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Jonathan Rhys Meyers was born Jonathan Michael Meyers on July 27, 1977, in Dublin, Ireland, to Mary Geraldine (Meyers) and John O'Keeffe, a musician. He and his family moved to County Cork, Ireland, when the actor was nearly a year old, and then, at the age of 3, his father left the family, leaving his mother to care for Jonny and his 3 younger brothers alone.
Rhys Meyers grew up with a tumultuous childhood and being permanently expelled from school at age 16. Happy to be out of school, he began spending time in a local pool hall where he was discovered by Hubbard Casting. The casting agents were talent-spotting for the David Puttnam production of War of the Buttons (1994), and asked Rhys Meyers to appear for an audition. After three days of auditions, however, he did not get the role, and Rhys Meyers gave up on his acting aspirations. Soon afterward, he received a call to audition for a national ad campaign for Knorr Soup, and though embarrassed by the attention from the ad, he soon found himself considered for a major film. His movie acting debut was a very small role in the film A Man of No Importance (1994), where his simple cast credit is as "First Young Man". His first lead role was in the film The Disappearance of Finbar (1996). During a 6-month postponement in production, he returned home to Cork and there received a call about the film Michael Collins (1996). He traveled to Dublin to meet with director Neil Jordan and successfully won the role of Collins' assassin. Jordan wrote about his meeting with the actor, "I have found someone to play Collins' killer. Jonathan Rees-Myers (sic), from County Cork, apparently, who looks like a young Tom Cruise. [He] Comes into the casting session with alarming certainty. Obviously gifted".
Rhys Meyers continued working constantly from that point and appeared in such films as The Maker (1997), Telling Lies in America (1997), and The Tribe (1998). Going on to film The Governess (1998), B. Monkey (1998), Titus (1999) and Ride with the Devil (1999), he has received critical acclaim for several performances, most notably as "Brian Slade" in Velvet Goldmine (1998), as "Steerpike" in the British mini-series Gormenghast (2000), and as a sympathetic football coach in Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Rhys Meyers is also a talented singer and musician, having performed his own vocals in Velvet Goldmine (1998) and appearing on the film's soundtrack. Rhys Meyers still resides in County Cork, Ireland.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Henry William Dalgliesh Cavill was born on the Bailiwick of Jersey, a British Crown dependency in the Channel Islands. His mother, Marianne (Dalgliesh), a housewife, was also born on Jersey, and is of Irish, Scottish and English ancestry. Henry's father, Colin Richard Cavill, a stockbroker, is of English origin (born in Chester, England). Henry is the second youngest son, with four brothers. He was privately educated at St. Michael's Preparatory School in Saint Saviour, Jersey before attending Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, England.
His interest in acting started at an early age with school play renditions of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and Sonny LaTierri in "Grease". He also starred and directed Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in the BBC documentary "40 Minutes". It was at age 17 when Henry was discovered by casting directors at school who were looking for a young boy to play Albert Mondego in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). He went on to star in Vendetta (2001), appear in BBC's The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2001), the television film Goodbye, Mr. Chips (2002), and the television series Midsomer Murders (1997).
When Henry was 20 years old, he gained starring roles in I Capture the Castle (2003), Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005), Red Riding Hood (2006) and Tristan + Isolde (2006). He also had a minor role in the fantasy-adventure epic Stardust (2007) alongside Sienna Miller and Ben Barnes. During 2007-2010, Henry had a leading role on the television series The Tudors (2007) as Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. The series was a success and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 2007 and won an Emmy Award in 2008. Entertainment Weekly named him "Most Dashing Duke".
He also starred in Blood Creek (2006) and Woody Allen's comedy film Whatever Works (2009). On January 30, 2011, it was announced that Henry Cavill had been cast as the next Superman in Man of Steel (2013), making him the first non-American actor to play Superman. The movie was directed by Zach Snyder, produced by Christopher Nolan, and scripted by David S. Goyer. On November 7, 2011, Henry starred in Tarsem Singh's fantasy-adventure epic Immortals (2011) alongside Mickey Rourke, Freida Pinto and Luke Evans. On September 7, 2012, Henry starred in the action-thriller Cold Light of Day (2003) alongside Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver.
On June 10, 2013, Man of Steel (2013) kicked off its world premiere in New York City followed by London, Bailiwick of Jersey, Sicily, Madrid, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo. The movie became the highest-grossing Superman film to date, and the second-highest-grossing reboot of all time behind The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). Glamour magazine ranked him the #1 "Sexiest Man". In August 2014, Henry became the Ambassador for Durrell Wildlife Park and created a website and social media called #CavillConservation to help raise funds and awareness for his love of animals and conservation. On November 3, 2014, it was announced that Cavill, his brother Charlie, and London-based producer Rex Glensy, have formed their own British production company, Promethean Productions.
On August 7, 2015, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) began its premiere tour with a people's premiere at the famous Somerset House in London, followed by its world premiere in New York City, then Toronto, and Rio de Janeiro. Cavill reprised his role as Superman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Rachel Anne McAdams was born on November 17, 1978 in London, Ontario, Canada, to Sandra Kay (Gale), a nurse, and Lance Frederick McAdams, a truck driver and furniture mover. She is of English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish descent. Rachel became involved with acting as a teenager and by the age of 13 was performing in Shakespearean productions in summer theater camp; she went on to graduate with honors with a BFA degree in Theater from York University. After her debut in an episode of Disney's The Famous Jett Jackson (1998), she co-starred in the Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows (2003), a comedy-drama about the trials and travails of a Shakespearean theater group, and won a Gemini award for her performance in 2003.
Her breakout role as Regina George in the hit comedy Mean Girls (2004) instantly catapulted her onto the short list of Hollywood's hottest young actresses. She followed that film with a star turn opposite Ryan Gosling in the adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks bestseller The Notebook (2004), which was a surprise box office success and became the predominant romantic drama for a new, young generation of moviegoers. After filming, McAdams and Gosling became romantically involved and dated through mid-2007. McAdams next showcased her versatility onscreen with the manic comedy Wedding Crashers (2005), the thriller Red Eye (2005), and the holiday drama The Family Stone (2005).
McAdams then explored the independent film world with Married Life (2007), which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and also starred Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson. Starring roles in the military drama The Lucky Ones (2008), the newspaper thriller State of Play (2009), and the romance The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) followed before she starred opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in Guy Ritchie's international blockbuster Sherlock Holmes (2009). McAdams played the plucky producer of a failing morning TV show in Morning Glory (2010), the materialistic fiancée of Owen Wilson in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), and returned to romantic drama territory with the hit film The Vow (2012) opposite Channing Tatum. The actress also stars with Ben Affleck in Terrence Malick's To the Wonder (2012) and alongside Noomi Rapace in Brian De Palma's thriller Passion (2012).
In 2005, McAdams received ShoWest's "Supporting Actress of the Year" Award as well as the "Breakthrough Actress of the Year" at the Hollywood Film Awards. In 2009, she was awarded with ShoWest's "Female Star of the Year." As of 2011, she has been romantically linked with her Midnight in Paris (2011) co-star Michael Sheen.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Eric Bana was born Eric Banadinovic on August 9, 1968, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He is the younger of two brothers. His father, named Ivan Banadinovic, came from Zagreb, Croatia, and worked as a manager for Caterpillar Inc. His mother, named Eleanor Banadinovic, came from a German family and was a hairdresser.
Young Bana grew up in suburban Melbourne. He was popular among his schoolmates for his talent of making comic impressions of his teachers. At that time, he was fond of Mel Gibson in Mad Max (1979) and also decided to become an actor. He moved to Sydney and worked odd jobs to support himself. In 1991, he began a career as a stand-up comedian, while working as a barman at Melbourne's Castle Hotel. In 1993, Bana made his television debut on Steve Vizard's Tonight Live with Steve Vizard (1990) talk show, then joined the Full Frontal (1993) TV-series. He gained popularity for making impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruse and "Columbo". In 1996, he started his own show titled Eric (1997), then launched a comedy series titled The Eric Bana Show Live (1997). The show was canceled for the lack of substantial audience. However, in 1997, Bana received the Logie Award for "Most Popular Comedian" for his work on The Eric Bana Show Live (1997).
He made his film debut in The Castle (1997), in a supporting comic role. That same year, he was cast to portray Mark "Chopper" Read, the notorious Australian underworld figure. For the role, Bana gained 30 pounds, by eating junk food; he also spent a few days with Read in prison, in order to perfect his mimicry. Bana completely transformed himself into a bald, plump, disturbed criminal. He would arrive on the film set at four in the morning, spending several hours in makeup, being tattooed exactly like Read. Chopper (2000) became an international success and won three Australian Film Institute Awards. Bana won the Best Actor at the 2000 Stockholm Film Festival and also the AFI 2000 Best Actor Award. Then he co-starred in Black Hawk Down (2001), then starred in Hulk (2003). In 2002, he was cast as the Trojan Prince Hector in the historical epic Troy (2004), after being recommended by Brad Pitt, who admired Bana for his work in Chopper (2000). In 2005, Bana co-starred with Daniel Craig and Geoffrey Rush in the political drama Munich (2005) directed by Steven Spielberg.
In 1995, he began dating Rebecca Gleeson, a publicist and daughter of Australian High Court Chief Justice Murray Gleeson. The following year, he was named "Bachelor of the Year" by Cleo magazine, and won a trip for two to the United States. He invited Gleeson, and proposed to her during that romantic trip. In 1997, the two were married; their son, Klaus, was born in 1999, their daughter, Sophia, was born in 2002. He currently resides in Melbourne with his wife and their two children. Bana is a passionate supporter of Australian football. He was appointed Member of the Order of Australia at the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to the performing arts and to charitable organisations.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
David Wenham is an Australian actor who is known for his portrayals of Faramir from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Friar Carl from the Van Helsing franchise and Dilios from 300. He also acted in Moulin Rouge, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Dark City, Top of the Lake, SeaChange and Peter Rabbit.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Natalie Dormer born February 11, 1982 is an English actress. She is best known for her roles as Anne Boleyn on the Showtime series The Tudors (2007-10), as Margaery Tyrell on the HBO series Game of Thrones (2012-14), Irene Adler on the CBS series Elementary (2013-15), and as Cressida in the science-fiction adventure films The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014) and Part 2 (2015). She has been nominated for Best Performance at the Gemini Awards for her work in The Tudors. She has also been nominated for a Screen Actor's Guild Award for her performance in Game of Thrones.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Samuel Henry John Worthington was born August 2, 1976 in Surrey, England. His parents, Jeanne (Martyn) and Ronald Worthington, a power plant employee, moved the family to Australia when he was six months old, and raised him and his sister Lucinda in Warnbro, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia.
Worthington graduated from NIDA (Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art) in 1998 at the age of 22. He received critical acclaim for his portrayal of "Arthur Wellesley" in his first professional role in the Belvoir Street Theatre production "Judas Kiss" (directed by Neil Armfield). He then went on to work in Australian television on such shows as Water Rats (1996) and "Backburner" and then on the American TV show JAG (1995)'s 100th episode (Boomerang: Part 1).
Worthington made his film debut in the highly acclaimed Australian movie Bootmen (2000), a film about a troop of "tap dogs". Minor roles proceeded in Hart's War (2002) and A Matter of Life (2001) before he was cast in another hailed Australian drama, Dirty Deeds (2002), co-starring Toni Collette and John Goodman.
The following year, he starred in yet another Aussie film, opposite David Wenham in Gettin' Square (2003). The director of the film, Jonathan Teplitzky, originally tested actors who were up to 8 years older than the then-27-year-old Worthington. Teplitzky wasn't sure Sam "could convincingly play a tough guy and also have elements of the leading man about him", but in the end Teplitzky decided he was "fantastic", and had "David playing the older, slightly more streetwise accomplice" proclaiming "it worked".
But it wasn't until 2004 that Sam got his big break. He was offered the starring role in Cate Shortland's acclaimed Australian drama Somersault (2004), opposite Abbie Cornish. The film made a clean sweep of the Australian Film Institute awards in 2004, winning in 13 film categories - the first time this has ever occurred in the award's history. Worthington also won the AFI award for Best Male Actor.
Worthington's career took off internationally when he was cast as Jake Sully in James Cameron's Avatar (2009) and as Marcus Wright, a cyborg who assists the humans despite their suspicions of him in Terminator Salvation (2009). Worthington soon became a household name, and starring in high profile films Clash of the Titans (2010), The Debt (2010), Texas Killing Fields (2011), Man on a Ledge (2012), and Wrath of the Titans (2012). Worthington also provided the voice for the Call of Duty: Black Ops video games.
In 2010, Worthington started a production company, Full Clip Productions, with two of his close friends John Schwarz and Michael Schwarz. The company teamed with Radical studios to print two graphic novels Damaged and Patriots.- Actor
- Producer
- Editorial Department
Christian Charles Philip Bale was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK on January 30, 1974, to English parents Jennifer "Jenny" (James) and David Bale. His mother was a circus performer and his father, who was born in South Africa, was a commercial pilot. The family lived in different countries throughout Bale's childhood, including England, Portugal, and the United States. Bale acknowledges the constant change was one of the influences on his career choice.
His first acting job was a cereal commercial in 1983; amazingly, the next year, he debuted on the West End stage in "The Nerd". A role in the 1986 NBC mini-series Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986) caught Steven Spielberg's eye, leading to Bale's well-documented role in Empire of the Sun (1987). For the range of emotions he displayed as the star of the war epic, he earned a special award by the National Board of Review for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor.
Adjusting to fame and his difficulties with attention (he thought about quitting acting early on), Bale appeared in Kenneth Branagh's 1989 adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V (1989) and starred as Jim Hawkins in a TV movie version of Treasure Island (1990). Bale worked consistently through the 1990s, acting and singing in Newsies (1992), Swing Kids (1993), Little Women (1994), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), The Secret Agent (1996), Metroland (1997), Velvet Goldmine (1998), All the Little Animals (1998), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999). Toward the end of the decade, with the rise of the Internet, Bale found himself becoming one of the most popular online celebrities around, though he, with a couple notable exceptions, maintained a private, tabloid-free mystique.
Bale roared into the next decade with a lead role in American Psycho (2000), director Mary Harron's adaptation of the controversial Bret Easton Ellis novel. In the film, Bale played a murderous Wall Street executive obsessed with his own physicality - a trait for which Bale would become a specialist. Subsequently, the 10th Anniversary issue for "Entertainment Weekly" crowned Bale one of the "Top 8 Most Powerful Cult Figures" of the past decade, citing his cult status on the Internet. EW also called Bale one of the "Most Creative People in Entertainment", and "Premiere" lauded him as one of the "Hottest Leading Men Under 30".
Bale was truly on the Hollywood radar at this time, and he turned in a range of performances in the remake Shaft (2000), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), the balmy Laurel Canyon (2002), and Reign of Fire (2002), a dragons-and-magic commercial misfire that has its share of defenders.
Two more cult films followed: Equilibrium (2002) and The Machinist (2004), the latter of which gained attention mainly due to Bale's physical transformation - he dropped a reported 60+ pounds for the role of a lathe operator with a secret that causes him to suffer from insomnia for over a year.
Bale's abilities to transform his body and to disappear into a character influenced the decision to cast him in Batman Begins (2005), the first chapter in Christopher Nolan's definitive trilogy that proved a dark-themed narrative could resonate with audiences worldwide. The film also resurrected a character that had been shelved by Warner Bros. after a series of demising returns, capped off by the commercial and critical failure of Batman & Robin (1997). A quiet, personal victory for Bale: he accepted the role after the passing of his father in late 2003, an event that caused him to question whether he would continue performing.
Bale segued into two indie features in the wake of Batman's phenomenal success: The New World (2005) and Harsh Times (2005). He continued working with respected independent directors in 2006's Rescue Dawn (2006), Werner Herzog's feature version of his earlier, Emmy-nominated documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997). Leading up to the second Batman film, Bale starred in The Prestige (2006), the remake of 3:10 to Yuma (2007), and a reunion with director Todd Haynes in the experimental Bob Dylan biography, I'm Not There (2007).
