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Brenda Song was born in Carmichael, California. Her father is Hmong and her mother is Thai-American. Brenda, her parents, and her younger brothers Timmy and Nathan now live in a suburb of Los Angeles.
Brenda was named an All-American Scholar in ninth grade and holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
She stars as London Tipton, the hotel owner's spoiled daughter, in the Disney Channel's sitcom The Suite Life of Zack & Cody (2005). Having acted since age six, Brenda is already a familiar face to Disney Channel viewers. Before beginning production on the new series, she had a recurring role as the hip and trendy Tia on Phil of the Future (2004). She also starred in the top-rated Disney Channel Original Movies Stuck in the Suburbs (2004), the mystery Get a Clue (2002) with Lindsay Lohan, and The Ultimate Christmas Present (2000) with Hallee Hirsh and Spencer Breslin.
Her other television credits include guest starring roles on That's So Raven (2003), George Lopez (2002), The Bernie Mac Show (2001), 7th Heaven (1996), One on One (2001), The Nightmare Room (2001), Judging Amy (1999), Popular (1999), Once and Again (1999), and as a panelist on Small Talk (1996). Brenda also had a starring role on the series 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd (1999).
On the big screen, she starred in Like Mike (2002) opposite Shad Moss and Jonathan Lipnicki, and appeared in Leave It to Beaver (1997) and Santa with Muscles (1996) starring Hulk Hogan.
A self-proclaimed total dork, she loves sampling international cuisine, shopping and studying. She is an avid Los Angeles Lakers fan.- Emma Myers was born on 2 April 2002 in Orlando, Florida, USA. She is an actress, known for Wednesday (2022), A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and Family Switch (2023).
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Ellen Kathleen Pompeo was born in Everett, Massachusetts, to Kathleen B. (O'Keefe) and Joseph E. Pompeo, a salesman. She is of Italian (from her paternal grandfather), Irish, and some English, ancestry.
Pompeo made her major studio screen debut in Brad Silberling's Moonlight Mile (2002), starring alongside Susan Sarandon, Dustin Hoffman, and Jake Gyllenhaal. She received outstanding reviews for her portrayal of an outspoken young woman carrying a silent burden that's breaking her heart.
Pompeo starred opposite Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell in the wildly successful Old School (2003) and, before that, in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.
Pompeo has starred in several independent features, including In the Weeds (2000), Coming Soon (1999), and Life of the Party (2005). Since 2005, she has played Dr. Meredith Grey on the television series Grey's Anatomy (2005).- Actress
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At fourteen years old, Q'orianka Kilcher emerged into the front ranks of young actresses with her portrayal of Pocahontas opposite Colin Farrell and Christian Bale in Terrence Malick's 'The New World', an epic about the encounter between English and North American societies in the early 1600s. Her performance won her the National Board of Reviews best breakthrough performance of 2006 and the 2006 Alma Award for best Latin American actress in a feature film, as well as numerous nominations and rave reviews.
Kilcher was born in Schweigmatt, Baden-Württemberg, Germany to a Peruvian indigenous father of Quechua-Huachipaeri background and an Alaskan-born mother of Swiss-German origin. She was raised in Kapa'a, Hawaii. Having started her performing arts career at six years old, she is not only an award-winning actress with critical acclaim, but an amazing singer, lyricist, and expert dancer. Kilcher is also a committed human rights and environmental activist, as well as a fearless, powerful, young force who uses her voice as tool to bring the need for universal dignity, compassion, environmental justice, and basic Human Rights to the attention of the international community.
Traveling frequently to speak at youth events, colleges, and universities, Kilcher has been invited as a featured keynote speaker and workshop facilitator at many international conferences and events for organizations such as Amnesty International, the I.F.G. (International Forum on Globalization), and Amazon Watch I.F.I.P. (International Funders for Indigenous Peoples). She was a panelist on the "Indigenous Peoples: Human Rights, Dignity and Development with Identity in collaboration with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" United Nations panel. She also lends her energy as spokeswoman, collaborator, and supporter to several international and national NGOs.
In her free time, Kilcher is an accomplished singer/song-writer, and recently launched her own youth driven human rights and environmental organization on Q Initiative, heading campaigns to connect young Hollywood with youth-activist leaders and projects from around the world.
Through her production company, IQ-Films, Kilcher is also producing several cause-driven documentaries and youth-programming projects.- Rondi Reed was born on 26 October 1952 in Dixon, Illinois, USA. She is an actress, known for The Astronaut's Wife (1999), Mo' Money (1992) and Jungle 2 Jungle (1997).
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Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946 in Pittman Center, Tennessee and raised in Sevierville, Tennessee to Avie Lee Parton, a housewife & Robert Lee Parton, a tobacco farmer. At 12, she was appearing on Knoxville TV and at 13, she was already recording on a small label and appearing at the Grand Ole Opry. After graduating from high school in 1964, she moved to Nashville to launch her country-singing career. She fell in love with Carl Dean, who ran an asphalt-paving business; they married on May 30, 1966 and are still together. In 1967 her singing caught the attention of Porter Wagoner, who hired her to appear on his program, The Porter Wagoner Show (1961). She stayed with the show for 7 years, their duets became famous, and she appeared with his group at the Grand Ole Opry; she also toured and sold records. By the time her hit "Joshua" reached #1 in 1970, her fame had overshadowed his, and she struck out on her own, though still recording duets with him. She left him for good to become a solo artist in 1974. Dolly gained immense popularity as a singer/songwriter. Dolly won numerous Country Music Association awards (1968, 1970, 1971, 1975, 1976). This petite (5'0") beauty was a natural for television, and by the mid-1970s she was appearing frequently on TV specials and talk shows before getting her own, Dolly (1976). In 1977, Dolly got her first Grammy award: Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her song "Here You Come Again." Dolly's movie debut was in 9 to 5 (1980), where she got an Oscar nomination for writing the title tune, and also Grammy awards 2 and 3: Best Country Song, and Best Female Country Vocal Performance for the song "Nine to Five." She got more fame for appearing in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and in Rhinestone (1984) with the song "Tennessee Homesick Blues". She is the head of Dolly Parton Enterprises, a $100 million media empire, and in 1986 she founded Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, celebrating her Smoky-Mountain upbringing. She appeared as herself in the Dolly (1987) TV series. In 1988, she won another Grammy: Best Country Performance Duo or Group with Vocals, for "Trio". Dolly was in the acclaimed picture Steel Magnolias (1989) with Julia Roberts, and went on to appear in 15 movies and TV-movies for the 1990s, and garnered more more Country Music Association awards. In 2000, Dolly received her 5th Grammy award: Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. She also released a Bluegrass Album. Dolly is known for beautiful songs such as "Coat of Many Colors," "Jolene," and "I Will Always Love You". Dolly said in an interview, "My music is what took me everywhere I've been and everywhere I will go. It's my greatest love. I can't abandon it. I'll always keep making records."- Actress
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Amanda Leigh Moore was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, on April 10, 1984, to Stacy (Friedman), a former news reporter, and Don Moore, an airline pilot. During her childhood, her family moved to Orlando, Florida, where she was raised. She has Russian Jewish (from her maternal grandfather), English, Scottish, and Irish, ancestry.
After seeing the musical "Oklahoma!", she decided that she wanted to pursue a career in singing. As a child, she performed the National Anthem at several athletic events around her hometown of Orlando, Florida, and became known as the "National Anthem girl". At the ripe age of fourteen, while she was recording in a studio in Orlando, a Fed-Ex worker who happened to be passing through heard her and was interested in her talent. He happened to know someone at Sony as well. Moore worked on cutting a demo and shortly thereafter signed a record deal with Sony 550 Music. At 15, her first record "So Real" was released. Her first tour was with the Backstreet Boys.
As her touring and recording schedule demanded more of her time, Moore withdrew from Bishop Moore Catholic High School in Orlando and opted for a tutor/correspondence. She has stated that her education is important to her and says that the fact that she wants to go to college motivates her to continue with her schooling.
Though Moore's record sales were not up in the ranks of Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera, she has proved to be a formidable talent both in singing and in acting, and snagged an MTV Movie Award in June 2002 for her first feature film role in A Walk to Remember (2002). Her biggest dream, though, is to perform on Broadway someday.
Throughout the 2000s, Mandy headlined several films, ranging from the little-seen drama Try Seventeen (2002) to mid-level releases like How to Deal (2003), Chasing Liberty (2004), Racing Stripes (2005), and the more broadly comedic Because I Said So (2007) and License to Wed (2007). She also appeared in the odd-ball sci-fi film Southland Tales (2006), and voiced Rapunzel in the Disney blockbuster CGI animation Tangled (2010).
In the mid 2010s, she re-emerged as a star actress, headlining the show This Is Us (2016) and the hit thriller film 47 Meters Down (2017), with more film roles to come.- Robyn Elaine Lively Johnson is an American actress. She is known for her role in the film Teen Witch (1989) and for her roles in the TV shows Doogie Howser, M.D.; Twin Peaks; Savannah; and Saving Grace. Robyn Lively was born into a family of actors in Powder Springs, Georgia; her mother, adoptive father, and all four siblings are (or have been) in the entertainment industry. She is the daughter of talent manager Elaine Lively and her first husband Ronald Otis (Ronnie) Lively. Her siblings are sister Lori and brother Jason, and her half-siblings are Eric and Blake.
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Sharon Case was born on 9 February 1971 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. She is an actress, known for The Young and the Restless (1973), Diplomatic Immunity (1991) and Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990). She was previously married to Sandy Corzine.- Actress
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An extremely gifted, versatile performer adept at both comedy and drama, actress/singer Katey Sagal became a household name in the late 1980s as the fabulously brazen, undomesticated Peg Bundy on the enduring Fox series Married... with Children (1987). During its lengthy run she received three Golden Globe and two American Comedy Award nominations. As popular and identifiable as her Peg Bundy persona was, Katey assertively moved on after the show went off the air, not only starring in other sitcoms and television movies, but portraying characters that were polar opposites of the outrageous role that first earned her nationwide attention. For example, in 2008 she took on the role of Gemma Teller Morrow, the matriarch of a Hell's- Angels-esque California biker gang, on the series Sons of Anarchy (2008), and in 2011 her portrayal earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in the Television Series--Drama.
Catherine Louise Sagal was born on January 19, 1954, to director and singer Sara Zwilling and noted television and film director Boris Sagal. The Los Angeles native began performing at age 5 and studied voice and acting at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.
A singing waitress during her "salad" years, she started performing with the band "The Group With No Name," then caught a break after hooking up with Gene Simmons and his 1970s rock band KISS. In the meantime, she gained valuable experience as a backup recording singer for Simmons and other established stars like Bob Dylan, Olivia Newton-John, Etta James, and Tanya Tucker. She was also dynamic performing live with diva Bette Midler as one of her "Harlettes" in Bette's wildly avant-garde stage shows during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1985, while performing on stage in a musical, she was spotted by talent agents who subsequently cast her as Mary Tyler Moore's feisty co-worker Jo Tucker in Mary (1985), a short-lived comedy series. From that point on she focused on film and television. In 1987 she won the role of voluptuous "housewife" Peg Bundy in the irreverent comedy Married... with Children (1987), and the rest is history.
In addition to her busy on-camera scheduling, Katey has retraced her steps to her first love: singing and songwriting. With the support of her record label Valley Entertainment, she released the album "Room" in 2004 that combined classics like "Feel a Whole Lot Better" and "(For the Love of) Money" with original songs she penned, including "Life Goes Round," "Daddy's Girl," and "Wish I Were a Kid." "Room" is her first CD since her 1994 debut "Well."
In her post-Bundy career, Katey has continued to demonstrate a strong range, playing a much more responsible parent in the popular sitcom 8 Simple Rules (2002), co-starring the late John Ritter and valiantly moving to single-household-head after Ritter's sudden passing in 2003 with highly successful results.
She has earned earned equally-fine kudos for her television movies like Chance of a Lifetime (1998), a charming romantic comedy that also co-starred John Ritter, God's New Plan (1999), a tearjerker in which she played a dying mother, and the Disney offerings Smart House (1999) and Mr. Headmistress (1998). The voice of Turanga Leela, the beautiful one-eyed sewer mutant in the animated series Futurama (1999), she has also guested on Ghost Whisperer (2005), Lost (2004), Boston Legal (2004), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000), and Eli Stone (2008). Feature films have included Maid to Order (1987), The Good Mother (1988), the Sundance Film Festival favorite Dropping Out (2000), Following Tildy (2002), and the indie I'm Reed Fish (2006).
Playing Jack's mother in a live-action/adventure retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk (2009) that also featured the talents of Christopher Lloyd, James Earl Jones, and Chevy Chase, Katey's more recent efforts include recurring role on TV's Lost (2004), a role in the mini-series The Bastard Executioner (2015) and a regular role in the series Superior Donuts (2017). She would also join the cast of the sitcom The Conners (2018) as a love interest to widower Dan John Goodman.
Following brief marriages to musician Freddie Beckmeier, Fred Lombardo, and former Steppenwolf drummer and "Mighty Ducks" hockey film advisor Jack White, Katey resides in the Los Angeles area with fourth husband writer/producer/director/creator Kurt Sutter, whose acclaimed work includes The Shield (2002) and the offbeat Sons of Anarchy (2008), which Sutter created. She had three children by White: Ruby (died at birth), Sarah, and Jackson; and one daughter by Sutter, Esme Louise.- Actress
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Briana Lane is known for her various appearances in television shows and films but most notably, for her role on ABC's 'General Hospital', for which she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 2021. She grew up in Los Angeles, California and performs and writes in two local indie bands. Two of her songs were featured in the film 'Luce' starring Octavia Spencer and Naomi Watts and Netflix's coming of age show 'Never Have I Ever.'- Actress
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Milena Markovna "Mila" Kunis is a Ukrainian-American actress born to a Jewish family in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
Her mother, Elvira, is a physics teacher, her father, Mark Kunis, is a mechanical engineer, and she has an older brother named Michael. Her family moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1991. After attending one semester of college between gigs, she realized that she wanted to act for the rest of her life. She started acting when she was nine years old, when her father heard about an acting class on the radio and decided to enroll Mila in it. There, she met her future agent. Her first gig was when she played a character named Melinda in Make a Wish, Molly (1995). From there, her career skyrocketed into big-budget films.
Although she is mostly known for playing Jackie Burkhart on That '70s Show (1998), she has shown the world that she can do so much more. Since 1999, she provided the voice of self-conscious daughter Meg Griffin on the animated sitcom Family Guy (1999). Her breakthrough film was Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), in which she played a free-spirited character named Rachel Jansen. She has since starred or co-starred in the films Max Payne (2008), The Book of Eli (2010), Black Swan (2010), Friends with Benefits (2011), Ted (2012) and Oz the Great and Powerful (2013).
Mila Kunis is married to actor Ashton Kutcher, with whom she has two children.- Actress
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Quinta Brunson is a writer, actress and Stand-Up Comedian living in LA. Born and raised in Philadelphia PA, Quinta started studying comedy in Chicago at the Second City. She moved to LA in 2013. Her 2014 viral series "The Girl Who's Never Been on a Nice Date" launched her into viral fame, eventually leading her to a relationship with BuzzFeed Motion pictures. She now develops shows in traditional and digital entertainment and performs stand up around the country.- Actress
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Lisa Ann Walter was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for The Parent Trap (1998), Bruce Almighty (2003) and Shall We Dance? (2004). She was previously married to Sam Baum.- Actress
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India de Beaufort was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, UK. She is an actress and producer, known for Run Fatboy Run (2007), Slumberland (2022) and Kimi (2022). She has been married to Todd Grinnell since 29 August 2015. They have one child.- Actress
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With over 300 television appearances to her credit, Debra Jo Rupp is perhaps best known for her role as the hilarious and beloved high-strung mom 'Kitty Forman' in the long-running FOX comedy series "That '70s Show." Her performance established her as a sitcom legend, and one of TV's Favorite Moms of all time!
Debra Jo was welcomed into the Marvel Universe with her memorable turn as 'Mrs. Hart' in Marvel Studios' "WandaVision" for Disney+.
Fans of "That '70s Show" can now look forward to Debra Jo reprising her iconic role of 'Kitty Forman' in the upcoming "That '90s Show" for Netflix! Debra Jo and Kurtwood Smith ('Red Forman') will anchor the new spin-off series, for which they will also serve as executive producers. Set in Wisconsin in 1995, they play grandparents to 'Leia' (daughter of 'Eric' and 'Donna') who visits over the summer and bonds with a new generation of Point Place kids, under the watchful eye of 'Kitty' and the stern glare of 'Red.' Production is scheduled to begin Q1 2022 on 10 episodes.
Debra Jo's memorable television roles include Phoebe's sister-in-law 'Alice' on "Friends," Jerry's Booking Agent 'Katie' on "Seinfeld," and more recently as Beth and Randall's social worker 'Linda' on "This is Us" and Abby's mother, 'Janice Phillips,' on "The Ranch." Notable guest-starring roles include "NCIS: Los Angeles," "From the Earth to the Moon" directed by Sally Field, and "The Office." She also previously starred in the ABC comedy series, "Better With You."
She made her feature film debut with Tom Hanks in "Big." She went on to play Jay Baruchel's mom in "She's Out of My League" and Jamie Kennedy's mom in "Kickin It Old Skool." Additional feature credits include "The Opposite Sex" with Mena Suvari, Geoff Stults and Kristin Chenoweth, "She Wants Me" with Josh Gad, Charlie Sheen and Hilary Duff, "Clockwatchers" with Toni Collette and Parker Posey, "Lucky 13" and "Sgt. Bilko" with Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd.
