List of all people nominated for a Razzie
Missing from IMDb:
Gail Redd (see #160)
J. Pennig (see #198)
Barbara Antonia (see #205)
Pauline Hanna (see #205)
David Sembello (see #245)
Garbage Pail Kids (see #366)
Chris LeVrar (see #477)
Beavis and Butt-Head (see #721)
Anaconda (see #769)
Jeffrey Barr (see #792)
Dennis Haliburton (see #797)
Thing One and Thing Two (see #1022)
Tom and Jerry (see #1707)
The Razzies (see #1751)
Pooh and Piglet (see #1777)
Gail Redd (see #160)
J. Pennig (see #198)
Barbara Antonia (see #205)
Pauline Hanna (see #205)
David Sembello (see #245)
Garbage Pail Kids (see #366)
Chris LeVrar (see #477)
Beavis and Butt-Head (see #721)
Anaconda (see #769)
Jeffrey Barr (see #792)
Dennis Haliburton (see #797)
Thing One and Thing Two (see #1022)
Tom and Jerry (see #1707)
The Razzies (see #1751)
Pooh and Piglet (see #1777)
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- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Allan Carr was born on 27 May 1937 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Grease (1978), Can't Stop the Music (1980) and Grease 2 (1982). He died on 29 June 1999 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.1937 - 1999 (aged 62)
Wins:
Worst Picture - Can't Stop the Music (1980)
Worst Screenplay - Can't Stop the Music (1980)
Nominations:
Worst Picture - Where the Boys Are (1984)- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
Henri Belolo was born on 27 November 1936 in Casablanca, Morocco. He was a composer and producer, known for The Nutty Professor (1996), Can't Stop the Music (1980) and Blast from the Past (1999). He was married to Daniele Allard. He died on 3 August 2019 in Paris, France.- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
Jacques Morali was born on 4 July 1946 in France. He was a composer and producer, known for Can't Stop the Music (1980), The Nutty Professor (1996) and Blast from the Past (1999). He died on 15 November 1991 in New York City, New York, USA.1947 - 1991 (aged 44)
Wins:
Worst Picture - Can't Stop the Music (1980)
Nominations:
Worst Original Song - Can't Stop the Music (1980), "Can't Stop the Music"- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Jerry Weintraub was born on 26 September 1937 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for The Avengers (1998), The Firm (1993) and The Next Karate Kid (1994). He was married to Jane Morgan and Janice Ivy Greenberg. He died on 6 July 2015 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.1937 - 2015 (aged 77)
Wins:
Worst Remake, Rip-off or Sequel - The Avengers (1998)
Nominations:
Worst Picture - Cruising (1980)
Worst Picture - The Karate Kid Part III (1989)
Worst Picture - The Specialist (1994)
Worst Picture - The Avengers (1998)- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Steve Shagan was born on 25 October 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Save the Tiger (1973), Primal Fear (1996) and The Formula (1980). He died on 30 November 2015 in Los Angeles, California, USA.1927 - 2015 (aged 88)
Nominations:
Worst Picture - The Formula (1980)
Worst Screenplay - The Formula (1980)- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Like William Girdler, Oliver Hellman or even Ed Wood, Sean S. Cunningham had a successful career of starting films cheap and fast. Originally from New York, Cunningham had a vast knowledge of directing films and came to Hollywood. He started about the same time Wes Craven did. Cunningham meets Craven and decided to make a comedy-romance film called Together (1971). Then they both shocked the world with the rape and ultra-violence of The Last House on the Left (1972). Craven directed the flick and Cunningham financed and produced. However Cunningham wanted to get a mix of comedy and horror and made Case of the Full Moon Murders (1973) and then started other comedy films like Manny's Orphans (1978) and Here Come the Tigers (1978) . Struggling in Hollywood Cunningham saw John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and wanted to make a follow up type film but would possibly regret it. Cunningham brought Friday the 13th (1980) into the cinema in 1980, a year of many other horror films. Friday the 13th (1980) was a shocking, gory and violent film about camp counselors being slashed by a killer and had Betsy Palmer in the lead role. Little did Cunningham know that Friday the 13th would have never ending sequels. Cunningham gladly avoided all of them and Friday the 13th remains one of the most popular horror films in history. Instead Cunningham wanted to make it big when he brought a best-selling novel to the screen, A Stranger Is Watching (1982) with Rip Torn, but it was a disappointment. Cunningham went downhill with the over sexed teen comedy Spring Break (1983) and The New Kids (1985). Cunningham then produced House (1985) and several of its sequels. Cunningham next entered the world of underwater terrors after The Abyss (1989) was released. Cunningham did a follow up called DeepStar Six (1989), but it was a flop, however it beat another 1989 underwater thriller Leviathan (1989) at box office receipts. Cunningham was finished with directing and moved on to producing films and teaching. He produced House III: The Horror Show (1989), My Boyfriend's Back (1993) and Friday the 13th's last sequel Jason Goes to Hell (1993). Cunningham then did yet another follow up to Friday the 13th with Jason X (2001).- Producer
- Writer
- Executive
Jerry Leider enjoys a life-long career in the entertainment industry as a motion picture and television producer, and major film studio, network and talent agency senior executive.
Currently Mr, Leider is developing a full slate of high-profile motion pictures planned for production within the next eighteen months, most notably Robert Harris' internationally best-selling novel "Fatherland," as well as "Anne, Frank, and Me," "Girl Stolen," "The October Gang," "Dead for a Dollar" and "Billy."
He most recently Executive Produced, with Francis Ford Copolla, Jack Kerouac's "On The Road," directed by Walter Salles and an all-star cast, including Garret Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams and Viggo Mortensen.
In the last ten years he produced seven features including the high-school comedy "Just Peck" starring Keir Gilchrist and Brie Larson; three family movies for Disney: "Confessions of a Teen Age Drama Queen" starring Lindsay Lohan; "Cadet Kelly" starring Hilary Duff; and "My Favorite Martian" starring Jeff Daniels, Elizabeth Hurley and Christopher Lloyd. Long-form television includes, for Showtime, the highly acclaimed romantic comedy "Coast to Coast", that starred Richard Dreyfuss and Judy Davis; and, for CBS-TV, "Mayday," an action thriller based on Nelson DeMille's hit novel.
In the past three decades, Mr. Leider has personally produced, executive produced, or supervised the production of more than twenty feature films including "The Jazz Singer" starring Neil Diamond and Laurence Olivier; the Academy Award nominee "Sophie's Choice" starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline; and the thriller, cult-classic horror film "The Stepfather."
For six years he was Chairman and CEO of the ITC Entertainment Group, an international television and film producer and distribution company with offices in Los Angeles, New York, London and Perth, Australia. More than thirty television and cable movies and mini-series were produced and aired during that time on all three broadcast networks, HBO, and Showtime including "Poor Little Rich Girl" starring Farrah Fawcett; "Malice in Wonderland" starring Elizabeth Taylor; "Unnatural Causes," a Golden Globe Award winner starring John Ritter; "Sidney Sheldon's Windmills of the Gods"; and the award winning "Billionaire Boys Club."
He also independently produced a number of network television movies including three romance novels by La Vyrle Spencer for CBS, as well as Alistair Maclean's international thriller, "The Hostage Tower" (also for CBS) and Stephen King's horror novella, "Trucks" for the USA Network
Mr. Leider was President of Warner Bros. Television in Los Angeles in the late sixties, after moving from New York, where he had been, a senior partner for seven years at the Ashley Famous Agency (now ICM Partners) in charge of worldwide television packaging and previously senior program executive at the CBS Television Network in New York. For five years at Warner's TV, he presided over numerous popular and profitable television series including such hits as "The FBI," "Kung Fu," "Wonder Woman," and "Alice."
Making the shift to features he took on the position of Executive Vice President of Foreign Feature Production, based in Rome, Italy, where he supervised the financing and production of fifteen Warner Bros. international motion pictures including "Madam Rosa" starring the late Simone Signoret, which received an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Before joining CBS-TV, Mr. Leider produced plays in New York and London. Among his Broadway successes were Sir John Gielgud's outstanding one-man show "The Ages of Man" and "The Visit" starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine. In London, he produced the acclaimed Tennessee Williams' drama "Suddenly Last Summer" that starred Patricia Neal.
He is a long time member of both the Motion Picture and Television Academies, a three-term Chairman of the Hollywood Caucus of Producers, Writers, and Directors, and past president of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society.
A frequent guest lecturer for the Film and Television programs at USC, UCLA, and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University (his alma mater), he was also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in Drama at Bristol University, England.Nominations:
Worst Picture - The Jazz Singer (1980)
Worst Remake, Rip-off or Sequel - Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde (1995)- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Actor
Originally a lawyer from New York City, Jennings Lang came to Hollywood in 1938 and set up an office as a talent agent. In 1940, he joined the Jaffe Agency and, within a few years, became the company's president and one of Hollywood's leading agents. He joined MCA in 1950 and, two years later, became vice president of MCA TV Ltd. In this capacity, he worked with Universal Studios and was involved in developing, creating and selling new series throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including Wagon Train (1957), The Bob Cummings Show (1955) and McHale's Navy (1962). Lang also played a key role in developing television movies as a staple of TV programming.
Lang produced and executive-produced theatrical films for Universal from 1969 to 1986, when his career was curtailed by a major stroke. Among them were Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), Play Misty for Me (1971), Charley Varrick (1973), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), Airport 1975 (1974), Airport '77 (1977), Earthquake (1974), Rollercoaster (1977), Nunzio (1978), The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979) and The Sting II (1983). He is credited with helping launch the early careers of Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg and developing the technique of "Sensurround".- William Frye was born on 5 October 1921 in Salinas, California, USA. He was a producer, known for Raise the Titanic (1980), Thriller (1960) and Airport '77 (1977). He died on 3 November 2017 in Palm Desert, California, USA.
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Sir Lew (later Lord) Grade, the English entertainment impresario whom critics loved to disparage as "Sir Low Grade," was born Louis Winogradsky on December 25, 1906, in Tokmak, Ukraine, in the former Russian Empire. His parents, Olga and Isaac, who were Jewish, emigrated to England in 1912 to escape the pogroms of their native land. They settled in London's East End, where Isaac managed a movie theatre. Lew and his two brothers, Leslie and Bernard (who later took the name Bernard Delfont), attended the Rochelle Street School in Shoreditch. After his formal education ended, he became an agent for a clothing firm at the age of 15 but soon went into business for himself. His fate was changed when he won a Charleston competition at the Albert Hall in 1926. He took the name Grade (which was also adopted by his brother Leslie) when he became a professional dancer, and as Lew Grade, the World Charleston Champion of 1926, he made his way into show business.
Lew Grade and his brother Leslie Grade founded a talent agency in 1933 that grew into the largest in the UK. With partner Joe Collins, father of Joan and Jackie Collins, the agency eventually represented some of the biggest and most prestigious stars in British show business, including Sir Ralph Richardson and Lord Laurence Olivier. His brother Bernard (later Lord Delfont) also made his way into show business, later becoming the head of the music industry behemoth EMI. (Lord Grade's own interests included Pye Records.)
Entering television, Grade's production company ITC Entertainment was responsible for the iconic 1960s British TV series The Saint (1962) and The Prisoner (1967). In 1962 he acquired the independent production company AP Films, which produced the popular children's marionette adventure series Thunderbirds (1965), among others. AP Films also produced three feature films and the live-action sci-fi series Space: 1999 (1975).
As a movie producer, Grade helped finance the big-screen incarnation of The Muppet Show (1976), for which he was immortalized by Jim Henson, who made a Muppet in his image, Dr Bunsen Honeydew. Henson also used Grade for the character of movie mogul Lew Lord (played by Orson Welles) in The Muppet Movie (1979).
Grade was the force behind the private British TV broadcasting network ATV, which he wanted to rival the BBC. The network featured extravagant 'quality' productions such as a live broadcast of Tosca (1988) from La Scala starring Maria Callas, which took up an entire evening's broadcast time. He produced director Franco Zeffirelli's award-winning TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977), which provided a financial windfall when it was resold to the American market. The miniseries garnered a then-record $12 million licensing fee (approximately $39 million in 2005 when adjusted for inflation). On the downside, Grade's high-budget, 'all-star' film adaptation of Clive Cussler's bestseller Raise the Titanic (1980) proved to be a monumental flop. A self-deprecating Grade remarked about laying this big egg, "It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic." Subsequent flops led Grade to abandon motion picture production.
Grade was knighted in 1969 for his services towards promoting international trade and was made a life peer (a baron) in 1976, both times under Harold Wilson's Labour Government. He was married to Kathleen Moody for 56 years, until his death. Lew and Kathleen adopted a son, Paul Dancer. Of his wife, Grade said, graciously, "Marriage was the best business deal I ever made. After that, 'Jesus of Nazareth' and 'The Muppets.'"
His nephew, Michael Grade, was the Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors from 1984 to 1986. Lord Grade died on December 13, 1998. He was 91 years old.- Director
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Inspired by Fred Astaire's dancing in Flying Down to Rio (1933), Stanley Donen (pronounced 'Dawn-en') attended dance classes from the age of ten. He later recalled that the only thing he wanted to be was a tap dancer.
He was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Helen Pauline (Cohen) and Mordecai Moses Donen, a dress-shop manager, of Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish descent. Donen debuted on Broadway at seventeen. While working as an assistant choreographer in 1941, he met and befriended the actor Gene Kelly, Kelly being the brash, extrovert and energetic side of the burgeoning partnership, Donen the more refined and relaxed. Three years later, the two men renewed their collaboration in Hollywood and did much to reinvigorate the musical genre. For the next decade, they worked side-by-side as choreographers and co-directors (a relationship Donen described as 'wonderful' but 'also trying at times'), linked to MGM's Arthur Freed unit. Between them, they directed classic musicals like On the Town (1949) and Singin' in the Rain (1952) and co-wrote the original story for Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). Freed, by the way, was the producer almost single-handedly responsible for the high standard of MGM's A-grade musicals in the 40s and 50s. A former vaudevillian and song-plugger, Freed was an astute judge of talent and encouraged gifted individuals from other media (like radio or theatre) to become involved with pictures. Moreover, he gave artists like Kelly and Donen free rein to express their creative flair.
In 1949, MGM signed Donen to a seven-year contract as director in his own right. From then on, he and Kelly went their separate ways. After directing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Donen moved on to Paramount for Funny Face (1957), then to Warner Brothers for The Pajama Game (1957) and Damn Yankees (1958). As musicals waned in popularity, Donen branched out into other genres. He began to direct and produce elegant, lavish romantic dramas like the delightful Indiscreet (1958), sophisticated comedies like The Grass Is Greener (1960) and Two for the Road (1967) (which starred Donen's favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn), as well as the top-shelf thrillers Charade (1963) (the best film Alfred Hitchcock never directed, again with Hepburn) and Arabesque (1966). Arguably, his most out-of-character film from this period was the esoteric mephistophelean (and very British) farce Bedazzled (1967), featuring the irrepressible comic talents of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
The 1970s heralded a steady decline in the quality of Donen's output. None of his later efforts seemed to have the panache of his earlier work: not the tepid adventure-comedy Lucky Lady (1975) (despite a good cast and sumptuous production look) nor the nostalgic musical fantasy The Little Prince (1974), based on the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A failure at the box office, the latter also marked the end of the Frederick Loewe-Alan Jay Lerner musical partnership. Donen's career may have finished on a low with a weak sojourn into science fiction that was Saturn 3 (1980) and the absolutely dreadful comedy Blame It on Rio (1984), but his reputation as one of the giants of the classic Hollywood musical is assured. Donen received an Honorary Oscar in 1998 ""for a body of work marked by grace, elegance, wit, and visual innovation.''- Producer
- Actor
- Executive
Mike Lobell is known for Striptease (1996), Tears of the Sun (2003) and It Could Happen to You (1994).- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Lawrence Gordon (Producer) has been one of the entertainment industry's most prolific and successful producers in a career spanning six decades. He has been behind such timeless films as the drama "Field of Dreams," for which Gordon received a Best Picture Oscar nomination; the landmark action film "Die Hard"; and the ultimate buddy picture "48 Hrs.," starring Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Gordon graduated from Tulane University with a degree in business administration. Moving to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, he went to work as executive assistant to Aaron Spelling at Four Star Television and soon became a writer and associate producer of Spelling shows. He followed with a stint as head of West Coast talent development for ABC Television and later as an executive with Bob Banner Associates. In 1968, he joined Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson at American International Pictures (AIP) as story editor, and rose to vice president in charge of development. He then segued to vice president at Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures, where he helped put together the classic television movie "Brian's Song," as well as the first "novel for television," the adaptation of Leon Uris' QB VII. Accepting an offer to become the first executive in the company's history to head worldwide production, Gordon returned to AIP. His many projects included "Coffy," "Foxy Brown," "Hell's Angels '69," "Wild in the Streets," John Milius' "Dillinger" (which Gordon also executive-produced), and Ralph Bakshi's groundbreaking and controversial animated hit "Heavy Traffic," which was named one of The New York Times' top-10 films of 1973. Gordon then formed Lawrence Gordon Productions and began a long and successful association with director Walter Hill. Among the duo's memorable titles are "Hard Times," starring Charles Bronson; "The Driver," with Ryan O'Neal and Isabelle Adjani; the cult classic "The Warriors"; "48 Hrs.," teaming Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, in his feature film debut; the rock-and-roll fable "Streets of Fire"; "Brewster's Millions," with Richard Pryor and John Candy; and "Another 48 Hrs.," which reunited the stars from the original. Gordon also produced the comedy hit "The End," starring Burt Reynolds, and collaborated with him again on the box office smash "Hooper." During this period, Gordon also produced the Paul Schrader-penned "Rolling Thunder," and the now-cult movie musical "Xanadu," starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly. By 1977, he was housed at Paramount Pictures with an overall producing deal. In 1982, he reunited with his old boss Aaron Spelling to create and executive produce the ABC television series "Matt Houston." In 1984, Gordon became president and chief operating officer of 20th Century Fox, where he oversaw such successful titles as James Cameron's "Aliens"; James L. Brooks' "Broadcast News"; "Commando," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; and "Jewel of the Nile," starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. During his tenure, "The Simpsons" television series was created by Matt Groening and James L. Brooks, as were series by Stephen Bochco and David E. Kelley. After his stint at Fox, in 1986, Gordon produced the critically acclaimed "Lucas," marking the directorial debut of David Seltzer; and "Jumpin' Jack Flash," starring Whoopi Goldberg, which was Penny Marshall's first film as a director. During the 1980s, Gordon also produced for the stage. For Broadway, he produced the 1986 musical "Smile," with music by Tony, Grammy and Oscar winner Marvin Hamlisch and book and lyrics by Tony and Oscar winner Howard Ashman. Off-Broadway, Gordon produced the 1982 revival of Joe Orton's "Entertaining Mr. Sloane," which won the Drama Desk Award for Best Revival of a Play. For the screen, Gordon produced the 1987 summer action hit "Predator," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, later, its sequel. In 1988, he produced the mega-blockbuster "Die Hard," which introduced Bruce Willis as an action hero and forever changed the action genre. The film went on to spawn three hit sequels, in addition to becoming one of cinema's most successful and imitated franchises. The following year, Gordon produced another seminal hit, "Field of Dreams," starring Kevin Costner under the direction of Phil Alden Robinson. The beloved film earned three Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture, while the title itself and the famous line, "If you build it...," became part of the cultural lexicon. Gordon subsequently produced "Family Business," directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick; the comedy hit "K-9," starring James Belushi; "The Rocketeer," directed by Joe Johnston; and "Lock Up," starring Sylvester Stallone. In 1989, Gordon formed Largo Entertainment with the backing of JVC Entertainment, Inc. of Japan, representing the first major Japanese investment in the entertainment industry. As the company's chairman and chief executive officer, Gordon was responsible for the production of such films as "Point Break," starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves; "Unlawful Entry," starring Kurt Russell, Ray Liotta and Madeleine Stowe; "Used People," starring Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates, Marcia Gay Harden and Marcello Mastroianni; and "Timecop," starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Largo also co-financed and handled the foreign distribution of the acclaimed biopic "Malcolm X," directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington in the title role. Gordon left Largo in 1994 in favor of a long-term producing deal with Universal Pictures. There, his first production was the controversial Kevin Costner-starrer "Waterworld," which grossed $300 million worldwide. Other Lawrence Gordon Productions include "The Devil's Own," starring Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt; the critically acclaimed "Boogie Nights," directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Heather Graham and Julianne Moore; and "Mystery Men," starring Ben Stiller. In 2001, Gordon produced two pictures that opened at number one at the box office: the summer hit "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," starring Angelina Jolie, and the acclaimed "K-PAX," starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. In summer 2003, "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" was released, with Angelina Jolie back as Lara Croft. The next year, Gordon produced the Guillermo del Toro's "Hellboy," based on the popular Mike Mignola comic book series and starring Ron Perlman and Selma Blair. In summer 2008, he scored an even bigger hit with its sequel, "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," reuniting the original cast and filmmakers. Gordon's "Watchmen" directed by Zack Snyder ("300") was released in March of 2009 as one of the highest R-rated openings ever. Gordon is producing a documentary for Netflix on the legendary basketball player Bill Russell. He is also executive producer on a television adaptation of "Field Of Dreams" for Peacock, and executive produced the "Predator" spinoff "Prey" on Hulu. Gordon served for many years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Producers Guild of America (PGA) and the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the Board of the American Film Institute. He is a recipient of the ShoWest Lifetime Achievement Award, the PGA's prestigious David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award, Tulane University's Distinguished Alumni Award, and most recently the Mississippi Governor's Arts Award.1936 -
Nominations:
Worst Picture - Xanadu (1980)
Worst Picture - Lock Up (1989)
Worst Picture - Waterworld (1995)
Worst Remake, Rip-off or Sequel - Hellboy (2019)- Producer
- Director
- Executive
Robert Greenwald is president of Brave New Films, a nonprofit film company that he founded after a career in commercial television and film to motivate and educate viewers on the most pressing issues of the day.
Brave New Films distributes its work for free through social media and in concert with nonprofit partners and movements. The group's movies and videos have been screened around the world and viewed over tens of millions of times and counting.
At Brave New Films, Greenwald has directed and produced gripping full-length documentaries and exposés, as well as shorter documentary films and videos. His latest documentary, Suppressed: The Fight to Vote, tells the story of rampant voter suppression in Georgia's 2018 midterm elections.
Greenwald's investigative documentary shorts include Healing Trauma: Beyond Gangs and Prisons on Los Angeles' Homeboy Industries, 16 Women and Donald Trump on President Trump's serial abuse of women, and Immigrant Prisons on America's system of privately-run immigrant detention centers.
Previous feature-length investigative documentaries include Making a Killing: Guns, Greed, and the NRA, Unmanned: America's Drone Wars, War on Whistleblowers, Koch Brothers Exposed, Rethink Afghanistan, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and Uncovered: The War on Iraq.
