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1-14 of 14
- Brooke Smith grew up in New York in the shadow of show business owing to the fact that she is the daughter of powerful publicist Lois Smith. After studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, her "first big thing" was playing Catherine Martin, the abducted young girl in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She went on to play Sonya in Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and Dawn in Daniel Minahan's brutal sendup of reality television Series 7: The Contenders (2001). Whether she is humming a Tom Petty tune, as her character did in "Lambs," or screaming for a bean dip, as her pregnant character does in "Series 7," Smith is known for giving brooding, detailed performances. In addition to stage work, her other interests include filmmaking (she has directed a short film and a feature-length documentary), journalism (she has published interviews with actors Steve Buscemi, Ed Harris, and Fred Ward), and travel (she has traveled extensively, especially to Africa).
- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Born in Mt. Vernon, New York, and raised in New Jersey, David Chase (born David DeCesare) dreamed of being a star drummer in a rock band! He spent many years playing drums and bass trying to be part of a successful rock band in the 1960s East Coast music scene. He also loved movies, such as The Public Enemy (1931) with James Cagney and TV shows like The Untouchables (1959) with Robert Stack. When not making music, he watched 1960s' Hollywood and foreign films avidly. After his music career ended, he got the inspiration to buy a movie camera and make his own movies. He studied at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and later the graduate film program at Stanford University. He began writing for network TV drama programs in the early 1970s. He eventually became a writer and producer on the classic NBC detective show The Rockford Files (1974) with James Garner. While on "Rockford", he penned many memorable episodes and pieces of dialog. He won his first Emmy in 1978, the year "Rockford" won the award for Best Dramatic Series. Many biographies incorrectly state that Chase won his first Emmy for writing the acclaimed TV movie, Off the Minnesota Strip (1980). Although it is a sensitive and well observed story about a young runaway trying to make sense of her life after being returned to her Midwestern family from a life of prostitution in New York City, Chase actually won his second Emmy (and a Writer's Guild Award) for that project. He then spent the 1980s and early 1990s getting paid for writing various TV scripts while writing feature film projects that never got produced. He also began directing his TV scripts whenever possible. He often told people stories about the troubled relationship he shared back in New Jersey with his mother. Encouraged to write about it, he found a way to combine a story about his mother with a mob story and a story about psychotherapy, which Chase had also began during this time. This intersection of ideas and themes led Chase to write the landmark pilot script to a show that the Fox network developed, then passed on shooting. HBO then decided to roll the dice with Chase on this odd mixture of mother/son conflict, mobster danger and insecurities about psychological therapy. The result: The Sopranos (1999). Everybody connected with the project thought they would film a pilot episode, it would not go to series and that would be that. It has since gone on to become one of the most successful shows to ever come out of a cable network. Chase and his crew have collected Emmy, Golden Globe, Writer's Guild and Director's Guild Awards for the show. In terms of impact and subject matter, it has been compared to The Godfather (1972). Chase vows to get his feature film projects off the ground, as soon as "The Sopranos" ends its run.- Producer
- Actress
- Music Department