Debra Jo has lent her voice to the Emmy-winning "Teacher's Pet" with Nathan Lane (both cartoon and feature film), "Garfield," "Air Buddies" and various other projects with tiny animals.
Debra Jo has a rich and impressive theatre background and has appeared on and off-Broadway for the past four decades. She appeared on Broadway with Kathleen Turner and Charles Durning in the 1990 revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." She starred off-Broadway in Cynthia Heimel's "A Girl's Guide to Chaos" (American Place Theatre), "Frankie and Johnnie in The Clair de Lune" (Westside Arts) and "The Butcher of Baraboo" (Second Stage Theatre) directed by Judith Ivey. She has also starred in numerous regional productions at Williamstown Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, Chester Theatre Company and Berkshire Theatre Group.
In recent years, Debra Jo has enjoyed getting back to her theater roots. She starred off-Broadway in the one-woman show, "Becoming Dr. Ruth," based on the life of pioneering radio and television sex therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. She was nominated for both a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award, in the category of Outstanding Solo Performance.
In 2019, she starred off-Broadway in Bekah Brunstetter's play, "The Cake," at The Manhattan Theatre Club, after originating the role at The Echo Theater Company (Los Angeles), Barrington Stage Company (Pittsfield, MA) and Geffen Playhouse (L.A.). For her performance in "The Cake," Debra Jo won the L.A. Stage Ovation Award and L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award.
Aside from acting, Debra Jo's eclectic interests range from gardening, needlepointing and grilling, to playing Bridge, video war games and Fantasy Football. During Covid lockdowns, she kept herself occupied by taking long walks in the snow and ordering huge boxes of Nacho Cheese Doritos in small bags in order to consume as much salt as possible! She also recorded a multitude of Cameo videos, with proceeds helping to keep local restaurant workers afloat in The Berkshires. Ever by Debra Jo's side are her loyal Yorkies, Olive and Martini, who have both had all their knees replaced and are looking forward to their impending move to the west coast where "That '90s Show" will film.- Actress
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It was after the 1968 Democratic convention and there was a casting call for a film with several roles for the kind of young people who had disrupted the convention. Two recent graduates of Catholic University in Washington DC, went to the audition in New York for Joe (1970). Chris Sarandon, who had studied to be an actor, was passed over. His wife Susan got a major role.
That role was as Susan Compton, the daughter of ad executive Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick). In the movie Dad Bill kills Susan's drug dealer boyfriend and next befriends Joe (Peter Boyle)-- a bigot who works on an assembly line and who collects guns.
Five years later, Sarandon made the film where fans of cult classics have come to know her as Janet, who gets entangled with transvestite Dr. Frank n Furter in The The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). More than 15 years after beginning her career Sarandon at last actively campaigned for a great role, Annie in Bull Durham (1988), flying at her own expense from Rome to Los Angeles. "It was such a wonderful script ... and did away with a lot of myths and challenged the American definition of success", she said. "When I got there, I spent some time with Kevin Costner, kissed some ass at the studio and got back on a plane". Her romance with the Bull Durham (1988)) supporting actor, Tim Robbins, had produced two sons by 1992 and put Sarandon in the position of leaving her domestic paradise only to accept roles that really challenged her. The result was four Academy Award nominations in the 1990s and best actress for Dead Man Walking (1995). Her first Academy Award nomination was for Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980).- Actress
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Lauren Collins was born in Thornhill, Ontario, Canada. She is an actress and producer, known for Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001), Kroll Show (2013) and What We Do in the Shadows (2019). She has been married to Jonathan Malen since October 2018. They have two children.- Actress
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Gal Gadot is an Israeli actress and model. She was born in Petah Tikva, Israel, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family (from Poland, Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia who Hebraized their name from 'Greenstein' to sound less European). She served in the IDF for two years, and won the Miss Israel title in 2004.
Gal began modeling in the late 2000s, and made her film debut in the fourth film of the Fast and Furious franchise, Fast & Furious (2009), where she appeared as Gisele Yashar; she repriced the role of Yashar in several subsequent installments of The Fast Saga. Gadot went on to achieve global stardom for her portrayal of Wonder Woman in the DC Extended Universe, including in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Wonder Woman (2017) and Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021). She has since starred in the Netflix action-comedy film Red Notice (2021) and the mystery film Death on the Nile (2022).
Gal is a motorcycle enthusiast, and owns a black 2006 Ducati Monster-S2R. She has been married to Yaron Versano since September 28, 2008. They have three daughters.- Born on March 9, 1953 in Boston, Massachusetts, Koslow's mother was a docent, and was raised with a strong love for colonial life along with her sister, Linda and her brother, Donald. Koslow was educated at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, graduating with a degree in theatre and costume design. Koslow signed on with a summer stock theater group in Virginia as a costume designer. She was also asked to audition for the role of Vera in the play "Ten Little Indians." Koslow soon put her costume designing talent aside to become a full-time actress, appearing in such regional productions as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Dial M for Murder". She then moved to Los Angeles to pursue a television career and landed various guest roles before scoring the role of the scheming Lindsay Wells on the hit CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless (1973) which she played from 1984-1986. She was then asked by the serial's creators William J. Bell and wife Lee Phillip Bell to become an original cast member on the duo's new sister soap The Bold and the Beautiful (1987) which debuted in the spring of 1987. She portrayed Eric Forrester's (played by John McCook) design assistant Margo Lynley from the serial's inception until 1992 when she left to begin a family. Through the early 1990s Koslow busied herself with guest starring roles in several prime time television series including Silk Stalkings (1991) and The Nanny (1993). However, she was lured back to daytime television in 1996 in order to replace actress Deborah Adair who left the NBC soap Days of Our Lives (1965) to, ironically, spend more time with her family. In the role of vindictive call girl turned corporate executive Kate Roberts, Koslow flourished on Days of Our Lives quickly becoming a woman fans 'love to hate'. The character is known for her wickedness and deception, specifically her ongoing war with fellow Salem resident Sami Brady (Alison Sweeney) and her rocky marriage with mogul Victor Kiriakis (John Aniston). In contrast to her reel life, in real life Koslow has been married to make-up artist Nicky Schillace since 1987. The couple resides on a ranch in Northridge, California in the San Fernando Valley with their 2 children and various animals.
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Swoosie is the only child of author Margo and Frank Kurtz. As her father was a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, she moved often during her school years, living in eight different states. At the University of Southern California she majored in drama; later she attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, collected Broadway's "triple crown" (the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards) for her portrayal of Gwen in Lanford Wilson's "The Fifth of July". Since then she has appeared in many TV shows and movies, and received several Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy for her guest-starring performance on Carol Burnett's comedy series Carol & Company (1990).- Actress
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Sara Evans was born on 5 February 1971 in New Franklin, Missouri, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Where the Heart Is (2000), Sara Evans: Born to Fly (2009) and To Appomattox (2015). She has been married to Jay Barker since 14 June 2008. She was previously married to Craig Schelske.- Actor
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Sam Morelos was born on 7 July 2005 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress and director, known for That '90s Show (2023) and Forgetting Nobody (2022).- Actress
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Alyvia Alyn Lind grew up in Los Angeles, in a houseful of actresses. She began her career at the age of 3 and at such a young age, has an impressive list of credits. This fall, Alyvia will be seen in the highly anticipated post-apocalyptic, genre-bending "Daybreak" for Netflix, playing the role of Angelica Green, a highly unstable kid genius. Alyvia is often recognized for playing Anna Faris's daughter in the remake of the comedy classic "Overboard." She recently completed season 2 of "Futureman" with Josh Hutcherson, produced by Seth Rogen, airing on Hulu. Currently she can be seen in the Netflix original film, "Walk. Ride. Rodeo." Alyvia is best known for her portrayal of the living legend, Dolly Parton, in the NBC Universal telefilm, "Coat of Many Colors," and immediately following, "Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love," which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. Alyvia was recognized by the prestigious Critics' Choice Awards by being nominated in the adult category for Best Actress alongside Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, and Kirsten Dunst, and she was also nominated and won the Movieguide's Grace Award for Best Actress. Not only did the MOW break records with 18.6 million viewers, which made COMC the highest-rated movie or miniseries on the broadcast networks in six years, the film walked away with numerous awards, including The Tex Ritter Award and the coveted Epiphany Prize given by the Movieguide Awards. One of Alyvia's favorite parts of working on the film was singing her solos, and recording "Angel Hill," an original duet with Dolly Parton. Alyvia was also seen in the Amazon original movie "An American Girl Story - Maryellen 1955: Extraordinary Christmas" playing the lead character, a young girl who sets her mind to helping children with polio. In conjunction with the film, Aly teamed up with Lollipop Theatre Network to help bring awareness to children with life-threatening illnesses. Alyvia is also known for the much publicized, campy Lifetime movie, "A Deadly Adoption" where she enjoyed the enviable role of Will Ferrell's and Kristen Wiig's kidnapped daughter. One of Aly's career highlights was playing Adam Sandler's daughter in the Warner Bros. film "Blended" alongside Drew Barrymore and Bella Thorne. Alyvia plays the precocious and sweet 'Lou Friedman,' the youngest daughter of Sandler. Alyvia's television credits include the ABC hit series "Revenge," playing the five-year-old 'Amanda Clarke,' the wisecracking 'Charlotte,' on the Nick @ Nite comedy "See Dad Run" with Scott Baio, 'Annika,' a foreign exchange student (she learned to speak Swedish for the role) in the TNT comedy "Teachers," "Gamer's Guide" for Disney, Sasha on "Alexa and Katie" for Netflix, Lily on the Ryan Murphy Fox hit "9-1-1," and she can still be seen (since the age of 3) in the television daytime drama "The Young and the Restless" as 'Faith Newman,' in which she was Emmy nominated for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series. On the big screen, Lind appeared in Dimension Film's "Dark Skies" (2013) with Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton, and was recently seen in Universal Pictures' "Mockingbird," a thriller starring Spencer List, and the feature film "Shangri-La Suite" opposite Ashley Greene and Emily Browning in which Alyvia portrays Lisa Marie Presley. Alyvia is also known for her recurring role, 'Gracie,' on the hit Amazon show "Transparent", and the critically acclaimed "Masters of Sex" for Showtime, playing 'Jenny,' Michael Sheen's and Caitlin Fitzgerald's daughter. Alyvia grew up with two older sisters, Natalie and Emily, (both actresses) in an animal-loving home. She has a passion for dogs and her favorite pastime is being a mom to her rescued malti-poo named "Georgie." In her spare time, she likes to record songs and make movies with her sisters, practice guitar, write music and dance. Alyvia has grown up watching her mom, actress Barbara Alyn Woods ("One Tree Hill" and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids") and looks up to her for acting inspiration.- Actress
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Peyton List has been an on-screen mainstay in many households and has grown up in front of the camera. She is a leading actor, producer and writer of her generation. Peyton joined Netflix's COBRA KAI, a series that serves as one of the streamer's biggest hits of all time. List portrays tough-as-nails and All Valley champ, Tory Nichols, who made her debut in Season 2, & transformed the role into a central character to the series. List's television series SCHOOL SPIRITS premiered on Paramount+ with an eight-episode season. WSJ called her leading performance "magnetic." List also serves as a producer on series, which was recently green lit for a second season and was also released on Netflix. Within a few days of launching on Netflix, School Spirits skyrocketed to the top 10 list. Peyton also stars in the Voltage Pictures film AMERICAN BOOGEYWOMAN as the lead role of 'Aileen Wournos.' In 2018 she filmed DEPARTURES, opposite Asa Butterfield, Maisie Williams, and Nina Dobrev. She also recently wrapped an intriguing new principal role for the Wonder Worldwide feature, GIRLS HAUNTS BOY opposite Michael Cimino. In Peyton's early career, she made a name for herself on the fan-favorite Disney's JESSIE, the network's longest running series. Following four seasons and due to the amazing response to her wildly popular character, Disney created a spin-off series, titled BUNK'D, which List wrapped production on in 2018. Peyton List is a name well respected in Hollywood. The world has watched her boldly transition to her adult career, and one thing we all know for certain is that Peyton List is only getting started.- Actress
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Dove Olivia Cameron was born Chloe Celeste Hosterman on January 15, 1996 in Bainbridge Island, Washington to Bonnie J. Wallace, an acting coach & Philip Alan Hosterman, a chief executive officer/founder of Kandahar Trading Company. She's known for playing a dual role as the eponymous characters in the Disney Channel teen sitcom, Liv and Maddie (2013) and playing Mal, daughter of Maleficent in Descendants (2015) and the sequel Descendants 2 (2017). Subsequently, she had a recurring role as Ruby in the ABC television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2018). She is set to voice Spider-Woman in Marvel's upcoming animated superhero feature film Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors (2018).
When she was a child, she attended Sakai Intermediate School. At the age of 8, she began acting in community theater at Bainbridge Performing Arts.
When she was 14, her family moved to Los Angeles, California, where she sang in Burbank High School's National Championship Show Choir. Cameron is of French descent, and is a fluent speaker of French, having spent many years of her life growing up in France. She has stated she was bullied through her entire school experience, starting in fifth grade, through the end of high school. Regardless of the pressure at school and fitting in, she stayed focused on her dreams of becoming successful in entertainment: "I became very passionate about [becoming an actress and singer]. I fully immersed myself". Her father died in 2011 when she was 15 years old.
In 2007, Cameron played the role of a young Cosette in the Bainbridge Performings Arts stage production of Les Miserables, and in 2008, she had the lead role of Mary in The Secret Garden, again with BPA.
In 2012, Cameron was cast in a new Disney Channel Original Series entitled Bits and Pieces as Alanna. Shortly after filming the pilot, Bits and Pieces was retooled into Liv and Maddie and saw Cameron starring in the dual lead role of Liv and Maddie Rooney. The preview of the series debuted on July 19, 2013, and the show premiered on September 15, 2013. The pilot episode gained 5.8 million viewers, which was the most-watched in total viewers in 2.5 years since the series Shake It Up! Disney Channel renewed Liv and Maddie for a 13-episode second season slated to premiere in Fall 2014, which was later expanded to 24 episodes.
On August 27, 2013, Cameron released a cover of "On Top of the World" by Imagine Dragons as a promotional single. Her cover peaked on the Billboard Kid Digital Songs chart at seventeen and spent three weeks on the chart. On October 15, 2013, "Better In Stereo" was released as a single under Walt Disney Records. "Better In Stereo" made its debut on the Billboard Kid Digital Songs chart at No. 21 before peaking at No. 1, becoming Cameron's first No. 1 hit. In February 2014, Cameron confirmed reports that recording had begun for her debut studio album. Her next single, "Count Me In", was released on June 3, 2014. The song peaked at number one on the Billboard Kids Digital Songs chart. Cameron played Liz Larson in her first non-Disney film, Barely Lethal, which was theatrically released by A24 Films in 2015.
Cameron starred in the television film Descendants which premiered on July 31, 2015. The film was viewed by 6.6 million people and spawned Cameron's two first Billboard Hot 100 songs, "Rotten to the Core" at No. 38 and a solo song, "If Only", at No. 94. Other songs from the film featuring Cameron such as "Set It Off" and "Evil Like Me" charted at No. 6 and 12 respectively on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. The soundtrack for the movie peaked atop the Billboard 200 chart becoming the first soundtrack from a Disney Channel Original Movie since High School Musical 2 to do so. As part of the Descendants franchise, Cameron released a cover of Christina Aguilera's hit song, "Genie in a Bottle". The music video premiered on Disney Channel on March 18, 2016. The single received 22 million views in less than a month.
On December 22, 2015, Liv and Maddie was officially renewed for a fourth season, becoming the 9th live-action Disney Channel show in history to achieve this. Cameron began filming the season of Liv and Maddie in early 2016. It was later announced that this would be the final season of the show. The series finale of Liv and Maddie later aired on March 24, 2017.
Cameron played the role of Amber Von Tussle in the NBC live television presentation of Hairspray Live!, which aired on December 7, 2016. Reception was generally positive, and Cameron's performance was praised.
Cameron reprized her role as Mal in Descendants 2, the sequel to Descendants, in 2017. The film premiered on July 21, 2017. The Descendants 2 soundtrack debuted at #6 on the Billboard 200, with "It's Goin' Down" from the soundtrack debuting at #81. This became Cameron's third Hot 100 entry, following "Rotten to the Core" and "If Only".