Greenwald and Brave New Films' work has been featured widely in the media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter and many more.
Before launching Brave Films in 2005, Greenwald produced and/or directed more than 65 TV movies, miniseries and films as well as major theatrical releases. His early body of work includes Steal This Movie!, Breaking Up, A Woman of Independent Means and The Burning Bed.
Greenwald has earned 25 Emmy Award nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, the Peabody Award and the Robert Wood Johnson Award. He was awarded the 2002 Producer of the Year Award by the American Film Institute.- Director
- Editor
- Producer
John G. Avildsen was born on 21 December 1935 in Oak Park, Illinois, USA. He was a director and editor, known for Rocky (1976), The Karate Kid Part III (1989) and Rocky V (1990). He was married to Tracy Brooks Swope and Marie Olga Maturevich. He died on 16 June 2017 in Los Angeles, California, USA.1935 - 2017 (aged 81)
Nominations:
Worst Director - The Formula (1980)
Worst Director - The Karate Kid Part III (1989)
Worst Director - Rocky V (1990)- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers. Born on September 11, 1940, De Palma was born in Newark, New Jersey in an Italian-American family. Originally entering university as a physics student, De Palma became attracted to films after seeing such classics as Citizen Kane (1941). Enrolling in Sarah Lawrence College, he found lasting influences from such varied teachers as Alfred Hitchcock and Andy Warhol.
At first, his films comprised of such black-and-white films as To Bridge This Gap (1969). He then discovered a young actor whose fame would influence Hollywood forever. In 1968, De Palma made the comedic film Greetings (1968) starring Robert De Niro in his first ever credited film role. The two followed up immediately with the films The Wedding Party (1969) and Hi, Mom! (1970).
After making such small-budget thrillers such as Sisters (1972) and Obsession (1976), De Palma was offered the chance to direct a film based on Stephen King's classic novel "Carrie". The story deals with a tormented teenage girl who finds she has the power of telekinesis. The film starred Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie and John Travolta, and was for De Palma, a chance to try out the split screen technique for which he would later become famous.
Carrie (1976) was a massive success, and earned the two lead females (Laurie and Spacek) Oscar nominations. The film was praised by most critics, and De Palma's reputation was now permanently secured. He followed up this success with the horror film The Fury (1978), the comedic film Home Movies (1979) (both these films featured Kirk Douglas), the crime thriller Dressed to Kill (1980) starring Michael Caine and Angie Dickinson, and another crime thriller entitled Blow Out (1981) starring John Travolta.
His next major success was the controversial, ultra-violent film Scarface (1983). Written by Oliver Stone and starring Al Pacino, the film concerned Cuban immigrant Tony Montana's rise to power in the United States through the drug trade. While being a critical failure, the film was a major success commercially.
Moving on from Scarface (1983), De Palma made two more movies before landing another one of his now-classics: The Untouchables (1987), starring old friend Robert De Niro in the role of Chicago gangster Al Capone. Also starring in the film were Kevin Costner as the man who commits himself to bring Capone down, and Sean Connery, an old policeman who helps Costner's character to form a group known as the Untouchables. The film was one of De Palma's most successful films, earning Connery an Oscar, and gave Ennio Morricone a nomination for Best Score.
After The Untouchables (1987), De Palma made the Vietnam film Casualties of War (1989) starring Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn. The film focuses on a new soldier who is helpless to stop his dominating sergeant from kidnapping a Vietnamese girl with the help of the coerced members of the platoon. The film did reasonably well at the box office, but it was his next film that truly displayed the way he could make a hit and a disaster within a short time. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) starred a number of well-known actors such as Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman, however it was still a commercial flop and earned him two Razzie nominations.
But the roller coaster success that De Palma had gotten so far did not let him down. He made the horror film Raising Cain (1992), and the criminal drama Carlito's Way (1993) starring Al Pacino and Sean Penn. The latter film is about a former criminal just released from prison that is trying to avoid his past and move on. It was in the year 1996 that brought one of his most well-known movies. This was the suspense-filled Mission: Impossible (1996) starring Tom Cruise and Jon Voight.
Following up this film was the interesting but unsuccessful film Snake Eyes (1998) starring Nicolas Cage as a detective who finds himself in the middle of a murder scene at a boxing ring. De Palma continued on with the visually astounding but equally unsuccessful film Mission to Mars (2000) which earned him another Razzie nomination. He met failure again with the crime thriller Femme Fatale (2002), the murder conspiracy The Black Dahlia (2006), and the controversial film Redacted (2007) which deals with individual stories from the war in Iraq.
Brian De Palma may be down for the moment, but if his box office history has taught us anything, it is that he always returns with a major success that is remembered for years and years afterwards.1940 -
Nominations:
Worst Director - Dressed to Kill (1980)
Worst Director - Scarface (1983)
Worst Director - Body Double (1984)
Worst Picture - The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Worst Director - The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Worst Director - Mission to Mars (2000)- Director
- Writer
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Friedkin's mother was an operating room nurse. His father was a merchant seaman, semi-pro softball player and ultimately sold clothes in a men's discount chain. Ultimately, his father never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent. Eventually young Will became infatuated with Orson Welles after seeing Citizen Kane (1941). He went to work for WGN TV immediately after graduating from high school where he started making documentaries, one of which won the Golden Gate Award at the 1962 San Francisco film festival. In 1965, he moved to Hollywood and immediately started directing TV shows, including an episode of the The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962); Hitchcock infamously chastised him for not wearing a tie.- Director
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Richard firmly established his credentials with such epics as The Vikings (1958) , 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and Barabbas (1961) and also proved to be a master of intimate drama with Compulsion (1959) , which won Cannes Festival awards for the male stars. He won an Academy Award for one of his earliest films - a documentary Design for Death (1947) . In 1947 the rapidly rising director met Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman who hired him for their first film together So This Is New York (1948) , One of his most memorable accomplishments 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) which grossed well over $25 million since it's release in 1953.- Director
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- Producer
Toronto-born Sidney J. Furie has enjoyed an incredibly distinguished career that has spanned more than five decades. Having dabbled in every genre, Furie has directed films starring Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Robert Redford, Diana Ross, Michael Caine, Peter O'Toole, Rodney Dangerfield, Barbara Hershey, Gene Hackman, Donald Sutherland, 'Laurence Olivier' (qav) and countless others.
He directed the first two feature-length fiction films ever made in English Canada, A Dangerous Age (1957) and A Cool Sound from Hell (1959), both independently financed, before emigrating to London in 1960. In 1961 he directed five feature films in a single year, before finally scoring his first box-office success with Wonderful to Be Young! (1961), starring the "British Elvis Presley", Cliff Richard. The critical and commercial success of Furie's 1963 British New Wave film The Leather Boys (1964), a kitchen-sink drama starring Rita Tushingham and Dudley Sutton, delivered him to the attention of high-powered producer Harry Saltzman, who hired him to direct the groundbreaking film The Ipcress File (1965), which won the BAFTA award for Best Picture. Michael Caine became an overnight star because of the film's success. The film also screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Furie then emigrated to Hollywood to direct Marlon Brando in The Appaloosa (1966) and Frank Sinatra in The Naked Runner (1967) for Universal and Warner Brothers, respectively. Paramount Pictures, then under the aegis of the new Gulf+Western management regime, hired Furie in 1967. He would work as a Paramount filmmaker for the next eight years. Beginning in 1968, he directed five films for the studio. His box-office hit Lady Sings the Blues (1972) was nominated for five Academy Awards and was Paramount's second biggest money-maker that year, behind only The Godfather (1972).
In 1981 he directed The Entity (1982), a cult classic that was named by Martin Scorsese as the fourth best horror film ever made, ranking ahead of both The Shining (1980) and Psycho (1960). Furie was assigned to direct Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), but was challenged by substantial last-minute budget cuts and a script he could not change (engineered personally by Christopher Reeve).
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s he returned to his native Canada to helm a series of films, often direct-to-video pictures, ranging from the war drama Going Back (2001) to the Canadian-British co-production Rock My World (2002), a comedy starring Peter O'Toole and Joan Plowright. Other career highlights include The Boys in Company C (1978) (one of the first Vietnam War pictures about combat soldiers, later to provide the basis for Full Metal Jacket (1987)), the underrated action epic Hit! (1973), and the "Iron Eagle" series. He has also maintained dual citizenship between the U.S. and Canada. In 2010, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Directors Guild of Canada.- Director
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Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle, Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as a tool for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.
Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.
In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight (1951). This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre (1951), and (The Seafarers (1953), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire (1952) in California.
Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956) brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 he directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the production of Spartacus (1960), by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film. Many crew members were upset by his style: cinematographer Russell Metty complained to producers that Kubrick was taking over his job. Kubrick's response was to tell him to sit there and do nothing. Metty complied, and ironically was awarded the Academy Award for his cinematography.
Kubrick's next project was to direct Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), but negotiations broke down and Brando himself ended up directing the film himself. Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Despite having obtained a pilot's license, Kubrick was rumored to be afraid of flying.
Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita (1962), which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a big risk for Kubrick; before this, "nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired. Around this time, Kubrick's focus diversified and he would always have several projects in various stages of development: "Blue Moon" (a story about Hollywood's first pornographic feature film), "Napoleon" (an epic historical biography, abandoned after studio losses on similar projects), "Wartime Lies" (based on the novel by Louis Begley), and "Rhapsody" (a psycho-sexual thriller).
The next film he completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is hailed by many as the best ever made; an instant cult favorite, it has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed. Kubrick followed this with A Clockwork Orange (1971), which rivaled Lolita (1962) for the controversy it generated - this time not only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry Lyndon (1975) would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become legendary. Actors would be required to perform dozens of takes with no breaks. Filming a story in Ireland involving military, Kubrick received reports that the IRA had declared him a possible target. Production was promptly moved out of the country, and Kubrick's desire for privacy and security resulted in him being considered a recluse ever since.
Having turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist (1973), Kubrick made his own horror film: The Shining (1980). Again, rumors circulated of demands made upon actors and crew. Stephen King (whose novel the film was based upon) reportedly didn't like Kubrick's adaptation (indeed, he would later write his own screenplay which was filmed as The Shining (1997).)
Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket (1987) was released. By this time, Kubrick was married with children and had extensively remodeled his house. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987) continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box office.
In the 1990s, Kubrick began an on-again/off-again collaboration with Brian Aldiss on a new science fiction film called "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but progress was very slow, and was backgrounded until special effects technology was up to the standard the Kubrick wanted.
Kubrick returned to his in-development projects, but encountered a number of problems: "Napoleon" was completely dead, and "Wartime Lies" (now called "The Aryan Papers") was abandoned when Steven Spielberg announced he would direct Schindler's List (1993), which covered much of the same material.
While pre-production work on "AI" crawled along, Kubrick combined "Rhapsody" and "Blue Movie" and officially announced his next project as Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. After two years of production under unprecedented security and privacy, the film was released to a typically polarized critical and public reception; Kubrick claimed it was his best film to date.
Special effects technology had matured rapidly in the meantime, and Kubrick immediately began active work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), but tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999.
After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discreetly about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project.
How much of Kubrick's vision remains in the finished project -- and what he would think of the film as eventually released -- will be the final great unanswerable mysteries in the life of this talented and private filmmaker.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Michael Ritchie was born on 28 November 1938 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, USA. He was a director and producer, known for The Golden Child (1986), The Island (1980) and Fletch (1985). He was married to Jimmie Brown and Georgina Tebrock. He died on 16 April 2001 in New York City, New York, USA.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
John Trent was born in Canada. He was a producer and director, known for Middle Age Crazy (1980), It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (1975) and Sunday in the Country (1974). He died on 3 June 1983 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Nominations:
Worst Director - Middle Age Crazy (1980)- Actress
- Director
- Soundtrack
They say big things often come in small packages, and never was that saying more true than when sizing up the talents of that diminutive dynamo Nancy Walker. Born Anna Myrtle Swoyer in Philadelphia on May 10, 1922, she lived a born-in-a-trunk existence as the daughter of vaudevillian Dewey Barto (né Stewart Steven Swoyer). At the time of his run of Broadway's "Hellzapoppin", Barto was part of the comedy team of Barto & Mann (George Mann). Her younger sister, Betty Lou Barto (born 1930), had a less impressive and briefer performing career. Although she had designs on becoming a legit singer, it was hard for others to take Nancy seriously with her naturally aggressive manner backed up by this tiny frame. Comedy became her forte.
Broadway legend George Abbott picked up on her innate comic abilities immediately and set her up as his blind date in the Broadway musical smash "Best Foot Forward" in 1941. The show, starring June Allyson, was a certifiable hit, and when MGM turned Best Foot Forward (1943) into a musical film, Nancy, as well as June, went right along with it. Nancy continued giving top support for MGM in the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney starrer Girl Crazy (1943) and in Broadway Rhythm (1944). Back on Broadway, Nancy all but stole the proceedings as the hoydenish cabbie Hildy Esterhazy, who pursues a sailor on leave, in "On the Town" (1944). After a brief first marriage, she met vocal coach David Craig during the 1948 run of "Look, Ma, I'm Dancing", when she was plagued by vocal problems. They married a few years later and had a daughter, Miranda. When Nancy left the show, she was replaced by her sister, Betty Lou Barto. Other musical plaudit came her way, including Tony nominations for the revue "Phoenix '55" and for her lead role in "Do Re Mi" with Phil Silvers.
Nancy experienced some tough, lean years in the late 1950s and 1960s until she found TV an accepting medium. She became popular all over again, and a household name to boot, as Rosie the waitress in a series of Bounty paper-towel commercials. At around the same time, she won a regular role as Mildred, the sardonic maid on McMillan & Wife (1971). Her prototypical wisecracking role, however, came as the outlandish Jewish mom Ida Morgenstern, mother of Valerie Harper's "Rhoda" character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970).
When Harper spun off into her own series--Rhoda (1974)--interfering Ida was right alongside her still-unmarried daughter, wreaking havoc. Alas, nominated for eight Emmys and four Golden Globe Awards for her collective work on series TV, she never won. Her renewed popularity, however, led to a couple of TV star vehicles that plainly didn't suit her second-banana talents. Neither lasted very long. She eventually moved into stage and film directing. Nancy made her final regular TV-series appearance on the sitcom True Colors (1990), playing another of her long line of delightfully brash buttinskys. During the run of the show, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and died about six weeks before her 70th birthday in 1992. She was survived by her husband, daughter, and sister.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Gordon Willis was an American cinematographer. He's best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather films, as well asWoody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979).
His work on the first two Godfather films turned out to be groundbreaking in its use of low-light photography and underexposed film, as well as in his control of lighting and exposure to create the sepia tones that denoted period scenes in The Godfather Part II (1974).
In the seven-year period up to 1977, Willis was the director of photography on six films that received among them 39 Academy Award nominations, winning 19 times, including three awards for Best Picture. During this time he did not receive a single nomination for Best Cinematography.
He directed one film of his own, Windows (1980). His last film as a cinematographer was The Devil's Own (1997), directed by Alan J. Pakula.
Willis died of cancer on May 18, 2014, ten days before his 83rd birthday, at the age of 82.- Music Artist
- Music Department
- Actor
Neil Leslie Diamond was born in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, New York City, on January 24, 1941. His father, Akeeba "Kieve" Diamond, was a dry-goods merchant. Both he and wife Rose were Jewish immigrants from Poland. The Diamond family temporarily relocated to Cheyenne, Wyoming, because of Kieve Diamond's military service during World War II. During their time in Wyoming, Neil fell in love with "singing cowboy" movies on matinée showings at the local cinema. After the end of World War II, Neil and his parents returned to Brooklyn. He was given a $9 acoustic guitar for a birthday gift, which began his interest in music. At age 15 Neil wrote his first song, which he titled "Here Them Bells".
At Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School, Neil sang in the 100-member fixed chorus, with classmate Barbra Streisand, although the two would not formally meet until over 20 years later. Neil and a friend, Jack Packer, formed a duo singing group called Neil & Jack, and they sang at Long Island's Little Neck Country Club and recorded a single for Shell Records. The record failed to sell, however, and the duo soon broke up.
In 1958 Neil entered New York University's pre-med program to become a doctor, on a fencing scholarship. Medicine did not catch his interest as much as music did, though, and he dropped out at the end of his junior year, only 10 credits shy of graduation. He Diamond went to work for Sunbeam Music on Manhattan's famous Tin Pan Alley. Making $50 a week, he worked at tailoring songs to the needs and abilities of the company's B-grade performers. Finding the work unrewarding, Neil soon quit. Renting a storage room in a printer's shop located above the famed Birdland nightclub on Broadway, Neil began to live there and installed a $30 piano and a pay telephone, and set about writing his songs his own way.
A chance encounter with the songwriting/record producing team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich led to a contract with Bang Records. In 1966 he recorded his first album, featuring hit singles such as "Solitary Man" and "Cherry, Cherry". That same year Diamond appeared twice on Dick Clark's American Bandstand (1952) TV musical variety show. Also, The Monkees recorded several songs to which he wrote the music, including "I'm a Believer" which was a hit in 1967. A number of TV appearances followed, including singing gigs on The Mike Douglas Show (1961), The Merv Griffin Show (1962) and een a dramatic part as a rock singer on an episode of Mannix (1967). Filling a musical void that existed between Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, Diamond found wide acceptance among the young and old with his songs, but endured criticism that his music was too middle-of-the-road.
Diamond split with Bang Records in 1969, and signed a contract with California's Uni label, for which he recorded his first gold records. In 1970 he introduced British rock star Elton John in his first Stateside appearance at Hollywood's Troubador nightclub. In December 1971 Diamond signed a $5-million contract with Columbia Records, which led to more recording contracts and live concert appearances. In 1972 Diamond took a 40-month break from touring, during which he agreed to score the film Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973). Although Diamond's soundtrack for that film earned him a Grammy Award, it was a box-office failure. Despite having worked with an acting coach since 1968, and talk of a five-picture acting contract with Universal Studios, Diamond remained inhibited by shyness of being in front of a camera. He turned down acting roles in every movie contract he was offered (among them was Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974) and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976)). However, he did appear as himself with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young in the 1978 documentary The Last Waltz (1978). He appeared at the 1977 Academy Awards where he presented Barbra Streisand the Oscar for Best Song.
In the summer of 1976, on the eve of three Las Vegas shows, Diamond's house in Bel Air was raided by the police because they received an anonymous tip that there were drugs and weapons stored there. The police found less than an ounce of marijuana. To have the arrest expunged from his recored, Diamond agreed to a six-month drug aversion program. In 1977 he starred in two TV specials for NBC. He had a cancer scare in 1979, when a tumor was found on his spine and had to be surgically removed, which confined him to a wheelchair for three months. During his recuperation he was given the script for the lead role in a planned remake of the early sound film The Jazz Singer (1927). Signing a $1-million contract to appear as the son of a Jewish cantor trying to succeed in the music industry, Diamond was cast opposite the legendary Laurence Olivier and Broadway actress Lucie Arnaz. Despite the almost universally negative reviews of the film, it grossed three times its budget when released late in 1980. In 1981 Diamond's hit single, "America", which was part of the film's soundtrack, was used on news broadcasts to underscore the return of the American hostages from Iran.
Aware of his lack of acting talent, Diamond never acted in movie roles again, aside from making appearances as himself. A movie fan, he collaborated on writing the scores of many different soundtracks, which can be heard in such films as Cactus Flower (1969), Pulp Fiction (1994), Beautiful Girls (1996), Donnie Brasco (1997), Bringing Out the Dead (1999) and many more. He continues to occasionally perform in concerts and write a vast catalog of music which is recored by both him and other artists.1941 -
Wins:
Worst Actor - The Jazz Singer (1980)
Nominations:
Worst Original Song - The Jazz Singer (1980), "You, Baby, Baby!"- Michael Beck was born on 4 February 1949 in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. He is an actor, known for The Warriors (1979), Xanadu (1980) and Megaforce (1982). He has been married to Carolyn Louise Brendel since September 1980. They have two children.
- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
American actor who began as a child in Our Gang comedies and reappeared as a powerful adult performer of leading and character roles. Born in New Jersey, the young Mickey Gubitosi won a role in MGM's Our Gang series at the age of 5. As one of the more prominent children in the Gang, he gained attention for his cute good looks and his lovable, if somewhat melancholy, personality.
In 1940 he took on the stage name Bobby Blake (though he continued to use the name Mickey Gubitosi in the Our Gang series for another three years) and began playing child roles in a wide range of films. He gained a good deal of fame as the Indian sidekick Little Beaver in the Red Ryder series of Westerns. Though roles were sporadic as he grew to manhood, he was never long off the screen (except for a period of military service, 1954-56). But despite some fine work in films like Pork Chop Hill (1959) and Town Without Pity (1961), his career did not take off until his stunning portrayal of killer Perry Smith in In Cold Blood (1967). A number of telling performances in films of the next decade, stardom in a popular television series (Baretta (1975), and several ruefully comic appearances as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) made him a popular figure even as his personal difficulties increased.
Consumed with anger over his treatment by his family and the studio as a child, he denigrated his early work, suffered bouts of difficulty with drugs, and became known as a difficult, perfectionist person to work with. He quit his successful TV series Hell Town (1985) when his personal demons became overwhelming. After a self-imposed exile of nearly eight years, during which he struggled to right his life, he successfully returned to films and television work, appearing renewed and more confident in himself and his work.
In 2001, though, the murder of his wife, Bonnie Bakley, thrust Blake into the limelight in a different way. Admittedly having married Bakley through the coercion of her pregnancy, a routine Bakley had apparently tried with various other celebrities, Blake made no denial of his distaste for the woman, but was by all accounts thrilled with the daughter born to them. Blake was arrested for his wife's murder, but the presumption of innocence trumped when jurors didn't believe what they thought was flimsy evidence, and Blake was acquitted in a trial that made worldwide headlines. Reportedly broke from legal costs, Blake indicated hopefulness that he might be allowed to return to acting work.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command.
However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983), Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).
As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema.
Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Bianca Jagger, Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John. In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.1933 -
Nominations:
Worst Actor - Dressed to Kill (1980) and The Island (1980)
Worst Supporting Actor - Jaws: The Revenge (1987)- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. His parents, Bryna (Sanglel) and Herschel Danielovitch, were Jewish immigrants from Chavusy, Mahilyow Voblast (now in Belarus). Although growing up in a poor ghetto, Douglas was a fine student and a keen athlete and wrestled competitively during his time at St. Lawrence University. Professional wrestling helped pay for his studies as did working on the side as a waiter and a bellboy. However, he soon identified an acting scholarship as a way out of his meager existence, and was sufficiently talented to gain entry into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in "Spring Again" before his career was interrupted by World War II. He joining the United States Navy in 1941, and then after the end of hostilities in 1945, returned to the theater and some radio work. On the insistence of ex-classmate Lauren Bacall, movie producer Hal B. Wallis screen-tested Douglas and cast him in the lead role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). His performance received rave reviews and further work quickly followed, including an appearance in the low-key drama I Walk Alone (1947), the first time he worked alongside fellow future screen legend Burt Lancaster. Such was the strong chemistry between the two that they appeared in seven films together, including the dynamic western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), the John Frankenheimer political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) and their final pairing in the gangster comedy Tough Guys (1986). Douglas once said about his good friend: "I've finally gotten away from Burt Lancaster. My luck has changed for the better. I've got nice-looking girls in my films now."
