crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2023-06-15 21:34:04

1290) Anne Bancroft

Summary

Anne Bancroft (born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano; September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005) was an American actress. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award. She is one of only 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.

Associated with the method acting technique, having studied under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, Bancroft made her film debut in the noir thriller Don't Bother to Knock in 1952, and then appeared in 14 other films over the following five years. In 1958, Bancroft made her Broadway debut with the play Two for the Seesaw, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. The following year she portrayed Anne Sullivan in the original Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Following her continued success on stage, Bancroft's film career was revived when she was cast in the acclaimed film adaptation of The Miracle Worker (1962) for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her film career further progressed with Oscar nominated performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), The Turning Point (1977), and Agnes of God (1985).

Bancroft continued to act in the later half of her life, with prominent roles in The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), Garbo Talks (1984), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Torch Song Trilogy (1988), Home for the Holidays (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), and Up at the Villa (2000). She received multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including for the television films Broadway Bound (1992), Deep in My Heart (1999), for which she won, and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003). Bancroft died in 2005, at the age of 73, as a result of uterine cancer. She was married to director, actor, and writer Mel Brooks, with whom she had a son named Max.

Details

Anne Bancroft, original name Anna Maria Louisa Italiano, (born September 17, 1931, Bronx, New York, U.S.—died June 6, 2005, New York, N.Y.), was an American actor whose half-century-long career was studded with renowned successes on stage, screen, and television. She won both a Tony Award and an Academy Award for one of her most physically and emotionally demanding roles, that of Helen Keller’s teacher, Annie Sullivan, in The Miracle Worker (Broadway, 1959; film, 1962), but it was with another Oscar-nominated film role, the seductive Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), that—to her bewilderment—she was most identified.

Bancroft began her career in the 1950s in live television productions, including the comedy series The Goldbergs, and in a number of grade-B or C movies. Dissatisfied with the roles she was finding, Bancroft moved to New York City. Her Broadway debut in the two-character drama Two for the Seesaw (1958), brought her wide recognition for the depth of her talent and garnered her a Tony Award for best supporting actress. The role of Annie Sullivan followed the next year, and the film version of that play rejuvenated her movie career.

In addition to her role in The Graduate, Bancroft also received Oscar nominations for her performances as an isolated wife in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), as a ballet dancer in The Turning Point (1977), and as a mother superior in Agnes of God (1985). Other notable film credits included The Slender Thread (1965), Young Winston (1972), The Elephant Man (1980), ’Night, Mother (1986), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), as well as three with her second husband, comedian-director-producer Mel Brooks—Silent Movie (1976), To Be or Not to Be (1983), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). For one of Bancroft’s occasional returns to the stage— Golda (1977)—she received a third Tony nomination, and television roles in PBS’s Mrs. Cage (1992) and CBS’s Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994) earned her Emmy Award nominations.

Additional Information

Anne Bancroft was born on September 17, 1931 in The Bronx, NY, the middle daughter of Michael Italiano (1905-2001), a dress pattern maker, and Mildred DiNapoli (1907-2010), a telephone operator. She made her cinema debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) in 1952, and over the next five years appeared in a lot of undistinguished movies such as Gorilla at Large (1954), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), New York Confidential (1955), Nightfall (1956) and The Girl in Black Stockings (1957). By 1957 she grew dissatisfied with the scripts she was getting, left the film business and spent the next five years doing plays on Broadway. She returned to screens in 1962 with her portrayal of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker (1962), for which she won an Oscar. Bancroft went on to give acclaimed performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Slender Thread (1965), Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) and other movies, but her most famous role would be as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967). Her status as the "older woman" in the film is iconic, although in real life she was only eight years older than Katharine Ross and just six years older than Dustin Hoffman. Bancroft would later express her frustration over the fact that the film overshadowed her other work. Selective for much of her intermittent career, she appeared onscreen more frequently in the '90s and early '00s, playing a range of characters in such films as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), Point of No Return (1993), Home for the Holidays (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Keeping the Faith (2000) and Up at the Villa (2000). She also started to make some TV films, including Deep in My Heart (1999) for which she won an Emmy. Sadly, on June 6, 2005, Bancroft passed away at the age of 73 from uterine cancer. Her death surprised many, as she had not disclosed her illness to the public. Among her survivors was her husband of 41 years, Mel Brooks, and their son Max Brooks, who was born in 1972. Her final film, the animated feature Delgo (2008), was released posthumously in 2008 and dedicated to her memory.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-06-18 17:36:44

1291) Sophia Loren

Summary

Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone (born 20 September 1934), known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian actress. She was named by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest stars of Classical Hollywood cinema and as of 2023, is one of the last surviving major stars from the era. Loren is also the only remaining living person to appear on AFI's list of the 50 greatest stars of American film history, positioned 21st.

Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant, Loren began her film career at age sixteen in 1950. She appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, until her five-picture contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career. Her film appearances around this time include The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat, and It Started in Naples. During the 1950s, she starred in films as a sexually emancipated persona and was one of the best known gender symbols of the time.

Loren's performance as Cesira in the film Two Women (1961) directed by Vittorio De Sica won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, making her the first actor to win an Oscar for a non-English-language performance. She holds the record for having earned seven David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress: Two Women; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963); Marriage Italian Style (1964, for which she was nominated for a second Oscar); Sunflower (1970); The Voyage (1974); A Special Day (1977) and The Life Ahead (2020). She has won five special Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award), a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, a Grammy Award, the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1991, she received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievements.

At the start of the 1980s, Loren chose to make rarer film appearances. Since then, she has appeared in films such as Prêt-à-porter (1994), Grumpier Old Men (1995), Nine (2009), and The Life Ahead (2020).

Details

Sophia Loren, original name Sofia Villani Scicolone, (born September 20, 1934, Rome, Italy), is an Italian film actress who rose above her poverty-stricken origins in postwar Naples to become universally recognized as one of Italy’s most beautiful women and its most famous movie star.

Before working in the cinema, Sofia Scicolone changed her last name to Lazzaro for work in the fotoromanzi, popular pulp magazines that used still photographs to depict romantic stories. Her first film role was as an extra, one of many slave girls in the American production of Quo Vadis? (1951). Under the tutelage of producer Carlo Ponti (her future husband), Scicolone was transformed into Sophia Loren. Her career was launched in a series of low-budget comedies before she attracted critical and popular attention with Aida (1953), in which she lip-synched the singing of Renata Tebaldi in the title role.

Loren’s beauty often overshadowed her enormous talents as an actress, but her earthy charisma is evident even in such early works as Vittorio De Sica’s L’oro di Napoli (1954; The Gold of Naples). With Ponti’s help, Loren increased her international visibility by appearing in Hollywood films opposite such major stars as Cary Grant (Houseboat, 1968), Clark Gable (It Started in Naples, 1960), Frank Sinatra (The Pride and the Passion, 1957, also with Grant), Alan Ladd (Boy on a Dolphin, 1957), William Holden (The Key, 1958), and Paul Newman (Lady L, 1965). Such exposure was undoubtedly instrumental in helping her win an Academy Award for best actress in De Sica’s La ciociara (1960; Two Women), in which she delivered a powerful performance as the courageous mother of a teenage girl during World War II.

Two other De Sica films showcased her comic talents and paired her with another Italian film icon, Marcello Mastroianni: Ieri, oggi, domani (1963; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow), a film that earned an Oscar for best foreign film; and Matrimonio all’italiana (1964; Marriage, Italian Style). The best performance of her late career, again with Mastroianni, was for director Ettore Scola in Una giornata particolare (1977, A Special Day). Loren’s subsequent work included the television movie Courage (1986) and the feature films Prêt-à-Porter (1994), which was directed by Robert Altman, and the musical Nine (2009). In 2010 she starred in the TV movie La mia casa è piena di specchi (My House Is Full of Mirrors), which was based on the autobiography of her sister, Maria Scicolone. Loren next appeared in Voce umana (2014; Human Voice), a short film based on a play by Jean Cocteau; it was directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. He also helmed La vita davanti a sé (2020; The Life Ahead), in which Loren starred as a Holocaust survivor who takes in a young refugee from Senegal.

International recognition for Loren’s distinguished acting career included a lifetime achievement Oscar (1991) and a career Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival (1998). She also made headlines in the 1990s for her strong defense of animal rights. In 2010 she received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for theatre/film.

Additional Information

Sophia Loren was born as Sofia Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome on September 20, 1934. Her father Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry her mother Romilda Villani, despite the fact that she was the mother of his two children (Sophia and her younger sister Maria Scicolone). Growing up in the slums of Pozzuoli during the second World War without any support from her father, she experienced great sadness in her childhood. Her life took an unexpected turn for the best when, at age 14, she entered into a beauty contest and placed as one of the finalists. It was here that Sophia caught the attention of film producer Carlo Ponti, some 22 years her senior, whom she later married. Perhaps he was the father figure she never experienced as a child. Under his guidance, Sophia was put under contract and appeared as an extra in ten films beginning with Le sei mogli di Barbablù (1950), before working her way up to supporting roles. In these early films, she was credited as "Sofia Lazzaro" because people joked her beauty could raise Lazzarus from the dead.

By her late teens, Sophia was playing lead roles in many Italian features such as La favorita (1952) and Aida (1953). In 1957, she embarked on a successful acting career in the United States, starring in Boy on a Dolphin (1957), Legend of the Lost (1957), and The Pride and the Passion (1957) that year. She had a short-lived but much-publicized fling with co-star Cary Grant, who was nearly 31 years her senior. She was only 22 while he was 53, and she rejected a marriage proposal from him. They were paired together a second time in the family-friendly romantic comedy Houseboat (1958). While under contract to Paramount, Sophia starred in Desire Under the Elms (1958), The Key (1958), The Black Orchid (1958), It Started in Naples (1960), Heller in Pink Tights (1960), A Breath of Scandal (1960), and The Millionairess (1960) before returning to Italy to star in Two Women (1960). The film was a period piece about a woman living in war-torn Italy who is raped while trying to protect her young daughter. Originally cast as the more glamorous child, Sophia fought against type and was re-cast as the mother, displaying a lack of vanity and proving herself as a genuine actress. This performance received international acclaim and was honored with an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Sophia remained a bona fide international movie star throughout the sixties and seventies, making films on both sides of the Atlantic, and starring opposite such leading men as Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston. Her English-language films included El Cid (1961), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Arabesque (1966), Man of La Mancha (1972), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). She gained wider respect with her Italian films, especially Marriage Italian Style (1964) and A Special Day (1977), both of which co-starred Marcello Mastroianni. During these years she received a second Oscar nomination and won five Golden Globe Awards.

From the eighties onward, Sophia's appearances on the big screen came few and far between. She preferred to spend the majority of her time raising sons Carlo Ponti Jr. (b. 1968) and Edoardo Ponti (b. 1973). Her only acting credits during the decade were five television films, beginning with Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), a biopic in which she portrayed herself and her mother. She ventured into other areas of business and became the first actress to launch her own fragrance and design of eyewear. In 1982 she voluntarily spent nineteen days in jail for tax evasion.

In 1991 Sophia received an Honorary Academy Award for her body of work, and was declared "one of world cinema's greatest treasures." That same year, she experienced a terrible loss when her mother died of cancer. Her return to mainstream films in Ready to Wear (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. She followed this up with her biggest U.S. hit in years, the comedy Grumpier Old Men (1995), in which she played a sexy divorcée who seduces Walter Matthau. Over the next decade Sophia had plum roles in a few independent films like Soleil (1997), Between Strangers (2002) (directed by Edoardo), and Lives of the Saints (2004). Still beautiful at 72, she posed scantily-clad for the 2007 Pirelli Calendar. Sadly, that same year she mourned the death of her 94-year-old spouse, Carlo Ponti. In 2009, after far too much time away from film, she appeared in the musical Nine (2009) opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. These days Sophia is based in Switzerland but frequently travels to the states to spend time with her sons and their families (Eduardo is married to actress Sasha Alexander). Sophia Loren remains one of the most beloved and recognizable figures in the international film world.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-06-20 20:31:04

1292) Patricia Neal

Summary

Patricia Neal, in full Patsy Louise Neal, (born January 20, 1926, Packard, Kentucky, U.S.—died August 8, 2010, Edgartown, Massachusetts), was an American motion picture actress known for her deeply intelligent performances, usually as tough-minded independent women, and for her rehabilitation and triumphant return to films following a series of strokes.

Neal studied theatre at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and then moved to New York City after landing an understudy assignment for the play The Voice of the Turtle (1946). By the following year, she was a student at the Actors Studio and had won a Tony Award for her performance in Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest. She attracted the attention of Hollywood scouts and landed a contract with Warner Brothers in 1948.

Though today regarded as dated and overwrought, Neal’s second film, director King Vidor’s adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1949), established her reputation as an intelligent and sophisticated actress. That film also introduced Neal to leading man Gary Cooper, with whom she also costarred in Bright Leaf (1950). Neal revealed in her autobiography, As I Am (1988), that Cooper had been the great love of her life; however, their affair ended shortly after their working collaboration. Neal married the popular author Roald Dahl in 1953, a union that lasted until their divorce in 1983.

Despite several fine performances and her work with such directors as Robert Wise, Michael Curtiz, and Douglas Sirk, Neal appeared in mostly mediocre films during the early 1950s. An exception was Wise’s science-fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), in which Neal uttered the immortal line “Klaatu barada nikto!” Frustrated with her film career, Neal returned to the stage for a few years and received acclaim for her performances in New York and London. She worked again in film in 1957 with her strongest vehicle to date, Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, in which she costarred opposite Andy Griffith. In Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), she played a woman who is spurned by the young lover she supports financially. Neal delivered one of her most renowned performances as the shy housekeeper who resists the advances of Paul Newman’s character in Hud (1963); she won the best actress Oscar for her efforts.

In 1965, while filming director John Ford’s final film, Seven Women (1966), Neal suffered a series of severe strokes. She remained unconscious for three weeks; upon awakening, she was paralyzed on her right side and unable to speak. She took an unconventional approach to rehabilitation and consulted with doctors around the world. Remarkably, she recovered within two years. Her first public appearance after her strokes came during the 1967 Oscar telecast, during which Neal received an enormous standing ovation. Any doubts as to her ability to continue acting were soon quelled by a magnificent performance in her comeback film, The Subject Was Roses (1968), for which she received another Oscar nomination. Her struggles and triumphs were chronicled in the 1981 television film The Patricia Neal Story, which starred Glenda Jackson as Neal.

Neal’s health problems overshadowed her later accomplishments as an actress, and—though she subsequently gave standout performances in TV and films—her career never completely recovered. Thereafter she devoted much of her time to charitable and religious causes.

Details

Patricia Neal (born Patsy Louise Neal, January 20, 1926 – August 8, 2010) was an American actress of stage and screen. She was born to William Neal (1895-1944) and Eura Neal (née Petrey, 1899-2003). A major star of the 1950s and 1960s, she was the recipient of an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and two British Academy Film Awards, and was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards. Her most popular film roles were: World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), radio journalist Marcia Jeffries in A Face in the Crowd (1957), wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and the worn-out housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud (1963), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She featured as the matriarch in the television film The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971); her role as Olivia Walton was re-cast for the series it inspired, The Waltons.

Early life and education

Neal was born in Packard, Whitley County, Kentucky, to William Burdette Neal and Eura Mildred (née Petrey) Neal). She had two siblings.

Neal grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she attended Knoxville High School, and studied drama at Northwestern, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. At Northwestern, she was crowned Syllabus Queen in a campus-wide beauty pageant.

Career

Neal gained her first job in New York as an understudy in the Broadway production of the John Van Druten play The Voice of the Turtle. Next, she appeared in Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest (1946), winning the 1947 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, in the first presentation of the Tony awards.

Neal made her film debut with Ronald Reagan in John Loves Mary, followed by another role with Reagan in The Hasty Heart, and then The Fountainhead (all 1949). The shooting of the last film coincided with her affair with her married co-star, Gary Cooper, with whom she worked again in Bright Leaf (1950).

Neal starred with John Garfield in The Breaking Point (1950), in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) with Michael Rennie, and in Operation Pacific (also 1951) starring John Wayne. She suffered a nervous breakdown around this time, following the end of her relationship with Cooper, and left Hollywood for New York, returning to Broadway in 1952 for a revival of The Children's Hour. In 1955, she starred in Edith Sommer's A Roomful of Roses, staged by Guthrie McClintic.

While in New York, Neal became a member of the Actors Studio. Based on connections with other members, she subsequently co-starred in the film A Face in the Crowd (1957, directed by Elia Kazan), the play The Miracle Worker (1959, directed by Arthur Penn), the film Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and the film Hud (1963), directed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman. During the same period, she appeared on television in an episode of The Play of the Week (1960), featuring an Actors Studio-dominated cast in a double bill of plays by August Strindberg, and in a British production of Clifford Odets' Clash by Night (1959), which co-starred one of the first generation of Actors Studio members, Nehemiah Persoff.

Neal won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Hud (1963), co-starring with Paul Newman. When the film was initially released it was predicted she would be a nominee in the supporting actress category, but when she began collecting awards, they were always for Best Actress, from the New York Film Critics, the National Board of Review and a BAFTA award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Neal was re-united with John Wayne in Otto Preminger's In Harm's Way (1965), winning her second BAFTA Award. Her next film was The Subject Was Roses (1968), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She starred as the matriarch in the television film The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which inspired the television series The Waltons; she won a Golden Globe for her performance. In a 1999 interview with the Archive of American Television, Waltons creator Earl Hamner said he and producers were unsure if Neal's health would allow her to commit to the schedule of a weekly television series; so, instead, they cast Michael Learned in the role of Olivia Walton. Neal played a dying widowed mother trying to find a home for her three children in an episode of NBC's Little House on the Prairie broadcast in 1975.

Neal appeared in a series of television commercials in the 1970s, notably for pain relief medicine Anacin and Maxim instant coffee.