Cameron played the role of Sophie in the Hollywood Bowl live production of Mamma Mia!. The show took place from July 28, 2017 to July 30, 2017. On August 21, 2017, Cameron was cast in the film Dumplin, starring Jennifer Aniston. Cameron is set to play Bekah Cotter in the comedy. In late 2017 Cameron signed on to appear in a recurring role in Season 5 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. This role was later revealed to be Ruby, the daughter of General Hale (Catherine Dent).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Tina Majorino has been charming audiences on the silver screen from a young age. In 1994, she made her feature film debut in Touchstone's When A Man Loves a Woman playing Meg Ryan & Andy Garcia's daughter, followed quickly that same year by New Line's Corrina, Corinna (opposite Whoopi Goldberg and Ray Liotta) and Paramount's Andre (in which she starred as "Toni Whitney"). While her career began in national television commercials and with the ABC television series Camp Wilder, the film trifecta firmly established Majorino as a breakout performer. She would go on to co-star in Universal's Waterworld (playing "Enola" opposite Kevin Costner), and she played "Alice" in the NBC movie Alice in Wonderland, alongside Whoopi Goldberg again (as the "Cheshire Cat"), Christopher Lloyd ("White Knight"), Miranda Richardson ("Queen of Hearts"), and Martin Short ("Mad Hatter"). In 2004, Majorino starred as "Deb" in the smash hit Napoleon Dynamite alongside Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez, and Jon Gries. The film became an overnight cult classic and remains one of her favorite roles. On the small screen, her television credits include Grey's Anatomy, Scorpion, True Blood, Big Love, Bones, Veronica Mars, and Legends, among many others.- Music Artist
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Audrey Faith McGraw known professionally as Faith Hill, is an American singer, actress and record producer. She is one of the most successful country music artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide. Hill's first two albums, Take Me as I Am (1993) and It Matters to Me (1995), were major successes and placed a combined three number ones on Billboard's country charts. She then achieved mainstream and crossover success with her next two albums, Faith (1998) and Breathe (1999). Faith spawned her first international success in early 1998, "This Kiss", while Breathe became one of the best-selling country albums of all time, led by the huge crossover success of the songs "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me". It had massive sales worldwide and earned Hill three Grammy Awards.- Actress
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Ellen Burstyn was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Correine Marie (Hamel) and John Austin Gillooly. She is of Irish, French/French-Canadian, Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and Native American ancestry.. She worked a number of jobs before she became an actress. At 14, she was a short-order cook at a lunch counter. After graduating from Detroit's Cass Technical High School, she went to Texas to model and then to New York as a showgirl on The Jackie Gleason Show (1952). From there, it was to Montreal as a nightclub dancer and then Broadway with her debut in "Fair Game (1957)". By 1963, she appeared on the TV series The Doctors (1963), but she gained notice for her role in Goodbye Charlie (1964). Ellen then took time off to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
Her big break came when she was cast as the female lead in The Last Picture Show (1971). For this role, she received nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award. Next, she co-starred with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), giving a chilling performance. Then came The Exorcist (1973). She was again nominated for the Golden Globe and Academy Award. In 1974, she starred in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), for which performance she won the Oscar and BAFTA awards as Best Actress. For the Golden Globe, she was nominated but lost to Marsha Mason. The same year, she made history by winning a Tony Award for the Broadway play "Same Time, Next Year". She won praise and award nominations for her performances in the film versions of Same Time, Next Year (1978) and Resurrection (1980).
In "Resurrection", she played a woman with the power to heal. A succession of TV movies resulting in two Emmy nominations kept her going as did the series The Ellen Burstyn Show (1986). The TV movies continued through the 1990s. Also in the 1990s, she was cast in the supporting role in such movies as The Cemetery Club (1993), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), The Baby-Sitters Club (1995) and The Spitfire Grill (1996). In addition to her acting, She was the first woman president of Actor's Equity (1982-85).- Sal Stowers was born in Pasadena, California, USA. Sal is an actor, known for Days of Our Lives (1965), Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem (2021) and Major Crimes (2012).
- Kristian Alfonso was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, USA. Kristian is an actor, known for Days of Our Lives (1965), Joshua Tree (1993) and Friends (1994). Kristian has been married to Danny Daggenhurst since 6 October 2001. They have one child. Kristian was previously married to Simon Macauley.
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Jodie Sweetin was born on 19 January 1982 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Full House (1987), Fuller House (2016) and Just Swipe (2021). She has been married to Mescal Wasilewski since 30 July 2022. She was previously married to Morty Coyle, Cody Herpin and Shaun Holguin.- Actress
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Kristin Lee Davis was born on February 23, 1965 in Boulder, Colorado. An only child, her parents divorced when she was a baby. She was adopted by her stepfather, psychology professor Keith Davis, after he married her mother, Dorothy, a university data analyst, in 1968. Early in her childhood, Kristin and her parents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where her stepfather was transferred to a university. She lived in South Carolina until she graduated high school in 1983. She then moved to New Jersey, where she attended Rutgers University. After graduation, she moved to New York and waited tables before opening a yoga studio with a friend. In 1995, she got her big break when she landed the role of Brooke Armstrong Campbell on Melrose Place (1992). She left the show after one year when producers found that audience members hated her bitchy character. In 1998, Kristin was cast as Charlotte York in Sex and the City (1998), of which she remained an integral cast member until the series ended in 2004. Kristin Davis resides in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Sarah Chalke was born on 27 August 1976 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her parents are Angie Chalke and Doug Chalke. She is the middle child, having one older sister, Natasha Chalke, and one younger, Piper Chalke. Sarah made her acting debut in a made-for-TV movie, City Boy (1992). In 1993, after her first film, she auditioned for the role of "Becky" on the TV series Roseanne (1988). The show was looking for a replacement after Alicia Goranson quit the show to go to college. Sarah graduated from high school in 1995, while shooting the 1994-1995 season of Roseanne (1988). Also, in 1994, Sarah co-starred in the film, Ernest Goes to School (1994), along with Jim Varney. Then, in 1996, she starred in 2 films, including Robin of Locksley (1996), and also Stand Against Fear (1996), where she played a cheerleader, "Krista Wilson". In 1998, a year after Roseanne (1988) ended, Sarah was asked to act in a show called Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy (1998). The show was based on the TV movie with the same name, Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy (1998), which Sarah was also in.- Actress
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Eva Maria Olivia Amurri Martino (born March 15, 1985) is an American film and television actress Amurri Martino was born in New York City, to Italian director Franco Amurri and American actress Susan Sarandon. She attended Friends Seminary (Manhattan) for middle school, and graduated from Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York, and Brown University.
Eva initially appeared in Bob Roberts (1992) in 1992 and Dead Man Walking (1995) in 1999. In 1999, she appeared in Earthly Possessions (1999) and Anywhere But Here (1999).In 2009, she appeared as Shelly in the episode The Playbook (2009) of How I Met Your Mother (2005). Amurri Martino starred in the thriller film Isolation (2011), directed by Stephen Kay. She guest-starred, along with her mother, on an episode of Friends (1994) in The One with Joey's New Brain (2001) Amurri Martino had a role in the 2002 film The Banger Sisters (2002), in which her mother starred, with Amurri Martino playing the daughter of her mother's character. She guest-starred, along with her mother, on an episode of Friends (1994) in Season 7 Episode 15 The One with Joey's New Brain (2001). In 2004, she appeared in Saved! (2004). She had a role in the third season of the Showtime series Californication (2007), where she played Jackie, a stripper, student and love interest of central character Hank Moody. Amurri Martino played the leading role in the 2008 film Middle of Nowhere (2008).
In 2010, she appeared in the Fox series House (2004) as Nicole in the episode The Choice (2010). In 2012, she appeared in Happy Madison Production's That's My Boy (2012) as young Mary McGarricle. Her mother also appeared in the film as McGarricle's older self.- Actress
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Felicity Huffman was born on 9 December 1962 in Bedford, New York, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Transamerica (2005), Desperate Housewives (2004) and Sports Night (1998). She has been married to William H. Macy since 6 September 1997. They have two children.- Actress
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Mary Beth Evans was born in Pasadena, California. She is an actress and producer, best known for her roles on Days of Our Lives, General Hospital and As the World Turns. She has been married to Dr. Michael Schwartz since Nov. 3, 1985 and they have three children.
One of daytime television's most beloved personalities for nearly 30 years, Mary Beth Evans is best known for her many roles on daytime's continuing dramas. In addition, she has had many guest appearances in prime time television, most recently on Chasing Life, Body of Proof and Criminal Minds.
An engaging and multi-talented entertainer, Evans has also worked in theatre, as a reality television judge and as a producer on the popular web series, THE BAY. In addition to acting, Evans is a columnist, blogger and entrepreneur. In 2005 she created Mary Beth's Apple Pie Company and in 2015 she launched her own lifestyle blog, Plank.
Throughout her career, Evans' genuine spirit and vibrant energy have created a relatable connection to viewers and readers; while her unique approach to balancing the demands of work and family have made her an inspiration to many. With her timeless girl-next-door looks and dynamic personality, Evans not only remains popular among legions of long-time fans, but also continues to attract new fans from every demographic with her compelling "can do it all" approach.- Actress
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Melissa McCarthy was born in Plainfield, Illinois, to Sandra and Michael McCarthy, and was raised on her family's corn and soybean farm. She began her performing career as a stand-up comedian in New York where she appeared at the famous clubs, Stand Up New York and The Improv. She worked on her acting skills at The Actors Studio and appeared in many stage productions in the city before moving to Los Angeles in the late-1990s. She made a number of TV and movie appearances before making her big breakthrough as Sookie in Gilmore Girls (2000). A steady stream of comedy performances followed, leading to her starring role in the sitcom Mike & Molly (2010).
In the 2010s, McCarthy became known for her starring roles in the films Bridesmaids (2011), The Heat (2013), St. Vincent (2014), Spy (2015), Ghostbusters (2016), and Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lea Michele Sarfati was born in the Bronx, New York to Edith Thomasina (Porcelli), a nurse, and Mark David Sarfati, a delicatessen owner-turned-real estate agent. Her mother is of Italian descent (from Rome and Naples), and her father is of Sephardi Jewish ancestry (from Turkey and Greece). Lea was raised Catholic in Tenafly, New Jersey and graduated from Tenafly High School.
At age eight, Lea went with a friend to an open casting call for an up-and-coming musical. After spontaneously deciding to audition, she was offered the role and, two weeks later, she was starring on Broadway. She made her Broadway debut in 1995 as a replacement for the role of Young Cosette in "Les Misérables". She was then cast in the role of Tateh's daughter, the Little Girl, in the 1998 original Broadway cast of "Ragtime", and in 2004 she portrayed Shprintze and understudied the role of Chava in the Broadway revival of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof".
When she was 14, Lea was given the role of Wendla Bergmann in Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's musical version of "Spring Awakening". She starred in early workshops, off-Broadway, and finally originated the role in the Broadway production at age 20. Around the same time that the show was set to go to Broadway, Lea was offered the role of Éponine Thénardier in the Broadway revival of "Les Misérables". She chose to remain with "Spring Awakening", which debuted on Broadway in December 2006. She was later nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical. After two years of starring in "Spring Awakening", Lea left the show with co-star Jonathan Groff, to pursue other opportunities.
In late 2008, Lea won the role of Rachel Berry on the comedy-drama series Glee (2009), and since the show's premiere on May 19, 2009, has received worldwide critical acclaim for her performance. She received the 2009 Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Series - Comedy or Musical, and later won three People's Choice Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Along with her award wins, Lea also received Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations.- Actress
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Christine Taylor is an American actress from Allentown, Pennsylvania. She is known for acting in The Brady Bunch film series and for her collaborations with American filmmaker, actor and comedian Ben Stiller. She acted in Zoolander, DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, Zoolander 2 and many more. She has two children with husband Ben Stiller.- Actress
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- Editorial Department
Emmy Award-winning Sarah Michelle Gellar was born on April 14, 1977 in New York City, the daughter of Rosellen (Greenfield), who taught at a nursery school, and Arthur Gellar, who worked in the garment industry. She is of Russian Jewish and Hungarian Jewish descent.
Eating in a local restaurant, Sarah was discovered by an agent when she was four years old. Soon after, she was making her first movie An Invasion of Privacy (1983). Besides a long list of movies, she has also appeared in many TV commercials and on the stage. Her breakthrough came with the television series Swans Crossing (1992). In 1997, she became known to the cinema audience when she appeared in two movies: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream 2 (1997). But she is most commonly known for her title role in the long-running television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997). She also won an Emmy Award for her performance as Kendall Hart on the soap opera All My Children (1970).
Sarah has since starred in many films, including Simply Irresistible (1999), Cruel Intentions (1999), and the live-action Scooby-Doo (2002) movies as the lovable Daphne Blake. She also provided her voice to several movies, including Small Soldiers (1998), Happily N'Ever After (2006) and TMNT (2007), starred in the box office hit The Grudge (2004), and co-starred with Robin Williams and James Wolk in the television series The Crazy Ones (2013).
She resides in Los Angeles, California, with her husband, Freddie Prinze Jr.. They have been married since 2002, and have two children.- Actress
- Producer
For someone who has made an award-winning impact in all three mediums (stage, film and TV), actress Kathy Baker has been strangely denied all-out stardom, yet continues to demonstrate her versatility in whatever material comes her way.
The comely blonde was born Katherine Whitton Baker in Midland, Texas, to Helene Andree Baker (nee Whitton) and John Seawand Baker, a geologist and educator who taught at both Princeton and the University of Paris. Raised in New Mexico, she first took to the stage at age 10. Influenced by her French-born mother, Kathy attended the University of California at Berkeley and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in French in 1977, then went to Paris to study haute cuisine at the famed Cordon Bleu. She returned to the States to work as a pastry chef, but discovered that she still wanted to act and eventually joined San Francisco's Magic Theatre, where she appeared in the play "The Man Who Killed the Buddha." Her performance drew the immediate attention of playwright Sam Shepard.
1983 was a banner year for Kathy. At the Magic Theatre, wherein she used the stage name of Kathy Whitton Baker, Shepard cast her in a leading role in one of his new plays, "Fool for Love." The premiere garnered exceptional notices and the play (and Kathy) went to New York. She and co-star Ed Harris, won 1984 Obie Awards for their rich performances, as did playwright Shepard for directing. The production itself won the Obie for "Best New American Play." That same year Kathy made a strong movie debut co-starring in The Right Stuff (1983) as the wife of astronaut Alan Shepard (played by Scott Glenn).
Displaying an attractive intelligence in her performances, Kathy continued to make strides on the New York stage both in 1984's "Desire Under the Elms" and as a replacement for the Lemon character in the Obie-winning "Aunt Dan and Lemon" at Joseph Papp's Shakespeare Festival in 1986. Later in the decade, both Kathy and Morgan Freeman stole the thunder right from under star Christopher Reeve in the tense film drama Street Smart (1987) with Kathy delivering a grim, heartfelt performance as an ill-fated hooker to Freeman's feral pimp. Both performances delivered a one-two punch and were applauded for their shocking realism. Each received their share of awards and plaudits; Kathy nabbed both the National Society of Critics and Boston Society of Critics awards, but was shamefully snubbed when it came to the Oscar race (Freeman was nominated, but lost).
Throughout the rest of the decade Kathy continued to give spot-on performances in such quality films as Clean and Sober (1988), as a recovering addict; Permanent Record (1988), as a wife whose son commits suicide; Jacknife (1989), in which she was reunited with Ed Harris as the put-upon, plain-Jane sister of an alcoholic Vietnam vet; and Edward Scissorhands (1990) as a seemingly model housewife who has an uncontrollably flirtatious nature. Top-flight stardom seemed to be almost a given.
With the new decade, however, the movie roles tendered out to her became less frequent or noteworthy so Kathy decided to focus outside her medium of choice and actively search for TV roles. The results were customarily expert. In the slightly quirky Picket Fences (1992), Kathy found a perfect fit taking on the role of small town mother and doctor Jill Brock. Running for four seasons, she was nominated for an Emmy each year and took home the trophy three of those four times for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series".
Into the millennium Kathy has maintained consistency with quality roles in such releases as The Glass House (2001), Assassination Tango (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), Nine Lives (2005), All the King's Men (2006), The Jane Austen Book Club (2007), Miss Nobody (2010), Seven Days in Utopia (2011), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017) and The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019). On TV she and Helen Mirren picked up supporting Emmy nods in the bittersweet Door to Door (2002), with Emmy-winning William H. Macy starring as a man with cerebral palsy.
In 2001 she joined the cast of Boston Public (2000) as a manipulative mom (another Emmy nomination). Some of those episodes were directed by Steven Robman, whom she married in June of 2003. Kathy has two children from a previous marriage.
In addition to guest spots on such TV series as "Fathers and Son," "Nip/Tuck," "Gilmore Girls, "Grey's Anatomy," "Saving Grace," "Medium" (recurring), and "Criminal Minds," she had series roles in Against the Wall (2011), I'm Sorry (2017) and The Ranch (2016).- Actress
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Jemima Kirke is the daughter of drummer Simon Kirke and vintage boutique owner, Lorraine Kirke. Although born in London, Kirke was raised in New York City. She was educated at Saint Ann's School in New York, before moving on to Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied art and graduated as a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
Kirke met and became friends with Lena Dunham whilst at school. Dunham asked her to appear in her 2010 film Tiny Furniture (2010). This led to her breakout role as Jessa Johansson in Dunham's hit HBO series Girls (2012).- Actress
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London-based Gwendoline Christie is one of the most exciting and unique British actresses working today, having caught the industry's attention with her Emmy and Critics' Choice nominated role in the global hit HBO series "Game of Thrones." During her time on the show, she was also nominated alongside the rest of the cast for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020.
Christie joined "Game of Thrones" in 2012 during the show's second season and was nominated in 2019 for an Emmy and Critics' Choice Award for Supporting Actress, Drama Series for her iconic role as the warrior Brienne of Tarth. Most recently, Christie can be seen as principal of Nevermore Academy Larissa Weems in Tim Burton's Netflix series "Wednesday" alongside Jenna Ortega as Wednesday, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Adams and Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams. The show debuted at #1 on Netflix in 83 countries around the world and set the record for most hours viewed in a week for an english-language series on the streaming platform. Christie can also be seen as Lucifer in Netflix's "The Sandman" based on Neil Gaiman's DC Comics series. The show debuted at #1 on Netflix's Top 10 rankings the week of its release. Christie also starred in Peter Strickland's "Flux Gourmet" which was released in June 2022 and was nominated for seven British Independent Film Awards including Best Ensemble.