After appearing in "I Walk Alone," Douglas scored his first Oscar nomination playing the untrustworthy and opportunistic boxer Midge Kelly in the gripping Champion (1949). The quality of his work continued to garner the attention of critics and he was again nominated for Oscars for his role as a film producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and as tortured painter Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), both directed by Vincente Minnelli. In 1955, Douglas launched his own production company, Bryna Productions, the company behind two pivotal film roles in his career. The first was as French army officer Col. Dax in director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant anti-war epic Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas reunited with Kubrick for yet another epic, the magnificent Spartacus (1960). The film also marked a key turning point in the life of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. At Douglas' insistence, Trumbo was given on-screen credit for his contributions, which began the dissolution of the infamous blacklisting policies begun almost a decade previously that had destroyed so many careers and lives.
Douglas remained busy throughout the 1960s, starring in many films. He played a rebellious modern-day cowboy in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), acted alongside John Wayne in the World War II story In Harm's Way (1965), again with The Duke in a drama about the Israeli fight for independence, Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), and once more with Wayne in the tongue-in-cheek western The War Wagon (1967). Additionally in 1963, he starred in an onstage production of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but despite his keen interest, no Hollywood studio could be convinced to bring the story to the screen. However, the rights remained with the Douglas clan, and Kirk's talented son Michael Douglas finally filmed the tale in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson. Into the 1970s, Douglas wasn't as busy as previous years; however, he starred in some unusual vehicles, including alongside a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in the loopy western comedy The Villain (1979), then with Farrah Fawcett in the sci-fi thriller Saturn 3 (1980) and then he traveled to Australia for the horse opera/drama The Man from Snowy River (1982).
Unknown to many, Kirk has long been involved in humanitarian causes and has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the US State Department since 1963. His efforts were rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1981), and with the Jefferson Award (1983). Furthermore, the French honored him with the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. More recognition followed for his work with the American Cinema Award (1987), the German Golden Kamera Award (1987), The National Board of Reviews Career Achievement Award (1989), an honorary Academy Award (1995), Recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award (1999) and the UCLA Medal of Honor (2002). Despite a helicopter crash and a stroke suffered in the 1990s, he remained active and continued to appear in front of the camera. Until his passing on February 5 2020 at the age of 103, he and Olivia de Havilland were the last surviving major stars from the Golden Years of Hollywood.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Richard Dreyfuss is an American leading man, who has played his fair share of irritating pests and brash, ambitious hustlers.
He was born Richard Stephen Dreyfus in Brooklyn, New York, to Geraldine (Robbins), an activist, and Norman Dreyfus, a restaurateur and attorney. His paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and his mother's family was Russian Jewish.
Richard worked his way up through bit parts (The Graduate (1967), for one) and TV before gaining attention with his portrayal of Baby Face Nelson in John Milius' Dillinger (1973). He gained prominence as a college-bound young man in American Graffiti (1973) and as a nervy Jewish kid with high hopes in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974). By the latter part of the 1970s Dreyfuss was established as a major star, playing leads (and alter-egos) for Steven Spielberg in two of the top-grossing films of the that decade: Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He won a Best Actor Oscar in his first romantic lead as an out-of-work actor in The Goodbye Girl (1977). Dreyfuss also produced and starred in the entertaining private eye movie The Big Fix (1978). After a brief lull in the early 1980s, a well-publicized drug problem and a string of box-office disappointments (The Competition (1980), Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981), The Buddy System (1984)), a clean and sober Dreyfuss re-established himself in the mid-'80s as one of Hollywood's more engaging leads. He co-starred with Bette Midler and Nick Nolte in Paul Mazursky's popular Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). That same year he provided the narration and appeared in the opening and closing "bookends" of Rob Reiner's nostalgic Stand by Me (1986). He quickly followed that with Nuts (1987) opposite Barbra Streisand, Barry Levinson's Tin Men (1987) in a memorable teaming with Danny DeVito, and Stakeout (1987) with Emilio Estevez. Dreyfuss continued working steadily through the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, most notably in Mazursky's farce Moon Over Parador (1988), Spielberg's Always (1989), Postcards from the Edge (1990) and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990). He appeared as a member of an ensemble that included Holly Hunter, Gena Rowlands and Danny Aiello in the romantic comedy Once Around (1991) and as a pop psychiatrist, the author of several successful self-help books, who is driven to the edge by nutcase Bill Murray in the popular comedy What About Bob? (1991). Dreyfuss has also remained active in the theater ("Death and Maiden", 1992) and on TV. In his next project he starred the thriller Silent Fall (1994) with John Lithgow and Linda Hamilton, being the film debut of Liv Tyler, Steven Tyler's daughter (Aerosmith's lead vocals). Just later Dreyfuss made Another Stakeout (1993), sequel of Stakeout (1987) where was team again with Emilio Estevez accompanied of Rosie O'Donnell, the adaptation of Neil Simon's play Lost in Yonkers (1993) and followed with a supporting turn as the querulous political opponent in The American President (1995). Dreyfuss received some of the best notices of his career as a determined, inspiring music teacher coping with a deaf son and the demands of his career in Mr. Holland's Opus (1995). Closing the 20th century he was in Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan (1996) with Andy Garcia, the crime comedy Mad Dog Time (1996) as the mob boss Vic, the screwball comedy Krippendorf's Tribe (1998) about an anthropologist who creates a false lost New Guinea tribe for not losing his job in the university, TV movie Lansky (1999) about the infamous mob boss to end, the too TV movie Fail Safe (2000) playing The President, and The Crew (2000), about four older mobsters retired in Miami, partnering with Hollywood legends Burt Reynolds, Dan Hedaya and Seymour Cassel.
His start in the 21st century was with the adaption of Luis Sepúlveda's novel The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (2001), playing an old man to must to hunt a female jaguar turned crazy. It was followed by the supporting apparition in the comedy Who Is Cletis Tout? (2001) and another TV movie about 1981 Ronald Reagan's shooting The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001). After the short-lived TV series The Education of Max Bickford (2001) about a teacher in a women's college where his daughter is student, Dreyfuss returned to cinema in Silver City (2004) and the box-office bomb Poseidon (2006) with Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum and Josh Lucas. Playing former vice-president Dick Cheney in the Oliver Stone's biopic W. (2008) and Irv, the cunning tourist in Greece turned in assistant of a troubled tour guide in My Life in Ruins (2009), Dreyfuss participated in low-budget productions as Leaves of Grass (2009) and The Lightkeepers (2009), for making a cameo in the wild and crazy Piranha 3D (2010) about prehistoric men-eater piranhas that make a bloodbath in a spring break. Returning to first line playing evil Alexander Dunning in the actioner RED (2010), his further productions included Paranoia (2013) as Liam Hemsworth's father partnering Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, road movie Cas & Dylan (2013) opposites Tatiana Maslany and the biopic TV mini-series Madoff (2016) about the infamous multi-billion-dollar and hustler Bernie Madoff. Tireless and always implied in new projects, Dreyfuss played George, the funny online date of Candice Bergen in Book Club (2018), the comedy and road movie The Last Laugh (2019) with Chevy Chase, and the set in wilderness thriller Daughter of the Wolf (2019) with Gina Carano and Brendan Fehr. Making his 73rd birthday in 2020, Dreyfuss is an example of talent, diversity and love for his work, touching not only all the genres in cinema but leaving an unforgettable footprint at any of them.- Actor
- Composer
- Producer
Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre, invited by Laurence Olivier, who could see the talent in Hopkins. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967).
From this moment on, he enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. Many successes came later, and Hopkins' remarkable acting style reached the four corners of the world. In 1977, he appeared in two major films: A Bridge Too Far (1977) with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell. In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980). Two good television literature adaptations followed: Othello (1981) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982). In 1987 he was awarded with the Commander of the order of the British Empire. This year was also important in his cinematic life, with 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), acclaimed by specialists. In 1993, he was knighted.
In the 1990s, Hopkins acted in movies like Desperate Hours (1990) and Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). His most remarkable film, however, was The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He also got a B.A.F.T.A. for this role.1937 -
Nominations:
Worst Actor - A Change of Seasons (1980)
Worst Supporting Actor - Collide (2016) and Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Caitlyn Marie Jenner was born William Bruce Jenner on October 28, 1949 in Mount Kisco, New York and raised in Sleepy Hollow, New York to Esther Jenner & William Jenner. Jenner played college football for the Graceland Yellowjackets before incurring a knee injury that required surgery. Convinced by Olympic decathlete Jack Parker's coach, L.D. Weldon, to try the decathlon, Jenner had a six-year decathlon career, culminating in winning the men's decathlon event at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, setting a third successive world record and gaining fame as "an all-American hero". Given the unofficial title of "world's greatest athlete", Jenner established a career in television, film, writing, auto racing, business, and as a Playgirl cover model.
Jenner has six children with three successive wives-Chrystie Crownover, Linda Thompson, and Kris Jenner-and from 2007 to 2021 appeared on the reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians with Kris, their daughters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, and Kris's other children Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob Kardashian.
Jenner publicly came out as a trans woman in April 2015, announcing her new name in July. From 2015 to 2016, she starred in the reality television series I Am Cait, which focused on her gender transition. She has been called the most famous transgender woman in the world. Jenner is a transgender rights activist, although her views on transgender issues have been criticized by many other trans and LGBTQ+ activists.
A member of the Republican Party, she ran as a replacement candidate in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election. The recall failed, and she only received 1% of the vote, finishing in 13th place among the candidates running to replace governor Gavin Newsom. 6 months after the election, Jenner was hired by Fox News as an on-air contributor.- Actor
- Producer
Actor Sam J. Jones was born in Chicago, Illinois but grew up in Sacramento, California. He was educated at Mira Loma High School in Sacramento and went on to serve as a United States Marine. Jones made his screen debut in Blake Edwards' comedy film 10 (1979). In 1980, he was cast in the iconic role of Flash Gordon in the cult classic of the same name, Flash Gordon (1980). A solid acting career in mostly television roles followed. Jones came back to moviegoers attention, making a cameo as a version of himself in the comedy film Ted (2012).- Actress
- Producer
- Director
"Want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." If you have not heard of Brooke Shields before, this tagline from her Calvin Klein Jeans ad had to grab your attention. Not that she has not had a previously noteworthy resume. She was born on May 31, 1965 in New York City, to Teri (Schmon) and Frank Shields. At age 12, she starred as a child prostitute in Pretty Baby (1978). Could this movie even be made today? It was considered risky and controversial in 1978. It was followed by another blockbuster, the romance adventure drama The Blue Lagoon (1980). Brooke has proved herself to be so much more than her early films. Her broad range of work as an adult would be quite an achievement for anyone, especially given how difficult transitioning from child actor to adult often is.
She has never stopped working, whether it be a Bob Hope Christmas special, her own sitcom Suddenly Susan (1996) or as an author. She also managed to work on a degree from Princeton University. She has received a number of awards during her career, most notably The People's Choice award for 1981 through 1984 in the category of Favorite Young Performer. In 1997, she was honored again with The People's Choice award for Favorite Female Performer in a New Television Series in 1997 for her work in Suddenly Susan (1996). In her personal life, she was married in 1997 to tennis player Andre Agassi and was devastated when they divorced two years later. She married for the second time in 2001 to Chris Henchy. She has been open about using fertility treatments to become pregnant with their daughter, Rowan, born in 2003.
When suffering debilitating depression after the birth of her daughter, she made the decision to put her feelings down on paper. Her book, "Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression," takes a hard, honest look at what she and many other women experience after childbirth. She still lives in New York City, and is still sought after for work in movies, television, and on stage. Pretty nice list of achievements for the once Calvin Klein jeans girl.1965 -
Wins:
Worst Actress - The Blue Lagoon (1980)
Worst Supporting Actor - Sahara (1983)
Worst Supporting Actress - Speed Zone (1989)
Nominations:
Worst Actress - Endless Love (1981)
Worst Actress - Sahara (1983)
Worst Actress of the Decade (1989)
Worst Actress of the Century (1999)- Nancy Anne Allen was born and raised in the Bronx borough of New York City, the youngest of three children. Her father, Eugene Allen, was a New York police lieutenant. At a young age, she trained for a dancing career at the High School of Performing Arts, and then attended Jose Quintano's School for Young Professionals. In dozens of television commercials from the age of 15, Nancy made her first film appearance in The Last Detail (1973) with Jack Nicholson. Three years later, she furnished the standard for all future bitch-goddess teenagers as Chris Hargensen in Stephen King's Carrie (1976), taken to the big screen by director Brian De Palma. Nancy then married De Palma in 1979. She next appeared in Steven Spielberg's I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978); for the next few years, she appeared only in De Palma's films: Home Movies (1979), Dressed to Kill (1980), and she starred with John Travolta in Blow Out (1981).
After her divorce from De Palma in 1984, Nancy's film opportunities were supposedly narrowed, but then she surprised the whole world when she performed as Officer Anne Lewis in the sci-fi cult film RoboCop (1987), along with Peter Weller. Here, she furnished another standard as a tough but at the same time feminine policewoman, whose sex would not interfere with her actions. After the success of Robocop (1987), she performed as Patricia Gardner in the second sequel Poltergeist III (1988). She came back in RoboCop 2 (1990) and in order to get more involved with her character, Nancy learned martial arts and police training for real. She returned again in RoboCop 3 (1993), though her co-star Peter Weller did not this time. In 1993, Nancy joined several other veteran stars in Acting on Impulse (1993), and married co-star Craig Shoemaker, in the same year. A few years later, she divorced Craig and some time after she married again.
She later appeared in some diverse films: Dusting Cliff 7 (1997), Secret of the Andes (1998), Circuit (2001), and she had a guest appearance in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (1998). Her last performance was for the television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), in the episode "Escape" aired on December 2, 2003. Allen has appeared in a number of documentaries about her most famous films, including Dressed to Kill (1980), Carrie (1976), Blow Out (1981), Poltergeist III (1988), and the RoboCop trilogy. She also hosted Andrew J. Kuehn's horror film documentary Terror in the Aisles (1984), along with Donald Pleasence.
Interested in projecting the image of a strong but at the same time feminine woman, she managed to get away from the victim roles she was always offered, she also was able to get away from the stereotype of the beautiful but dumb woman in most action films. She is an environmentalist that traded her Volvo car for an Hybrid car in order to furnish the example. She is also an activist against breast cancer along with her friend actress Wendie Jo Sperber, who created the foundation WeSpark. Her last appearance on television was on the Inside E! story of her co-star John Travolta and the A&E Biography of Travolta - both appearances in 2004. Nowadays, Allen lives a quiet life along with her family and friends somewhere in the United States. - Actress
- Producer
- Director
An icy, elegant blonde with a knack for playing complex and strong-willed female leads, enormously popular actress Faye Dunaway starred in several films which defined what many would come to call Hollywood's "second Golden Age." During her tenure at the top of the box office, she was a more than capable match for some of the biggest macho stars of the 1970s. Then an overwrought turn in the disastrous biopic Mommie Dearest (1981) effectively derailed her career - but, at the same time, made her a bit of a camp favorite in the gay community - though she's been afforded infrequent opportunities worthy of her talent since that unfortunate halt.
Born prematurely on Jan. 14, 1941 in Bascom, FL, Dorothy Faye Dunaway was the daughter of MacDowell Dunaway, Jr., a career Army officer, and his wife, Grace April Smith. After a stint as a teenaged beauty queen in Florida, she intended to pursue education at the University of Florida, but switched to acting, earning her degree from Boston University in 1962. She was given the enviable task of choosing between a Fulbright Scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts or a role in the Broadway production of "A Man For All Seasons" as a member of the American National Theatre and Academy. She picked the latter, enjoying a fruitful stage career for the next two years, which was capped by appearances in "After the Fall" and "Hogan's Goat." The latter - an off-Broadway production in 1967 - required Dunaway to tumble down a flight of steps in every performance, earning her a screen debut in the wan counterculture comedy The Happening (1967). Just five months after its release, however, she was wowing audiences across the country as Depression-era bank robber Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn's controversial Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Her turn as the naïve but trigger-happy and sexually aggressive Parker earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, and provided a direct route to the front of the line for Hollywood leading ladies in an unbelievably short amount of time.
Dunaway followed this success with another hit, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), in which her coolly sensual insurance investigator generated considerable sparks with playboy and jewel thief Steve McQueen. She then bounced between arthouse efforts like Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), directed by her ex-boyfriend, photographer Jerry Schatzberg, and the revisionist Western 'Doc' (1971), as well as big-budget efforts like Little Big Man (1970), which cast her as a predatory preacher's wife with designs on Dustin Hoffman's reluctant Native American hero. Dunaway also balanced these projects with several well-regarded theatrical productions, including a 1972-73 stint as Blanche Du Bois in "A Streetcar Named Desire," and notable TV-movies like The Woman I Love (1972), which cast her as the Duchess of Windsor, and TV broadcasts of Hogan's Goat (1971) and After the Fall (1974). But her turn as the duplicitous Lady De Winter in Richard Lester's splashy, slapstick take on The Three Musketeers (1973) and its sequel The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974) preceded a long period of critical and box office hits, starting with her masterful performance in Chinatown (1974).
Dunaway's turn as Evelyn Mulwray, the mysterious woman who draws detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) into a dark and complicated web of murder, incest, and catastrophic business deals, seemed the epitome of every femme fatale to ever stride across a chiaroscuro-lit scene in classic noir. But Dunaway also found the horribly wounded core of her character as well, and turned Evelyn from a pastiche to a full-blown and emotionally resonant human being. Critics and award groups rushed to nominate Dunaway for the role, and she netted her second Academy Award nod, as well as Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. Dunaway had fought hard for her performance - her battles with director Roman Polanski were no secret - but sadly, she lost the Oscar to Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). However, it would be Dunaway's performance which stood the test of time.
High-gloss turns in The Towering Inferno (1974) and Sydney Pollack's political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975) preceded one of her best television performances; that of Depression-era radio preacher Aimee Semple MacPherson in The Disappearance of Aimee (1976). Even more startling was her sterling role in Network (1976), Paddy Chayefsky's blistering take on the television industry. Dunaway pulled out all the stops as an executive on the rise who stops at nothing to advance her career - even bedding veteran producer William Holden. Critics again rose in unison to praise Dunaway, and she finally netted an Oscar for the role, as well as a Golden Globe.
Surprisingly, Dunaway's career began to falter after her Oscar win. She was effective as a fashion photographer who experiences disturbing visions in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), but was wasted in thankless roles as the dissatisfied ex of washed-up boxer Jon Voight in The Champ (1979) and wife to Frank Sinatra's detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). And then came Mommie Dearest (1981), director Frank Perry's biopic of actress Joan Crawford based on the tell-all book by her daughter Christina Crawford. Crawford herself had praised Dunaway in the early stages of her career, and while some critics gave positive reviews to her performance - in particular, the extent to which she physically transformed herself into Crawford - most fixated on the hysterical dialogue and garish scenes of child abuse. Clips of Dunaway as Crawford bellowing "No more wire hangers!" became immediate laugh-getters on late-night television, and a substantial gay following rose up in response to the film's high camp value. Dunaway, however, found none of the response amusing, and later admitted her regret in taking the role. Whether laughable or pure genius, no one could deny that Dunaway threw her everything into the role. The film's continued cult success proved she had succeeded in becoming Crawford.
The fallout from "Mommie Dearest" obscured Dunaway's follow-up projects, which included the title role in the TV-movie Evita Peron (1981) and a return to Broadway in 1982's "The Curse of an Aching Heart". Discouraged, she moved to London with her second husband, photographer Terry O'Neill, who had also served as a producer on "Mommie Dearest." For the next few years, Dunaway appeared sporadically in films, most of which underscored her newly minted status as a camp icon. The Wicked Lady (1983) was an absurd, near-softcore period drama by Michael Winner, with Dunaway as an 18th-century highway robber. Fans of her early dramatic work were similarly aghast by her turn as a shrieking witch battling Helen Slater's Girl of Steel in Supergirl (1984). Only a Golden Globe-winning appearance in the cumbersome miniseries Ellis Island (1984) offered any respite from the negative press which now continued to follow her.
Dunaway returned to the United States in 1987 following her divorce from O'Neill, and attempted to rebuild her career and reputation by appearing in several independent dramas. She was widely praised for her performance as a once-glamorous woman felled by alcohol in Barbet Schroeder's Barfly (1987), and served as executive producer and star of Cold Sassy Tree (1989), a TV adaptation of the popular novel by Olive Ann Burns about an independent-minded woman who romances a recently widowed store owner (Richard Widmark). Dunaway was exceptionally busy for the remainder of the decade in both major Hollywood features and independent fare, though her strong women now occasionally sported an unfortunate shrill side. She was Robert Duvall's frosty wife in the dystopian thriller The Handmaid's Tale (1990) and contributed a vocal cameo as Evelyn Mulwray in The Two Jakes (1990), the ill-fated sequel to "Chinatown". Other notable performances came as the unhappy wife of psychiatrist Marlon Brando in Don Juan DeMarco (1994), as the daughter of imprisoned Klansman Gene Hackman in The Chamber (1996), and as a bartender caught in the middle of a hostage standoff in Kevin Spacey's Albino Alligator (1996). She later received Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations as the matron of a wealthy Jewish family in turmoil in The Twilight of the Golds (1996). Perhaps her best turn of the decade was as a seductive murderess who attempts to sway the unflappable Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) in It's All in the Game (1993), which earned her a 1994 Emmy. She won her third Golden Globe as modeling agency head Wilhelmina Cooper in the biopic Gia (1998), starring Angelina Jolie as doomed model Gia Carangi.
The 1990s were also not without incident for Dunaway. She was embroiled in an ugly lawsuit against Andrew Lloyd Webber after he closed a Los Angeles production of his musical version of "Sunset Blvd." with claims that she was unable to sing to his standards. The suit was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. A national tour of Terrence McNally's "Master Class", about the legendary opera diva Maria Callas, ended with her involvement in a suit over legal rights to the play. The project was expected to become her next great film role but remained uncompleted more than a decade after the 1996 tour. Her attempt at sitcom stardom in It Had to Be You (1993), co-starring Robert Urich, was met with universal disinterest, and the project was announced as being retooled without Dunaway prior to its cancellation.
Dunaway's schedule remained busy from 2000 onward, mostly in television and small independent features. She co-starred with Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix as the wife of career criminal James Caan in The Yards (2000), then made her directorial debut with the short The Yellow Bird (2001), based on the play by Tennessee Williams. Younger audiences had their first taste of Dunaway's particular star power as Ian Somerhalder's mother in The Rules of Attraction (2002), Roger Avary's amped-up adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel, before Dunaway turned up the heat as a merciless celebrity judge on the reality series The Starlet (2005).