Neal played the title role in Robert Altman's movie Cookie's Fortune (1999). She worked on Silvana Vienne's movie Beyond Baklava: The Fairy Tale Story of Sylvia's Baklava (2007), appearing as herself in the portions of the documentary talking about alternative ways to end violence in the world. In the same year as the film's release, Neal received one of two annually-presented Lifetime Achievement Awards at the SunDeis Film Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts. (Academy Award nominee Roy Scheider was the recipient of the other.)

Having won a Tony Award in their inaugural year (1947) and eventually becoming the last surviving winner from that first ceremony, Neal often appeared as a presenter in later years. Her original Tony was lost, so she was given a surprise replacement by Bill Irwin when they were about to present the 2006 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play to Cynthia Nixon. In April 2009, Neal received a lifetime achievement award from WorldFest Houston on the occasion of the debut of her film, Flying By. Neal was a long-term actress with Philip Langner's Theatre at Sea/Sail With the Stars productions with the Theatre Guild. In her final years she appeared in a number of health-care videos.

Neal was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2003. She was a subject of the British television show This Is Your Life in 1978 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at a math party on London's Park Lane.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-06-22 17:59:05

1293) Julie Andrews

Summary

Dame Julie Andrews DBE (born Julia Elizabeth Wells; 1 October 1935) is an English actress, singer, and author. One of the last surviving leading actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood, she has garnered numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over seven decades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards and six Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for three Tony Awards. She has been honoured with an Honorary Golden Lion, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2007, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2022. She was made a dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.

A child actress and singer, Andrews appeared in the West End in 1948 and made her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend (1954). Billed as "Britain's youngest prima donna", she rose to prominence in Broadway musicals starring as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1956) and Queen Guinevere in Camelot (1960). She also starred in the Rodgers and Hammerstein's television musical Cinderella (1957). Andrews made her feature film debut in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins (1964) where she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. The following year, she starred in the musical film The Sound of Music (1965), playing Maria von Trapp and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.

Between 1964 and 1986, Andrews starred in various films working with directors including her husband Blake Edwards, George Roy Hill, and Alfred Hitchcock. Films she starred in include The Americanization of Emily (1964), Hawaii (1966), Torn Curtain (1966), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), Star! (1968), The Tamarind Seed (1974), 10 (1979), S.O.B. (1981), Victor/Victoria (1982), That's Life! (1986), and Duet for One (1986). She returned to films appearing in The Princess Diaries (2001), The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), as well as Eloise at the Plaza and Eloise at Christmastime (both 2003). She also lent her voice to the Shrek franchise and the Despicable Me franchise (2010–present).

Andrews is also known for her collaborations with Carol Burnett, including the specials Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall (1962), Julie and Carol at Lincoln Center (1971) and Julie and Carol: Together Again (1989). She starred in her own variety special The Julie Andrews Hour (1973) for which she received the Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Musical Series. Recently she co-created and hosted Julie's Greenroom (2017), and voiced Lady Whistledown in the Netflix series Bridgerton (2020-present). Andrews has co-authored numerous children's books with her daughter and two autobiographies, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years (2008) and Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years (2019).

Details

Julie Andrews, in full Dame Julie Andrews, original name Julia Elizabeth Wells, (born October 1, 1935, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England), is an English motion-picture, stage, and musical star noted for her crystalline four-octave voice and her charm and skill as an actress.

At the age of 10, Andrews began singing with her pianist mother and singer stepfather (whose last name she legally adopted) in their music-hall act. Demonstrating a remarkably powerful voice with perfect pitch, she made her solo professional debut in 1947 singing an operatic aria in Starlight Roof, a revue staged at the London Hippodrome.

Andrews made her Broadway debut in 1954 in the American production of the popular British musical spoof The Boy Friend. In 1956 she created the role of the math flower girl Eliza Doolittle in Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s classic musical My Fair Lady. Andrews’s performance was universally acclaimed, and the production became one of the biggest hits in Broadway history, as well as a huge success in Britain. In 1957, during the show’s run, Andrews appeared on American television in a musical version of Cinderella, written for her by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. In 1960 she had another hit in a role developed especially for her, that of Queen Guinevere in Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot.

Although Andrews lost the part of Eliza in the film version of My Fair Lady (1964), she did make her movie debut that year. After seeing her performance in Camelot, Walt Disney went backstage and offered Andrews the title role of the magical proper English nanny in his Mary Poppins (1964). The picture became one of Disney’s biggest moneymakers, and Andrews won both a Grammy and an Academy Award for her performance. The wholesome role and image, however, would prove difficult for Andrews to shed. Her portrayal of the governess and aspiring nun Maria in The Sound of Music (1965), one of the top-grossing films of all time, earned Andrews another Academy Award nomination and further reinforced her sweet, “goody-goody” image.

Andrews attempted to change that image with dramatic, nonmusical roles in such films as The Americanization of Emily (1964) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), but these were overshadowed by her musicals, whose success made her one of the biggest stars of the decade. By the late 1960s, however, traditional film musicals were declining in popularity. Andrews starred in two expensive musical flops—Star! (1968) and Darling Lili (1970), the latter produced, directed, and cowritten by Blake Edwards, whom she married in 1970—and was considered by many to be a has-been. She continued to make television and concert appearances, and, using the name Julie Edwards, she wrote two children’s books—Mandy (1971) and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles (1974). She did not, however, have another notable film role until 1979, when she played a supporting part in Edwards’s popular comedy 10 (1979). Beginning with that picture, audiences began to accept Andrews in a wider range of roles.

She proved herself a versatile actress, adept at both comedy and drama, and she received an Academy Award nomination for her performance as a woman impersonating a male female-impersonator in Edwards’s Victor/Victoria (1982). She was also widely praised for her portrayal of a violinist struggling with multiple sclerosis in Duet for One (1986). Her later films included the family comedies The Princess Diaries (2001) and its sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004). She also narrated the fantasy Enchanted (2007) and provided the voice of the queen in several of the animated Shrek films (2004, 2007, and 2010). In addition, Andrews voiced characters in Despicable Me (2010), Despicable Me 3 (2017), and Aquaman (2018). In 2011 she won a Grammy Award for Julie Andrews’ Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabies, a spoken-word album for children, and she was honoured with a special Grammy for lifetime achievement.

Andrews reprised her Victor/Victoria role on Broadway in 1995 and stirred up controversy when she refused to accept a Tony nomination for her performance—the only nomination the show received—because she felt that the rest of the cast and crew, which included director Edwards, had been “egregiously overlooked.” In 1997 Andrews was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Three years later she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). She wrote the autobiographies Home: A Memoir of My Early Years (2008) and Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years (2019); the latter was written with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton.

Additional Information

Julia Elizabeth Wells was born on October 1, 1935, in England. Her mother, Barbara Ward (Morris), and stepfather, both vaudeville performers, discovered her freakish but undeniably lovely four-octave singing voice and immediately got her a singing career. She performed in music halls throughout her childhood and teens, and at age 20, she launched her stage career in a London Palladium production of "Cinderella".

Andrew came to Broadway in 1954 with "The Boy Friend", and became a bona fide star two years later in 1956, in the role of Eliza Doolittle in the unprecedented hit "My Fair Lady". Her star status continued in 1957, when she starred in the TV-production of Cinderella (1957) and through 1960, when she played "Guenevere" in "Camelot".

In 1963, Walt Disney asked Andrews if she would like to star in his upcoming production, a lavish musical fantasy that combined live-action and animation. She agreed on the condition if she didn't get the role of Doolittle in the pending film production of My Fair Lady (1964). After Audrey Hepburn was cast in My Fair Lady, Andrews made an auspicious film debut in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins (1964), which earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Andrews continued to work on Broadway, until the release of The Sound of Music (1965), the highest-grossing movie of its day and one of the highest-grossing of all time. She soon found that audiences identified her only with singing, sugary-sweet nannies and governesses, and were reluctant to accept her in dramatic roles in The Americanization of Emily (1964) and Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Torn Curtain (1966). In addition, the box-office showings of the musicals Julie subsequently made increasingly reflected the negative effects of the musical-film boom that she helped to create. Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) was for a time the most successful film Universal had released, but it still couldn't compete with Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music for worldwide acclaim and recognition. Star! (1968) and Darling Lili (1970) also bombed at the box office.

Fortunately, Andrews did not let this keep her down. She worked in nightclubs and hosted a TV variety series in the 1970s. In 1979, Andrews returned to the big screen, appearing in films directed by her husband Blake Edwards, with roles that were entirely different from anything she had been seen in before. Andrews starred in 10 (1979), S.O.B. (1981) and Victor/Victoria (1982), which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

She continued acting throughout the 1980s and 1990s in movies and TV, hosting several specials and starring in a short-lived sitcom. In 2001, she starred in The Princess Diaries (2001), alongside then-newcomer Anne Hathaway. The family film was one of the most successful G-Rated films of that year, and Andrews reprised her role as Queen Clarisse Renaldi in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004). In recent years, Andrews appeared in Tooth Fairy (2010), as well as a number of voice roles in Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), Enchanted (2007), Shrek Forever After (2010), and Despicable Me (2010).

Jai Ganesh · 2023-06-24 18:56:03

1294) Julie Christie

Gist

Julie Christie (born 14 April 1941) is a British actress. She has worked in theatre, motion picture and television. She has won the Academy, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Award. In 1997 she was given a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a lifetime achievement award. She has starred in many movies throughout her career. She was born in British India to British parents.

In 1967, Time magazine said of her: "What Julie Christie wears has more real impact on fashion than all the clothes of the ten best-dressed women combined".

Personal life

In the early 1960s, Christie dated actor Terence Stamp. She became engaged to Don Bessant, a lithographer and art teacher, in 1965. She dated actor Warren Beatty from 1967 to 1974. In November 2007, aged 66, Christie married The Guardian journalist Duncan Campbell. He had been her partner since 1979.

She is active in various causes, including animal rights, environmental protection, and the anti-nuclear power movement. She is also a Patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Summary

Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1940) is a British actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, Christie is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has appeared in six films ranked in the British Film Institute's BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century, and in 1997, she received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement.

Christie's breakthrough film role was in Billy Liar (1963). She came to international attention for her performances in Darling (1965), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Doctor Zhivago (also 1965), the eighth highest-grossing film of all time after adjustment for inflation. She continued to receive Academy Award nominations, for McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Afterglow (1997) and Away from Her (2007).

In the following years, she starred in Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Petulia (1968), The Go-Between (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), Shampoo (1975), and Heaven Can Wait (1978). She's also known for her performances in Hamlet (1996), and Finding Neverland (2004), Troy and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (both 2004).

Details

Julie Christie, (born April 14, 1941, Chukua, Assam, India), is a British film actress renowned for a wide range of roles in English and American films of the 1960s and ’70s, as well as for her offbeat, free-spirited personality.

Christie was born on her father’s Indian tea plantation but was educated in England and France. She studied acting at London’s Central School for Drama and made her stage debut in 1957. Her first major film role was in director John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar (1963). In 1965 she found stardom and won an Academy Award for playing a self-destructive fashion model in Schlesinger’s Darling. That same year she appeared as the romantic heroine Lara in David Lean’s enormously successful screen adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. She played dual roles in director François Truffaut’s production of Ray Bradbury’s science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and portrayed the Thomas Hardy heroine Bathsheba in Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), her final theatrical film with Schlesinger.

At the peak of her popularity, Christie made it a point to resist easy money and to be leery of fame. Often shunning the lure of mediocre Hollywood projects, the actress opted instead to play interesting roles in a series of films by respected international directors such as Lean, Truffaut, Richard Lester, Robert Altman, and Nicolas Roeg. Christie was comfortable in both contemporary and period pieces; in Lester’s Petulia (1968), she gave the defining performance of a 1960s free spirit, and in Altman’s period western McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), she won another Oscar nomination for her portrait of a tough, unflappable madam. In Roeg’s disturbing psychological thriller Don’t Look Now (1973)—a film that has become something of a cult classic—Christie turned in what was perhaps her most emotionally layered performance to date as a woman haunted by the deaths of her daughter and husband yet determined to maintain her poise and dignity.

Her romance with American actor, producer, and director Warren Beatty was echoed on-screen in three noteworthy films: McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Shampoo (1975), and Heaven Can Wait (1978). Christie appeared only sporadically in films during the 1980s, finding few compelling roles for an actress in her 40s. A notable exception was her performance in the 1983 made-for-television adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play Separate Tables.

In the 1990s Christie returned to the filmgoing public’s attention with her acclaimed portrayal of Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1996). She received her third Academy Award nomination for her role as a world-weary retired screen actress in Afterglow (1997). Her subsequent films included Troy (2004), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), and Finding Neverland (2004). Christie received a best actress Oscar nomination for her role as a woman with Alzheimer disease who forgets about her husband and falls in love with another man in Away from Her (2006), based on a short story by Alice Munro. She later portrayed the grandmother in Red Riding Hood (2011), an adaptation of the well-known folktale, and an erstwhile radical political activist in Robert Redford’s thriller The Company You Keep (2012). In 2017 she narrated the drama The Bookshop, though her work was uncredited.

Additional Information

Julie Christie, the British movie legend whom Al Pacino called "the most poetic of all actresses," was born in Chabua, Assam, India, on April 14, 1940, the daughter of a tea planter and his Welsh wife Rosemary, who was a painter. The young Christie grew up on her father's plantation before being sent to England for her education. Finishing her studies in Paris, where she had moved to improve her French with an eye to possibly becoming a linguist (she is fluent in French and Italian), the teenager became enamored of the freedom of the Continent. She also was smitten by the bohemian life of artists and planned on becoming an artist before she enrolled in London's Central School of Speech Training. She made her debut as a professional in 1957 as a member of the Frinton Repertory of Essex.

Christie was not fond of the stage, even though it allowed her to travel, including a professional gig in the United States. Her true métier as an actress was film, and she made her debut in the science-fiction television series A for Andromeda (1961) in 1961. Her first film was a girlfriend part in the Ealing-like comedy Crooks Anonymous (1962), which was followed up by a larger ingénue role in another comedy, The Fast Lady (1962). The producers of the James Bond series were sufficiently intrigued by the young actress to consider her for the role that subsequently went to Ursula Andress in Dr. No (1962), but dropped the idea because she was not busty enough.

Christie first worked with the man who would kick her career into high gear, director John Schlesinger, when he choose her as a replacement for the actress originally cast in Billy Liar (1963). Christie's turn in the film as the free-wheeling Liz was a stunner, and she had her first taste of becoming a symbol if not icon of the new British cinema. Her screen presence was such that the great John Ford cast her as the young prostitute in Young Cassidy (1965). Charlton Heston wanted her for his film The War Lord (1965), but the studio refused her salary demands.

Although Amercan magazines portrayed Christie as a "newcomer" when she made her breakthrough to super-stardom in Schlesinger's seminal Swinging Sixties film Darling (1965), she actually had considerable work under her professional belt and was in the process of a artistic quickening. Schlesinger called on Christie, whom he adored, to play the role of mode Diana Scott when the casting of Shirley MacLaine fell through. (MacLaine was the sister of the man who would become Christie's long-time paramour in the late 1960s and early '70s, Warren Beatty, whom some, like actor Rod Steiger, believe she gave up her career for. Her "Dr. Zhivago" co-star, Steiger -- a keen student of acting -- regretted that Christie did not give more of herself to her craft.)

As played by Christie, Diana is an amoral social butterfly who undergoes a metamorphosis from immature gender kitten to jaded socialite. For her complex performance, Christie won raves, including the Best Actress Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Academy. She had arrived, especially as she had followed up "Darling" with the role of Lara in two-time Academy Award-winning director David Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (1965), one of the all-time box-office champs.

Christie was now a superstar who commanded a price of $400,000 per picture, a fact ruefully noted in Charlton Heston's diary (his studio had balked at paying her then-fee of $35,000). More interested in film as an art form than in consolidating her movie stardom, Christie followed up "Zhivago" with a dual role in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) for director François Truffaut, a director she admired. The film was hurt by the director's lack of English and by friction between Truffaut and Christie's male co-star Oskar Werner, who had replaced the the more-appropriate-for-the-role Terence Stamp. Stamp and Christie had been lovers before she had become famous, and he was unsure he could act with her, due to his own ego problems. On his part, Werner resented the attention the smitten Truffaut gave Christie. The film is an interesting failure.

Stamp overcame those ego problems to sign on as her co-star in John Schlesinger's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), which also featured two great English actors, Peter Finch and Alan Bates. It is a film that is far better remembered now than when it was received in 1967. The film and her performance as the Hardy heroine Bathsheba Everdene was lambasted by film critics, many of whom faulted Christie for being too "mod" and thus untrue to one of Hardy's classic tales of fate. Some said that her contemporary Vanessa Redgrave would have been a better choice as Bathsheba, but while it is true that Redgrave is a very fine actress, she lacked the gender appeal and star quality of Christie, which makes the story of three men in love with one woman more plausible, as a film.

Although no one then knew it, the period 1967-68 represented the high-water mark of Christie's career. Fatefully, like the Hardy heroine she had portrayed, she had met the man who transformed her life, undermining her pretensions to a career as a movie star in their seven-year-long love affair, the American actor Warren Beatty. Living his life was always far more important than being a star for Beatty, who viewed the movie star profession as a "treadmill leading to more treadmills" and who was wealthy enough after Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to not have to ever work again. Christie and Beatty had visited a working farm during the production of "Madding Crowd" and had been appalled by the industrial exploitation of the animals. Thereafter, animal rights became a very important subject to Christie. They were kindred souls who remain friends four decades after their affair ended in 1974.

Christie's last box-office hit in which she was the top-liner was Petulia (1968) for Richard Lester, a film that featured one of co-star George C. Scott's greatest performances, perfectly counter-balanced by Christie's portrayal of an "arch-kook" who was emblematic of the '60s. It is one of the major films of the decade, an underrated masterpiece. Despite the presence of the great George C. Scott and the excellent Shirley Knight, the film would not work without Julie Christie. There is frankly no other actress who could have filled the role, bringing that unique presence and the threat of danger that crackled around Christie's electric aura. At this point of her career, she was poised for greatness as a star, greatness as an actress.