In the summer of 2019, Christie played Titania in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bridge Theatre in London. She appeared in Gabriela Cowperthwaite's "The Friend", alongside Jason Segel and Dakota Johnson, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019. In January 2020, she appeared in the film adaptation of Charles Dickens' "The Personal History of David Copperfield", alongside Dev Patel and Tilda Swinton.
In 2018, Christie appeared in the Robert Zemeckis film "The Women of Marwen" alongside Steve Carell and Diane Kruger. She also starred in Peter Strickland's film "In Fabric", which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018.
In 2017, Christie starred alongside Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Moss in the second season of director Jane Campion's Sundance show "Top of the Lake: China Girl." The show received rave reviews and a 2018 Golden Globe nomination for Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. That same year, Christie was seen in the highly anticipated film "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi". The film was directed by Rian Johnson and Christie returned as the franchise's first female villain, Captain Phasma, alongside Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac. Christie first appeared in the beloved sci-fi franchise by starring in "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens" (2015) alongside John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong'o and Domhnall Gleeson, who joined the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Kenny Baker.
Christie's notable theatre credits include: Doctor Fauster in 2010 playing the role of Lucifer as well as the Theatre Royal Haymarket's Breakfast at Tiffany's as Mag Wildwood in 2009 and the Queen in Shakespeare's romance Cymbeline in 2007. Her feature film debut came in 2009 with a supporting role in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", directed by Terry Gilliam who she worked with again in "Zero Theorem". Additional film credits include Fox's The Darkest Minds and "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2".
Christie graduated from Drama Centre London in 2005 and has also modelled for several fashion houses over the years.- Actress
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Wendy Jane Crewson is a Canadian actress and producer. She began her career appearing on Canadian television, before her breakthrough role in 1991 dramatic film The Doctor. Crewson has appeared in many Hollywood films, including The Good Son (1993), The Santa Clause (1994) and its sequels The Santa Clause 2 (2002) and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006), as well as Air Force One (1997), Bicentennial Man (1999), What Lies Beneath (2000), The 6th Day (2000), The Covenant (2006) and Eight Below (2006). She also starred in a number of independent movies, such as Better Than Chocolate (1999), Suddenly Naked (2001), Perfect Pie (2002), Away from Her (2006), Into the Forest (2015) and Room (2015). Crewson has won six Gemini Awards, two Canadian Screen Awards and ACTRA Award for her performances on television. She played leading roles in a number of television films, include playing Joanne Kilbourn in six movies based on novels by Gail Bowen. She had recurring roles on American television series 24 and Revenge, and the Canadian television series Frankie Drake Mysteries. From 2012 to 2017, Crewson co-starred in the CTV medical drama Saving Hope.- Actress
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Maureen Denise McCormick was born on August 5, 1956 to Richard and Irene McCormick. The youngest of four children, she has three brothers Michael, Dennis and Kevin. Her acting career began at age six when she won the Baby Miss San Fernando Valley contest, which opened up the glamorous world of acting to the future teenie-bopper. At age seven, her first role was in a play, and within a year, was a popular choice for TV commercials and sitcoms. In addition to ads for Barbie and Kool Aid, Maureen was seen on Bewitched (1964), My Three Sons (1960) and Camp Runamuck (1965). She also did voice-over recordings for a dozen Mattel talking dolls. For five years, Maureen was one of America's top teen role-models, admired by millions. When the Brady Kids became a singing group on the side, producers noticed her special talent for singing and encouraged the recording of a number of solo tracks, some of which turned up later on the LP "Chris Knight and Maureen McCormick". Years later, she would attempt to revive her singing career, with the 1995 Country CD "When You Get A Little Lonely". Maureen has appeared in many feature films, many TV guest spots and completed three films in the last three years, Baby Huey's Great Easter Adventure (1999) and The Million Dollar Kid (2000) and Dogtown (1997). She currently pursues her career and keeps her friends and family first priority. Maureen is married to Michael Cummings and together they have a daughter, Natalie.- Actress
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Merle was born in Okinawa, Japan to a mother of Korean and Japanese descent and an African-American father serving in the U.S. Air Force. After graduating high school in Papillion, Nebraska, she attended the Theatre Conservatory at Roosevelt University in Chicago on a full-ride scholarship and graduated with a BFA in Theatre. She starred on Broadway as The Lady of the Lake in the Mike Nichols-directed Spamalot, as Aida in Aida, Kala in Tarzan, Joanne in Rent and in Jesus Christ Superstar. She has toured the U.S. and Europe 5 times. And regionally, she has appeared at Williamstown Theatre Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Geffen Playhouse, and Pasadena Playhouse.- Actress
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Mamie Gummer was born on 3 August 1983 in New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for The Lifeguard (2013), Ricki and the Flash (2015) and The Ward (2010). She has been married to Mehar Sethi since February 2019. They have two children. She was previously married to Benjamin Walker.- Actress
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Debra Messing was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the daughter of Jewish American parents, Sandra (née Simons), who has worked as a professional singer, banker, travel and real estate agent, and Brian Messing, a sales executive for a jewelry manufacturer. When Messing was three, she moved with her parents and her older brother, Brett, to East Greenwich, a small town outside Providence, Rhode Island.
During her high school years, she acted (and sang) in a number of high school productions, including the starring role in the musical "Annie" and "Fiddler On the Roof." Messing took lessons in dance, singing, and acting. In 1986, she was Rhode Island's Junior Miss and competed in Mobile, Alabama in the America's Junior Miss scholarship program. While her parents encouraged her dream of becoming an actress, they also urged her to complete a liberal arts education before deciding on acting as a career. Following their advice, she attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
In 1990, after graduating summa cum laude from Brandeis with a bachelor's degree in theater arts, Messing gained admission to the elite Graduate Acting Program (which accepts only about 15 new students annually) at New York University, where she earned a master's degree in fine arts after three years.
In 1998, Messing played a lead role as the bio-anthropologist Sloan Parker on ABC's dramatic science fiction television series Prey. During this time her agent approached her with the pilot script for the television show Will & Grace. Messing was inclined to take some time off, but the script intrigued her, and she auditioned for the role of Grace Adler, beating out Nicollette Sheridan, who later guest-starred on the show as a romantic rival of Grace's. Will & Grace became a ratings success, and Messing gained renown.
In 2002, she was named one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" by People Magazine. TV Guide picked her as its "Best Dressed Woman" in 2003. Messing met her husband, Daniel Zelman (an actor and screenwriter), on their first day as graduate students at NYU. The two were married on September 3, 2000, and live in New York City. On April 7, 2004, Messing gave birth to their son, Roman Walker Zelman.- Actress
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Shannen Doherty was born in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, on April 12, 1971, to Rosa Doherty (Wright) and Tom Doherty. Her father worked in a bank, while her mother owned a beauty parlor. She has an older brother, Sean B. Doherty. Her ancestry includes Irish, English, Scottish, and French. In 1978, at the tender age of seven, she and her family moved to Los Angeles, where her father started a West Coast branch of the family transportation business. She knew she wanted to pursue an acting career when she made her acting debut at age ten, with a role on the series Father Murphy (1981).
Shannen was a confident student, involving herself in school performances and working hard in school, making sure she always had exceptional grades. Despite her confidence she isolated herself from large crowds and preferred to few close friends. She made a name for herself as a child actress at just 11-years-old, starring in Little House on the Prairie (1974) as Jenny Wilder. It was Michael Landon who noticed her performance in an episode of Father Murphy (1981) that he decided to cast her. She then went on to appear in Our House (1986) with Deidre Hall and Wilford Brimley. She also starred alongside Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) and then in Heathers (1988), a teen comedy also starring Winona Ryder.
Her real success came in 1990, at the age of 19, when she was cast in Aaron Spelling's long-running hit series, Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) as Brenda Walsh, the twin sister of Brandon Walsh, played by Jason Priestley. She attracted media attention from the press and eventually made her a household name. The success of the popular teen drama appealed to young teenage girls who could relate to her character. After four years she left the show in 1994. Afterward, she continued her work in movies, starring in the thriller Almost Dead (1994) and the comedy Mallrats (1995).
During the fall of 1998, she reunited with long-time producer Aaron Spelling, when she was cast as Prue Halliwell on Charmed (1998), a show about three ordinary women who happen to be witches. She starred alongside Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs. After three years she left the show to find work in movies. Before her departure from the show she directed three of the last episodes in which she starred. She continued her work in movies by starring in Another Day (2001), The Rendering (2002), Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay (2002), and View of Terror (2003). In 2003, she hosted season one of Scare Tactics (2003) as well as season two with only 8 episodes and then left to pursue other endeavors.
In the fall of 2004, Shannen made her return to television on Fox's drama series North Shore (2004), where she played Alexandra Hudson, the long-lost sister of Nicole Booth, played by Brooke Burns. The show was canceled after one season. Then in 2005 she landed the role of Denise Johnson on the UPN series Love, Inc. (2005); however, after the pilot episode she was dropped from the sitcom. From there she has ventured into new projects and in 2006 she starred in her own reality series, Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty (2006).- Actress
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Melissa Ellen Gilbert is an American actress, television director, producer, politician, and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. Gilbert began her career as a child actress in the late 1960s, appearing in numerous commercials and guest starring roles on television. From 1974 to 1983, she starred as Laura Ingalls Wilder, the second oldest daughter of Charles Ingalls (played by Michael Landon) on the NBC series Little House on the Prairie. During the run of Little House, Gilbert appeared in several television films, including The Diary of Anne Frank and The Miracle Worker.- Actress
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Laura Helene Prepon was born on March 7, 1980, in Watchung, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Marjorie (Coll) and Michael Prepon. Her father died in 1993, when she was 13 years old. Laura is the youngest of five children--she has a brother named Brad and three sisters: Danielle, Jocelyn, and Stephanie. She attended Watchung Hills Regional High School. She studied at the Total Theater Lab in New York City, where she appeared in a number of theatrical productions.
Before acting became her profession, Laura was a model, working in Paris, Milan, and elsewhere in Europe. She began acting at the young age of 15 as well as dancing--ballet, jazz, and modern. She also played soccer and other sports. Laura loves vintage clothes. Her hobbies include cooking, traveling, horseback riding, playing piano, and dancing. Her favorite book is 'The Hobbit' by J.R.R. Tolkien. Laura resides in New York when not filming in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Elegant Nicole Kidman, known as one of Hollywood's top Australian imports, was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were there on educational visas.
Kidman is the daughter of Janelle Ann (Glenny), a nursing instructor, and Antony David Kidman, a biochemist and clinical psychologist. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Nicole's father pursued his research on breast cancer, and then, three years later, made the pilgrimage back to her parents' native Sydney in Australia, where Nicole was raised. Young Nicole's first love was ballet, but she eventually took up mime and drama as well (her first stage role was a bleating sheep in an elementary school Christmas pageant). In her adolescent years, acting edged out the other arts and became a kind of refuge -- as her classmates sought out fun in the sun, the fair-skinned Kidman retreated to dark rehearsal halls to practice her craft. She worked regularly at the Philip Street Theater, where she once received a personal letter of praise and encouragement from audience member Jane Campion (then a film student). Kidman eventually dropped out of high school to pursue acting full-time. She broke into movies at age 16, landing a role in the Australian holiday favorite Bush Christmas (1983). That appearance touched off a flurry of film and television offers, including a lead in BMX Bandits (1983) and a turn as a schoolgirl-turned-protester in the miniseries Vietnam (1987) (for which she won her first Australian Film Institute Award). With the help of an American agent, she eventually made her US debut opposite Sam Neill in the at-sea thriller Dead Calm (1989).
Kidman's next casting coup scored her more than exposure. While starring as Tom Cruise's doctor/love interest in the racetrack romance Days of Thunder (1990), she won over the Hollywood hunk hook, line and sinker. After a whirlwind courtship (and decent box office returns), the couple wed on December 24, 1990. Determined not to let her new marital status overshadow her fledgling career, the actress pressed on. She appeared as a catty high school senior in the Australian film Flirting (1991), then as Dustin Hoffman's moll in the gangster flick Billy Bathgate (1991). She reunited with Cruise for Far and Away (1992), the story of young Irish lovers who flee to America in the late 1800s, and starred opposite Michael Keaton in the tear-tugger My Life (1993). Despite her steady employment, critics and moviegoers still had not quite warmed to Kidman as a leading lady. She tried to spice up her image by seducing Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (1995), but achieved her real breakthrough with Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995). As a fame-crazed housewife determined to eliminate any obstacle in her path, Kidman proved that she had an impressive range and deadly comic timing. She took home a Golden Globe and several critics' awards for the performance. In 1996, Kidman stepped into a corset to work with her countrywoman and onetime admirer, Jane Campion, on the adaptation of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1996). A few months later, she tore across the screen as a nuclear weapons expert in The Peacemaker (1997), adding "action star" to her professional repertoire.
She and Cruise then disappeared into a notoriously long, secretive shoot for Stanley Kubrick's sexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut (1999). The couple's on-screen shenanigans prompted an increase in public speculation about their sex life (rumors had long been circulating that their marriage was a cover-up for Cruise's rumored homosexuality); tired of denying tabloid attacks, they successfully sued The Star for a story alleging that they needed a sex therapist to coach them through love scenes. Family life has always been a priority for Kidman. Born to social activists (mother was a feminist; father, a labor advocate), Nicole and her little sister, Antonia Kidman, discussed current events around the dinner table and participated in their parents' campaigns by passing out pamphlets on street corners. When her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, 17-year-old Nicole stopped working and took a massage course so that she could provide physical therapy (her mother eventually beat the cancer). She and Cruise adopted two children: Isabella Jane (born 1993) and Connor Antony (born 1995). Despite their rock-solid image, the couple announced in early 2001 that they were separating due to career conflicts. Her marriage to Cruise ended mid-summer of 2001.- Actress
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Jennifer Aniston was born in Sherman Oaks, California, to actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow. Her father was Greek, and her mother was of English, Irish, Scottish, and Italian descent. Jennifer spent a year of her childhood living in Greece with her family. Her family then relocated to New York City where her parents divorced when she was nine. Jennifer was raised by her mother and her father landed a role, as "Victor Kiriakis", on the daytime soap Days of Our Lives (1965). Jennifer had her first taste of acting at age 11 when she joined the Rudolf Steiner School's drama club. It was also at the Rudolf Steiner School that she developed her passion for art. She began her professional training as a drama student at New York's School of Performing Arts, aka the "Fame" school. It was a division of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts. In 1987, after graduation, she appeared in such Off-Broadway productions as "For Dear Life" and "Dancing on Checker's Grave". In 1990, she landed her first television role, as a series regular on Molloy (1990). She also appeared in The Edge (1992), Ferris Bueller (1990), and had a recurring part on Herman's Head (1991). By 1993, she was floundering. Then, in 1994, a pilot called "Friends Like These" came along. Originally asked to audition for the role of "Monica", Aniston refused and auditioned for the role of "Rachel Green", the suburban princess turned coffee peddler. With the success of the series Friends (1994), Jennifer has become famous and sought-after as she turns her fame into movie roles during the series hiatus.- Actress
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Natasha Lyonne is an Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated producer, actor, writer, and director.
Lyonne co-created Netflix series Russian Doll (2019), which received three Emmy awards, a total of 13 Emmy nominations including Comedy Series and Lead Actress for Lyonne, a Gotham Award nomination, and a Golden Globe acting nomination for Lyonne after premiering in 2019. She is showrunner and writes and directs for the series, in which she stars alongside Greta Lee, Charlie Barnett, and Chloë Sevigny.
Lyonne directed the October 2020 Netflix comedy special, Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine (2020), a variety special dealing with issues of politics, race, gender, and class and featured Helen Mirren, Fred Armisen, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Hamm, Aubrey Plaza, Ben Stiller, Winona Ryder, and Marisa Tomei, among others. In addition to directing, Lyonne executive-produced the special through Animal Pictures, her production company with Maya Rudolph and Danielle Renfrew Behrens. Animal Pictures is developing and producing a slate of original content, including the half-hour series Desert People, which Lyonne co-created with Alia Shawkat and Apple TV+'s upcoming comedy series starring Rudolph, created by Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard.
Lyonne portrayed Tallulah Bankhead opposite Andra Day in her Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning turn as legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday in Academy Award nominee Lee Daniels's The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021). The biopic was released by Hulu in February 2021.
In 2019, Lyonne returned as Nicky Nichols in the seventh and final season of the Netflix original drama series Orange Is the New Black (2013), for which she also directed an episode. Lyonne directed and appeared in an episode of Comedy Central's Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens (2020). She also directed an episode of Shrill (2019), starring Aidy Bryant, and an episode of Hulu series High Fidelity (2020), starring Zoë Kravitz.
Lyonne made her directorial debut with Kenzo short film Cabiria, Charity, Chastity (2017), featuring the Fall/Winter 2017 collection. She wrote the screenplay for the film, which stars Rudolph, Armisen, and Leslie Odom Jr., among others. In 2017, she produced and starred in IFC Midnight's Antibirth (2016), directed by Danny Perez, co-starring Sevigny. This independent farce horror hybrid, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, was released wide in the US in 2016, and released in the UK in 2017.