Born in Boston, Donna was a child performer: she won an amateur talent show, sang a jingle for Meadow Gold Ice Cream, performed on radio shows, appeared as a guest on the The Mickey Mouse Club (1955), and recorded several singles, all before she was 10 years old. In 1963 she was chosen, after a nationwide talent search, to become the spokesperson for Dr. Pepper and subsequently became the one and only "Dr Pepper Girl". For five years, she was on billboards, in magazines, and on television and in movies as the teenage spokesperson for the soft drink. For her personal appearances, she designed and sewed most of her own costumes, a talent which would come in very handy later in her career. The Dr. Pepper gig led to a role in the second Frankie Avalon / Annette Funicello beach movie, Muscle Beach Party (1964). She was originally assigned a non-speaking role holding a soft-drink bottle (guess which soft drink), but the producers decided to let her perform a song instead. She performed the Brian Wilson-penned "Muscle Bustle" with Dick Dale, and the song's success led to her appearing in a featured musical number in later beach movies. Her brunette beauty and strong voice were welcome additions to the films. She could do no more than sing and speak a few lines in those pictures because her contract with Dr. Pepper forbade her to wear any outfit that showed her navel. She became a regular on the ABC shows Shindig! (1964) and The Milton Berle Show (1966). In 1968 she was even offered the lead in a series called "Two for Penny" to be produced by Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas. Instead she chose marriage and retirement from performing. Her second husband, Jered Cargman was a member of the 1960s studio surf band Fantastic Baggys. From 1998-2008, Donna and her husband created fashion retailer ADASA Hawaii, which sold many of Donna's own '60's-inspired designs. Donna still sings and writes songs.- Director
- Editorial Department
- Actor
Hal Ashby was born the fourth and youngest child in a Mormon household, in Ogden, Utah, to Eileen Ireta (Hetzler) and James Thomas Ashby, on September 2, 1929. His father was a dairy farmer. After a rough childhood that included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, his dropping out of high school, getting married and divorced all before he was 19, he decided to leave Utah for California. A Californian employment office found him a printing press job at Universal Studios. Within a few years, he was an assistant film editor at various other studios. One of his pals while at MGM was a young messenger named Jack Nicholson. He moved up to being a full fledged editor on The Loved One (1965) and started editing the films of director Norman Jewison.
A highlight of his film editing career was winning an Oscar for the landmark In the Heat of the Night (1967). Itching to become a director, Jewison gave him a script he was too busy to work on called The Landlord (1970). It became Ashby's first film as a director. From there he delivered a series of well-acted, intelligent human scaled dramas that included The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978) and Being There (1979). Great reviews and Oscar nominations became common on Ashby films.
Ashby was always a maverick and a contrary person and success proved difficult for Ashby to handle. He became unreliable due to his dependence on drugs and a reclusive lifestyle. He actually collapsed while making The Rolling Stones concert film Let's Spend the Night Together (1982) in Arizona. Although he recovered, he was never the same after that. He began taking too much time in post production on his films and actually had a couple of his later projects taken away from him to be edited by others. He tried to straighten himself out, but in the 1980s, he was considered by many to be unemployable. Just when he felt he was turning a corner in his life, he developed cancer that spread to his liver and colon. He died on December 27, 1988. Actor Sean Penn dedicated his first film as a director, The Indian Runner (1991) to Ashby and John Cassavetes, even though Penn was never directed by either one. Because he did not have a set visual style, many mistake this for no style at all. His career is not discussed as often as the careers of some of his contemporaries.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of four girls, Smithers was raised in the comfortable San Fernando Valley suburb of Woodland Hills just north of Los Angeles, CA. Her father was an attorney. While studying art at Taft High School, Smithers swerved her automobile to avoid hitting another driver and ran into a telephone pole. The accident left a permanent scar on her chin. A couple of years later, Smithers was interviewed by Newsweek reporter David Moberg for a story about typical American teenagers in the 1960s. She was photographed happily riding on the back of a friend's motorcycle by Julian Wasser. That carefree looking shot made the cover of the March 21, 1966 issue of the magazine. The shot led to work in commercials while she was continuing her art studies at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.