Anticipation for The Dark Knight (2008) was spun into unexpected heights with the tragic passing of Heath Ledger, whose performance as The Joker became the highlight of the sequel. Bale's graceful statements to the press reminded us of the days of the refined Hollywood star as the second installment exceeded the box-office performance of its predecessor.
Bale's next role was the eyebrow-raising decision to take over the role of John Connor in the Schwarzenegger-less Terminator Salvation (2009), followed by a turn as federal agent Melvin Purvis in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009). Both films were hits but not the blockbusters they were expected to be.
For all his acclaim and box-office triumphs, Bale would earn his first Oscar in 2011 in the wake of The Fighter (2010)'s critical and commercial success. Bale earned the Best Supporting Actor award for his portrayal of Dicky Eklund, brother to and trainer of boxer "Irish" Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg. Bale again showed his ability to reshape his body with another gaunt, skeletal transformation.
Bale then turned to another auteur, Yimou Zhang, for the epic The Flowers of War (2011), in which Bale portrayed a priest trapped in the midst of the Rape of Nanking. Bale earned headlines for his attempt to visit with Chinese civil-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, which was blocked by the Chinese government.
Bale capped his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012); in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, Bale made a quiet pilgrimage to the state to visit with survivors of the attack that left theatergoers dead and injured. He also starred in the thriller Out of the Furnace (2013) with Crazy Heart (2009) writer/director Scott Cooper, and the drama-comedy American Hustle (2013), reuniting with David O. Russell.
Bale will re-team with The New World (2005) director Terrence Malick for two upcoming projects: Knight of Cups (2015) and an as-yet-untitled drama.
In his personal life, he devotes time to charities including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Foundation. He lives with his wife, Sibi Blazic, and their two children.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim. In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". Other theatre credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe", Miranda in "The Tempest" and Rose in "The Blind Giant is Dancing", both for the Belvoir Street Theatre Company. In other television roles, Blanchett starred as Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), as Janie Morris in G.P. (1989) and in ABC's popular series Police Rescue (1994). She made her feature film debut in Paradise Road (1997).
Cate married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. She had met him a year earlier on a movie set, and they didn't like each other at first. He thought she was aloof, and she thought he was arrogant, but then they connected over a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later he proposed marriage and they quickly married before she went off to England to play her breakthrough role in films: the title character in Elizabeth (1998) for which she won numerous awards for her performance, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for the role but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a particularly busy year, with starring roles in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001) and playing Elf Queen Galadriel in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. She also gave birth to her first child, son Dashiell, in 2001. In 2004, she gave birth to her second son Roman.
Also, in 2004, she played actress Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for playing a teacher having an affair with an underage student in Notes on a Scandal (2006). In 2007, she returned to the role that made her a star in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). It earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She was nominated for another Oscar that same year as Best Supporting Actress for playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). In 2008, she gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius. She and her husband became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, choosing to spend more time in Australia raising their three sons. She also purchased a multi-million dollar home in Sydney, Australia and named it Bulwarra and made extensive renovations to it. Because of her life in Australia, her film work became sporadic, until Woody Allen cast her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), which won her the Academy Award as Best Actress. She ended her job as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, while her husband continued there for two more years before he too resigned.
In 2015, she adopted her daughter Edith in her father's homeland of the United States. That same year, she and her husband sold their multi-million dollar home in Australia at a profit and moved to America. Reasons varied from her wanting to work more in America to wanting to familiarize herself with her late father's American heritage. She played the title role of Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife in a lesbian affair with a younger woman, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While most actresses might slow down in their forties, Blanchett did the opposite by stretching her boundaries even further, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then making her Broadway debut in 2017 in "The Present", which is her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's play "Platonov" for which she earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2017, she was selected for the highest honor in her birth country: the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Natalie Portman is the first person born in the 1980s to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (for Black Swan (2010)).
Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an American-born artist (from Cincinnati, Ohio), who also acts as Natalie's agent. Her parents are both of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Natalie's family left Israel for Washington, D.C., when she was still very young. After a few more moves, her family finally settled in New York, where she still lives to this day. She graduated with honors, and her academic achievements allowed her to attend Harvard University. She was discovered by an agent in a pizza parlor at the age of 11. She was pushed towards a career in modeling but she decided that she would rather pursue a career in acting. She was featured in many live performances, but she made her powerful film debut in the movie Léon: The Professional (1994) (aka "Léon"). Following this role Natalie won roles in such films as Heat (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), and Mars Attacks! (1996).
It was not until 1999 that Natalie received worldwide fame as Queen Amidala in the highly anticipated US$431 million-grossing prequel Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). She then she starred in two critically acclaimed comedy dramas, Anywhere But Here (1999) and Where the Heart Is (2000), followed by Closer (2004), for which she received an Oscar nomination. She reprised her role as Padme Amidala in the last two episodes of the Star Wars prequel trilogy: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005). She received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Black Swan (2010).
She received a second nomination for Best Actress, for playing Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie (2016).- 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
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- Cinematographer
When hunky, twenty-year-old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of little depth. He spent several years trying desperately to sway this image, but this was a double-edged sword. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001), Ned Kelly (2003), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Casanova (2005), Candy (2006), I'm Not There (2007), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
Heath Ledger was born on the fourth of April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally (Ramshaw), a teacher of French, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer who also raced cars. His ancestry was Scottish, English, Irish, and Sephardi Jewish. As the story goes, in junior high school it was compulsory to take one of two electives, either cooking or drama. As Heath could not see himself in a cooking class he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, however the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent. When he was seventeen he and a friend decided to pack up, leave school, take a car and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams were made or, at least, where actors could possibly get their big break. Upon arriving in Sydney with a purported sixty-nine cents to his name, Heath tried everything to get a break.
His first real acting job came in a low-budget movie called Blackrock (1997), a largely unimpressive cliché; an adolescent angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He only had a very small role in the film. After that small role Heath auditioned for a role in a T.V. show called Sweat (1996) about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He was offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. Heath accepted the latter because he felt to really stand out as an actor one had to accept unique roles that stood out from the bunch. It got him small notice, but unfortunately the show was quickly axed, forcing him to look for other roles. He was in Home and Away (1988) for a very short period, in which he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay. Then came his very brief role in Paws (1997), a film which existed solely to cash in on guitar prodigy Nathan Cavaleri's brief moment of fame, where he was the hottest thing in Australia. Heath played a student in the film, involved in a stage production of a Shakespeare play, in which he played "Oberon". A very brief role, this offered him a small paycheck but did nothing to advance his career. Then came Two Hands (1999). He went to the U.S. trying to audition for film roles, showcasing his brief role in Roar (1997) opposite then unknown Vera Farmiga.
Then Australian director Gregor Jordan auditioned him for the lead in Two Hands (1999), which he got. An in your face Aussie crime thriller, Two Hands (1999) was outstanding and helped him secure a role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a young hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama The Patriot (2000).
What followed was a stark inconsistency of roles, Ledger accepting virtually every single character role, anything to avoid being typecast. Some met with praise, like his short role in Monster's Ball (2001), but his version of Ned Kelly (2003) was an absolute flop, which led distributors hesitant to even release it outside Australia. Heath finally had deserved success with his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005). For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in in the film, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills near-by. It was concluded weeks later that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that included pain-killers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight (2008) and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).
Posthumously, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There (2007), which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in 'The Dark Knight (2008). His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production. Ledger received more than thirty posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance as the Joker, the psychopathic clown prince of crime, in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he is the second actor to win an acting award posthumously after Peter Finch who won an Oscar for Network (Best Actor 1977)), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.- Actor
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With an authoritative voice and calm demeanor, this ever popular American actor has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern US cinema. Morgan was born on June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mayme Edna (Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber. The young Freeman attended Los Angeles City College before serving several years in the US Air Force as a mechanic between 1955 and 1959. His first dramatic arts exposure was on the stage including appearing in an all-African American production of the exuberant musical Hello, Dolly!.
Throughout the 1970s, he continued his work on stage, winning Drama Desk and Clarence Derwent Awards and receiving a Tony Award nomination for his performance in The Mighty Gents in 1978. In 1980, he won two Obie Awards, for his portrayal of Shakespearean anti-hero Coriolanus at the New York Shakespeare Festival and for his work in Mother Courage and Her Children. Freeman won another Obie in 1984 for his performance as The Messenger in the acclaimed Brooklyn Academy of Music production of Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus and, in 1985, won the Drama-Logue Award for the same role. In 1987, Freeman created the role of Hoke Coleburn in Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisy, which brought him his fourth Obie Award. In 1990, Freeman starred as Petruchio in the New York Shakespeare Festival's The Taming of the Shrew, opposite Tracey Ullman. Returning to the Broadway stage in 2008, Freeman starred with Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher in Clifford Odets' drama The Country Girl, directed by Mike Nichols.
Freeman first appeared on TV screens as several characters including "Easy Reader", "Mel Mounds" and "Count Dracula" on the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) show The Electric Company (1971). He then moved into feature film with another children's adventure, Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow! (1971). Next, there was a small role in the thriller Blade (1973); then he played Casca in Julius Caesar (1979) and the title role in Coriolanus (1979). Regular work was coming in for the talented Freeman and he appeared in the prison dramas Attica (1980) and Brubaker (1980), Eyewitness (1981), and portrayed the final 24 hours of slain Malcolm X in Death of a Prophet (1981). For most of the 1980s, Freeman continued to contribute decent enough performances in films that fluctuated in their quality. However, he really stood out, scoring an Oscar nomination as a merciless hoodlum in Street Smart (1987) and, then, he dazzled audiences and pulled a second Oscar nomination in the film version of Driving Miss Daisy (1989) opposite Jessica Tandy. The same year, Freeman teamed up with youthful Matthew Broderick and fiery Denzel Washington in the epic Civil War drama Glory (1989) about freed slaves being recruited to form the first all-African American fighting brigade.
His star continued to rise, and the 1990s kicked off strongly with roles in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and The Power of One (1992). Freeman's next role was as gunman Ned Logan, wooed out of retirement by friend William Munny to avenge several prostitutes in the wild west town of Big Whiskey in Clint Eastwood's de-mythologized western Unforgiven (1992). The film was a sh and scored an acting Oscar for Gene Hackman, a directing Oscar for Eastwood, and the Oscar for best picture. In 1993, Freeman made his directorial debut on Bopha! (1993) and soon after formed his production company, Revelations Entertainment.
More strong scripts came in, and Freeman was back behind bars depicting a knowledgeable inmate (and obtaining his third Oscar nomination), befriending falsely accused banker Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). He was then back out hunting a religious serial killer in Se7en (1995), starred alongside Keanu Reeves in Chain Reaction (1996), and was pursuing another serial murderer in Kiss the Girls (1997).
Further praise followed for his role in the slave tale of Amistad (1997), he was a worried US President facing Armageddon from above in Deep Impact (1998), appeared in Neil LaBute's black comedy Nurse Betty (2000), and reprised his role as Alex Cross in Along Came a Spider (2001). Now highly popular, he was much in demand with cinema audiences, and he co-starred in the terrorist drama The Sum of All Fears (2002), was a military officer in the Stephen King-inspired Dreamcatcher (2003), gave divine guidance as God to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty (2003), and played a minor role in the comedy The Big Bounce (2004).
2005 was a huge year for Freeman. First, he he teamed up with good friend Clint Eastwood to appear in the drama, Million Dollar Baby (2004). Freeman's on-screen performance is simply world-class as ex-prize fighter Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris, who works in a run-down boxing gym alongside grizzled trainer Frankie Dunn, as the two work together to hone the skills of never-say-die female boxer Hilary Swank. Freeman received his fourth Oscar nomination and, finally, impressed the Academy's judges enough to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance. He also narrated Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005) and appeared in Batman Begins (2005) as Lucius Fox, a valuable ally of Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman for director Christopher Nolan. Freeman would reprise his role in the two sequels of the record-breaking, genre-redefining trilogy.
Roles in tentpoles and indies followed; highlights include his role as a crime boss in Lucky Number Slevin (2006), a second go-round as God in Evan Almighty (2007) with Steve Carell taking over for Jim Carrey, and a supporting role in Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (2007). He co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the breakout hit The Bucket List (2007) in 2007, and followed that up with another box-office success, Wanted (2008), then segued into the second Batman film, The Dark Knight (2008).
In 2009, he reunited with Eastwood to star in the director's true-life drama Invictus (2009), on which Freeman also served as an executive producer. For his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the film, Freeman garnered Oscar, Golden Globe and Critics' Choice Award nominations, and won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor.
Recently, Freeman appeared in RED (2010), a surprise box-office hit; he narrated the Conan the Barbarian (2011) remake, starred in Rob Reiner's The Magic of Belle Isle (2012); and capped the Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Freeman has several films upcoming, including the thriller Now You See Me (2013), under the direction of Louis Leterrier, and the science fiction actioner Oblivion (2013), in which he stars with Tom Cruise.- Actor
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Gary Oldman is a talented English movie star and character actor, renowned for his expressive acting style. One of the most celebrated thespians of his generation, with a diverse career encompassing theatre, film and television, he is known for his roles as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), Drexl in True Romance (1993), George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), among many others. For much of his career, he was best-known for playing over-the-top antagonists, such as terrorist Egor Korshunov in the 1997 blockbuster Air Force One (1997), though he has reached a new audience with heroic roles in the Harry Potter and Dark Knight franchises. He is also a filmmaker, musician, and author.
Gary Leonard Oldman was born on March 21, 1958 in New Cross, London, England, to Kathleen (Cheriton), a homemaker, and Leonard Bertram Oldman, a welder. He won a scholarship to Britain's Rose Bruford Drama College, in Sidcup, Kent, where he received a B.A. in theatre arts in 1979. He subsequently studied with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and went on to appear in a number of plays throughout the early '80s, including "The Pope's Wedding," for which he received Time Out's Fringe Award for Best Newcomer of 1985-1986 and the British Theatre Association's Drama Magazine Award as Best Actor for 1985. Before fame, he was employed as a worker in assembly lines and as a porter in an operating theater. He also had jobs selling shoes and beheading pigs while supporting his early acting career.
His film debut was Remembrance (1982), though his most-memorable early role came when he played Sex Pistol Sid Vicious in the biopic Sid and Nancy (1986) picking up the Evening Standard Film Award as Best Newcomer. He then received a Best Actor nomination from BAFTA for his portrayal of '60s playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987).
In the 1990s, Oldman brought to life a series of iconic real-world and fictional villains including Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK (1991), the title character in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Drexl Spivey in True Romance (1993), Stansfield in Léon: The Professional (1994), Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element (1997) and Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One (1997). That decade also saw Oldman portraying Ludwig van Beethoven in biopic Immortal Beloved (1994).
Oldman played the coveted role of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), giving him a key part in one of the highest-grossing franchises ever. He reprised that role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Oldman also took on the iconic role of Detective James Gordon in writer-director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), a role he played again in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Prominent film critic Mark Kermode, in reviewing The Dark Knight, wrote, "the best performance in the film, by a mile, is Gary Oldman's ... it would be lovely to see him get a[n Academy Award] nomination because actually, he's the guy who gets kind of overlooked in all of this."
Oldman co-starred with Jim Carrey in the 2009 version of A Christmas Carol in which Oldman played three roles. He had a starring role in David Goyer's supernatural thriller The Unborn, released in 2009. In 2010, Oldman co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli. He also played a lead role in Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood. Oldman voiced the role of villain Lord Shen and was nominated for an Annie Award for his performance in Kung Fu Panda 2.
