crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-17 00:05:52

1141) Anushka Sharma

Summary

Anushka Sharma (born 1 May 1988) is an Indian actress and film producer who works in Hindi films. She has received several awards, including a Filmfare Award. One of the highest-paid actresses in India, she has appeared in Forbes India's Celebrity 100 since 2012 and was featured by Forbes Asia in their 30 Under 30 list of 2018.

Born in Ayodhya and raised in Bangalore, Sharma had her first modelling assignment for the fashion designer Wendell Rodricks in 2007 and later moved to Mumbai to pursue a full-time career as a model. She made her acting debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan in the highly successful romantic film Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008) and rose to prominence with starring roles in Yash Raj Films' romances Band Baaja Baaraat (2010) and Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012); winning the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress for the latter. Sharma went on to earn praise for playing strong-willed women in the crime thriller NH10 (2015), and the dramas Dil Dhadakne Do (2015), Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016), and Sui Dhaaga (2018). Her highest-grossing releases came with the sports drama Sultan (2016), Rajkumar Hirani's religious satire PK (2014) and biopic Sanju (2018).

Sharma is the co-founder of the production company Clean Slate Filmz, under which she has produced several films, including NH10. She is the ambassador for multiple brands and products, has designed her own line of clothing for women, named Nush, and supports various charities and causes, including gender equality and animal rights. Sharma is married to Indian cricketer Virat Kohli.

Details

Born : May 1, 1988 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Height : 5' 6" (1.68 m)

Anushka Sharma was born on 1 May 1988 in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Her father, Colonel Ajay Kumar Sharma, is an army officer, and her mother, Ashima Sharma, is a homemaker. Her father is a native of Uttar Pradesh, while her mother is a Garhwali. Her elder brother is film producer Karnesh Sharma, who earlier served in the Merchant Navy. Prior to joining the navy, Karnesh played for the under-19 Bangalore Ranji cricket team. Sharma has stated that being a military brat played an important role in shaping her as a person and contributing to her life. In an interview with The Times of India in 2012, she said, "I take pride in saying that I am an army officer's daughter even more than being an actor. She studied in Army School and graduated with specialization in arts from Mount Carmel College, Bangalore. She then moved to Mumbai to further her modeling career. Sharma says she originally wished to make it big in the modeling world but had no strong aspirations for films. She began her modeling career at the Lakme Fashion Week as a model for Wendell Rodricks's Les Vamps Show and was picked to be Rodricks's finale model at the Spring Summer '07 Collection. Since then she has done campaigns for Silk & Shine, Whisper, Nathella Jewelry and Fiat Palio.

Her first acting role was in Aditya Chopra's Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008) opposite Shahrukh Khan. The film was a huge success and her performance was appreciated. Film critic Taran Adarsh said, "Anushka looks the character and surprises you with a confident performance. It's no small achievement to share screen space with an actor of the caliber of SRK and Anushka manages it very well from start to end." Her second film, Badmaash Company, also under Yash Raj Films, was released on May 7, 2010. She was praised for breaking out of the shell of the conservative and homely Taani to play the feisty and independent Bulbul, and her performance was applauded.

She has two other projects on hand. She began shooting for her first venture outside of Yash Raj with Nikhil Advani and Akshay Kumar in Patiala House in December 2009. Patiala House is scheduled to be released on February 11, 2011. She has also started filming for her third Yash Raj Film, Band Baaja Baaraat, directed by Maneesh Sharma and co-starring debutant Ranveer Singh.

Trivia
* Her favorite movies are The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Life Is Beautiful (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000), Fish Tank (2009), Jab We Met (2007), Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Let's Go! India (2007), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Dil Se.. (1998).
* A photo of Anushka appears on the wall in the film Carry On, Munna Bhai (2006). This was 2 years before her debut.
* Anushka's first movie in theatre was Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995).
* In an interview, She confessed that Aditya Chopra told her that she was not the most good-looking girl around but that she was talented.
* Rejected lead roles in 2 States (2014) and Ki & Ka (2016), which went to Alia Bhatt and Kareena Kapoor respectively. Both films were hits at the box office.
* She was the first choice for the lead role in Imtiaz Ali's Tamasha (2015). But She rejected the role saying that it wasn't meaty enough. The role went to Deepika Padukone.
* In December 2014, Anushka Sharma auctioned the leather jacket she wore in Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012) on eBay, with proceeds going to the redevelopment of the flood-ravaged states of Kashmir and Assam.
* She is the youngest bollywood actress who became producer. She became a producer at the age of 25.
* She originally intended to pursue a career in modelling or journalism, and had no aspirations to be an actress.
* She is the first bollywood actress whose film PK (2014) crossed 300 crore mark at box office.
* Her father is a retired Army-Officer and her mother is a housewife. Her brother is in Merchant Navy.
* She was once shortlisted for Steven Spielberg's movie based on Indo-Pak relations, along with Bradley Cooper, Denzel Washington and Richard Gere. However, Spielberg dropped the plan of making the movie.
* If not an actress, Anushka Sharma would have been a Journalist. Before foraying into modelling world, she had first enrolled for a journalism course.
* She was trained by well-known style consultant Prasad Bidapa when she was just 15.
* She confessed that she decided to become an actress after watching Kareena Kapoor in the movie Jab We Met (2007).
* Anushka Sharma became the first bollywood actress to appear on the Enterpreneur magazine.
* She auditioned for Kareena Kapoor's role in 3 Idiots (2009). This was before her debut in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008).
* Is a good friend of actors Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif.
* She rapped for a song in her film Phillauri (2017).
* She admires and respects actor Shah Rukh Khan a lot. Her debut was with Khan. Khan once confessed that she told him that she doesn't like him as an actor, but he is a very good person.
* Got married to her boyfriend and Indian cricketer Virat Kohli in 2017, in a private ceremony in Italy.
* Sister of Karnesh Ssharma.
* Played the role of love interest of a cricketer in the film Patiala House (2011). She would eventually marry real life Indian cricketer Virat Kohli.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-19 00:03:09

1142) Werner Arber

Summary

Werner Arber, (born June 3, 1929, Gränichen, Switzerland), is a Swiss microbiologist, corecipient with Daniel Nathans and Hamilton Othanel Smith of the United States of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for 1978. All three were cited for their work in molecular genetics, specifically the discovery and application of enzymes that break the giant molecules of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) into manageable pieces, small enough to be separated for individual study but large enough to retain bits of the genetic information inherent in the sequence of units that make up the original substance.

Arber studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, the University of Geneva, and the University of Southern California. He served on the faculty at Geneva from 1960 to 1970 and later was professor of microbiology at the University of Basel (1971–96). In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI named Arber president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences; he held the post until 2017.

During the late 1950s and early ’60s Arber and several others extended the work of an earlier Nobel laureate, Salvador Luria, who had observed that bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) not only induce hereditary mutations in their bacterial hosts but at the same time undergo hereditary mutations themselves. Arber’s research was concentrated on the action of protective enzymes present in the bacteria, which modify the DNA of the infecting virus—e.g., the restriction enzyme, so-called for its ability to restrict the growth of the bacteriophage by cutting the molecule of its DNA to pieces.

Details

Werner Arber (born June 3, 1929 in Gränichen, Aargau) is a Swiss microbiologist and geneticist. Along with American researchers Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans, Werner Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of restriction endonucleases. Their work would lead to the development of recombinant DNA technology.

Life and career

Arber studied chemistry and physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich from 1949 to 1953. Late in 1953, he took an assistantship for electron microscopy at the University of Geneva, in time left the electron microscope, went on to research bacteriophages and write his dissertation on defective lambda prophage mutants. In his Nobel Autobiography, he writes:

In the summer of 1956, we learned about experiments made by Larry Morse and Esther and Joshua Lederberg on the lambda-mediated transduction (gene transfer from one bacterial strain to another by a bacteriophage serving as vector) of bacterial determinants for galactose fermentation. Since these investigators had encountered defective lysogenic strains among their transductants, we felt that such strains should be included in the collection of lambda prophage mutants under study in our laboratory. Very rapidly, thanks to the stimulating help by Jean Weigle and Grete Kellenberger, this turned out to be extremely fruitful. ... This was the end of my career as an electron microscopist and in chosing [sic] genetic and physiological approaches I became a molecular geneticist.

He received his doctorate in 1958 from the University of Geneva.

Arber then worked at the University of Southern California in phage genetics with Gio ("Joe") Bertani starting in the summer of 1958. Late in 1959 he accepted an offer to return to Geneva at the beginning of 1960, but only after spending "several very fruitful weeks" at each of the laboratories of Gunther Stent (University of California, Berkeley), Joshua Lederberg and Esther Lederberg[3] (Stanford University) and Salvador Luria (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Back at the University of Geneva, Arber worked in a laboratory in the basement of the Physics Institute, where he carried out productive research and hosted "a number of first class graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and senior scientists." including Daisy Roulland Dussoix, whose work helped him to later obtain the Nobel Prize. In 1965, the University of Geneva promoted him to Extraordinary Professor for Molecular Genetics. In 1971, after spending a year as a visiting professor in the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of California in Berkeley, Arber moved to the University of Basel. In Basel, he was one of the first persons to work in the newly constructed Biozentrum, which housed the departments of biophysics, biochemistry, microbiology, structural biology, cell biology and pharmacology and was thus conducive to interdisciplinary research.

On 27 occasions since 1981, Werner Arber has shared his expertise and passion for science with young scientists at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.

Werner Arber is member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 1981. In 1981, Arber became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in January 2011, making him the first Protestant to hold the position. In 2017, Arber retired as President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and was replaced by German scientist Joachim von Braun.

Personal life

Arber is married and has two daughters.

Arber is a Christian and theistic evolutionist, stating "The most primitive cells may require at least several hundred different specific biological macromolecules. How such already quite complex structures may have come together, remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to this problem." In addition, he has affirmed: "I know that the concept of God helped me to master many questions in life; it guides me in critical situations, and I see it confirmed in many deep insights into the beauty of the functioning of the world."

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-21 14:16:03

1143) Daniel Nathans

Summary

Daniel Nathans (October 30, 1928 – November 16, 1999) was an American microbiologist. He shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application in restriction mapping.

Nathans was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the last of nine children born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Sarah (Levitan) and Samuel Nathans. During the Great Depression his father lost his small business and was unemployed for a long time.

Nathans attended public schools and then to the University of Delaware, where he received his BS degree in chemistry in 1950. He received his MD degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1954 and did a one-year internship at Presbyterian Medical Center with Robert Loeb.

Wanting a break before his medical residency, Nathans became a clinical associate at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. There he split his time between caring for patients receiving experimental cancer chemotherapy and research on recently discovered plasma-cell tumors in mice, similar to human multiple myeloma. Struck by how little was known about cancer biology, he became interested in protein synthesis in myeloma tumors, and published his first papers on this research.

Nathans returned to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center for a two-year residency in 1957, again on Robert Loeb's service. He continued working on the problem of protein synthesis as time allowed. In 1959, he decided to work on the research full time and became a research associate at Fritz Lipmann's lab at the Rockefeller Institute in New York.

Career

In 1962, Nathans came to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as an assistant professor of microbiology. He was promoted to associate professor in 1965 and to professor in 1967. He became the director of the microbiology department in 1972 and served in that position until 1982. In 1981, the department of microbiology was renamed the department of molecular biology and genetics.

In 1982 Johns Hopkins University made Nathans a University Professor, a position in which he served until his death in 1999. He also became a senior investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute unit at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1982.

From 1995 to 1996, Nathans served as the interim president of Johns Hopkins University.

In January 1999, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine established the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, a multidisciplinary clinical and research center named for Nathans and pioneering medical geneticist Victor McKusick.

Nathans was also given six honorary doctorates over the span of his career.

Details

Daniel Nathans, (born Oct. 30, 1928, Wilmington, Del., U.S.—died Nov. 16, 1999, Baltimore, Md.), was a American microbiologist who was corecipient, with Hamilton Othanel Smith of the United States and Werner Arber of Switzerland, of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The three scientists were cited for their discovery and application of restriction enzymes that break the giant molecules of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) into fragments, making possible the study of the genetic information they contain. The process constitutes one of the basic tools of genetic research.