Dunaway penned her memoirs, Looking For Gatsby, in 1995, one year before receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Attached throughout her professional career to intriguing men ranging from Lenny Bruce to Marcello Mastroianni, she was twice married; her first husband was singer Peter Wolf of the popular seventies rock group, The J. Geils Band. Liam O'Neill, her son by second husband Terry, followed in her footsteps with minor acting roles beginning in 2004. His father later dropped a bombshell in 2003 by revealing that Liam was not their biological son, but was adopted - a claim that Dunaway had previously denied.
A series of occasional roles in little-seen films followed, but Dunaway was unexpectedly thrust back into the public eye at the 2017 Academy Awards. Reunited with Warren Beatty on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of "Bonnie and Clyde," the pair were tapped to present the Best Picture award to close the night. Before proceeding onstage, Beatty was mistakenly handed a backup envelope for Best Actress in a Leading Role, which had already been won by Emma Stone for La La Land (2016). Unsure what to do when he opened the envelope and discovered the error, Beatty stalled for time and showed the card to Dunaway; misunderstanding his intent, the actress announced that the Best Picture Oscar went to "La La Land." During producer Jordan Horowitz's acceptance speech, he was informed that the actual Best Picture winner was Moonlight (2016). During the onstage chaos that ensued, Beatty delivered a heartfelt explanation and apology for the snafu while undergoing good-natured ribbing from host Jimmy Kimmel.
After her break from acting and the memorable Oscars moment, Dunaway is now back in the saddle as an actress working more frequently in her 70s. Over the past year, she has appeared in three films, starring in The Bye Bye Man (2017), The Case for Christ (2017), and Inconceivable (2017), with more projects expected to be on the way. The icon also fronts Gucci's summer 2018 ad campaign for their Sylvie handbag and has a Broadway show scheduled for 2019.1941 -
Wins:
Worst Actress - Mommie Dearest (1981)
Worst Supporting Actress - The Temp (1993)
Nominations:
Worst Actress - The First Deadly Sin (1980)
Worst Actress - The Wicked Lady (1983)
Worst Actress - Supergirl (1984)
Worst Actress of the Decade (1989)
Worst Supporting Actress - The Chamber (1996) and Dunston Checks In (1996)
Worst Supporting Actress - Albino Alligator (1996)- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Farrah Fawcett is a true Hollywood success story. Born in Texas, she was the daughter of Pauline Fawcett (Pauline Alice Evans), a homemaker, and James Fawcett, an oil field contractor. She was a natural athlete, something that her father encouraged, and she attended a high school with a strong arts program. She attended the University of Texas in Austin, graduating with a degree in Microbiology, but only wanted to be an actress.
Winning a campus beauty contest got her noticed by an agent, who encouraged her to pursue acting. After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles and her healthy, all-American blond beauty was immediately noticed. She quickly got roles in various television commercials for such products as Ultra-Brite toothpaste, and Wella Balsam shampoo, and also made appearances in some TV series. In 1968, she met another Southerner, actor Lee Majors, star of the popular TV series The Big Valley (1965), on a blind date set up by their publicists. He became very taken with her and also used his own standing to promote her career. In 1969, she made her film debut in Love Is a Funny Thing (1969). The next year, she appeared in the film adaptation of the Gore Vidal bestselling novel Myra Breckinridge (1970). The shooting was very unpleasant, with much feuding on the set, and Farrah was embarrassed by the finished film, which was a major failure. But Farrah was undamaged and continued to win roles. In 1973, she and Majors married, and the following year, she won a recurring role in the crime series, Harry O (1973). She had her first taste of major success when she won a supporting role in the science fiction film, Logan's Run (1976). She came to the attention of the highly successful producer Aaron Spelling, who was impressed by her beauty and vivacious personality. That won her a role in the TV series, Charlie's Angels (1976). She played a private investigator who works for a wealthy and mysterious businessman, along with two other glamorous female detectives, played by Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith. The show immediately became the most popular series on television, earning record ratings and a huge audience. All three actresses became very popular, but Farrah became, by far, the best known. She won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Performer in a New TV program in 1977. Her lush, free-wheeling, wavy blond hair also became a phenomenon, with millions of women begging their hairstylists to give them "The Farrah", as her hairstyle was called. Fawcett was also a savvy businesswoman, and she received 10% profit from the proceeds of her famous poster in a red swimsuit. It sold millions and she became the "It Girl" of the 1970s.
Fawcett was America's sweetheart and found herself on every celebrity magazine and pursued by photographers and fans. While she enjoyed the success and got along well with her co-stars (both of whom were also of Southern origin), she found the material lightweight. Also, the long hours she worked were beginning to take a toll on her marriage to Majors, who found himself eclipsed by her popularity. So the following year, when the show was at its peak, she left to pursue a movie career. Charlie's Angels' producers sued her, and the studios shied away from her, and she lost out on the lead role in the hit feature film Foul Play (1978) to Goldie Hawn. Eventually, she and the Charlie's Angels producers reached a settlement, where she would make guest appearances on the series. As a result of the negative publicity and some poor script choices, her career briefly hit a slow spot. In addition, she and Majors separated in 1979. She had starring roles in Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978), Sunburn (1979), and Saturn 3 (1980) (which she did a topless scene in), but all three failed financially. She appeared in the Burt Reynolds chase comedy The Cannonball Run (1981), which was successful financially, but it was met not only with bad reviews but also with bad publicity when Farrah's stunt double Heidi Von Beltz was involved in a stunt that went horribly wrong and left her a quadriplegic. Farrah's feature film career came to a halt, and she and Majors were drifting apart. In 1981, she met Ryan O'Neal, a friend of her husband's, and they began became friends and spent a great deal of time together. He also encouraged her to go back to television and she received good reviews in the well-received miniseries, Murder in Texas (1981). In 1982, she filed for divorce, which Majors readily agreed to. Soon, she and O'Neal were a couple and moved in together. She set on sights on becoming a serious dramatic actress. She took over for Susan Sarandon in the stage play, "Extremities", where she played a rape victim who turns the tables on her rapist. That, in turn, led her to her major comeback, when she starred in the searing story of a battered wife in The Burning Bed (1984), based on a true story. It garnered a very large audience, and critics gave her the best reviews she had ever received for her heartfelt performance. She was nominated for both an Emmy and Golden Globe and also became involved in helping organizations for battered women. The following year, she and O'Neal became the parents of a son, Redmond O'Neal. She tried to continue her momentum with a starring role in the feature film adaptation of Extremities (1986), and while she garnered a Golden Globe nomination, the film, itself, was not a hit.
She continued to seek out serious roles, appearing mainly on television. She scored success again in Small Sacrifices (1989), again based on a true crime. Portraying an unhappy woman who is so obsessed with the man she loves that she shoots her children to make herself available and disguises it as a carjacking, Farrah again won rave reviews and helped draw a large audience, and was nominated for an Emmy again. Shortly afterwards, she and O'Neal co-starred in Good Sports (1991), playing a couple who co-star in a sports news program, but O'Neal's performance was lambasted and only 9 episodes were aired. In 1995, she surprised her fans by posing for "Playboy" at the age of 48, it became the magazine's best-selling issue of that decade.
Her relationship with O'Neal was deteriorating, however, and in 1997, they broke up. The breakup took a toll, and she posed for Playboy again at the age of 50. To promote it, she appeared on Late Show with David Letterman (1993) and gave a rambling interview, sparking rumors of drug use. That same year, however, she made another comeback in The Apostle (1997), playing the neglected wife of a Pentacostal preacher, played by Robert Duvall. Both stars were praised and the film became a surprise hit. She also began dating James Orr, who had directed her earlier in the feature film, Man of the House (1995). An incident occurred between them in 1998, and Farrah suffered injuries. The scandal drew nationwide headlines, especially after the tabloids published photos of Farrah with her injuries. The authorities compelled Fawcett to testify against Orr in court, and he was found guilty of assault and given a minimum sentence. Embarrassed, she lowered her profile and her career lost momentum, but she continued to work in television and films. She and O'Neal also started seeing each other again, when he was diagnosed with leukemia. The new millennium brought her highs and lows. In 2000, she acted with Richard Gere in Robert Altman's film, Dr. T & the Women (2000). Her son Redmond has had problems with drug abuse and has been in and out of jail. In 2001, she lost her only sister, Diane Fawcett Walls, to cancer. In 2004, she received her third Emmy nomination for her performance in The Guardian (2003), and she starred in her own reality show, titled Chasing Farrah (2005), in 2005 along with Ryan O'Neal, but that ended after only 7 episodes. That same year, she was devastated when her beloved mother, Pauline Fawcett, died. In 2006, producer Aaron Spelling died, and she famously reunited with her Charlie's Angels co-stars, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, at the Emmys, in a tribute to him. She looked tan and healthy, but soon, she was diagnosed with anal cancer. She asked her friend Alana Stewart to accompany her and videotape her during her doctor's visits. Those video journals resulted in the documentary Farrah's Story (2009), co-executive produced by Fawcett. It aired in 2009, and viewers were shocked to see Farrah with a shaved head and in a continuous state of pain. Ryan O'Neal and Alana Stewart were constantly by her side, and her Charlie's Angels co-stars, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, also visited her, marking the final time that all three original Angels appeared together on television. The documentary became a ratings success, and it earned a Emmy nomination as Outstanding Nonfiction Special. On June 25, 2009 Farrah lost her battle with cancer and passed away at aged 62. She left the bulk of her estate to her only son Redmond, and her trust fund allowed for the creation of The Farrah Fawcett Foundation, which provides funding for cancer research and prevention. Alana Stewart is the president of the Foundation and Jaclyn Smith's husband Dr. Brad Allen is one of the Board of Directors. Ryan O'Neal and Farrah's nephew, Greg Walls, are also on the Advisory Board, keeping alive her legacy.1947 - 2009 (aged 62)
Nominations:
Worst Actress - Saturn 3 (1980)
Worst Supporting Actress - The Cannonball Run (1981)- Actress
- Director
- Producer
Sondra Locke was born May 28, 1944 as Sandra Louise Smith, in Shelbyville, Tennessee, a quiet little town about 60 miles southeast of Nashville. She was the daughter of Raymond Smith, a military man stationed at nearby Tullahoma, and Pauline Bayne. Smith departed the scene before Sondra's birth. In 1945, her mother wed William B. Elkins, and together they had a son, Donald, on April 26, 1946. The short union ended in divorce. In 1948, Bayne remarried. Alfred Locke bestowed his surname on Pauline's children and raised them as his own. Sondra's stepfather was a carpenter; her mother worked in a pencil factory. For the smart, fanciful Locke, "My childhood felt as if I had been dropped off at an extended summer camp from which I was waiting to be picked up." The bright girl loved to read, which puzzled her simple mother, who was always pushing her to spend more time outside. Sondra's happiest moments occurred on weekend visits to the local movie theater.
Locke was a cheerleader in junior high and graduated valedictorian of Shelbyville Mills' 1957-1958 eighth grade class. At Shelbyville Central High School, the "classroom was the one place where I felt like I had a chance to prove myself and I continued to excel. I felt safe there and I liked it." Her best friend was classmate Gordon Anderson, the son of a teacher, whose family had relocated to the area from Arkansas around 1953. He was a fey young man, who shared many of Sondra's fanciful hopes about the future and was her collaborator in devising harmless ways to make their lives in Shelbyville more magical. One of the duo's frequent activities was making home movies with Gordon's Super 8 camera.
When Gordon attended Middle Tennessee State University (in Murfreesboro, about 30 miles from Nashville) in 1962, Sondra enrolled there too. Upon completing freshman year, Sondra had a blowup with her mother, left home, and did not return to college. Instead, she worked in Nashville as a promotions assistant for WSM-TV, with occasional modeling and voiceover work. While in Nashville, Locke began acting in community theater as a member of Circle Players Inc. Along the way she dated George Crook, a cameraman from WSM, and Brad Crandall, head of the station's public relations department. She also enjoyed a romance with law student Gary Gober, whom she had been in plays with. Meanwhile, Gordon revealed to her that he was homosexual. He went off to Manhattan to study acting and, for a while, had a lover there. Anderson was talented but unfocused about his theater craft and eventually returned to Tennessee. Because of Locke's spiritual kinship with Anderson, she and Gordon decided to wed. The mixed-orientation couple were married at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville on September 25, 1967. (Reputedly, the marriage was never consummated.)
If Gordon was unable to launch his own acting career, he had no such problems igniting Sondra's. Months before their wedding, he learned that Warner Bros. was holding a nationwide search for a young actress to play a key role in the screen adaptation of Carson McCullers' novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968). Anderson helped Locke research the part of Mick, a teenage waif in a southern town who befriends a suicidal deaf-mute (Alan Arkin) boarding at the house where she lives. For the audition, in Birmingham, Alabama, Gordon bleached her eyebrows, bound her bosom and carefully fixed her hair, makeup and outfit so that she would instantly impress casting agents. The ploy succeeded, and, after several callbacks, Locke -- who lied about her age to seem younger -- was hired. The movie was released in the summer of 1968 and earned respectful reviews from critics, although many filmgoers found the picture too arty. Sondra was Oscar-nominated for her sensitive portrayal.
Next, Sondra moved to Los Angeles, with Gordon in tow. She hoped to parlay her Academy Award nomination into further movie assignments. The big-eyed, wiry bottle blonde found it difficult to win choice roles, making her accept lesser projects, the most famous of which was Willard (1971), a film about marauding rats. Cover Me Babe (1970), A Reflection of Fear (1972) and The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974) faded into cinematic obscurity. In the lattermost, Locke played a Christ figure and had torrid love scenes with Paul Sand. Episodic television provided steadier acting opportunities: the anthology program Night Gallery (1969) and dramatic series including The F.B.I. (1965), Cannon (1971), Kung Fu (1972) and Barnaby Jones (1973). Thanks in part to the limited media of the time, she was able to maintain the ruse of younger age, which no doubt extended her shelf-life amid professional lulls. It was in 1972 that she first met rising kingpin Clint Eastwood when he was preparing to direct his second feature film, Breezy (1973). For the title role, Locke was passed over in favor of nine-years-younger Kay Lenz.
For half of the 1970s, the Andersons resided at West Hollywood's Andalusia condominium complex whilst seeing other people. For a time, Sondra was involved with Bruce Davison, her co-star from Willard (1971). While working on the teleplay Gondola (1974), she gained a new boyfriend, sandy-haired actor Bo Hopkins. He was once divorced and shared her penchant for falsifying birthdates. In the spring of 1974, she visited the set of Hopkins' current project, The Killer Elite (1975), and networked with composer Jerry Fielding, who was about to score a new Western showcase for Clint Eastwood. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) had a role that Locke thought could revitalize her career. This time, Eastwood was responsive and hired the 31-year-old to play his romantic interest. In early October 1975, the complementary pair fell hard for each other on location in Page, Arizona. "We were almost living together from the very first days of the film," Locke remembered. Besotted Clint confided he'd never been in love before and wrote a poem for his new mate: "She made me monogamous." This serially philandering megastar was 14 years her senior and a foot taller than she.
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) was indeed a hit, with Sondra sparking a flurry of interest among male viewers as virtually nonspeaking eye candy. Yet she stopped pursuing film roles on her own initiative to assume wifely duties, appearing on the big screen exclusively in Eastwood-controlled projects thereon. The sole exception to this was The Shadow of Chikara (1977), an Arkansas-lensed Western with burly Joe Don Baker. (The home invasion thriller Death Game (1977), though released after Locke and Eastwood became an item, was actually shot in 1974.) "Clint wanted me to work only with him," she said. "He didn't like the idea of me being away from him."
Over the next few years, Locke had two abortions from her relationship with Eastwood. In 1979, she underwent a tubal ligation at UCLA to prevent further pregnancies. She and Clint settled into a $1.12 million, seven-bedroom Spanish-style Bel-Air mansion originally built in 1931, which she spent months renovating and decorating, and which she believed would be hers for life. She continued to spend platonic time with Gordon, whom she never divorced, nurtured by their spiritual relationship. Gordon moved in and out of gay relationships, and sometimes he and a boyfriend would socialize with Clint and Sondra. As for the professional side of things, Locke and Eastwood reteamed for his action opus The Gauntlet (1977), slapstick adventure-comedy Every Which Way But Loose (1978), its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), the quirky satire Bronco Billy (1980) and the fourth, darkest, most ambitious "Dirty Harry" vehicle, Sudden Impact (1983). All were stellar box office performers and cemented the twosome as filmdom's most visible couple.
During this period, Sondra took a few TV roles when Clint was starring in a movie that had no part for her to play (such as Escape from Alcatraz (1979) or Firefox (1982)). The first time she worked apart from him for any length of time since The Shadow of Chikara (1977) in 1976 was Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982). (Rosemary Clooney personally asked Locke to star in the CBS biopic on the strength of her performance in Bronco Billy (1980).) She later made an appearance on Britain's Tales of the Unexpected (1979) series. For the most part, however, she found herself sitting on the sidelines waiting for Eastwood to cast her in something.
By the mid-1980s, Sondra, over 40 but still refusing to admit it, was acutely aware that in Hollywood terms her leading lady days were just about finished. She had long been interested in film directing and had observed carefully how Eastwood and others directed the pictures she was in. With his blessing, she found a property that intrigued her and that his Malpaso production company would package, and developed it into a project for Warner Bros. She made Ratboy (1986), but despite good reviews, the film received scant distribution. In retrospect, Locke concluded that her exertion of authority over the project caused her longtime paramour to turn away from her, to find someone who was more compliant. (In an unpublicized affair with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves, Eastwood sired two legally fatherless children born in 1986 and 1988, in Monterey -- an "evil betrayal" Locke was unaware of.)
The showdown between Sondra and Clint occurred on December 29, 1988 at their mountain hideaway in Sun Valley, Idaho. After an unpleasant screaming match, Eastwood suggested Locke go back to Los Angeles. She sensed their relationship had passed a point of reconciliation, a fact confirmed when she scarcely saw Eastwood in subsequent months and when industry friends they knew in common shunned her. As she admitted later, "In my head I guess I knew it was over, but in my heart Clint and I were still not severed." On April 10, 1989, while she was directing a demanding sequence in a new police procedural, Impulse (1990), Eastwood had the locks changed on their house in Bel-Air. He also ordered her possessions to be boxed and put in storage. A letter addressed to "Mrs. Gordon Anderson," imperatively telling her not to come home, was delivered to her lawful husband's doorstep. When Gordon telephoned Sondra on the set and read her the letter, she fainted dead away in front of the cast and crew.
On April 26, 1989, Sondra filed a palimony lawsuit against her domestic partner of 14 years. Her "brazenness" in taking on the powerful Eastwood amazed and shocked Tinseltown and titillated the public. Her action sought unspecified damages and an equal division of the property she and Eastwood had acquired during their relationship. Locke asked for title to the Bel-Air home they had shared and to the Crescent Heights (West Hollywood) place Eastwood had purchased in 1982 (in which Gordon lived). The closed hearing was held on May 31, 1989, before a private judge. Before any court decision could be made, a private settlement was reached between the parties. Locke received $450,000, the Crescent Heights property, and a $1.5 million multiyear development-directing pact at Warner Bros. In return, she dropped her suit. By then, the fall of 1990, she was happy to end the hassle. (In the past months she had been diagnosed with cancer, undergone a double mastectomy, and endured chemotherapy.)
For the next three years Locke submitted over 30 projects to Warner Bros., but none received a green light to move ahead. Moreover, the studio refused to assign her to direct any of their in-house projects. In the mid-1990s, Sondra discovered evidence that Eastwood had arranged to reimburse Warner Bros. for her three-year studio contract -- a matter that he had never mentioned to her. It became obvious that the studio's negative professional attitude toward her had little or nothing to do with her directing or project-finding abilities. On June 5, 1995, Locke sued Eastwood again, alleging fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. She claimed that Clint's behind-the-scene actions had sent a message "to the film industry and the world at large ... that Locke was not to be taken seriously." (According to Sondra's lawyer, the situation was Clint's "way of terminating the earlier palimony suit.")
While Locke's case was revving up at the Burbank Courthouse, Eastwood begged her to settle. On September 24, 1996 -- the morning jurors were set to begin a second day of deliberation -- Sondra announced her decision to drop her suit against Clint for an undisclosed monetary reward. One contingency was laid down: she would not reveal the settlement amount. The jubilant plaintiff said, "This was never about money. It was about my fighting for my professional rights." According to the victor, "I didn't enjoy it. But sometimes you have to do things you don't enjoy." Locke added, "In this business, people get so accustomed to being abused, they just accept the abuse and say, 'Well, that's just the way it is.' Well, it isn't."
But Locke was not finished. She had a pending action against Warner Bros. for allegedly harming her career by agreeing to the sham movie-directing deal that Eastwood had purportedly engineered. On May 24, 1999, just as jury selection was beginning (and four days before Locke turned 55), the studio reached an out-of-court settlement with Sondra.
In the decade following her courtroom saga, Sondra did not direct another movie. She did make a brief return to acting with cameo roles in back-to-back low-budget independent features, The Prophet's Game (2000) and Clean and Narrow (2000), both of which failed to secure a theatrical release. In 2001, she sold her home in the Hollywood Hills and moved to another part of L.A. After interim flings with producer Hawk Koch and John F. Kennedy's nephew Robert Shriver, she had a live-in relationship with one of the physicians who had treated her during her cancer siege. Dr. Scott Cunneen, described by Locke as "Herculean," was 17 years her junior, his mother only three years older than Sondra. She eventually split up with him.
In 2016, preceded by a protracted absence from the public eye, trade press reported that Locke would come out of retirement to co-star in Alan Rudolph's Ray Meets Helen (2017) opposite Keith Carradine. The film was booked for a limited run in spring 2018. No longer able to hide her true year of birth in the post-internet era, Sondra was playing a romantic lead at the unheard of age of 74.
Locke died on November 3, 2018, of cardiac arrest stemming from metastatic breast cancer. It was not publicized until mid-December. The mysterious six-week delay raised a lot of eyebrows, especially since the belated news leaked opening day of the latest Eastwood blockbuster, The Mule (2018). According to a death certificate obtained by the media, her cancer had returned in 2015 and spread to her bones. Locke's remains were cremated at Westwood (Village) Mortuary and the ashes entrusted to her husband of 51 years. Rosanna Arquette, Frances Fisher and Evan Rachel Wood were among the celebrities who paid tribute. Despite the acrimony that followed the collapse of her famous relationship, Locke will be long remembered for her prominent roles in some of Eastwood's most popular works -- and perhaps dichotomously, as a pioneer for the rights of independent working women.- Music Artist
- Actress
- Music Department
Olivia Newton-John was an English singer and actress who was born on September 26, 1948, in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK. In 1954, her family relocated to Australia when her father was offered a job as the dean of a Presbyterian college in Melbourne. After winning a singing talent contest, she returned to England with her mother, where she resided until 1975. Her many hit singles include, "You're The One That I Want" from the movie Grease (1978), which she starred in with John Travolta. She appeared on the TV series, It's Cliff Richard (1970), as well as in the film Toomorrow (1970). For several years, she was engaged to Bruce Welch, a founding member of The Shadows, which included Cliff Richard. Welch was one of the producers of her first international hit, "If Not For You".- Valerie Ritchie Perrine is an American actress and model. For her role as Honey Bruce in the 1974 film Lenny, she won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles, the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other film appearances include Superman (1978), The Electric Horseman (1979), and Superman II (1980).
- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Deborah Raffin was born on 13 March 1953 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Death Wish 3 (1985), God Told Me To (1976) and Touched by Love (1980). She was married to Michael Viner. She died on 21 November 2012 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Talia Rose Shire is an American actress who played roles as Connie Corleone in The Godfather films and Adrian Balboa in the Rocky series. For her work in The Godfather Part II and Rocky, Shire was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, respectively, and for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama for her role in Rocky.1946 -
Nominations:
Worst Actress - Windows (1980)
Worst Supporting Actress - Rocky IV (1985)
Worst Actress - Rocky V (1990)- John Adames in an American actor born in 1972 and best remembered for cinema lovers as the young kid rescued by Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes' film Gloria (1980). As Phil Dawn, Adames is protected by the title character who tries to save him from the mobsters who killed his parents and the duo has on their hands a book that the gangsters want and are willing to kill for it. His performance is a matter of debate, some say it was good and others claimed that it was bad. As final result, Adames won a Razzie Awards as Worst Supporting Actor (tied with Laurence Olivier for The Jazz Singer) and a nomination on the same category for The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. After the movie, he quit the movie industry and later in the early 2000's he became a manager of Soho Billiards in New York City, the city he was born and lived most of his life.
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.
One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsingør), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).
There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.
In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.
More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).1907 - 1989 (aged 82)
Wins:
Worst Supporting Actor - The Jazz Singer (1980)
Worst Actor - Inchon (1981)- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), all American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was Brando. It was if the shadow of John Barrymore, the great American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom, dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and Fredric March. Only the luster of Spencer Tracy's reputation hasn't dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However, neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by the force of his personality. Brando did.
Marlon Brando, Jr. was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr., a calcium carbonate salesman, and his artistically inclined wife, the former Dorothy Julia Pennebaker. "Bud" Brando was one of three children. His ancestry included English, Irish, German, Dutch, French Huguenot, Welsh, and Scottish; his surname originated with a distant German immigrant ancestor named "Brandau." His oldest sister Jocelyn Brando was also an actress, taking after their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was a visual artist. Both Brando sisters contrived to leave the Midwest for New York City, Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to escape the vocational doldrums forecast for him by his cold, distant father and his disapproving schoolteachers by striking out for The Big Apple in 1943, following Jocelyn into the acting profession. Acting was the only thing he was good at, for which he received praise, so he was determined to make it his career - a high-school dropout, he had nothing else to fall back on, having been rejected by the military due to a knee injury he incurred playing football at Shattuck Military Academy, Brando Sr.'s alma mater. The school booted Marlon out as incorrigible before graduation.
Acting was a skill he honed as a child, the lonely son of alcoholic parents. With his father away on the road, and his mother frequently intoxicated to the point of stupefaction, the young Bud would play-act for her to draw her out of her stupor and to attract her attention and love. His mother was exceedingly neglectful, but he loved her, particularly for instilling in him a love of nature, a feeling which informed his character Paul in Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris") when he is recalling his childhood for his young lover Jeanne. "I don't have many good memories," Paul confesses, and neither did Brando of his childhood. Sometimes he had to go down to the town jail to pick up his mother after she had spent the night in the drunk tank and bring her home, events that traumatized the young boy but may have been the grain that irritated the oyster of his talent, producing the pearls of his performances. Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning co-star in Viva Zapata! (1952) told Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it."
Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the "emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture.
Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in "I Remember Mama," a great success. As a young Broadway actor, Brando was invited by talent scouts from several different studios to screen-test for them, but he turned them down because he would not let himself be bound by the then-standard seven-year contract. Brando would make his film debut quite some time later in Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950) for producer Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic soldier, Brando brought new levels of realism to the screen, expanding on the verisimilitude brought to movies by Group Theatre alumni John Garfield, the predecessor closest to him in the raw power he projected on-screen. Ironically, it was Garfield whom producer Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to play the lead in a new Tennessee Williams play she was about to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Burt Lancaster was next approached, but couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had directed to great effect in Maxwell Anderson's play "Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with Karl Malden, who was to remain a close friend for the next 60 years.
During the production of "Truckline Café," Kazan had found that Brando's presence was so magnetic, he had to re-block the play to keep Marlon near other major characters' stage business, as the audience could not take its eyes off of him. For the scene where Brando's character re-enters the stage after killing his wife, Kazan placed him upstage-center, partially obscured by scenery, but where the audience could still see him as Karl Malden and others played out their scene within the café set. When he eventually entered the scene, crying, the effect was electric. A young Pauline Kael, arriving late to the play, had to avert her eyes when Brando made this entrance as she believed the young actor on stage was having a real-life conniption. She did not look back until her escort commented that the young man was a great actor.
The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be attributed to his youthful ignorance. Brando ultimately was dissatisfied with his performance, though, saying he never was able to bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter, broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred, smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.
For his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley because Jessica Tandy was too shrill. He thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness and nymphomania. Brando's appearance as Stanley on stage and on screen revolutionized American acting by introducing "The Method" into American consciousness and culture. Method acting, rooted in Adler's study at the Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavsky's theories that she subsequently introduced to the Group Theatre, was a more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the actor with the character's emotions. Adler took first place among Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from an unsophisticated Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.
Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Brando denounced Strasberg in his autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me" (1994), saying that he was a talentless exploiter who claimed he had been Brando's mentor. The Actors Studio had been founded by Strasberg along with Kazan and Stella Adler's husband, Harold Clurman, all Group Theatre alumni, all political progressives deeply committed to the didactic function of the stage. Brando credits his knowledge of the craft to Adler and Kazan, while Kazan in his autobiography "A Life" claimed that Brando's genius thrived due to the thorough training Adler had given him. Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience
Interestingly, Elia Kazan believed that Brando had ruined two generations of actors, his contemporaries and those who came after him, all wanting to emulate the great Brando by employing The Method. Kazan felt that Brando was never a Method actor, that he had been highly trained by Adler and did not rely on gut instincts for his performances, as was commonly believed. Many a young actor, mistaken about the true roots of Brando's genius, thought that all it took was to find a character's motivation, empathize with the character through sense and memory association, and regurgitate it all on stage to become the character. That's not how the superbly trained Brando did it; he could, for example, play accents, whereas your average American Method actor could not. There was a method to Brando's art, Kazan felt, but it was not The Method.
After A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which he received the first of his eight Academy Award nominations, Brando appeared in a string of Academy Award-nominated performances - in Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953) and the summit of his early career, Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954). For his "Waterfront" portrayal of meat-headed longshoreman Terry Malloy, the washed-up pug who "coulda been a contender," Brando won his first Oscar. Along with his iconic performance as the rebel-without-a-cause Johnny in The Wild One (1953) ("What are you rebelling against?" Johnny is asked. "What have ya got?" is his reply), the first wave of his career was, according to Jon Voight, unprecedented in its audacious presentation of such a wide range of great acting. Director John Huston said his performance of Marc Antony was like seeing the door of a furnace opened in a dark room, and co-star John Gielgud, the premier Shakespearean actor of the 20th century, invited Brando to join his repertory company.
It was this period of 1951-54 that revolutionized American acting, spawning such imitators as James Dean - who modeled his acting and even his lifestyle on his hero Brando - the young Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. After Brando, every up-and-coming star with true acting talent and a brooding, alienated quality would be hailed as the "New Brando," such as Warren Beatty in Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961). "We are all Brando's children," Jack Nicholson pointed out in 1972. "He gave us our freedom." He was truly "The Godfather" of American acting - and he was just 30 years old. Though he had a couple of failures, like Désirée (1954) and The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), he was clearly miscast in them and hadn't sought out the parts so largely escaped blame.
In the second period of his career, 1955-62, Brando managed to uniquely establish himself as a great actor who also was a Top 10 movie star, although that star began to dim after the box-office high point of his early career, Sayonara (1957) (for which he received his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination). Brando tried his hand at directing a film, the well-reviewed One-Eyed Jacks (1961) that he made for his own production company, Pennebaker Productions (after his mother's maiden name). Stanley Kubrick had been hired to direct the film, but after months of script rewrites in which Brando participated, Kubrick and Brando had a falling out and Kubrick was sacked. According to his widow Christiane Kubrick, Stanley believed that Brando had wanted to direct the film himself all along.
Tales proliferated about the profligacy of Brando the director, burning up a million and a half feet of expensive VistaVision film at 50 cents a foot, fully ten times the normal amount of raw stock expended during production of an equivalent motion picture. Brando took so long editing the film that he was never able to present the studio with a cut. Paramount took it away from him and tacked on a re-shot ending that Brando was dissatisfied with, as it made the Oedipal figure of Dad Longworth into a villain. In any normal film Dad would have been the heavy, but Brando believed that no one was innately evil, that it was a matter of an individual responding to, and being molded by, one's environment. It was not a black-and-white world, Brando felt, but a gray world in which once-decent people could do horrible things. This attitude explains his sympathetic portrayal of Nazi officer Christian Diestl in the film he made before shooting One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Edward Dmytryk's filming of Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions (1958). Shaw denounced Brando's performance, but audiences obviously disagreed, as the film was a major hit. It would be the last hit movie Brando would have for more than a decade.
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) generated respectable numbers at the box office, but the production costs were exorbitant - a then-staggering $6 million - which made it run a deficit. A film essentially is "made" in the editing room, and Brando found cutting to be a terribly boring process, which was why the studio eventually took the film away from him. Despite his proved talent in handling actors and a large production, Brando never again directed another film, though he would claim that all actors essentially direct themselves during the shooting of a picture.
Between the production and release of One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando appeared in Sidney Lumet's film version of Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending," The Fugitive Kind (1960) which teamed him with fellow Oscar winners Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward. Following in Elizabeth Taylor's trailblazing footsteps, Brando became the second performer to receive a $1-million salary for a motion picture, so high were the expectations for this re-teaming of Kowalski and his creator (in 1961 critic Hollis Alpert had published a book "Brando and the Shadow of Stanley Kowalski"). Critics and audiences waiting for another incendiary display from Brando in a Williams work were disappointed when the renamed The Fugitive Kind (1960) finally released. Though Tennessee was hot, with movie versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) burning up the box office and receiving kudos from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, The Fugitive Kind (1960) was a failure. This was followed by the so-so box-office reception of One-Eyed Jacks (1961) in 1961 and then by a failure of a more monumental kind: Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), a remake of the famed 1935 film.
Brando signed on to Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) after turning down the lead in the David Lean classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) because he didn't want to spend a year in the desert riding around on a camel. He received another $1-million salary, plus $200,000 in overages as the shoot went overtime and over budget. During principal photography, highly respected director Carol Reed (an eventual Academy Award winner) was fired, and his replacement, two-time Oscar winner Lewis Milestone, was shunted aside by Brando as Marlon basically took over the direction of the film himself. The long shoot became so notorious that President John F. Kennedy asked director Billy Wilder at a cocktail party not "when" but "if" the "Bounty" shoot would ever be over. The MGM remake of one of its classic Golden Age films garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination and was one of the top grossing films of 1962, yet failed to go into the black due to its Brobdingnagian budget estimated at $20 million, which is equivalent to $120 million when adjusted for inflation.
Brando and Taylor, whose Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20th Century-Fox due to its huge cost overruns (its final budget was more than twice that of Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)), were pilloried by the show business press for being the epitome of the pampered, self-indulgent stars who were ruining the industry. Seeking scapegoats, the Hollywood press conveniently ignored the financial pressures on the studios. The studios had been hurt by television and by the antitrust-mandated divestiture of their movie theater chains, causing a large outflow of production to Italy and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s in order to lower costs. The studio bosses, seeking to replicate such blockbuster hits as the remakes of The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), were the real culprits behind the losses generated by large-budgeted films that found it impossible to recoup their costs despite long lines at the box office.
While Elizabeth Taylor, receiving the unwanted gift of reams of publicity from her adulterous romance with Cleopatra (1963) co-star Richard Burton, remained hot until the tanking of her own Tennessee Williams-renamed debacle Boom! (1968), Brando from 1963 until the end of the decade appeared in one box-office failure after another as he worked out a contract he had signed with Universal Pictures. The industry had grown tired of Brando and his idiosyncrasies, though he continued to be offered prestige projects up through 1968.
Some of the films Brando made in the 1960s were noble failures, such as The Ugly American (1963), The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). For every "Reflections," though, there seemed to be two or three outright debacles, such as Bedtime Story (1964), Morituri (1965), The Chase (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Candy (1968), The Night of the Following Day (1969). By the time Brando began making the anti-colonialist picture Burn! (1969) in Colombia with Gillo Pontecorvo in the director's chair, he was box-office poison, despite having worked in the previous five years with such top directors as Arthur Penn, John Huston and the legendary Charles Chaplin, and with such top-drawer co-stars as David Niven, Yul Brynner, Sophia Loren and Taylor.
The rap on Brando in the 1960s was that a great talent had ruined his potential to be America's answer to Laurence Olivier, as his friend William Redfield limned the dilemma in his book "Letters from an Actor" (1967), a memoir about Redfield's appearance in Burton's 1964 theatrical production of "Hamlet." By failing to go back on stage and recharge his artistic batteries, something British actors such as Burton were not afraid to do, Brando had stifled his great talent, by refusing to tackle the classical repertoire and contemporary drama. Actors and critics had yearned for an American response to the high-acting style of the Brits, and while Method actors such as Rod Steiger tried to create an American style, they were hampered in their quest, as their king was lost in a wasteland of Hollywood movies that were beneath his talent. Many of his early supporters now turned on him, claiming he was a crass sellout.
Despite evidence in such films as The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) that Brando was in fact doing some of the best acting of his life, critics, perhaps with an eye on the box office, slammed him for failing to live up to, and nurture, his great gift. Brando's political activism, starting in the early 1960s with his championing of Native Americans' rights, followed by his participation in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's March on Washington in 1963, and followed by his appearance at a Black Panther rally in 1968, did not win him many admirers in the establishment. In fact, there was a de facto embargo on Brando films in the recently segregated (officially, at least) southeastern US in the 1960s. Southern exhibitors simply would not book his films, and producers took notice. After 1968, Brando would not work for three years.
Pauline Kael wrote of Brando that he was Fortune's fool. She drew a parallel with the latter career of John Barrymore, a similarly gifted thespian with talents as prodigious, who seemingly threw them away. Brando, like the late-career Barrymore, had become a great ham, evidenced by his turn as the faux Indian guru in the egregious Candy (1968), seemingly because the material was so beneath his talent. Most observers of Brando in the 1960s believed that he needed to be reunited with his old mentor Elia Kazan, a relationship that had soured due to Kazan's friendly testimony naming names before the notorious House un-American Activities Committee. Perhaps Brando believed this, too, as he originally accepted an offer to appear as the star of Kazan's film adaptation of his own novel, The Arrangement (1969). However, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Brando backed out of the film, telling Kazan that he could not appear in a Hollywood film after this tragedy. Also reportedly turning down a role opposite box-office king Paul Newman in a surefire script, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Brando decided to make Burn! (1969) with Pontecorvo. The film, a searing indictment of racism and colonialism, flopped at the box office but won the esteem of progressive critics and cultural arbiters such as Howard Zinn. He subsequently appeared in the British film The Nightcomers (1971), a prequel to "Turn of the Screw" and another critical and box office failure.
Kazan, after a life in film and the theater, said that, aside from Orson Welles, whose greatness lay in film making, he only met one actor who was a genius: Brando. Richard Burton, an intellectual with a keen eye for observation if not for his own film projects, said that he found Brando to be very bright, unlike the public perception of him as a Terry Malloy-type character that he himself inadvertently promoted through his boorish behavior. Brando's problem, Burton felt, was that he was unique, and that he had gotten too much fame too soon at too early an age. Cut off from being nurtured by normal contact with society, fame had distorted Brando's personality and his ability to cope with the world, as he had not had time to grow up outside the limelight.
Truman Capote, who eviscerated Brando in print in the mid-'50s and had as much to do with the public perception of the dyslexic Brando as a dumbbell, always said that the best actors were ignorant, and that an intelligent person could not be a good actor. However, Brando was highly intelligent, and possessed of a rare genius in a then-deprecated art, acting. The problem that an intelligent performer has in movies is that it is the director, and not the actor, who has the power in his chosen field. Greatness in the other arts is defined by how much control the artist is able to exert over his chosen medium, but in movie acting, the medium is controlled by a person outside the individual artist. It is an axiom of the cinema that a performance, as is a film, is "created" in the cutting room, thus further removing the actor from control over his art. Brando had tried his hand at directing, in controlling the whole artistic enterprise, but he could not abide the cutting room, where a film and the film's performances are made. This lack of control over his art was the root of Brando's discontent with acting, with movies, and, eventually, with the whole wide world that invested so much cachet in movie actors, as long as "they" were at the top of the box-office charts. Hollywood was a matter of "they" and not the work, and Brando became disgusted.
Charlton Heston, who participated in Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington with Brando, believes that Marlon was the great actor of his generation. However, noting a story that Brando had once refused a role in the early 1960s with the excuse "How can I act when people are starving in India?," Heston believes that it was this attitude, the inability to separate one's idealism from one's work, that prevented Brando from reaching his potential. As Rod Steiger once said, Brando had it all, great stardom and a great talent. He could have taken his audience on a trip to the stars, but he simply would not. Steiger, one of Brando's children even though a contemporary, could not understand it. When James Mason' was asked in 1971 who was the best American actor, he had replied that since Brando had let his career go belly-up, it had to be George C. Scott, by default.
Paramount thought that only Laurence Olivier would suffice, but Lord Olivier was ill. The young director believed there was only one actor who could play godfather to the group of Young Turk actors he had assembled for his film, The Godfather of method acting himself - Marlon Brando. Francis Ford Coppola won the fight for Brando, Brando won - and refused - his second Oscar, and Paramount won a pot of gold by producing the then top-grossing film of all-time, The Godfather (1972), a gangster movie most critics now judge one of the greatest American films of all time. Brando followed his iconic portrayal of Don Corleone with his Oscar-nominated turn in the high-grossing and highly scandalous Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris"), the first film dealing explicitly with sexuality in which an actor of Brando's stature had participated. He was now again a top ten box office star and once again heralded as the greatest actor of his generation, an unprecedented comeback that put him on the cover of "Time" magazine and would make him the highest-paid actor in the history of motion pictures by the end of the decade. Little did the world know that Brando, who had struggled through many projects in good faith during the 1960s, delivering some of his best acting, only to be excoriated and ignored as the films did not do well at the box office, essentially was through with the movies.
After reaching the summit of his career, a rarefied atmosphere never reached before or since by any actor, Brando essentially walked away. He would give no more of himself after giving everything as he had done in Last Tango in Paris (1972)," a performance that embarrassed him, according to his autobiography. Brando had come as close to any actor to being the "auteur," or author, of a film, as the English-language scenes of "Tango" were created by encouraging Brando to improvise. The improvisations were written down and turned into a shooting script, and the scripted improvisations were shot the next day. Pauline Kael, the Brando of movie critics in that she was the most influential arbiter of cinematic quality of her generation and spawned a whole legion of Kael wannabes, said Brando's performance in Last Tango in Paris (1972) had revolutionized the art of film. Brando, who had to act to gain his mother's attention; Brando, who believed acting at best was nothing special as everyone in the world engaged in it every day of their lives to get what they wanted from other people; Brando, who believed acting at its worst was a childish charade and that movie stardom was a whorish fraud, would have agreed with Sam Peckinpah's summation of Pauline Kael: "Pauline's a brilliant critic but sometimes she's just cracking walnuts with her ass." He probably would have done so in a simulacrum of those words, too.
After another three-year hiatus, Brando took on just one more major role for the next 20 years, as the bounty hunter after Jack Nicholson in Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks (1976), a western that succeeded neither with the critics or at the box office. Following The Godfather and Tango, Brando's performance was disappointing for some reviewers, who accused him of giving an erratic and inconsistent performance. In 1977, Brando made a rare appearance on television in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. In 1978, he narrated the English version of Raoni (1978), a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the indigenous Indian tribes of north central Brazil.
Later in his career, Brando concentrated on extracting the maximum amount of capital for the least amount of work from producers, as when he got the Salkind brothers to pony up a then-record $3.7 million against 10% of the gross for 13 days work on Superman (1978). Factoring in inflation, the straight salary for "Superman" equals or exceeds the new record of $1 million a day Harrison Ford set with K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand, and his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage.
Before cashing his first paycheck for Superman (1978), Brando had picked up $2 million for his extended cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) in a role, that of Col. Kurtz, that he authored on-camera through improvisation while Coppola shot take after take. It was Brando's last bravura star performance. He co-starred with George C. Scott and John Gielgud in The Formula (1980), but the film was another critical and financial failure. Years later though, he did receive an eighth and final Oscar nomination for his supporting role in A Dry White Season (1989) after coming out of a near-decade-long retirement. Contrary to those who claimed he now only was in it for the money, Brando donated his entire seven-figure salary to an anti-apartheid charity. He then did an amusing performance in the comedy The Freshman (1990), winning rave reviews. He portrayed Tomas de Torquemada in the historical drama 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), but his performance was denounced and the film was another box office failure. He made another comeback in the Johnny Depp romantic drama Don Juan DeMarco (1994), which co-starred Faye Dunaway as his wife. He then appeared in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), co-starring Val Kilmer, who he didn't get along with. The filming was an unpleasant experience for Brando, as well as another critical and box office failure.
Brando had first attracted media attention at the age of 24, when "Life" magazine ran a photo of himself and his sister Jocelyn, who were both then appearing on Broadway. The curiosity continued, and snowballed. Playing the paraplegic soldier of The Men (1950), Brando had gone to live at a Veterans Administration hospital with actual disabled veterans, and confined himself to a wheelchair for weeks. It was an acting method, research, that no one in Hollywood had ever heard of before, and that willingness to experience life.1924 - 2004 (aged 80)
Wins:
Worst Supporting Actor - The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
Nominations:
Worst Supporting Actor - The Formula (1980)
Worst Supporting Actor - Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992)
Worst Screen Combo - The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Deadpan comedian Charles Sydney Grodin (originally Grodinsky) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania of Russian/Polish ancestry and raised in a Jewish orthodox home. He attended the University of Miami but dropped out, opting instead for the life of a struggling actor. The movie A Place in the Sun (1951) was said to have steered him towards his chosen profession. In his own words: "It was two things. One is I think I developed an overwhelming crush on Elizabeth Taylor. And two, Montgomery Clift made acting look like 'Gee, well that looks pretty easy - just a guy talking.'".