In 2011, Oldman portrayed master spy George Smiley in the adaptation of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and the role scored Oldman his first Academy Award nomination. In 2014, he played one of the lead humans in the science fiction action film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) alongside Jason Clarke and Keri Russell. Also in 2014, Oldman starred alongside Joel Kinnaman, Abbie Cornish, Michael Keaton, and Samuel L. Jackson in the remake of RoboCop (2014), as Norton, the scientist who creates RoboCop.
Aside from acting, Oldman tried his hand at writing and directing for Nil by Mouth (1997). The movie opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, and won Kathy Burke a Best Actress prize at the festival.
Oldman has three children, Alfie, with first wife, actress Lesley Manville, and Gulliver and Charlie with his third wife, Donya Fiorentino. In 2017, he married writer and art curator Gisele Schmidt.
In 2018 he won an Oscar for best actor for his work on Darkest Hour (2017).- Actress
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Maggie Gyllenhaal was born on November 16, 1977 in New York City, New York as Margalit Ruth Gyllenhaal, the daughter of producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner and director Stephen Gyllenhaal, and the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal. She is of Ashkenazi Jewish (mother) and Swedish, English, and German (father) descent.
She made her film debut in Waterland (1992). She had sporadic roles throughout her teenage years though she took a break to attend Columbia University where she graduated w/ a degree in literature in 1999. In addition, she briefly studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, which helped w/ her post-graduation transition back into acting.
Soon after graduating, she had supporting roles in Cecil B. Demented (2000) & Donnie Darko (2001). Her breakout role came later when she starred in Secretary (2002), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She followed that up w/ supporting roles in 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Adaptation. (2002), & Mona Lisa Smile (2003) among other movies. She received her 2nd Golden Globe nomination for playing a recent prison parolee in Sherrybaby (2006). She followed that up w/ roles in World Trade Center (2006), Stranger Than Fiction (2006) & The Dark Knight (2008).
In 2009, she received great acclaim for her role in Crazy Heart (2009), which earned her 1st Oscar nomination. Since then, she has been seen in Nanny McPhee Returns (2010), Hysteria (2011) & Won't Back Down (2012).- Actor
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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.- Actor
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Born Ryan Thomas Gosling on November 12, 1980, in London, Ontario, Canada, he is the son of Donna (Wilson), a secretary, and Thomas Ray Gosling, a traveling salesman. Ryan was the second of their two children, with an older sister, Mandi. His ancestry is French-Canadian, as well as English, Scottish, and Irish. The Gosling family moved to Cornwall, Ontario, where Ryan grew up and was home-schooled by his mother. He also attended Gladstone Public School and Cornwall Collegiate & Vocational School, where he excelled in Drama and Fine Arts. The family then relocated to Burlington, Ontario, where Ryan attended Lester B. Pearson High School.
Ryan first performed as a singer at talent contests with Mandi. He attended an open audition in Montreal for the TV series "The Mickey Mouse Club" (The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1989)) in January 1993 and beat out 17,000 other aspiring actors for a a spot on the show. While appearing on "MMC" for two years, he lived with co-star Justin Timberlake's family.
Though he received no formal acting training, after "MMC," Gosling segued into an acting career, appearing on the TV series Young Hercules (1998) and Breaker High (1997), as well as the films The Slaughter Rule (2002), Murder by Numbers (2002), and Remember the Titans (2000). He first attracted serious critical attention with his performance as the Jewish neo-Nazi in the controversial film The Believer (2001), which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. He was cast in the part by writer-director Henry Bean, who believed that Gosling's strict upbringing gave him the insight to understand the character Danny, whose obsessiveness with the Judaism he was born into turns to hatred. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award as Best Male Lead in 2002 for the role and won the Golden Aries award from the Russian Guild of Film Critics.
After appearing in the sleeper The Notebook (2004) in 2004, Gosling won the dubious honor of being named one of the 50 Hottest Bachelors by People Magazine. More significantly, he was named the Male Star of Tomorrow at the 2004 Show West convention of movie exhibitors.
Gosling reached a summit of his profession with his performance in Half Nelson (2006), which garnered him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. In a short time, he has established himself as one of the finest actors of his generation. Throughout the subsequent decade, he has become all three of an internet fixation, a box office star, and a critical darling, having headlined Blue Valentine (2010), Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011), Drive (2011), The Ides of March (2011), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), The Nice Guys (2016), and La La Land (2016). In 2017, he starred in the long-awaited science fiction sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017), with Harrison Ford.
Ryan has two children with his partner, actress Eva Mendes.- Producer
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William Bradley "Brad" Pitt was born on December 18, 1963 in Shawnee, Oklahoma and raised in Springfield, Missouri to Jane Etta Pitt (née Hillhouse), a school counselor & William Alvin "Bill" Pitt, a truck company manager. At Kickapoo High School, Pitt was involved in sports, debating, student government and school musicals. Pitt attended the University of Missouri, where he majored in journalism with a focus on advertising. He occasionally acted in fraternity shows. He left college two credits short of graduating to move to California. Before he became successful at acting, Pitt supported himself by driving strippers in limos, moving refrigerators and dressing as a giant chicken while working for El Pollo Loco.
Pitt's earliest credited roles were in television, starting on the daytime soap opera Another World (1964) before appearing in the recurring role of Randy on the legendary prime time soap opera Dallas (1978). Following a string of guest appearances on various television series through the 1980s, Pitt gained widespread attention with a small part in Thelma & Louise (1991), in which he played a sexy criminal who romanced and conned Geena Davis. This led to starring roles in badly received films such as Johnny Suede (1991) & Cool World (1992).
But Pitt's career hit an upswing with his casting in A River Runs Through It (1992), which cemented his status as an multi-layered actor as opposed to just a pretty face. Pitt's subsequent projects were as quirky and varied in tone as his performances, ranging from his unforgettably comic cameo as stoner roommate Floyd in True Romance (1993) to romantic roles in such visually lavish films as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) and Legends of the Fall (1994), to an emotionally tortured detective in the horror-thriller Se7en (1995). His portrayal of frenetic oddball Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys (1995) won him a Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.
Pitt's portrayal of Achilles in the big-budget period drama Troy (2004) helped establish his appeal as an action star and was closely followed by a co-starring role in the stylish spy-versus-spy flick Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). It was on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith that Pitt, who married Jennifer Aniston in a highly publicized ceremony in 2000, met Angelina Jolie. Pitt left Aniston for Jolie in 2005, a break-up that continues to fuel tabloid stories years after its occurrence.
He continues to wildly vary his film choices, appearing in everything from high-concept popcorn flicks such as Megamind (2010) to adventurous critic-bait like Inglourious Basterds (2009) and The Tree of Life (2011). He has received two Best Actor Oscar nominations, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011). In 2014, he starred in the war film Fury (2014), opposite Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Peña.
Pitt and Jolie have 6 children, 3 adopted & 3 biological.- Actor
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With his breakthrough performance as Eames in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi thriller Inception (2010), English actor Tom Hardy has been brought to the attention of mainstream audiences worldwide. However, the versatile actor has been steadily working on both stage and screen since his television debut in the miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). After being cast in the World War II drama, Hardy left his studies at the prestigious Drama Centre in London and was subsequently cast as Twombly in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down (2001) and as the villain Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002).
Edward Thomas Hardy was born on September 15, 1977 in Hammersmith, London; his mother, Elizabeth Anne (Barrett), is an artist and painter, and his father, Chips Hardy, is a writer. He is of English and Irish descent. Hardy was brought up in East Sheen, London, and first studied at Reed's School. His education continued at Tower House School, then at Richmond Drama School, and subsequently at the Drama Centre London, along with fellow Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender. After winning a modeling competition at age 21, he had a brief contract with the agency Models One.
Tom spent his teens and early twenties battling delinquency, alcoholism and drug addiction; after completing his work on Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), he sought treatment and has also admitted that his battles with addiction ended his five-year marriage to Sarah Ward. Returning to work in 2003, Hardy was awarded the Evening Standard Most Promising Newcomer Award for his theatre performances in the productions of "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Blood". In 2003, Tom also co-starred in the play "The Modernists" with Paul Popplewell, Jesse Spencer and Orlando Wells.
During the next five years, Hardy worked consistently in film, television and theatre, playing roles as varied as Robert Dudley in the BBC's The Virgin Queen (2005), Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist (2007) and starring in "The Man of Mode" at the National Theatre. On the silver screen, he appeared in the crime thriller Layer Cake (2004) with Daniel Craig, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006), and the romp Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006).
In 2006, Hardy created "Shotgun", an underground theatre company along with director Robert Delamere, and directed a play, penned by his father for the company, called "Blue on Blue". In 2007, Hardy received a best actor BAFTA nomination for his touching performance as Stuart Shorter in the BBC adaptation of Alexander Masters' bestselling biography Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007). Hailed for his transformative character acting, Hardy was lauded for his emotionally and physically convincing portrayal in the ill-fated and warmhearted tale of Shorter, a homeless and occasionally violent man suffering from addiction and muscular dystrophy.
The following year, he appeared as gay hoodlum Handsome Bob in the Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla (2008), but this would be his next transformation that would prove his extensive range and stun critics. In the film Bronson (2008), Hardy played the notorious Charles Bronson (given name, Michael Peterson), the "most violent prisoner in Britain". Bald, pumped-up, and outfitted with Bronson's signature strongman mustache, Hardy is unrecognizable and gives a harrowing performance that is physically fearless and psychologically unsettling. Director Nicolas Winding Refn breaks the fourth wall with Hardy retelling his tales directly to viewers as well as performing them outright before an audience of his own imagining. The performance mixes terrifying brutality, vaudevillian showmanship, wry humor, and an alarming amount of commitment, and won Hardy a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor. The performance got Hollywood's attention, and in 2009, Hardy was named one of Variety's "10 Actors to Watch". That year, he continued to garner praise for his starring role in The Take (2009), a four-part adaptation of Martina Cole's bestselling crime novel, as well as for his performance as Heathcliff in a version of Wuthering Heights (2009).
Recent work includes the aforementioned breakthrough appearance in Inception (2010) alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard and Elliot Page. The movie was released in July 2010 and became one of top 25 highest grossing films of all time, collecting eight Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and winning four.
Other films include Warrior (2011), opposite Joel Edgerton, the story of two estranged brothers facing the fight of a lifetime from director Gavin O'Connor, and This Means War (2012), directed by McG and co-starring Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine. Tom also starred in the heralded Cold War thriller, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) with Colin Firth and Gary Oldman. Hardy rejoined Christopher Nolan for The Dark Knight Rises (2012); he played the villain role of Bane opposite Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman. Hardy's menacing physique and his character's scrambled, hard-to-distinguish voice became a major discussion point as the film was released.
Outside of performing, Hardy is the patron for the charity "Flack", which is an organization to aid the recovery of the homeless in Cambridge. And in 2010, Hardy was named an Ambassador for The Prince's Trust, which helps disadvantaged youth. On the recent stage, he starred in the Brett C. Leonard play "The Long Red Road" in early 2010. Written for Hardy and directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, the play was staged at Chicago's Goodman Theater.
In 2015, Hardy starred as the iconic Mad Max in George Miller's reboot of his franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). He also collected a British Independent Film Award for his portrayal of both the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, in Legend (2015), and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as John Fitzgerald in The Revenant (2015). Hardy also starred on the BBC series Peaky Blinders (2013), alongside Cillian Murphy, and on the television series Taboo (2017), both created by Steven Knight.
He has an outlaw biker story among other projects in development. In 2010, Hardy became engaged to fellow English actress Charlotte Riley, whom he starred with in The Take (2009) and Wuthering Heights (2009), and is raising a young son, Louis Thomas Hardy, with ex-girlfriend Rachael Speed. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to drama.- Actor
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Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt was born February 17, 1981 in Los Angeles, California, to Jane Gordon and Dennis Levitt. Joseph was raised in a Jewish family with his late older brother, Dan Gordon-Levitt, who passed away in October 2010. His parents worked for the Pacifica Radio station KPFK-FM and his maternal grandfather, Michael Gordon, had been a well-known movie director. Joseph first became well known for his starring role on NBC's award-winning comedy series 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996). During his six seasons on the show, he won two YoungStar Awards and also shared in three Screen Actors Guild Award® nominations for Outstanding Performance by a Comedy Series Ensemble.
Prior to his success on television, Joseph had already worked steadily in feature films. Early in his career, he won a Young Artist Award for his first major role, in Robert Redford's drama A River Runs Through It (1992). During the 1990s, he also co-starred in the films Angels in the Outfield (1994), The Juror (1996), Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), a well-reviewed slasher sequel, and 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), opposite Heath Ledger, which has become a teen comedy classic.
Following his work on 3rd Rock, Joseph took time off from acting to attend Columbia University. In the early 2000s, he broke from the mold of his television and film comedy supporting roles by appearing in a string of intense dramatic parts, mostly in smaller, independent films, such as Manic (2001), with Don Cheadle; Mysterious Skin (2004), for writer/director Gregg Araki; Rian Johnson's award-winning debut, dramatic thriller Brick (2005) (2005); Lee Daniels' Shadowboxer (2005); the crime drama The Lookout (2007), which marked Scott Frank's directorial debut; John Madden's Killshot (2008), with Diane Lane and Mickey Rourke; Spike Lee's World War II film Miracle at St. Anna (2008); and the controversial drama Stop-Loss (2008), in which he starred with Ryan Phillippe, under the direction of Kimberly Peirce. By 2009, Joseph was officially established as one a new generation of leading men with his Golden Globe-nominated role in Marc Webb's comedy-drama 500 Days of Summer (2009), also starring Zooey Deschanel , for which he received Golden Globe, Independent Spirit Award and People's Choice Award nominations. He also adapted the Elmore Leonard short story Sparks (2009) into a 24-minute short film that he directed, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival.
Beginning the new decade, he headlined the indie drama Hesher (2010) and established himself as an action star in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), also starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard and Elliot Page. Balancing both independent and Hollywood film, Joseph scored another Golden Globe nod for the cancer drama 50/50 (2011), directed by Jonathan Levine and also starring Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, and Bryce Dallas Howard. He worked again with director Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises (2012), the third and final installment in the director's Batman series, for which he received a People's Choice Award nomination for Favorite Movie Actor; and snagged leading roles in both Premium Rush (2012), directed by David Koepp, and Looper (2012), reuniting with his Brick director, Rian Johnson, opposite Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. Rounding out the year, he played Abraham Lincoln's son Robert in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated Lincoln (2012), with Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field.
In 2013, Gordon-Levitt starred in his critically-acclaimed feature film directorial debut, Don Jon (2013), from a script he wrote, opposite Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for "Best First Screenplay" for the film. He also provided the voice of Jiro Horikoshi in the 2014 English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award-nominated animated feature The Wind Rises (2013), and appeared in Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), in which he played Johnny, a character Miller created for the film. In 2015, he starred in The Walk (2015), directed by Robert Zemeckis, and in which he portrayed Philippe Pettit, and in 2016 headlined Oliver Stone's Snowden (2016).
Joseph has completed production on Project Power (2020), Henry Joost/Ariel Schulman sci-fi film for Netflix, in which he stars opposite Jamie Foxx, and on the independent thriller, 7500 (2019), written and directed by Patrick Vollarth. Among his other projects, he will play attorney Richard Schultz in Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), and is in development on a variety of feature films including Fraggle Rock.
Joseph has also founded and directs hitRECord, an open collaborative production. hitRECord creates and develops art and media collectively using their website where anyone with an internet connection can upload their records, download and remix others' records, and work on projects together. When the results of these RECords are produced and make a profit, hitRECord splits the profits 50/50 with everybody who contributed to the final production. hitRECord has published books, put out records, gone on tour and has screened their work at major festivals including Sundance and TIFF. The half-hour variety program, "Hit Record on TV with Joseph Gordon-Levitt," which includes short films, live performances, music, animation, conversation and more, earned an Emmy Award for Creative Achievement in Interactive Media - Social TV Experience. hitRECord's project, "Band Together with Logic," is a one-hour YouTube Originals special that sees Grammy-nominated rapper Logic open up his creative process like never before, inviting the world to collaborate with him on an original song and music video.