The son of Russian immigrants, Nathans attended the University of Delaware and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he earned a medical degree in 1954. He became a professor of microbiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1962 and director of its department of microbiology in 1972; he also briefly served as the school’s interim president (1995–96).

In his prizewinning research, Nathans used the restriction enzyme isolated by Smith from the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae to investigate the structure of the DNA of the simian virus 40 (SV40), the simplest virus known to produce cancerous tumours. This achievement, the construction of a genetic map of a virus, heralded the first application of restriction enzymes to the problem of identifying the molecular basis of cancer. His work also played an important role in the development of prenatal tests for such genetic diseases as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. In 1993 Nathans was awarded the National Medal of Science.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-22 19:57:30

1144) Penélope Cruz

Summary

Penélope Cruz Sánchez (born 28 April 1974) is a Spanish actress who is known for her roles in films of several genres, particularly those in the Spanish and English language. She has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, four Golden Globe Awards, and five Screen Actors Guild Awards. She is the first and only Spanish actress to be nominated for and to win an Academy Award, as well as the first to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Signed by an agent at age 15, Cruz made her acting debut at 16 on television, and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón Jamón (1992). Her subsequent roles included Belle Époque (1992), Open Your Eyes (1997), Don Juan (1998), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000), and Woman on Top (2000). She is also known for her longtime collaboration with director Pedro Almodóvar in Live Flesh (1997), All About My Mother (1999), Volver (2006), Broken Embraces (2009), I'm So Excited! (2013), Pain and Glory (2019), and Parallel Mothers (2021). She is also known for her work with director Woody Allen in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and To Rome with Love (2012).

Cruz achieved international recognition for her lead roles in the films All the Pretty Horses (2000), Vanilla Sky (2001), Blow (2001), Sahara (2005), Elegy (2008). She's also appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), The Counselor (2013), and Murder on the Orient Express (2017). She received critical acclaim for her roles in Volver (2006) and Nine (2009), earning Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for each. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2008 for her performance in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. In 2018, Cruz made her American television debut as Italian fashion designer Donatella Versace in the FX series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie.

Cruz has been married to actor Javier Bardem since 2010. She has modeled for Mango, Ralph Lauren, and L'Oréal, and along with her younger sister Mónica Cruz, also designed clothing for Mango. She has been a house ambassador for Chanel since 2018. She's volunteered in Uganda and India, where she spent one week working with Mother Teresa; she donated her salary from The Hi-Lo Country to help fund the late nun's mission.

Filmography and accolades

She is known for her frequent collaborations with Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar starting with Live Flesh in 1997 and in six more films: All About My Mother (1999), Volver (2006), Broken Embraces (2009), I'm So Excited! (2013), Pain and Glory (2019), and Parallel Mothers (2021). She also starred in a variety films often crossing genres in both independent films and Hollywood movies such as Ted Demme's Blow, Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky (both 2001), Isabel Coixet's romantic drama Elegy (2008), Rob Marshall's musical Nine (2009), and the adventure film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), Kenneth Branagh's mystery Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Asghar Farhadi's drama Everybody Knows (2018).

She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). She worked with Allen again in To Rome with Love (2012) She is the first and only Spanish actress to both win and be nominated for an Academy Award.

Cruz has been recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:

* 79th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Volver (2006)
* 81st Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role, win, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
* 82nd Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role, nomination, Nine (2009)
* 94th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, Parallel Mothers (2021)

She has also received two British Academy Film Award nominations, four Golden Globe Award nominations, a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, five Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, and fourteen Goya Award nominations. In 2006 she received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Volver, and in 2021 the Venice International Film Festival's Volpi Cup for Best Actress for Parallel Mothers. For her performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona she received the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, and Goya Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Details

Penélope Cruz, in full Penélope Cruz Sánchez, (born April 28, 1974, Madrid, Spain), Spanish actress known for her portrayal of sultry characters. She achieved early success in Spanish cinema and quickly established herself as an international star.

Cruz grew up outside Madrid, where she studied ballet for nine years at Spain’s National Conservatory; she also received intensive training in classical and jazz dance and studied theatre in New York City. At age 15 she won a modeling agency competition and began appearing in music videos and on Spanish television. Her first film roles were in El laberinto griego (“The Greek Labyrinth”; although the film was completed in 1991, its release was delayed until 1993) and Jamón, jamón (1992; “Ham, Ham”). She came to international attention with Belle Epoque (1992; “The Age of Beauty”), a film about an army deserter taken in by an elderly man and his four enchanting daughters. It won an Academy Award for best foreign film. On numerous occasions Cruz worked with the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, initially appearing in his Carne trémula (1997; Live Flesh) and Todo sobre mi madre (1999; All About My Mother).

Cruz’s first English-language role came in Talk of Angels (1998), which was completed in 1994 but not released for several years. She then appeared in the contemporary western The Hi-Lo Country (1998). Cruz quickly established herself as a prominent actress in Hollywood. She appeared in the romantic comedy Woman on Top (2000) and starred alongside Matt Damon in All the Pretty Horses (2000), a film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name. She starred opposite Johnny Depp in Blow (2001), a film based on the life of George Jung, the most prolific cocaine dealer in the United States during the 1970s. In 2001 Cruz also appeared in Vanilla Sky—a remake of a successful film in which she had earlier starred, Abre los ojos (1997; Open Your Eyes)—and afterward was involved in a highly publicized relationship with costar Tom Cruise.

In the early 21st century Cruz continued to act in both English- and Spanish-language productions. She starred in Head in the Clouds (2004) and later appeared as an unhappily married mother in Almodóvar’s critically acclaimed Volver (2006; To Return), for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Cruz played a woman dreamed of by a man undergoing a midlife crisis in The Good Night (2007) and appeared as the young lover of an aging college professor in Elegy (2008), a film adaptation of the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal (2001). She then won her first Oscar—for best supporting actress, for her work in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), in which she starred alongside Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem; Cruz and Bardem married in 2010.

In 2009 Cruz appeared in Almodóvar’s Los abrazos rotos (2009; Broken Embraces), provided the voice of a guinea pig in the animated G-Force (2009), and starred in Nine, a musical set in the 1960s that focused on the life of a film director (played by Daniel Day-Lewis). She reteamed with Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), in which she portrayed the strong-willed daughter of the pirate Blackbeard. Cruz then collaborated again with Allen, portraying an Italian prostitute in his ensemble comedy To Rome with Love (2012). In the crime drama The Counselor (2013), she was cast as the girlfriend of a lawyer who becomes involved in a drug deal that goes wrong. The Spanish-language melodrama Ma ma (2015), which Cruz coproduced, featured her as a mother diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her comedic skills were on display in Ben Stiller’s fashion-industry satire Zoolander 2 (2016).

In 2017 Cruz was part of the star-studded cast of Murder on the Orient Express, based on Agatha Christie’s 1933 novel of the same name. She then took to the small screen to play Donatella Versace in the TV series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (2018). Cruz also costarred with Bardem in both Loving Pablo (2017), about the relationship between Pablo Escobar and journalist Virginia Vallejo, and Asghar Farhadi’s family drama Todos lo saben (2018; Everybody Knows). She then reteamed with Almodóvar in Dolor y gloria (2019; Pain and Glory), about a director contemplating his life. In Wasp Network (2019), Cruz played the unsuspecting wife of a Cuban pilot secretly working against Cuba’s government.

Cruz earned acclaim—as well as an Oscar nomination for best actress—for her performance in Madres paralelas (2021; Parallel Mothers), a drama by Almodóvar that centres on a relationship between two single mothers while also exploring the lasting influence of Spain’s civil war and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Also in 2021 she starred with Antonio Banderas in Competencia oficial (Official Competition), a satire about the making of a movie. In the espionage thriller The 355 (2022), Cruz was part of an all-star cast that included Jessica Chastain and Lupita Nyong’o.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-24 00:11:13

1145) Kate Winslet

Summary

Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress. Known for her work in independent films, particularly period dramas, and for her portrayals of headstrong and complicated women, she has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. Time magazine named Winslet one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009 and 2021. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012.

Winslet studied drama at the Redroofs Theatre School. Her first screen appearance, at age 15, was in the British television series Dark Season (1991). She made her film debut playing a teenage murderess in Heavenly Creatures (1994), and went on to win a BAFTA Award for playing Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1995). Global stardom followed with her leading role in the epic romance Titanic (1997), which was the highest-grossing film at the time. Winslet then eschewed parts in blockbusters in favour of critically acclaimed period pieces, including Quills (2000) and Iris (2001).

The science fiction romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), in which Winslet was cast against type in a contemporary setting, proved to be a turning point in her career, and she gained further recognition for her performances in Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), Revolutionary Road (2008), and The Reader (2008). For playing a former Nazi camp guard in the latter, she won the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress. Winslet's portrayal of Joanna Hoffman in the biopic Steve Jobs (2015) won her another BAFTA Award, and she received two Primetime Emmy Awards for her performances in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011) and Mare of Easttown (2021).

For her narration of a short story in the audiobook Listen to the Storyteller (1999), Winslet won a Grammy Award. She performed the song "What If" for the soundtrack of her film Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001). A co-founder of the charity Golden Hat Foundation, which aims to create autism awareness, Winslet has written a book on the topic. Divorced from film directors Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes, Winslet has been married to businessman Edward Abel Smith since 2012. She has a child from each marriage.

Details

Kate Winslet, in full Kate Elizabeth Winslet, (born October 5, 1975, Reading, Berkshire, England), is an English actress known for her sharply drawn portrayals of spirited and unusual women.

Winslet was raised in a family of actors. She began performing at an early age, taking small parts in commercials, television shows, and stage plays. Her first major role was in director Peter Jackson’s drama Heavenly Creatures (1994). The film, based on the Pauline Parker–Juliet Hulme case in New Zealand, depicted the obsessive fantasy life of two adolescent girls and their eventual murder of Parker’s mother. In 1995 Winslet appeared in an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Sense and Sensibility; the film was written by actress Emma Thompson and directed by Ang Lee. Winslet’s turn as Marianne Dashwood, a young woman set financially and romantically adrift by the circumstances of her father’s death, brought her to the attention of a larger audience and earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. Winslet then starred in another literary adaptation, Jude (1996), which was based on Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure (1895). Winslet solidified her burgeoning reputation for taking period roles by portraying Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh’s production of Hamlet (1996).

In 1997 Winslet became an international star with the release of director James Cameron’s Titanic, an epic that innovatively blended a conventional romantic story line with the large-scale computer-generated special effects normally reserved for action movies. Winslet portrayed heroine Rose DeWitt Bukater, a wealthy, idealistic young woman who pursues a brief, passionate affair with Jack Dawson, a struggling artist played by Leonardo DiCaprio. The film set box-office records, and Winslet received her second Oscar nomination.

Following the phenomenon generated by Titanic, Winslet eschewed a career in popular, lucrative movies in favour of several independent films. Hideous Kinky (1998) featured Winslet as a woman traveling in search of spiritual fulfillment in 1960s Morocco with her two daughters. In Holy Smoke (1999) she starred as a young woman whose parents extricate her from a cult and attempt to have her deprogrammed. Winslet further demonstrated a tendency to choose provocative roles with Quills (2000), in which she played a laundress smuggling manuscripts written by the Marquis de Sade out of the insane asylum where he is imprisoned. Her transformation into writer Iris Murdoch in Iris (2001) won her further accolades, including Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.

Again demonstrating a proclivity for idiosyncratic choices, Winslet portrayed a woman who has the memories of a painful relationship erased by a new medical procedure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), earning her yet another Academy Award nomination. In Little Children (2006) she appeared as a housewife whose frustration with the tedium of her suburban existence results in an adulterous affair. Winslet earned her fifth Academy Award nomination for that performance; she was the youngest actress to have received that many nominations. She turned to lighter matters with the romantic comedy The Holiday (2006) and Flushed Away (2006), a computer-animated adventure for which she provided the voice of a rat.

A 2008 adaptation of Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road again paired Winslet and DiCaprio, this time as an unconventional couple attempting to buck the restrictive mores of 1950s suburbia. The film was directed by Winslet’s husband, Sam Mendes, whom she had married in 2003 (they divorced in 2010). In The Reader (2008), Winslet explored the ethical complexities of the Holocaust as an illiterate concentration camp guard. For her performances in Revolutionary Road and The Reader, Winslet won Golden Globe Awards for best actress and best supporting actress, respectively. For her work in The Reader she also earned her first Academy Award (for best actress).

