punk rock group, Fetish, and is also an artist. He is a descendant of the prominent Vanderbilt and Olyphant families of businesspeople, and his ancestry includes Russian Jewish (from a maternal great-grandfather), English, German, Scottish, Dutch, and Irish. Timothy quickly became Modesto's favorite son, competing as a pro swimmer and excelling at drawing. It was, by chance, that he enrolled in an acting course as an elective and decided to pursue an acting career. He took his family and headed to New York City, where he studied the craft and began auditioning for roles. From the beginning, he tried to choose diversified roles and take chances with every genre and always approached everything he did with commitment, humor and grace. Timothy is married to his college sweetheart, Alexis Knief, and, together, they raise three children, one son and two daughters in California. He has managed to keep his personal life out of the tabloids. He obviously has his priorities straight, as this is no easy task in Hollywood.
Highlights of Olyphant's career include his riveting portrayal of "Sheriff Seth Bullock" in HBO's hit drama, Deadwood (2004). He now personifies intensity as complex Kentucky Marshal, "Raylan Givens", in FX's Justified (2010). On the big screen, in 2010's The Crazies (2010), he had the chance to infuse his character with doubts, fears and humaneness in an inhumane situation. Mr. Olyphant proved he could carry a major movie on his talent, alone. He recently appeared in I Am Number Four (2011), a sci-if thriller, in which Tim provided the adult mentorship, taking a back seat to the teen cast.- 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.- Actor
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Shia LaBeouf's natural talent and raw energy have secured his place as one of Hollywood's leading men.
Most recently, LaBeouf starred alongside Vanessa Kirby and Ellen Burstyn in Kornel Mundruczo's Oscar® nominated Pieces of a Woman. In the critically acclaimed film, a grieving couple (Kirby/LaBeouf) embarks on an emotional journey after the loss of their baby. Previously, Shia was also seen in the crime drama, The Tax Collector, which was written and directed by David Ayer. He most recently wrapped production on Abel Ferrarra's Padre Pio which follows the life of the now saint during his time as a monk in Puglia, Italy.
LaBeouf received rave reviews for his performance in Honey Boy, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The film also marks Shia's first feature length film as a screenwriter. LaBeouf portrays a law breaking, alcohol-abusing father who tries to mend his tumultuous relationship with his son (Lucas Hedges & Noah Jupe) over the course of a decade. The film received a Special Jury Award for Vision and Craft at the festival. In 2019, Shia starred in The Peanut Butter Falcon, the highest grossing indie film of the year with $20,500,000 domestic box office receipts. The film, also starring Dakota Johnson, Bruce Dern and Zachary Gottsagen, won the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival.
Other credits include drama, Borg vs. McEnroe (critics heralded LaBeouf's performance as "perfection," "flawless" and "explosive"); the critically acclaimed independent film American Honey , directed by Andrea Arnold, (his performance earned him a British Independent Film Award nomination for "Best Actor," a London Critics' Circle Film Award nomination for "Supporting Actor of the Year," and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for "Best Supporting Male"); the post-apocalyptic thriller, Man Down alongside Gary Oldman and Kate Mara; the war drama Fury, directed by David Ayer, opposite Brad Pitt; Lars von Trier's drama, Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1; Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Vol. 2; and the suspense drama Charlie Countryman, opposite Evan Rachel Wood, Mads Mikkelsen and Melissa Leo.
LaBeouf starred in Transformers: Dark of the Moon (grossing over $1 billion worldwide), which marked his third and final turn as the enterprising and heroic Sam Witwicky. From the original Transformers released in 2007 (which earned over $700 million around the world in theatrical release and became the highest grossing DVD of the year) to the second installment in 2009, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, (which garnered global receipts upwards of $836 million,) Sam continued to find himself in the middle of a life and death struggle between warring robot legions on earth. Additional film credits include Robert Redford's The Company You Keep, Lawless alongside Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce, Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opposite Michael Douglas, the fourth installment of Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones" series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, alongside Harrison Ford, D.J. Caruso's Eagle Eye, the Anthony Minghella-scripted segment of New York, I Love You, a romantic anthology also starring Julie Christie and John Hurt, the popular thriller Disturbia, the Oscar® nominated animated film Surf's Up alongside Jeff Bridges, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which won "Best Ensemble Cast" at the Sundance Film Festival, Emilio Estevez's acclaimed drama Bobby, Disney's The Greatest Game Ever Played which follows the true story of a 19-year-old amateur athlete's journey to winning the U.S. Open, I, Robot, Constantine, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, HBO's "Project Greenlight" featuring The Battle of Shaker Heights produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and in 2003 he made his feature film debut in the comedy Holes, based on the best-selling book by Louis Sacher.
On television, LaBeouf garnered much praise from critics everywhere for his portrayal of "Louis Stevens" on the Disney Channel's original series "Even Stevens." In 2003, he earned a Daytime Emmy award for "Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series" for his work on the highly-rated family show.- Actor
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Michael Chiklis has been working professionally as an actor since he was thirteen. He started in the theater and after receiving his BFA in acting from Boston University's College Of Fine Arts, Michael moved to New York City where he continued acting on the stage until he got his big break playing the late, great John Belushi in the controversial bio-pic Wired. Since then, Michael has spent the last 30 plus years starring in historic television, celebrated films and stage productions as well as directing and recording music. The first 30 years of his career have been extremely rewarding and he's even more excited about the next 30! Michael lives in Los Angeles with his wife Michelle Chiklis. They have two daughters together, Autumn and Odessa Chiklis.