In 2016, the ACLU honored Gordon-Levitt with their annual Bill of Rights Award for furthering diversity efforts, promoting free speech, empowering women and otherwise supporting civil rights and liberties for all Americans.- Actress
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Academy Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard was born on September 30, 1975 in Paris. Cotillard is the daughter of Jean-Claude Cotillard, an actor, playwright and director, and Niseema Theillaud, an actress and drama teacher. Her father's family is from Brittany.
Raised in Orléans, France, she made her acting debut as a child with a role in one of her father's plays. She studied drama at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Orléans. After small appearances and performances in theater, Cotillard had occasional and minor roles in TV series such as Highlander (1992) and Extrême limite (1994), but her career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s. While still a teenager, Cotillard made her cinema debut at the age of 18 in the film L'histoire du garçon qui voulait qu'on l'embrasse (1994), and had small but noticeable roles in films such as Arnaud Desplechin's My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument (1996) and Coline Serreau's comedy The Green Planet (1996).
In 1996, she had her first lead role in the TV film Chloé (1996), playing the title role - a teenage runaway who is forced into prostitution. Cotillard co-starred opposite Anna Karina, the muse of the Nouvelle Vague.
In 1997, she won her first film award at the Festival Rencontres Cinématographiques d'Istres in France, for her performance as the young imprisoned Nathalie in the short film Affaire classée (1997). Her first prominent screen role was Lilly Bertineau in Gérard Pirès's box-office hit Taxi (1998), a role which she reprised in two sequels: Taxi 2 (2000) and Taxi 3 (2003), this role earned her first César award nomination (France's equivalent to the Oscar) for Most Promising Actress in 1999.
In 1999, Cotillard starred as Julie Bonzon in the Swiss war drama War in the Highlands (1998). For her performance in the film, she won the Best Actress award at the Autrans Film Festival in France. In 2001, Marion starred in Pretty Things (2001) as the twin sisters Marie and Lucie, and was nominated for her second César award for Most Promising Actress.
Cotillard's breakthrough in France came in 2003, when she starred in Yann Samuell's dark romantic comedy Love Me If You Dare (2003), in which she played Sophie Kowalsky, the daughter of Polish immigrants who lives a love-hate relationship with her childhood friend. The film was a box-office hit in France, became a cult film abroad and led Cotillard to bigger projects.
Her first Hollywood movie was Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003), in which she played Joséphine, the wife of William Bloom (played by Billy Crudup). A few years later, Marion starred in Ridley Scott's A Good Year (2006) playing Fanny Chenal, a French café owner who falls in love with Russell Crowe's character. In 2004, she won the Chopard Thophy of Female Revelation at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, Cotillard won the César award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance of Tina Lombardi in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (2004).
In 2007, Cotillard received international recognition for her iconic portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose (2007). Director Olivier Dahan cast Cotillard to play the legendary French singer because to him, her eyes were like those of "Piaf". The fact that she can sing also helped Cotillard land the role of "Piaf", although most of the singing in the film is that of Piaf's. The role won Cotillard the Academy Award for Best Actress along with a César, a Lumière Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe. That made her only the second actress to win an acting Oscar performing in a language other than English next to Sophia Loren (Two Women (1960)). Only two male performers (Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful (1997) and Robert De Niro for The Godfather Part II (1974)) have won an Oscar for solely non-English parts. Trevor Nunn called her portrayal of "Piaf" "one of the greatest performances on film ever". At the Berlin International Film Festival, where the film premiered, Cotillard was given a 15-minute standing ovation. When she won the César, Alain Delon presented the award and announced the winner as "La Môme Marion" (The Kid Marion), he also praised her at the stage saying: "Marion, I give you this César. I think this César is for a great great actress, and I know what I'm talking about".
Cotillard has worked much more frequently in English-language movies following her Academy Award recognition. In 2009, she acted opposite Johnny Depp in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009), and later that year played Luisa Contini in Rob Marshall's musical Nine (2009) and received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. Time magazine ranked her as the fifth best performance by a female in 2009. The following year, she took on the main antagonist role, Mal, in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), and in 2011 she had memorable parts in Midnight in Paris (2011) and Contagion (2011) and reteamed with Christopher Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
In 2011 and 2012 respectively, Cotillard appeared on the top of Le Figaro's list of the highest paid actors in France, it was the first time in nine years that a female topped the list. Cotillard was also the highest paid foreign actress in Hollywood.
In 2012, Cotillard received wide-spread critical acclaim for her role as the legless orca trainer Stéphanie in Rust and Bone (2012). The film was a box office hit in France and received a ten-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Cotillard won the Globe de Cristal (France's equivalent to the Golden Globe), the Étoile d'Or award and was nominated for the Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA, Critics' Choice and César Awards for her performance in the film. Cate Blanchett wrote an op-ed for Variety praising Cotillard's performance in "Rust and Bone", the two actresses competed for the Academy Awards for Best Actress in 2008, Cate was nominated for her performance in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and Marion for her performance in La Vie En Rose (2007) and Cotillard won the Oscar.
She had her first leading role in an American movie in 2013, in James Gray's The Immigrant (2013), in which she played Ewa Cybulska, a Polish immigrant who wants to experience the American dream. Cotillard received wide-spread acclaim for her performance in the film at the 66th Cannes Film Festival, where the film premiered, and also won several critics awards. In 2014, Cotillard played Sandra in the Belgian film Two Days, One Night (2014) by the Dardenne brothers. Her performance was unanimously praised at the 67th Cannes Film Festival, earned several critics awards, Cotillard won her first European Award for Best Actress and also received her second Oscar nomination and her sixth César award nomination.
In 2015, she played Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Fassbender in Justin Kurzel's Macbeth (2015) and voiced two animated movies: The Little Prince (2015) in which she voiced The Rose, and April and the Extraordinary World (2015), in which she voiced the lead role, Avril. Her 2016 included Nicole Garcia's From the Land of the Moon (2016), Xavier Dolan's It's Only the End of the World (2016), Justin Kurzel's Assassin's Creed (2016), in which she worked again with her Macbeth co-star Michael Fassbender; and Robert Zemeckis's Allied (2016), with Brad Pitt.- 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.- Actress
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British actress Emilia Clarke was born in London and grew up in Oxfordshire, England. Her father was a theatre sound engineer and her mother is a businesswoman. Her father was working on a theatre production of "Show Boat" and her mother took her along to the performance. This is when, at the age of 3, her passion for acting began. From 2000 to 2005, she attended St. Edward's School of Oxford, where she appeared in two school plays. She went on to study acting at the prestigious Drama Centre London, where she took part in 10 plays. During this time, Emilia first appeared on television with a guest role in the BBC soap opera Doctors (2000).
In 2010, after graduating from the Drama Centre London, Emilia got her first film role in the television movie Triassic Attack (2010). In 2011, her breakthrough role came in when she replaced fellow newcomer Tamzin Merchant on Game of Thrones (2011) after the filming of the original pilot episode. From March to April 2013, she played Holly Golightly in a Broadway production of "Breakfast at Tiffany's". She played Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys (2015), opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jai Courtney and Jason Clarke. She played the lead role of Louisa Clark in the romantic comedy blockbuster Me Before You (2016) and went on to star in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) as Qi'ra.
Since her rise to prominence, Emilia has contributed to various charitable organisations. In 2018, she was named as the ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing because of her efforts in raising awareness about the working condition of the nurses in the UK. In 2019, she was named as the first ambassador for the global Nursing Now campaign. In 2019, in a personal essay published in The New Yorker, Emilia revealed that she had suffered from two life threatening brain aneurysms in 2011 and 2013. She launched her own charity SameYou in 2019, which aims to broaden neurorehabilitation access for young people after a brain injury or stroke.- Actor
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Peter Dinklage is an American actor. Since his breakout role in The Station Agent (2003), he has appeared in numerous films and theatre plays. Since 2011, Dinklage has portrayed Tyrion Lannister in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) . For this he won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film in 2011.
Peter Hayden Dinklage was born in Morristown, New Jersey, to Diane (Hayden), an elementary school teacher, and John Carl Dinklage, an insurance salesman. He is of German, Irish, and English descent. In 1991, he received a degree in drama from Bennington College and began his career. His exquisite theatre work that expresses brilliantly the unique range of his acting qualities, includes remarkable performances full of profoundness, charisma, intelligence, sensation and insights in plays such as "The Killing Act", "Imperfect Love", Ivan Turgenev's "A Month in the Country" as well as the title roles in William Shakespeare's "Richard III" and in Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya".
Peter Dinklage received acclaim for his first film, Living in Oblivion (1995), where he played an actor frustrated with the limited and caricatured roles offered to actors who have dwarfism. In 2003, he starred in The Station Agent (2003), written and directed by Tom McCarthy. The movie received critical praise as well as Peter Dinklage's work including nominations such as for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role at the "Screen Actors Guild" and Best Male Lead at the "Film Independent Spirit Awards". One of his next roles has been the one of Miles Finch, an acclaimed children's book author, in Elf (2003). Find Me Guilty (2006), the original English Death at a Funeral (2007), its American remake Death at a Funeral (2010), Penelope (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) are also included in his brilliant work concerning feature films.
His fine work in television also includes shows such as Entourage (2004), Life as We Know It (2004), Threshold (2005) and Nip/Tuck (2003). In 2011, the primary role of Tyrion Lannister, a man of sharp wit and bright spirit, in Game of Thrones (2011), was incarnated with unique greatness in Dinklage's unparalleled performance. The series is an adaptation of author George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and his work has received widespread praise, also highlighted by his receiving of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series at The 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards (2011), The 67th Primetime Emmy Awards (2015), The 70th Primetime Emmy Awards (2018) and The 71st Primetime Emmy Awards (2019) as well as of the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television at [error].
Dinklage, among others, has also voiced Captain Gutt in Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and The Mighty Eagle in The Angry Birds Movie (2016), starred in the comedy horror film Knights of Badassdom (2013) while his tour-de-force interpretations as a multifarious "chameleon" of substantial mastery and artistic generosity also include film and TV gems such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Three Christs (2017) and I Think We're Alone Now (2018).- Actor
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Kit Harington was born Christopher Catesby Harington in Acton, London, to Deborah Jane (Catesby), a former playwright, and David Richard Harington, a businessman. His mother named him after 16th-century British playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe, whose first name was shortened to Kit, a name Harington prefers. Harington's uncle is Sir Nicholas John Harington, the 14th Baronet Harington, and his paternal great-grandfather was Sir Richard Harington, the 12th Baronet Harington. Through his paternal grandmother, Lavender Cecilia Denny, Kit's eight times great-grandfather was King Charles II of England. Also through his father, Harington descends from politician Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, the bacon merchant T. A. Denny, clergyman Baptist Wriothesley Noel, merchant and politician Peter Baillie, peer William Legge, 4th Earl of Dartmouth, and MP Sir William Molesworth, 6th Baronet.
Harington was a pupil at the Southfield Primary School from 1992 to 1998. When he was 11, his family moved to Worcestershire, and he studied at the Chantry High School in Martley until 2003. He became interested in acting after watching a production of Waiting for Godot when he was 14, and he performed in several school productions. He attended Worcester Sixth Form College, where he studied Drama and Theatre Studies, between 2003 and 2005. When he was 17, he was inspired to study acting in a drama school after watching a performance by Ben Whishaw playing Hamlet in 2004. He moved back to London when he was eighteen and a year later attended the Central School of Speech and Drama, from which he graduated in 2008.- Actress
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Lena Headey is a Bermudian-British actress. Headey is best known for her role as "Cersei Lannister" in Game of Thrones (2011) (2011-2019) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), Possession (2002), and The Remains of the Day (1993). Headey stars as "Queen Gorgo", a heroic Spartan woman in the period film, 300 (2006), by director Zack Snyder.
Headey was born in Hamilton, Bermuda, to British parents Sue and John Headey. Her father, a Yorkshire police cadet, was stationed in the Bermuda Police Service. She was raised there until age five, when her family returned to England. She was brought up in Yorkshire before moving to London in her teens. Headey had not gone to drama school before she became an actress. At the age of seventeen, Headey's performance in a one-off show in the company of six school friends caught the attention of a casting agent, who took a photo and asked her to audition. Eventually, Headey was cast in Waterland (1992), which became her big-screen debut. She honed her natural acting talent while filming and also took archery classes and horse training. She also took boxing classes in clubs in south London, where a former boxer had been teaching her to spar. During her film career, spanning over 15 years, Headey has shown her range in a variety of roles, playing characters from Amazon-type warriors and action-minded women in The Cave (2005) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), to a lesbian florist in Imagine Me & You (2005).
Headey's film career has taken her all over the world. She was in India for the filming of The Jungle Book (1994), then in St. Petersburg, Russia, for filming Onegin (1999), and in Norway for filming of Aberdeen (2000). In 2005 Headey was filming in Romania and in Mexico, then spent four months in Prague, Czech Republic, where a forest was designed and built for filming The Brothers Grimm (2005), with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. During 2006 Headey was in Canada for the filming of 300 (2006), then went to locations in Bulgaria for shooting The Contractor (2007), and Germany and in Czech Republic for the filming of The Red Baron (2008).
She also played Gina McVey in the horror thriller The Broken (2008), and Elizabeth in Tell Tale (2009). In addition to her film-work, Heady appeared as Sarah Connor in a TV spin-off of the popular "Terminator" film franchise, the FOX's television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008).
Outside of her acting profession, Headey continued taking boxing lessons in London. She is a vegetarian and also remains loyal to yoga, which she discovered during her work in India. She has never been back to her birthplace in Bermuda; she shares her time between her homes in London, England, and Los Angeles, California.- Actor
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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (born 27 July 1970) is a Danish actor, producer and screenwriter. He graduated from the Danish National School of Theatre in Copenhagen in 1993. Coster-Waldau's breakthrough performance in Denmark was his role in the film Nightwatch (1994). Since then he has appeared in numerous films in his native Scandinavia and Europe in general, including Headhunters (2011) and A Thousand Times Good Night (2013).
In the United States, his debut film role was in the war film Black Hawk Down (2001), playing Medal of Honor recipient Gary Gordon. He then played Detective John Amsterdam in the short-lived Fox television series New Amsterdam (2008), as well as appearing as Frank Pike in the 2009 Fox television film Virtuality, originally intended as a pilot. He became widely known for his role as Jaime Lannister in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2018. He is a UNDP Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to critical issues such as gender equality and climate change.
Coster-Waldau was born in Rudkøbing, Denmark, the son of Hanne Søborg Coster, a librarian, and Jørgen Oscar Fritzer Waldau (died 1998). He has spoken in interviews about his father's problems with alcohol, as well as his parents' divorce. He has two older sisters, and was raised mainly by his mother. He grew up in Tybjerg, a small village between Ringsted and Næstved in southern Zealand. Coster-Waldau was the youngest actor to enter the Danish National School of Theatre and Contemporary Dance (Danish: Statens Teaterskole), where he was educated from 1989 to 1993.
In 2001, he began his U.S. career in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down as Medal of Honor recipient Gary Gordon. Coster-Waldau says "My first U.S. movie was Black Hawk Down and a friend helped me put myself on tape up on the attic over my apartment in Copenhagen. We shipped it out and I got lucky."
Since April 2011, Coster-Waldau has played Jaime Lannister in the HBO hit series Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin's best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novel series. He commented about the character "What's not to like about Jaime? As an actor I couldn't ask for a better role". For his role as Jaime Lannister he has received several accolades, including Primetime Emmy Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Critics' Choice Television Award, Saturn Award and People's Choice Award nominations.