After a few years as a working actress, she won the role of pretty but shy Bailey Quarters in WKRP in Cincinnati (1978), a CBS sitcom about a Midwestern radio station. After the show ended its run, she worked on occasion and in 1987, married actor James Brolin. She became a stepmother to his two sons and had a daughter with Brolin. Her marriage to Brolin ended in 1995.- Writer
- Soundtrack
Jerry Harvey was born in the late 1940s and came from Bakersfield, California where he and his two sisters were raised in a strict Catholic home by a father who worked as an attorney and judge and a mother who was a hospital administrator. Harvey describes his childhood as not only unhappy but as a cross between "American Graffitti" and "Two Lane Blacktop". His sister Ann definitely committed suicide; she left her family a series of communications stating her reasons for taking her own life. His other sister Mary may have also committed suicide; this has not been confirmed because Jerry would only say sister Mary 'vanished' and would not go into more detail. His background left Harvey paranoid and in need of constant counseling. He fell in love with movies as a child and moved to Los Angeles in the late 1960s to attend UCLA. While on campus one day in 1971, he met Douglas Venturelli and became fast friends. Together, they wrote a western script that was produced in Europe and released with the title: "China 9, Liberty 37". Harvey then got a job booking films for the Beverly Canon repertory theater. One of his greatest accomplishments was getting director Sam Peckinpah to deliver an uncut version of "The Wild Bunch" to the Beverly Canon which played to packed houses. When his first wife Vera caught him yelling at their TV because of the lousy programming, Vera urged Jerry to do something about it. After writing an angry letter to the Los Angeles based pay TV service SelectTV, the service not only contacted Harvey but hired him as an assistant film programmer. From there, he became an assistant film programmer for the Z Channel in the early 1980s, another Los Angeles based pay TV service. Harvey eventually became head film programmer for Z and through a combination of connections, aggression and love started booking important films to be shown to Z Channel subscribers. His programming included uncut versions of films such as: "Once Upon a Time in America", "1900" and "Heaven's Gate". At the same time, he would book mainstream studio fare, independent films and even soft core porn on their "Night Owl" series of films. The Z Channel became influential and mandatory viewing for not only film buffs and industry professionals but young filmmakers such as Alexander Payne and Quentin Tarantino. Many fans even looked forward to receiving the Z Channel program guide that included articles by writers such as critic F.X. Feeney. At the same time, established filmmakers such as Peckinpah and Michael Cimino befriended Harvey. After divorcing his first wife Vera in the mid 1980's, the increasingly difficult Harvey fell in love with Deri Rudolph, who owned a building near UCLA where Harvey rented an apartment. They were married a short time later, with Cimino as best man. The Z Channel was eventually sold to a company that tried to combine films with sports programming. This did not sit well with Harvey who protested against this change and struggled to find his path away from the Z Channel. As more and more pressure mounted on Harvey, he seemed unable to cope and in the spring of 1988, he shot his wife Deri to death with a gun given to him by Peckinpah. He then used the gun to kill himself. The Z Channel went out of business in 1989. Harvey's main legacy is discovering the appeal of the "Director's Cut" of a film and the value in showing films from companies other than the major studios. Jerry Harvey's career is the subject of the documentary film "Z Channel, a Magnificent Obession".- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
As flamboyant as any character in his movies, Joel Silver can be credited along with Jerry Bruckheimer as practically reinventing the action film genre in the 1980s. Born in New Jersey, he attended the New York University Film School. After college, he worked at Lawrence Gordon Pictures, earning his first onscreen credit as associate producer of The Warriors (1979). He eventually became president of the motion picture division of Gordon Pictures. Together with Gordon, Silver produced 48 Hrs. (1982) and Streets of Fire (1984). In 1983 he formed Silver Pictures and initially set up shop at Universal Pictures to produce Brewster's Millions (1985) before going to Fox and continued producing hit action films such as Commando (1985), the "Lethal Weapon" franchise, the first two films of the "Die Hard" franchise and the three films of "Matrix" franchise of action films. He had then subsequently joined Warner Bros. in 1987 after leaving Fox. Despite these successes, he has hit some rough spots and has been banned from working on several studio lots. He was unable to produce the "48 Hrs" sequel Another 48 Hrs. (1990), the third "Die Hard" film, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and the fourth "Matrix" installment The Matrix Resurrections (2021) because of past run-ins with studio executives. Because of his habit of wearing sport shirts and talking loudly and quickly, he has been parodied in several films, even spoofing himself in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) by playing the frustrated cartoon director in the film's opening sequence. In order to perform in that role, he had to use an alias to get onto the Walt Disney lot, and his onscreen credit was not revealed to Disney executives until the very last minute. He had worked in television, setting up his own television branch with his first project Parker Kane (1990), a project that would eventually never made to series, and then worked at HBO for many years, until he found a home at Warner Bros. Television in 1998, where he had developed two UPN shows The Strip (1999) and Freedom (2000) before finding commercial success with the hit Veronica Mars (2004). In 1999, Silver Pictures had teamed up with film director/producer Robert Zemeckis to set up Dark Castle Entertainment to produce genre and horror films with the first film under Dark Castle being House on Haunted Hill (1999). Joel Silver pioneered the practice of shooting action movies in Australia with the "Matrix" films, and has been credited with either inventing or reinventing the careers of Eddie Murphy, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal. He was mentioned in Halle Berry's Academy Award acceptance speech. Other credits include non-action pictures, ranging from Xanadu (1980), Weird Science (1985) and Fred Claus (2007) to HBO's long-running TV series, Tales from the Crypt (1989). He had resigned from his founding production company in 2019.- Actress
- Script and Continuity Department
- Stunts
The oldest of four siblings born to a surgeon father, Marilyn Jones was raised in the affluent Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe. After graduating from high school in Michigan, she attended Miami University (Ohio) and eventually graduated from the University of Colorado with a humanities degree.