In 2011 Winslet moved to the small screen with the titular role in the Home Box Office (HBO) miniseries Mildred Pierce, based on James M. Cain’s novel about the travails of a divorced mother in the 1930s. Winslet received an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her performance. Returning to feature films, she then appeared in Contagion (2011), as an epidemiologist analyzing the spread of a deadly virus, and in the satiric comedy Carnage (2011), as one of four parents entangled in a dispute about child rearing. She played a single mother who develops a relationship with an escaped convict in Labor Day (2013). Winslet then stalked the screen as a ruthless operative in Divergent (2014), based on a series of young-adult novels, and wafted through the period piece A Little Chaos (2014), a fictional take on the romantic life of Versailles garden designer André Le Nôtre.

In 2016 Winslet was awarded a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Apple marketing executive Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs (2015), a biopic about seminal moments in the career of the titular computer pioneer; she also received an Oscar nomination, her seventh overall, for her performance. Winslet then appeared as a vampy Russian mobster in the crime thriller Triple 9 and as the coworker of a grieving father in the tearjerker Collateral Beauty (both 2016). Her credits from 2017 included The Mountain Between Us, an adventure drama about strangers who survive a plane crash, and Wonder Wheel, a comedy directed by Woody Allen, in which she portrayed a bored waitress on Coney Island in the 1950s. In the biopic Ammonite (2020), Winslet played English fossil hunter Mary Anning. After lending her voice to Black Beauty (2020), Winslet starred in the HBO miniseries Mare of Easttown (2021), about a small-town detective investigating a murder while dealing with her own personal struggles; for her acclaimed performance, the actress received her second Emmy.

Winslet was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-26 00:15:08

1146) Angelina Jolie

Summary

Angelina Jolie (born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards, she has been named Hollywood's highest-paid actress multiple times.

Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father, Jon Voight, in Lookin' to Get Out (1982), and her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993), followed by her first leading role in a major film, Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical cable films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1999 drama Girl, Interrupted. Her starring role as the video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) established her as a leading Hollywood actress. She continued her action-star career with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010), and The Tourist (2010), and received critical acclaim for her performances in the dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), the latter of which earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Her biggest commercial success came with the fantasy picture Maleficent (2014). She is also known for her voice role in the animation film series Kung Fu Panda (2008–present). Jolie has also directed and written several war dramas, namely In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), Unbroken (2014), and First They Killed My Father (2017). In 2021, Jolie portrayed Thena in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals.

In addition to her film career, Jolie is known for her humanitarian efforts, for which she has received a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and made an honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG), among other honors. She promotes various causes, including conservation, education, and women's rights, and is most noted for her advocacy on behalf of refugees as a Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Jolie has undertaken over a dozen field missions globally to refugee camps and war zones; her visited countries include Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and Ukraine.

As a public figure, Jolie has been cited as one of the most powerful and influential people in the American entertainment industry. She has been cited as the world's most beautiful woman by various media outlets. Her personal life, including her relationships, marriages, and health, has been the subject of wide publicity. She is divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton and Brad Pitt. She has six children with Pitt, three of whom were adopted internationally.

Details

Angelina Jolie, original name Angelina Jolie Voight, (born June 4, 1975, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), is an American actress and director known for her gender appeal and edginess as well as for her humanitarian work. She won an Academy Award for her supporting role as a mental patient in Girl, Interrupted (1999).

Early life

Jolie, daughter of actor Jon Voight, spent much of her childhood in New York before relocating to Los Angeles at age 11. She attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute for two years and then enrolled at Beverly Hills High School. She later studied drama at New York University. In addition to acting in theatre productions, she modeled and appeared in music videos.

Film roles

Jolie’s first major movie role was in Hackers (1995), during the filming of which she met her first husband, British actor Jonny Lee Miller (married 1996; divorced 1999). The film failed to find an audience, as did a series of subsequent movies. In 1997, however, Jolie garnered much attention portraying the wife of Alabama’s segregationist governor in the television movie George Wallace, and she later won a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal. The following year she played a supermodel struggling with drug addiction in the HBO movie Gia, a performance that earned her multiple honours, including a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 1999 she appeared in the comedy Pushing Tin with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, and the following year she married Thornton (divorced 2003).

After her Oscar-winning turn in Girl, Interrupted, Jolie starred in a series of action movies. She played the girlfriend of a carjacker (Nicolas Cage) in Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) and later adopted a British accent and mastered street fighting and kickboxing for the title roles in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003). In 2004 she portrayed the mother of Alexander the Great in Oliver Stone’s Alexander and also starred opposite Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a sci-fi thriller set in 1930s New York City. Both films were box-office disappointments, but Jolie scored a hit with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), in which she played an assassin pretending to be a normal housewife; while working on the film, she met Brad Pitt, who became her partner.

In Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd (2006), she was the aggrieved wife of an early CIA agent (Matt Damon). Jolie earned critical acclaim for her performance as Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart (2007). Based on a true story, the film followed efforts to rescue Pearl’s husband, Daniel, who was kidnapped and later murdered by Islamic extremists while reporting in Pakistan for The Wall Street Journal. Jolie followed it with Beowulf (2007) and Wanted (2008). Her immersion into the role of a mother whose son is kidnapped and later replaced by a different child in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (2008) resulted in another Oscar nomination.

In 2010 Jolie starred as a CIA operative accused of spying for Russia in the action thriller Salt and appeared opposite Johnny Depp in the caper The Tourist. She later assumed the role of the titular villain in Maleficent (2014). The live-action film attempted to cast the evil fairy from the 1959 Disney animated classic Sleeping Beauty in a more sympathetic light. Jolie later starred in the sequel (2019). In 2020 she starred in the fantasy-adventure Come Away, playing the mother of Peter Pan and Alice (of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), characters created by J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll, respectively. In the action-thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021), Jolie portrayed a firefighter protecting a young boy being chased by killers. Also in 2021 she appeared as the immortal warrior Thena in Eternals, an action movie that was part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In addition, Jolie provided voices for several films, including the animated Kung Fu Panda (2008) and its sequels (2011 and 2016) as well as The One and Only Ivan (2020).

Directing

In 2011 Jolie made her directorial and screenwriting debut with the Bosnian-language In the Land of Blood and Honey, a turbulent love story set during the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s. She then helmed the World War II drama Unbroken (2014). The script for the film, based on the true story of an Olympic runner and U.S. Air Force officer who became a Japanese prisoner of war after his plane crashed, was written by the Coen brothers. In 2015 she directed, wrote, and starred in By the Sea, which focuses on a troubled couple in 1970s France; the drama also starred Pitt. Jolie followed with First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (2017), an adaption of Loung Ung’s memoir about her childhood during the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s.

Personal life and philanthropic work

Jolie’s personal life often attracted at least as much attention as her acting. Her relationship with Pitt became fodder for tabloids, and the birth of the couple’s biological children, Shiloh (2006) and twins Knox and Vivienne (2008), caused a media frenzy. Jolie and Pitt married in 2014, but two years later Jolie filed for divorce. Her humanitarian work also drew interest. In 2001 she was named a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). After that appointment she traveled to numerous poverty-stricken countries and adopted children from Cambodia and Ethiopia—Maddox and Zahara, respectively. Pitt later adopted the children, and in 2007 the couple adopted a boy, Pax, from Vietnam. In 2013 Jolie made news for having a preventive double mastectomy after discovering mutations in her BRCA1 gene, which increase the odds of developing breast or ovarian cancer. That year she also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-28 00:09:45

1147) Anna Kournikova

Gist

A former World Number 1 professional tennis player, Anna Kournikova along with her doubles partner Martina Hingis won two Grand Slam titles (Australian Open). She made her debut in professional tennis at the young age of 14, becoming the youngest ever player to participate and win the Fed Cup for Russia. This achiever made it to the U.S Open when she was only 15 year old and at 16 managed to reach up to the semi-finals of Wimbledon. Unfortunately, she had to retire from professional tennis at the age of 21 due to due to severe back problems. She, however, continues to play for charity matches and exhibition matches. After she retired from tennis, she pursued a brief stint in modelling; appeared in advertisements and even played a minor role in a film. She was also seen in the music video ‘Escape’ of Spanish singer and songwriter, Enrique Iglesias. She soon became one of the most highly searched celebrities on the internet. She was featured on ‘People’ magazine’s list of '50 Most Beautiful People'.

Summary

Anna Sergeyevna Kournikova (born 7 June 1981) is a Russian former professional tennis player and American television personality. Her appearance and celebrity status made her one of the best known tennis stars worldwide. At the peak of her fame, fans looking for images of Kournikova made her name one of the most common search strings on Google Search.

Despite never winning a singles title, she reached No. 8 in the world in 2000. She achieved greater success playing doubles, where she was at times the world No. 1 player. With Martina Hingis as her partner, she won Grand Slam titles in Australia in 1999 and 2002, and the WTA Championships in 1999 and 2000. They referred to themselves as the "Spice Girls of Tennis".

Kournikova retired from professional tennis in 2003 due to serious back and spinal problems, including a herniated disk. She lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and played in occasional exhibitions and in doubles for the St. Louis Aces of World Team Tennis before the team folded in 2011. She was a new trainer for season 12 of the television show The Biggest Loser, replacing Jillian Michaels, but did not return for season 13. In addition to her tennis and television work, Kournikova serves as a Global Ambassador for Population Services International's "Five & Alive" program, which addresses health crises facing children under the age of five and their families.

Details

Anna Kournikova is arguably the most marketable woman in sports, despite having won no WTA Tour

singles tournaments. "Anna Kournikova is gender with a tennis racket attached," Bud Collins, longtime expert in the sport, said on ESPN Classic's Sports Century series. Kournikova has only once reached the semifinals of a Grand Slam event, yet Web sites related to the attractive young Russian woman annually receive among the most "hits" worldwide. ESPN televised the filming of her skin-revealing 2003 calendar five times during Christmas week, 2002. It drew a 1.1 rating, considered high for an ESPN non-event telecast.

"Kournikova is of the post-feminist generation, one more likely to take its cues from MTV, Madonna and Camille Paglia than Ms.," Peter Bodo wrote on the ESPN.com Web site. "She also is of a realistic generation, and in a world in which gender sells—no matter what anyone has said or done so far—she has what the market wants. Having grown up relatively poor in a confused and desolate place (post-Soviet Russia), she is more than glad to exploit her natural gifts for personal gain." In 2000, she was one of five female tennis players named to Forbes magazine's Power 100 in Fame and Fortune list at No. 58.

Kournikova, beset by injuries in 2001 and 2002, does have two Grand Slam women's doubles titles. She and Martina Hingis teamed together to capture the Australian Open in 1999 and 2002 (they no longer play together). She was ranked as high as eighth among singles in May, 2001, before injuring her ankle. As 2002 ended, Kournikova was playing Monica Seles in exhibition matches. In tune-ups for the January, 2003 Australian Open, she was 35th in the Women's Tennis Association rankings. As the year 2003 began, Kournikova's pro singles career tournament drought stood at 115.

Bollettieri Protege

Born an only child in Moscow, Kournikova first swung a tennis racquet at age 5. She came from an athletic family; her father, Sergei, was a Greco-Roman wrestler and her mother, Alla, ran the 400 meters. At age seven, Kournikova was accepted as a junior member in Moscow's renowned Spartak Athletic Club, but the city's climate limited outdoor play to four months, and indoor courts were cost prohibitive.

The family moved to Florida in the early 1990s, enabling Kournikova to enroll at Nick Bollettieri's tennis academy, which launched the likes of Seles, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras to stardom. Kournikova spoke no English when she arrived. "But Anna knew who she was, and wanted everyone to know who she was, too," Bollettieri recalled. "She thought she was Queen Tut."

She turned pro at 14, making her WTA Tour debut at Moscow as a qualifier, defeating Marketa Kochta before losing to Sabine Appelmans. A year later, she surged 224 spots to a No. 57 ranking and, in her first Grand Slam, reached the fourth round before losing top-ranked Steffi Graf . She also represented Russia in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.