And she walked away.

After meeting Beatty, Julie Christie essentially surrendered any aspirations to screen stardom, or at maintaining herself as a top-drawer working actress (success at the box office being a guarantee of the best parts, even in art films.) She turned down the lead in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), two parts that garnered Oscar nominations for the second choices, Jane Fonda and Geneviève Bujold. After shooting In Search of Gregory (1969), a critical and box office flop, to fulfill her contractual obligations, she spent her time with Beatty in Calfiornia, renting a beach house at Malibu. She did return to form in Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (1971), a fine picture with a script by the great Harold Pinter, and she won another Oscar nomination as the whore-house proprietor in Robert Altman's minor classic McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) that she made with her lover Beatty. However, like Beatty himself, she did not seek steady work, which can be professional for an actor who wants to maintain a standing in the first rank of movie stars.

At the same time, Julie Christie turned down the role of the Russian Empress in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), another film that won the second-choice (Janet Suzman) a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Two years later, she appeared in the landmark mystery-horror film Don't Look Now (1973), but that likely was as a favor to the director, Nicolas Roeg, who had been her cinematographer on "Fahrenheit 451," "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "Petulia." In the mid '70s, her affair with Beatty came to an end, but the two remained close friends and worked together in Shampoo (1975) (which she regretted due to its depiction of women) and Heaven Can Wait (1978).

Christie was still enough of a star, due to sheer magnetism rather than her own pull at the box-office, to be offered $1 million to play the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis character in The Greek Tycoon (1978) (a part eventually played by Jacqueline Bisset to no great acclaim). She signed for but was forced to drop out of the lead in Agatha (1979) (which was filled by Vanessa Redgrave) after she broke a wrist roller-skating (a particularly southern Californian fate!). She then signed for the female lead in American Gigolo (1980) when Richard Gere was originally attached to the picture, but dropped out when John Travolta muscled his way into the lead after making twin box-office killings as disco king Tony Manera in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and greaser Danny Zuko in Grease (1978). Christie could never have co-starred with such a camp figure of dubious talent. When Travolta himself dropped out and Gere was subbed back in, it was too late for Christe to reconsider, as the part already had been filled by model-actress Lauren Hutton. It would take 15 years for Christie and Gere to work together.

Finally, the end of the American phase of her movie career was realized when Christie turned down the part of Louise Bryant in Reds (1981), a part written by Warren Beatty with her in mind, as she felt an American should play the role. (Beatty's latest lover, Diane Keaton, played the part and won a Best Actress Oscar nomination.) Still, she remained a part of the film, Beatty's long-gestated labor of love, as it is dedicated to "Jules."

Julie Christie moved back to the UK and become the UK's answer to Jane Fonda, campaigning for various social and political causes, including animal rights and nuclear disarmament. The parts she did take were primarily driven by her social consciousness, such as appearing in Sally Potter's first feature-length film, The Gold Diggers (1983) which was not a remake of the old Avery Hopwood's old warhorse but a feminist parable made entirely by women who all shared the same pay scale. Roles in The Return of the Soldier (1982) with Alan Bates and Glenda Jackson and Merchant-Ivory's Heat and Dust (1983) seemed to herald a return to form, but Christie -- as befits such a symbol of the freedom and lack of conformity of the '60s -- decided to do it her way. She did not go "careering," even though her unique talent and beauty was still very much in demand by filmmakers.

At this point, Christie's movie career went into eclipse. Once again, she was particularly choosy about her work, so much so that many came to see her, essentially, as retired. A career renaissance came in the mid-1990s with her turn as Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's ambitious if not wholly successful Hamlet (1996). As Christie said at the time, she didn't feel she could turn Branagh down as he was a national treasure. But the best was yet to come: her turn as the faded movie star married to handyman Nick Nolte and romanced by a younger man in Afterglow (1997), which brought her rave notices. She received her third Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, and showed up at the awards as radiant and uniquely beautiful as ever. Ever the iconoclast, she was visibly relieved, upon the announcement of the award, to learn that she had lost!

Christie lived with left-wing investigative journalist Duncan Campbell (a Manchester Guardian columnist) since 1979, first in Wales, then in Ojai, California, and now in London's East End, before marrying in January 2008. In addition to her film work, she has narrated many books-on-tape. In 1995, she made a triumphant return to the stage in a London revival of Harold Pinter's "Old Times", which garnered her superb reviews.

In the decade since "Afterglow," she has worked steadily on film in supporting roles. Christie -- an actress who eschewed vulgar stardom -- proved to be an inspiration to her co-star Sarah Polley, the remarkably talented Canadian actress with a leftist political bent who also abhors Hollywood. Of her co-star in No Such Thing (2001) and The Secret Life of Words (2005), Polley says that Christie is uniquely aware of her commodification by the movie industry and the mass media during the 1960s. Not wanting to be reduced to a product, she had rebelled and had assumed control of her life and career. Her attitude makes her one of Polley's heroes, who calls her one of her surrogate mothers. (Polley lost her own mother when she was 11 years old.)

Both Christie and Polley are rebels. Sarah Polley had walked off the set of the big-budget movie that was forecast as her ticket to Hollywood stardom, Almost Famous (2000), to have a different sort of life and career. She returned to her native Canada to appear in the low-budget indie The Law of Enclosures (2000), a prescient art film in that director John Greyson offset the drama with a background of a perpetual Gulf War three years before George W. Bush invaded Iraq, touching off the second-longest war in U.S. history. Taking a hiatus from acting, Polley went to Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre to learn to direct, and direct she has, making well-regarded shorts before launching her feature film debut, Away from Her (2006), which was shot and completed in 2006 but held for release until 2007 by its distributor.

Polley, who had longed to be a writer since she was a child actress on the set of the quaint family show Avonlea (1990) wrote the screenplay for her adaptation of Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" with only one actress in mind: Julie Christie. Polley had first read the short story on a flight back from Iceland, where she had made "No Such Thing" with Christie, and as she read, it was Julie whom she pictured as Fiona, the wife of a one-time philandering husband, who has become afflicted with Alzheimer's disease and seeks to save her hubby the pain of looking after her by checking herself into a home.

After finishing the screenplay, it took months to get Christie to commit to making the film. Julie turned her down after reading the script and pondering it for a couple of months, saying "No" even though she liked the script. Polley then had to "twist her arm" for another couple of months. But alas, Julie has a weakness for national treasures: Just like with Branagh a decade ago, the legendary Julie Christie could not deny the Great White North's Sarah Polley, and commit she did. Polley then found out why Christie is so reticent about making movies:

"She gives all of herself to what she does. Once she said yes, she was more committed than anybody."

According to David Germain, a cinema journalist who interviewed Christie for the Associated Press, "Polley and Christie share a desire to do interesting, unusual work, which generally means staying away from Hollywood.

"'It's been a kind of greed and a kind of egotism, but it's not necessarily wanting to avoid the Hollywood thing, but in fact, it incorporates wanting to avoid the Hollywood thing, because the Hollywood thing is so inevitably not original,' Christie said. 'It's avoiding non-originality, so that means you're really down to a very small choice.'"

The collaboration between the two rebels yielded a small gem of a film. Lions Gate Films was so impressed, it purchased the American distribution rights to the film in 2006, then withheld it until the following year to build up momentum for the awards season.

Julie Christie's performance in "Away From Her" is superb, and already has garnered her the National Board of Review's Best Actress Award. She will likely receive her fourth Academy Award nomination, and quite possibly her second Oscar, for her unforgettable performance, a labor of love she did for a friend.

We, the Julie Christie fans who have waited decades for the handful of films made by the numinous star: Would we have wanted it any other way? We are the Red Sox fans of the movies, once again rewarded with a world-class masterpiece by our heroine. Perhaps, like all human beings, we want more, but we have learned over the last thirty-five years to be content with the diamonds that are Julie's leading performances that she gives just once a decade, content to feel that these are a surfeit of riches, our surfeit of riches, so great is their luminescence.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-06-29 00:07:00

1295) Maggie Smith

Summary

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith (born 28 December 1934) is an English actress. With an extensive career on screen and stage over seven decades, she has achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, having received highest achievement for film, television and theatre, winning two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, and four Primetime Emmy Awards. Hailed as one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actresses, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 for contributions to the Arts, and a Companion of Honour in 2014 for services to Drama.

Smith began her career on stage as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional debut on Broadway in New Faces of '56. Over the following decades, Smith established herself alongside Judi Dench as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company. On the Broadway stage she received Tony Award nominations for Noël Coward's Private Lives (1975) and David Hare's Night and Day (1979), winning Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage (1990).

Smith received two Academy Awards for her roles in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), and California Suite (1978). Her other Oscar-nominated roles were in Othello (1965), Travels with My Aunt (1972), A Room with a View (1985), and Gosford Park (2001). She rose to popular fame portraying Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2011). Other notable films include Death on the Nile (1978), Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), Quartet (2012) and The Lady in the Van (2015).

On television she gained newfound attention and international fame for her role as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, on Julian Fellowes's period series Downton Abbey (2010–2015), as well as the 2019 film and the 2022 film. The role earned her three Primetime Emmy Awards, which she has also won for the HBO film My House in Umbria (2003). She is the recipient of several honorary awards including the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1993, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1996, and the Society of London Theatre Special Award in 2010.

Details

Maggie Smith, in full Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, (born December 28, 1934, Ilford, Essex, England), is a English stage and motion-picture actress noted for her poignancy and wit in comic roles.

Smith studied acting at the Oxford Playhouse School and began appearing in revues in Oxford in 1952 and London in 1955. She first achieved recognition in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1956 and held the lead comedian role in the London revue Share My Lettuce (1957–58). She then began appearing regularly in plays at the Old Vic theatre in London. Her work in Jean Anouilh’s The Rehearsal (1961), Peter Shaffer’s linked comedies The Private Ear and The Public Eye (1962), and Jean Kerr’s Mary, Mary (1963) solidified her reputation. In 1963 Smith joined Britain’s National Theatre company, and the following year she played Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello. She repeated that role in Olivier’s motion-picture version of Othello in 1965 and further appeared with the National Theatre in such roles as Silvia in George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer (1963).

Smith had made her screen debut in 1958 in Nowhere to Go, but she only achieved international fame with her performance in the title role of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), for which she received an Academy Award for best actress. Her subsequent stage appearances with the National Theatre included roles in William Wycherley’s The Country-Wife (1969), Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem (1970), and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1970). Smith left the National Theatre in the early 1970s and appeared for several seasons at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival. She also played in both the London and New York City productions of Noël Coward’s Private Lives (1972, 1975) and of Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day (1979).

In 1978 Smith starred in California Suite, a film adaptation of Neil Simon’s Broadway play. Her performance as an Oscar-nominated actress who bickers with her husband (played by Michael Caine) earned her a real-life Academy Award for best supporting actress. Smith also received Oscar nominations for her roles as a chaperone to a young woman traveling in Italy in A Room with a View (1985) and as a countess in Gosford Park (2001).

Smith’s subsequent films included The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), a drama in which she played the title role; the comedy Sister Act (1992), which starred Whoopi Goldberg; The Secret Garden (1993), an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel; Ladies in Lavender (2004), with Judi Dench; and Becoming Jane (2007), which imagines the early life of author Jane Austen. She later enlivened the ensemble comedies The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) and its 2015 sequel, about a group of British retirees in India, as well as Quartet (2012), which centred on four aging opera singers. Also in the early 21st century Smith played Professor Minerva McGonagall in the film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series, and she provided a voice for the animated Shakespeare spoof Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) and its sequel, Sherlock Gnomes (2018). Her talent for delivering barbed dialogue was highlighted in the comedy My Old Lady (2014), in which she depicted the tenant of a Parisian apartment inherited by an American man.

Smith continued to act onstage in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Notable credits included West End productions of William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1984), Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage (1987), and Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women (1994); for a subsequent Broadway production of Lettice and Lovage, she won a Tony Award in 1990. In 1999 she appeared as the title character in Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van at the Queen’s Theatre and later reprised the role in a 2015 film version.

Smith occasionally appeared on television. After starring in such TV movies as David Copperfield (1999) and My House in Umbria (2003), the latter of which earned her an Emmy Award, she took on a role in the British series Downton Abbey (2010–15), a period drama centring on the Crawleys, an aristocratic family, and their servants. For her performance as Violet, dowager countess of Grantham, Smith won three Emmys (2011, 2012, and 2016). She reprised the role for two feature-length films (2019 and 2022).

Smith was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1990 and was named a Companion of Honour (CH) in 2014.

Additional Information

One of the world's most famous and distinguished actresses, Dame Maggie Smith was born Margaret Natalie Smith in Essex. Her Scottish mother, Margaret (Hutton), worked as a secretary, and her English father, Nathaniel Smith, was a teacher at Oxford University. Smith has been married twice: to actor Robert Stephens and to playwright Beverley Cross. Her marriage to Stephens ended in divorce in 1974. She was married to Cross until his death in 1999. She had two sons with Stephens, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens who are also actors.

Maggie Smith's career began at the Oxford Playhouse in the 1950s. She made her film debut in 1956 as one of the party guests in Child in the House (1956). She has since performed in over sixty films and television series with some of the most prominent actors and actresses in the world. These include: Othello (1965) with Laurence Olivier, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), California Suite (1978) with Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, A Room with a View (1985), Richard III (1995) with Ian McKellen and Jim Broadbent, Franco Zeffirelli's Tea with Mussolini (1999) with Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Cher and Gosford Park (2001) with Kristin Scott Thomas and Clive Owen, directed by Robert Altman. Maggie Smith has also been nominated for an Oscar six times and won twice, for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and California Suite (1978).

Smith later appeared in the very successful 'Harry Potter' franchise as the formidable Professor McGonagall as well as in Julian Fellowes' ITV drama series, Downton Abbey (2010) (2010-2011) as the Dowager Countess of Grantham.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-06-30 21:04:05

1296) Glenda Jackson

Summary

Glenda May Jackson CBE (9 May 1936 – 15 June 2023) was a British actress and politician. She was one of the few performers to achieve the American Triple Crown of Acting, having won two Academy Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Tony Award. A member of the Labour Party, she served continuously as a Member of Parliament (MP) for 23 years, initially for Hampstead and Highgate from 1992 to 2010, and, following boundary changes, Hampstead and Kilburn, from 2010 to 2015.

Jackson won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for the romance films Women in Love (1970) and A Touch of Class (1973), but did not appear in person to collect either due to work commitments. She also won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). Her other notable performances include Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), Hedda (1975), The Incredible Sarah (1976), House Calls (1978), Stevie (1978) and Hopscotch (1980). She won two Primetime Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in the BBC series Elizabeth R (1971). She received both the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress and International Emmy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Elizabeth Is Missing (2019).

Jackson studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). She made her Broadway debut in Marat/Sade (1966). She received five Laurence Olivier Award nominations for her West End roles in Stevie (1977), Antony and Cleopatra (1979), Rose (1980), Strange Interlude (1984) and King Lear (2016), the last being her first role after a 25-year absence from acting, which she reprised on Broadway in 2019. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role in the revival of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women (2018).

Jackson ceased acting to take on a career in politics from 1992 to 2015, and was elected MP for Hampstead and Highgate at the 1992 general election. She was a junior transport minister from 1997 to 1999 during the first Blair ministry; she later became critical of Blair. After constituency boundary changes, she represented Hampstead and Kilburn from 2010. At the 2010 general election, her majority of 42 votes, confirmed after a recount, was the narrowest margin of victory in Great Britain. Jackson stood down at the 2015 general election and returned to acting.

Details

Glenda Jackson, (born May 9, 1936, Birkenhead, Cheshire, England—died June 15, 2023, London, England), was a British actress and Labour Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons (1992–2015). As an actress on stage and screen, she was noted for her tense portrayals of complex women.

The daughter of a bricklayer, Jackson quit school at age 16 to join an amateur theatre group and soon won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. After graduating she began working in repertory theatres as an actress and stage manager. She was discovered by Peter Brook for his Theatre of Cruelty revue, in which her career was established. In 1964 she had a stunning personal triumph when she portrayed Charlotte Corday in the West End production of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat…, better known as Marat/Sade. She reprised the role in the New York production of Marat/Sade in 1965, which marked her Broadway debut, and in the film version (1967).

Jackson’s performance as artist Gudrun Brangwen in Ken Russell’s film Women in Love (1969) gained her both international acclaim and the Academy Award for best actress. She followed this success with leading roles in The Music Lovers (1971), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), and A Touch of Class (1973). The latter film, a romantic comedy, was a departure for Jackson, and she won another Oscar for her portrayal of a woman who has an affair with a married man. Jackson’s screen persona was typically that of a highly intelligent, rather ironic, aloof woman who combines strength of character with a disturbing eroticism.

Jackson portrayed the English queen Elizabeth I both in the BBC television miniseries Elizabeth R (1971) and in the film Mary, Queen of Scots (1971). Her other film portrayals included the title role in Hedda (1975), a film adaptation of a play by Henrik Ibsen; The Incredible Sarah (1976); Stevie (1978); The Return of the Soldier (1982); and Turtle Diary (1985). In the early 1990s she also appeared in a series of TV movies, including A Murder of Quality (1991) and The Secret Life of Arnold Bax (1992). During this time she continued to act on the stage, and her notable theatre credits in the 1980s included West End and Broadway productions of both Rose and Strange Interlude, both of which earned her Laurence Olivier Award and Tony Award nominations.

In 1992 Jackson left acting to embark on a political career. That year she won a seat in the House of Commons as a Labour Party candidate. She later served as junior transport minister (1997–99). In 2000 she unsuccessfully ran for mayor of London, though she continued to serve in the House of Commons, winning reelection in 2001, 2005, and 2010. She did not run in 2015.

After leaving politics, Jackson resumed her acting career following a 25-year absence. In 2016 she notably starred in a West End production of King Lear. Her performance in the title role earned Jackson her fifth Laurence Olivier Award nomination. Further acclaim—including a Tony Award—followed in 2018, when she appeared in the first Broadway staging of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women. The next year she reprised her role as King Lear in the play’s Broadway staging. Her later credits include the TV movie Elizabeth Is Missing (2019), about a woman with dementia, and the film Mothering Sunday (2021), a romantic drama set in post-World War I England. Jackson was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1978.