After a spell with Uta Hagen (1956-59), he attended Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio before making his stage debut on Broadway in 1962. Though he appeared on screen from as early as 1954, Grodin did not make a great deal of headway in this medium until he attracted critical notice playing the small but crucial role of obstetrician Dr. C.C. Hill in Rosemary's Baby (1968). More substantial roles soon followed. His first major starring turn was in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), a black comedy written by Neil Simon and directed by Elaine May. Grodin managed to inject charm and humanity in what was essentially an egotistical central character. Film reviewer Roger Ebert praised his performance, describing the actor as a "kind of Dustin Hoffman-as-overachiever", an opinion which was echoed by Vincent Canby of the New York Times. Ironically, Grodin had earlier turned down the pivotal role in The Graduate (1967) which propelled Hoffman to stardom (he also -- probably unwisely -- spurned the role of oceanographer Matt Hooper in Jaws (1975) which instead went to Richard Dreyfuss).
Grodin's ultimate breakthrough came on the Broadway stage in "Same Time Next Year" (1975) (opposite Ellen Burstyn), a hugely successful romantic comedy about two people, each married to someone else, who conduct an extramarital affair for a single day over the course of 24 years in the same room of a northern Californian inn. Though the two leads left the show after seven months, Grodin was now much sought-after in Hollywood as a droll comic actor and cast in a string of hit comedies: Heaven Can Wait (1978), Seems Like Old Times (1980), The Lonely Guy (1984) and Midnight Run (1988). He also appeared to sterling effect in the underrated farce The Couch Trip (1988), in which he co-starred with Walter Matthau and Dan Aykroyd as the brittle psychiatrist and radio host Dr. George Maitlin. Arguably his most popular box office success was opposite the titular Saint Bernard canine in the family-oriented comedy Beethoven (1992). Despite less than enthusiastic critical reviews, the film was a hit with audiences, grossed $147.2 million worldwide and spawned a sequel.
In the mid-1990s, Grodin reinvented himself as a television host (The Charles Grodin Show (1995)) and political commentator. He made frequent guest appearances on talk shows with Carson or Letterman, typically adopting the persona of a belligerent tongue-in-cheek character to facilitate "comically uncomfortable situations on the set". Grodin was also a prolific author, both of fiction and non-fiction. An autobiography was entitled "It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here: My Journey Through Show Business" (1989). Charles Grodin died at age 86 of bone marrow cancer on May 18, 2021 at his home in Wilton, Connecticut.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Soundtrack
Tall (6'3"), darkly handsome, seriously-looking David Selby, highly regarded for his villainous work on both daytime and nighttime soap classics, was born on February 5, 1941, in Morgantown, West Virginia. He attended West Virginia University and graduated with both B.S. and M.A. degrees from West Virginia University, then earned a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
In his hometown, he made his stage debut in 1961 and appeared in such productions as "Brigadoon," "Oklahoma!, "Tiger at the Gates" and "Romeo and Juliet (as Mercutio). He went on appear in repertory and stock productions throughout the decade in such productions as "The Last Days of Lincoln" (as Abraham Lincoln), the title role in "Oedipus Rex," "Inherit the Wind," the title role in "Krapp's Last Case," "You Can't Take It With You," "Brecht on Brecht" and "The Tempest." In New York from 1967, he appeared in "The Impossible Years" and "Sticks and Bones."
He achieved instant attention on TV when he was signed on as Quentin Collins, a werewolf, on the gothic daytime drama Dark Shadows (1966), inheriting heartthrob status and even recorded two songs during the show's run, "Quentin's Theme" and "I Wanna Dance With You." After the series' demise, he made his movie debut with Night of Dark Shadows (1971), the second film based on the cult series.
Selby toyed with film stardom in the early 1970s after co-starring as Barbra Streisand's beleaguered husband in the riotous comedy Up the Sandbox (1972), playing the lead opposite Maud Adams in the minor Canadian drama The Girl in Blue (1973), and sharing the title role with Ron Leibman in the crime comedy The Super Cops (1974)). When it didn't pan out, he aggressively turned back to TV with guest parts on "The Waltons," "Police Woman," "Kojak" and "Family," and a role in the acclaimed mini-series Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977), plus several TV movies. He also continued his high-profiled pace on the New York theatre stage with productions of "The Playboy of the Western World," "The Heiress," with Jane Alexander and Richard Kiley, and "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" opposite Betsy Palmer. He also played Brick in the 1975 national tour of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
Returning to either co-star or support roles in films, David's credits would include Rich Kids (1979), Raise the Titanic (1980) and Rich and Famous (1981). He was given an extra shot of adrenalin when, in 1981, he joined the night-time soap opera scene with the second season of Flamingo Road (1980). He didn't hit real pay dirt, however, until he squared off with tough-as-nails Jane Wyman as her scheming son in the long-running series Falcon Crest (1981) in which he won a Soap Opera Digest award.
Following the end of his hit series in 1990, David returned to the big screen offering white-collar support to Julia Roberts in Dying Young (1991); Richard Gere in Intersection (1994); Jeff Bridges in White Squall (1996); James Spader in Shadow of Fear (2004); Ben Affleck in Surviving Christmas (2004); Cuba Gooding Jr. in End Game (2006); Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network (2010); a guest cameo in the Johnny Depp remake of Dark Shadows (2012); Owen Wilson in Are You Here (2013); and Kristen Stewart in Equals (2015). He also kept busy on TV with guest appearances on "Touched by an Angel," "Ally McBeal," "Cold Case," "Castle Rock," "Chicago Fire" and "NCIS: New Orleans."
Always returning to his love for the live stage, later theatrical credits include "The Crucible" (as John Proctor), "The Night of the Iguana" (as Shannon), "Much Ado About Nothing" (as Benedick), several productions of "Love Letters," "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" (as James Tyrone), "Lincoln and James" (as Lincoln, which he wrote), and "A Delicate Balance" (as Tobias). David also penned the play "Final Assault" which premiered in 2003. A long-time staple player in radio drama with the L.A. Theatre Works, he has written books of poetry, plays and several novels including Promises of Love and A Casualty of Indifference.
David and his wife Chip ran a summer children's musical theatre in New York for ten years before moving to Los Angeles. They have three children.- Actress
- Producer
- Music Department
Naturally brunette/blue-eyed beauty Amy Davis Irving was born in Palo Alto, California. She is the youngest of three children, and the daughter of influential theatrical/television director and producer Jules Irving, and actress Priscilla Pointer. Her father was of Russian Jewish descent, and her mother's ancestry includes English, Scots-Irish, Welsh, Jewish, and German.
Amy was brought up in the world of theater. She was put on stage from the time she was nine-months-old, her father was the director and her mother was the actress, they didn't want baby sitters for their children, so if she wasn't performing, she would stay in the wardrobe department or her mother used to put her in the second row center where she could watch her. And, before she was 10-years-old, she had already worked in several plays. At a young age, Amy Irving was trained at the American Conservatory Theater and Britain's London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (L.A.M.A.D.A.). She made her off-Broadway debut at the age of 17 and, from that moment to date, she received critical acclaim, appearing in such plays as: "Heartbreak House" (1983), "The Road to Mecca" (1988), "Broken Glass" (1994), "The Three Sisters" (1997), "The Guys" (2002), "Ghosts" (2002) and "Celadine" (2004), among others.
In 1976, Amy made her film debut, playing "Sue Snell", one of her most unforgettable characters in Stephen King's Carrie (1976), a classic in the horror genre, taken to the big screen by director Brian De Palma. For the next few years, Irving continued working in important films, The Fury (1978), also directed by De Palma, Voices (1979) and The Competition (1980). Later, in 1983, she gave a fine performance as "Hadass", in Barbra Streisand's Yentl (1983); earning an Oscar nomination. Two of her best opportunities arrived in the late 80s, when she played "Anna Anderson" in Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986) and "Isabelle Grossman" in the romantic comedy, Crossing Delancey (1988); she received a Golden Globe nomination for each movie.
Amy was married to director Steven Spielberg from 1985 to 1989 and she has a son with him, Max Spielberg. And, in 1990, after her divorce, she met Brazilian director Bruno Barreto while they were working on A Show of Force (1990). They wed a few years later and they have a son (Gabriel). In 1997, Irving made a guest appearance on Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997) and, in 1999, she came back in the sequel of Carrie (1976), The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999).
Unfortunately, her film opportunities narrowed in the 90s. However, in the year 2000, she surprised the whole world again when she performed as "Mary Ann Simpson", a very funny and sensual, at the same time, English teacher in the film, Bossa Nova (2000). She managed to capture this peculiar character very well. After this romantic comedy, Amy had a great opportunity, playing "Barbara Wakefield", Michael Douglas' wife in Traffic (2000), the film was a huge success and she won an Actor Award, shared with the rest of the cast. Then, this beautiful and talented actress continued working in remarkable films such as 13 Conversations About One Thing (2001), with her Carrie (1976) co-star, Sissy Spacek, in the Walt Disney production, Tuck Everlasting (2002) and in the horror film, Hide and Seek (2005), along with Robert De Niro. Recently, she had an important part as "Emily Sloane" in the very-known show, Alias (2001).
In addition to her talents as an actress, she is a great dancer and also showed off her vocal talents, singing in films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Honeysuckle Rose (1980), Rumpelstiltskin (1987) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991).
Nowadays, Amy Irving continues working on stage in Broadway productions and spends most of her time with her friends and family, especially with her two children.1953 -
Wins:
Worst Supporting Actress - Honeysuckle Rose (1980)
Nominations:
Worst Supporting Actress - Yentl (1983)- Award-winning actress Elizabeth Ashley can always be counted on to give her all. Grand in style, exotic in looks, divinely outgoing in personality and an engaging interpreter of Tennessee Williams' florid Southern-belles on stage, she was born Elizabeth Ann Cole on August 30, 1939, in Ocala, Florida. The daughter of Arthur Kingman and Lucille (Ayer) Cole, the family moved to Louisiana where Elizabeth graduated from Louisiana State University Laboratory School (University High) in Baton Rouge in 1957.
The liberal-minded Elizabeth immediately embarked upon an acting career following her education and relocated to New York. Briefly using her real name, her big breakthrough year occurred in 1959 when she made her off-Broadway debut with "Dirty Hands", played "Esmeralda" in the Neighborhood Playhouse production of "Camino Real" and took on Broadway with Dore Schary's "The Highest Tree". Now using the marquee name of Elizabeth Ashley, the 1960s proved to be even better, taking her to trophy-winning heights. After understudying the lead roles in Broadway's "Roman Candle" and "Mary, Mary", she won the role of Mollie in the delightful comedy "Take Her, She's Mine" and won both the "supporting actress" Tony and Theatre World Awards for it. Neil Simon was quite taken by the new star and created especially for her the role of Corie Bratter in 1963's "Barefoot in the Park" opposite Robert Redford. She received another Tony nomination, this time for Best Actress. In addition to these theatrical pinnacles, Elizabeth also found happiness in her private life when she met and married (in 1962) actor James Farentino, who was also on his way up. This happiness, however, was short-lived...the marriage lasted only three years. The attention she earned from Broadway led directly to film offers and she made a highly emotive debut in Harold Robbins glossy soaper The Carpetbaggers (1964), headlining handsome George Peppard. The critics trashed the movie but Elizabeth sailed ahead...temporarily.
Following intense roles in the superb all-star film epic Ship of Fools (1965) and the psychological crime drama The Third Day (1965), which again starred Peppard, the still-married Elizabeth divorced her husband and wed Peppard in 1966, taking a hiatus to focus on domestic life. The couple went on to have son Christian Peppard (born 1968), who would later become a writer.
The Peppard-Ashley marriage was a volatile one, however, and the twosome ultimately divorced in 1972. Wasting no time, Elizabeth returned to the stage and also went out for TV roles. Abandoning a film career that had just gotten out of the starting gate proved detrimental and she never did recapture the momentum she once had. Broadway, however, was a different story. The dusky-toned actress pulled out all the stops as Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1974) co-starring Keir Dullea and as Sabina in Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth" the following year, and she was back on top. Other heralded work on the live stage would include "Caesar and Cleopatra" opposite Rex Harrison, "Vanities" and, notably, "Agnes of God", for which she received the Albert Einstein Award for "excellence in the performing arts".
Following "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" for which she won a third Tony nomination, Elizabeth struck up a close friendship with author Williams. Over time, she would play and come to define three of his (and the theater's) finest female roles: Mrs. Venable in "Suddenly, Last Summer" (1995), Alexandra Del Lago in "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1998), and Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie" (2001). In addition, she also appeared in Williams' "Eight by Tenn" (a series of his one-act plays), "Out Cry", "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" and "The Red Devil Battery Sign". In 2005, 31 years after playing Maggie, she was again a success in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", this time as Big Mama.
Elizabeth went on to sink her teeth into a number of other famous plays as well, all peppered with her inimitable trademark flourish: Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", Isadora Duncan in "When She Danced", Maria Callas in "Master Class" and the scheming Regina in "The Little Foxes", to name a few. On '90s TV, she found daytime soaps to her liking with eye-catching parts on Another World (1964) and All My Children (1970). She also appeared in the ensemble cast of Burt Reynolds' series Evening Shade (1990). Occasional serious film supports in Rancho Deluxe (1975) and Coma (1978) were often intertwined with campier, over-the-top ones such as her psychotic lesbian in Windows (1980).
Overcoming a series of tragic, personal setbacks - a third divorce, a boating accident, a NY apartment fire, and a rape incident - the still-lovely Elizabeth continues to demonstrate her mettle and maintain a busy acting schedule on stage ("Enchanted April", "Ann & Debbie"); film (Happiness (1998), Labor Pains (2000), The Cake Eaters (2007), Ocean's Eight (2018)); and TV ("Caroline in the City," "Law & Order," "Treme," "Russian Doll").
Elsewhere, her memoir "Actress: Postcards from the Road" (1978) became a best seller. She was also a founding member of the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute while serving on the first National Council of the Arts during the administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and has also served on the President's Committee for the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Awards. - Actor
- Director
- Producer
Georg Stanford Brown was born on 24 June 1943 in Havana, Cuba. He is an actor and director, known for Stir Crazy (1980), Roots (1977) and Bullitt (1968). He was previously married to Tyne Daly.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Betsy Palmer was probably best known for playing Jason Voorhees' mother in the horror film Friday the 13th (1980), but her career as an actress began many years before.
Palmer was born Patricia Betsy Hrunek in East Chicago, Indiana, to Marie (née Love), who launched the Chicago Business College, and Rudolph Vincent Hrunek, a Czech-born industrial chemist. Palmer played a young female officer opposite Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts (1955), and appeared in another war film the same year, The Long Gray Line (1955). Throughout the late 1950s, Palmer was recognized as a news reporter on Today (1952) on NBC, then became largely involved in television. She remained in made-for-TV films and notable guest appearances, before playing the murderous avenging mother, Mrs. Voorhees, in the horror film Friday the 13th (1980). She also continued working in television, and appearing in low-budget films like The Fear: Resurrection (1999). Palmer spent her later years between her home in New York City and Sedona, Arizona.
Betsy Palmer died of natural causes on a Friday, May 29, 2015, at a hospice care center in Danbury, Connecticut.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Although many fans may not know her name, Marilyn Sokol is a familiar face on television and in films. Perhaps best known for her work on the stage, she has appeared in "Fiddler on the Roof" at St. Louis MUNY, "Candide" at The Goodman Theatre, "Death Trap" at The Papermill Theatre; "The Sisters Rosenweig", "He Looks Good in a Hat", and "Light Up the Sky" at The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Off-Broadway credits include "The Beggar's Opera" and "Merry Wives of Windsor". Sokol has appeared in several Broadway productions including "The Great God Brown", "Don Juan", and "Conversations With My Father". An actress of tremendous range, she has been honored with Emmy, Bistro, and Obie Awards.- Bronte Woodard was born on 8 October 1940 in Alabama, USA. She was a writer, known for Grease (1978), Can't Stop the Music (1980) and Grease Live! (2016). She died on 6 August 1980 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Actor
Erich Segal was born on 16 June 1937 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Love Story (1970), Yellow Submarine (1968) and A Change of Seasons (1980). He was married to Karen Marianne James. He died on 17 January 2010 in London, England, UK.- Ronni Kern is known for Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003), A Change of Seasons (1980) and Helen of Troy (2003).Nominations:
Worst Screenplay - A Change of Seasons (1980) - Fred Segal was born on 5 May 1925. He was a writer, known for A Change of Seasons (1980), A Separate Peace (1972) and Family (1976). He died on 28 May 1976 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Martin Ransohoff was born on 7 July 1927 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), Nightwing (1979) and Silver Streak (1976). He was married to Joan Marie Madgey and Nancy Hope Lundgren. He died on 13 December 2017 in Bel-Air, California, USA.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Eleanor Bergstein was born on 17 April 1938 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for Dirty Dancing (1987), Let It Be Me (1995) and It's My Turn (1980). She has been married to Michael Paul Goldman since 17 January 1965.- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Carl Kleinschmitt was born on 28 August 1937 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), M*A*S*H (1972) and Middle Age Crazy (1980). He was married to Pamela Burgess. He died on 8 December 2022 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
Adam Kennedy was born on 10 March 1922 in Otterbein, Indiana, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Raise the Titanic (1980), The Domino Principle (1977) and The Dove (1974). He was married to Susan Adams. He died on 16 October 1997 in Kent, Connecticut, USA.- Nominations:
Worst Screenplay - Raise the Titanic (1980) - Hesper Anderson was born on 2 August 1934 in New York City, New York, USA. Hesper was a writer, known for Children of a Lesser God (1986), Touched by Love (1980) and The Deliberate Stranger (1986). Hesper was married to Earle H Levenstein. Hesper died on 17 October 2018 in Sherman Oaks, California, USA.
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Barry Siegel is known for Windows (1980) and A Child Lost Forever: The Jerry Sherwood Story (1992).Nominations:
Worst Screenplay - Windows (1980)- Nominations:
Worst Screenplay - Xanadu (1980) - Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
George Duning was educated in Cincinnati, Ohio, and during his early 20s played trumpet and piano for the Kay Kyser band, later arranging most of the music for Kyser's popular "Kollege of Musical Knowledge" radio program. It was during the Kyser band's appearance in Carolina Moon (1940) that Duning's work was noticed, leading to a contract with Columbia Pictures.1908 - 2000 (aged 92)
Wins:
Worst Original Song - The Man with Bogart's Face (1980), "The Man with Bogart's Face"- Producer
- Writer
- Music Department
Andrew J. Fenady was born on 4 October 1928 in Toledo, Ohio, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Man with Bogart's Face (1980), The Rebel (1959) and Branded (1965). He was married to Mary Frances Dolan. He died on 16 April 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.1928 - 2020 (aged 91)
Wins:
Worst Original Song - The Man with Bogart's Face (1980), "The Man with Bogart's Face"- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
John Farrar was born on 8 November 1946 in Melbourne, Australia. He is a composer and actor, known for Grease (1978), Xanadu (1980) and Flight of the Navigator (1986). He has been married to Pat Carroll since 6 January 1970. They have two children.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, but brought up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute in a local band, as a youth, before sending some arrangements to Benny Goodman. Goodman offered him a job and, after serving in WWII, he joined the rearranged Glenn Miller band. In 1952, he was given a two-week assignment at Universal to work on an Bud Abbott and Lou Costello film and ended up staying for six years. Success with The Glenn Miller Story (1954) allowed him to score many other films, helping along the way to change the style of film background music by injecting jazz into the traditional orchestral arrangements of the 1950s. He was nominated for 18 Oscars and won four; in addition, he won 20 Grammys and 2 Emmys, made over 50 albums and had 500 works published. Mancini collaborated extensively with Blake Edwards -- firstly on TV's Peter Gunn (1958), then on Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), which won him two Oscars; he won further Oscars for the titles song for Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and the score for Victor/Victoria (1982); he will be best-remembered for the theme tune for The Pink Panther (1963).1924 - 1994 (aged 70)
Nominations:
Worst Original Song - A Change of Seasons (1980), "Where Do You Catch the Bus for Tomorrow?"
Worst Original Song - That's Life! (1986), "Life in a Looking Glass"- Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
Prolific songwriter ("Nice 'n' Easy", "Yellow Bird"), composer and author, educated at UCLA and the University of Northern Carolina (BA). During WW II, he wrote and directed Special Services shows, then directed TV shows for CBS in Philadelphia, PA from 1945-1953. He joined ASCAP in 1955 and wrote TV production numbers for Jo Stafford special shows, and songs for Fred Astaire and Marge and Gower Champion. He also wrote songs for revues and night club acts. His stage scores include "That's Life" (Los Angeles), "Ice Capades of 1957" and "Something More!" (Broadway). His chief musical collaborators include his wife Marilyn Bergman , Lew Spence, Norman Luboff, Paul Weston, Sammy Fain and Alex North. His other song compositions include "Cheatin' Billy", "Don't Know Where I'm Goin'", "I've Never Left Your Arms", "Marriage-Go-Round", "Sentimental Baby", "Sleep Warm", "Sogni D'Oro", "That Face", "Baby, The Ball Is Over", "Ol' MacDonald", "That's Him Over There" and "If I Were In Love". His albums include "Never Be Afraid" and "Aesop's Fables".1925 -
Nominations:
Worst Original Song - A Change of Seasons (1980), "Where Do You Catch the Bus for Tomorrow?"
Worst Original Song - Author! Author! (1982), "Comin' Home to You"
Worst Musical Score - Yentl (1983)- Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
Prolific songwriter ("Nice 'n' Easy", "Yellow Bird"), composer and author Marilyn Bergman wrote several theme songs for television and songs for revues, night clubs, and films. Joining ASCAP in 1953, her chief musical collaborators included her husband Alan Bergman, Lew Spence, Norman Luboff, Paul Weston, Sammy Fain, and Alex North. Her other song compositions included "Cheatin' Billy", "Don't Know Where I'm Goin'", "I've Never Left Your Arms", "Never Be Afraid", "Outta My Mind", "The Right Approach" (for film), "Marriage-Go-Round" (for film), "Sentimental Baby", "Sleep Warm", "Sogni D'Oro", "That Face", "Baby, the Ball is Over", "Ol' MacDonald", "If I Were in Love" (for film) and "That's Him Over There."1928 - 2022 (aged 93)
Nominations:
Worst Original Song - A Change of Seasons (1980), "Where Do You Catch the Bus for Tomorrow?"
Worst Original Song - Author! Author! (1982), "Comin' Home to You"
Worst Musical Score - Yentl (1983)- Producer
- Writer
Former President of Paramount Pictures. During his tenure at Paramount, Frank Yablans was instrumental in forming the partnership with Universal CIC, now known as "UPI," creating the most successful distributor of films in international distribution.