In 2014, Lyonne earned an Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Orange Is the New Black (2013). Recent television credits include guest stints on Portlandia (2011), Girls (2012), Inside Amy Schumer (2013), The Simpsons (1989), and IFC's Documentary Now! (2015).
As a young child, Lyonne was signed by the Ford Modeling Agency and at the age of six, and she was cast as Opal on Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986). She is well-known for her acclaimed performances in Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), the beloved comedy directed by Tamara Jenkins and co-starring Alan Arkin and Tomei; the coming-of age comedy But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), with Clea DuVall and RuPaul; and Everyone Says I Love You (1996). Additional film credits include The Grey Zone (2001), Sleeping with Other People (2015), Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015), Blade: Trinity (2004), Party Monster (2003), James Mangold's Kate & Leopold (2001), American Pie (1999), American Pie 2 (2001), Detroit Rock City (1999), A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018), and Irresistible (2020).
On stage, Lyonne starred alongside Ethan Hawke in The New Group's darkly comic Off-Broadway production of Blood From a Stone, written by Tommy Nohilly and directed by Scott Elliott. Lyonne earned critical acclaim for her adept portrayal of the couch-ridden, heartbroken Grace in the Roundabout Theatre Company s production of Tigers Be Still, written by Kim Rosenstock and directed by Sam Gold. In 2019, Lyonne co-presented Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees with executive producer Mike Birbiglia. The comedy showed at the Cherry Lane Theatre and received rave reviews. Lyonne's other stage credits include roles in Love, Loss, and What I Wore, an intimate collection of monologues and stories by Delia Ephron and Nora Ephron, and the familial drama Two Thousand Years, directed by Scott Elliot and written by the legendary Mike Leigh.- Actress
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Ming-Na ("enlightenment") was born on the island of Macau, forty miles from Hong Kong. Her mother, Lin Chan Wen, divorced her father when Ming-Na was only a toddler. She has an older brother named Jonathan. After the divorce, they moved to Hong Kong where her mother became a nurse. There her mother met Soo Lim Yee, a U.S. businessman. They soon married, and at four years, Ming-Na moved with her family to Queens, New York. Five years later, they transferred to Yee's hometown of Pittsburgh where his family runs the Chinatown Inn restaurant. Jonathan and half-brother, Leong, now manage this restaurant. Struggling to fit in at school, she changed her name to Maggie & Doris. She found a love for acting while appearing in a third grade Easter play, where she played a klutzy bunny. Her mother was not excited about her desire to pursue acting, She preferred that she go into medicine. Nonetheless, Ming-Na graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in theatre. She got her first acting job in 1988 on the soap As the World Turns (1956). Her big break came when she was cast in The Joy Luck Club (1993). When she needed a ride to the premiere of the film, her acting instructor sent one of his students, Eric Michael Zee. The two started dating in 1994 after Ming-Na moved permanently to Los Angeles and married in 1995, dropping her last name, Wen, at that time. She says she is now like Ann-Margret. Zee is a screenwriter and, with Ming-Na, manages At Last, a boy band.- Actress
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Chloë Sevigny is an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actress and director who is known for her groundbreaking work across film, television and theatre. Sevigny has spent her career working with innovative and revolutionary filmmakers and artists including Lars von Trier, Jim Jarmusch, Mary Harron, David Fincher and Whit Stillman and Luca Guadagnino. She continues that work with several upcoming projects: Sevigny can be currently seen in We Are Who We Are, for HBO/Sky, which was created, written and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name). The eight-episode drama is a coming of age story about a group of American soldiers on an Army base in Italy. We Are Who We Are is being produced by Wildside and Apartment Pictures and distributed by Freemantle. Alice Braga, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Kid Cudi also star. In 2021 Sevigny will begin production on the second season of the Natasha Lyonne hit Russian Doll for Netflix. In the first season, Chloë made an appearance as Leonora, mother to Natasha's character Nadia. The second season will be an origin story in which Chloë's character is heavily featured. Russian Doll was created by Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland. Sevigny was last seen on the big screen in Queen and Slim, directed by Melina Matsoukas and written by Lena Waithe, with the original idea by James Frey. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith. The film is about a black man and black woman on a first date that goes awry after the two are pulled over by a police officer at a traffic stop. They kill the police officer in self-defense and go on the run, rather than turn themselves in. Chloë's character plays a pivotal role in deciding their fate. The film was released in the US by Universal in November 2019. Opening the 2019 Cannes Film Festival was Jim Jarmusch's third film for Focus Features and Universal Pictures International, The Dead Don't Die. The zombie-comedy boasts a cast including Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Steve Buscemi and Selena Gomez. Sevigny plays a small-town police officer, with Murray and Driver, in a town under zombie attack. Carter Logan and Animal Kingdom produced. Sevigny previously worked with Jarmusch on Broken Flowers and Ten Minutes Older Sevigny has now made the move into directing with three critically acclaimed short films: Her most recent, White Echo, premiered in competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, at which Sevigny was the only American female director in Competition. Chloë's directorial debut, Kitty, also debuted at Cannes in 2016 and her second short entitled Carmen, proved equally successful at the 2017 Venice Film Festival. Recent past projects include: The Act, on Hulu, a true-crime anthology series written by Michelle Dean and Nick Antosca and directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (Mustang). The Act tells the true story of Gypsy Blanchard, a girl (Joey King) trying to escape the toxic relationship she has with her overprotective mother, played by Patricia Arquette. Chloë played Mel, who serves as the moral compass of the story. Lizzie, which premiered at Sundance 2018 after being developed and produced by Sevigny. The film, in which she starred with Kristen Stewart, was released by Roadside Attractions in September 2018. Lean On Pete, directed by Andrew Haigh, which was released domestically in May 2018 by A24. Sevigny co-starred with Steve Buscemi in a coming of age story starring Charlie Plummer, based on the acclaimed novel by Willy Vlautin. Golden Exits, directed by Alex Ross Perry, Oren Moverman's The Dinner, and Miguel Arteta's Beatriz at Dinner. The critically acclaimed television series Bloodline is recently aired its third and final season on Netflix. On stage, Sevigny was most recently seen in the New Group's Downtown Race Riot written by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld and directed by Scott Elliot. Sevigny was previously seen in The New Group's productions of What the Butler Saw and Hazelwood Junior High. Sevigny has also appeared in many celebrated indie and cult-favorite films like, The Last Days of Disco, American Psycho, Gummo, Dogville, Party Monster, Broken Flowers and Love & Friendship, and has appeared in television hits such as American Horror Story, Portlandia and Big Love, for which she won a Golden Globe. Sevigny made her film debut in the controversial Kids, directed by Larry Clark and written by Harmony Korine. For her performance in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry, Chloë received nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe among many others. She makes her home in New York. 10/2020- Actress
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Alyson Hannigan was born in Washington, D.C. to Emilie (Posner), a real estate agent, and Al Hannigan, a truck driver. She began her acting career in Atlanta at the young age of 4 in commercials sponsoring such companies as McDonald's, Six Flags, and Oreos. She is a seasoned television actress, guest starring in Picket Fences (1992), Roseanne (1988), Touched by an Angel (1994) and the The Torkelsons (1991) before starring in her most notorious roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) as "Willow Rosenberg" and How I Met Your Mother (2005) as "Lily Aldrin."- Actress
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Alicia Silverstone was born on October 4, 1976 in San Francisco, California, the youngest of three children. She is the daughter of Didi (Radford), a former flight attendant, and Monty Silverstone, a real estate investor. Her English-born father is from a Jewish family, while her Scottish-born mother converted to Judaism. Alicia's career began at the tender age of six, when her father took some photos of his young daughter, which eventually led to her getting several television commercials. After a guest spot on The Wonder Years (1988) as a literal "dream girl", she moved on to movies. She landed a role in The Crush (1993), a sort of Fatal Attraction (1987) for teenagers in which she portrayed a disturbed young girl obsessed with an older man. The nasty little role did not impress the critical establishment but it wowed its target audience: teenagers. In fact, the role won her the 1994 MTV Movie Award for "Best Villain" and "Breakthrough Performance". It is interesting to note that during the filming of the movie, Alicia became an emancipated minor in order to get around child labor laws which would have interfered with her working hours. She was a dedicated actress from early on.
The film also caught the attention of Aerosmith, who hired her to appear in a string of their music videos. The first of them, "Cryin'", was voted the #1 video of all time on MTV. Silverstone was definitely a hit with the MTV crowd, but larger commercial success still eluded her. That all changed when she landed the role of Cher in Amy Heckerling's Clueless (1995). Cher was the antithesis of Alicia's role in The Crush; this time around, she was a rich, naive yet endearing girl from Beverly Hills in search of love in the 1990s. The film was a huge box-office hit and wowed both audiences and critics alike and demonstrated Alicia's strength and bankability. She was hailed as the woman of the hour, and branded the spokeswoman for an emerging young generation. She signed a deal with Columbia TriStar worth $10 million and got the coveted role of Batgirl in the Batman franchise. Also, as part of the package, she received a three-year first-look deal for her own production company, First Kiss Productions. The first film released by First Kiss was Excess Baggage (1997).- Actress
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Stunning pop culture icon, Hollywood leading lady and three-time NAACP award winner Nia Long returns to the big screen this fall in the highly anticipated Universal Pictures sequel The Best Man Holiday (in theaters November 15th) where she reunites with original castmates Taye Diggs ("Private Practice"), Terrence Howard (Hustle & flow), Morris Chestnut (The brothers) and Harold Perrineau ("Lost"). Additionally in Spring 2014, Long will star in Tyler Perry's Single mom's club alongside Wendi McLendon- Covey (Bridesmaids), Tyler Perry (Madea) and Amy Smart (Crank).
Early this year, Long joined the all-star cast of Showtime's "House of Lies" alongside Golden Globe Award winner Don Cheadle & Kristen Bell as "Tamara," a business school classmate and former flame of Marty's (Don Cheadle) who has been hired by the same consulting firm Galweather Stearn after taking time off to raise a family.
Long made her film debut in the poignant film portraying the social problems in inner-city Los Angeles, Boyz n the hood , and continued on to star in Friday, alongside Ice Cube and Chris Tucker, as well as Love Jones, which won the prestigious Audience Award at Sundance. Other notable film roles include Soul Food, Alfie opposite Jude Law, The Best man, Are We There Yet?, Big Momma's House 1 & 2 opposite Martin Lawrence, Stigmata, the Broken Hearts Club and Made in America.
On the small screen, Long's portrayal of "Officer Sasha Monroe" on NBC's hit crime drama "Third Watch" awarded her two NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Actress in a Drama series. Long's other TV accomplishments include "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "Boston Legal," "Judging Amy," and "Big Shots." Long also voiced "Roberta" in the first season of the Fox hit "the Cleveland Show."
Making her directorial debut on Ashanti's music video "Baby" and Yolanda Adam's "This Too Shall Pass," Nia continues her work behind the camera and is developing a feature film that centers on renowned world champion boxer and trainer Ann Wolfe.
In addition to her film and TV work, Long's passion lies in serving her community. With her family roots planted in Trinidad, Grenada, and Barbados, Long's long term goals are to connect women in the US to those of the islands and to mentor young girls to regain their self-esteem. Additionally, Long lends her support to Black Girls Rock, an organization that promotes the arts for young women of color and encourages dialogue on the ways women of color are portrayed in the media. In 2012 she was named an official surrogate to the Barack Obama reelection campaign.
Nia was born in Brooklyn, to Talita (Gillman), a teacher and printmaker, and Doughtry Long, a high school teacher and poet. She now calls Los Angeles home where she lives with her 12 year old son, Massai, 14 month old son, Kez and partner Ime Udoka, an Assistant Coach for the San Antonio Spurs. Long loves to cook organic farmers market fresh meals adding a twist of her Trinidadian heritage. When she's not juggling between her career and motherhood, she enjoys staying active by doing pilates, boxing, hiking, and horseback riding. Long also finds pleasure in traveling and experiencing different cultures throughout the world. One of her favorite locations to visit is Jamaica, a place she calls her second home where she can reflect and refuel.- Actress
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Regina Hall was born December 12, 1970 in Washington, D.C., to Ruby, a teacher, and Odie Hall, a contractor. She graduated from Fordham University in 1992, and went on to earn a master's degree in journalism from New York University before shifting to an acting career. In 1997 at age 26, she began appearing in commercials, and then made the giant leap into movies. Her fame came with her role in the comedy-horror spoof Scary Movie, Regina Hall has frequented the big screen in roles that far from betrayed her age. Her recurring role in Scary Movie and the sequel Scary Movie 2 exhibited the 30-year-old's ability to maintain her youthful appearance, as she portrayed the high-school-aged Brenda Meeks. However, her first film role was in the 1999 film The Best Man. The following year, she made many other film appearances, including her starring role in Scary Movie in 2000. She first had a role in the movie Love and Basketball which also starred close friend Sanaa Lathan. In 2001, Hall's list of credits grew to include her first television role, as Corretta Lipp on the prime-time drama Ally McBeal, which was a recurring role for several episodes. Furthermore, in 2001 Scary Movie 2 was released, in addition to the Mandel Holland comedy The Other Brother, featuring Hall as Vicki. One year later, she starred in the action-drama Paid in Full, directed by Charles Stone III. She would later on start in other films such as;Malibu's Most Wanted, Scary Movie 3, The Honeymooners, and First Sunday.- Actress
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Leah Marie Remini was born on June 15,1970 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York & was raised in Los Angeles, California. Leah was born to Vicki Julia Marshall, & George Anthony Remini, who owned an asbestos removal company. She has an older sister named Nicole and 4 half-sisters named Christine, Stephanie (died of cancer in 2013), Elizabeth & Shannon. She starred as Carrie Heffernan on the long-running CBS comedy series The King of Queens (1998-2007) and later co-hosted The Talk in 2010-11. Since 2016 she has created, hosted and executive produced co-produced the Emmy Award-winning A&E documentary series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. Since 2020 Remini is producing and co-hosting the iHeart radio podcast Scientology: Fair Game
She was baptized Roman Catholic. When she was 8 years old, her mother joined the Church of Scientology, and Remini was thereafter raised as a Scientologist. Remini and sister Nicole were then taken to join Scientology's Paramilitary organization called the Sea Organization, where they were forced to sign billion-year contracts and work for their room and board. Sea Org children do not live with their parents and children of the Sea Org are treated as adults and work around the clock. Remini's mother decided to take her children out of the Sea Org and return to civilian Scientology life when Remini was thirteen years old. Remini moved to Los Angeles, California, with her mother and sisters, where she spent the remainder of her teenage years working to pay off their debt to Scientology called a Freeloader's Debt. Remini and family worked regular jobs to pay for Scientology services.
Remini and husband Angelo Pagán, baptized their daughter Sofia as a Catholic.
Remini left the organization in 2013. Two years later, Remini released her book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, her memoir became number one on The New York Times Best Sellers List. In 2016, she followed up her memoir with the two-time Emmy Award-winning documentary television series on the A&E network, Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, where she created a platform for victims and survivors of Scientology. The Documentary Series received many awards in its three seasons; two Emmy Awards, 2019 Critics' Choice Real TV Impact Award, 2017 Television Critics Association Award for Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming, 2018 Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television, 2018 NATPE Unscripted Breakthrough Awards for Best Innovation, 2019 IDA Truth to Power Award, CHILD USA 2019 Barbara Blaine Trailblazer Award, The Gracie Awards presented by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation for On-Air Talent - Lifestyle and Entertainment and another Gracie Award for Non-Fiction Entertainment.
Remini reunited with her co-star Kevin James in CBS's Kevin Can Wait, as Vanessa Cellucci.
One of Remini's early television roles was on Who's the Boss? as Charlie Briscoe, which led to a spin-off series entitled Living Dolls, in which Remini starred with Halle Berry. The show premiered in late 1989 and ran for 12 episodes.
In 1991, Remini had a supporting role on the short-lived ABC comedy The Man in the Family. She then had recurring roles on Saved by the Bell, where she played Stacey Carosi, and on Evening Shade as Daisy, the girlfriend of Taylor Newton (Jay R. Ferguson). Remini then appeared in two more short-lived series, First Time Out (1995) and Fired Up (1997-98). In 1993, she appeared on Cheers as Serafina, the daughter of Carla and Nick Tortelli (Rhea Perlman and Dan Hedaya). In 1994, Remini auditioned for the role of Monica Geller on Friends, but the role went to Courteney Cox. Remini later appeared in the 1995 Friends episode "The One with the Birth" in which she played a pregnant woman. In 1998, Remini landed the role of Carrie Heffernan on the CBS sitcom The King of Queens. The series was successful, and ran for nine seasons from September 21, 1998, to May 14, 2007.
Remini had a supporting role in the comedy film Old School (2003). Remini also starred in her own reality show, Inside Out: Leah Remini, which was a documentary that aired on VH1 about Remini's wedding. Following the success of the wedding special, VH-1 documented the next phase of their lives with the birth of her daughter Sofia Bella. Remini has starred in nine-episode webisodes of In the Motherhood, along with Chelsea Handler and Jenny McCarthy.
In October 2011, Remini signed a talent development deal at ABC and ABC Studios that required the network and the studio to develop a comedy project for Remini to star in and produce.
Remini competed on season 17 of Dancing with the Stars, in which she was partnered with professional dancer Tony Dovolani. The couple made it to the 10th week of competition and reached 5th place. Remini later returned in season 19 as a guest co-host on week 6. She returned as guest co-host on season 21 during weeks 6 and 7.