Additional Information

Few in modern British history have come as far or achieved as much from humble beginnings as Glenda Jackson has. From acclaimed actress to respected MP (Member of Parliament), she is known for her high intelligence and meticulous approach to her work. She was born to a working-class household in Birkenhead, where her father was a bricklayer and her mother was a cleaning lady. When she was very young, her father was recruited into the Navy, where he worked aboard a minesweeper. She graduated from school at 16 and worked for a while in a pharmacy. However, she found this boring and dead-end and wanted better for herself. Her life changed forever when she was accepted into the prestigious Royal Acadamy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at the age of 18. Her work impressed all who observed it. In addition, she married Roy Hodges at 22.

Her first work came on the stage, where she won a role in an adaptation of "Separate Tables", and made a positive impression on critics and audiences alike. This led to film roles, modest at first, but she approached them with great determination. She first came to the public's notice when she won a supporting role in the controversial film Marat/Sade (1967), and is acknowledged to have stolen the show. She quickly became a member of Britian's A-List. Her first starring role came in the offbeat drama Negatives (1968), in which she out-shone the oddball material. The following year, controversial director Ken Russell gave her a starring role in his adaptation of the 1920s romance Women in Love (1969), in which she co-starred with Oliver Reed. The beautifully photographed film was a major success, and Jackson's performance won her an Academy Award for Best Actress. In the process, she became an international celebrity, known world-wide, yet she didn't place as much value on the status and fame as most do. She did, however, become a major admirer of Russell (who had great admiration for her in return) and acted in more of his films. She agreed to do a cameo appearance in his next film, The Boy Friend (1971). Although her role as an obnoxious actress was very small, she once again performed with great aplomb.

1971 turned out to be a key year for her. She took a risk by appearing in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), as a divorced businesswoman in a dead-end affair with a shallow bisexual artist, but the film turned out to be another major success. Also, she accepted the starring role in the British Broadcasting Corporation's much anticipated biography of Queen Elizabeth I, and her performance in the finished film, Elizabeth R (1971), was praised not only by critics and fans, but is cited by historians as the most accurate portrayal of the beloved former queen ever seen. The same year, she successfully played the role of Queen Elizabeth I again in the historical drama Mary, Queen of Scots (1971). That same year, she appeared in the popular comedy series The Morecambe & Wise Show (1968) in a skit as Queen Cleopatra, which is considered on of the funniest TV skits in British television, and also proof that she could do comedy just as well as costume melodrama. One who saw and raved about her performance was director Melvin Frank, who proceeded to cast her in the romantic comedy A Touch of Class (1973), co-starring George Segal. The two stars had a chemistry which brought out the best in each other, and the film was not only a major hit in both the United States and Great Britian, but won her a second Academy Award. She continued to impress by refusing obvious commercial roles and seeking out serious artistic work. She gave strong performances in The Romantic Englishwoman (1975) and The Incredible Sarah (1976), in which she portrayed the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt. However, some of her films didn't register with the public, like The Triple Echo (1972), The Maids (1975), and Nasty Habits (1977). In addition, her marriage fell apart in 1976. But her career remained at the top and in 1978 she was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire. That year, she made a comeback in the comedy House Calls (1978), co-starring Walter Matthau. The success of this film which led to a popular television spin-off in the United States the following year. In 1979, she and Segal re-teamed in Lost and Found (1979), but they were unable to overcome the routine script. She again co-starred with Oliver Reed in The Class of Miss MacMichael (1978), but the film was another disappointment.

During the 1980s, she appeared in Hopscotch (1980) also co-starring Walter Matthau, and HealtH (1980) with Lauren Bacall, with disappointing results, although Jackson herself was never blamed. Her performance in the TV biography Sakharov (1984), in which she played Yelena Bonner, devoted wife of imprisoned Russian nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov opposite Jason Robards, won rave reviews. However, the next film Turtle Diary (1985), was only a modest success, and the ensemble comedy Beyond Therapy (1987) was a critical and box office disaster and Jackson herself got some of the worst reviews of her career.

As the 1980s ended, Jackson continued to act, but became more focused on public affairs. She grew up in a household that was staunchly supportive of the Labour Party. She had disliked the policies of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, even though she admired some of her personal attributes, and strongly disapproved of Thatcher's successor, John Major. She was unhappy with the direction of British government policies, and in 1992 ran for Parliament. Although running in an area (Hampstead and Highgate) which was not heavily supportive of her party, she won by a slim margin and immediately became its most famous newly elective member. However, those who expected that she would rest on her laurels and fame were mistaken. She immediately took an interest in transportation issues, and in 1997 was appointed Junior Transportation Minister by Prime Minister Tony Blair. However, she was critical of some of Blair's policies and is considered an inter-party opponent of Blair's moderate faction. She is considered a traditional Labour Party activist, but is not affiliated with the faction known as The Looney Left. In 2000, she ran for Mayor of London, but lost the Labour nomination to fellow MP Frank Dobson, an ally of Blair's, who then lost the election to an independent candidate, Ken Livingstone. In 2005, she ran again and won the nomination, but lost to Livingstone, winning 38% of the vote. When Blair announced he would not seek reelection as Prime Minister in 2006, Jackson's name was mentioned as a possible successor, although she didn't encourage this speculation. In 2010, she sought reelection to parliament and was almost defeated, winning by only 42 votes. In 2013, she responded to the death of Margaret Thatcher by strongly denouncing her policies, which was condemned by many as graceless. In 2015, elections for parliament were called again but she didn't seek reelection. She was succeeded in Parliament by Chris Philip, a Conservative Party member who had been Jackson's opponent in 2010.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-02 22:44:52

1297) Jane Fonda

Summary

Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress and activist. Recognized as a film icon, Fonda is the recipient of various accolades including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Honorary Palme d'Or, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award.

Born to socialite Frances Ford Seymour and actor Henry Fonda, Fonda made her acting debut with the 1960 Broadway play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and made her screen debut later the same year with the romantic comedy Tall Story. She rose to prominence during the 1960s with the comedies Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (1963), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967), and Barbarella (1968) before receiving her first Oscar nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Fonda then established herself as one of the most acclaimed actresses of her generation, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress twice in the 70s for Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), On Golden Pond (1981), and The Morning After (1986). Consecutive hits Fun with Dickinson and Jane (1977), California Suite (1978), The Electric Horseman (1979), and 9 to 5 (1980) sustained Fonda's box-office drawing power, and she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the television film The Dollmaker (1984).

In 1982, Fonda released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling videotape of its time. It would be the first of 22 such videos over the next 13 years, which would collectively sell over 17 million copies. She also released another five exercise videos during 2009–2012. She starred in Stanley & Iris (1990), Monster-in-Law (2005), and Georgia Rule (2007) before returning to Broadway in the play 33 Variations (2009), earning a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play nomination. Fonda re-launched her acting career starring leading film roles in Youth (2015), and Our Souls at Night (2017), and in Netflix's comedy series Grace and Frankie (2015–2022) for which she earned a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

Fonda was a political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War. She was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, during which she gained the nickname "Hanoi Jane". During this time, she was effectively blacklisted in Hollywood. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women, and describes herself as a feminist and environmental activist. In 2005, along with Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, she co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda serves on the board of the organization.

Details

Jane Fonda, original name Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda, (born December 21, 1937, New York, New York, U.S.), is an American actress and political activist who first gained fame in comedic roles but later established herself as a serious actress, winning Academy Awards for her work in Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978).

Jane Fonda was the daughter of actor Henry Fonda; her younger brother, Peter Fonda, also became a noted actor. She left Vassar College after two years and lived in New York City, where she worked as a model and in 1958 studied acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Her acting career began with appearances in the Broadway play There Was a Little Girl (1960) and the motion picture Tall Story (1960), and she went on to appear in numerous comic films in the 1960s, including Cat Ballou (1965) and Barefoot in the Park (1967).

Fonda’s subsequent, more-substantial roles were in such socially conscious films as They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Klute (1971), Coming Home (1978), and The China Syndrome (1979). She received Academy Awards for best actress for her performances as a call girl in Klute and as the wife of a Vietnam War soldier in Coming Home. Fonda then joined Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin in Nine to Five (1980), a comedy in which three women join forces to get even with their cruel misogynistic boss. In 1981 she costarred with her father and Katharine Hepburn in the film On Golden Pond. Fonda’s other movies in the 1980s included Agnes of God (1985) and The Morning After (1986).

Following her turn as a struggling widow in Stanley & Iris (1990), Fonda took a break from acting and did not reappear onscreen until 2005, when she starred opposite Jennifer Lopez in the romantic comedy Monster-in-Law. Her later films included Georgia Rule (2007), Peace, Love & Misunderstanding (2011), Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013), and This Is Where I Leave You (2014). In 2009 Fonda returned to Broadway, after a 46-year absence, to portray a dying musicologist in 33 Variations. She also had a recurring role on the television drama The Newsroom (2012–14).

Fonda then starred opposite Lily Tomlin in the Netflix television comedy Grace and Frankie (2015–22), about two women whose husbands leave them for each other. In 2017 Fonda portrayed a widow who befriends her longtime neighbour (played by Robert Redford) in the Netflix movie Our Souls at Night. She later starred in Book Club (2018), a romantic comedy about longtime friends (Fonda, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, and Diane Keaton) who add spice to their club—and their lives—by reading E.L. James’s erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey; a sequel, Book Club: The Next Chapter, appeared in 2023. In the sports comedy 80 for Brady, Fonda costarred with Tomlin, Sally Field, and Rita Moreno as fans of the New England Patriots. In 2021 Fonda was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement).

From the 1970s Fonda was active on behalf of left-wing political causes. An outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, she journeyed to Hanoi in 1972 to denounce the U.S. bombing campaigns there. During that trip she visited with the crew of a North Vietnamese air defense battery, and photographs of Fonda in the seat of an antiaircraft gun were widely circulated. Her actions led to Fonda’s being branded “Hanoi Jane” (recalling World War II’s Tokyo Rose). In 1988 she apologized to American veterans of the Vietnam War in a televised interview with Barbara Walters, saying that some of her behaviour in Hanoi was “thoughtless and careless.” In the 1980s she devised a popular exercise program to fund Campaign for Economic Democracy, an organization founded by American politician Tom Hayden, who was her husband from 1973 to 1990. Fonda was also active in the women’s rights movement, and in 2005 she cofounded the Women’s Media Center. She also sought to raise awareness about climate change.

Fonda was married two other times, to the French film director Roger Vadim (1965–73) and to the American broadcasting entrepreneur Ted Turner (1991–2001). Her books included the autobiography My Life So Far (2005); Prime Time (2011), a volume of advice about aging; and What Can I Do?: My Path from Climate Despair to Action (2020). The documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts (2018) chronicled her life and career.

Additional Information

Born in New York City to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and Ontario-born New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Seymour Fonda was destined early to an uncommon and influential life in the limelight. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of "The Country Girl". Her interest in acting grew after meeting Lee Strasberg in 1958 and joining the Actors Studio. Her screen debut in Tall Story (1960) (directed by Logan) marked the beginning of a highly successful and respected acting career highlighted by two Academy Awards for her performances in Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978), and five Oscar nominations for Best Actress in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), The Morning After (1986) and On Golden Pond (1981), which was the only film she made with her father. Her professional success contrasted with her personal life, which was often laden with scandal and controversy. Her appearance in several risqué movies (including Barbarella (1968)) by then-husband Roger Vadim was followed by what was to become her most debated and controversial period: her espousal of anti-establishment causes and especially her anti-war activities during the Vietnam War. Her political involvement continued with fellow activist and husband Tom Hayden in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1980s she started the aerobic exercise craze with the publication of the "Jane Fonda's Workout Book". She and Hayden divorced, and she married broadcasting mogul Ted Turner in 1991.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-05 01:03:21

1298) Liza Minnelli

Summary

Liza May Minnelli (born March 12, 1946) is an American actress, singer, dancer, and choreographer. Known for her commanding stage presence and powerful alto singing voice, Minnelli is one of the very few performers awarded a non-competitive Emmy, Grammy (Grammy Legend Award), Oscar, and Tony (EGOT). Minnelli is a Knight of the French Legion of Honour.

Daughter of actress and singer Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, Minnelli was born in Los Angeles, spent part of her childhood in Scarsdale, New York, and moved to New York City in 1961 where she began her career as a musical theatre actress, nightclub performer, and traditional pop music artist. She made her professional stage debut in the 1963 Off-Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward and received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for starring in Flora the Red Menace in 1965, which marked the start of her lifelong collaboration with John Kander and Fred Ebb. They wrote, produced or directed many of Minnelli's future stage acts and television series and helped create her stage persona of a stylized survivor, including her career-defining performances of anthems of survival ("New York, New York", "Cabaret", and "Maybe This Time"). Along with her roles on stage and screen, this persona and her style of performance contributed to Minnelli's status as an enduring gay icon.

An acclaimed performance in the drama film The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) marked a film breakthrough for Minnelli and brought her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She later received the award for her performance as Sally Bowles in the musical film Cabaret (1972), which brought her to international prominence. Most of her following films, including Lucky Lady (1975), New York, New York (1977), Rent-a-Cop (1988), and Stepping Out (1991), were not as successful, aside from the major box office hit and critically lauded Arthur (1981) which starred Minnelli. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Lucky Lady, New York, New York and Arthur. She returned to Broadway on a number of occasions, including The Act (1977), for which she received her second Tony Award, as well as The Rink (1984) and Liza's at The Palace.... (2008). Minnelli has also worked on various television formats and has predominantly focused on music hall and nightclub performances since the late 1970s. Her concert performances at Carnegie Hall in 1979 and 1987 and at Radio City Music Hall in 1991 and 1992 are recognized among her most successful. From 1988 to 1990, she toured with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. in Frank, Liza & Sammy: The Ultimate Event.

While Minnelli is known for her renditions of American standards, her early-1960s pop singles were produced to attract a young audience. Her albums from 1968 to 1977 contained contemporary singer-songwriter material. In 1989, she ventured into the contemporary pop scene by collaborating with the Pet Shop Boys on the album Results. After a hiatus due to serious health problems, Minnelli returned to the concert stage in 2002 with Liza's Back and recurred as a guest star on the sitcom Arrested Development between 2003 and 2013. Since the 2010s, she has avoided huge concert performances in favor of small retrospective performances.

Details

Liza Minnelli, in full Liza May Minnelli, (born March 12, 1946, Hollywood, California, U.S.), is an American actress and singer perhaps best known for her role as Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse’s classic musical film Cabaret (1972).

Minnelli was the daughter of film director Vincente Minnelli and iconic entertainer Judy Garland. Initially she set her sights on a career as an ice-skater, but in 1963 she won a supporting role in the Off-Broadway revival of the 1941 musical Best Foot Forward. Her success in that role brought her appearances on a number of television shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show, and brought her to the attention of a wider public.

In 1965, at age 19, Minnelli starred as the title character in Flora, the Red Menace, the first musical by the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb. The show ran for only 87 performances, but Minnelli’s performance won her a Tony Award for best actress in a musical, and she remained the youngest winner of this award into the 21st century. Her association with Kander and Ebb had begun in 1964, when she was preparing to make her first recording, and the duo would supply Minnelli with all of her best-known arrangements and special material for the next 40 years.

Within two months of the closing of Flora, Minnelli began her first solo tour. Like her mother, she drew a strong audience response, and her own comfort with the concert stage was equally clear. She rejected initial overtures to act in movies but finally accepted a small role as Albert Finney’s secretary in Charlie Bubbles (1968). The following year, for her performance in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), she received her first Oscar nomination (for best actress). She starred in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970) before achieving her greatest screen success in Cabaret (1972). The musical, derived from John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera (itself taken from Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 collection of stories Goodbye to Berlin), featured lyrics and music by Kander and Ebb. As the “divinely decadent” Sally Bowles, Minnelli created a sensation. She became the first performer to appear on the covers of the newsmagazines Time and Newsweek in the same week. In 1973 she won both the Academy Award for best actress for her role in Cabaret and an Emmy Award for her performance as the star of the previous TV season’s spectacular Liza with a “Z”.

At this point in her career, Minnelli was deemed one of only two “bankable” female movie stars in Hollywood (the other being Barbra Streisand), but she returned to live concert work, including a Tony-winning engagement at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. When she did return to film acting, the projects did not prove to match her earlier success. The huge budget demands for Lucky Lady (1975) cut deeply into profits, and A Matter of Time (1976)—the last movie directed by her father—fell victim to studio tampering. Her last film of this period was Martin Scorsese’s brilliant homage to the big band music of the 1940s, New York, New York (1977). Although it lost money at the box office, the film did provide Minnelli with two trademark songs, “Theme from New York, New York” and “But the World Goes ’Round.” Though her following films were mostly less than memorable, Minnelli scored a hit as Dudley Moore’s true love in the blockbuster comedy Arthur (1981).

Minnelli’s return to Broadway for the 1977–78 season in the Kander-Ebb musical The Act brought her a third Tony Award. After appearing in the musical Victor/Victoria (1995–97), she reunited with Ebb for Minnelli on Minnelli (1999–2000). Her Broadway show Liza’s at the Palace… (2008–09) won the Tony Award for best special theatrical event.

During this time Minnelli continued to record, and her notable albums included Results (1989), Gently (1996), and Liza’s Back (2002). The latter is a taped performance of a concert held after her recovery from various health issues. Confessions was released in 2010. In addition, Minnelli occasionally appeared on film and television. She notably had a recurring role on the TV series Arrested Development.

Additional Information

Liza Minnelli was born on March 12, 1946, the daughter of Judy Garland and movie director Vincente Minnelli. She was practically raised at MGM studios while her parents worked long hours there and she made her film debut at fourteen months of age in the movie In the Good Old Summertime (1949). Her parents divorced in 1951 and, in 1952, her mother married Sidney Luft, with sister Lorna Luft and brother Joey Luft subsequently being born. Her father, Vincente Minnelli, later married Georgette Magnani, mother of her half-sister Christiane Nina "Tina Nina" Minnelli.