The family moved to Florida in the early 1990s, enabling Kournikova to enroll at Nick Bollettieri's tennis academy, which launched the likes of Seles, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras to stardom. Kournikova spoke no English when she arrived. "But Anna knew who she was, and wanted everyone to know who she was, too," Bollettieri recalled. "She thought she was Queen Tut."

She turned pro at 14, making her WTA Tour debut at Moscow as a qualifier, defeating Marketa Kochta before losing to Sabine Appelmans. A year later, she surged 224 spots to a No. 57 ranking and, in her first Grand Slam, reached the fourth round before losing top-ranked Steffi Graf . She also represented Russia in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Wimbledon Semifinalist

In 1997, at age 16, Kournikova toppled No. 5 Iva Majoli and No. 10 Anke Huber at Wimbledon and reached the semifinals before losing 6-3, 6-2 to Hingis. She was the second woman in the open era, after Chris Evert , to reach the Wimbledon semifinals in her debut. Kournikova, who admitted to soreness in her left hip, said she saw her run as a learning experience. "It's unbelievable, I got to the semi-finals," she said. "I was dreaming about this. I'm definitely going to take a lot with me from this tournament, and from this experience."

Early the next year, she rose to No. 16 by reaching her first final, in Key Biscayne, Florida. She knocked off four straight top-10 players (Seles, Conchita Martinez, Lindsay Davenport and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario ) before losing the title match to Venus Williams in a full three sets. She also defeated Graf at Eastbourne. Kournikova missed Wimbledon that year, however, because of a thumb injury. In her other noteworthy Grand Slam singles performance, she reached the 2001 Australian Open quarterfinals, where Davenport proved too much, 6-4, 6-2.

Off-Court Headlines

Kournikova ended 1999 with a number one in doubles. A year later she finished number eight, her first top 10 singles ranking. Her beauty and success were magnets for sponsors. She pitched brokerages and dot-com companies on television. By then, her personal life had also made big headlines. She was romantically linked to Russian-born hockey stars Sergei Federov and Pavel Bure. She was also linked to musician Enrique Iglesias, with whom she made a video. Some observers say her off-court distractions hurt her game, although an injured left foot has also troubled her. Her record in singles matches in 2002 was only 28-24.

"I do think someday she will hate herself for not giving tennis her best shot," ESPN.com 's Chris McKendry wrote. "I don't think Kournikova is a fraud or the product of PR packaging. I do think she's a lucky winner of the 'birth lottery'—born beautiful and athletic—and that's not her fault. But she is to blame for underachieving." McKendry added: "So when exactly did Kournikova become less of a tennis player and more of a pop icon?

Seles Defends Her
After an exhibition match in December, 2002, in St. Paul, Minnesota, Seles quickly denied reports about resentment toward Kournikova by other WTA tour players. "I don't think there's animosity. My gosh, that's a strong word to use," Seles said after beating Kournikova in the Minnesota Tennis Challenge. "She's dedicated her life to this sport. She's one of the hardest workers on tour. She's a gorgeous girl. What can she do about that? She can't just hide her face."

Bodo admires Kournikova's work ethic. "Consider this: In the spring of 2000, Kournikova badly tore ligaments in her left ankle in Berlin, just 19 days before the French Open," he wrote. "Doctors advised that Kournikova rest the ankle for a month, but two days before Roland Garros began, she booked a practice court and hit balls fed right to her racket because she could not yet run properly. Ignoring all advice, she entered the French Open and won a round before a loss to Sylvia Plischke left her open to charges that by now constitute a ceaseless refrain: Kournikova is all glitz and no substance, she's overrated, she can't handle Grand Slam-level pressure."

Looking Ahead
Kournikova's one wish for 2003, she said, was "to stay healthy, go back and try to play a full season this time." Her latest coach is former men's star Harold Solomon, a no-nonsense type credited with saving Jennifer Capriati 's career. Off the court, meanwhile, she sued Penthouse magazine, which published photos in 2002 purporting to be Kournikova frolicking on a topless beach. The magazine apologized for a misidentification and settled out of court.

McKendry feels Kournikova's best chance for a Grand Slam title may have eluded her, given the dominance of the Williams sisters. "Both (Hingis and Kournikova) are missing what the Williams sisters, Jennifer Capriati, Lindsay Davenport and even Monica Seles have—incredible strength and a powerful serve," she wrote. "It has been too long since Kournikova's play justified her popularity. But don't call her a nontalent. Nobody, not even Anna, can fake their way to even the No. 36 ranking in the world. Fact is, somewhere under the piles of publicity is a good tennis player. And the only way for her to prove her critics wrong is to prove that … again."

While leveling her share of criticisms at Kournikova, McKendry still feels there's more to like than not to like. "As for young girls looking up to her, all I can say is this: Kournikova is an athletic 5-foot-8, 125-pound beauty," she writes. "Who's a better role model—Anna or some skinny heroin chic model?"

Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-29 00:06:18

1148) Ashley Judd

Summary

American actress and political activist Ashley Judd was born Ashley Tyler Ciminella on April 19, 1968, in Granada Hills, California. She grew up in a family of successful performing artists as the daughter of country music singer Naomi Judd and the sister of Wynonna Judd. While she is best known for an ongoing acting career spanning more than two decades, she has increasingly become involved in global humanitarian efforts and political activism.

Details

Ashley Judd (born Ashley Tyler Ciminella; April 19, 1968) is an American actress. She grew up in a family of performing artists: she is the daughter of the late country music singer Naomi Judd and the half-sister of country music singer Wynonna Judd. Her acting career has spanned more than three decades, and she has also become increasingly involved in global humanitarian efforts and political activism.

Judd has starred in films that have been well received and films that have been box office successes, including: Ruby in Paradise (1993), Heat (1995), Smoke (1995), Norma Jean & Marilyn (1996), A Time to Kill (1996), Kiss the Girls (1997), Double Jeopardy (1999), Where the Heart Is (2000), Frida (2002), High Crimes (2002), Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood (2002), De-Lovely (2004), Twisted (2004), Bug (2006), Dolphin Tale (2011), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), Divergent (2014), Dolphin Tale 2 (2014), Big Stone Gap (2014), Barry (2016) and A Dog's Way Home (2019). She starred as Rebecca Winstone in the 2012 television series Missing, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie.

Golden Globe nominated American actress, Ashley Judd has acted in more than 20 films and is known for her devotion to humanitarian work. She was voted as one of the '25 Most Intriguing People' by ‘People' magazine and was also ranked at number 20 on the 'FHM’ magazine’s list of 'Sexiest Women in the World'. Some of her well-known movies include, 'Ruby in Paradise', 'Natural Born Killers', 'Norma Jean & Marilyn', 'Kiss the Girls', 'Double Jeopardy', 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood', 'Crossing Over' and 'Tooth Fairy'. She was also seen in the Emmy Award nominated mystery thriller series, 'Missing'. With a net worth of $22 million, Judd has established herself as one of the most leading actresses in Hollywood. She has also come out with her autobiographical book, ‘All That is Bitter & Sweet', chronicled from her childhood to adulthood. With a film career that has lasted more than 15 years, Judd has managed to make her mark as a powerful performer, versatile actress and most importantly a passionate and devoted humanitarian.

Humanitarian work

For more than a decade, Judd has conducted humanitarian work that focuses on gender equality, and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls. In 2016, she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNFPA, the United Nations agency with responsibilities including sexual and reproductive health. As of May 2018, she had visited UNFPA's projects for women and girls affected by humanitarian crises in Jordan, Turkey, Ukraine, and Bangladesh, and its development work in India and Sri Lanka.

Judd has also travelled with YouthAIDS to places affected by illness and poverty, such as Cambodia, Kenya, and Rwanda. She has since become an advocate for preventing poverty and promoting awareness internationally. She has met with political and religious leaders on behalf of the deprived about political and social change. Judd has narrated three documentaries for YouthAIDS that aired on the Discovery Channel, in National Geographic, and on VH1.

In 2011, she joined the Leadership Council of the International Center for Research on Women. Other organizations Judd has been involved with include Women for Women International and Equality Now.

Judd is active on the speakers' circuit, giving speeches about gender equality, abuse and humanitarian topics.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-09-30 00:10:22

1149) Britney Spears

Summary

Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and dancer. Often referred to as the "Princess of Pop", she is credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s. After appearing in stage productions and television series, Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age fifteen. Her first two studio albums, ...Baby One More Time (1999) and Oops!... I Did It Again (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time and made Spears the best-selling teenage artist of all time. With first-week sales of over 1.3 million copies, Oops!... I Did It Again held the record for the fastest-selling album by a female artist in the United States for fifteen years. Spears adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums Britney (2001) and In the Zone (2003), and starred in the 2002 film Crossroads.

Spears was executive producer of her fifth studio album Blackout (2007), often referred to as her best work. Following a series of highly publicized personal problems, promotion for the album was limited, and Spears was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship. Since then, she released the chart-topping albums, Circus (2008) and Femme Fatale (2011), the latter of which became her most successful era of singles in the US charts. She embarked on a four-year concert residency, Britney: Piece of Me, at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas to promote her next two albums Britney Jean (2013) and Glory (2016). In 2019, Spears's legal battle over her conservatorship became more publicized and led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement. In 2021, the conservatorship was terminated following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse.

Regarded as a pop icon, Spears has sold 200 million records worldwide, including over 70 million in the United States, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. She has achieved six number-one albums on the Billboard 200 and four number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100: "...Baby One More Time", "Womanizer", "3", and "Hold It Against Me". The "S&M" remix also topped the Billboard chart. Her singles "Oops!... I Did It Again", "Toxic", and "Scream & Shout" topped the charts in most countries. With "3" in 2009 and "Hold It Against Me" in 2011, Spears became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs. Her heavily choreographed videos earned her the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. She has earned numerous other awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven Billboard Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Spears was ranked by Billboard as the eighth-biggest artist of the 2000s.[8] In the United States, she is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. "...Baby One More Time" was named the greatest debut single of all time by Rolling Stone in 2020. In 2004, Spears launched a perfume brand with Elizabeth Arden, Inc.; sales exceeded $1.5 billion as of 2012. Forbes has reported Spears as the highest-earning female musician of 2001 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in twelve years. Time named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, while also winning the reader poll by receiving the highest number of votes.

Details

Britney Spears, in full Britney Jean Spears, (born December 2, 1981, McComb, Mississippi, U.S.), is an American singer who helped spark the teen-pop phenomenon in the late 1990s and later endured intense public scrutiny for her tumultuous personal life.

Early life

Spears, who grew up in Kentwood, Louisiana, began singing and dancing at age two and was soon competing in talent shows. At age eight she auditioned for Disney’s television show The All New Mickey Mouse Club but was deemed too young for the program. The impressed producers did, however, encourage her to get an agent in New York City, and she began spending her summers there, attending the Professional Performing Arts School. During this period she started making television commercials and in 1991 appeared in Ruthless, an Off-Broadway play. Two years later Spears finally became a cast member of The All New Mickey Mouse Club, joining an ensemble of Mouseketeers that included future pop stars Justin Timberlake (with whom she was later romantically linked) and Christina Aguilera.

After the show’s cancellation in 1995, Spears returned home, but she was soon eager to resume her career. At age 15 she made a demo tape that earned her a development deal with Jive Records. In 1998 she released her first single, “…Baby One More Time.” The attention, however, only helped the song, and when the album (…Baby One More Time) was released in 1999, it quickly went to number one on the charts and eventually sold more than 10 million copies in the United States. In 2000 she released her second album, Oops!…I Did It Again. It sold 1.3 million copies in its first week of release, setting a record for first-week sales by a solo artist. Although Spears drew criticism for her revealing attire—often imitated by her female fans—she was able to convey a wholesomeness that proved highly profitable. In 2001 she signed a multimillion-dollar deal to be a spokesperson for Pepsi and released her third album, Britney, which sold more than four million copies domestically. Its follow-up, In the Zone (2003), sold nearly three million, partly on the strength of the hit single “Toxic.”