In 2011, he also starred alongside Sam Shepard in Mateo Gil's feature Blackthorn, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Later the same year he starred in Morten Tyldum's Headhunters. The film went on to be the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all-time and received very positive reviews including a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Coster-Waldau starred in the 2013 horror film Mama alongside Jessica Chastain, which debuted at number one in the US box office and grossed over $140 million worldwide. He went on to play Sykes, a military weapons expert in the science fiction action thriller film Oblivion. The same year he co-starred with Juliette Binoche in Erik Poppe's drama A Thousand Times Good Night. In 2014, he starred in Susanne Bier's Danish thriller A Second Chance as Andreas, a police officer forced to make a difficult choice. In 2016, Coster-Waldau appeared in the action-fantasy film Gods of Egypt as Horus.
In early 2017, he starred in E.L. Katz's dark comedy Small Crimes which premiered at South by Southwest film festival on 11 March 2017, to positive reviews. Coster-Waldau then appeared in the Danish film 3 Things, a thriller about a prime suspect of a bank robbery who negotiates the terms of his witness protection deal. He starred in Roman Waugh's prison film Shot Caller, which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival on 16 June 2017. Since January 2018 he has been the L'Oréal Paris global spokesperson for the company's Men Expert line of products. In May 2017, it was announced that he is attached to star in Domino, a film directed by Brian De Palma. He is also set to star in The Silencing, a thriller directed by Anders Engstom.
Although Coster-Waldau is not religious, like the vast majority of Danes, he was baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran in the Danish National Church during his youth and viewed his confirmation as a big moment in his life when he first identified as becoming an adult. He married Nukâka, a Greenlandic actress and singer, in 1998, and they live in Kongens Lyngby with their two daughters as well as two dogs. Their daughter Filippa has starred in a Danish short film, The Girl and the Dogs, which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. His father-in-law is Josef Motzfeldt, a member of the Parliament of Greenland and former leader of the Community of the People party. He is a supporter of English football club Leeds United and he is a member of the Leeds United Supporters' Trust.- Actor
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A second-generation Norwegian actor, Kristofer Hivju was born on 7 December, 1978 in Oslo. He is the son of actors Lieselotte Holmene and Erik Hivju, a prominent character actor who appeared with his son in the short film Flax, where Kristofer shared screenwriting credit with director Bård Ivar Engelsås.
Kristofer made his American Film debut in Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s 2011 prequel of John Carpenter's The Thing (2011). Next he was seen in M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth (2013) but he is most recognizable as fan favorite Tormund Giantsbane on HBO's Game of Thrones (2011).- Actor
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Richard Madden, born 18 June 1986, is a Scottish stage, film, and television actor best known for portraying Robb Stark in the HBO series "Game of Thrones" and Prince Kit in Disney's "Cinderella." Starring as David Budd in the BBC miniseries "Bodyguard" has also brought him more international acclaim and attention including a Golden Globe and other nominations. Despite his seemingly overnight success, Madden has been acting since he was in his teens, with only a brief break where he focused on school.
Madden was born in Elderslie, Renfrewshire, Scotland, where he was brought up with two sisters. His mother, Pat, is a classroom assistant, and his father, Richard, is in the fire brigade.- Dean-Charles Chapman is an English actor. He is known for portraying Billy Elliot in the West End theatre production of Billy Elliot the Musical, Tom Blake in Sam Mendes's film 1917, and Tommen Baratheon in the fourth, fifth and sixth seasons of the HBO drama series Game of Thrones.
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George MacKay was born in 1992 in Hammersmith, London, England, to Kim Baker, a British costume designer, and Paul Christopher MacKay, an Australian stage/lighting manager, from Adelaide. One of his grandmothers is from Cork, Ireland.
At the age of ten, George was scouted to audition for a role in the family feature, Peter Pan (2003). He quickly landed the part of Curly, one of the Lost Boys, and went on to have several minor roles on TV, including an episode of Rose and Maloney (2002) and Footprints in the Snow (2005). At thirteen, George landed the part of Riccio in the film adaptation of Cornelia Funke's best-selling children's novel, The Thief Lord (2006), starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and was also cast in lead role for the BBC adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb (2006).
George worked with Tim Roth, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sophie Okonedo for the HBO Movie Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006) and later took a part in the Dickensian drama, The Old Curiosity Shop (2007). Soon after, George co-starred with Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber on Defiance (2008). In 2009, George took on the role of Harry, in The Boys Are Back (2009) alongside Clive Owen, for which he received 2 award nominations. His career took another step forward with Hunky Dory (2011).
Since, George has featured in several shorts which have been popular on the festival circuit and played the part of Tommo Peaceful with counterpart Jack O'Connell in the adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's Private Peaceful (2012).
2013 was George's breakthrough year, and was recognized for his parts as Aaron in For Those in Peril (2013), Davy in the musical Sunshine on Leith (2013), Jake Whittam in Breakfast with Jonny Wilkinson (2013) and the dark horse Eddie in How I Live Now (2013). George received several nominations and for such features and later bought home a total of 5 awards.
George had a stint in the West End in 2014 in The Cement Garden. He portrayed Joe in the well-received Pride (2014) and Duane Hopkins' Bypass (2014) premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October. Both Captain Fantastic and Sadie Jones' The Outcast (2015) are in post-production and George will be returning to theatre for Eugene O'Neill's 'Ah,Wilderness!' this April.
In 2016, George starred in the film Captain Fantastic (2016), opposite Viggo Mortensen, and the mini-series 11.22.63 (2016), with James Franco and Sarah Gadon. He rounded out the decade playing the starring role in Sam Mendes' 1917 (2019), a box office hit and highly critically-acclaimed drama set during World War I and shot to simulate a single take in real time.- Actor
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Colin Andrew Firth was born into an academic family in Grayshott, Hampshire, England. His mother, Shirley Jean (Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at the Open University, and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, lectured on history at Winchester University College (formerly King Alfred's College) in Winchester, and worked on education for the Nigerian government. His grandparents were missionaries. His siblings Katie Firth and Jonathan Firth are also actors.
Firth's first acting experience came in infant's school when he played "Jack Frost" in a Christmas pantomime. Three of his four grandparents were Methodist missionaries and he spent his early childhood in Nigeria, returning to England at age five where he entered a comprehensive school in Winchester. He spent two years at the Drama Centre, then in Chalk Farm, where he was "discovered" whist playing "Hamlet" during his final term. His first professional role was as "Bennet" in the West End production of "Another Country". From this performance, he was chosen to play the character of "Judd" in the movie of the play. He went on to play a variety of character parts in both film and television. For his portrayal of "Robert Lawrence" in the 1989 TV production Tumbledown (1988), he received the Royal Television Society Best Actor award and also a BAFTA nomination. He also received a BAFTA nomination for "Mr. Darcy" in the 1995 TV version of Pride and Prejudice (1995). In 2011, he won the Oscar for Best Actor for his commanding leading role, playing British King George VI in The King's Speech (2010).- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born in Concord, California, to Janet Marylyn (Frager), a hospital worker, and Amos Mefford Hanks, an itinerant cook. His mother's family, originally surnamed "Fraga", was entirely Portuguese, while his father was of mostly English ancestry. Tom grew up in what he has called a "fractured" family. He moved around a great deal after his parents' divorce, living with a succession of step-families. No problems, no alcoholism - just a confused childhood. He has no acting experience in college and credits the fact that he could not get cast in a college play with actually starting his career. He went downtown, and auditioned for a community theater play, was invited by the director of that play to go to Cleveland, and there his acting career started.
Ron Howard was working on Splash (1983), a fantasy-comedy about a mermaid who falls in love with a business executive. Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, which eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks landed the lead role and the film went on to become a surprise box office success, grossing more than $69 million. After several flops and a moderate success with the comedy Dragnet (1987), Hanks' stature in the film industry rose. The broad success with the fantasy-comedy Big (1988) established him as a major Hollywood talent, both as a box office draw and within the film industry as an actor. For his performance in the film, Hanks earned his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor.
Hanks climbed back to the top again with his portrayal of a washed-up baseball legend turned manager in A League of Their Own (1992). Hanks has stated that his acting in earlier roles was not great, but that he subsequently improved. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hanks noted his "modern era of movie making ... because enough self-discovery has gone on ... My work has become less pretentiously fake and over the top". This "modern era" began for Hanks, first with Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and then with Philadelphia (1993). The former was a blockbuster success about a widower who finds true love over the radio airwaves. Richard Schickel of Time magazine called his performance "charming", and most critics agreed that Hanks' portrayal ensured him a place among the premier romantic-comedy stars of his generation.
In Philadelphia, he played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination. Hanks lost 35 pounds and thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role. In a review for People, Leah Rozen stated, "Above all, credit for Philadelphia's success belongs to Hanks, who makes sure that he plays a character, not a saint. He is flat-out terrific, giving a deeply felt, carefully nuanced performance that deserves an Oscar." Hanks won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia. During his acceptance speech, he revealed that his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth and former classmate John Gilkerson, two people with whom he was close, were gay.
Hanks followed Philadelphia with the blockbuster Forrest Gump (1994) which grossed a worldwide total of over $600 million at the box office. Hanks remarked: "When I read the script for Gump, I saw it as one of those kind of grand, hopeful movies that the audience can go to and feel ... some hope for their lot and their position in life ... I got that from the movies a hundred million times when I was a kid. I still do." Hanks won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Forrest Gump, becoming only the second actor to have accomplished the feat of winning consecutive Best Actor Oscars.
Hanks' next role - astronaut and commander Jim Lovell, in the docudrama Apollo 13 (1995) - reunited him with Ron Howard. Critics generally applauded the film and the performances of the entire cast, which included actors Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Kathleen Quinlan. The movie also earned nine Academy Award nominations, winning two. Later that year, Hanks starred in Disney/Pixar's computer-animated film Toy Story (1995), as the voice of Sheriff Woody. A year later, he made his directing debut with the musical comedy That Thing You Do! (1996) about the rise and fall of a 1960s pop group, also playing the role of a music producer.
As of 2022, Hanks is 66-years-old. He has never retired from acting, and has remained active in the film industry for more than four decades.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s, as the hunky lead actor in movies such as Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997), to then become a leading man in Hollywood blockbusters, made by internationally renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Irmelin DiCaprio (née Indenbirken) and former comic book artist George DiCaprio. His father is of Italian and German descent, and his mother, who is German-born, is of German, Ukrainian and Russian ancestry. His middle name, "Wilhelm", was his maternal grandfather's first name. Leonardo's father had achieved minor status as an artist and distributor of cult comic book titles, and was even depicted in several issues of American Splendor, the cult semi-autobiographical comic book series by the late 'Harvey Pekar', a friend of George's. Leonardo's performance skills became obvious to his parents early on, and after signing him up with a talent agent who wanted Leonardo to perform under the stage name "Lenny Williams", DiCaprio began appearing on a number of television commercials and educational programs.
DiCaprio began attracting the attention of producers, who cast him in small roles in a number of television series, such as Roseanne (1988) and The New Lassie (1989), but it wasn't until 1991 that DiCaprio made his film debut in Critters 3 (1991), a low-budget horror movie. While Critters 3 (1991) did little to help showcase DiCaprio's acting abilities, it did help him develop his show-reel, and attract the attention of the people behind the hit sitcom Growing Pains (1985), in which Leonardo was cast in the "Cousin Oliver" role of a young homeless boy who moves in with the Seavers. While DiCaprio's stint on Growing Pains (1985) was very short, as the sitcom was axed the year after he joined, it helped bring DiCaprio into the public's attention and, after the sitcom ended, DiCaprio began auditioning for roles in which he would get the chance to prove his acting chops.
Leonardo took up a diverse range of roles in the early 1990s, including a mentally challenged youth in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead (1995) and a drug addict in one of his most challenging roles to date, Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries (1995), a role which the late River Phoenix originally expressed interest in. While these diverse roles helped establish Leonardo's reputation as an actor, it wasn't until his role as Romeo Montague in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) that Leonardo became a household name, a true movie star. The following year, DiCaprio starred in another movie about doomed lovers, Titanic (1997), which went on to beat all box office records held before then, as, at the time, Titanic (1997) became the highest grossing movie of all time, and cemented DiCaprio's reputation as a teen heartthrob. Following his work on Titanic (1997), DiCaprio kept a low profile for a number of years, with roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and the low-budget The Beach (2000) being some of his few notable roles during this period.
In 2002, he burst back into screens throughout the world with leading roles in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002), his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. With a current salary of $20 million a movie, DiCaprio is now one of the biggest movie stars in the world. However, he has not limited his professional career to just acting in movies, as DiCaprio is a committed environmentalist, who is actively involved in many environmental causes, and his commitment to this issue led to his involvement in The 11th Hour, a documentary movie about the state of the natural environment. As someone who has gone from small roles in television commercials to one of the most respected actors in the world, DiCaprio has had one of the most diverse careers in cinema. DiCaprio continued to defy conventions about the types of roles he would accept, and with his career now seeing him leading all-star casts in action thrillers such as The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), DiCaprio continues to wow audiences by refusing to conform to any cliché about actors.
In 2012, he played a mustache twirling villain in Django Unchained (2012), and then tragic literary character Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013) and Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
DiCaprio is passionate about environmental and humanitarian causes, having donated $1,000,000 to earthquake relief efforts in 2010, the same year he contributed $1,000,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Elijah Wood is an American actor best known for portraying Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's blockbuster Lord of the Rings film trilogy. In addition to reprising the role in The Hobbit series, Wood also played Ryan in the FX television comedy Wilfred (2011) and voiced Beck in the Disney XD animated television series Tron: Uprising (2012).
Born Elijah Jordan Wood on 28 January, 1981, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Wood is the son of Debbie (Krause) and Warren Wood, who ran a delicatessen. He has an older brother, Zach, and a younger sister, Hannah Wood. He is of English, German, Austrian, and Danish descent. Demonstrating a gift for performing at a young age, Wood's natural talent inspired his mother to take him to an International Modeling and Talent Association annual convention in Los Angeles. Soon after, he began to get bookings for small parts on television.
Although his first credit was a small part in Back to the Future Part II (1989), Wood's first major film role was in the 'Barry Levinson' historical family drama Avalon (1990). Following that, Wood became an in-demand child actor, appearing in a number of major films such as Paradise (1991), Radio Flyer (1992) and The Good Son (1993), in which he co-starred with Macaulay Culkin. This was followed by the first role for which he received top-billing, North (1994). Although the film was widely condemned and a disaster at the box office, Elijah was praised as the only good thing to come out of it.
In 1996 Elijah starred in a movie remake of an old TV show, Flipper (1996). Many critics wondered if his ability as a child actor to capture an audience was wearing thin, as had many child actors', but Wood deftly transitioned into a versatile performer with roles such as the endlessly curious Mikey Carver in Ang Lee' ensemble film The Ice Storm (1997), as well as parts in popcorn flicks like Deep Impact (1998) and The Faculty (1998). In 1999, Elijah was in three movies that never made it into wide release: The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (1999) (released on satellite TV), Black & White (1999) (released on home video) and Chain of Fools (2000).
Wood's work in Peter Jackson's film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), provided a major boost to his career. The actor followed his work in the astronomically successful trilogy with a broad range of interesting screen roles and voice work, including a supporting role in Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), as well as the part of a sinister mute sociopath in Sin City (2005). His voice work has been featured in such animated films as Happy Feet (2006) and 9 (2009), as well as on television series including American Dad! (2005) and Robot Chicken (2001). Wood also played Ad-Rock in the Beastie Boys' comedic video for Beastie Boys: Fight for Your Right Revisited (2011).
An avid music fan, Wood founded Simian records and released its first album, New Magnetic Wonder by The Apples in Stereo, in 2007.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Widely regarded as one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native Great Britain and internationally, twice nominated for the Oscar and recipient of every major theatrical award in the UK and US, Ian Murray McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, to Margery Lois (Sutcliffe) and Denis Murray McKellen, a civil engineer and lay preacher. He is of Scottish, Northern Irish, and English descent. During his early childhood, his parents moved with Ian and his older sister, Jean, to the mill town of Wigan. It was in this small town that young Ian rode out World War II. He soon developed a fascination with acting and the theatre, which was encouraged by his parents. They would take him to plays, those by William Shakespeare, in particular. The amateur school productions fostered Ian's growing passion for theatre.