In 2013, Remini joined the cast of the TV Land comedy The Exes, filling a recurring role starting in season three.
Remini created, produced, and starred in a reality television series titled Leah Remini: It's All Relative. The show focuses on Remini's family life. It premiered on TLC on July 10, 2014.
In August 2013, it was disclosed that Remini had filed a missing person report with the Los Angeles Police Department concerning Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige, who had not been seen in public since 2007. After the report was filed, the Los Angeles Police Department investigated the matter, met, and spoke with her before closing the investigation and stating Remini's report was "unfounded". The Church said in a statement that the whole affair was simply harassment and a publicity stunt for Remini.
In 2020 Remini & her production company, "No, Seriously Productions" signed a production deal with Critical Content and continues to create content that is both entertaining and continuing to speak truth to power.
Remini released her memoir Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology on November 3, 2015. In a 2015 interview with People magazine, Remini stated that she was embracing Catholicism and found comfort in the religion's practices, contrasting her experiences with Scientology.- Actress
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Armed with an acid dry wit and a full arsenal of sarcasm and sass, African-American character comedienne Marla Gibbs showed up on 1970s television with a bang in middle age (44). Landing the feisty maid role on the popular ground-breaking CBS sitcom The Jeffersons (1975), eventually led to her very own sitcom 227 (1985) a decade later and international celebrity. A divorced mother with three children (Angela Elayne Gibbs, Dorian Gibbs, Joseph Gibbs) at the time of her initial success, it was a job transfer from Detroit to Los Angeles, while working as a United Airlines reservation clerk, that set up this more-than-welcome surprise and change of destiny.
Born in Chicago on June 14, 1931, Marla attended Peters Business School (1950-1952) following high school and toiled for a time as a receptionist and switchboard operator in the Detroit area. Eventually, she secured work with United Airlines. After moving to Southern California on a transfer, Marla gave acting a try and initially studied at the Mafundi Institute and Watts Writers Workshop, located in the Watts area of L.A.
Bitten hard by the acting bug, Marla went on to appear in a number of local productions, including "Medea", "The Amen Corner" and "The Gingerbread Lady". After only a couple of minor film roles, including the blaxploitation film, Black Belt Jones (1974), she nabbed the role of Florence Johnston and television stardom.
On The Jeffersons (1975), the role of Florence, the maid, was initially set up as a mere one-shot guest role but Marla showed the character's potential. And, so it came to be that Florence Johnston became THE scene-stealing foil to Sherman Hemsley's equally mouthy, money-minded George Jefferson. Until the sitcom became a certified hit, Marla cautiously kept her job with the Airlines. However, with wisecracks and Emmy Award nominations (totaling 5) a plenty, Marla never really had to look back. The role of Florence was a natural for a spin-off series and it happened with the sitcom, Checking In (1981), in which the character becomes a housekeeper for a very swanky hotel. However, the sitcom was harmed by a writer's strike before it could gain a core audience. Fortunately for Marla, she was ushered right back into the Jefferson household following its quick demise (four episodes). Two months after the last "Jeffersons" episode aired in July 1985, 227 (1985) was included in that year's fall schedule.
Daughter Angela Elayne Gibbs produced an award-winning play by Christine Houston entitled "227", with Marla as the lead, at Marla's own local Crossroads Theatre, which the actress founded in 1981. The award-winning play was a solid hit and Marla wisely purchased the television rights. Once "The Jeffersons" was over, she pushed for "227" as a sitcom vehicle. Producer Norman Lear gave it the green light and Marla settled right back in for another popular series ride (for NBC), this time as resident gossip Mary Jenkins, whose demeanor was warmer and more approachable than the feisty Florence Johnson. This sitcom, which featured spitfire Jackée Harry as vampish neighbor Sandra Clark, ran for five years.
An eight-time NAACP Image Award winner, Marla has received several honors over the years, including Essence Woman of the Year. She has not carried a series since "227", but has been seen from time to time on other popular shows, including ER (1994), Cold Case (2003), Chappelle's Show (2003), Judging Amy (1999), Touched by an Angel (1994), The King of Queens (1998) and Dawson's Creek (1998). She has also had recurring roles on daytime (Passions (1999)) as well as prime-time (Pryor's Place (1984), The Hughleys (1998)) and gave a knowing portrayal as Natalie Cole's mother in the heart-warming television movie, Lily in Winter (1994).
In later years, Marla turned up again on the big screen with plucky roles in Up Against the Wall (1991), The Meteor Man (1993), Lost & Found (1999), Foolish (1999), Border to Border (1998), The Brothers (2001), and standout roles in The Visit (2000) and Stanley's Gig (2000).
Elsewhere, Marla's voice has been heard on the animated series 101 Dalmatians: The Series (1997) and, in addition to acting, sang the theme song to the film Stanley's Gig (2000), "In the Memory of You", which will be included on a CD, entitled "Scenes In Jazz". Marla owned a jazz club for some time in South Central L.A. called "Marla's Memory Lane, a jazz and supper club that ran from 1981 to 1999. She released her own CD of music, "It's Never Too Late", in May 2006, and co-wrote with Ray Colcord, the theme song to her starring series "227".
Into the millennium, Marla suffered both personal and professional setbacks. Her older sister, Susie Garrett, who co-starred on the hit sitcom Punky Brewster (1984), died of cancer in 2002. A few years later, in 2006, Marla suffered a small aneurysm followed by a stroke. She recovered and made a gradual comeback as a guest on such TV shows as Lincoln Heights (2006), House of Payne (2006), Mr. Box Office (2012), Scandal (2012), Hot in Cleveland (2010), The Blexicans (2015), American Horror Story (2011), This Is Us (2016), Black-ish (2014), NCIS (2003), Bless This Mess (2019) and the revamped One Day at a Time (2017). At one point, she played the recurring role of Grandma Eddy on the comedy series The First Family (2012) which starred her old "227" castmate Jackée Harry. On stage, Marla appeared in such comedies as "Boeing, Boeing" and was featured in such comedy films as C'mon Man (2012), Madea's Witness Protection (2012), Grantham & Rose (2014), Lemon (2017), Please Stand By (2017), Love Jacked (2018) and She Ball (2020).- Actress
Sophia Lillis was born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She started her acting career at the age of seven, when her stepfather encouraged her to take acting classes at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in Manhattan. While studying there, a teacher recommended her for a role in an NYU student film. She then signed a deal with an agent and started auditioning for roles. She started out in short films but later landed her breakthrough role in the horror film It (2017). She has also starred in the films It Chapter Two (2019), Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019), and Gretel & Hansel (2020).- Actress
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Nadia Bjorlin was born the fifth out of six children. Her parents were Ulf Björlin (a Swedish conductor and composer, known to be the world's most active opera composer during the 20th century) and Fary Bjorlin. Her siblings are Katja, Kaj, Kamilla, Ulf Jr and Jean Paul. (Each sibling have a history of artistic or creative work in their background. A very stunning and talented family indeed). Nadia was born in Newport, Rhode Island (USA), but her family soon moved to Sweden. This was only for a few short years before moving back to the USA again.
Nadia worked the opera scene before becoming an actress. It was a fast lane change by a sudden contract with NBC who needed an opera singing girl for a permanent part in a television series. Nadia has since then appeared in both movies and TV series. She has played lead characters in big screen productions and she has been a guest star in shows like CSI, Two an a half men, Two Broke Girls, as well as other comedy shows. Her talent is strong in comedy as well as in drama. She is also quite the dancer, which can be seen in Ricky Martin's music video "Shake Your Bon Bon". She was second runner up placing in Miss Teen Florida. Her voice won a sought after first place in a world proclaimed a opera competition in Italy.
Nadia is fluent in Swedish, English and Farsi. Because of her education in opera, she is schooled in several more languages like Italian and French. Nadia was a child prodigy who excelled in her studies at school as well as voice, theater, dance, and music. She started her professional career at six years old and won several awards while attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.
She currently (2014) lives in California. Her school years were mostly in Palm Beach, Florida and New York. Her most beloved father died of leukemia in 1993. This has inspired Nadia to become a spokesperson and represent The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for many years now.- Actress
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Lucy Boynton (born 17 January 1994) is an American-English actress. She made her film debut with a leading role in Miss Potter (2006). Boynton's credits include Copperhead (2013), Sing Street (2016), Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).
Boynton was born in New York City and grew up in London. She is the daughter of British-born Graham Boynton, the Group Travel Editor of the Telegraph Media Group, and Adriaane Pielou, a travel writer. She has an older sister, Emma Louise Boynton. She attended Blackheath High School, followed by James Allen's Girls' School.
Boynton's first professional role was as the young Beatrix Potter in the 2006 British-American film Miss Potter (2006). Boynton has said that the first day of filming was "the best day of [her] life." In 2007, she was nominated for the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a Feature Film - Supporting Young Actress, for Miss Potter.
She went on to play Posy Fossil, one of three main characters in the BBC film Ballet Shoes (2007), in 2007. Posy is a young, ambitious ballerina who is taken under the wing of a prestigious dance academy. She did not dance in Ballet Shoes, instead a body double was used for her character's dancing scenes. Boynton also played the role of Margaret Dashwood in the BBC serial Sense & Sensibility (2008). In 2011, Boynton played a guest lead on Inspector Lewis (2006). She appeared in Mo (2010) with Julie Walters and David Haig. She portrayed the mysterious model Raphina in the 2016 film Sing Street (2016), and Countess Helena Andrenyi in the 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (2017).- Actress
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Kelsey Asbille Chow is the oldest of three siblings, a younger brother and younger sister. At a young age she studied dance, and grew to love performing. School plays led to community theater, then she was member of the Hammond Select Ensemble, which she has performed with in Italy and other places. She has a recurring role in "One Tree Hill (2003)", also co-stars Matisse Burrows in the Disney movie "Den Brother (2010)". She is perhaps best known for her role as Mikayla in Disney XD's popular TV show "Pair of Kings (2010)".- Actress
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Margot Elise Robbie was born on July 2, 1990 in Dalby, Queensland, Australia to Scottish parents. Her mother, Sarie Kessler, is a physiotherapist, and her father, is Doug Robbie. She comes from a family of four children, having two brothers and one sister. She graduated from Somerset College in Mudgeeraba, Queensland, Australia, a suburb in the Gold Coast hinterland of South East Queensland, where she and her siblings were raised by their mother and spent much of her time at the farm belonging to her grandparents. In her late teens, she moved to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia to pursue an acting career.
From 2008-2010, Robbie played the character of Donna Freedman in the long-running Australian soap opera, Neighbours (1985), for which she was nominated for two Logie Awards. She set off to pursue Hollywood opportunities, quickly landing the role of Laura Cameron on the short-lived ABC series, Pan Am (2011). She made her big screen debut in the film, About Time (2013).
Robbie rose to fame co-starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, portraying the role of Naomi Lapaglia in Martin Scorsese's Oscar nominated film, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). She was nominated for a Breakthrough Performance MTV Movie Award, and numerous other awards.
In 2014, Robbie founded her own production company, LuckyChap Entertainment. She also appeared in the World War II romantic-drama film, Suite Française (2014). She starred in Focus (2015) and Z for Zachariah (2015), and made a cameo in The Big Short (2015).
In 2016, she married Tom Ackerley in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia.
She starred as Jane Porter in The Legend of Tarzan (2016), Tanya Vanderpoel in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016) and as DC comics villain Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad (2016), for which she was nominated for a Teen Choice Award, and many other awards.
She portrayed figure skater Tonya Harding in the biographical film I, Tonya (2017), receiving critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress - Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.- Actress
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Melissa Fumero is an American actress. From the age of ten, she aspired to become an actress and attended New York University, from which she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drama. She made her professional debut in 2004, recurring as Adriana Cramer in the soap opera One Life to Live. Following several minor roles, Fumero had her first main role in the Fox (later NBC) comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine as Amy Santiago, a role she played from 2013 to 2021. Since this breakthrough, Fumero has voiced Melissa Tarleton in the critically acclaimed animated series M.O.D.O.K. (2021) and is set to star in Netflix's upcoming series Blockbuster. She is married to actor and former model David Fumero, with whom she has two sons.- Actress
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Francia Raisa is a bilingual first generation Mexican and Honduran actress, born and raised in Los Angeles. Francia began her acting career in 2005 at the fresh-faced age of 17 and has since made quite an impression in Hollywood. Upon making her debut, she's since become a powerhouse and catalyst for change within the LatinX community and strives to raise awareness for organizations whose primary focus is the fight against sex trafficking as well as familial separation at the border. She is also a staunch advocate for women's health and wellness.- Actress
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Becca Tobin was born on 18 January 1986 in Marietta, Georgia, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Glee (2009), A Song for Christmas (2017) and NCIS: Los Angeles (2009). She has been married to Zach Martin since 3 December 2016. They have one child.- Actress
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Juliette Lewis has been recognized as one of Hollywood's most talented and versatile actors of her generation since she first stunned audiences and critics alike with her Oscar-nominated performance as "Danielle Bowden" in Cape Fear (1991). To date, she has worked with some of the most revered directors in the industry, including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Lasse Hallström, Oliver Stone, and Garry Marshall. Whether lending dramatic authenticity or a natural comedic flair to her roles, Lewis graces the screen with remarkable range and an original and captivating style.
Lewis was born in Los Angeles, Californa, to Glenis (Duggan) Batley, a graphic designer, and Geoffrey Lewis, an actor. By the age of six, she knew she wanted to be a performer. At twelve, Lewis landed her first leading role in the Showtime miniseries Home Fires (1987). After appearing in several TV sitcoms including The Wonder Years (1988), she made her move to film, starring with Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) and with Jennifer Jason Leigh in the drama Crooked Hearts (1991). At 16, Lewis starred opposite Brad Pitt in the critically acclaimed television movie Too Young to Die? (1990), catching the attention of Martin Scorsese, who cast her in his thriller Cape Fear (1991). Her powerful scenes with Robert De Niro captured the quiet complexities of adolescence and earned her an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe nomination for "Best Supporting Actress". Her auditorium scene with De Niro went down in movie history as one of cinema's classic scenes.
Lewis next worked with Woody Allen in Husbands and Wives (1992), playing a self-assured college coed with a penchant for older men and, particularly, her married professor. She quickly followed suit with a succession of starring roles in a variety of blockbusters and critically acclaimed projects including Kalifornia (1993), Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), and Natural Born Killers (1994), Oliver Stone's controversial media satire about two mass murderers who become legendary folk heroes. Lewis's other credits include the Nora Ephron comedy Mixed Nuts (1994), with Steve Martin and Adam Sandler; the sci-fi action film Strange Days (1995) with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett; Quentin Tarantino's vampire tale From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) with George Clooney; The Evening Star (1996) with Shirley MacLaine; the Garry Marshall-directed The Other Sister (1999), and Todd Phillips' Old School (2003), co-starring opposite Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell as well as Starsky & Hutch (2004). In addition to her film career, Lewis has continued to add roles to her growing list of television credits with a performance in Showtime's My Louisiana Sky (2001), for which she secured an EMMY nomination, and a starring role in the Mira Nair-directed HBO's film Hysterical Blindness (2002), alongside Uma Thurman and Gena Rowlands.
After a six-year hiatus from film to pursue her burgeoning music career exclusively, Lewis announced her return to acting with a handful of upcoming movies. Juliette starred alongside Elliot Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig and Jimmy Fallon in the comedy Whip It (2009). The film was released by Fox Searchlight on October 2nd, 2009. Directed by Drew Barrymore, the film tells the story of an ex-beauty pageant contestant that leaves her crowns behind after joining a roller derby team. Lewis plays "Iron Maven", the star of a top derby team. Next, she joined the cast of the acclaimed European animated thriller Metropia (2009), as the voice of "Nina". She also appeared in the romantic comedy The Switch (2010), opposite Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, and Patrick Wilson. The film tells the story of a single mother (Aniston) who decides to have a child using a sperm donor. Juliette plays "Debbie Epstein", the best friend of Aniston's character. Lewis also appears in Sympathy for Delicious (2010), Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut. The film follows a paralyzed DJ, struggling to survive on the streets of LA who turns to faith healing and mysteriously develops the ability to cure the sick. Juliette plays "Ariel", costarring alongside Orlando Bloom, Mark Ruffalo, and Laura Linney. The film took home the US Dramatic Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Most recently, Juliette Lewis appears in the indie-drama Conviction (2010), which stars Hilary Swank, Melissa Leo, Minnie Driver, and Sam Rockwell. She plays "Roseanna Perry" in the true story of an unemployed single mother (Swank) who saw her brother begin serving a life sentence in 1983 for murder and robbery. The role has won Lewis praise from audiences and critics, alike, for her performance, with USA Today saying, "Juliette Lewis has an indelible role" and the San Francisco Chronicle saying "Her character work should be studied in schools. Just remarkable". In addition to Conviction (2010), Lewis also makes a cameo in Todd Phillips's comedy, Due Date (2010), starring Robert Downey Jr., Michelle Monaghan, and Zach Galifianakis.