Spears’s subsequent studio albums suffered diminished sales but remained major events in the pop music world. The electronic-infused Blackout (2007) found her in a self-reflective mood; Circus (2008) featured her first Billboard number-one single (“Womanizer”) since her debut; and Femme Fatale (2011) was her most up-tempo dance-oriented offering to date. Britney Jean (2013) was characterized by Spears as being highly personal, but it was criticized for obscuring her voice with synthesized effects. However, Glory (2016), her ninth studio album, was considered a return to form for the singer.

Other activities: acting and residencies

Spears also dabbled in acting, making her big-screen debut in 2002 with the lead role in the coming-of-age film Crossroads. In 2012 she appeared as a judge in the televised talent competition The X Factor. The following year she began a residency show titled Britney: Piece of Me at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. That residency ended in late 2017, and she embarked on a world tour the following summer. In 2019 Spears announced that she was taking an “indefinite work hiatus.”

Scandal and conservatorship

Spears often found herself in the spotlight less for her music than for events in her personal life, most notably her tumultuous marriage (2004–07) to dancer Kevin Federline. Her erratic behaviour during this time—at one point she shaved her head and was briefly hospitalized—resulted in her being placed under a court-ordered conservatorship (also known as guardianship) in 2008; her father was named as a conservator. Concerns about this legal arrangement later caused fans to start the online campaign #FreeBritney. The conservatorship was also the subject of the TV documentaries Framing Britney Spears and Controlling Britney Spears, both of which aired in 2021. That year Spears petitioned for an end to the conservatorship, claiming that the arrangement was “abusive” and unnecessary, especially given that she was performing and recording. In September 2021 a judge ruled that the “current situation is not tenable,” and Spears’s father was suspended as conservator. Two months later the conservatorship was terminated. For many, Britney Spears had come to epitomize the endemic growth in the public’s fascination with celebrities, catered to by paparazzi and tabloid journalism and fueled by gossip and scandal.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-02 00:04:25

1150) Cindy Crawford

Summary

Cynthia Ann Crawford (born February 20, 1966) is an American model, actress and television personality. During the 1980s and 1990s, she was among the most popular supermodels and a ubiquitous presence on magazine covers, runways, as well as fashion campaigns. She subsequently expanded into acting and business ventures.

Details

Cindy Crawford, in full Cynthia Ann Crawford, (born February 20, 1966, DeKalb, Illinois, U.S.), American fashion model and television personality who first gained fame in the 1980s and was among the first “supermodels.”

Crawford grew up in DeKalb, Illinois, near Chicago, where her father worked as an electrician and her mother was employed as a bank teller. In 1982, while working during the summer detasseling corn on a nearby farm, she was spotted and photographed by a local news photographer. The following year she entered the Look of the Year modeling contest (later renamed Elite Model Look) held by Elite Model Management, one of the largest modeling agencies in the world. Her status as a finalist secured her professional representation, which quickly generated modeling assignments. In 1984 Crawford graduated as class valedictorian from DeKalb High School and began pursuing a degree in chemical engineering at Northwestern University on an academic scholarship. She found it increasingly difficult, however, to juggle school and modeling, and in 1985 she dropped out of college to model full-time.

In 1986 Crawford relocated to New York City to pursue a professional modeling career. Touted as “Baby Gia” in reference to her resemblance to the late top fashion model Gia Carangi, Crawford immediately secured work. Her big break came when she was chosen as the cover model for the August 1986 issue of Vogue, the leading fashion magazine, whose decision not to airbrush out the beauty mark above her upper lip—which many industry professionals deemed a flaw—set a new industry standard and ensured her eventual trademark.

Crawford’s intelligence, down-to-earth demeanour, and athletic full-bodied physique earned her a rare cross-gender appeal.

In 1989 Crawford signed a four-year multimillion-dollar contract with Revlon, which gained her international recognition. She was subsequently featured with fellow models Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Tatjana Patitz on the cover of British Vogue (January 1990). The grouping of several top models on a single cover attracted significant attention, and the models were chosen to again appear together in the pop singer George Michael’s Freedom ’90 music video. Gianni Versace, then a top fashion designer, in turn hired Crawford, Turlington, Evangelista, and Campbell to simultaneously walk the runway to the video at his couture show (1991), eliciting a standing ovation from the audience. The monumental event is believed by many industry professionals to have marked the official debut of the “supermodel”—a top fashion model who appears simultaneously on the covers of the world’s leading fashion magazines and is globally recognized by first name only. Later that year Crawford wed Hollywood actor Richard Gere; they divorced in 1995.

Crawford quickly gained a reputation for her business savvy and is widely considered to be the first model to diversify her career by venturing into multiple industries. She launched her own production company, Crawdaddy Inc., to exclusively manage her career, and in 1992 she released the first installment in her fitness video trilogy, which sold millions.

As the supermodel phenomenon began to rise, Crawford was at the forefront of a small group of models—known in the industry as “the supers”—who became worldwide celebrities, increasingly dominating both the high-fashion runways and the global media. American singer RuPaul captured the phenomenon in the 1993 hit song aptly titled “Supermodel,” which mentioned the year’s top models, including Crawford, Turlington, Campbell, Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, and Niki Taylor, by first name only. In 1995 Crawford appeared in a major advertising campaign for PepsiCo, Inc., and was named the top-earning model in the world by the U.S. publishing and media company Forbes.

Crawford made her acting debut in the 1995 film Fair Game and appeared in the fashion documentaries Unzipped (1995) and Catwalk (1996). She also authored Cindy Crawford’s Basic Face: A Makeup Workbook (1996).

Following a partnership of more than a decade, Revlon opted not to renew its contract with Crawford. In 2000 she retired from full-time modeling, having appeared on hundreds of magazine covers and walked the runways of the world’s top fashion labels, including Chanel, Valentino, and Christian Dior.

In the early 21st century, Crawford launched a string of signature products. She also was featured in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition “The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion” (2009), which showcased the models who epitomized fashion during the 20th century. Crawford later coauthored Becoming (2015), a book about her life and career. Her son Presley and daughter Kaia—Crawford’s children with her second husband, Rande Gerber—were also notable models.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-03 00:04:37

1151) Jessica Alba

Summary

Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981) is an American actress and businesswoman. She began her television and movie appearances at age 13 in Camp Nowhere and The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994), and rose to prominence at age 19 as the lead actress of the television series Dark Angel (2000–2002), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.

Her big screen breakthrough came in Honey (2003). She soon established herself as a Hollywood actress, and has starred in numerous box office hits throughout her career, including Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Good Luck Chuck (2007), The Eye (2008), Valentine's Day (2010), Little Fockers (2010), and Mechanic: Resurrection (2016). She is a frequent collaborator of director Robert Rodriguez, having starred in Sin City (2005), Machete (2010), Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011), Machete Kills (2013), and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). From 2019 to 2020, Alba starred in the Spectrum action crime series L.A.'s Finest.

In 2011, Alba co-founded The Honest Company, a consumer goods company that sells baby, personal and household products. Magazines including Men's Health, Vanity Fair and FHM have included her on their lists of the world's most beautiful women.

Details

Jessica Marie Alba was born on April 28, 1981, in Pomona, CA, to Catherine (Jensen) and Mark David Alba, who served in the US Air Force. Her father is of Mexican descent (including Spanish and Indigenous Mexican roots), and her mother has Danish, Welsh, English, and French ancestry. Her family moved to Biloxi, MS, when she was an infant. Three years later her father's career brought the family back to California, then to Del Rio, TX, before finally settling in Southern California when Jessica was nine. In love with the idea of becoming an actress from the age of five, she was 12 before she took her first acting class. Nine months later she was signed by an agent. She studied at the Atlantic Theatre Company with founders William H. Macy and David Mamet.

A gifted young actress, Jessica has played a variety of roles ranging from light comedy to gritty drama since beginning her career. She made her feature film debut in 1993 in Hollywood Pictures' comedy Camp Nowhere (1994). Originally hired for two weeks, she got her break when an actress in a principal role suddenly dropped out. Jessica cheerfully admits it wasn't her prodigious talent or charm that inspired the director to tap her to take over the part--it was her hair, which matched the original performer's. The two-week job stretched to two months, and Jessica ended the film with an impressive first credit. Two national TV commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney quickly followed before Jessica was featured in several independent films. She branched out into TV in 1994 with a recurring role in Nickelodeon's popular comedy series The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994). She played an insufferable young snob, devoted to making life miserable for the the title character, played by Larisa Oleynik. That same year, she won the role of "Maya" in Flipper (1995) and filmed the pilot for the series. She spent 1995 shooting the first season's episodes in Australia. An avid swimmer and PADI-certified SCUBA diver, Jessica was delighted to be doing a show that allowed her to play with dolphins. The show's success guaranteed it a second season, which she also starred in. Her involvement in the show lasted from 1995 to 1997.

In 1996 she appeared in Venus Rising (1995) as "Young Eve." The next year she appeared on The Dini Petty Show (1989), a Canadian talk show, and spoke about her role in "Flipper" and her general acting career. She began working on P.U.N.K.S. (1999), featuring Randy Quaid, in 1998. In early 1998 she appeared in Brooklyn South (1997) as "Melissa." That same year she was in two episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) as "Leanne" and in two episodes of Love Boat: The Next Wave (1998).

She appeared in "Teen Magazine" in 1995 and various European magazines over the following years. More importantly, she was featured in the February 1999 issue of "Vanity Fair" magazine. She also had major roles in two movies that year: Never Been Kissed (1999) and Idle Hands (1999). In 2000 she had roles in Paranoid (2000) and starred in the sci-fi TV series Dark Angel (2000), gaining worldwide recognition.

Her first starring role in a major studio film was the Honey (2003), Universal Pictures' contemporary urban drama that grossed over $60 million worldwide. She has since made over 25 feature films that have earned a combined box-office total of over $800 million, including comedies and dramas, from gritty independents to major studio blockbusters. In 2005 she starred opposite Bruce Willis and an all-star cast in the provocative and critically acclaimed Sin City (2005), directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. She next starred as Sue Storm--"The Invisible Girl"--in Marvel's action-franchise blockbuster Fantastic Four (2005), which was released by 20th Century-Fox in July 2005 and became a worldwide box-office success with over $300 million in revenue.

Jessica was part of Garry Marshall's all-star ensemble romantic comedy, Valentine's Day (2010), which broke box-office records with the largest opening on a four-day President's Day weekend in history. She starred opposite Casey Affleck and Kate Hudson in director Michael Winterbottom's controversial screen adaptation of The Killer Inside Me (2010), based on Jim Thompson's novel, as well as Robert Rodriquez's Machete (2010). She co-starred in the third installment of the hit "Meet the Parents" franchise Little Fockers (2010), as well as the 4D family adventure Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World (2011), marking her third of five collaborations with Robert Rodriguez. Jessica was part of an all-star voice cast for The Weinstein Company's animated adventure, Escape from Planet Earth (2012), also featuring Sarah Jessica Parker, Brendan Fraser and James Gandolfini.

She appeared in the comedy A.C.O.D. (2013), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and starred Adam Scott, Jane Lynch and Amy Poehler. She made a cameo appearance in Machete Kills (2013) and co-starred in Robert Rodriquez's highly-anticipated, star-studded sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). That year she had a full slate of acting projects, including the period drama Dear Eleanor (2016), The Englishman opposite Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek; the IFC parody mini-series The Spoils of Babylon (2014), produced by Funny or Die, with a stellar cast including Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Tobey Maguire, Michael Sheen and Tim Robbins; and Stretch (2014), co-starring Patrick Wilson, Chris Pine, Ray Liotta, Ed Helms and Brooklyn Decker.

Jessica has received Golden Globe and People's Choice Award nominations, was voted TV Guide readers' Breakout Star of the Year, and won Favorite TV Actress at the 2001 Teen Choice Awards for "Dark Angel." She won the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award for Favorite Female Actress for her performance in "Fantastic Four" and an MTV Movie Award for Sexiest Performance in "Sin City." She received another Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress in a Horror/Thriller for The Eye (2008) and was honored by the Young Hollywood Awards as Superstar of Tomorrow in 2005. She has received ALMA Awards for her performances in "Dark Angel" and "Machete," as well as a Fashion Icon in 2009.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-05 00:10:30

1152) Amy Jackson

Amy Louise Jackson (born 31 January 1992) is a British actress and model known for her work in Indian films, predominantly in Tamil, Hindi, and Telugu languages. A former Miss Teen World, Jackson has appeared in over fifteen films. She made her US debut in 2017 with Warner Brothers television production of DC Comics Supergirl as Imra Ardeen/ Saturn Girl. Jackson's most notable roles include her debut into the industry as Amy Wilkinson in Madrasapattinam (2010), Sarah in action film Singh Is Bliing (2015), and Nila in India's most expensive film 2.0 (2018).