When Ian was of age to begin attending school, he made sure to get roles in all of the productions. At Bolton School in particular, he developed his skills early on. Indeed, his first role in a Shakespearian play was at Bolton, as Malvolio in "Twelfth Night". Ian soon began attending Stratford-upon-Avon theatre festivals, where he saw the greats perform: Laurence Olivier, Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Paul Robeson. He continued his education in English Drama, but soon it fell by the wayside as he concentrated more and more on performing. He eventually obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1961, and began his career in earnest.
McKellen began working in theatre over the next few years. Very few people knew of Ian's homosexuality; he saw no reason to go public, nor had he told his family. They did not seem interested in the subject and so he saw no reason to bring it up. In 1988, Ian publicly came out of the closet on the BBC Radio 4 program, while discussing Margaret Thatcher's "Section 28" legislation, which made the promotion of homosexuality as a family relationship by local authorities an offense. It was reason enough for McKellen to take a stand. He has been active in the gay rights movement ever since.
Ian resides in Limehouse, where he has also lived with his former long-time partner Sean Mathias. The two men have also worked together on the film Bent (1997) as well as in exquisite stage productions. To this day, McKellen works mostly in theatre, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 for his efforts in the arts. However, he has managed to make several quite successful forays into film. He has appeared in several productions of Shakespeare's works including his well received Richard III (1995), and in a variety of other movies. However, it has only been recently that his star has finally begun to shine in the eyes of North American audiences. Roles in various films, Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Apt Pupil (1998) and Gods and Monsters (1998), riveted audiences. The latter, in particular, created a sensation in Hollywood, and McKellen's role garnered him several of awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar nod. McKellen, as he continues to work extensively on stage, he always keeps in 'solidifying' his 'role' as Laurence Olivier's worthy 'successor' in the best sense too, such as King Lear (2008) / King Lear (2008) directed by Trevor Nunn and in a range of other staggering performances full of generously euphoric delight that have included "Peter Pan" and Noël Coward's "Present Laughter", as well as Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" (National Theatre Live: No Man's Land (2016)), both in acclaimed productions brilliantly directed by Sean Mathias.
McKellen found mainstream success with his performance as Magneto in X-Men (2000) and its sequels. His largest mark on the big screen may be as Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, which he reprised in "The Hobbit" trilogy. He also reprised the role of 'King Lear' with new artistic perspectives in National Theatre Live: King Lear (2018) offering an invaluable mesmerizing experience as a natural force of stage - and screen - of infinite generosity through his unsurpassable interpretation of the titanically vulnerable king.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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
- Producer
- Animation Department
Sean Bean's career since the eighties spans theatre, radio, television and movies. Bean was born in Handsworth, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to Rita (Tuckwood) and Brian Bean. He worked for his father's welding firm before he decided to become an actor. He attended RADA in London and appeared in a number of West End stage productions including RSC's "Fair Maid of the West" (Spencer), (1986) and "Romeo and Juliet" (1987) (Romeo) , as well as "Deathwatch" (Lederer) (1985) at the Young Vic and "Killing the Cat" (Danny) (1990) at the Theatre Upstairs.
This soulful, green-eyed blonde's roles are so varied that his magnetic persona convincing plays angst-ridden villains, as in Clarissa (1991), passionate lovers like Mellors in Lady Chatterley (1993), rough-and-ready soldiers such as Richard Sharpe, heart wrenching warriors as the emotionally torn Boromir in "The Lord of the Rings," and noble Greeks, like Odysseus in Troy (2004), where his very presence in the film adds grace and validity to the rest of the movie. Recently, he did a turn in Shakespeare's "Macbeth," where as the principal lead, he so transfixed the audience that the show was extended in London and critically acclaimed. Bean, however, remains himself, a man's man, and in the glitzy world of movies this is a rare thing indeed. Bean resides in London where he enjoys raising his beautiful daughters, his beloved football, and the occasional pint.
Bean has three daughters, Lorna, Molly and Evie.- Actor
- Producer
English actor Sam Claflin was born in Ipswich, England, to Susan A. (Clarke), a classroom assistant, and Mark J. Claflin, a finance officer. As a child, he was football-mad, often going to see his favorite team, Norwich City. He was a talented footballer, playing for Norwich schools at city level and Norfolk county level. However, he suffered two broken ankles and at 16 gave up thinking about a footballing career. He took up performing arts and a teacher from Costessey High School was impressed with his performance in a school play, and encouraged him to take up drama. He joined the local youth group at Norwich's Theatre Royal and went on to gain entry to LAMDA drama school in 2006 graduating with a 3 year acting degree in 2009. He is the 3rd eldest of 4 boys, his older brothers Dan and Ben are not involved in drama but his younger brother Joe Claflin commenced at the same drama school in 2009 also doing a 3 year acting degree.
In 2010, Clafin made his debut screen performances in two award-winning series, The Pillars of the Earth (2010) and Any Human Heart (2010). His film debut came playing footballer Duncan Edwards, one of the 'Busby Babes', in United (2011). Clafin then came to the attention of cinemagoers across the world when he was cast as Philip in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011). Various roles followed, including Jack in White Heat (2012) and Prince William in Snow White and the Huntsman (2012). He played Finnick Odair in the sequels The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014), and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015).- Actress
- Producer
Jennifer Connelly was born in the Catskill Mountains, New York, to Ilene (Schuman), a dealer of antiques, and Gerard Connelly, a clothing manufacturer. Her father had Irish and Norwegian ancestry, and her mother was from a Jewish immigrant family. Jennifer grew up in Brooklyn Heights, just across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, except for the four years her parents spent in Woodstock, New York. Back in Brooklyn Heights, she attended St. Ann's school. A close friend of the family was an advertising executive. When Jennifer was ten, he suggested that her parents take her to a modeling audition. She began appearing in newspaper and magazine ads (among them "Seventeen" magazine), and soon moved on to television commercials. A casting director saw her and introduced her to Sergio Leone, who was seeking a young girl to dance in his gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984). Although having little screen time, the few minutes she was on-screen were enough to reveal her talent. Her next role after that was an episode of the British horror anthology TV series Tales of the Unexpected (1979) in 1984.
After Leone's movie, horror master Dario Argento signed her to play her first starring role in his thriller Phenomena (1985). The film made a lot of money in Europe but, unfortunately, was heavily cut for American distribution. Around the same time, she appeared in the rock video "I Drove All Night," a Roy Orbison song, co-starring Jason Priestley. She released a single called "Monologue of Love" in Japan in the mid-1980s, in which she sings in Japanese a charming little song with semi-classical instruments arrangement. On the B-side is "Message Of Love," which is an interview with music in background. She also appeared in television commercials in Japan.
She enrolled at Yale, and then transferred two years later to Stanford. She trained in classical theater and improvisation, studying with the late drama coach Roy London, Howard Fine, and Harold Guskin.
The late 1980s saw her starring in a hit and three lesser seen films. Amongst the latter was her roles in Ballet (1989), as a ballerina and in Some Girls (1988), where she played a self-absorbed college freshman. The hit was Labyrinth (1986), released in 1986. Jennifer got the job after a nationwide talent search for the lead in this fantasy directed by Jim Henson and produced by George Lucas. Her career entered in a calm phase after those films, until Dennis Hopper, who was impressed after having seen her in "Some Girls", cast Jennifer as an ingénue small-town girl in The Hot Spot (1990), based upon the 1950s crime novel "Hell Hath No Fury". It received mixed critical reviews, but it was not a box office success.
The Rocketeer (1991), an ambitious Touchstone super-production, came to the rescue. The film was an old-fashioned adventure flick about a man capable of flying with rockets on his back. Critics saw in "Rocketeer" a top-quality movie, a homage to those old films of the 1930s in which the likes of Errol Flynn starred. After "Rocketeer," Jennifer made Career Opportunities (1991), The Heart of Justice (1992), Mulholland Falls (1996), her first collaboration with Nick Nolte and Inventing the Abbotts (1997). In 1998, she was invited by director Alex Proyas to make Dark City (1998), a strange, visually stunning science-fiction extravaganza. In this movie, Jennifer played the main character's wife, and she delivered an acclaimed performance. The film itself didn't break any box-office record but received positive reviews. This led Jennifer to a contract with Fox for the television series The $treet (2000), a main part in the memorable and dramatic love-story Waking the Dead (2000) and, more important, a breakthrough part in the polemic and applauded independent Requiem for a Dream (2000), a tale about the haunting lives of drug addicts and the subsequent process of decadence and destruction. In "Requiem for a Dream," Jennifer had her career's most courageous, difficult part, a performance that earned her a Spirit Award Nomination. She followed this role with Pollock (2000), in which she played Pollock's mistress, Ruth Klingman. In 2001, Ron Howard chose her to co-star with Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the film that tells the true story of John Nash, a man who suffered from mental illness but eventually beats this and wins the Nobel Prize in 1994. Jennifer played Nash's wife and won a Golden Globe, BAFTA, AFI and Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. Connelly continued her career with films including Hulk (2003), her second collaboration with Nick Nolte, Dark Water (2005), Blood Diamond (2006), The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), He's Just Not That Into You (2009) and Noah (2014), where she did her second collaboration with both Darren Aronofsky and Russell Crowe and made her third collaboration with Nick Nolte in that same film.
Jennifer lives in New York. She is 5'7", and speaks fluent Italian and French. She enjoys physical activities such as swimming, gymnastics, and bike riding. She is also an outdoors person -- camping, hiking and walking, and is interested in quantum physics and philosophy. She likes horses, Pearl Jam, SoundGarden, Jesus Jones, and occasionally wears a small picture of the The Dalai Lama on a necklace. Her favorite colors are cobalt blue, forest green, and "very pale green/gray -- sort of like the color of the sea". She likes to draw.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Djimon Hounsou was born in Cotonou, Benin, in west Africa to Albertine and Pierre Hounsou, a cook. He moved to Lyon, France, when he was 13. Hounsou has graced the catwalks of Paris and London as a popular male model. He has since left his modeling career and has worked on Gladiator (2000) by Ridley Scott and Amistad (1997) by Steven Spielberg.- Actress
- Producer
- Music Department
Jena Malone was born in Reno, Nevada, raised in Sparks, Nevada; two cities that have merged together over time, to Deborah Malone and Edward Berge. Her grandfather owned a casino, Karl's Silver Club, in Reno. She was raised by her mother and her mother's partner. Beginning as a child actress, and then stepping up to roles as a young adult, Malone's career path has been compared to that of Jodie Foster, herself a former child actress and who has co-starred with Malone in two movies. Jena is often described as having a maturity beyond her years and, in her career thus far, she has often tackled roles that are difficult and are not standard fare for actors her age.
Malone's first claim to fame was in performing the title role in Bastard Out of Carolina (1996) for which she won the Young Artist Award, and which she filmed when she was merely ten years old. This movie dealt with issues of child abuse, violence and sex. Jena has said in later interviews that this movie and her participation in it continue to influence her life substantially.
Showing self-assurance and a clear vision of personal goals from an early age, Jena, at age 14, was encouraged to try out for Air Force One (1997), a movie that was virtually guaranteed to be a success since box-office king Harrison Ford was cast in the lead, but Jena said she'd prefer to seek other roles that were of more interest to her.
In the following years, Malone appeared in several made-for-TV movies for which she won or was nominated for many awards. In 1997, she lucked in to being cast in the blockbuster Contact (1997) where she portrayed the child version of Jodie Foster's lead character. Foster stated that she built her character by mimicking Jena. And, in 1998, Jena was cast in the major film Stepmom (1998) where she co-starred with Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon and Ed Harris. Jena was given what was likely the best line in that movie where her character, bitter over her parents' divorce, confronts her father who has returned home briefly; at a moment of crisis, her dad tells her "You do NOT run out on your mother", and the rueful Malone exclaims "No -- that's YOUR job".
Also, in 1998, Malone appeared in a two-part episode of the critically acclaimed TV series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993). Contrary to what might usually be expected of a teenage actress, in this episode, Jena played the complex role of the perpetrator of a crime, which she portrayed with subtlety.
At age 15, Jena was legally emancipated and thus took direct control of her finances and her career. Malone began getting more attention and acclaim in her next set of films: the artistic cult film Donnie Darko (2001); the teenage journey The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) where she again co-starred with Jodie Foster; and the satirical Saved! (2004) which debuted Jena as the lead in a movie.
Jena has expressed an interest in directing some day, and so she is preparing for roles behind the camera as well as in front. In 2002, she co-produced American Girl (2002) while also starring in it. And, in 2003, she undertook a formal study of photography.
In early 2006, Malone debuted on the Broadway stage in the play "Doubt". A review by Broadway.com characterized her performance as "astonishing".
Many people in Hollywood have jobs as actors. Watch for Jena Malone. She is an artist.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Emile Davenport Hirsch was born in Palms, California, to Margaret Esther (Davenport), a teacher and visual artist, and David M. Hirsch, an entrepreneur and producer. He grew up in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and having been introduced to acting while still at school, he got his first acting job on TV at the age of 11 in an episode of Kindred: The Embraced (1996).
More TV work followed until he made his Hollywood debut in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) and doesn't seem to have been out of work since.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Though most famous for her role as Isabella "Bella" Swan in The Twilight (2008) Saga, Kristen Stewart has been a working actor since her early years in Los Angeles, California. Her parents, John Stewart and Jules Stewart, both work in film and television. The family includes three boys, Kristen's older brother Cameron Stewart and two adopted brothers Dana and Taylor. Kristen is of English, Scottish, and Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
After a talent scout caught her grade school performance in a play at the age of eight, she appeared on television in a few small roles. Her first significant role came when she was cast as Sam Jennings in The Safety of Objects (2001). Soon after that, she starred alongside Jodie Foster in the hit drama, Panic Room (2002) and was nominated for a Young Artist Award.
Praised for her Panic Room performance, she went on to join the cast of Cold Creek Manor (2003) as the daughter of Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone. Though the film did not do well at the box office, she received another nomination for a Young Artist Award. After appearing in a handful of movies and a Showtime movie called Speak (2004), Stewart was cast in the role of a teenage singer living in a commune in Sean Penn's Into the Wild (2007), a critically acclaimed biopic. A third Young Artist Award nomination resulted in a win for this role. She also appeared in Mary Stuart Masterson's The Cake Eaters (2007) that same year.
Just 17, Stewart took on the starring role in Twilight (2008) which was based on a series of the same name written by Stephenie Meyer, the novel already had a huge following and the film opened to fans anxious to see the vampire romance brought to life. Awarded the MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance, Stewart's turn as Bella continued in the sequels The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010). The final installments of the series started filming in late 2010, and were released the following years, as The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011) and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012).
Despite her stratospheric launch into stardom with the Twilight films, she stayed true to her roots by working on a number of indie projects, including Adventureland (2009) (filmed prior to the Twilight series) and Welcome to the Rileys (2010). And she took on the daunting task of playing hard rocker Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways (2010) alongside Dakota Fanning. Stewart received praise for her acting and musical performances and later won the 2010 BAFTA Rising Star Award and best actress at the Milan International Film Festival for Welcome to the Rileys (2010).
Stewart worked on several other leading roles between the Twilight Saga installments including the #1 summer box office hit, Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), and the Cannes selection On the Road (2012). She also performed in the Sundance drama Camp X-Ray (2014), Cannes selection Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), for which she won a César Award, and the Lionsgate action comedy, American Ultra (2015), also starring Jesse Eisenberg, the Adventureland duo. She also delivered an acclaimed turn opposite Academy Award-winner Julianne Moore in Still Alice (2014). For the remainder of the decade, Kristen alternated choice supporting roles, such as Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016) and Café Society (2016), with starring roles in films about historical figures, including Lizzie (2018) and Seberg (2019), and special effects/action thrillers Charlie's Angels (2019) and Underwater (2020).