At sixteen, Liza was on her own in New York City, struggling to begin her career in show business. Her first recognition came for the play "Best Foot Forward" which ran for seven months in 1963. A year later, Judy invited Liza to appear with her for a show at the London Paladium. This show sold out immediately and a second night was added to it. Liza's performance in London was a huge turning point in both her career and her relationship with her mother. The audience absolutely loved Liza and Judy realized that Liza was now an adult with her own career. It was at the Paladium that Liza met her first husband, Peter Allen, a friend of Judy's.

Liza won a Tony award at age nineteen and was nominated for her first Academy Award at age twenty-three for the role of Pookie Adams in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969). Other dramatic roles followed and, in 1972, she won an Oscar for her performance as Sally Bowles in the movie Cabaret (1972). The seventies were a busy time for Liza. She worked steadily in film, stage and music. She and good friend Halston were regulars at Studio 54, the trendiest disco club in the world. Marriages to filmmaker Jack Haley Jr. and Mark Gero, a sculptor who earned his living in the theater followed. Each marriage ended in divorce.

Over the past years, her career has leaned more towards stage performances and she has a long list of musical albums which she continues to add to. She teamed with Frank Sinatra in his "Duets" CD and Sammy Davis Jr. joined them for a series of concerts and TV shows which were extremely well-received.

She has had to deal with tabloid stories of drug abuse and ill-health and has had a number of high profile stays at drug-rehabilitation clinics. Her hectic schedule may have slowed down in recent years, but she still has a large following of immensely loyal fans who continue to cheer her on.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-08 00:17:02

1299) Ellen Burstyn

Summary

Ellen Burstyn (born Edna Rae Gillooly; December 7, 1932) is an American actress. Known for her portrayals of complicated women in dramas, she is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, making her one of the few performers to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting".

Born in Detroit, Burstyn left school and worked as a dancer and model. At age 24, she made her acting debut on Broadway in 1957 and soon started to make appearances in television shows. Stardom followed several years later with her acclaimed role in The Last Picture Show (1971), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her next appearance in The Exorcist (1973), earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. The film has remained popular and several publications have regarded it as one of the greatest horror films of all time. She followed this with Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in the title role. In 1975 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role in Same Time, Next Year. Her performance in the 1978 film adaptation won her a Golden Globe Award.

Burstyn appeared in numerous television films and gained further recognition from her performance in the films Resurrection (1980), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), and Requiem for a Dream (2000). She portrayed a lonely drug-addicted woman in the latter, and she was again nominated for an Academy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In the 2010s, she made appearances in television series including the political dramas Political Animals and House of Cards, both of which earned her Emmy Award nominations. Since 2000, she has been co-president of the Actors Studio, a drama school in New York City. In 2013, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame for her work on stage.

Details

Ellen Burstyn , original name Edna Rae Gillooly, early professional name Ellen McRae, (born December 7, 1932, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.), is an American actress who was known for her understated charm and versatility.

Gillooly was raised in Detroit, though she attended St. Mary’s Academy in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, for several years in the late 1930s. Both her mother and her stepfather were physically and verbally abusive, and in 1950, several credits short of graduating from Cass Technical High School, Gillooly left home. After stints in Dallas and Montreal, she relocated to New York City in 1954 and soon secured a bit part in a television musical. Assuming the stage name Edna Rae, she began appearing on The Jackie Gleason Show (1956–57), and under the name Ellen McRae she debuted on Broadway in 1957 in Fair Game. She married the play’s director, Paul Roberts, in 1958 (divorced 1962) and two years later accompanied him to Hollywood. There she accepted a series of minor film roles and television guest spots, including on Perry Mason (1962). In 1964 she was cast in director Vincente Minnelli’s Goodbye Charlie, her first significant studio picture. She returned to New York later that year, began studying with Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio, and in 1964 married actor and writer Neil Burstyn (also known as Neil Nephew; divorced 1972).

She was first credited as Ellen Burstyn in Alex in Wonderland (1970), a comedy about the film industry. In 1970 she also starred in Tropic of Cancer, an adaptation of Henry Miller’s autobiographical novel in which she played Miller’s wife. She received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for The Last Picture Show (1971), about life in a small Texas town. In The Exorcist (1973), Burstyn played a woman whose daughter (played by Linda Blair) has been demonically possessed. She secured studio support for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) and selected Martin Scorsese to direct. Burstyn’s depiction of the travails of a single mother in that film won her the Academy Award for best actress in 1975. That year she also won the Tony Award for best actress for Same Time, Next Year.

Burstyn then accepted substantial roles in Providence (1977) and the film production of Same Time, Next Year (1978). She received an Oscar nomination for Resurrection (1980), in which she played a woman who develops healing powers after a car accident. During the remainder of the 1980s, however, her screen appearances were limited mostly to minor features and television movies. She nonetheless worked steadily into the next decade, appearing in When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) and The Spitfire Grill (1996). Her transformative performance as an addict in Requiem for a Dream (2000) was critically lauded, as was her turn as first lady Barbara Bush in Oliver Stone’s W. (2008). In 2014 she played the grown daughter of a spaceship pilot in the big-screen drama Interstellar. Burstyn’s later credits included Lucy in the Sky (2019), Pieces of a Woman (2020), and Queen Bees (2021).

Burstyn’s notable TV credits included a recurring role (2007–11) in the HBO television series Big Love, and she won Emmy Awards for her guest appearance (2008) on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and for her supporting role (2012) in the miniseries Political Animals. In 2014 she played a crazed matriarch in a television adaptation of the melodramatic thriller Flowers in the Attic (1979), by V.C. Andrews, and two years later she portrayed the vindictive mother of the first lady of the United States (Robin Wright) on the Netflix series House of Cards. Burstyn also continued to appear onstage in such plays as The Children’s Hour (2011) and Picnic (2013).

Burstyn was very active with the Actors Studio. Notably, she served as artist director, with Al Pacino, from 1982 to 1986 and remained director for a further two years after Pacino resigned. She became copresident, with Pacino and Harvey Keitel, in 2000. Burstyn also served as the first female president of the Actors’ Equity Association (1982–85). She published her memoir, Lessons in Becoming Myself, in 2006.

Additional Information

Ellen Burstyn was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Correine Marie (Hamel) and John Austin Gillooly. She is of Irish, French/French-Canadian, Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and Native American ancestry.. She worked a number of jobs before she became an actress. At 14, she was a short-order cook at a lunch counter. After graduating from Detroit's Cass Technical High School, she went to Texas to model and then to New York as a showgirl on The Jackie Gleason Show (1952). From there, it was to Montreal as a nightclub dancer and then Broadway with her debut in "Fair Game (1957)". By 1963, she appeared on the TV series The Doctors (1963), but she gained notice for her role in Goodbye Charlie (1964). Ellen then took time off to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.

Her big break came when she was cast as the female lead in The Last Picture Show (1971). For this role, she received nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award. Next, she co-starred with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), giving a chilling performance. Then came The Exorcist (1973). She was again nominated for the Golden Globe and Academy Award. In 1974, she starred in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), for which performance she won the Oscar and BAFTA awards as Best Actress. For the Golden Globe, she was nominated but lost to Marsha Mason. The same year, she made history by winning a Tony Award for the Broadway play "Same Time, Next Year". She won praise and award nominations for her performances in the film versions of Same Time, Next Year (1978) and Resurrection (1980).

In "Resurrection", she played a woman with the power to heal. A succession of TV movies resulting in two Emmy nominations kept her going as did the series The Ellen Burstyn Show (1986). The TV movies continued through the 1990s. Also in the 1990s, she was cast in the supporting role in such movies as The Cemetery Club (1993), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), The Baby-Sitters Club (1995) and The Spitfire Grill (1996). In addition to her acting, She was the first woman president of Actor's Equity (1982-85).

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-10 00:16:45

1300) Louise Fletcher

Details

Estelle Louise Fletcher (July 22, 1934 – September 23, 2022) was an American actress. She is best known for her portrayal of the antagonist Nurse Ratched in the psychological drama film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which earned her numerous accolades including, the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.

Fletcher notably had a recurring role as the Bajoran religious leader Kai Winn Adami in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–99). She was nominated for two Emmy Awards for her roles in the television series Picket Fences (1996) and Joan of Arcadia (2004). Her final role was as Rosie in the Netflix series Girlboss (2017).

Early life

Estelle Louise Fletcher was born on July 22, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama, the second of four children of Estelle (née Caldwell) and the Reverend Robert Capers Fletcher, an Episcopalian missionary from Arab, Alabama. Her parents were deaf and worked with the deaf/hard-of-hearing, but Fletcher and her siblings, Roberta, John, and Georgianna, were all hearing normally, so her hearing aunt was her orator. Fletcher's father founded more than 40 churches for the deaf in Alabama. She received a bachelor's degree in drama from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1957.

Career

Fletcher began appearing in several television series including Lawman (1958) and Maverick (1959). (The Maverick episode "The Saga of Waco Williams" with James Garner was the series's highest-rated episode.) Also in 1959, she appeared in an episode of the original Untouchables TV series starring Robert Stack, "Ma Barker and Her Boys", as Elouise. Fletcher recalled having greater success being cast in Westerns due to her height:

I was 5 feet 10 inches [1.78 m] tall, and no television producer thought a tall woman could be sexually attractive to anybody. I was able to get jobs on westerns because the actors were even taller than I was.

— Louise Fletcher (November 1975)

In 1960, Fletcher made two guest appearances on Perry Mason, as defendant Gladys Doyle in "The Case of the Mythical Monkeys", and as Susan Connolly in "The Case of the Larcenous Lady". In the summer of 1960, she was cast as Roberta McConnell in the episode "The Bounty Hunter" of Tate, starring David McLean.

In 1974, Fletcher returned to film in the crime drama Thieves Like Us, co-produced by her husband Jerry Bick and Robert Altman, who also directed. When the two had a falling out on Altman's next project (Nashville (1975)), Altman decided to cast Lily Tomlin for the role of Linnea Reese, initially created for and by Fletcher. Meanwhile, director Miloš Forman saw Fletcher in Thieves and cast her as McMurphy's nemesis Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). She based her performance of the character on the paternalistic way she saw white people treat black people in her native Alabama. Fletcher gained international recognition and fame for the role, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress, as well as a BAFTA Award and Golden Globe. She was only the third actress ever to win an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for a single performance, after Audrey Hepburn and Liza Minnelli. When Fletcher accepted her Oscar, she used sign language to thank her parents.

After Cuckoo's Nest, Fletcher had mixed success in film. She made several financially and critically successful films, while others were box-office failures. Fletcher's film roles were in such features as Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Cheap Detective (1978), The Lady in Red (1979), The Magician of Lublin (1979), Brainstorm (1983), Firestarter (1984), Invaders From Mars (1986), Flowers in the Attic (1987), Two Moon Junction (1988), Best of the Best (1989), Blue Steel (1990), Virtuosity (1995), High School High (1996), and Cruel Intentions (1999), as the aunt of Ryan Phillippe's Sebastian. Additionally, she played the character Ruth Shorter, a supporting role, in Aurora Borealis (2005), alongside Joshua Jackson and Donald Sutherland, and appeared in the Fox Faith film The Last Sin Eater (2007).

Fletcher co-starred in TV movies such as The Karen Carpenter Story (1989) (as Karen and Richard Carpenter's mother, Agnes), Nightmare on the 13th Floor (1990), The Haunting of Seacliff Inn (1994), and The Stepford Husbands (1996). From 1993 to 1999, she held a recurring role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the scheming Bajoran religious leader Kai Winn Adami.[15] She also earned Emmy Award nominations for her guest roles on Picket Fences (1996), and later on Joan of Arcadia (2004). In 2009, Fletcher appeared in Heroes as the physician mother of character Emma Coolidge. In 2011 and 2012, she appeared on four episodes of Shameless as Grammy Gallagher, Frank Gallagher's foul-mouthed and hard-living mother, who is serving a prison sentence for manslaughter related to a meth lab explosion. She portrayed the recurring role of Rosie on the series Girlboss (2017).

Personal life

Fletcher married producer Jerry Bick, divorcing in 1977. The couple had two sons, John Dashiell Bick and Andrew Wilson Bick. Fletcher took an 11-year break from acting to raise them.

Fletcher received an honorary degree from Gallaudet University in 1982.

Fletcher died at her home in Montdurausse, France, on September 23, 2022, at the age of 88.

Additional Information

Louise Fletcher, in full Estelle Louise Fletcher, (born July 22, 1934, Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.—died September 23, 2022, Montdurausse, France), was an American actress who was perhaps best known for her skillfully underplayed portrayal of the rigidly authoritarian Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), which earned her the Academy Award for best actress.

Fletcher’s father was an Episcopal priest, and both of her parents were deaf. She was introduced to acting by an aunt with whom she and her siblings, all of whom were hearing, spent one full year and summers thereafter to ensure that they learned to speak. (When she accepted her Academy Award, she memorably signed her thanks to her parents.) After graduating (1957) from the University of North Carolina, Fletcher traveled to Los Angeles, where she soon found work making guest appearances on such television shows as Bat Masterson, Maverick, The Untouchables, Wagon Train, and Perry Mason. In 1963 she made her film debut in A Gathering of Eagles, though her role was uncredited. Fletcher then decided to retire from acting and devote herself to her family.

Several years later, director Robert Altman persuaded Fletcher to appear in Thieves Like Us (1974). Her portrayal of a capable mother who initially shelters bank robbers but eventually works with the police caught the attention of director Miloš Forman, and he cast her as Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In addition to winning an Oscar for the performance, she received a BAFTA award and a Golden Globe. Fletcher was frequently typecast thereafter, and her subsequent movies were less notable. She portrayed a psychiatrist in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and had the title role in The Lady in Red (1979), starring Robert Conrad and written by John Sayles. She appeared in several horror films, among them Strange Behavior (1981), Strange Invaders (1983), Firestarter (1984), Invaders from Mars (1986), and Flowers in the Attic (1987). Later film credits included Kathryn Bigelow’s thriller Blue Steel (1989), Altman’s The Player (1992), and the sci-fi thriller Virtuosity (1995).

During this time, Fletcher continued to appear in various TV shows and movies. She played the controlling mother of the title character in the television biopic The Karen Carpenter Story (1989), and in 1996 she was nominated for an Emmy Award for a guest appearance on the TV series Picket Fences. She also made guest appearances on the series Profiler and The Practice, and she had a recurring part on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Fletcher received a second Emmy nomination for a 2004 guest role on Joan of Arcadia, and she later played recurring characters on ER, Heroes, Private Practice, Shameless, and Girlboss.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-12 01:52:54

1301) Faye Dunaway

Summary

Dorothy Faye Dunaway (born January 14, 1941) is an American actress. She is the recipient of many accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a BAFTA Award. In 2011, the government of France made her an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Her career began in the early 1960s on Broadway. She made her screen debut in the 1967 film The Happening, the same year she made Hurry Sundown with an all-star cast, and rose to fame with her portrayal of outlaw Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. Her most notable films include the crime caper The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the drama The Arrangement (1969), the revisionist western Little Big Man (1970), a two-part adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic The Three Musketeers (1973, with The Four Musketeers following in 1974), the neo-noir mystery Chinatown (1974) for which she earned her second Oscar nomination, the action-drama disaster The Towering Inferno (1974), the political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975), the satire Network (1976) for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, and the thriller Eyes of Laura Mars (1978).

Her career evolved to more mature character roles in subsequent years often in independent films, beginning with her controversial portrayal of Joan Crawford in the 1981 film Mommie Dearest. Other notable films include Supergirl (1984), Barfly (1987), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), Arizona Dream (1994), Don Juan DeMarco (1995), The Twilight of the Golds (1997), Gia (1998) and The Rules of Attraction (2002). Dunaway has also performed on stage in several plays, including A Man for All Seasons (1961–63), After the Fall (1964), Hogan's Goat (1965–67), A Streetcar Named Desire (1973). She was awarded the Sarah Siddons Award for her portrayal of opera singer Maria Callas in Master Class (1996).

Protective of her private life, she rarely gives interviews and makes very few public appearances. After romantic relationships with Jerry Schatzberg and Marcello Mastroianni, Dunaway married twice, first to singer Peter Wolf and then to photographer Terry O'Neill, with whom she had a son, Liam.

Details

Faye Dunaway, in full Dorothy Faye Dunaway, (born January 14, 1941, Bascom, Florida, U.S.), is an American actress known for her tense, absorbing performances. She enjoyed early success on the stage and then gained international stardom for her work in films.

Initially studying to become a teacher, Dunaway entered the University of Florida in Gainesville on a teaching scholarship, but she transferred to Boston University’s School of Fine and Applied Arts, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1962. Although she was offered the opportunity to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Dunaway accepted instead a role in the American National Theatre and Academy production of A Man for All Seasons (1962). In 1965 she won critical acclaim for her role in William Alfred’s Hogan’s Goat, and that year she made her television debut. A film career soon followed, as her first two movies, The Happening and Hurry Sundown, were released early in 1967.

Dunaway did not have long to wait for big-screen success. Just months after her film debut, she became a Hollywood star with her role opposite Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, which premiered in August 1967. As Bonnie Parker, she embodied the spirit of the film (as she often did in her best performances), instilling the legendary bank robber with an intoxicating mix of youthful rebellion, vanity, and sexuality. She was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress. Dunaway proved equally adept as a determined insurance investigator pursuing a rakish thief (played by Steve McQueen) in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). After appearing in a string of good if unremarkable films, including Little Big Man (1970) and The Three Musketeers (1973), she gave a deeply affecting performance in Roman Polanski’s classic film noir Chinatown (1974). As Evelyn Mulwray, Dunaway depicted a complex and troubled woman in a role that transcended the typical femme fatale and earned her a second Oscar nomination. She then appeared as a civilian abducted by a CIA agent on the run (Robert Redford) in Three Days of the Condor (1975). She won the Academy Award for best actress for her role as Diana Christensen, an intimidating and amoral television executive, in Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976).