She has won an Ananda Vikatan Cinema Award, a SIIMA Award, and a London Asian Film Festival award. She was featured in The Times of India's "Most Desirable Women of 2014" as well as the "Most Promising Female Newcomers of 2012" list.

In 2009, Jackson won the Miss Teen World title in America. At the age of 15, she began her modeling career in the UK and has since worked with designers such as Hugo Boss, Carolina Herrera, JW Anderson, Bvlgari, and Cartier. In a twist of fate, Jackson was called to London to audition for the lead role in the Tamil-language period-drama Madrasapattinam (2010) directed by A. L. Vijay. Despite having had no previous acting experience, Jackson landed the role and thus began her career in India.

Jackson is a patron for charities such as "The Sneha Sargar Orphanage for girls". In 2018, she was honoured with the United Nations' International Day of The Girl Child award in London. Jackson is a proclaimed vegan animal rights advocate and has been an ambassador for PETA since 2016 as well as supporting The Elephant Family with their mission to aid human-animal conflict primarily in Asia.

Early life

Amy Louise Jackson was born on 31 January 1992 in Douglas on the Isle of Man, the daughter of Marguerita and Alan Jackson, who divorced several years after Amy Jackson was born. She has an elder sister, Alicia, who is a school teacher. When she was two years old, the family returned to Liverpool and lived with Jackson's grandmother in Woolton so that her father could continue his career with BBC Radio Merseyside. Jackson attended St Edward's College from the age of 3 - 16. She had the intention of taking her A–Levels in English literature, philosophy and ethics before she was cast in her first film.

Career:

Modelling

After winning the Miss Teen Liverpool and Miss Teen Great Britain pageants, Jackson won the title of Miss Teen World in 2009, which resulted in a modelling contract in the US. In 2009, Jackson started her modelling career with the Northern-based modelling agency, Boss Model Management, and then went on to sign with her London agency, Models 1. She won Miss Liverpool in 2010. She competed for the Miss England title in 2010 and was crowned the runner-up to Jessica Linley.

2010–2012: Breakthrough in Indian films

In 2010, Indian film producers spotted Jackson's photo on the Miss Teen World website and invited her to audition for the Tamil period-drama film Madrasapattinam (2010). Despite having had no previous acting experience, she was cast as the female lead opposite Arya. The film, set against the backdrop of 1947 India, tells the story of a British Governor's daughter who falls in love with a village boy. Jackson admitted that it was very difficult to learn the Tamil dialogues. The film was released on 9 July 2010; it was praised by critics and performed well at the box office, with Jackson gaining praise for her performance. Sify wrote, "It is an out and out Amy Jackson show. She is simply amazing to deliver lines in Tamil, and is one good reason to see the film". Behindwoods wrote, "The one who walks away with the top honours is Amy Jackson for a beautiful portrayal of a lady torn between her love and the mighty empire. She looks absolutely beautiful, emotes well through her expressive eyes and is able to earn the sympathy of the audiences during tough times". Rediff wrote, "Amy Jackson is almost perfect as the wide-eyed young girl who is seeing India for the first time, fascinated by its culture". She received a nomination for the Vijay Award for Best Debut Actress for her role in the film.

In 2011, she was signed by Gautham Vasudev Menon to play the female lead opposite Prateik Babbar in Ekk Deewana Tha (2012), the Hindi remake of the 2010 hit romantic drama film Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa. She essayed the role played by Trisha in the original, of Jessie Thekekuttu, a Malayali Nasrani Christian who falls in love with a Hindu boy, but is prevented from pursuing the romance by her father. The film was released in February 2012. Jackson received praise for her performance and for her chemistry with Babbar, with BehindWoods stating that "she has done wonders," and the Times of India saying that "she never disappoints."

In September 2012, Jackson made her return to Tamil cinema with a supporting role in Thaandavam (2012), starring opposite Vikram and Anushka Shetty. She was signed for the film in 2011 and shooting took place in India and London, enabling Jackson to return to see her family and friends. It was her second collaboration with director A. L. Vijay after Madrasapattinam (2010). She played the role of Sarah Vinayagam, a British-born Anglo-Indian girl who wins the Miss London title. She reportedly dubbed her own dialogues in Tamil. She received her first nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress – Tamil at the 60th Filmfare Awards South ceremony.

2014–present

Jackson made her debut in Telugu cinema with the Vamshi Paidipally's Yevadu (2014) alongside Ram Charan and Shruti Haasan, playing the role of Shruti. Jackson next starred as supermodel Diya in Shankar's romantic thriller film, whose title is simply I (2015), the biggest project in her career. The making of the film, one of the most costly Indian films to date, took over two-and-a-half years, with a major part of the film being shot in China. The film was released on 14 January 2015 and received a mixed critical response, although Jackson's performance received favorable reviews. Deccan Chronicle wrote that she was "simply superb. She is another highlight of the film and has given a mature performance", while Sify noted that she was "the biggest surprise packet in the film" and "perfect eye candy". Consequently, she was ranked #1 in The Times of India, Chennai Edition list of the most desirable women in 2014. After I (2015), Jackson signed on to Prabhu Deva's Singh Is Bliing (2015), opposite Akshay Kumar. She had signed on to be part of Venkat Prabhu's supernatural thriller Masss (2015), but opted out of it later when the script and her character were changed. Instead, she signed on to Velraj's Thanga Magan (2015) alongside Dhanush and Samantha Ruth Prabhu.

Soon after, Jackson starred in Thirukumaran's Gethu (2016), portraying an Anglo-Indian girl, for which she won positive reviews, . She has been shooting for a "gritty BBC drama series", on which she declined to further elaborate. She then portrayed the lead female role in Atlee's Theri (2016), featured alongside Vijay while portraying a Malayali teacher. Her performance received positive reviews and her role as a teacher was well appreciated. Upon release, the film went on to become one of the most profitable Tamil films of all time.

On 25 September 2017, it was announced that Jackson had been cast in her first Hollywood role as Imra Ardeen, aka Saturn Girl, in The CW's superhero drama series Supergirl (2017). The character made her first appearance in the third season. The series, based on DC characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, is produced by Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Bros Television.

Jackson has played Sita in Prem's Kannada film The Villain (2018) alongside Shiva Rajkumar and Sudeep. She starred as the andro-humanoid robot Nila in Shankar's film 2.0 (2018) alongside Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar.

Personal life

Jackson lived in India from 2012 to 2015 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, before later moving back to England, currently living in London. Jackson revealed that she was dating hotelier George Panayiotou, the son of English-Cypriot businessman Andreas Panayiotou since December 2015. On 1 January 2019, George Panayiotou proposed in Zambia. Their son was born on 19 September 2019.

Jackson is a regular attendee at BAFTA, Cannes Film Festival, British Fashion Awards and International Fashion Weeks. In 2017 she was chosen as the muse for L'Agence at The Green Carpet Fashion Awards during Milan Fashion Week. She has been featured in editorials for fashion magazines like Vogue, Marie Clare, Cosmopolitan, ELLE.

Jackson is an ambassador and spokesperson for charities such as Being Human, Cash and Rocket St. Jude's Hospital in Mumbai and the Girl Child education program in India. In 2014, she posed with her rescue cat in a PETA campaign promoting the adoption of animals from shelters.

Overview

Born : January 31, 1992 in Isle Of Man
Birth Name : Amy Louise Jackson
Height : 5' 7" (1.7 m)

Mini Bio

Amy Jackson is a British actress who began her acting career in India.

Amy became a household name after movies such as 'I', 'Singh is Bling' and '2.0'.

Jackson landed her first Hollywood role as Saturn Girl in season 3 of The CW's superhero series Supergirl (2017) and can be next seen in Guy Ritchie's upcoming spy thriller opposite Jason Statham (2021)

Family

Parents : Jackson, Marguerita
Jackson, Alan

Trivia

Was crowned Miss Teen World 2008 and Miss Liverpool 2010.
Daughter of Marguerita Jackson and BBC Radio Merseyside presenter Alan Jackson.
Amy Jackson competed at the Horse of the Year Show along with the Royal International Horse Show as a teenager.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-06 00:03:09

1153) Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Summary

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (née Rai; born 1 November 1973) is an Indian actress and the winner of the Miss World 1994 pageant. Primarily known for her work in Hindi and Tamil films, she has established herself as one of the most popular and influential celebrities in India. Rai has received numerous accolades, including two Filmfare Awards, and was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2009 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France in 2012. She has often been cited in the media as "the most beautiful woman in the world".

While in college, Rai did a few modelling jobs. Following appearances in several television commercials, she entered the Miss India pageant, in which she placed second. She was then crowned Miss World 1994, after which she began receiving offers to act in film. She made her acting debut in Mani Ratnam's 1997 Tamil film Iruvar and had her first Hindi film release in Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya that same year. Her first commercial success was the Tamil romantic drama Jeans (1998), which was the most expensive film to be made in Indian cinema at the time. She achieved wider success and won two Filmfare Awards for Best Actress for her performances in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) and Devdas (2002).

Rai garnered critical appreciation for portraying a passionate artist in the Tamil romance film Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), Tagore's heroine, Binodini, in the Bengali film Chokher Bali (2003), a depressed woman in the drama Raincoat (2004), Kiranjit Ahluwalia in the British drama film Provoked (2006), and a nurse in the drama Guzaarish (2010). Rai's greatest commercial successes have been the romance Mohabbatein (2000), the adventure film Dhoom 2 (2006), the drama Guru (2007), the period film Jodhaa Akbar (2008), the science fiction film Enthiran (2010), and the romantic drama Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016).

Rai married actor Abhishek Bachchan in 2007; the couple have one daughter. Her off-screen roles include duties as a brand ambassador for several charity organisations and campaigns. She is a Goodwill Ambassador for the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS). In 2003, she was the first Indian actress to be a jury member at the Cannes Film Festival.

Additional Information

Aishwarya Rai (Ash) is one of Bollywood's pre-eminent leading ladies. This Indian darling burst upon the world stage when her striking beauty, poise and commanding intelligence won her the Miss World crown in 1994. This former architecture major soon became one of India's most famous models, landing a prestigious Pepsi-Cola campaign and appearing in Vogue Magazine. India's top Bollywood directors were soon lining up to work with Ash. Her film debut in Mani Ratnam's Iruvar (1997) received critical acclaim and her performance in ...Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya (1997), directed by Rahul Rawail, garnered her the Best Female Debutante Award. In 2000 she was awarded Best Actress by FilmFare and Zee Cine for her work in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) in that same year, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her special appearance in Aditya Chopra's Mohabbatein (2000). In 2001 Ash was nominated for FilmFare's Best Actress Award for Satish Kaushik's Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai (2000).

Ash's star continued to rise in 2002, working again with Sajay Leela Bhansali in Devdas (2002), the most ambitious and most successful film in Bollywood history. It became the first Bollywood picture to receive a special screening at that year's Cannes Film Festival and broke box-office records in India and the US.

Ash had even more exciting opportunities in 2003. She became the first Indian actor to be a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. She is also the latest member of the elite L'Oreal Dream Team, joining renowned international beauties Catherine Deneuve and Andie MacDowell as L'Oreal's international ambassador. She graced the covers of India Today and the prestigious TIME Magazine, which also listed her on their list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World Today". She has graced numerous covers worldwide including the US, UK, China, Russia, Israel, United Emerites, Italy, Spain and France. Ash was also listed on Rolling Stone Magazine's annual "Hot List", Hello Magazine's 'Most Attractive Women in the World", Stuff Magazine, FHM magazine, V-Life from Variety Magazine, GQ Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Harper's & Queen and countless others. In 2004 Aishwarya took on the leading role in her first English-language film: Gurinder Chadha's Bride & Prejudice (2004). She also became the first Indian female to be immortalized in wax at the world-famous Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London.