After a stint in New York waiting on tables and working as an office clerk in-between acting jobs, she was signed with 30 other performers to Columbia Pictures' Talent and Development Workshop and sent to Los Angeles. The program folded when the executive, who ran the studio at the time, resigned. Jones did manage to land an agent and began acting on episodic television. Her performances in Harassment (1980) and Good-Bye Radar: Part 1 (1979) were especially strong. She landed roles in two short-lived prime-time soaps, Secrets of Midland Heights (1980) (CBS) and King's Crossing (1982) (ABC). She worked steadily throughout the 1980s.- Midge Sanford began her professional career as a teacher. She entered show business as a film story analyst, eventually teaming up with Sarah Pillsbury in 1981 to form Sanford/Pillsbury Productions. She and her partner have overcome the usual obstacles in working in a male dominated field, including having to deny over and over that she and Pillsbury are gay. The company has produced many character driven projects, including the Independent Spirit Award winning River's Edge (1986) and the Emmy winning And the Band Played On (1993). Their production company has been successful for over twenty years.
- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Sandra Oh was born to Korean parents in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, Ontario, Canada. Her father, Oh Junsu, a businessman, and her mother, Oh Young-Nam, a biochemist, were married in Seoul, Korea. They both attended graduate school at the University of Toronto. Sandra began her career as a ballet dancer and eventually studied drama at the National Theatre School in Montreal. She then starred in a London (Ontario) stage production of David Mamet's "Oleanna" and appeared as the title character in the Canadian television production The Diary of Evelyn Lau (1994), beating out over 1,000 applicants. Her list of awards includes the FIPA d'Or for Best Actress at the 1994 Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels at Cannes, France, two Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscar), a Cable Ace Award, a Theatre World Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2003, she married writer-director Alexander Payne and their first film together was the Oscar-winning Sideways (2004).- Producer
- Additional Crew
Minnesotan Sarah Pillsbury attended Yale University and studied film and African history in the late 1960s. She once took a break from her studies to live in Africa to learn about it first thand. After graduation, she moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s to continue her film studies at UCLA, work on student film projects and help produce documentaries. One of the student projects she worked on became the feature film Eraserhead (1977) directed by AFI student 'David Lynch'. She co-produced a short film, Board and Care (1980) that delivered Pillsbury an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. In 1981, she teamed up with Midge Sanford to form Sanford/Pillsbury Productions. They have produced many feature film projects including Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), River's Edge (1986) and the HBO telefilm, And the Band Played On (1993) - the latter two projects earning the team an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. She is the mother of a daughter and a son.- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Stephen J. Cannell was raised in Pasadena, California. His father ran an interior design firm. From an early age, Stephen suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia, which made it nearly impossible from him to do well in school, he either flunked or was held back many times. Even though one of the courses he had trouble with was English, he wrote in one of his yearbooks that it was his ambition to be an author. After a lot of work, he managed to graduate from high school and attend the University of Oregon. He worked for his father's design firm while he wrote television scripts and story ideas after work. He sold his first story ideas to Mission: Impossible (1966) and his first script to It Takes a Thief (1968). His first steady job in television was as a story editor on Adam-12 (1968). He created a character named Jim Rockford for a script he wrote for the series Toma (1973), a show he was producing at the time. That script was rejected by ABC, so it was rewritten and eventually became the pilot for the classic NBC series, The Rockford Files (1974). From there, it becomes nearly impossible to list all of his work. He has either written or co-written over 300 television scripts, created or co-created over two dozen television series, formed a successful production company, wrote best-selling police novels and even acted in his own and other producers' shows. He has won an Emmy, two Writer's Guild Awards, two Edgar Award Nominations and has a star on the Hollywood Blvd. Walk of Fame. Despite his many accolades, his first love continued to be writing. A co-worker of his on "Rockford", writer and The Sopranos (1999) creator David Chase, was once quoted as saying no person he ever met seemed to love writing as much as Stephen J. Cannell.