Although Dunaway continued to perform in films, few of her later vehicles achieved any measure of critical success. She played the title role in the supernatural thriller Eyes of Laura Mars (1978). Her chilling portrayal of Joan Crawford in the biopic Mommie Dearest (1981) thrilled some but alienated most, especially in Hollywood, where she found increasingly less work. She gave memorable performances in Barfly (1987), The Handmaid’s Tale (1990), and Arizona Dream (1993). She later took on supporting roles in the biopic The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), the crime thriller The Yards (2000), the dark comedy The Rules of Attraction (2002), and the drama The Case for Christ (2017).

Dunaway continued to act onstage, most notably as opera diva Maria Callas in the American tour of Terrence McNally’s Master Class (1996–97). She also starred in several television movies and made guest appearances on shows including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2006) and Grey’s Anatomy (2009). In 2017 Dunaway and her Bonnie and Clyde costar, Warren Beatty, made Oscar history by mistakenly announcing La La Land (2016) as the winner for best picture. The actual winner was Moonlight (2016), and show officials noted that the mistake was due to an envelope mix-up. Dunaway’s autobiography, Looking for Gatsby (written with Betsey Sharkey), was published in 1995.

Additional Information

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 1974 sequel The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974) preceded a long period of critical and box office hits, starting with her masterful performance in 1974's 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 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 1981 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. In 1998, 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.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-13 23:14:23

1302) Diane Keaton

Summary

Diane Keaton (born Diane Hall, January 5, 1946) is an American actress. She has received various accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two Emmy Awards. She was honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 2007 and an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2017.

Keaton's career began on stage when she appeared in the original 1968 Broadway production of the musical Hair. The next year she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Woody Allen's comic play Play it Again, Sam. She then made her screen debut in a small role in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), before rising to prominence with her first major film role as Kay Adams-Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), a role she reprised in its sequels Part II (1974) and Part III (1990). She frequently collaborated with Woody Allen, beginning with the film adaptation of Play It Again, Sam (1972). Her next two films with him, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actor, while her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

To avoid being typecast as her Annie Hall persona, Keaton appeared in several dramatic films, starring in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and Interiors (1978). She received three more Academy Award nominations for her roles as activist Louise Bryant in Reds (1981), a leukemia patient in Marvin's Room (1996), and a dramatist in Something's Gotta Give (2003). Keaton is also known for her starring roles in Manhattan (1979), Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), Father of the Bride Part II (1995), The First Wives Club (1996), The Family Stone (2005), Finding Dory (2016) and Book Club (2018).

Details

Diane Keaton, original name Diane Hall, (born January 5, 1946, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), is an American film actress and director who achieved fame in quirky comic roles prior to gaining respect as a dramatic actress.

Keaton studied acting at Santa Ana College in California and at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. She appeared in summer stock in the mid-1960s and in 1968 understudied the lead in the Broadway rock musical Hair. She had the lead role in Woody Allen’s Broadway play Play It Again, Sam (1969), which she later reprised for the 1972 film version. Keaton made her film debut in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970); her character, a young naïf divorcing her husband because his hair no longer smells like raisins, established a comic persona that would sustain her early career.

Though she acted in Francis Ford Coppola’s acclaimed gangster dramas—The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974)—Keaton appeared mostly in Allen’s comedies during the 1970s, including Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), Interiors (1978), and Manhattan (1979).

Keaton’s watershed year was 1977: in two films she not only established herself as a star but succeeded in both reinventing her screen persona and capitalizing on her established one. Allen’s Annie Hall—which won Academy Awards for best picture, actress, and director—is probably the role for which she is best known, appearing as the archetypal Keaton “kook.” Based on the real-life relationship between Allen and Keaton, the film chronicles Annie’s transformation from shy awkwardness to mature confidence. In many ways it was an autobiographical statement for Keaton, who made a dramatic turn the same year in Richard Brooks’s dark, violent Looking for Mr. Goodbar. She continued in that vein as journalist Louise Bryant in Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981), which earned her another Oscar nomination.

Keaton found continued success in such diverse films as Shoot the Moon (1982), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), and the popular Baby Boom (1987). She reunited with Allen for a cameo in Radio Days (1987) and a leading role in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993). During the 1990s she appeared in several films with broad appeal, such as The Godfather, Part III (1990), the romantic farce Father of the Bride (1991), and the melodrama Marvin’s Room (1996).

In the early 21st century Keaton starred in a number of lighthearted comedies, including Nancy Meyers’s Something’s Gotta Give (2003), opposite Jack Nicholson; The Family Stone (2005); Because I Said So (2007); and Morning Glory (2010), in which she and Harrison Ford portrayed TV anchors with clashing personalities. She returned to less frothy fare with the dramedy Darling Companion (2012) before starring in the multigenerational-family farce The Big Wedding (2013) and the comedies And So It Goes (2014) and Love the Coopers (2015). Keaton voiced a blue tang fish, the mother of the title character (voiced by Ellen Degeneres), in Pixar’s computer animated aquatic adventure Finding Dory (2016).

Keaton then took on her first regular television role, playing a nun in HBO’s The Young Pope (2016). She later starred in the romantic comedies Hampstead (2017), Book Club (2018), and Love, Weddings & Other Disasters (2020). In Poms (2019) she played a terminally ill woman who forms a cheerleading squad in her retirement community. The dramedy Mack & Rita (2022) centres on a 30-year-old social-media influencer who ages 40 years after spending time in a life-regression machine.

In addition to acting, Keaton also directed several films, including Hanging Up (2000). Her memoir, Then Again, was published in 2011. She later wrote a collection of essays, Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty (2014), and also published a series of house-styling guides, including House (2012) and The House That Pinterest Built (2017).

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-16 01:38:59

1303) Sally Field

Summary

Sally Field, (born November 6, 1946, Pasadena, California, U.S.), is an American actress known for playing firebrands and steely matriarchs.

Field played lighthearted television roles in Gidget (1965–66) and The Flying Nun (1967–70) before developing her talent at the Actors Studio (1973–75), from which she emerged as a dramatic actress. After she starred in the television movie Sybil (1977, Emmy Award), Hollywood finally rewarded her with strong roles. In Norma Rae (1979) she portrayed a union organizer, and for her performance Field won an Academy Award. In 1981 she was cast as a journalist who wrongly implicates a businessman (Paul Newman) for murder in Absence of Malice. Field received her second Oscar for the Depression-era drama Places in the Heart (1984), in which she played a mother struggling to keep her farming family intact. During her acceptance speech, Field exclaimed, “You like me, you really like me,” a phrase that quickly entered the canon of familiar pop-culture quotations. She played another strong-willed matriarch in Steel Magnolias (1989).

Field’s later films included the comedies Soapdish (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), and Two Weeks (2006). In Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), she portrayed Mary Todd Lincoln. She subsequently was cast in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015). In the sports comedy 80 for Brady (2023), she costarred with Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin.

Field also continued to appear on television. She had a recurring role on ER from 2000 to 2006, and she starred in the drama series Brothers & Sisters (2006–11); she earned Emmy Awards (2001 and 2007) for her work on both shows. Field later appeared in the Netflix series Maniac (2018), portraying the mother of a mad scientist. In 2020 she starred in Dispatches from Elsewhere, a series inspired by an alternate-reality game. She also appeared in the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (2022– ), about the famed NBA team.

During this time, Field also appeared on the stage. In 2002 she made her Broadway debut in the first staging of Edward Albee’s The Goat; or, Who Is Sylvia?. She returned to the stage in 2017 for a revival of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, and her performance as the domineering matriarch Amanda Wingfield earned Field a Tony Award nomination. Her memoir, In Pieces (2018), revealed a traumatic childhood in which she was sexually abused by her stepfather.

Details

Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946) is an American actress. Known for her extensive work on screen and stage, she has received many accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two British Academy Film Awards. She was presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2014, the National Medal of Arts in 2014, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2019, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2023.

Field began her career on television, starring in the comedies Gidget (1965–1966), The Flying Nun (1967–1970), and The Girl with Something Extra (1973–1974). She received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the NBC television film Sybil (1976). Her film debut was as an extra in Moon Pilot (1962) followed by starring roles in Stay Hungry (1976), The Way West (1967) Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Heroes (1977), The End (1978), and Hooper (1978). She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress for Norma Rae (1979), and Places in the Heart (1984). Other notable roles include in Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), Absence of Malice (1981), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), Murphy's Romance (1985), Steel Magnolias (1989), Soapdish (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and Forrest Gump (1994).

In the 2000s, Field returned to television with a recurring role on the NBC medical drama ER, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2001. For her role of Nora Walker in the ABC drama series Brothers & Sisters (2006-2011), Field won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She portrayed Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln (2012), for which she received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination. She portrayed Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its 2014 sequel. Other roles include in the films Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015), and 80 for Brady (2023), as well as in the Netflix limited series Maniac (2018).

She made her professional stage debut in the Broadway revival of Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? in 2002. Field returned to the stage after an absence of 15 years with the 2017 revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She made her debut on the West End theatre in the revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons in 2019.

cheetahflycello · 2023-07-17 05:58:15

This thread is fun!

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-17 13:01:10

Thanks!

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-20 00:09:50

1304) Sissy Spacek

Details

Mary Elizabeth "Sissy" Spacek (born December 25, 1949) is an American actress, set dresser and singer. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for four British Academy Film Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. Spacek was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.

Spacek was born in Quitman, Texas and grew up in Texas. She aspired to have a career as a recording artist. In 1968, at age 18, she recorded a single, "John, You Went Too Far This Time," under the name Rainbo. Spacek began her professional acting career in the early 1970s, making her debut as an extra in Andy Warhol's Women in Revolt (1971). Her breakout role came with Terrence Malick's influential crime film Badlands (1973), which earned her a nomination for the British Academy Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. She rose to international prominence with her portrayal of Carrie White in Brian De Palma's horror film Carrie (1976), for which she received her first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. After appearing in the films Welcome to L.A. (1976) and the acclaimed Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977), Spacek won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn in the biographical musical film Coal Miner's Daughter (1980).

Spacek's other Oscar-nominated roles include Missing (1982), The River (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), and the In the Bedroom (2001). Her other prominent films include Raggedy Man (1981), JFK (1991), Affliction (1997), The Straight Story (1999), Tuck Everlasting (2002), Nine Lives (2005), North Country (2005), Four Christmases (2008), Get Low (2010), The Help (2011), and The Old Man & the Gun (2018). She received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the television films The Good Old Boys (1995) and Last Call (2002), and for her guest role on the HBO drama series Big Love (2011). She portrayed matriarch Sally Rayburn on the Netflix drama thriller series Bloodline (2015–2017), Ruth Deaver on the Hulu psychological horror series Castle Rock (2018), and Ellen Bergman on the Amazon Prime Video psychological thriller series Homecoming (2018).

Spacek has also ventured into music, and recorded vocals for the soundtrack album of Coal Miner's Daughter, which peaked at number two on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart and garnered her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. She also released a studio album, Hangin' Up My Heart (1983), which was critically well-received and peaked at number 17 on Billboard Top Country Albums chart.

Additional Information

Sissy Spacek, byname of Mary Elizabeth Spacek, (born December 25, 1949, Quitman, Texas, U.S.), is an American actress who was known for her ability to convey genuineness in a range of critically admired roles.

Spacek grew up in rural Texas, and, following high school, she moved to New York City in 1967 to pursue a career as a singer. While there she stayed with a cousin, actor Rip Torn, and his wife, actress Geraldine Page. After recording a novelty single under the name Rainbo, Spacek enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute (now the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute) to study acting. Her first credited movie role was in the thriller Prime Cut (1972), with Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman.

After guest roles in such TV shows as Love, American Style and The Waltons, Spacek was cast in a leading role in Terrence Malick’s first feature film, Badlands (1973); her narration and her performance as a bored teenage girl joining her boyfriend in a murder spree won critical praise. In 1974 Spacek appeared in the TV movie The Migrants (written by Lanford Wilson from a Tennessee Williams short story) and played the title role in the minor film comedy Ginger in the Morning. Spacek’s breakthrough came when she played the taunted teen misfit title character in Brian De Palma’s horror classic Carrie (1976), based on a Stephen King novel. She earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance. She then costarred with Shelley Duvall and Janice Rule in Robert Altman’s enigmatic 3 Women (1977).

Spacek’s complex performance as country music star Loretta Lynn in the biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), in which she portrayed Lynn from the age of about 13 to near middle age and did her own singing, earned her an Academy Award for best actress as well as a Golden Globe Award. Spacek also played Beat muse Carolyn Cassady in the less successful Heart Beat (1980). She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her lead role in Raggedy Man (1981), directed by her husband, Jack Fisk, and she won nominations for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar for her performance in Costa-Gavras’s Missing (1982). Her portrayal of a struggling farm wife in The River (1984) earned her additional Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. Spacek starred in Marie (1985), a true-life political drama, and in Fisk’s romance Violets Are Blue… (1986), as well as the play adaptation ’Night, Mother (1986). She was nominated for a fifth Oscar and won a Golden Globe Award for her role in Beth Henley’s adaptation of her own play Crimes of the Heart (1986). Spacek’s later movies included The Long Walk Home (1990), Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), Paul Schrader’s Affliction (1997), and David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999).

Spacek earned a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for both a BAFTA Award and an Oscar for her role as the mother of a murdered son in In the Bedroom (2001). She later appeared in the fantasy Tuck Everlasting (2002), the horror film The Ring Two (2005), and the drama North Country (2005). She received a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of an eccentric artist in the television movie Pictures of Hollis Woods (2007). Spacek appeared in a few minor film comedies thereafter. In 2010 she performed in several episodes of the TV series Big Love (2006–11). She had a small part in the blockbuster movie The Help (2011), and she portrayed the family matriarch in the TV series Bloodline (2015–17). Spacek’s next TV role was a mother with dementia in the first season (2018) of Castle Rock, a series based on the work of Stephen King. She then returned to film in The Old Man & the Gun (2018), playing the love interest of Robert Redford’s charming bank robber. Spacek later starred with J.K. Simmons in the TV series Night Sky (2022– ), about a couple who discover a portal to another planet.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-23 00:07:28

1305) Meryl Streep

Summary

Mary Louise Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress. Often described as "the best actress of her generation", Streep is particularly known for her versatility and accent adaptability. She has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over six decades, including a record 21 Academy Award nominations, winning three, and a record 32 Golden Globe Award nominations, winning eight.

Streep made her stage debut in 1975 Trelawny of the Wells and received a Tony Award nomination the following year for a double-bill production of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and A Memory of Two Mondays. In 1977, she made her film debut in Julia. In 1978, she won her first Primetime Emmy Award for a leading role in the mini-series Holocaust, and received her first Oscar nomination for The Deer Hunter. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a troubled wife in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and went on to establish herself as a film actor in the 1980s. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for starring as a Holocaust survivor in Sophie's Choice (1982) and had her biggest commercial success to that point in Out of Africa (1985). She continued to gain awards, and critical praise, for her work in the late 1980s and 1990s, but commercial success was varied, with the comedy Death Becomes Her (1992) and the drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995), her biggest earners in that period.

Streep reclaimed her stardom in the 2000s and 2010s with starring roles in Adaptation (2002), The Hours (2002), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Doubt (2008), Mamma Mia! (2008), Julie & Julia (2009), It's Complicated (2009), Into the Woods (2014), The Post (2017) and Little Women (2019). She also won her third Academy Award for her portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011). Her stage roles include The Public Theater's 2001 revival of The Seagull, and her television roles include two projects for HBO, the miniseries Angels in America (2003), for which she won another Primetime Emmy Award, and the drama series Big Little Lies (2019).

Streep has been the recipient of many honorary awards. She was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004, Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2008, and Kennedy Center Honor in 2011 for her contribution to American culture, through performing arts. President Barack Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 2010, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. In 2003, the French government made her a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. She was awarded the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2017.

Details

Meryl Streep, original name Mary Louise Streep, (born June 22, 1949, Summit, New Jersey, U.S.), is an American film actress known for her masterly technique, expertise with dialects, and subtly expressive face.

Early life

Streep started voice training at age 12 and took up acting in high school. In 1971 she graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, with a degree in drama and costume design. After working in summer stock theatre, Streep studied drama at Yale University, where she earned a master of fine arts degree in 1975. She then moved to New York City to begin a professional career as an actress.

Stardom: The Deer Hunter, Sophie’s Choice, and Silkwood

Streep made her Broadway debut in 1975 with Trelawny of the “Wells.” Two years later she appeared in her first feature film, Julia (1977), but it was her performance in The Deer Hunter (1978) that earned Streep widespread recognition. Though her role was relatively small, she displayed a quiet softness that contrasted sharply with the bravado of the male characters and deepened the film’s testament to the devastating effects of the Vietnam War on young Americans. That same year she starred in the television miniseries Holocaust, for which she won an Emmy Award.

Over the next 10 years, Streep confirmed her reputation as one of Hollywood’s finest dramatic actresses. Her performances in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)—as a mother who leaves her young son and then fights to regain his custody—and Sophie’s Choice (1982)—as a Polish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp—earned her Academy Awards for supporting actress and leading actress, respectively. She further demonstrated her range and her gifts for rendering complex emotional states and seamless characterization in such roles as a modern-day actress portraying a Victorian woman of mystery in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), a factory-worker-turned-activist in Silkwood (1983), and the aristocratic Danish author Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa (1985). She won the Cannes film festival and New York Film Critics’ Circle awards for best actress for her moving performance in A Cry in the Dark (1988) as Lindy Chamberlain, the real-life Australian mother accused of having murdered her baby daughter although she claimed that the child was carried off by a dingo.