She began 2005 with appearances on 60 Minutes (1968), Late Show with David Letterman (1993) and the most watched television program in the world: "Oprah" (1972). Her career continued to grow with roles in The Mistress of Spices (2005) for director Paul Mayeda Berges, Jag Mundhra's Provoked (2006), Sanjay Gadhvi's Dhoom 2 (2006) and legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis' The Last Legion (2007) opposite Colin Firth and Sir Ben Kingsley and a comic turn as the villainess in Steve Martin's The Pink Panther 2 (2009).

Details

Aishwarya Bachchan Rai, née Aishwarya Rai, (born November 1, 1973, Mangalore, Karnataka state, India), is an Indian actress whose classic beauty made her one of Bollywood’s premier stars.

Rai was raised in a traditional South Indian home and was pursuing an education in architecture when she was crowned Miss World in 1994. The title put her on the fast track of the modeling business. She landed lucrative jobs with PepsiCo, Inc., and Vogue magazine, and in 2003 she signed on as a spokesmodel for L’Oréal Paris. Her acting career began in earnest with acclaimed performances in Iruvar (1997; The Duo) and …Aur pyaar ho gaya (1997; based on the 1994 American movie Only You). Both films broke from the simplistic structure typical of Bollywood films at the time and helped to push Rai to the forefront of the “New Bollywood.” For decades the Indian film industry had produced a large number of very predictable and clichéd feature films that were enjoyed almost exclusively by South Asians. Changes in Bollywood with regard to financing and production, however, had seen the industry move to improve the artistic quality of its product and to expand its audience beyond South Asia.

Rai established herself as the new “Queen of Bollywood” with her moving performance as the jilted lover Paro in Devdas (2002), one of the most acclaimed and popular films to come out of Bollywood and the first to be screened at the Cannes film festival. She followed with a critically acclaimed performance in Chokher Bali (2003; Choker Bali: A Passion Play), a tense drama based on the novel by Rabindranath Tagore. That same year she became the first Indian actress to serve as a jury member at Cannes. In 2004 Rai starred in Bride and Prejudice, a music- and dance-filled adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that was directed by Gurinder Chadha, director of the 2002 hit Bend It Like Beckham. As Lalita Bakshi, the Indian equivalent of the strong-willed Elizabeth Bennett, Rai brought her star power and radiant beauty to her first major English-language film.

Rai returned to Bollywood for the blockbuster Dhoom: 2 (2006) before releasing the English-language Provoked: A True Story (2006), the tale of a Punjabi woman imprisoned for murdering her abusive husband. In April 2007 she married Abhishek Bachchan, her frequent costar and the son of Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan, in a union that joined two of the most powerful names in the Indian entertainment industry. Rai returned to work in the Arthurian tale The Last Legion (2007). It proved to be a disappointment at the box office but was soon overshadowed by the critical and popular success of Jodhaa Akbar (2008), a lush historical romance that tells the story of Akbar, the greatest Mughal emperor.

Rai’s later films included The Pink Panther 2 (2009) and the action romance Enthiran (2010; The Robot). In Guzaarish (2010; The Request) she portrayed the nurse of a quadriplegic magician who wishes to legally end his life. Following the birth of her daughter in 2011, Rai took a hiatus from acting. She returned in 2015 with Jazbaa, a crime drama in which she played a criminal attorney whose daughter is kidnapped. The following year she starred in the biopic Sarbjit, about an Indian man held in a Pakistani prison on charges of terrorism and espionage. Fanney Khan (2018) was a musical comedy in which a father goes to great lengths to make his daughter a famous singer.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-07 00:17:35

1154) Brooke Shields

Summary

Brooke Christa Shields (born May 31, 1965) is an American actress and model. She was initially a child model and gained critical acclaim at age 12 for her leading role in Louis Malle's film Pretty Baby (1978). She continued to model into her late teenage years and starred in several dramas in the 1980s, including The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Franco Zeffirelli's Endless Love (1981).

In 1983, Shields suspended her career as a model to attend Princeton University, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in Romance languages. In the 1990s, Shields returned to acting and appeared in minor roles in films. She also starred in the NBC sitcoms Suddenly Susan (1996–2000), for which she received two Golden Globe nominations, and Lipstick Jungle (2008–2009). In 2017, Shields returned to NBC with a major recurring role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in the show's 19th season. Since 2014, Shields has voiced Beverly Goodman in the Adult Swim animated series Mr. Pickles and its spinoff Momma Named Me Sheriff.

Details

"Want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." If you have not heard of Brooke Shields before, this tagline from her Calvin Klein Jeans ad had to grab your attention. Not that she has not had a previously noteworthy resume. She was born on May 31, 1965 in New York City, to Teri (Schmon) and Frank Shields. At age 12, she starred as a child prostitute in Pretty Baby (1978). Could this movie even be made today? It was considered risky and controversial in 1978. It was followed by another blockbuster, the romance adventure drama The Blue Lagoon (1980). Brooke has proved herself to be so much more than her early films. Her broad range of work as an adult would be quite an achievement for anyone, especially given how difficult transitioning from child actor to adult often is.

She has never stopped working, whether it be a Bob Hope Christmas special, her own sitcom Suddenly Susan (1996) or as an author. She also managed to work on a degree from Princeton University. She has received a number of awards during her career, most notably The People's Choice award for 1981 through 1984 in the category of Favorite Young Performer. In 1997, she was honored again with The People's Choice award for Favorite Female Performer in a New Television Series in 1997 for her work in Suddenly Susan (1996). In her personal life, she was married in 1997 to tennis player Andre Agassi and was devastated when they divorced two years later. She married for the second time in 2001 to Chris Henchy. She has been open about using fertility treatments to become pregnant with their daughter, Rowan, born in 2003.

When suffering debilitating depression after the birth of her daughter, she made the decision to put her feelings down on paper. Her book, "Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression," takes a hard, honest look at what she and many other women experience after childbirth. She still lives in New York City, and is still sought after for work in movies, television, and on stage. Pretty nice list of achievements for the once Calvin Klein jeans girl.

Brooke Christa Shields (born May 31, 1965) is an American actress, author and model. Some of her better known movies include Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon, as well as TV shows such as Suddenly Susan, That '70s Show and also Lipstick Jungle.

Acting
2021 : A Castle for Christmas as Sophie
2021 : Eggs as Horrible Harriet Hare
2020 : Showbiz Kids as Self (archive footage)
2020 : My Boyfriend's Meds as Alicia
2020 : The Paley Center Salutes Law & Order: SVU as Self
2019 : Momma Named Me Sheriff (9 episodes) as Beverly Goodman (voice)
2019 : Tamron Hall (1 episode) as Self - Guest
2019 : Halston as Self (archive footage)
2018 : 9-1-1 (1 episode) as Dr. Kara Sanford
2017 : This Is Bob Hope... as Herself
2017 : Larger than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story as Herself
2017 : Daisy Winters as Sandy Winters
2017 : When the Bough Breaks: A Documentary About Postpartum Depression as Narrator (voice)
2017 : Michael Bolton's Big, Sexy Valentine's Day Special as Herself
2016 : Flower Shop Mystery: Dearly Depotted as Abby Knight
2016 : Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures as Herself
2016 : Flower Shop Mystery: Snipped in the Bud as Abby Knight
2016 : Flower Shop Mystery: Mum's the Word as Abby Knight
2015 : Scream Queens (1 episode) as Dr. Scarlett Lovin
2014 : Under Wraps as Jean (voice)
2014 : Jane the Virgin (5 episodes) as River Fields
2014 : Mr. Pickles (30 episodes) as Mrs. Goodman (voice)
2014 : The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (1 episode)
2013 : A Monsterous Holiday as Betsy
2013 : The Michael J. Fox Show (4 episodes)
2013 : The Hot Flashes as Beth Humphrey
2013 : Wild Horses as Brooke Shields
2011 : Impractical Jokers (1 episode) as Brooke Shields
2011 : The Greening of Whitney Brown as Joan Brown
2011 : Chalet Girl as Caroline Madsen
2010 : The Boy Who Cried Werewolf as Madame Varcolac
2010 : The Other Guys as Brooke Shields
2010 : Furry Vengeance as Tammy Sanders
2010 : Who Do You Think You Are? (1 episode)
2010 : Teenage Paparazzo as Self
2009 : Jim Henson's Tales From Muppetland as Alice
2009 : Michael Jackson Memorial as Herself
2009 : Hannah Montana: The Movie as Susan Stewart
2009 : Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (1 episode) as Self
2008 : The Midnight Meat Train as Susan Hoff
2008 : Justice League: The New Frontier as Carol Ferris (voice)
2008 : Lipstick Jungle (20 episodes) as Wendy Healy
2008 : Unstable Fables: Goldilocks and the Three Bears as Ruby Bear (voice)
2007 : Bag Boy as Mrs. Hart
2007 : Army Wives (13 episodes) as Kat Young
2007 : The Graham Norton Show (1 episode) as Self
2006 : Hannah Montana (3 episodes) as Susan Stewart
2005 : Nigella (1 episode)
2005 : Bob the Butler as Anne Jamieson
2005 : Beautiful Music as Narrator (voice)
2005 : Gone but Not Forgotten as Betsy Tannenbaum
2004 : Project Runway (1 episode) as Self - Guest Judge
2004 : -- : The '80s (5 episodes)
2004 : The Tony Danza Show (1 episode)
2004 : The Batman (1 episode) as Julie (voice)
2004 : The Easter Egg Adventure as Horrible Harriet Hare (voice)
2004 : Entourage (1 episode)
2004 : Our Italian Husband as Charlene Taylor
2003 : I'm with Her (1 episode)
2003 : Two and a Half Men (1 episode) as Danielle
2003 : The Ellen DeGeneres Show (1 episode) as Self
2003 : Nip/Tuck (3 episodes)
2003 : Michael Jackson's Private Home Movies as Herself
2003 : Regarding Ardy as Self
2002 : Widows (4 episodes) as Shirley Heller
2002 : Widows as Shirley Heller
2002 : Disenchanted Forest as Narrator
2001 : Law & Order: Criminal Intent (1 episode)
2001 : What Makes a Family as Janine Nielssen
2000 : as Kate
1999 : The Bachelor as Buckley Hale-Windsor
1999 : Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (5 episodes) as Sheila Porter
1999 : Black and White as Sam Donager
1999 : The Almost Perfect Bank Robbery as Cyndee Lafrance
1999 : The Weekend as Nina
1998 : The Misadventures of Margaret as Lily
1998 : That '70s Show (7 episodes) as Pamela Burkhart
1998 : AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (1 episode) as Self
1997 : Scratch the Surface as Herself
1997 : The View (4 episodes) as Self
1996 : Suddenly Susan (93 episodes) as Susan Keane
1996 : Freeway as Mimi Wolverton
1996 : E! True Hollywood Story (1 episode)
1995 : Nothing Lasts Forever (2 episodes) as Dr. Beth Taft
1995 : Nothing Lasts Forever as Dr. Beth Taft
1995 : Born Wild as Christine Shaye
1995 : Legends in Light: The Photography of George Hurrell
1994 : The Seventh Floor as Kate Fletcher
1994 : Friends (2 episodes) as Erika Ford
1994 : Inside the Actors Studio (1 episode) as Self
1994 : An American Love as Greta
1993 : Freaked as Skye Daley
1993 : I Can Make You Love Me as Laura Black
1992 : The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1 episode)
1990 : Backstreet Dreams as Stevie
1990 : Night Of 100 Stars III as Self
1990 : Voices That Care as Self - Choir Member
1989 : The Simpsons (1 episode) as Brooke Shields (voice)
1989 : Tales from the Crypt (1 episode)
1989 : Brenda Starr as Brenda Starr
1989 : Speed Zone as Stewardess
1989 : Quantum Leap (1 episode) as Vanessa Foster
1988 : LIVE with Kelly and Ryan (4 episodes)
1988 : Happy Birthday, Bob: 50 Stars Salute Your 50 Years with NBC as Self
1988 : The Diamond Trap as Tara Holden
1985 : Muppet Video: The Kermit and Piggy Story as Herself
1984 : Wet Gold as Laura
1984 : The Muppets Take Manhattan as Customer in Pete's
1983 : Sahara as Dale
1982 : Night of 100 Stars as Self
1982 : Hollywood’s Children as Self (archive footage)
1981 : Endless Love as Jade Butterfield
1981 : Wanna Bet? (1 episode) as Self
1980 : The Blue Lagoon as Emmeline
1979 : Just You and Me, Kid as Kate
1979 : Wanda Nevada as Wanda Nevada
1979 : Leif as Herself
1979 : An Almost Perfect Affair as Self (uncredited)
1979 : Tilt as Tilt (Brenda Louise Davenport)
1978 : King of the Gypsies as Tita
1978 : Pretty Baby as Violet
1977 : The Prince of Central Park as Kristin
1977 : Bitte umblättern (1 episode) as Self
1976 : Alice, Sweet Alice as Karen Spages
1976 : The Muppet Show (1 episode) as Self - Special Guest Star
1974 : After the Fall as Quentin's Daughter
1952 : Today (1 episode)