Beginning in 2004, Juliette took a hiatus from acting to embark on a musical journey. After six years, two full length albums and countless high profile tours and festival gigs with her band, 'Juliette & the Licks', Juliette set out on a solo career. Releasing "Terra Incognita" last fall, the album has taken her all across the world from Europe to Japan to Turkey, Australia, North America and Canada. For more information on Juliette Lewis' music, please visit her MySpace page. Juliette Lewis resides in Los Angeles.- Actress
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American actress and political activist Ashley Judd was born Ashley Tyler Ciminella on April 19, 1968, in Granada Hills, California. She grew up in a family of successful performing artists as the daughter of country music singer Naomi Judd and the sister of Wynonna Judd. While she is best known for an ongoing acting career spanning more than two decades, she has increasingly become involved in global humanitarian efforts and political activism.- Actress
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Precocious, outspoken child-teen starlet of the 1990s, Christina Ricci was born on February 12, 1980 in Santa Monica, California, the youngest of four children of Sarah (Murdoch), a realtor, and Ralph Ricci, a lawyer and therapist. She is of Italian (from her paternal grandfather), Irish, and Scots-Irish descent. She made her screen debut at the age of 9 in Mermaids (1990), in which she worked with Winona Ryder and Cher. Her breakthrough adult role was in The Ice Storm (1997), in which she plays a nymphet who skillfully seduces two brothers. She worked with Johnny Depp and Casper Van Dien in the Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow (1999).- Actress
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Rebecca Alie Romijn was born on November 6, 1972 in Berkeley, California. Her father was Dutch-born and worked as a custom-furniture maker. Her mother was American-born, with Dutch and English ancestry, and was a teacher of English. Rebecca attended Berkeley High School where her nickname was the "Jolly Blond Giant", then she attended the University of California at Santa Cruz where she majored in Music, but left in 1995.
She was a natural for modeling, and has posed for Sports Illustrated, Christian Dior and Victoria's Secret, to name but a few. Rebecca first met John Stamos in 1994, at a Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and had her first date with him at Disneyland. They married in September 1998, but have since gotten divorced.
Rebecca's favorite foods are fillet mignon, tuna sashimi and Häagen-Dazs Cappuccino Commotion ice cream. But to keep her weight at a svelte 130 pounds, she stays fit with a rigorous stretching and strengthening routine (her firm body tone is evident when compared to photos of her earlier modeling, where she was very slim but not toned). Rebecca's most famous movie role, so far, was as the shapeshifting Mystique in X-Men (2000), based on the long-running comic book series about teenage mutant superheroes (that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created in 1962). To play Mystique every day, Rebecca had to start out nude, and then two female makeup artists would apply blue body paint and other stick-on parts for 8 hours a day. Rebecca told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) that things like tissue paper would stick to her hips; and, one day, the long hours of wearing sticky paint makeup made her so upset that director Bryan Singer told her to have a glass of white wine and relax. Notwithstanding those technical difficulties, X-Men (2000) was a box-office bonanza, and Rebecca's future in films was assured.- Actress
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Ms. McClain began her professional acting career at the age of 9. She has worked with respected directors such as Herbert Ross, Richard Benjamin, Marvin Chomsky and John Erman. Over the course of her long career she has starred in five independent films including "Soldier's Heart," "Home Movie" (released through IFC), "Alma Mater," (nominee Golden Starfish at the Hamptons International Film Festival), "Simple Justice" (with Cesar Romero and Doris Roberts), and "Retreat" (Winner, Woods Hole Film Festival). Studio films include "My Favorite Year" with Peter O'Toole, and "Pennies From Heaven" with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters. Television credits of note include "Law and Order SVU," "Cheers," and "St. Elsewhere."
During her 25 years living in New York City, Ms. McClain was a two-time Emmy winner and six-time nominee for her roles on "All My Children" (Best Juvenile, 1991) and "As the World Turns" (Best Supporting, 2004). She additionally enjoyed performing in historic theatrical productions Off-Broadway such as David Ives' "The Red Address" at Second Stage, "Much Ado About Nothing" at Lincoln Center Theater, and "A Comedy of Errors" at the Hudson Guild. In addition to performing in a one-woman show of Wallace Stevens poetry called "Inventions of Farewell" at the Here Theater in NYC, she is particularly proud of a short one-woman play she wrote, produced, co-directed, and starred in called "Mona7," which dealt with the after affects of abuse on a young woman through collaged video by Tal Yarden, surrealist word play, and Viewpoints movement she learned while studying with Ann Bogart's Siti Company.
In 2018 she released a documentary about women who direct called "Seeing is Believing: Women Direct." Interviews include Sarah Gavron ("Suffragette"), Anne Makepeace ("Tribal Justice"), Dorothy Canton (Mad Riot Productions), Lesli Linka Glatter ("Homeland," "Mad Men"), Bethany Rooney (EP "Bull," co-author Directors Tell the Story), Joanna Kerns ("Jane the Virgin"), Jann Turner ("Chicago Fire"), Jon Wells ("ER," "West Wing"), Oscar winner Lee Grant, two-time Oscar winner Sarah Kernochan, Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry"), and Betty Thomas ("Dr. Doolittle," "The Brady Bunch Movie"). An Awesome Without Borders grantee and chosen by IndieWire as "Project of the Day," it was picked up for educational distribution by Tugg Edu.
In April of 2017 the 28 minute version of "Seeing is Believing: Women Direct" received a Jury Award at its premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Encouraged by various festivals to make it longer, a new 58-minute version received the Audience Award in August 2017 for Best Feature at it's premiere at the SOHO International Film Festival. It has gone on to win four other "Best Documentary" awards and played at respected festivals such as the St Louis Film Festival, the Oxford Film Festival, and the High Falls Film Festival. Further encouraged by distributors to make the film even longer, she created an 84 minute version which premiered in the fall of 2018 at a the Heartland Film Festival and won Best Documentary Pro Action at the Artemis Women in Action 2019 Film Festival. McClain produced and edited all three versions, as well as shot, lit, and did sound on almost all of the footage.
"I am of a mind that I cannot ask others to do something I have not been willing to do myself. Having some practice and understanding of the key departments involved in film makes me more able to communicate with insight into each craft involved and, I believe, a better producer and director." - Cady McClain
Other directing credits include the short film "Butterflies" (Winner Best Short Film and Best Actress in a Short Film at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, Best Screenplay at the Kew Gardens Film Festival, Nominated Best Editing, Best Cinematography at Kew Gardens Film Festival) ; "Venice the Series," (two Daytime Drama Web Series Emmy Nominations for Directing: 2017 and 2018); "Switch" (Winner of the NYWIFT festival in partnership with GoIndieTV), "The Missing Piece" (Winner Best Ensemble and Best Supporting Actress at the Movies by Kids Awards at FOX Studios); "The Last Day" (nominated for Best Short at the Kids Awards at FOX Studios) for Kids in the Spotlight; and the full length narrative "Paint Made Flesh," an original play written by Howard Meyer which she produced, directed, and filmed multi-camera live in NYC with support from Sotheby's in 2018.
Earlier directing work includes the short film "The World of Albert Fuh," which premiered at the SOHO International Film Fest (Winner Best Comedy Drama Short at the Indie Gathering Festival.) "Fuh" was also an official selection of the LA Indie Film Fest, was awarded an Honorable Mention for Best Director by the Los Angeles Film Review, an Honorable Mention from the SaMoIndie FF, and an Award of Merit by the Best Shorts Film Festival. Her first short film, "Flip Fantasia," enjoyed acceptance into the Macon Film Festival and gained a remarkable FB cult following of over 80K. She also created an original online character in 2013 called "Suzy F*cking Homemaker," which was picked up by Prospect Park for additional promotion of it's online distribution of "All My Children."
In the fall of 2018 she produced "Lost Girl's: Angie's Story," a narrative film directed by Julia Verdin in conjunction with the Not for Profit organization Artists for Change to help create awareness around the epidemic of sex trafficking in America. The film stars Randall Battinkoff ("As Good As it Gets"), Cherie Jimenez ("Pretty Little Liars"), Jane Widdop ("The Kicks"), Anthony Montgomery ("Star Trek Enterprise"), MC Lyte ("Girls Trip") and Amin Joseph ("Snowfall").
Other producing work includes the short film Val-en-tina, directed by Araeia Robinson; "Ghost Light: The Haunting," an Asian/American piece of experimental theater in New York directed by Penny Bergman, and an L.A. based Diverse/Gender Equal short film festival at the Electric Lodge in Venice, CA titled, "One Night Only"; all of her short films; "Seeing is Believing: Women Direct"; and the filmed play "Paint Made Flesh." Her first producing experience was as an Associate Producer on the festival multi award-winning film "How We Got Away With It," (distributed by Devolver Digital Films) and as a producer as well as just about every position other than director or actor on the short film, "Discedo," (including special effects makeup, script supervisor, and production assistant.)
As a writer, her memoir, "Murdering My Youth," is an in-depth look into life as a child actor and her struggles to survive an alcoholic family system. It was released in the spring of 2014. As a result she was featured in TV Guide and invited to do a feature interview with Cameron Mathison on Entertainment Tonight. The book has received wide acclaim and 113 five-star reviews on Amazon. Always interested in contributing to the wider conversation about topics ranging from women's issues to national tragedies, she has written articles for The Good Men Project, HLNTV, Policymic, Ms Cheevious, Ms in the Biz, AND Magazine and live blogged the People's Choice Awards and the Golden Globes.
McClain also is the voice for several audio books, winning an Earphones Audiophile Award and recognition from Entertainment Weekly, Audiophile Magazine, and Publishers Weekly for her reading of Emma Cline's debut novel "The Girls."
"Reader McClain is phenomenal, evoking the older Evie's mature retrospection and struggle to analyze her own emotional state and the motivations of that tumultuous time, as well as the younger Evie's yearning for acceptance and love and adventure. McClain also creates authentic, memorable voices for the other characters, including the lazy drawl of Suzanne and the seductive madness of Russell. A perfect marriage of text and narrator, this is the kind of audiobook that stays in your mind long after it's finished." ~Publishers Weekly
"Narrator Cady McClain is extraordinary here, her diction perfect, her performance of every sentence thoughtful, unforced, yet hyper vigilant." ~Audiophile Magazine
Education includes formal acceptance and study at NYU, SVA, and The New School for Public Engagement. Studies included international literature, fine art drawing and painting, art history, and writing.
Nationally, Ms. McClain has been invited to discuss how narrative stories can impact social issues at the PCI (now PMC) Entertainment Summit in Washington D.C.. She was later interviewed by Charlie Rose at a recorded live event as part of her work for RARE. Cady joined this award winning nonprofit organization by taking a trip with the heads of the "As the World Turns" production staff to help local St. Lucian's develop radio dramas to promote social change. Cady has enjoyed hosting the Palm Beach International Film Festival and the WEHO Women and Leadership Conference, where she discussed the process of being a female filmmaker with guest filmmakers Marianna Palka, Finola Hughes, Li Lu, and Grace Lee.
McClain was pleased to have served on the board of The Chimaera Project, a not-for-profit that grants funds to visionary women filmmakers, and worked to create partnerships with film festivals as Chairperson for Festival Outreach with the Alliance of Women Directors in Los Angeles. She also was happy to have served on the Jury for the 2018 Hell's Half Mile Film Festival and to participate as a mentor for Women in Film Los Angeles.
McClain has been featured in Salon, IndieWire, Film Threat, PBS SoCal, KNAU and MPB (NPR affiliates), Broadway World, Women and Hollywood, Good Morning Texas, CBS KCAL 9, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, TV Guide Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Daily News, The Boston Herald, Time Out NY, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Times Picayune, The Palm Beach Post, Mix Monthly, Newsday, AM New York, The Sacramento Bee, Brooklyn Papers, Agency Magazine, Tulsa World, Orange County Register, MidWest Beat, Imagine, Rocky Mountain News, The Jamaica Gleaner, Brooklyn Papers, Priority Girl Magazine, Girl Talk HQ, Film Inquiry, Ms in the Biz, Newport Beach Magazine, and Country Weekly.
Born in Los Angeles, CA, she is a 9th generation Californian and is of Mexican heritage on her father's side.
She is married to actor/director/writer Jon Lindstrom and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.- Actress
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Melissa Sue Anderson was very much like her most famous character role, of eldest child & sister, Mary Ingalls -- a quiet, slightly shy girl who would rather read a book than climb a tree. Her show business career got started, when a dance teacher urged her parents to find an agent for her. She began doing television commercials, and the blonde, blue-eyed beauty was in great demand for roles; she was a guest-actress once in weekly & family TV series, Never Too Young (1973) and theatrical movie, Shaft (1973). During the production of Little House on the Prairie (1974) & after leaving the show, she has guest-starred in several films and made-for-TV movies. She continues to pursue an active acting career and published her autobiography, titled "The Way I See It", in 2009.- Actress
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Courteney Cox was born on June 15th, 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama, into an affluent Southern family. She is the daughter of Courteney (Bass) and Richard Lewis Cox (1930-2001), a businessman. She was the baby of the family with two older sisters (Virginia and Dottie) and an older brother, Richard, Jr. She was raised in an exclusive society town, Mountain Brook, Alabama. Courteney was the archetypal daddy's girl, and therefore was understandably devastated when, in 1974, her parents divorced, and her father moved to Florida.
She became a rebellious teen, and did not make things easy for her mother, and new stepfather, New York businessman Hunter Copeland. Now, she is great friends with both. She attended Mountain Brook High School, where she was a cheerleader, tennis player and swimmer. In her final year, she received her first taste of modeling. She appeared in an advert for the store, Parisians. Upon graduation, she left Alabama to study architecture and interior design at Mount Vernon College. After one year she dropped out to a pursue a modeling career in New York, after being signed by the prestigious Ford Modelling Agency. She appeared on the covers of teen magazines such as Tiger Beat and Little Miss, plus numerous romance novels. She then moved on to commercials for Maybeline, Noxema, New York Telephone Company and Tampax.
While modeling, she attended acting classes, as her real dream and ambition was to be an actress. In 1984, she landed herself a small part in one episode of As the World Turns (1956) as a young débutante named Bunny. Her first big break, however, was being cast by Brian De Palma in the Bruce Springsteen video "Dancing in The Dark". In 1985, she moved to LA to star alongside Dean Paul Martin in Misfits of Science (1985). It was a flop, but a few years later, she was chosen out of thousands of hopefuls to play Michael J. Fox's girlfriend, psychology major Lauren Miller in Family Ties (1982).
In 1989, Family Ties (1982) ended, and Cox went through a lean spell in her career, featuring in unmemorable movies such as Mr. Destiny (1990) with Michael Caine. Fortunes changed dramatically for Cox, when in 1994, she starred alongside Jim Carrey in the unexpected hit Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), and a year later she was cast as Monica Geller on the hugely successful sitcom Friends (1994). It was this part that turned her into an international superstar and led to an American Comedy Award nomination. In 1996 Cox starred in Wes Craven's horror/comedy Scream (1996) . This movie grossed over $100 million at the box office, and won Cox rave reviews for her standout performance as the wickedly bitchy and smug TV reporter Gale Weathers. She went on to play this character again in each of the three sequels. Not only did her involvement in this movie lead to critical acclaim, but it also led to her meeting actor husband David Arquette. He played her on-screen love interest Dewey, and life imitated art as the two fell in love for real. Their wedding took place in San Francisco, at the historic Grace Cathedral atop Nob Hill, on June 12th, 1999. Joined by 200 guests, including Cox's film star friends Liam Neeson and Kevin Spacey, the happy couple finally became Mr. and Mrs. Arquette.- Actress
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Ask Kate Winslet what she likes about any of her characters, and the word "ballsy" is bound to pop up at least once. The British actress has made a point of eschewing straightforward pretty-girl parts in favor of more devilish damsels; as a result, she's built an eclectic resume that runs the gamut from Shakespearean tragedy to modern-day mysticism and erotica.
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, into a family of thespians -- parents Roger Winslet and Sally Anne Bridges-Winslet were both stage actors, maternal grandparents Oliver and Linda Bridges ran the Reading Repertory Theatre, and uncle Robert Bridges was a fixture in London's West End theatre district. Kate came into her talent at an early age. She scored her first professional gig at eleven, dancing opposite the Honey Monster in a commercial for a kids' cereal. She started acting lessons around the same time, which led to formal training at a performing arts high school. Over the next few years, she appeared on stage regularly and landed a few bit parts in sitcoms. Her first big break came at age 17, when she was cast as an obsessive adolescent in Heavenly Creatures (1994). The film, based on the true story of two fantasy-gripped girls who commit a brutal murder, received modest distribution but was roundly praised by critics.
Still a relative unknown, Winslet attended a cattle call audition the next year for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995). She made an immediate impression on the film's star, Emma Thompson, and beat out more than a hundred other hopefuls for the part of plucky Marianne Dashwood. Her efforts were rewarded with both a British Academy Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Winslet followed up with two more period pieces, playing the rebellious heroine in Jude (1996) and Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
The role that transformed Winslet from art house attraction to international star was Rose DeWitt Bukater, the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat in James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet, swooning over all that face time opposite heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and noting her refreshingly healthy, unemaciated physique. Winslet's performance also garnered a Best Actress nomination, making her the youngest actress to ever receive two Academy Award nominations.
After the swell of unexpected attention surrounding Titanic (1997), Winslet was eager to retreat into independent projects. Rumor has it that she turned down the lead roles in both Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Anna and the King (1999) in order to play adventurous soul searchers in Hideous Kinky (1998) and Holy Smoke (1999). The former cast her as a young single mother traveling through 1970s Morocco with her daughters in tow; the latter, as a zealous follower of a guru tricked into a "deprogramming" session in the Australian outback. The next year found her back in period dress as the Marquis de Sade's chambermaid and accomplice in Quills (2000). Kate holds the distinction of being the youngest actor ever honored with four Academy Award nominations (she received her fourth at age 29). As of 2016, she has been nominated for an Oscar seven times, winning one of them: she received the Best Actress Oscar for the drama The Reader (2008), playing a former concentration camp guard.