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Vanessa Lynne Williams was born on March 18, 1963 in Tarrytown, Greenburgh, New York and raised in Millwood, New Castle, New York to Helen Williams & Milton Williams, both music teachers. Vanessa and her brother grew up in suburban New York in comfortable surroundings. Vanessa sang and danced in school productions and signed her high school yearbook with a promise to "see you on Broadway". After winning a performing scholarship to Syracuse University, she left school and tried to make it in New York show business. She began entering beauty contests in 1984, eventually winning Miss New York and then becoming the first African-American Miss America. During her reign, some nude girl-girl photos, taken while she was in New York, surfaced in Penthouse magazine. Although the photos were taken before her beauty contest victories, she was forced to resign her crown. Many predicted that her future in show business was over. She went on to land a recording contract and released several albums, including "The Comfort Zone" and "The Sweetest Days".
Vanessa made her film debut in 1986 in Under the Gun (1987) and appeared in the films The Pick-up Artist (1987), Another You (1991) and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991). She starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Eraser (1996), opposite Laurence Fishburne and Andy Garcia in Hoodlum (1997) and the box office hit, Soul Food (1997). She also starred in Dance with Me (1998), Light It Up (1999), Shaft (2000), opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Johnson Family Vacation (2004). She starred recently in the independent features, My Brother (2006) and And Then Came Love (2007) (aka "Somebody Like You"). On television, Vanessa starred in such movies and mini-series as Stompin' at the Savoy (1992), The Kid Who Loved Christmas (1990), The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992), ABC's revival of Bye Bye Birdie (1995), Nothing Lasts Forever (1995), The Odyssey (1997), Don Quixote (2000) and Keep the Faith, Baby (2002), and she executive-produced and starred in Lifetime's The Courage to Love (2000) for Lifetime and the VH1 Original Movie, A Diva's Christmas Carol (2000).
Her albums "The Right Stuff", "The Comfort Zone and "The Sweetest Days" earned multiple Grammy nominations and have yielded the Academy Award-winning single "Colors of the Wind", from Disney's Pocahontas: The Musical Tradition Continues (1995). Her recordings also include two holiday albums, "Star Bright" and "Silver & Gold", "Vanessa Williams Greatest Hits: The First Ten Years" and "Everlasting Love", a romantic collection of love songs from the 1970's. In 1994, Vanessa took Broadway by storm when she replaced Chita Rivera in "Kiss of the Spider Woman", winning the hearts of critics and becoming a box-office sensation. She garnered rave reviews and was nominated for a Tony Award for the 2002 revival of "Into the Woods". She also headlined a limited special engagement of the classic, "Carmen Jones", at the Kennedy Center and starred in the Encore! Series staged concert production of "St. Louis Woman".
She stars in ABC's critically-acclaimed hit series, Ugly Betty (2006), for which she has won or been nominated for numerous individual and ensemble awards, including the Emmy, SAG Award, Golden Globe and NAACP Image Awards. Vanessa achieved a career pinnacle, with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her accomplishments as a performer. Her charitable endeavors are many and varied, embracing and supporting such organizations as Special Olympics and many others.- Welker trained as an actor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Additionally she holds a Bachelor of Science in Theatre Studies from CUNY, and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Brooklyn College. Welker is well known for her work in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas and The Irishman, among others. She is also known internationally as an acting teacher and coach.