A devil, Julia Child, and Margaret Thatcher

By the late 1980s Streep’s reputation as a brilliant technical actress came to be a burden. Her name was typically associated with a serious, often depressing sort of film, and some critics complained that her performances lacked compassion. As a result, Streep tried to change her popular image by appearing in a handful of comedies, including Postcards from the Edge (1990) and Death Becomes Her (1992), and in the action-adventure film The River Wild (1994). For the most part, these films were not well received, and Streep returned to dramatic films that required more technical skill and less personal charisma. She gave memorable performances in The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Marvin’s Room (1996), One True Thing (1998), and The Hours (2002).

In 2003 Streep received an unprecedented 13th Academy Award nomination—for best supporting actress in Adaptation (2002); Katharine Hepburn originally held the record with 12 nominations. Streep earned another Oscar nomination (for best actress) for her portrayal of an overbearing fashion magazine editor in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). In 2008 she played Donna, a middle-aged woman reunited with three of her former lovers, in the musical Mamma Mia! and later that year starred with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt, about a nun who suspects a priest of having inappropriate relationships with children at a Catholic school; her performance in the latter film earned Streep another Academy Award nomination. She also garnered critical acclaim for her portrayal of famed American chef Julia Child in Julie & Julia (2009), a role for which she received a Golden Globe Award and her 16th Oscar nomination.

Streep later provided the voice of Mrs. Fox in the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), a film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book, and starred with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin in It’s Complicated (2009), a comedy about a divorced woman having an affair with her remarried ex-husband. She then stepped into the role of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011), a portrait of the former British prime minister. For her performance, Streep earned her eighth Golden Globe Award and third Oscar. In the lighthearted Hope Springs (2012), she and Tommy Lee Jones starred as a couple trying to save their stagnant marriage. She next evinced a razor-tongued matriarch whose husband has committed suicide in August: Osage County (2013), adapted from Tracy Letts’s play; for her performance, Streep earned her 18th Oscar nomination.

Later films

In 2014 Streep appeared as the dispassionate leader of an ostensibly utopian community in The Giver, based on the novel for young readers by Lois Lowry; as a minister’s wife who cares for mentally ill women in the western The Homesman; and as a vengeful witch in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods. She was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for the latter role. Streep then slipped into the role of a feckless (and unsuccessful) rock-and-roll singer who attempts to reconcile with her family in Ricki and the Flash (2015). After depicting woman-suffrage pioneer Emmeline Pankhurst in Suffragette (2015), Streep delivered an ebullient and sympathetic performance in the title role of Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), about the tragicomic but ultimately inspiring efforts of a syphilitic society matron to establish an opera career. For her work in the film, Streep received her 20th Oscar nomination.

Streep next starred in The Post, portraying Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post. The drama, directed by Steven Spielberg, chronicles the newspaper’s publication of the Pentagon Papers. For her performance, Streep was nominated for another Academy Award. She then reprised her role as Donna in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and played a disorderly cousin to the eponymous character in Mary Poppins Returns (both 2018). In 2019 Streep took a turn on television, joining the critically acclaimed cast of the HBO series Big Little Lies for its second season. That same year she starred in The Laundromat, Steven Soderbergh’s farce about the Panama Papers scandal, and portrayed Aunt March in Little Women, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic. Her films from 2020 included The Prom, a musical in which a theatre troupe tries to help a gay teenager, and Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk, about an award-winning author who reunites with several old friends during a cruise. Streep next played a narcissistic U.S. president in Don’t Look Up (2021), a dramedy about an impending comet strike that will destroy Earth.

In addition to receiving numerous acting awards, Streep was made Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters (the highest cultural award presented by the French government) in 2002. In 2010 she was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The following year Streep received a Kennedy Center Honor. In 2017 she was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement).

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-24 23:41:30

1306) Shirley MacLaine

Summary

Shirley MacLaine (born Shirley MacLean Beaty, April 24, 1934) is an American actress, author and former dancer. Known for her portrayals of quirky, strong-willed and eccentric women, she has received numerous accolades over her seven-decade career, including an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, two BAFTA Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Volpi Cups and two Silver Bears. She has been honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Tribute in 1995, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1998, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2012, and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2013.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, MacLaine made her acting debut as a teenager with minor roles in the Broadway musicals Oklahoma! and The Pajama Game. She made her film debut with Alfred Hitchcock's black comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), winning the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress. She rose to prominence with starring roles in Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Some Came Running (1958), Ask Any Girl (1959), The Apartment (1960), The Children's Hour (1961), Irma la Douce (1963), and Sweet Charity (1969).

A six-time Academy Award nominee, MacLaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the comedy-drama Terms of Endearment (1983). Her other prominent films include The Turning Point (1977), Being There (1979), Madame Sousatzka (1988), Steel Magnolias (1989), Postcards from the Edge (1990), In Her Shoes (2005), Bernie (2011), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), Elsa & Fred (2014), and Noelle (2019).

MacLaine starred in the sitcom Shirley's World (1971–1972) and played the eponymous fashion designer in the biopic television film Coco Chanel (2008), receiving nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe Award for the latter. She also made appearances in various television series, including Downton Abbey (2012–2013), Glee (2014), and Only Murders in the Building (2022). MacLaine has written numerous books regarding the subjects of metaphysics, spirituality, and reincarnation, as well as a best-selling memoir, Out on a Limb (1983).

Details

Shirley MacLaine, original name Shirley MacLean Beaty, (born April 24, 1934, Richmond, Virginia, U.S.), is an outspoken American actress and dancer known for her deft portrayals of charmingly eccentric characters and for her interest in mysticism and reincarnation.

Beaty’s mother was a drama teacher, and her younger brother, Warren Beatty (he later changed the spelling of the family’s last name), became a successful director and actor. At the age of three, she began studying ballet, and, after graduating from high school, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a dancer and model. Around this time she changed her name to Shirley MacLaine. In 1954 she was hired as a chorus girl and understudy to the second lead, Carol Haney, in the hit Broadway musical The Pajama Game. When Haney broke her ankle, MacLaine took over the role and was “discovered” by film producer Hal Wallis, who put her under contract.

MacLaine made her movie debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955). Her unique sexy tomboyish looks and her ability to combine worldly experience with an offbeat innocence caused her to be frequently cast as a good-hearted hooker or waif—for example, in such films as Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (1958), an adaptation of a James Jones novel, and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) and Irma la Douce (1963), romantic comedies that also starred Jack Lemmon. Her performances in those films earned MacLaine Academy Award nominations. In 1969 she starred in Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity, portraying a taxi dancer who remains optimistic despite a series of disappointments.

As MacLaine aged, her characters grew more cantankerous, and she often played a spirited, sharp-tongued, frustrated, slightly over-the-top woman. Rather than reduce these characters to a cliché, however, MacLaine managed to humanize them and make them believable. She was cast as a former ballerina questioning her decision to give up her career for her family in The Turning Point (1977), for which she received her fourth Oscar nomination for best actress, and she finally won the award for her portrayal of a strong-willed compulsive mother in Terms of Endearment (1983). She later played grumpy Ouiser Boudreaux in Steel Magnolias (1989), a feisty former first lady in Guarding Tess (1994), and a wealthy woman surprised by her daughter-in-law’s mistaken identity in Mrs. Winterbourne (1996). In 2000 MacLaine directed her only feature film, Bruno (also released as The Dress Code), about a young boy struggling to express himself.

MacLaine continued to be a sought-after actress into the early 21st century. In 2005 she appeared in In Her Shoes, portraying a grandmother who helps her granddaughters patch up their differences, and Rumor Has It, a comedy about the family that was the inspiration for Charles Webb’s novel The Graduate (1963). She later starred in Bernie (2011), a dark comedy based on the true story of a popular funeral director who killed a wealthy widow, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013). In Wild Oats (2016) MacLaine was cast as a widow who, after mistakenly receiving a life insurance check for $5 million, goes to the Canary Islands with her best friend (played by Jessica Lange). The film underwent numerous production delays because of financial difficulties, and MacLaine chronicled the troubled shoot in the book Above the Line: My Wild Oats Adventure (2016). Her subsequent movies included The Little Mermaid (2018), based on the Hans Christian Andersen story.

Rarely able to exercise her considerable dancing talent on film, MacLaine often appeared on television variety specials, winning several Emmy Awards, and in 1976 and 1984 she returned to Broadway in, respectively, A Gypsy in My Soul and Shirley MacLaine on Broadway. Her other notable TV credits included the British drama series Downton Abbey.

In 1970 MacLaine published Don’t Fall off the Mountain, which turned out to be the first in a series of best-selling memoirs describing not only her life in movies and her relationships (including that with her brother) but also her search for spiritual fulfillment. In 1987 she cowrote, produced, directed, and starred in a television adaptation of one of her autobiographies, Out on a Limb, which had been published in 1983. She also directed The Other Half of the Sky (1976), which received an Oscar nomination for best documentary; it was about life in China.

MacLaine was the recipient of numerous honours. She received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement) in 1998 and was named a Kennedy Center honoree in 2013.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-26 00:10:18

1307) Geraldine Page

Details

Geraldine Sue Page (November 22, 1924 – June 13, 1987) was an American actress. With a career which spanned four decades across film, stage, and television, Page was the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four nominations for the Tony Award.

A native of Kirksville, Missouri, Page studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and with Uta Hagen and Lee Strasberg in New York City before being cast in her first credited part in the Western film Hondo (1953), which earned her her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. During the McCarthyism era, she was blacklisted in Hollywood based on her association with Hagen and did not work in film for eight years. Page continued to appear on television and on stage and earned her first Tony Award nomination for her performance in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959–60), a role she reprised in the 1962 film adaptation, the latter of which earned her a Golden Globe Award.

She earned additional Academy Award nominations for her roles in Summer and Smoke (1961) (another Golden Globe award for Best Actress - Drama), You're a Big Boy Now (1966) and Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), followed by a Tony nomination for her performance in the stage production of Absurd Person Singular (1974–75). Other film appearances during this time included in the thrillers What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) opposite Ruth Gordon, and The Beguiled (1971) opposite Clint Eastwood. In 1977, she provided the voice of Madam Medusa in Walt Disney's The Rescuers, followed by a role in Woody Allen's Interiors (1978), which earned her a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

After being inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1979 for her stage work, Page returned to Broadway with a lead role in Agnes of God (1982), earning her third Tony Award nomination. Page was nominated for Academy Awards for her performances in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) and The Trip to Bountiful (1985), the latter of which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Page died in New York City in 1987 in the midst of a Broadway run of Blithe Spirit, for which she earned her fourth Tony Award nomination.

Additional Information

Geraldine Sue Page (November 22, 1924 – June 13, 1987) was an American actress. With a career which spanned four decades across film, stage, and television, Page was the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four nominations for the Tony Award.

A native of Kirksville, Missouri, Page studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and with Uta Hagen and Lee Strasberg in New York City before being cast in her first credited part in the Western film Hondo (1953), which earned her her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. During the McCarthyism era, she was blacklisted in Hollywood based on her association with Hagen and did not work in film for eight years. Page continued to appear on television and on stage and earned her first Tony Award nomination for her performance in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959–60), a role she reprised in the 1962 film adaptation, the latter of which earned her a Golden Globe Award.

She earned additional Academy Award nominations for her roles in Summer and Smoke (1961) (another Golden Globe award for Best Actress - Drama), You're a Big Boy Now (1966) and Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), followed by a Tony nomination for her performance in the stage production of Absurd Person Singular (1974–75). Other film appearances during this time included in the thrillers What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) opposite Ruth Gordon, and The Beguiled (1971) opposite Clint Eastwood. In 1977, she provided the voice of Madam Medusa in Walt Disney's The Rescuers, followed by a role in Woody Allen's Interiors (1978), which earned her a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

After being inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1979 for her stage work, Page returned to Broadway with a lead role in Agnes of God (1982), earning her third Tony Award nomination. Page was nominated for Academy Awards for her performances in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) and The Trip to Bountiful (1985), the latter of which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Page died in New York City in 1987 in the midst of a Broadway run of Blithe Spirit, for which she earned her fourth Tony Award nomination.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-28 00:06:06

1308) Marlee Matlin

Summary

Marlee Beth Matlin (born August 24, 1965) is an American actress, author, and activist. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for a BAFTA Award, and four Primetime Emmy Awards.

Deaf since she was 18 months old, Matlin made her acting debut playing Sarah Norman in the romantic drama film Children of a Lesser God (1986), winning the Academy Award for Best Actress. She is the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, as well as the youngest winner in the Best Actress category. Matlin starred in the police drama series Reasonable Doubts (1991–1993), which earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, and her guest roles in Seinfeld (1993), Picket Fences (1993), The Practice (2000), and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2004–05) earned her four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. For her role in CODA (2021), she won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Matlin is a prominent member of the National Association of the Deaf, and her interpreter is Jack Jason. In 2009, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Details

Marlee Matlin, in full Marlee Beth Matlin, (born August 24, 1965, Morton Grove, Illinois, U.S.), is an American actress and activist who was the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, for best actress for her debut film performance, in Children of a Lesser God (1986). She was also known for seeking greater representation of the hearing impaired and others with disabilities in movies and television.

Matlin lost almost all of her hearing when she was 18 months old. She made her stage debut in a 1974 production of The Wizard of Oz staged by the Children’s Theatre of the Deaf and sponsored by the Center on Deafness, then in Des Plaines, Illinois, and she continued to act with that theatre for the next several years. Following her graduation from high school, Matlin began studying criminal justice at a community college with an eye toward becoming a police officer, but, upon learning that her deafness would severely limit her options in law enforcement, she left school.

In 1985 Matlin was cast in a supporting role in a revival by Chicago’s Immediate Theatre of the play Children of a Lesser God, which had won a Tony Award in 1980. Her performance won notice, and when Randa Haines, the director of the film adaptation, saw a video of that production, she cast Matlin in the lead role of her movie, opposite William Hurt. Matlin was widely acclaimed for her moving portrayal of a hearing-impaired cleaning woman at a school for the deaf who insists on communicating only in American Sign Language. Matlin earned a Golden Globe Award, and she became the youngest performer to win the Oscar for best actress.

Matlin next played the wife of the title character in the widely panned film Walker (1987), and she portrayed the deaf mother of a hearing daughter who has to fight her own (hearing) mother for the child’s custody in the television movie Bridge to Silence (1989). Matlin later starred with Mark Harmon in the TV series Reasonable Doubts (1991–93), and she was twice nominated (1992 and 1993) for a Golden Globe Award for her role as an assistant district attorney in that series. She played the mentally disabled title character in the TV movie Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story (1994), and she appeared in the film melodrama It’s My Party (1996).

Matlin was nominated for an Emmy Award for a 1994 guest appearance on Seinfeld. She had a recurring role (1993–96) as Mayor Laurie Bey in the TV series Picket Fences, and she received (1994) a second Emmy nomination for that role. Matlin was nominated a third time for an Emmy for a 2000 guest role on The Practice, and she received a fourth Emmy nomination for a 2004 guest role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In the early 21st century Matlin had recurring roles on The West Wing, My Name Is Earl, The L Word, Switched at Birth, and Quantico. Her films from this period included the family drama CODA (2021), which features a largely deaf cast; the movie title stands for “Child of Deaf Adults.”

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-30 00:58:14

1309) Cher

Details

Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian; May 20, 1946) is an American singer, actress and television personality. Often referred to by the media as the "Goddess of Pop", she has been described as embodying female autonomy in a male-dominated industry. Known for her distinctive contralto singing voice and for having worked in numerous areas of entertainment, as well as adopting a variety of styles and appearances; Cher rose to fame in 1965 as one half of the folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher, before launching a successful, six-decade-long solo career.

Shortly after her success with Sonny Bono, Cher released her first solo top-ten singles "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and "You Better Sit Down Kids". Throughout the 1970s, she scored the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves", "Half-Breed", and "Dark Lady", becoming the female solo artist with the most number-one singles in US history at the time. After her divorce from Bono in 1975, Cher released the successful disco album Take Me Home (1979). Her music career revival in 1987 saw the releases of rock-inflected albums Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989), and Love Hurts (1991), all of which yielded hit singles such as "I Found Someone", "If I Could Turn Back Time", and "Love and Understanding". Cher reached a new commercial peak in 1998 with the dance-pop album Believe, which featured pioneering use of Auto-Tune to distort her vocals, known as the "Cher effect". The title track became the number-one song of 1999 in the US and the biggest-selling single of all time by a female artist in the UK. She continued to make music, with the albums Closer to the Truth (2013) and Dancing Queen (2018) both debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and becoming her highest-charting solo albums in the US.

Cher became a television personality in the 1970s with her CBS shows ― The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, watched by over 30 million viewers weekly during its three-year run, and the namesake Cher. In 1982, she made her Broadway debut in the play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and starred in its film adaptation. Cher subsequently garnered critical acclaim for her performances in films such as Silkwood (1983), Mask (1985), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), and Moonstruck (1987), the last of which won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. She contributed to the soundtrack for her next film, Mermaids (1990), which spawned the UK number-one single "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)", and made her directorial debut with a segment in the abortion-themed anthology If These Walls Could Talk (1996). During the 2010s, Cher landed starring roles in the films Burlesque (2010) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Having sold 100 million records, Cher is one of the world's best-selling music artists. Her achievements include a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, the Billboard Icon Award, and awards from the Kennedy Center Honors and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She is the only artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in six consecutive decades, from the 1960s to the 2010s. Her 2002–2005 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour became one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time, earning $250 million. Aside from music and acting, she is noted for her trendsetting, elaborate outfits, plastic surgeries, political views, social media presence, philanthropic endeavors, and social activism, including HIV/AIDS prevention.

Additional Information

Cher, byname of Cherilyn Sarkisian, (born May 20, 1946, El Centro, California, U.S.), is an American entertainer who parlayed her status as a teenage pop singer into a recording, concert, and acting career.

At age 16 Cher moved to Los Angeles, where she met entertainer and songwriter Salvatore (“Sonny”) Bono, whom she married in 1964. The couple began singing together, and their first big pop hit came in 1965 with “I Got You Babe,” which sold more than three million copies. The duo went on to score a number of hits, but by the late 1960s their popularity had begun to fade. A jump start came in 1971 with the television variety show The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, which ran until 1974. During this time Cher’s solo singing career flourished. Cher and Sonny divorced in 1974, though they appeared as cohosts of another television show in 1976–77.