His five years as head of Paramount are often referred to as "Paramounts Golden Years," during which he was responsible for the development, production and marketing of films, acclaimed by audiences and critics alike, including the Godfather, Chinatown, Paper Moon, Serpico, Death Wish, Lady Sings the Blues, Murder On the Orient Express, and The Longest Yard. In addition, Paramount television, which reported to him, had successes such as Star Trek, The Odd Couple, Mission Impossible, Love American Style, and the pilot Happy Days.
After leaving Paramount, Yablans began a career as an independent producer at both Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures simultaneously, producing such hits as Silver Streak, North Dallas Forty, Mommy Dearest, The Other Side of Midnight, The Fury, and Monsignor. He also co-authored the screenplays for both North Dallas Forty and Mommy Dearest. During that time, Yablans was asked to assume the task of rebuilding MGM/UA Studio. As Co-Chairman and CEO, he reduced overhead costs and rearranged MGM and United Artists into one entity: MGM/UA. Immediately after assuming his responsibilities at MGM/UA, Yablans embarked upon an enthusiastic, yet cautious program designed to attract creative talent to the Company while controlling the risks inherent and motion picture production, distribution, and marketing. Under Yablans guidance, the Company produced and distributed a variety of high, medium and modestly budgeted films, including such hits as War Games, Octopussy, A Christmas Story, Yentl, Hot Dog: The Movie, Breakin', Red Dawn, Teachers, and 2010. His last independent film, Congo, which was produced for Paramount Pictures, has grossed in excess of $400 million worldwide. In addition, Yablans has spent the last few years focusing on Family entertainment market producing the highly regarded A Dog of Flanders and Baby Geniuses.
Yablans serves as the CEO of Promenade Pictures producing such upcoming films entitled: The Ten Commandments, Noah's Ark: The New Beginning and The Lamb.1935 - 2014 (aged 79)
Wins:
Worst Picture - Mommie Dearest (1981)
Worst Screenplay - Mommie Dearest (1981)- Producer
- Actor
- Casting Director
Dyson Lovell was born on 28 August 1936 in Rhodesia. He was a producer and actor, known for Romeo and Juliet (1968), Merlin (1998) and Endless Love (1981). He died on 11 January 2024.- Producer
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Nominations:
Worst Picture - Heaven's Gate (1980)- Additional Crew
- Production Manager
- Producer
Walter Coblenz was born on 15 August 1928 in Glogau, Germany. He was a production manager and producer, known for All the President's Men (1976), Money Talks (1997) and The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981). He was married to Rita Bellisle. He died on 16 March 2022 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Nominations:
Worst Picture - The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981)- Actress
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Bo Derek (born Mary Cathleen Collins) is an American actress and model. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy 10 (1979). Her first husband John Derek directed her in Fantasies; Tarzan, the Ape Man (both 1981); Bolero (1984) and Ghosts Can't Do It (1989), all of which received negative reviews. Widowed in 1998, she married actor John Corbett in 2020. Now semi-retired, she makes occasional film, television, and documentary appearances.1956 -
Wins:
Worst Actress - Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)
Worst Picture - Bolero (1984)
Worst Actress - Bolero (1984)
Worst Actress of the Decade (1989)
Worst Picture - Ghosts Can't Do It (1989)
Worst Actress - Ghosts Can't Do It (1989)
Nominations:
Worst Picture - Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)
Worst Supporting Actress - Tommy Boy (1995)
Worst Actress of the Century (1999)
Worst Supporting Actress - The Master of Disguise (2002)- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Michael Cimino studied architecture and dramatic arts; later he filmed advertisements and documentaries and also wrote scripts until the actor, producer and director Clint Eastwood gave him the opportunity to direct the thriller Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). But his biggest success was The Deer Hunter (1978) which won the Oscar for Best Picture. For another successful film, The Sicilian (1987), he got into trouble with critics when they accused him of portraying as a hero the Italian criminal Salvatore Giuliano.1939 - 2016 (aged 77)
Wins:
Worst Director - Heaven's Gate (1980)
Nominations:
Worst Screenplay - Heaven's Gate (1980)
Worst Director - Year of the Dragon (1985)
Worst Screenplay - Year of the Dragon (1985)- Actor
- Director
- Cinematographer
John Derek was born on 12 August 1926 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Ten Commandments (1956), Ghosts Can't Do It (1989) and Bolero (1984). He was married to Bo Derek, Linda Evans, Ursula Andress and Pati Behrs. He died on 22 May 1998 in Santa Maria, California, USA.1926 - 1998 (aged 71)
Wins:
Worst Director - Bolero (1984)
Worst Screenplay - Bolero (1984)
Worst Director - Ghosts Can't Do It (1989)
Nominations:
Worst Director - Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)
Worst Screenplay - Ghosts Can't Do It (1989)- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Blake Edwards' stepfather's father J. Gordon Edwards was a silent screen director, and his stepfather Jack McEdward was a stage director and movie production manager. Blake acted in a number films, beginning with Ten Gentlemen from West Point (1942) and wrote a number of others, beginning with Panhandle (1948) and including six for director Richard Quine. He created the popular TV series Peter Gunn (1958), Mr. Lucky (1959) and Dante (1960). He directed a diverse body of films, from comedies to dramas to war films to westerns, including such pictures as Operation Petticoat (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Experiment in Terror (1962), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The Pink Panther (1963) and A Shot in the Dark (1964). After The Great Race (1965) he began fighting with studios. In England he surfaced again with The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), then went back to Hollywood and a real hit, 10 (1979). Victor/Victoria (1982) won him French and Italian awards for Best Foreign Film.1922 - 2010 (aged 88)
Wins:
Worst Director - Sunset (1988)
Nominations:
Worst Director - S.O.B. (1981)
Worst Screenplay - S.O.B. (1981)- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Frank Perry was born on 21 August 1930 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Mommie Dearest (1981), David and Lisa (1962) and Last Summer (1969). He was married to Virginia Brush Ford, Barbara Goldsmith and Eleanor Perry. He died on 29 August 1995 in New York City, New York, USA.1930 - 1995 (aged 65)
Wins:
Worst Screenplay - Mommie Dearest (1981)
Nominations:
Worst Director - Mommie Dearest (1981)- Additional Crew
- Production Designer
- Director
Franco Zeffirelli is an Italian director and producer of operas, films and television. He was also a senator from 1994 until 2001 for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party. Some of his operatic designs and productions have become worldwide classics.
He was known for several of the movies he directed, especially the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet (1968), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. His 1967 version of The Taming of The Shrew (1967) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton remains the best-known film adaptation of that play as well. His mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (1977) won both national and international acclaim.
In 1999, Zeffirelli received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. In November 2004, he was awarded an honorary knighthood by the United Kingdom. He was awarded the Premio Colosseo in 2009 by the city of Rome.- Klinton Spilbury was born in Chihuahua in Mexico.
After his only feature film, "The Legend of the Lone Ranger" in 1981, he travelled around Europe, and also did some modelling.
Amazingly, considering that he is only known for the one film, he coached acting at the Herpolscheimer Academy in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.1950 -
Wins:
Worst Actor - The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981)
Worst New Star - The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) - Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Without a doubt Gary Coleman was THE child TV star of the late 1970s and early 1980s. A refreshingly confident little tyke with sparkling dark, saucer-like eyes and an ingratiating, take-on-anyone burst of personality, the boy charmed the pants right off of TV viewers the minute he was glimpsed in national commercials. Amazed by how mature he came across, Gary was in truth older than he looked, which was brought upon by a congenital kidney condition. Sadly, the pint-sized phenomena outgrew his chubby-cheeked welcome and found the course of his grown-up Hollywood career brutally rough and patchy. The fragile condition of his health coupled with this lack of adult career acceptance, sparked an aggressively defensive behavior mechanism in his adult years and led to great personal unhappiness, chronic legal/financial hassles and early death.
He was born Gary Wayne Coleman on February 8, 1968, to a homeless woman, and was adopted by a fork-lift operator and his nurse practitioner wife from a Chicago hospital when he was just a few days old. Raised in Zion, Illinois, it was discovered that little Gary had severe health issues before the age of 2. Born with one atrophied kidney and an endangering weak second one, he had two kidney transplants by the time he reached age 16 and the effects of his dialysis medication permanently stunted his growth (to 4'8").
A highly precocious comedy cut-up on-camera, Gary proved a natural in local Chicago commercials. As his commercials spread nationwide, audiences began wondering just who this diminutive dynamo was. Norman Lear's talent scout spotted him in a Chicago bank commercial (he was 9 at the time) and decided to reveal to the world who the little guy was. Brought in to brighten up such Lear sitcoms as "The Jeffersons" and "Good Times" (the latter as a friend of little Janet Jackson's character), NBC quickly recognized the boy's comedy prowess and handed the 10-year-old his own prime-time sitcom playground to mug in.
While Diff'rent Strokes (1978)'s underlying approach was to preach racial and social tolerance (it revolved around two lower-class African-American brothers from Harlem who are taken in and adopted by a wealthy, debonair Park Avenue white man after their housekeeper mother dies), the show's powers-that-be smartly deduced that it was the wisecracking gifts of young Coleman, who played the youngest brother, Arnold Jackson, that gave the show its spark. Deemed "NBC's Littlest Big Man," Gary's sly, pouting-lipped delivery of, "What'chu talkin' about, Willis?" soon became a popular American catchphrase.
Legendary comics such as Bob Hope and Lucille Ball absolutely gushed about the little boy's comedy genius and Gary soon became a hit on the talk show circuit, trading clever banter with the likes of Johnny Carson among others. The boy was also outfitted with a series of lightweight TV-movie showcases which included The Kid from Left Field (1979), Scout's Honor (1980), The Kid with the Broken Halo (1982), The Kid with the 200 I.Q. (1983), The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins (1984) and Playing with Fire (1985). All of them wisely centered around Gary's adorable persona. Modest film comedies also came his way with On the Right Track (1981) and Jimmy the Kid (1982). Topping it all off, the Hanna-Barbera-produced series The Gary Coleman Show (1982) produced an animated version of the child star. Little Gary would make close to $18 million during his nearly decade-long TV reign.
Like many others in his shoes, however, the aging Coleman felt trapped and pigeonholed by his stifling juvenile image and begged to get out from under it. The 18-year-old was truly thankful when the series ended in 1986. Coleman found, however, that a very fickle public was not as receptive to seeing him grow up. Like fellow TV star Emmanuel Lewis, Coleman began aging in appearance but remained trapped in the body of a young boy and the contrast proved too strange for audiences. As a result, Hollywood had little resources as to what to do with Gary Coleman the man. It wasn't long before Coleman was reduced to making weird guest appearances and small parts in even smaller films.
This crash course in reality triggered an increasingly erratic and aggressive behavior in Gary Coleman as he became increasingly angry and bitter about his lack of work when he was so used to be on top of everything. The subsequent tragedies suffered by all three young stars from the "Diff'rent Strokes" show, in fact, was sold out as a jinx package known as the "Diff'rent Strokes curse". While distaff co-star Dana Plato fell heavily into drug addiction, petty crime and pornography before taking her own life in 1999, Todd Bridges, who played Coleman's older brother, battled major cocaine abuse and was later charged (but acquitted of) attempted murder in the late 1980s.
In addition to his life-long health issues, Gary's adult problems came in the form of scattered financial and legal entanglements, as well as scrapes with the law. He was once arrested in 1999 for punching a persistent female autograph fan, in which he was fined and ordered to take anger-management classes. This became tabloid fodder for late night comics who joked that he must have landed "several good uppercuts." He also had many disorderly conduct and reckless driving charges brought up against him at various times. He would admit that the tally of his life problems led to more than a few feigned suicide attempts. In 1989, Coleman successfully sued his adopted parents and business manager after they allegedly pilfered his youthful fortune for their own self interest totaling $3.8 million in losses, and he won $1,280,000. Despite the large settlement, all of the money was soon spent on taxes, legal fees, as well as his increasingly high medical bills for his continuing dialysis treatments. As a result by 1999 (with no steady acting work) Coleman had to declare bankruptcy, finding work outside the Hollywood industry as a security guard. For self-preservation, he went the reality-show route and became the object of self-mocking cameos to help bring in some cash. As a gag, he ran for California's 2003 governorship during its recall election.
In 2007, he married the much younger actress Shannon Price, whom he met on the set of the low budget film Church Ball (2006), but the quickly marriage dissolved quickly into domestic squabbles that put him in front of the court system yet again on domestic abuse charges. He later moved and settled in Utah.
In early 2009, Coleman managed to star in his very last film, the crude independent comedy Midgets vs. Mascots (2009) filmed in Dallas, Texas before the end came. Following heart surgery complicated by pneumonia in the fall of 2009, he suffered a heart seizure in February 2010 while performing on a Hollywood set. The 42-year-old actor died of a brain hemorrhage on May 28, 2010, after suffering an epidural haematoma from a fall at home. A sad end to a very bright and talented, but very troubled and bitter, child star who, at his peak, brought such joy to TV audiences.1968 - 2010 (aged 42)
Nominations:
Worst Actor - On the Right Track (1981)
Worst New Star - On the Right Track (1981)- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern's tremendous career is made up of playing both modern day heroes and legendary villains. Through decades of lauded performances, Dern has acquired the reputation of being one of the most talented and prolific actors of his generation.
Dern currently appears opposite Kristen Wiig, Allison Janney and his daughter Laura in Apple+ TV's acclaimed comedy series "Palm Royale." He also received critical praise for the last season of the Amazon series "Goliath" opposite Oscar winners Billy Bob Thornton and JK Simmons.
Dern appeared as real-life rancher George Spahn in Quentin Tarantino's 10-time Academy Award nominated "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." The film also won the Golden Globes & Critics Choice Awards for Best Picture, among others. He also co-starred in the #1 independent film of 2019, "The Peanut Butter Falcon" and he earned rave reviews for Focus Features' "The Mustang." He has recently appeared in several recent independent film projects including "Reminisce," "The Accidental Texan," "Remember Me," "The Artist's Wife," "Emperor," "Badland," "Death in Texas," "Last Call," and "The Gateway."
In 2018, he starred in two high profile independent films - as Joe Kennedy in "Chappaquiddick" and opposite Matthew McConaughey in Sony's "White Boy Rick." In 2017, he appeared with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in the Netflix film "Our Souls at Night."
On the television side in 2019 - he memorably guested on Showtime's comedy "Black Monday" and was seen in the Stephen King series "Mr. Mercedes" for the AT&T AUDIENCE Network.
In 2015, Dern reteamed with his "Django Unchained" director Quentin Tarantino in the ambitious & critically-acclaimed "The Hateful Eight." In 2013, Dern earned his second Academy Award nomination for his heralded role in Alexander Payne's "Nebraska." That role also garnered him a Best Actor Award from the Cannes Film Festival and the National Board of Review. He was also nominated for a BAFTA, Golden Globe, Independent Spirit Award, Broadcast Film Critics Association Award and Screen Actors Guild Award.
Dern was also nominated for an Emmy in 2011 for his portrayal of polygamist patriarch Frank Harlow in HBO's hit drama "Big Love." A celebrated stage actor, Dern was trained by famed director Elia Kazan at the legendary The Actor's Studio and made his film debut in Kazan's "Wild River" in 1960. In the 60's, Dern also found success as a distinguished television actor. He appeared regularly in contemporary Western TV series, as well as on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Mr. Hitchcock was such a fan of Dern's that he cast him in "Marnie" and "Family Plot" (Hitchcock's final film).
Also during the 60's, Dern went on to work with director Roger Corman and appeared in several of his classic and decade defining films including "Wild Angels." He also received critical success during that time for films such as "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and "Drive, He Said." Dern goes down in history for his role as Long Hair in "The Cowboys," in which he became the only man ever to kill John Wayne on screen.
Dern went on to star in such classic films like "The King of Marvin Gardens" with Jack Nicholson and Ellen Burstyn as well as playing Tom Buchanan in "The Great Gatsby" (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination). It was his brilliant and powerful performance in Hal Ashby's "Coming Home" that earned him both an Academy Award and Golden Globe nomination.
Dern has starred in over 100 films in his career, including: "Monster," "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," "Silent Running," "Smile," "Middle Age Crazy," "That Championship Season," "Tattoo," "The 'Burbs," "The Haunting," "All the Pretty Horses," "Masked and Anonymous," "Down in the Valley," "Astronaut Farmer," "The Cake Eaters," "Black Sunday," "After Dark, My Sweet," "Madison," "Diggstown," "Twixt" and "Last Man Standing."
Dern has received several Lifetime Achievement Awards from various film festivals. In 2010, Dern received the prestigious Hollywood Walk of Fame star along with his ex-wife Diane Ladd & daughter Laura Dern, the only family in history to receive their Stars in one ceremony.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Richard St John Harris was born on October 1, 1930 in Limerick, Ireland, to a farming family, one of nine children born to Mildred (Harty) and Ivan Harris. He attended Crescent College, a Jesuit school, and was an excellent rugby player, with a strong passion for literature. Unfortunately, a bout of tuberculosis as a teenager ended his aspirations to a rugby career, but he became fascinated with the theater and skipped a local dance one night to attend a performance of "Henry IV". He was hooked and went on to learn his craft at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), then spent several years in stage productions. He debuted on screen in Shake Hands with the Devil (1959) and quickly scored regular work in films, including The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), The Night Fighters (1960) and a good role as a frustrated Australian bomber pilot in The Guns of Navarone (1961).
However, his breakthrough performance was as the quintessential "angry young man" in the sensational drama This Sporting Life (1963), which scored him an Oscar nomination. He then appeared in the WW II commando tale The Heroes of Telemark (1965) and in the Sam Peckinpah-directed western Major Dundee (1965). He next showed up in Hawaii (1966) and played King Arthur in Camelot (1967), a lackluster adaptation of the famous Broadway play. Better performances followed, among them a role as a reluctant police informer in The Molly Maguires (1970) alongside Sir Sean Connery. Harris took the lead role in the violent western A Man Called Horse (1970), which became something of a cult film and spawned two sequels. As the 1970s progressed, Harris continued to appear regularly on screen; however, the quality of the scripts varied from above average to woeful.
His credits during this period included directing himself as an aging soccer player in The Hero (1970); the western The Deadly Trackers (1973); the big-budget "disaster" film Juggernaut (1974); the strangely-titled crime film 99 and 44/100% Dead! (1974); with Connery again in Robin and Marian (1976); Gulliver's Travels (1977); a part in the Jaws (1975); Orca (1977) and a nice turn as an ill-fated mercenary with Richard Burton and Roger Moore in the popular action film The Wild Geese (1978).
The 1980s kicked off with Harris appearing in the silly Bo Derek vanity production Tarzan the Ape Man (1981) and the remainder of the decade had him appearing in some very forgettable productions. However, the luck of the Irish was once again to shine on Harris's career and he scored rave reviews (and another Oscar nomination) for The Field (1990). He then locked horns with Harrison Ford as an IRA sympathizer in Patriot Games (1992) and got one of his best roles as gunfighter English Bob in the Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven (1992). Harris was firmly back in vogue and rewarded his fans with more wonderful performances in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993); Cry, the Beloved Country (1995); The Great Kandinsky (1995) and This Is the Sea (1997). Further fortune came his way with a strong performance in the blockbuster Gladiator (2000) and he became known to an entirely new generation of film fans as Albus Dumbledore in the mega-successful Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). His final screen role was as "Lucius Sulla" in Caesar (2002).
Harris died of Hodgkin's disease, also known as Hodgkin's lymphoma, in London on October 25, 2002, aged 72.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
Kris Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, to Mary Ann (Ashbrook) and Lars Henry Kristofferson. His paternal grandparents were Swedish, and his father was a United States Air Force general who pushed his son to a military career. Kris was a Golden Gloves boxer and went to Pomona College in California. From there, he earned a Rhodes scholarship to study literature at Oxford University. He ultimately joined the United States Army and achieved the rank of captain. He became a helicopter pilot, which served him well later. In 1965, he resigned his commission to pursue songwriting. He had just been assigned to become a teacher at USMA West Point. He got a job sweeping floors in Nashville studios. There he met Johnny Cash, who initially took some of his songs but ignored them. He was also working as a commercial helicopter pilot at the time. He got Cash's attention when he landed his helicopter in Cash's yard and gave him some more tapes. Cash then recorded Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down", which was voted the 1970 Song of the Year by the Country Music Association. Kris was noted for his heavy boozing. He lost his helicopter pilot job when he passed out at the controls, and his drinking ruined his marriage to singer Rita Coolidge, when he was reaching a bottle and half of Jack Daniels daily. He gave up alcohol in 1976. His acting career nose-dived after making Heaven's Gate (1980). In recent years, he has made a comeback with his musical and acting careers. He does say that he prefers his music, but says his children are his true legacy.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
From the age of five, Linda Blair had to get used to the spotlight, first as a child model and then as an actress, when out of 600 applicants she was picked for the role of Regan, the possessed child, in The Exorcist (1973). Linda quickly rose to international fame, won the Golden Globe, and seemed to be set to take the Academy Award for that role, but when it leaked how some parts of the role were not performed by her (the demonic voice was dubbed by Mercedes McCambridge, and eight seconds of a stunt dummy were used) that dream broke, and with that disappointment probably came the first blow to what looked like the beginning of an A-list career.
Over the next few years she had no trouble securing lead roles in a number of pictures, including the highly successful television films Born Innocent (1974) (the #1 TV movie of that year) and Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975), as well as the Exorcist sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). However, when she was peer pressured into buying cocaine at the age of 18, it led to an arrest and subsequent sentencing to three years probation. The much-publicized drug bust caused Linda to be blacklisted in Hollywood, and her career was soon reduced to B-movies and occasional TV guest appearances only.
Although her career never returned to its former glory, Linda proved to be a good sport about embracing the change, and out of the '80s emerged lead roles in two cult classics: the women-in-prison film Chained Heat (1983) and the femme fatale vigilante action film Savage Streets (1984). She continued acting in numerous films throughout the '80s and '90s, including the Exorcist spoof Repossessed (1990). In 1997, she also took to the Broadway stage and starred as "Rizzo" in the revival of "Grease." She received widespread mainstream attention again in the 2000's with the theatrical re-release of the Exorcist, followed by a hosting job on the hit Fox Family TV series Scariest Places on Earth (2000), which ran for six years and followed Linda as she visited notorious "haunted" locations around the world.
Linda was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Elinore, a real estate agent, and James, an executive headhunter. She has a brother, Jimmy, and a sister, Debbie. Linda has been a Hollywood icon for over 40 years, but it is her first love of animals that has ultimately taken center stage in her life. She now runs the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation, a non-profit 501C3 tax deductible organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating abused, neglected, and abandoned animals from the harsh streets of the Los Angeles area, as well as from the overcrowded and overwhelmed city and county animal shelters. She works and lives on the 2-acre rescue sanctuary full-time in California, which was featured on The Today Show in a segment titled "From Devil to Angel." Of course, she also makes frequent appearances at horror fan conventions to celebrate the legacy of The Exorcist (1973) .1959 -
Wins:
Worst Career Achievement Award (1984)
Worst Actress - Night Patrol (1984), Savage Island (1985), and Savage Streets (1984)
Nominations:
Worst Actress - Hell Night (1981)
Worst Actress - Chained Heat (1983)- Music Artist
- Actress
- Producer
Barbra Streisand is an American singer, actress, director and producer and one of the most successful personalities in show business. She is the only person ever to receive all of the following: Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, Cable Ace, National Endowment for the Arts, and Peabody awards, as well as the Kennedy Center Honor, American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement honor and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Chaplin Award.