Kristen had a change-of-pace role in the romantic comedy Happiest Season (2020), about an LGBT+ couple, and received universal acclaim, and her first Oscar nomination, for Best Actress, for her performance as Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín's Spencer (2021). Moving deeper into the 2020s, she is working on David Cronenberg's thriller Crimes of the Future (2022).
Stewart lives in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Hal Holbrook was an Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor who was one of the great craftsmen of stage and screen. He was best known for his performance as Mark Twain, for which he won a Tony and the first of his ten Emmy Award nominations. Aside from the stage, Holbrook made his reputation primarily on television, and was memorable as Abraham Lincoln, as Senator Hays Stowe on The Bold Ones: The Senator (1970) and as Capt. Lloyd Bucher on Pueblo (1973). All of these roles brought him Emmy Awards, with Pueblo (1973) bringing him two, as Best Lead Actor in a Drama and Actor of the Year - Special. On January 22, 2008, he became the oldest male performer ever nominated for an Academy Award, for his supporting turn in Into the Wild (2007).
He was born Harold Rowe Holbrook, Jr. on February 17, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Eileen (Davenport), a vaudeville dancer, and Harold Rowe Holbrook, Sr. Raised primarily in South Weymouth, Massachusetts by his paternal grandparents, Holbrook attended the Culver Academies. During World War II, Holbrook served in the Army in Newfoundland. After the war, he attended Denison University, graduating in 1948. While at Denison, Holbrook's senior honors project concerned Mark Twain.
He later developed "Mark Twain Tonight!," the one-man show in which he impersonates the great American writer Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens. Holbrook learned his craft on the boards and by appearing in the TV soap opera The Brighter Day (1954). He first played Mark Twain as a solo act in 1954, at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania. The show was a success that created a buzz. After seeing the performance, Ed Sullivan, the host of TV's premier variety show, featured him on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) on February 12, 1956. This lead to an international tour sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, which included appearances in Iron Curtain countries. Holbrook brought the show to Off-Broadway in 1959. He even played Mark Twain for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The 1966 "Mark Twain Tonight" Broadway production brought Holbrook even more acclaim, and the Tony Award. The show was taped and Holbrook won an Emmy nomination. He reprised the show on Broadway in 1977 and in 2005. By that time, he had played Samuel Clemens on stage over 2,000 times.
Among Holbrook's more famous roles was "The Major" in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's "Incident at Vichy", as Martin Sheen's significant other in the controversial and acclaimed TV movie That Certain Summer (1972), the first TV movie to sympathetically portray homosexuality, and as Abraham Lincoln in Carl Sandburg's acclaimed TV biography of the 16th President Lincoln (1974), a role he also portrayed in excellent performances too in North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985) and North & South: Book 2, Love & War (1986). He also is known for his portrayal of the enigmatic "Deep Throat" in All the President's Men (1976), one of the major cinema events of the mid-'70s. In the 1990s, he had a regular supporting role in the TV series Evening Shade (1990), playing Burt Reynolds' character's father-in-law.
Hal Holbrook died on January 23, 2021, at 95 years, in Beverly Hills. He was buried in McLemoresville Cemetery in Tennessee with his wife Dixie Carter.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Monica Anna Maria Bellucci was born on September 30, 1964 in the Italian village of Città di Castello, Umbria, the only child of Brunella Briganti and Pasquale Bellucci. She originally pursued a career in the legal profession. While attending the University of Perugia, she modeled on the side to earn money for school, and this led to her modeling career. In 1988, she moved to one of Europe's fashion centers, Milan, and joined Elite Model Management. Although enjoying great success as a model, she made her acting debut on television in 1990, and her American film debut in Bram Stoker's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Her role in the French thriller The Apartment (1996), shot her to stardom as she won the French equivalent of an Oscar nomination. Other credits include Malena (2000), Under Suspicion (2000) and Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001).- Actor
- Composer
- Producer
Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre, invited by Laurence Olivier, who could see the talent in Hopkins. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967).
From this moment on, he enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. Many successes came later, and Hopkins' remarkable acting style reached the four corners of the world. In 1977, he appeared in two major films: A Bridge Too Far (1977) with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell. In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980). Two good television literature adaptations followed: Othello (1981) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982). In 1987 he was awarded with the Commander of the order of the British Empire. This year was also important in his cinematic life, with 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), acclaimed by specialists. In 1993, he was knighted.
In the 1990s, Hopkins acted in movies like Desperate Hours (1990) and Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). His most remarkable film, however, was The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He also got a B.A.F.T.A. for this role.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Joshua Regnall Stewart was born in Diana, West Virginia, to Margie (Skidmore) and Charles Regnall Stewart, a teacher and Baptist pastor. He studied at the T. Schreiber studios in New York City and was a company member of the 13th Street Repertory Theatre. He continued his work in theater in Los Angeles performing in 'Light Bulb,' and 'Beacon' alongside 'Robert Forster' and Brooke Shields. He is a competitive snowboarder and boxer.- Actor
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Gerard James Butler was born in Paisley, Scotland, to Margaret and Edward Butler, a bookmaker. His family is of Irish origin. Gerard spent some of his very early childhood in Montreal, Quebec, but was mostly raised, along with his older brother and sister, in his hometown of Paisley. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he and his siblings were raised primarily by their mother, who later remarried. He had no contact with his father between the ages of two and 16 years old, after which time they became close. His father passed away when Gerard was in his early 20s. Butler went on to attend Glasgow University, where he studied to be a lawyer/solicitor. He was president of the school's law society thanks to his outgoing personality and great social skills.
His acting career began when he was approached in a London coffee shop by actor Steven Berkoff, who later appeared alongside Butler in Attila (2001), who gave him a role in a stage production of "Coriolanus" (later, Butler played Tullus Aufidius in a big screen Coriolanus (2011). After that, Butler decided to give up law for acting. He was cast as Ewan McGregor's character "Renton" in the stage adaptation of Trainspotting. His film debut was as Billy Connolly's younger brother in Mrs. Brown (1997). While filming the movie in Scotland, he was enjoying a picnic with his mother near the River Tay when they heard the shouts of a young boy, who had been swimming with a friend, who was in some trouble. Butler jumped in and saved the young boy from drowning. He received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society. He felt he only did what anyone in the situation would have done.
His film career continued with small roles, first in the "James Bond" movie, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and then Russell Mulcahy's Tale of the Mummy (1998). In 2000, Butler was cast in two breakthrough roles, the first being "Attila the Hun" in the USA Network mini-series, Attila (2001). The film's producers wanted a known actor to play the part but kept coming back to Butler's screen tests and decided he was their man. He had to lose the thick Scottish accent, but managed well. Around the time "Attila" was being filmed, casting was in progress for Wes Craven's new take on the "Dracula" legacy. Also wanting a known name, Butler wasn't much of a consideration, but his unending tenacity drove him to hounding the producers. Eventually, he sent them a clip of his portrayal of "Attila". Evidently, they saw something because Dracula 2000 (2000) was cast in the form of Butler. Attila's producers, thinking that his big-screen role might help with their own film's ratings, finished shooting a little early so he could get to work on Dracula 2000 (2000). Following these two roles, Butler developed quite a fan base, and began appearing on websites and fancasts everywhere.
Since then, he has appeared in Reign of Fire (2002) as "Creedy" and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003) as "Terry Sheridan", alongside Angelina Jolie. The role that garnered him the most attention from both moviegoers and movie makers, alike, was that of "Andre Marek" in the big-screen adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel, Timeline (2003). Butler played an archaeologist who was sent back in time with a team of students to rescue a colleague. Last year, he appeared in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, The Phantom of the Opera (2004), playing the title character in the successful adaptation of the stage musical. It was a role that brought him much international attention. Other projects include Dear Frankie (2004), The Game of Their Lives (2005) and Beowulf & Grendel (2005).
In 2007, he starred as Spartan "King Leonidas" in the Warner Bros. production 300 (2006), based on the Frank Miller graphic novel, and Shattered (2007), co-starring Pierce Brosnan and Maria Bello, which aired on network TV under the title, "Shattered". He also starred in P.S. I Love You (2007), with Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank.
In 2007, he appeared in Nim's Island (2008) and RocknRolla (2008), and completed the new Mark Neveldine / Brian Taylor film, Gamer (2009). His next films included The Ugly Truth (2009), co-starring Katherine Heigl, which began filming in April 2008, The Bounty Hunter (2010), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Chasing Mavericks (2012) and Olympus Has Fallen (2013). In recent years, he has appeared in films such as Gods of Egypt (2016), Geostorm (2017), Den of Thieves (2018), The Vanishing (2018) and Hunter Killer (2018). Butler is related to writer-director Mark Flood.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Jamie Foxx is an American actor, singer and comedian. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, for his work in the biographical film Ray (2004). The same year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the action film Collateral (2004). Other prominent acting roles include the title role in the film Django Unchained (2012), the supervillain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and William Stacks in the modern version of Annie (2014).
Jamie Foxx was born Eric Marlon Bishop in Terrell, Texas, to Louise Annette Talley and Darrell Bishop, who worked as a stockbroker and had later changed his name to Shahid Abdula. His mother was an adopted child. When her marriage to his father failed, his maternal grandparents, Mark and Estelle Talley, stepped in and, at age seven months, adopted Jamie too. He has said that he had a very rigid upbringing that placed him in the Boy Scouts and the church choir. During high school, he played quarterback for his high school team and was good enough that he got press in Dallas newspapers. He studied music in college. He released a music album, "Peep This" (1994), and sings the theme song for his movie, Any Given Sunday (1999). However, in 1989, his life changed when a girlfriend challenged him to get up onstage at the Comedy Club. In fact, he says he took his androgynous stage name because he learned that women got preference for mike time on open stage nights. That led to his being cast on Roc (1991) and In Living Color (1990).
Foxx had his own WB television show from 1996 to 2001, the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show (1996), in which he played Jamie King Jr. Foxx is also a Grammy Award-winning musician, producing four albums which have charted highly on the US Billboard 200: "Unpredictable" (2005), which topped the chart, "Intuition" (2008), "Best Night of My Life" (2010), and "Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses" (2015). In 2012, Foxx starred in the title role of the Quentin Tarantino written and directed Django Unchained (2012). Foxx starred alongside his Ray co-star Kerry Washington, as well as Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson. In 2013, Foxx was cast as President James Sawyer in White House Down (2013) alongside Channing Tatum. The following year, Foxx appeared as the villain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and co-starred with Quvenzhané Wallis in Annie (2014), Sony's Will Smith and Jay-Z produced update of the comic strip-turned-musical.
He has two children, including Corinne Foxx, (born 1994), who resides with her mother.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Colin Farrell is one of Ireland's biggest stars in Hollywood and abroad. His film presence has been filled with memorable roles that range from an inwardly tortured hit man, to an adventurous explorer, a determined-but-failing writer, and the greatest military leader in history.
Farrell was born on May 31, 1976 in Castleknock, Dublin, Ireland to Rita (Monaghan) and Eamon Farrell. His father and uncle were both professional athletes, and briefly it looked like Farrell would follow in their footsteps. Farrell auditioned for a part in the Irish boy band Boyzone, unsuccessfully. After dropping out of the Gaiety School of Acting, Farrell was cast in Ballykissangel (1996), a BBC television drama. "Ballykissangel" was not his first onscreen role. Farrell had previously been in The War Zone (1999), directed by Tim Roth and had appeared in the independent film Drinking Crude (1997). Farrell was soon to move on to bigger things.
Exchanging his thick Dublin accent for a light Texas drawl, Farrell acted in the gritty Tigerland (2000), directed by Joel Schumacher. Starring Farrell among a number of other budding young actors, the film portrays a group of new recruits being trained for the war in Vietnam. Farrell played the arrogant soldier Boz, drafted into the army and completely spiteful of authority. The film was praised by critics but made little money at the box office. It was Farrell's first big role on film, and certainly not his last. Farrell followed up with American Outlaws (2001), where he played the notorious outlaw Jesse James with Scott Caan, son of legendary actor James Caan, in the role of Cole Younger. The film was a box-office flop and a critical failure. Immediately, Farrell returned to the war drama film that had made him famous. Co-starring in the war film Hart's War (2002) opposite Bruce Willis, Farrell played the young officer captured by the enemy. The film was another failure. Farrell struck gold when he was cast in the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report (2002) that same year. Set in a futuristic time period, Farrell played the character Danny Witwer, a young member of the Justice Department who is sent after Tom Cruise's character. The film was a smash hit, and praised by critics.
Farrell continued this success when he reunited with Joel Schumacher on the successful thriller Phone Booth (2002). Farrell played the role of the victim who is harassed by an unseen killer (Kiefer Sutherland) and is made to reveal his sins to the public. 2003 was a big year for Farrell. He starred in the crime thriller The Recruit (2003) as a young CIA man mentored by an older CIA veteran (Al Pacino). Pacino later stated that Farrell was the best actor of his generation. Farrell certainly continued to be busy that year with Daredevil (2003), which actually allowed him to keep his thick Irish accent. The film was another success for Farrell, as was the crime film S.W.A.T. (2003) where Farrell starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson and LL Cool J. Farrell also acted in the Irish black comedy film Intermission (2003) and appeared another Irish film Veronica Guerin (2003) which reunited him with Joel Schumacher once again. The following year, Farrell acted in what is his most infamous film role yet: the title role in the mighty Oliver Stone film epic Alexander (2004), which is a character study of Alexander the Great as he travels across new worlds and conquers all the known world before him. Farrell donned a blond wig and retained his Irish accent, and gave a fine performance as Alexander. However, both he and the film were criticized. Despite being one of the highest grossing films internationally and doing a good job at the DVD sales, Farrell did not come out of the experience without a few hurts. Farrell attempted to rebound with his historical film The New World (2005). Reuniting with "Alexander" star Christopher Plummer, and also acting with Christian Bale, Farrell played the brave explorer John Smith, who would make first contacts with the Native peoples. The film did not do well at the box office, though critics praised the film's stunning appearance and cinematography.
Farrell returned to act in Michael Mann's film Miami Vice (2006) alongside Jamie Foxx. The film was a film adaptation of the famous television series, and did reasonably well at the box office. Farrell also acted in Ask the Dust (2006) with Salma Hayek and Donald Sutherland, though the film did not receive much distribution. The next year, Farrell acted alongside Ewan McGregor in the Woody Allen film Cassandra's Dream (2007) which received mixed reviews from critics. Farrell followed up with the hilarious black comedy In Bruges (2008). Written and directed by Irish theatre director Martin McDonagh, the film stars Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two Irish hit men whose latest assignment went wrong, leaving them to hide out in Bruges, Belgium. The film has been one of Farrell's most praised work, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe. As well as In Bruges (2008), Farrell acted alongside Edward Norton in the crime film Pride and Glory (2008) which was not as successful as the former film. As well as working with charity, and speaking at the Special Olympics World Games in 2007, he has donated his salary for Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) to Heath Ledger's little daughter (who was left nothing in a will that had not been updated in time). Ledger had originally been cast in the film and was replaced by Farrell, Johnny Depp and Jude Law. The film was a critical and financial success, and Farrell also played a small role in Crazy Heart (2009) which had the Dubliner playing a country singer. Farrell even sang a few songs for the film's soundtrack. As well as those small roles, Farrell took the lead role in the war film Triage (2009). Farrell incredibly lost forty-four pounds to play the role of a war photographer who must come to terms with what he has experienced in Kurdistan. While the film was finely made, with excellent performances from all involved, the film has received almost no distribution.
Farrell's other leading role that year was in Neil Jordan's Irish film Ondine (2009). In recent years, he co-starred in the comedy horror film Fright Night (2011), the science fiction action film Total Recall (2012), both remakes, and McDonagh's second feature, and the black comedy crime film Seven Psychopaths (2012). Since the mid-2000s, Farrell has cleaned up his act, and far from being a Hollywood hell raiser and party animal, he has shown himself to be a respectable and very talented actor.