After Sonny left show business, Cher cultivated a successful nightclub act and revisited an earlier interest in acting. She appeared in the Broadway and film versions of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) and received an Academy Award nomination for her supporting role in Silkwood (1983). In 1988 she won an Academy Award for her starring role as an Italian American widow in the romantic comedy Moonstruck (1987). Her other films included Mask (1985), Suspect (1987), and Tea with Mussolini (1999). In 2010 she starred opposite Christina Aguilera as a nightclub owner and performer in the musical drama Burlesque, and in the following year she provided the voice of a lioness in the broad comedy Zookeeper. Cher later appeared in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

After two successful albums—Cher (1987) and Heart of Stone (1989)—Cher’s music career waned, but she made a comeback with Believe (1998) and Living Proof (2002). In 2000 she won a Grammy Award for the dance single “Believe.” Cher’s enduring popularity was evident with a successful (and elaborate) Las Vegas residency from 2008 to 2011. In 2017 she began another concert residency, in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. Her later albums included Closer to the Truth (2013). In 2018 Cher was named a Kennedy Center honoree.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-07-31 22:56:58

1310) Jodie Foster

Details

Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress and filmmaker. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. For her work as a producer and director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. She has also earned numerous honors such as the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2013, was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2016 and received the Cannes Film Festival's Honorary Palme d'Or in 2021.

Foster began her professional career as a child model and later as a teen idol in various Disney films including Napoleon and Samantha (1972), Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977). She acted in Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and reunited with him in Taxi Driver (1976) in a role for which she received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination. Other early films include Tom Sawyer (1973), Bugsy Malone (1976), The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).

After attending Yale University, Foster transitioned into mature leading roles earning two Academy Awards for playing a victim in The Accused (1988), and Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She also received a nomination for Nell (1994). Her other notable films include Sommersby (1993), Maverick (1994), Contact (1997), Anna and the King (1999), Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), The Brave One (2007), Nim's Island (2008), Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021).

Foster made her directorial film debut with Little Man Tate (1991) and has since directed films such as Home for the Holidays (1995), The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016). She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. She earned two Primetime Emmy Awards for producing The Baby Dance (1999), and directing the Orange Is the New Black episode in 2014. She has also directed episodes for Tales from the Darkside, House of Cards, Black Mirror, and Tales from the Loop.

Additional Information

Jodie Foster, original name Alicia Christian Foster, (born November 19, 1962, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), is an American motion-picture actress who began her career as a tomboyish and mature child actress. Although she demonstrated a flair for comedy, she is best known for her dramatic portrayals of misfit characters set against intimidating challenges.

Foster began her professional career as a very young child in television, appearing first in commercials. After repeated performances in such TV shows as Gunsmoke, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, and My Three Sons, she starred in her own short-lived series, Paper Moon (1974), based on the 1973 film of the same name. She also appeared in a number of Disney films, beginning with Napoleon and Samantha (1972).

Director Martin Scorsese cast Foster in a bit part in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) before giving her the role of Iris, the 12-year-old prostitute who becomes the object of the title character’s obsession in Taxi Driver (1976); her precocious and complex performance earned her critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress. Her later films as a child actress were less impressive, but her performances were consistently admired. Foster graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1985.

Perhaps because of her screen image of early maturity, Foster was never dismissed as merely a child actress but instead was able to make a relatively smooth transition to adult roles. In The Accused (1988) she gave a remarkable performance as Sarah Tobias, a math victim who struggles with inequities in the justice system. In The Silence of the Lambs (1991) she tracks a serial killer as FBI agent Clarice Starling. Both performances won her Academy Awards as best actress.

In the 1990s Foster branched into other areas of filmmaking. She made her big screen directorial debut with the drama Little Man Tate (1991), in which she also costarred, and she later directed the ensemble film Home for the Holidays (1995). She also served as a producer for several of her films, including Nell (1994), for which she also received an Oscar nomination for best actress. In 1997 Foster starred in Contact, an adaptation of the science-fiction novel by Carl Sagan. Subsequent films in which she acted included the thrillers Panic Room (2002), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007); the satirical comedy Carnage (2011); and the dystopian drama Elysium (2013). She later starred in Hotel Artemis (2018), playing a nurse who runs a clandestine emergency room for criminals, and in The Mauritanian (2021), which was based on the memoir of a man held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp for 14 years.

In 2011 Foster directed and appeared in The Beaver, a drama about a depressed man (played by Mel Gibson) who finds a remedy of sorts in a hand puppet. She also helmed the Wall Street thriller Money Monster (2016), about a financial pundit (George Clooney) who is taken hostage. Foster directed episodes of a number of television series as well, including Tales from the Darkside, Orange Is the New Black, and House of Cards.

Foster received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement) in 2013.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-02 00:47:12

1311) Jessica Tandy

Details

Jessie Alice Tandy (7 June 1909 – 11 September 1994) was a British-American actress. Tandy appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV, receiving an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She acted as Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948. Her films included Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and The Gin Game. At 80, she became the oldest actress to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy.

Early life

The youngest of three siblings, Tandy was born in Geldeston Road in Hackney, London to Harry Tandy and his wife, Jessie Helen Horspool. Her mother was from a large fenland family in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and the head of a school for mentally handicapped children, and her father was a travelling salesman for a rope manufacturer. She was educated at Dame Alice Owen's School in Islington.

Her father died when she was 12, and her mother subsequently taught evening courses to earn an income. Her brother Edward was later a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Asia.

Acting career

Tandy was 18 years old when she made her professional debut on the London stage in 1927. During the 1930s, she acted in many plays in London's West End, playing Ophelia (opposite John Gielgud's legendary Hamlet) and Katherine (opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V).

She entered films in Britain, but after her marriage to Jack Hawkins failed, she moved to the United States hoping to find better roles. During her time as a leading actress on the stage in London, she often had to fight over roles with her two rivals, Peggy Ashcroft and Celia Johnson. In the following years, she played supporting roles in several Hollywood films.

Like many stage actors, Tandy also worked in radio. Among other programs, she was a regular on Mandrake the Magician (as Princess Narda), and then with her second husband Hume Cronyn in The Marriage which ran on radio from 1953 to 1954, and then segued onto television.

She made her American film debut in The Seventh Cross (1944). She had supporting appearances in The Valley of Decision (1945), The Green Years (1946, as Cronyn's daughter), Dragonwyck (1946) starring Gene Tierney and Vincent Price and Forever Amber (1947). She appeared as the insomniac murderess in A Woman's Vengeance (1948), a film noir adapted by Aldous Huxley from his short story "The Gioconda Smile".

Over the next three decades, her film career continued sporadically while she found better roles on the stage. Her roles during this time included The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) opposite James Mason, The Light in the Forest (1958), and a role as a domineering mother in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds (1963).

On Broadway, she won a Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948. After this (she lost the film role to actress Vivien Leigh), she concentrated on the stage. In 1976, she and Cronyn joined the acting company of the Stratford Festival, and returned in 1980 to debut Cronyn's play Foxfire. In 1977, she earned her second Tony Award, for her performance (with Cronyn) in The Gin Game and her third Tony in 1982 for her performance, again with Cronyn, in Foxfire.

The beginning of the 1980s saw a resurgence in her film career, with character roles in The World According to Garp, Best Friends, Still of the Night (all 1982) and The Bostonians (1984). She and Cronyn were now working together more regularly on stage and television, including the films Cocoon (1985), *batteries not included (1987) and Cocoon: The Return (1988) and the Emmy Award winning television film Foxfire (1987, recreating her Tony winning Broadway role).

However, it was her colourful performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), as an aging, stubborn Southern Jewish matron, that earned her an Oscar.

She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her work in the grassroots hit Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and co-starred in The Story Lady (1991 TV film, with her daughter Tandy Cronyn), Used People (1992, as Shirley MacLaine's mother), television film To Dance with the White Dog (1993, with Cronyn), Camilla (1994, with Cronyn). Nobody's Fool (1994) proved to be her last performance, at the age of 84.

Other awards

Tandy was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world in 1990.

1979 – Induction into the American Theatre Hall of Fame
1979 – Sarah Siddons Award Chicago theatre
1986 – Drama Desk Special Award
1986 – Kennedy Center Honors Recipient
1990 – National Medal of Arts
1991 – Women in Film Crystal Award
1994 – Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement shared with her husband, Hume Cronyn

Personal life and death

In 1932 Tandy married English actor Jack Hawkins and together they had a daughter, Susan Hawkins. Susan became an actress and was the daughter-in-law of John Moynihan Tettemer, a former Passionist monk who authored I Was a Monk: The Autobiography of John Tettemer, and was cast in small roles in Lost Horizon and Meet John Doe.

Tandy and Hawkins divorced in 1940. She married Canadian actor Hume Cronyn in 1942. Prior to moving to Connecticut, she and Cronyn lived for many years in nearby Pound Ridge, New York, and they remained together until her death in 1994. They had two children, daughter Tandy Cronyn, an actress who would co-star with her mother in the TV film The Story Lady, and son Christopher Cronyn. Jessica Tandy became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1952.

In 1990, Jessica Tandy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she also suffered from angina and glaucoma. Despite her illnesses and age she continued working. On September 11, 1994, she died at home in Easton, Connecticut, at the age of 85.

Additional Information

Jessica Tandy, (born June 7, 1909, London, Eng.—died Sept. 11, 1994, Easton, Conn., U.S.), was an English-born American actress of stage, screen, and television, noted for her complex portrayals and frequent collaborations with Hume Cronyn, her husband.

Tandy was the daughter of a traveling salesman and grew up in London, where she studied acting at the Ben Greet Academy. She first appeared in London in The Rumour (1929) and in New York City in The Matriarch (1930). After playing dozens of increasingly complex roles, she received critical acclaim for her creation of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), for which she received a Tony Award in 1948. Her film appearances were varied and included The Desert Fox (1951), The Birds (1963), and Butley (1973). Tandy was first married to the British actor Jack Hawkins, whom she divorced in 1940. She married Hume Cronyn on Sept. 27, 1942, and became an American citizen in 1954.

Tandy appeared with Cronyn on the stage in The Fourposter (1951), Madame, Will You Walk (1953), The Honeys (1955), A Day by the Sea (1955), The Man in the Dog Suit (1958), The Physicists (1964), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Noel Coward in Two Keys (1974). Their stage partnership culminated in The Gin Game (1977) and Foxfire (1982), each of which yielded Tandy another Tony Award. Tandy and Cronyn, who were known as the “first couple of the American theatre,” received the first-ever Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 1994.

Tandy and Cronyn also performed together on radio and television, and their film work included The Seventh Cross (1944), The Green Years (1946), The World According to Garp (1982), Cocoon (1985) and its sequel Cocoon: The Return (1988), and Batteries Not Included (1987). Tandy earned an Academy Award for best actress for her performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989). At age 80, she was the oldest person to win an Oscar. Although diagnosed with cancer in 1990, she continued to appear to great acclaim in films such as Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Used People (1992), and Nobody’s Fool (1994). For their contributions to the arts, Tandy and Hume received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1986.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-04 01:35:02

1312) Kathy Bates

Details

Kathleen Doyle Bates (born June 28, 1948) is an American actress and director. Known for her roles in comedic and dramatic films and television programs, she has received various accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, including an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as nominations for a Tony Award and two BAFTA Awards.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, she studied theater at Southern Methodist University before moving to New York City to pursue an acting career. She landed minor stage roles before being cast in her first on screen role in Taking Off (1971). Her first Off-Broadway stage role was in the play Vanities (1976). Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, she continued to perform on screen and on stage, and garnered a nomination for the Tony Award Best Lead Actress in a Play for 'night, Mother (1983), and won an Obie Award for her role in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (1988).

She earned the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Annie Wilkes in thriller Misery (1990). Her other Oscar-nominated roles were in Primary Colors (1998), About Schmidt (2002), and Richard Jewell (2019). Her other notable films include Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Dolores Claiborne (1995), The Waterboy (1998), Titanic (1997), Revolutionary Road (2008), The Blind Side (2009), and Midnight in Paris (2011).

Bates is also known for her extensive work on television. She won her first Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for the ninth season of Two and a Half Men (2012) and her second for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her portrayal of Delphine LaLaurie in American Horror Story: Coven (2013). Her other Emmy-nominated roles were in The Late Shift (1996), Annie (1999), Six Feet Under (2003), Warm Springs (2005), Harry's Law (2011–12), American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014), and American Horror Story: Hotel (2015).

Additional Information

Kathy Bates, in full Kathleen Doyle Bates, (born June 28, 1948, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.), is an American actress of stage, screen, and television, especially known for her portrayals of strong women who act against the social milieu. She won an Academy Award for best actress for her chilling performance of an obsessed fan in Misery (1990).

Early life and stage work

Bates was raised in Memphis and later studied theatre at Southern Methodist University in Dallas (B.F.A., 1969). In 1970 she moved to New York City, where she worked odd jobs while pursuing an acting career. She landed minor stage roles and in 1971 appeared in Taking Off, the first American film of Czech-born director Miloš Forman. Her first Off-Broadway role was Joanne in Vanities (1976), which helped her secure a role in the film Straight Time (1978). Bates appeared in numerous theatre and film productions during the late 1970s and the ’80s, including the successful plays Crimes of the Heart (1979); ’Night, Mother (1983), for which she received a Tony Award nomination; and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (1988).

Films

In 1990 Bates established herself as a powerful screen presence in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery. She played Annie Wilkes, a psychotic fan who rescues a best-selling novelist (played by James Caan) after a car accident but turns on him when she finds that he has killed her favourite character in his latest novel. In addition to an Academy Award, she also won a Golden Globe for her performance. Throughout the 1990s Bates showed her versatility in a number of films, playing a forlorn Southern housewife in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), a maid accused of murdering her employer in Dolores Claiborne (1995; adapted from a novel by King), and an outspoken socialite in Titanic (1997). She received critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for her role as Libby Holden, an idealistic political operative, in Primary Colors (1998).

Bates later acted in such films as About Schmidt (2002), for which she received another Academy Award nomination; Failure to Launch (2006); and The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), a remake of the 1951 classic. In 2008 Bates took a supporting role in Revolutionary Road, portraying a real estate agent in 1950s suburbia. She subsequently appeared in the sports drama The Blind Side (2009); the romantic comedies Valentine’s Day (2010) and A Little Bit of Heaven (2011); Woody Allen’s fantasy Midnight in Paris, in which she portrayed the writer Gertrude Stein; and the raunchy comedies Tammy (2014) and Bad Santa 2 (2016).

In the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic (2018), Bates portrayed Dorothy Kenyon, a lawyer and women’s rights activist. She then was cast as Texas Gov. Miriam (“Ma”) Ferguson in the Netflix film The Highwaymen (2019), about two former Texas Rangers searching for the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. In Richard Jewell (2019), a biopic directed by Clint Eastwood, Bates gave an Oscar-nominated performance as the devoted mother of a security guard who was wrongly suspected of orchestrating the Atlanta Olympic Games bombing of 1996. In addition, Bates’s voice was featured in a number of films, including the animated adaptation of E.B. White’s classic story Charlotte’s Web (2006), Bee Movie (2007), and The Golden Compass (2007).

Television

Bates also worked in television. Her credits as a TV director included the movie Dash and Lilly (1999), about the writers Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman, and episodes of the HBO drama Six Feet Under (2001–05), in which she also acted. In 2010–11 Bates had a recurring role on the sitcom The Office, and in 2011–12 she starred in the TV drama Harry’s Law. For her 2012 guest appearance on Two and a Half Men, she received her first Emmy Award. In 2013 she joined American Horror Story for its third season (Coven), portraying the real-life Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a socialite who tortured and killed slaves in antebellum New Orleans. The role earned her an Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or movie. In 2014 Bates returned as a bearded woman for the fourth season (Freak Show), and she portrayed the manager of a haunted hotel in the fifth season (Hotel). She also was cast in the sixth and eighth seasons: Roanoke and Apocalypse, respectively.

In 2017 Bates appeared in another TV anthology series, Feud. In the first season—Bette and Joan, about the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford—she played Joan Blondell. During this time she also starred as the owner of a medical marijuana dispensary in Disjointed (2017–18).

Math Is Fun Forum

#1326 2023-06-15 21:34:04

Re: crème de la crème

#1327 2023-06-18 17:36:44

Re: crème de la crème

#1328 2023-06-20 20:31:04

Re: crème de la crème

#1329 2023-06-22 17:59:05

Re: crème de la crème

#1330 2023-06-24 18:56:03

Re: crème de la crème

#1331 2023-06-29 00:07:00

Re: crème de la crème

#1332 2023-06-30 21:04:05

Re: crème de la crème

#1333 2023-07-02 22:44:52

Re: crème de la crème

#1334 2023-07-05 01:03:21

Re: crème de la crème

#1335 2023-07-08 00:17:02

Re: crème de la crème

#1336 2023-07-10 00:16:45

Re: crème de la crème

#1337 2023-07-12 01:52:54

Re: crème de la crème

#1338 2023-07-13 23:14:23

Re: crème de la crème

#1339 2023-07-16 01:38:59

Re: crème de la crème

#1340 2023-07-17 05:58:15

Re: crème de la crème

#1341 2023-07-17 13:01:10

Re: crème de la crème

#1342 2023-07-20 00:09:50

Re: crème de la crème

#1343 2023-07-23 00:07:28

Re: crème de la crème

#1344 2023-07-24 23:41:30

Re: crème de la crème

#1345 2023-07-26 00:10:18

Re: crème de la crème

#1346 2023-07-28 00:06:06

Re: crème de la crème

#1347 2023-07-30 00:58:14

Re: crème de la crème

#1348 2023-07-31 22:56:58

Re: crème de la crème

#1349 2023-08-02 00:47:12

Re: crème de la crème

#1350 2023-08-04 01:35:02

Re: crème de la crème

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