She was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942 to Diana Kind (née Ida Rosen), a singer turned school secretary, and Emanuel Streisand, a high school teacher. Her father died when she was 15 months old. She has a brother, Sheldon, and a half-sister, Roslyn Kind, from their mother's remarriage. As a child she attended the Beis Yakov Jewish School in Brooklyn. She was raised in a middle-class family and grew up dreaming of becoming an actress (or even an actress / conductor, as she happily described her teenage years at one of her concerts).
After a period as a nightclub singer and off-Broadway performer in New York City she began to attract interest and a fan base, thanks to her original and powerful vocal talent. She debuted on Broadway in the 1962 musical comedy "I Can Get It For You Wholesale" by Harold Rome, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and a New York Drama Critics Poll award. The following year she reached great commercial success with her first Columbia Records solo releases, "The Barbra Streisand Album" (multiple Grammy winner, including "Best Album of the Year") and "The Second Barbra Streisand Album" (her first RIAA Gold Album); these albums, mostly devoted to composer Harold Arlen, brought her critical praise and, most of all, public acclaim all over the US. In 1964 she had another smash Broadway hit when she portrayed legendary Broadway star Fanny Brice in "Funny Girl" by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill; the show's main song, "People", became her first hit single and she appeared on the cover of Time magazine. After many TV appearances as a guest on various music and variety shows (such as an episode of The Judy Garland Show (1963), for which she was nominated for an Emmy), she signed an exclusive contract with CBS for a series of annual TV specials. My Name Is Barbra (1965) (which won an Emmy) and Color Me Barbra (1966) were extremely successful.
After a brief London stage period and the birth of her son Jason Gould (with then-husband Elliott Gould), in summer 1967 she gave a memorable free concert in New York City, "A Happening in Central Park", that was filmed and later broadcast (in an edited version) as a TV special; then she flew to Hollywood for her first movie, Funny Girl (1968), a filming of her stage success. The picture, directed by William Wyler, opened in 1968 and became a hit in the US and abroad, making her an international "superstar" and multiple award winner, including the Best Actress Oscar. After a series of screen musicals, such as Gene Kelly's Hello, Dolly! (1969) and Vincente Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), she wanted to try comedies, resulting in such films as The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) and What's Up, Doc? (1972). She turned to dramas and turned out Up the Sandbox (1972) and the classic The Way We Were (1973), directed by Sydney Pollack and co-starring Robert Redford. The song "The Way We Were" (written by Marvin Hamlisch and Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman) became one of her biggest hits and most memorable and famous songs.
She returned to TV for a new special conceived as a musical journey covering many world musical styles, Barbra Streisand and Other Musical Instruments (1973), then returned (for contractual reasons) to her Fanny Brice role in a sequel to her hit "Funny Girl" film, Funny Lady (1975), and the next year turned out one of her most personal film projects, A Star Is Born (1976), one of the biggest hits of the year for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress and her second Oscar, for the song "Evergreen". Always extremely busy on the discography side, averaging one album a year throughout the '70s and '80s, she had a string of successful singles and albums, such as "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" (duet with Neil Diamond), "Enough is Enough" (with Donna Summer), "The Main Event" (from her film The Main Event (1979) with her friend Ryan O'Neal) and the album "Guilty", written for her by The Bee Gees' Barry Gibb, which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
She debuted as a director with the musical drama Yentl (1983), in which she also portrayed a Jewish girl who is forced to pass herself off as a man to pursue her dreams. The movie received generally positive reviews and the beautiful score by Michel Legrand and lyricists Marilyn Bergman and Alan Bergman stands up as one of Streisand's finest musical works. The film received several Oscar nominations, winning in two categories, but she was not nominated as Best Director, which disappointed both her and her fans, many of whom consider this the Academy's biggest "snub".
In 1985 her album "The Broadway Album" was an unexpected runaway success, winning a Grammy Award and helping to introduce a new generation to the world of American musical theater. In 1986 she performed in a memorable concert, after 19 years of stage silence, "One Voice". She returned to the screen in Nuts (1987), a drama directed by Martin Ritt, in the role of a prostitute accused of murder who fights to avoid being labeled "insane" at her trial. In 1991 she appeared in The Prince of Tides (1991), which many consider to be the pinnacle of her screen career, playing a psychiatrist who tries to help a man (Nick Nolte) to find the pieces of his past life. The film received seven Oscar nominations (but again NOT for Best Directing), but she did receive a nomination from the DGA (Directors Guild of America) for Best Director. In 1994 she returned to the stage after 27 years for a series of sold-out concerts (for the televised version of one of these, she won another Emmy).
In the 1990s she broke several personal records: with two #1 albums ("Back to Broadway" in 1993 and "Higher Ground" in 1997) and became the only artist to achieve a #1 album on the Billboard charts in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (she extended this record into the 21st century in 2009 with the jazz album "Love is the Answer"). In 1996 she starred in her third picture as director, The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), with Jeff Bridges and Lauren Bacall. The film had a "the girl got the guy" ending, and the same happened to her in real life--the next year she married well known TV actor James Brolin.
In 2000 she focused her career again on concerts ("Timeless") and in 2006-07 with a European tour. She made only two more films--a supporting role as a sex therapist mother in the Ben Stiller comedy Meet the Fockers (2004) and its sequel, Little Fockers (2010), alongside Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. She published a book, "Passion for Design", in 2010 and celebrated her friendship with the Bergmans with an entire album of their songs, "What Matters Most" (2011), that debuted in the top 10.
After a long break from filming, she returned in a starring role for the 2012 holiday season with The Guilt Trip (2012), a mother/son picture co-starring Seth Rogen and directed by Anne Fletcher, and is working on putting together a film version of the well-known Jule Styne musical "Gypsy". In almost 50 years of career, Streisand has contributed to the show business industry in a personal and unique way, collecting a multi-generational fan base; she has a powerful and recognize vocal range, and a raucous and often self-deprecating sense of humor, which doesn't prevent her from showing the serious and dramatic sides of her personality. Her strong political belief in social justice infuses her professional career and personal life, and she makes no bones about what she believes; her willingness to put her money where her mouth is has resulted in some truly vicious attacks by many who hold opposite political views, but that hasn't stopped her from acting on her beliefs. She has been honored with the Humanitarian Award from the Human Rights Campaign, an Honorary Doctorate in Arts and Humanities from Brandeis University in 1995, an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2013 and the bestowing by the government of France the title of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. She supports many humanitarian causes through the Streisand Foundation and has been a dedicated environmentalist for many years; she endowed a chair in environmental studies in 1987 and donated her 24-acre estate to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. In addition, she was the lead founder for the Clinton Climate Change Initiative. This effort brought together a consortium of major cities around the world to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. She is a leading spokesperson and fund-raiser for social and political causes close to her heart and has often dedicated proceeds from her live concert performances to benefit programs she supports.1942 -
Nominations:
Worst Actress - All Night Long (1981)
Worst Actor - Yentl (1983)
Worst Supporting Actress - Little Fockers (2010)
Worst Actress - The Guilt Trip (2012)- Actor
- Soundtrack
A ruggedly handsome action man of the 1960s and '70s, Steve Forrest was born William Forrest Andrews in Huntsville, Texas, the youngest of thirteen children of Annis (Speed) and Charles Forrest Andrews, a Baptist minister. His brother was actor Dana Andrews. Forrest began his screen career as a small part contract player with MGM. In 1942, Steve enlisted in the U.S. Army, rose to the rank of sergeant and saw action at the Battle of the Bulge. Following his demobilization, he visited his brother in Hollywood and came to the conclusion that acting wasn't a bad way to make a living (having already done some work as a movie extra). He went on to study in college at UCLA, eventually graduating in 1950 with a B.A. Honours Degree in theatre arts. He then served a brief apprenticeship as a carpenter, prop boy and set builder at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse, where he was discovered by resident actor Gregory Peck and given a small part as a bellboy in the cast of the summer stock production of "Goddbye Again". A subsequent screen test led to a contract with MGM and resulting employment as second leads, brothers of the titular star, toughs and outlaws. His first proper recognition was being awarded 'New Star of the Year' by Golden Globe for his role in So Big (1953), a drama based on a Pulitzer prize-winning novel by Edna Ferber.
From the mid-1950's, the rangy, 6-foot-3 actor became much in-demand on TV, beginning with classic early anthology and western series, interspersed with occasional appearances on the big screen (notably, in The Longest Day (1962) and as Joan Crawford's lover/attorney Greg Savitt in Mommie Dearest (1981)). In addition to numerous guest roles, he was regularly featured in series like Gunsmoke (1955), Dallas (1978) (as Wes Parmalee, who believes himself to be lost Ewing patriarch Jock) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). Already from the mid-60's, he decided to pick his assignments more carefully. In order to shed his image as the perpetual bad guy, he had relocated his family to England to star as antique-dealer-cum-undercover intelligence agent John Mannering in BBC's The Baron (1966). He followed this by another starring role as the stoic, tough Lieutenant Dan 'Hondo' Harrelson in the short-lived ABC police drama series S.W.A.T. (1975), possibly his best-remembered role. Steve later lampooned his screen personae in the satirical Amazon Women on the Moon (1987).
In private life, Steve Forrest was known as a skilled golfer, lover of football and (according to 1970's newspaper articles) as a dedicated amateur beekeeper.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Billy Barty was born William John Bertanzetti on October 25, 1924 in Millsboro, Pennsylvania. He began performing at age three and began making pictures in 1927. He played Mickey Rooney's little brother in the "Mickey McGuire" comedy shorts series. He was equally adept in both comedy and drama, and generally gives an added zest to any production he is associated with. He founded the Little People of America in 1957 and the Billy Barty Foundation in 1975. He possessed an immense talent and energetic charm that added a much needed shot in the arm to many series and films. Billy Barty died at age 76 of heart failure on December 23, 2000 in Glendale, California.1924 - 2000 (aged 76)
Nominations:
Worst Supporting Actor - Under the Rainbow (1981)
Worst Supporting Actor - Masters of the Universe (1987)
Worst Supporting Actor - Willow (1988)
Worst Screen Combo - An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997)- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Ernest Borgnine was born Ermes Effron Borgnino on January 24, 1917 in Hamden, Connecticut. His parents were Anna (Boselli), who had emigrated from Carpi (MO), Italy, and Camillo Borgnino, who had emigrated from Ottiglio (AL), Italy. As an only child, Ernest enjoyed most sports, especially boxing, but took no real interest in acting. At age 18, after graduating from high school in New Haven, and undecided about his future career, he joined the United States Navy, where he stayed for ten years until leaving in 1945. After a few factory jobs, his mother suggested that his forceful personality could make him suitable for a career in acting, and Borgnine promptly enrolled at the Randall School of Drama in Hartford. After completing the course, he joined Robert Porterfield's famous Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, staying there for four years, undertaking odd jobs and playing every type of role imaginable. His big break came in 1949, when he made his acting debut on Broadway playing a male nurse in "Harvey".
In 1951, Borgnine moved to Los Angeles to pursue a movie career, and made his film debut as Bill Street in The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951). His career took off in 1953 when he was cast in the role of Sergeant "Fatso" Judson in From Here to Eternity (1953). This memorable performance led to numerous supporting roles as "heavies" in a steady string of dramas and westerns. He played against type in 1955 by securing the lead role of Marty Piletti, a shy and sensitive butcher, in Marty (1955). He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, despite strong competition from Spencer Tracy, Frank Sinatra, James Dean and James Cagney. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Borgnine performed memorably in such films as The Catered Affair (1956), Ice Station Zebra (1968) and Emperor of the North (1973). Between 1962 and 1966, he played Lt. Commander Quinton McHale in the popular television series McHale's Navy (1962). In early 1984, he returned to television as Dominic Santini in the action series Airwolf (1984) co-starring Jan-Michael Vincent, and in 1995, he was cast in the comedy series The Single Guy (1995) as doorman Manny Cordoba. He also appeared in several made-for-TV movies.
Ernest Borgnine has often stated that acting was his greatest passion. His amazing 61-year career (1951 - 2012) included appearances in well over 100 feature films and as a regular in three television series, as well as voice-overs in animated films such as All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (1996), Small Soldiers (1998), and a continued role in the series SpongeBob SquarePants (1999). Between 1973 until his death, Ernest was married to Tova Traesnaes, who heads her own cosmetics company. They lived in Beverly Hills, California, where Ernest assisted his wife between film projects. When not acting, Ernest actively supported numerous charities and spoke tirelessly at benefits throughout the country. He has been awarded several honorary doctorates from colleges across the United States as well as numerous Lifetime Achievement Awards. In 1996, Ernest purchased a bus and traveled across the United States to see the country and meet his many fans. On December 17, 1999, he presented the University of North Alabama with a collection of scripts from his film and television career, due to his long friendship with North Alabama alumnus and actor George Lindsey (died May 6, 2012), who was an artist in residence at North Alabama.
Ernest Borgnine passed away aged 95 on July 8, 2012, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, of renal failure. He is survived by his wife Tova, their children and his younger sister Evelyn (1926-2013)- Actor
- Soundtrack
Born in New York City of humble means, character player James Coco was the son of Feliche, an Italian shoemaker, and Ida (Detestes) Coco. Shining shoes as a youngster with his father, his interest in acting occurred early on as a child. At age 17 he toured with a children's theatre troupe for three years portraying Old King Cole and Hans Brinker. Intensive study with acting guru Uta Hagen led to his Broadway debut at age 29 in "Hotel Paradiso" in 1957, but he earned his first acting award, an Obie, for his performance in the 1961 off-Broadway production of "The Moon in Yellow River". He went on to win a second and third Obie for his performances in the plays "Fragments" (1967) and "The Transfiguration of Benno Blimppie" (1977). Dark, hefty and prematurely balding, he proved to be a natural on the comedy stage and in scores of commercials (notably as Willy the plumber in the Drano ads) throughout the 1960s. Other comedy theater highlights included roles in "Auntie Mame," "Everybody Loves Opal," "A Shot in the Dark," "Bell, Book and Candle" and "You Can't Take It With You".
In the late 60s he formed a strong collaboration with playwright Terrence McNally and appeared in an off-Broadway double-bill of his one-act plays (his one-act was entitled "Witness") in 1968, followed by "Here's Where I Belong" a failed 1968 Broadway musical variation of the Steinbeck play "East of Eden" that closed on opening night. Their most notable alliance occurred the following year with the play "Next," which ran more than 700 performances and earned Coco a Drama Desk award. Sixteen years later, and shortly before Coco's death, the two reunited for the 1985 Manhattan Theatre Club production of "It's Only a Play".
Coco also earned kudos for his work in Neil Simon comedies, and "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers" (1969), which was specifically written for him, earned him a Tony Award nomination as Best Actor. The two later joined forces for a Broadway revival of the musical "Little Me" and the hilarious film comedy spoofs Murder by Death (1976) and The Cheap Detective (1978), in addition to his moving support role as Marsha Mason's depressed gay actor/friend in Only When I Laugh (1981), which garnered his sole Oscar nomination.
Achieving stardom first on stage, Coco's other films were a mixed bag with more misses (Ensign Pulver (1964), Man of La Mancha (1972) (as Sancho Panza), The Wild Party (1975), Scavenger Hunt (1979)) than hits (A New Leaf (1971)). On the TV screen, Coco fronted two short-lived 1970s comedy series, Calucci's Department (1973) and The Dumplings (1976), and also appeared in daytime soaps (The Edge of Night (1956) and "The Guiding Light"). Throughout his career he played an amusing number of characters on such sitcoms as Maude (1972) and Alice (1976) and also played bathos and pathos to great effect, not only winning an Emmy for his dramatic performance on a St. Elsewhere (1982) episode but appearing opposite Doris Roberts as the brittle Van Daan couple in the TV version of The Diary of Anne Frank (1980). One of his last TV assignments was a recurring role on the sitcom "Who's The Boss?" in 1986-1987.
In his last years, Coco received attention for his culinary talents and best-selling cookbooks. The James Coco Diet, an educational book which included chapters on menu planning and behavior modification as well as choice recipes), was just one that he promoted on the talk show circuit. It is probably not a coincidence that he often played characters with extreme food issues. Suffering from obesity (5'10", 250 lbs.) for most his adult life, the talented actor died unexpectedly of a heart attack in New York City in 1987 at the age of 56, and was buried in St. Gertrude's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Danny DeVito has amassed a formidable and versatile body of work as an actor, producer and director that spans the stage, television and film.
Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. was born on November 17, 1944, in Neptune, New Jersey, to Italian-American parents. His mother, Julia (Moccello), was a homemaker. His father, Daniel, Sr., was a small business owner whose ventures included a dry cleaning shop, a dairy outlet, a diner, and a pool hall.
While growing up in Asbury Park, his parents sent him to private schools. He attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel grammar school and Oratory Prep School. Following graduation in 1962, he took a job as a cosmetician at his sister's beauty salon. A year later, he enrolled at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts so he could learn more about cosmetology. While at the academy, he fell in love with acting and decided to further pursue an acting career. During this time, he met another aspiring actor Michael Douglas at the National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut. The two would later go on to collaborate on numerous projects. Soon after he also met an actress named Rhea Perlman. The two fell in love and moved in together. They were married in 1982 and had three children together.
In 1968, Danny landed his first part in a movie when he appeared as a thug in the obscure Dreams of Glass (1970). Despite this minor triumph, Danny became discouraged with the film industry and decided to focus on stage productions. He made his Off-Broadway debut in 1969 in "The Man With the Flower in His Mouth." He followed this up with stage roles in "The Shrinking Bride," and "Lady Liberty." In 1975, he was approached by director Milos Forman and Michael Douglas about appearing in the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which would star Jack Nicholson in the leading role. With box office success almost guaranteed and a chance for national exposure, Danny agreed to the role. The movie became a huge hit, both critically and financially, and still ranks today as one the greatest movies of all time. Unfortunately, the movie did very little to help Danny's career. In the years following, he was relegated to small movie roles and guest appearances on television shows. His big break came in 1978 when he auditioned for a role on an ABC sitcom pilot called Taxi (1978), which centered around taxi cab drivers at a New York City garage. Danny auditioned for the role of dispatcher Louie DePalma. At the audition, the producers told Danny that he needed to show more attitude in order to get the part. He then slammed down the script and yelled, "Who wrote this sh**?" The producers, realizing he was perfect for the part, brought him on board. The show was a huge success, running from 1978 to 1983.
Louie DePalma, played flawlessly by Danny, became one of the most memorable (and reviled) characters in television history. While he was universally hated by TV viewers, he was well-praised by critics, winning an Emmy award and being nominated three other times. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Danny maintained his status as a great character actor with memorable roles in movies like Romancing the Stone (1984), Ruthless People (1986), Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and Twins (1988). He also had a great deal of success behind the camera, directing movies like The War of the Roses (1989) and Hoffa (1992). In 1992, Danny was introduced to a new generation of moviegoers when he was given the role of The Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot in Tim Burton's highly successful Batman Returns (1992). This earned him a nomination for Best Villain at the MTV Movie Awards. That same year, along with his wife Rhea Perlman, Danny co-founded Jersey Films, which has produced many popular films and TV shows, including Pulp Fiction (1994), Get Shorty (1995), Man on the Moon (1999) and Erin Brockovich (2000). DeVito has many directing credits to his name as well, including Throw Momma from the Train (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Hoffa (1992), Death to Smoochy (2002) and the upcoming St. Sebastian.
In 2006, he returned to series television in the FX comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005). With a prominent role in a hit series, Devito's comic talents were now on display for a new generation of television viewers. In 2012, he provided the title voice role in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012).
These days, he continues to work with many of today's top talents as an actor, director and producer.1944 -
Nominations:
Worst Supporting Actor - Going Ape! (1981)
Worst Director - Hoffa (1992)
Worst Supporting Actor - Batman Returns (1992)
Worst Supporting Actor - Deck the Halls (2006)- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in Savannah, Georgia, Scarwid moved to New York at 17 to become an actress. Simultaneously, as an honors student, she graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Pace University. She landed some small film and TV roles before her subtle performance in Inside Moves (1980) was nominated for an Oscar, and as Joan Crawford's daughter in Mommie Dearest (1981) - the infamous Razzie. Understated film and TV roles followed. Retired, she lives east of Savannah, Georgia, working with local non-profit organizations and acting workshops.1955 -
Wins:
Worst Supporting Actress - Mommie Dearest (1981)
Nominations:
Worst Supporting Actress - Strange Invaders (1983)
Worst New Star of the Decade (1989)- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Rutanya Alda was born on 13 October 1942 in Riga, Latvia. She is an actress and writer, known for The Deer Hunter (1978), Mommie Dearest (1981) and Amityville II: The Possession (1982). She was previously married to Richard Bright.1942 -
Nominations:
Worst Supporting Actress - Mommie Dearest (1981)
Worst Supporting Actress - Amityville II: The Possession (1982)- Mara Hobel was born on 18 June 1971 in New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for Mommie Dearest (1981), The Hand (1981) and The Happening (2008). She has been married to Mark Richard Furrer since 21 March 1991. They have three children.1971 -
Nominations:
Worst Supporting Actress - Mommie Dearest (1981)
Worst New Star - Mommie Dearest (1981) - Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Shirley Knight was an American actress who appeared in more than 180 feature films, television movies, television series, and Broadway productions in her career playing leading and character roles.
She was a member of the Actors Studio. Knight was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress: for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1962).
In 1976, Knight won a Tony Award for her performance in Kennedy's Children, a play by Robert Patrick. In later years, she played supporting roles in many films, including Endless Love (1981), As Good as It Gets (1997), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002), and Grandma's Boy (2006). For her performances on television, Knight was nominated eight times for a Primetime Emmy Award (winning three), and she received a Golden Globe Award.- Martin Hewitt was born on 19 February 1958 in San Jose, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Endless Love (1981), Yellowbeard (1983) and Alien Predator (1986). He has been married to Kerstin Gneiting since 11 August 1990. They have two children.
- Attended the Air Force Academy Prep School after high school. He quit and switched over to Mississippi State to play football, but was forced to quit when he broke his hand. He then transferred to the University of the South, and graduated with a B.A. in psychology. He worked a year as a counselor at the Tennessee State Prison, then traveled around a bit before being asked to appear as an extra in a TV movie. He moved to Los Angeles in 1980, and sent in his picture to the makers of Tarzan the Ape Man (1981). The rest is history.
- Writer
- Actress
Tracy Hotchner was born on 1 March 1950 in the USA. She is a writer and actress, known for Mommie Dearest (1981), Little Big Man (1970) and Big Shamus, Little Shamus (1979).