For her performance of Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs (2015), she received her seventh Academy Award nomination.
Off camera, Winslet is known for her mischievous pranks and familial devotion. She has two sisters, Anna Winslet and Beth Winslet (both actresses), and a brother, Joss.
In 1998, she married assistant director Jim Threapleton. They had a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, in October 2000. They divorced in 2001. She later married director Sam Mendes in 2003 and gave birth to their son, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, later that year. After seven years of marriage, in February 2010 they announced that they had amicably separated, and divorced in October 2010. In 2012, Kate married Ned Rocknroll, with whom she has a son. She was awarded Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to Drama.- Lois Smith was born on 3 November 1930 in Topeka, Kansas, USA. She is an actress, known for Minority Report (2002), Lady Bird (2017) and Twister (1996). She was previously married to Wesley Dale Smith.
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Karen Malina White was born on 7 July 1965 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Lean on Me (1989), Monster (2022) and Malcolm & Eddie (1996).- Actress
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Captivating, gifted, and sensational, Angela Bassett's presence has been felt in theaters and on stages and television screens throughout the world. Angela Evelyn Bassett was born on August 16, 1958 in New York City, to Betty Jane (Gilbert), a social worker, and Daniel Benjamin Bassett, a preacher's son. Bassett and her sister D'nette grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida with their mother. As a single mother, Betty stressed the importance of education for her children. With the assistance of an academic scholarship, Bassett matriculated into Yale University. In 1980, she received her B.A. in African-American studies from Yale University. In 1983, she earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Yale School of Drama. It was at Yale that Bassett met her husband, Courtney B. Vance, a 1986 graduate of the Drama School.
Bassett first appeared in small roles on The Cosby Show (1984) and Spenser: For Hire (1985), but it was not until 1990 that a spate of television roles brought her notice. Her breakthrough role, though, was playing Tina Turner, whom she had never seen perform before taking the role, in What's Love Got to Do with It (1993). Bassett's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination and a Golded Globe Award for Best Actress.- Actress
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Dorothy Lyman was born on 18 April 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. She is an actress and director, known for Blow (2001), All My Children (1970) and Mama's Family (1983). She was previously married to Vincent Malle and John Tillinger.- Actress
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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.- Actress
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Leslie Grossman was born on 25 October 1971 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for American Horror Story (2011), The Good Place (2016) and Popular (1999). She has been married to Jon Bronson since 16 October 1999. They have one child.- Actress
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Sarah Baker was born in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. Sarah is an actor, known for The Kominsky Method (2018), The Campaign (2012) and Big Little Lies (2017).- Actress
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Kim Rhodes grew up in Portland, Oregon. She attended Southern Oregon State College and earned her B.F.A. in Acting and graduated summa cum laude. Kim graduated from Temple University with her Masters in Fine Arts (M.F.A.). She is certified in four kinds of stage combat: hand-to-hand, quarterstaff, rapier and dagger. Kim has an insatiable appetite for reading. For Kim's first AW Fan Club Luncheon, she rewrote the lyrics for "All for the Best" from "Godspell". She enjoys reading comic books and playing pool and dancing. Kim debuted in her first soap opera, Another World (1964), as "Cindy Brooke" on August 8, 1996. She has appeared in various plays including several written by William Shakespeare. Kim has spent three years as a veterinarian technician's assistant.- Actress
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Christine Michelle Metz is an American actress and singer. She played Kate Pearson in the television series This Is Us (2016-2022), which earned her nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. She has also appeared in films such as Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (2018) and Breakthrough (2019).- Actress
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Barbara Alyn Woods was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Barbara Alyn is an actor, known for One Tree Hill (2003), Striptease (1996) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). Barbara Alyn has been married to John Lind since 1999. They have three children.- Odelya Halevi was born on 12 February 1987 in Rosh HaAyin, Israel. She is an actress, known for Black Adam (2022), Law & Order (1990) and Why Women Kill (2019).
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Tracey Gold has virtually grown up on television. She made an auspicious television debut in the award-winning mini-series Roots. She also enjoyed seven years on the immensely popular ABC comedy series Growing Pains after which she returned to drama in more than 20 movies for television.
Born in New York City and raised in Southern California, Tracey is the oldest daughter of a thriving show business family. Her father, Harry Gold, owns a successful talent agency in Hollywood. Her mother, Bonnie, is a former New York advertising executive, who had her own radio show in Montana. Following Tracey's lead, three of her younger sisters have also pursued acting: Missy starred in the long-running ABC series Benson, Brandy starred in ABC's Baby Makes Five, and Jessie starred alongside Tracey in Shattered Trust.
Tracey's career as an actress started at the age of five when she began working in commercials. Her first television starring role was as Missy Ann (Sandy Duncan's character as a girl) in the ABC mini-series Roots. Since then, Tracey has accumulated an impressive number of television movie credits. She has starred in Captains and Kings; Night Cries; Little Moe; Jennifer: A Woman's Story; The Secret of the Harvest Moon (with Bette Davis), The Child Stealer (opposite Beau Bridges), Walt Disney's Escape From Witch Mountain; A Few Days at Weasel Creek; Marilyn: The Untold Story; Labor of Love (with Anne Jillian); Thursday's Child (opposite Rob Lowe); Who Will Love My Children (alongside Ann-Margaret; Another Woman's Child; Lots of Luck and A Reason to Live. She also portrayed the title character in the ABC television movie For the Love of Nancy. Other movie of the week credits include Sleep Baby Sleep, The Lady Killer with Judith Light, Midwest Obsession with Courtney Thorne-Smith and Stolen Innocence and the air rescue thriller Wild Fire 7. In 2000, she starred in Growing Pains The Movie, ABC's highest-rated television movie of the year. She also appeared recently on USA's series The Dead Zone. Recently she starred in the TV movies My Dad'a a Soccer Mom, Arachnoquake, Your Love Never Fails and Sight Unseen amongst many others.
Tracey has also starred in many television specials, such as the CBS Emmy Award-winning Kelly vs. Kelly, (directed by Tom Skerrit), I Think I'm Having a Baby; If Wishes Were Horses; The Hand Me Down Kid and Senior Prom.
Not limiting herself only to television, Tracey has also ventured into feature films and theatre. She co-starred in several features such as Shoot the Moon (opposite Albert Finney and Diane Keaton), Best of Times (with Robin Williams and Kurt Russell) and Wanted and Tailspin.
In 2012 Tracey hosted and Produced the reality series Starving Secrets for LifeTime. Other hosting credits include The Secret Life Of A Soccer Mom for TLC, Trapped in TV Guide and multiple episodes of Entertainment Tonight.
On the stage she starred in Neil Simon's I Ought To Be in Pictures at the Tiffany Attic Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, before performing alongside Bonnie Franklin and Jackee Harry in The Vagina Monologues at the famous Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills.
She also authored Room To Grow, her autobiography.
In 1992, Tracey's former television mother, Joanna Kearns, introduced her to Roby Marshall. The couple married two years later and are now the parents of sons Sage, Bailey, Aiden, Dillon. The family resides in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Briana Buckmaster is an actor, singer and voice over performer originally hailing from Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. She attended the prestigious Grant MacEwan University where she received her diploma in Theatre Arts. Continuing to perform on stages across North America she also began cutting her teeth in the improv world working with renowned theatre companies including the Canadian Comedy Award winning Die Nasty. Briana is an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award winner for numerous productions she has performed with Teatro La Quindicina (with whom she is currently a core company member). Her writing credits include the sell-out hit play Tunnels of Little Chicago which toured across Western Canada, and Lady Fartlek Productions- a series of comedic shorts written, directed, and starring fellow comedic actresses. Briana resides in Vancouver Canada with her husband and daughter where she continues to study her craft and regularly appear on stage and in television. She can be seen as the recurring character Sheriff Donna on the CW Network's long running series Supernatural.- Actress
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Blake Ellender Lively was born Blake Ellender Brown on August 25, 1987 in Los Angeles, California to Elaine Lively & Ernie Lively. Her brother is actor Eric Lively, and her half-siblings are actors Lori Lively, Robyn Lively and Jason Lively. She followed her parents' and siblings' steps. Her first role was Trixie, the Tooth Fairy in the musical movie Sandman (1998), directed by her father. Her big break came along a few years later, though. Blake was up to finish high school when she got the co-starring role of Bridget in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005).
Blake was so perfect for the role of Bridget that, with no big references or even auditioning, she landed the role. According to her, all she did was walk in and leave a photo of herself. It was clear that she was the Bridget needed. After the film, Blake went back to high school for her senior year to have the life of a regular teenager -- or a very busy regular teenager. She was class president, a cheerleader, and performed with the choir.- Actress
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Eve Plumb, the actress and painter most famous for playing the role of Jan on The Brady Bunch (1969), began acting professionally in 1966, appearing in TV commercials. The child actor began getting parts on series television in 1967.
Her place in TV history was cemented when she landed the role of Jan Brady, the middle of three daughters in a mixed family that also featured three sons, in the TV sitcom "The Brady Bunch". The show, which debuted in 1969, ran for five seasons and spawned numerous spin-offs. While Plumb declined to reprise the role of Jan in the first spin-off, the TV variety show The Brady Bunch Variety Hour (1976), as she did not want to sign a five-year contract (the show was canceled after nine episodes), she did appear as Jan in the subsequent spin-offs featuring the original cast: the TV movie The Brady Girls Get Married (1981), the short-lived sitcom The Brady Brides (1981), the TV movie A Very Brady Christmas (1988), and another short-lived TV series, The Bradys (1990).
Though she has worked steadily in TV since a child, her only other major role was as a teenage prostitute in Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1976).
In the 1990s, Plumb began painting, fashioning for herself a second artistic career. She works out of a studio at her Laguna Beach home.- Actress
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Alyssa Milano comes from an Italian-American family; her mother Lin Milano is a fashion designer and father Thomas Milano is a film music editor. Alyssa was born in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn and grew up in a modest house on Staten Island. One day her babysitter, who was an aspiring dancer, dragged Alyssa along to an open audition for the first national tour of "Annie". However, it was Alyssa and not the sitter who was chosen from 1500 other girls for the role. So at the tender age of seven, with her mother in tow, Alyssa joined the tour as July, one of the orphans. After 18 months on the road Alyssa, who had begun to garner a reputation as an energetic and charismatic young actress, left Annie to be featured in off-Broadway productions and television commercials. Then in 1983, at age 10, she landed her breakthrough role on the sitcom Who's the Boss? (1984) as Tony Danza's saccharine sweet daughter, "Samantha Micelli", a kid whose native Brooklyn accent rivaled her TV dad's. In order for Alyssa to accept the gig, the Milano family had to uproot and move 3,000 miles to Hollywood.- Actress
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Tiffani Amber Thiessen was born on January 23, 1974 in Long Beach, California to Robyn Ernest, a homemaker & Frank Thiessen, a park designer. She grew up in Long Beach with her parents and her brothers, professional cyclist Todd (born August 1, 1968) and Schyler (born May 10, 1977). When Tiffani was 8, her uncle, Roger Ernest, suggested that she try acting and modeling. Soon afterward, she appeared in her first TV commercial, for Peaches and Cream Barbie. From there she started competing in several beauty pageants and, in 1987, she won the Miss Junior America pageant.
She got her big break when she was cast as the popular cheerleader Kelly Kapowski on the NBC series Saved by the Bell (1989), which lasted for five years. But this was not at all the end of her career. Coinciding with the cancellation of the short-lived Saved by the Bell: The College Years (1993), she was cast as the bitchy, conniving vixen Valerie Malone on Aaron Spelling's long-running hit series Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990). Here, she played the constant enemy of Kelly Taylor, played by Jennie Garth, although in real life, the two are actually best friends. Tiffani also lived with co-star Brian Austin Green for several years. She stayed with the show until 1998 and then left to pursue her movie career. The result was two independent movies, followed by two comedies and then Hollywood Ending (2002), in which she starred alongside Woody Allen.
She met actor Richard Ruccolo while guest starring as Marti in the hit sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place (1998) where in 2001, the couple became engaged. During the fall of 2002, she co-starred with best friend Jennie's husband, Peter Facinelli, and Bill Bellamy on Fox's action/drama series, Fastlane (2002), where she starred as Billie Chambers, but the show was canceled after one season. In 2003, Tiffani broke off her engagement to Richard Ruccolo and in 2005, she married actor Brady Smith. The couple have two children, a daughter, Harper Smith (Harper Renn Smith) and a son, Holt Fisher Smith.- Actress
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Mayim Bialik grew up in San Diego and got her first acting job (Pumpkinhead (1988)) when she was just 12 years old. A number of TV roles followed until in 1990 she was cast in Blossom (1990), the role which made her famous.
By 1993, while Blossom was still airing, she had already won a deferred place at Harvard and was also accepted by Yale but chose in the end to attend UCLA. She was awarded her Bachelor's degree in 2000 and began reading for a PhD in Neuroscience (studying Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in adolescents with Prader-Willi syndrome) which she eventually completed in 2007.
She continued working throughout her studies and was a regular on US TV screens, becoming a Prime Time face again in 2010 when she began her regular appearances as "Sheldon's friend who is not his girlfriend" in the hit series The Big Bang Theory (2007).- Music Artist
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Janelle Monáe is an American musical recording artist, actress and model signed to their own imprint, Wondaland Arts Society, and Atlantic Records.
They were born in Kansas City, Kansas, to Janet, a janitor, and Michael Robinson Summers, a truck driver. In 2010, Monáe released her first full-length studio album, The ArchAndroid. In March 2012, "We Are Young" by Fun., on which Monáe appears as a guest vocalist, reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, their first appearance in the US Top 10. Monáe's music has garnered them six Grammy Award nominations.
Monáe has excelled at film acting and picking roles, having had major parts in Moonlight (2016), Hidden Figures (2016), Lady and the Tramp (2019) and Harriet (2019). In 2020, they played the lead in the horror film Antebellum (2020).- Actress
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Blonde-haired, blue-eyed with an effervescent personality, Meg Ryan was born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra in Fairfield, Connecticut, to Susan (Duggan), an English teacher and one-time actress, and Harry Hyra, a math teacher. She is of Ruthenian, Polish, Irish, and German ancestry ("Hyra" is a Ruthenian surname, and "Ryan" is her maternal grandmother's maiden name). Meg graduated from Bethel high school in June 1979. Moving to New York, she attended New York University where she majored in journalism. To earn extra money while working on her degree, Meg went into acting using her new name Meg Ryan. In 1981, she had her big screen debut with a brief appearance as Candice Bergen's daughter in George Cukor's last film Rich and Famous (1981).
She tried out and was cast as Betsy in the day time television soap As the World Turns (1956). She was part of the cast from 1982 to 1984. Meg also had a part in the television series One of the Boys (1982), but this show was soon canceled. In 1984, she moved to tinsel town and landed a job in the western television Series Wildside (1985). Meg's small part in the blockbuster movie Top Gun (1986) led to her being cast in Steven Spielberg's Innerspace (1987) where she co-starred with Dennis Quaid. She again co-starred with Quaid in the remake of D.O.A. (1988) and they married on Saint Valentine's Day in 1991. In 1989, Meg appeared in When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and the scene at the restaurant became famous. Meg was nominated for both the Golden Globe and the BAFTA.
In 1990, she co-starred with Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and this time she played three roles as DeDe/Angelica/Patricia. She appeared again with Tom in the very successful Sleepless in Seattle (1993) for which she was again nominated for the Golden Globe. In 1994, Meg decided to act against type when she appeared as the alcoholic wife and mother in When a Man Loves a Woman (1994). After that, she went back to "cute" with both I.Q. (1994) and French Kiss (1995). In 1994, Meg won the Harvard Hasty Pudding Award as "Woman of the Year" and was voted as being one of "The 50 most beautiful people in the world 1994" by People Magazine.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Michelle Yeoh was born in Ipoh, Malaysia. She's the daughter of Janet Yeoh & Kian Teik Yeoh. She's of Hokkien descent, speaking English and Malay before Chinese. A ballet dancer since 4, she moved to London to study at the Royal Academy as a teen. After a brief dance career, she won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant title in and the Miss Moomba beauty pageant title in Melbourne, Australia in the early 1980s. Her first on camera work was a 1984 commercial with martial arts star Jackie Chan. In 1985, she began making action movies with D&B Films of Hong Kong. She was first billed as Michelle Khan, then Michelle Yeoh. Never a trained martial artist, she relied on her dance discipline and on-set trainers to prepare for martial arts action scenes.
She uses many dance moves in her films and does most of her own stunts. In 1988, she married wealthy D&B Films executive Dickson Poon & retired from acting. Even though they divorced in 1992, she's close to Poon's second wife and a godmother to his daughter. When she returned to acting, she became very popular w/ Chinese audiences. She later became known to Western audiences through role in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and in the phenomenally successful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). She turned down a role in a sequel to The Matrix (1999).
She has her own production company, Mythical Films. She trained with the Shen Yang Acrobatic team for her role in The Touch (2002), an English-language film she both starred in and produced. She hopes to use her company to discover and nurture new film-making talent. She also aspires to act in roles that combine both action and deeper spiritual themes.