He also starred in The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), both directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. For The Lobster he was nominated for a Golden Globe.- Actor
- Soundtrack
At a consistently lean 6' 2", green-eyed Timothy Dalton may very well be one of the last of the dying breed of swashbuckling, classically trained Shakespearean actors who have forged simultaneous successful careers in theater, television and film. He has been comparison-shopped roundly for stepping into roles played by other actors, first following Sir Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights (1970), in Scarlett (1994).
Undaunted and good-natured, he has always stated that he likes the risk of challenges. He was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the oldest of five children of Dorothy (Scholes) and Peter Dalton-Leggett. His father was stationed in Colwyn Bay during World War II, and moved the family to Manchester in the late 1940s, where he worked in advertising and raised the growing Dalton family, in an upper-class neighbourhood outside of Belper, Derbyshire. Timothy was enrolled in a school for bright children, where he excelled in sports and was interested in the sciences. He was fascinated with acting from a young age, perhaps due to the fact that both his grandfathers were vaudevillians, but it was when he saw a performance of "Macbeth" at age 16 that his destiny was clinched.
After leaving Herbert Strutt Grammar School at age 16, he toured as a leading member of Michael Croft's National Youth Theater. Between 1964-66, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Just before completing his two years, he quit and joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, playing the lead in many productions under the direction of Peter Dews while at the same time then as James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989), and even more brutally, recently, as Rhett Butler turning professional. Dalton later said of RADA in an interview with "Seventeen" magazine (December 1970), "It took a year to undo the psychological damage that was caused by the oppressive teachers.".
His talent and classic good looks immediately landed him professional work in television, guest-starring on an episode of the short-lived series, Judge Dee (1969), and as a regular on the 14-episode series Sat'day While Sunday (1967) with the young Malcolm McDowell. In late 1967, Peter O'Toole recommended him for the role of the young King Philip of France in The Lion in Winter (1968) (coincidentally, this was also Anthony Hopkins' big break). The following year, he starred in the Italian film Giuochi particolari (1970) with Marcello Mastroianni and Virna Lisi, although his voice was dubbed into Italian by another actor. Dalton also mixed in a healthy dose of BBC work during this time, including The Three Princes (1968), Five Finger Exercise (1970) and Candida (1973). Also during this time, he was approached and tested for the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) which he turned down, feeling he was too young for the role. His next film was another costume drama, Cromwell (1970), working with director Ken Hughes, with whom he later made his first American film, Sextette (1977). He followed Cromwell (1970) with Wuthering Heights (1970) and Mary, Queen of Scots (1971).
He was already developing a pattern in his films that would follow him throughout his career: costume dramas where he played royalty, which he had done in three of his first four films (and ridden horses in three, and raised a sword in two). In 1972, he was contracted to play a role in Lady Caroline Lamb (1972). However, he was replaced at the last moment. Dalton sued the company and won, but the film went on without him. From the early to mid-1970s, he decided to further hone his skills by going back into the theater full time. He signed on with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Prospect Theatre Company (PTC), and toured the world with both, playing the leads in "Romeo and Juliet", "King Lear", "Henry V", "Love's Labours Lost" and "Henry IV" - parts 1 and 2.
In 1975, he returned to movies in the British/Austrian production of The Executioner (1975). It was followed in 1976 by the Spanish religious historical film about the inquisition, El hombre que supo amar (1976), which was never widely released. After this, he took another break from film, mixing in a healthy dose of theater, returning for his first American film, Sextette (1977), and the lengthy miniseries Centennial (1978), his first American television appearance, in which Lynn Redgrave played his wife. Because of his broad exposure to American audiences in this series, he began to get more frequent film and television work in the United States, including the Charlie's Angels (1976) episode "Fallen Angel" -- which, ironically, had several references to his character being like James Bond -- and the TV movie The Flame Is Love (1979). Although he did a few features, including playing Vanessa Redgrave's husband in Agatha (1979), most of his work until 1985 consisted of TV movies and miniseries. He played Prince Barin in the science fiction classic Flash Gordon (1980). He followed this with a small film, Chanel Solitaire (1981) and also filmed a staged production of Antony and Cleopatra (1984) opposite Lynn Redgrave, with Anthony Geary, as well as Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig of the original Star Trek (1966) series.
The years 1983-1987 have so far been the most prolific of his career. In 1983, he starred as Rochester in what he considers one of his best works, the popular BBC miniseries Jane Eyre (1983). Also, during this time, Roger Moore was considering leaving Bond, and Dalton was again approached, but due to his full schedule, he had to decline. In 1984, he did one of his many narrations in the Faerie Tale Theatre (1982) production of The Emperor's New Clothes (1987). That same year also saw him in the Hallmark Hall of Fame piece The Master of Ballantrae (1984) opposite Michael York and Richard Thomas, and another miniseries, Mistral's Daughter (1984), opposite Stefanie Powers and Stacy Keach. The next year was also a very busy one. He starred in another miniseries, Sins (1986), playing the brother of Joan Collins, and also starred in and narrated the four-hour miniseries Florence Nightingale (1985), opposite Jaclyn Smith. He also starred in The Doctor and the Devils (1985) as Dr. Thomas Rock, with Stephen Rea, Jonathan Pryce and Patrick Stewart.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, Dalton narrated many nature documentaries, most notably several episodes of the UK series Wildlife Chronicles (1987). In the spring of 1986, he teamed with Vanessa Redgrave for another revival of a Shakespeare production, The Taming of the Shrew (1988) and his interpretation of Petrucchio received uniformly high praise. Simultaneously, the world was playing a guessing game as to who would succeed Roger Moore as James Bond. Dalton was approached but was committed to the theater, and so Pierce Brosnan was offered the role. When Brosnan was unable to get out of his Remington Steele (1982) contract at the last minute, Dalton was again approached. Able now to work it into his tight schedule, he agreed. Although his first outing as Bond, The Living Daylights (1987), did reasonably well at the box-office, Licence to Kill (1989) suffered from a lack of marketing that appeared to harm its chances of big box-office success. However, Dalton's interpretation of "Bond" in this film received critical acclaim in some quarters as being the closest to author Ian Fleming's literary "Bond". Back in the theater, he teamed again with Vanessa Redgrave for a revival of Eugene O'Neill's seldom performed play, "A Touch of the Poet", which is considered by some to be his and Redgrave's finest professional collaboration. Although there were talks of bringing the play to Broadway, this never materialized.
Following Licence to Kill (1989), he immediately returned to one of his strengths, costume drama, in The King's Whore (1990). It was followed by his excellent performance in the Disney action adventure The Rocketeer (1991), where he played an Errol Flynn type Nazi agent. In August 1991, he teamed with Whoopi Goldberg for the first biracial interpretation of "Love Letters" for the final sold-out performances of the play in Los Angeles. When he had signed on to do Bond, it was for three pictures, but the rights to the Bond films became entangled in lengthy litigation, delaying production of the third. During this wait, he was set to star in the title role of another historical epic, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992). However, the film was doomed from the start due to the competition with the Gérard Depardieu "Columbus" picture, which was racked with its own problems. When the director was replaced, Dalton backed out and was followed by his co-star, Isabella Rossellini.
In 1992, he starred in the A&E production Framed (1992), which won a bronze medal in the 1993 New York Film Festival. The next year, he journeyed to northern Alaska and Minnesota to make a documentary on one of his favorite subjects, wolves. In the Company of Whales (1991) went on to win a silver medal in the 1994 New York Film Festival. He kept busy in television through 1993 and 1994. He made Red Eagle (1994), Scarlett (1994) and managed to squeeze in a guest appearance on Tales from the Crypt (1989) in the episode "Werewolf Concerto". In 1994, he took on the role of Rhett Butler in the eight-hour miniseries Scarlett (1994), produced by Robert Halmi Sr. for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. In April of that year, believing he needed to move on to fresh challenges, he officially resigned the role of James Bond, a move which was much regretted by the producers, though they understood his reasons. After two months of negotiations, the role went to Pierce Brosnan.
In September 1994, Dalton was called upon for two readings of "Peter and the Wolf" at the Hollywood Bowl. He played to full-capacity crowds. In November, Scarlett (1994) premiered and, though given only a lukewarm response by critics, it was a ratings success not only in the United States but all over the world, breaking records in many European countries. As always after a major work, Dalton again withdrew quietly and without fanfare to search for his next project, a small, personal film. In the summer of 1995, he journeyed to Canada to shoot Salt Water Moose (1996). The film was made by Canada's Norstar Entertainment and was sold to Halmi to be the first video release in his new line of Hallmark family films. It premiered on Showtime in June 1996.
During the spring of 1996, he made the IRA drama The Informant (1997) in Ireland and, in May, he traveled to Prague to shoot Passion's Way (1999), opposite Sela Ward. On February 7, 1997, the comedy The Beautician and the Beast (1997) co-starring Fran Drescher opened in the United States. He also gleefully parodied his swashbuckling/James Bond image in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) as a spy playing an actor playing a spy.
In 1995, Dalton began a relationship with Oksana Grigorieva which produced a child in 1997, Dalton's son Alexander. Over the following years, Dalton has been a caring and loving father of his son. Very much a private man, Dalton's pastimes include fishing, reading, jazz, opera, antique fairs and auctions and, of course, movies.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Born in Roseau, Minnesota, Garrett John Hedlund is the son of Kristi Anne (Yanish) and Robert Martin Hedlund. He has two older siblings, Nathaniel and Amanda. His father is of Swedish descent and his mother is of German and Norwegian ancestry.
Garrett spent his early years growing up on a farm in a small town. When he was in the ninth grade, he moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, with his mother, and took private acting lessons. After graduating from high school, he immediately moved to Los Angeles, California to pursue an acting career. One month later, he would landed the role of Achilles' cousin Patroclus in the major feature Troy (2004) opposite Brad Pitt. His next feature was Friday Night Lights (2004) starring Billy Bob Thornton, in which Garrett played a high school football player. He then landed a starring role opposite Mark Wahlberg in Four Brothers (2005), playing one of four brothers whose mother is murdered. He also starred opposite Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde in Tron: Legacy (2010), the long-awaited sequel to the science fiction cult classic Tron (1982).- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Domhnall Gleeson is an Irish actor and writer. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter film franchise (2010-2011), About Time (2013), Ex Machina (2015) and The Revenant (2015).
He is the son of actor Brendan Gleeson, alongside whom he has appeared in several films and theatre projects.
Gleeson starred in Anna Karenina (2012), Frank (2014), Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017). He also portrayed the First Order's General Hux in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017).
In 2013 he starred in the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back.
His film debut was Boy Eats Girl (2005).- Actor
- Additional Crew
Craig Parker was born on November 12th 1970 in Suva, Fiji and now lives in New Zealand. He is best know for his part as Haldir the Elf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, although he had a part in the 1993 film of Stephen King's "Tommyknockers".- Actor
- Producer
- Executive
Barry Robert Pepper was born on April 4, 1970, in Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada. He has two older brothers named Alex and Doug Pepper. The Peppers didn't stick around Campbell River for too long. They had been building a ship in their backyard for years. When Barry was five years old, the ship was done and the family set sail. The ship, named "The Moonlighter," was a 50-foot craft that would be their home for the next five years. They navigated through the South Pacific islands, using only a sextant and the stars as guides. While visiting such exotic locales as Fiji and Tahiti, Barry was educated through correspondence courses and sometimes enrolled in public schools. He grew up around Polynesian children and credits them for his love of dance, music and other expressive arts. Barry had plenty of time to practice his newfound loves, too. Without television as entertainment on the ship, the family relied on games and sketch acting for fun. When the five-year cruise was over, the Peppers returned to their native Canada, where they set up shop on a small island off the West Coast near Vancouver. They built a farm on the outskirts of a small artists' town, which was populated mainly by hippies, poets, musicians and other craftsmen. While in high school, Barry was enthusiastic about art and excelled in sports. In addition to playing volleyball, he was an excellent rugby player. He graduated in 1988 from George P. Vanier High School in Courtenay and then enrolled in college and majored in marketing and graphic design, but after getting involved with the Vancouver Actors Studio, he changed his course. Once again, he was using "the stars" to navigate. Barry landed his first role on Madison (1993) (a sort of Canadian 90210) and other prominent television series before moving on to more prestigious roles in the US. Television movies followed, most notably the mini-series Titanic (1996), which costarred George C. Scott. Still, Barry's career really wasn't taking off. He was a hard-working actor, but not a star. That all changed in 1998. After a string of big screen duds, Pepper obtained his breakthrough role as a Bible-quoting sniper in Steven Spielberg's WW II drama Saving Private Ryan (1998). With the success of the film came sudden stardom for its cast--complete with photo spreads, interviews and even some Oscar buzz. Barry followed the film with a small but noteworthy role in the blockbuster, Enemy of the State (1998) opposite Will Smith and Gene Hackman. Next he co-starred in an Oscar-worthy film starring Tom Hanks: Stephen King's The Green Mile (1999). Barry received much critical acclaim in 2001 for his portrayal of Roger Maris in the made-for-cable drama about the 1961 home run race between Maris and Mickey Mantle called 61* (2001).- Actor
- Director
- Writer
English actor, writer and director Chiwetel Ejiofor is renowned for his portrayal of Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave (2013), for which he received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations, along with the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. He is also known for playing Okwe in Dirty Pretty Things (2002), the Operative in Serenity (2005), Lola in Kinky Boots (2005), Luke in Children of Men (2006), Dr. Adrian Helmsley in 2012 (2009) and Dr. Vincent Kapoor in The Martian (2015).
Chiwetelu Umeadi Ejiofor was born on July 10, 1977 in Forest Gate, London, England, to Nigerian parents, Obiajulu (Okaford), a pharmacist, and Arinze Ejiofor, a doctor. Chiwetel attended Dulwich College in South-East London. By the age of 13, he was appearing in numerous school and National Youth Theatre productions and subsequently attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA).
Ejiofor caught the attention of Steven Spielberg who cast him in the critically acclaimed Amistad (1997) alongside Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins. He has since been seen on the big screen in numerous features including Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things (2002) (for which he won Best Actor at the British Independent Film Awards, the Evening Standard Film Awards, and the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards), Love Actually (2003), Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda (2004), Kinky Boots (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), American Gangster (2007) and Talk to Me (2007), for which his performance won him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Ejiofor has balanced his film and television commitments with a number of prestigious stage productions. In 2008, his portrayal of the title role in Michael Grandage's "Othello" at the Donmar Warehouse alongside Ewan McGregor was unanimously commended and won him best actor at the 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards and Evening Standard Theatre Awards. He also received nominations in the South Bank Show Awards and the What's On Stage Theatregoers' Choice Awards in 2009. His other stage roles include Roger Michell's "Blue/Orange" in 2000 which received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play, and the same year Tim Supple's "Romeo and Juliet" in which Ejiofor portrayed the title role.
Following his television debut in the series episode Deadly Voyage (1996), Ejiofor has complimented his film and theatre work on the small screen in productions including Murder in Mind (2001), created by the award-winning writer Anthony Horowitz, Trust (2003), Twelfth Night, or What You Will (2003), and Canterbury Tales (2003). His television appearance in the hard hitting emotional drama Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006) alongside Toni Collette, Sophie Okonedo and Tim Roth earned him a nomination for a Golden Globe Award as well as an NAACP Image award.
Ejiofor also appeared in such notable films as Endgame (2009), Channel 4's moving drama set in South Africa for which his performance earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries; Roland Emmerich's action feature 2012 (2009), opposite John Cusack, Danny Glover and Thandiwe Newton; and Salt (2010), opposite Angelina Jolie and Liev Schreiber. In 2013, he starred in Half of a Yellow Sun (2013) and 12 Years a Slave (2013), receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for the latter film.