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-08 19:26:32

1155) Cameron Diaz

Summary

Very few Hollywood actresses have been as lucky as Cameron Diaz, who got the opportunity to make her Hollywood debut with the big-budget mega hit ‘The Mask’. The movie catapulted her career and she went on to appear in several box office hits, including ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’. With her enchanting looks, blue eyes, and blonde hair, Diaz won the hearts of millions. She delivered brilliant performances in movies like ‘My Sisters Keeper’, ‘There’s Something About Mary,’ and ‘Vanilla Sky’. She has also made appearances on ‘Saturday Night Live’, ‘Top Gear’ and was a guest judge on the television show ‘The X factor’. Diaz began her career in the entertainment industry as a model, and appeared for brands like Calvin Klein and Levi's by the age of 16. With her stellar performances, this Californian beauty has established herself as one of the A-listers in Hollywood. She has also been voted the best looking female star by many prominent magazines.

Details

Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) is an American actress. The recipient of multiple accolades, including nominations for four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA Award, Diaz was named the highest-paid Hollywood actress over 40 in 2013. As of 2018, the U.S. domestic box office grosses of Diaz's films total over $3 billion US, with worldwide grosses surpassing US$7 billion, making her the fifth highest-grossing U.S. domestic box office actress. Diaz's successful early roles cemented her as a symbol and one of the world's most bankable actresses.

Born in San Diego, California, Diaz was raised in Long Beach. While still in high school, she signed a modeling contract with Elite Model Management. She made her film debut at age 21 opposite Jim Carrey in the comedy The Mask (1994). Following a supporting role in the romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), she starred as the titular character in the Farrelly brothers' comedy There's Something About Mary (1998), which brought her increased fame and her first Golden Globe nomination. Her following two projects—the sports drama Any Given Sunday and Spike Jonze's fantasy film Being John Malkovich (both 1999)—lent Diaz a reputation as a dramatic actress.

Diaz had praised supporting roles in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky (2001) and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002) and had greater commercial success in the action comedy Charlie's Angels (2000) and its 2003 sequel, as well as for voicing Princess Fiona in the Shrek franchise (2001–2010). Her subsequent films include the comedies In Her Shoes (2005), The Holiday (2006), What Happens in Vegas (2008), Knight and Day (2010), The Green Hornet (2011), and Bad Teacher (2011). After starring in three critically panned but financially successful films in 2014, Diaz took a break from acting until 2022.

Diaz has also written two health books: The Body Book (2013), a New York Times bestseller, and The Longevity Book (2016). Her personal life drew strong media attention throughout the course of her career, mostly regarding her relationships and fashion sense. In 2015, she married Good Charlotte guitarist Benji Madden; they have a daughter via surrogate in 2019.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-10 00:02:04

1156) Celine Dion

Summary

Céline Marie Claudette Dion (born 30 March 1968) is a Canadian singer. Noted for her powerful and technically skilled vocals, Dion is the best-selling Canadian recording artist, and the best-selling French-language artist of all time. Her music has incorporated genres such as pop, rock, R&B, gospel, and classical music.

Born into a large family from Charlemagne, Quebec, she emerged as a teen star in her home country with a series of French-language albums during the 1980s. She first gained international recognition by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest, where she represented Switzerland. After learning to speak English, she signed on to Epic Records in the United States. In 1990, Dion released her debut English-language album, Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world. Her recordings since have been mainly in English and French although she has also sung in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese, and Chinese.

During the 1990s, she achieved worldwide fame after releasing several best-selling English-language albums in music history, such as Falling into You (1996) and Let's Talk About Love (1997), which were both certified diamond in the US and over 30 million sales worldwide each. She also scored a series of international number-one hits, including "The Power of Love", "Think Twice", "Because You Loved Me", "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", "My Heart Will Go On", and "I'm Your Angel". Dion continued releasing French albums between each English record; D'eux (1995) became the best-selling French-language album of all time, while S'il suffisait d'aimer (1998), Sans attendre (2012), and Encore un soir (2016), were all certified diamond in France. During the 2000s, she built her reputation as a highly successful live performer with A New Day... on the Las Vegas Strip (2003–07), which remains the highest-grossing concert residency of all time, as well as the Taking Chances World Tour (2008–09), one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time.

Dion is also one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with record sales of more than 200 million worldwide. Although her releases have often received mixed critical reception, Dion is regarded as one of pop music's most influential and successful vocalists. She has won five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year. Throughout her four-decade-long career, Dion has been referred to as the "Priestess of Pop" and has received two Honorary Doctorates in Music degree from Berklee College of Music and Université Laval. Billboard named her the "Queen of Adult Contemporary" for having the most number-one songs on the radio format for a female artist. Dion is the second-best-selling female artist in the US during the Nielsen SoundScan, the 8th all-time best-performing top female artist in the United States, and the sixth all-time best-performing female soloist in Billboard 200 history. In 2003, she was honoured by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for selling over 50 million albums in Europe. In 2008, Dion was recognized as the best-selling international artist in South Africa. At the end of 2009, Dion was recognized by Los Angeles Times as that decade's top-earning artist, with combined album sales and concert revenue exceeding $747 million.

Details

Céline Dion, in full Céline Marie Claudette Dion, (born March 30, 1968, Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada), is a French Canadian pop singer, known for her vocal prowess and her passionate showmanship, who achieved international superstardom in the 1990s. Working primarily in the pop ballad tradition, she recorded numerous hit albums in both French and English and was the recipient of several prestigious awards.

The youngest of 14 children raised in a small town near Montreal, Dion began singing with her musically inclined family when she was five years old. At age 12 she came to the attention of impresario René Angélil—whom she eventually married in 1994—and he launched her career with the album La Voix du bon Dieu (1981; “The Voice of God”). Dion subsequently won an award at the World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo in 1982, and the following year she received the first of many Félix awards (for musicians from Quebec). Also in 1983 she became the first Canadian recipient of a gold record in France. Invited to represent Switzerland at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988, Dion won with her performance of “Ne partez pas sans moi” (“Do Not Leave Without Me”). By the end of the 1980s, she had recorded eight studio albums in French. As she transitioned into adulthood, she shed her image as a winsome naïf in favour of a more worldly look and sound.

In 1990 Dion released her first English-language album, Unison, and the romantic ballad “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” became her first top-10 single in the United States. She attracted further international attention for her Grammy Award-winning duet with Peabo Bryson on “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), from the Disney animated feature of the same name. Before long, Dion’s evident vocal talent and emotionally driven songs had made her a worldwide phenomenon, even as some critics dismissed her music as schmaltzy and overly polished. With The Colour of My Love (1993), she scored another hit single (the soaring “The Power of Love”), and Falling into You (1996) earned two Grammys, including album of the year.

Perhaps Dion’s greatest renown, however, came from her recording of “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme of the blockbuster motion picture Titanic (1997). The song won an Academy Award, topped charts in multiple countries, and helped propel sales of her album Let’s Talk About Love (1997)—which also featured duets with Barbra Streisand and Luciano Pavarotti—into the tens of millions. Throughout the 1990s Dion continued to record in French, with D’eux (1995; also released as The French Album) becoming the best-selling Francophone album of all time.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Dion took a hiatus from her career to focus on her family. She returned with the albums A New Day Has Come (2002) and One Heart (2003), which flirted with dance pop in addition to her usual adult contemporary fare. While the releases were commercially successful by most standards, their sales did not reach Dion’s previous heights. In 2003 she began performing a live show in Las Vegas, which ran for more than four years, and she launched a second residency there in 2011. Dion’s later recordings included the English-language Miracle (2004) and Taking Chances (2007) and the French-language 1 fille & 4 types (2003; “1 Girl & 4 Guys”) and D’elles (2007; “About Them”). Despite the fact that Dion was no longer the dominant cultural force that she had been a decade earlier, it was reported in 2007 that worldwide sales of her albums had surpassed 200 million. That total increased after the release of Sans attendre (2012; “Without Waiting”), which included several duets, including one with French rock legend Johnny Hallyday, and Loved Me Back to Life (2013), which featured a duet with Stevie Wonder, among others.

In 2014–15 Dion took a break from performing to care for her ailing husband, who died in early 2016. During this time she was in the midst of her Las Vegas residency and was recording the French album Encore un soir (2016; “One More Night”), which was released some seven months after René Angélil’s death. She later recorded “How Does a Moment Last Forever” for the live-action Beauty and the Beast (2017) and “Ashes” for the parody superhero film Deadpool 2 (2018). In 2019 Dion released Courage, her first English-language album in six years.

Dion was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1998 and was appointed Companion in 2008. A memoir, Ma vie, mon rêve (My Story, My Dream; with Georges-Hébert Germain), was published in 2000.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-11 21:51:11

1157) Jennifer Aniston

Summary

Jennifer Joanna Aniston (born February 11, 1969) is an American actress and producer. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, in addition to a nomination for a Critics’ Choice Award. Since her career progressed in the 1990s, she has become one of the world's highest-paid actresses.

The daughter of actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow, she began working as an actress at an early age with an uncredited role in the 1988 film Mac and Me; her first major film role came in the 1993 horror comedy Leprechaun. She later rose to international fame for her role as Rachel Green on the television sitcom Friends (1994–2004), for which she earned Primetime Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards. She has since played starring roles in numerous dramas, comedies and romantic comedies. Her biggest box office successes include Bruce Almighty (2003), The Break-Up (2006), Marley & Me (2008), Just Go with It (2011), Horrible Bosses (2011), and We're the Millers (2013), each of which grossed over $200 million in worldwide box office receipts. Some of her most critically acclaimed film roles include Office Space (1999), The Good Girl (2002), Friends with Money (2006), Cake (2014), and Dumplin' (2018). She returned to television in 2019, producing and starring in the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show, for which she won another Screen Actors Guild Award.

Aniston has been included in numerous magazines' lists of the world's most beautiful women. Her net worth is estimated as $300 million. With a box office gross of over $1.6 billion worldwide, Aniston has been referred as one of few performers to have influenced several generations of viewers. She is the recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is the co-founder of the production company Echo Films, established in 2008. She has been married twice: first to actor Brad Pitt, to whom she was married for five years, and later to actor Justin Theroux, whom she married in 2015 and separated from in 2017.

Details

Jennifer Aniston, in full Jennifer Joanna Aniston, (born February 11, 1969, Sherman Oaks, California, U.S.), is an American actress who achieved stardom on the popular television sitcom Friends (1994–2004) and launched a successful film career.

Aniston’s parents divorced when she was nine, and she grew up with her mother while her father worked as an actor, notably on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. Aniston attended the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City and spent several years acting in Off-Broadway productions. In 1989 she began appearing on television, and she was soon cast in two unsuccessful shows, Molloy (1990) and Ferris Bueller (1990–91); in the latter, which was based on the popular 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, she played Ferris’s older sister, Jeannie. Aniston acted in several other television shows before making her big-screen debut in Leprechaun (1993), a horror film that went largely unnoticed.

Aniston got her big break when she was cast as the funny, spoiled waitress Rachel Green on Friends. The series, centred on six friends in New York City, premiered in 1994 and soon ranked among the most-watched shows on television. Rachel’s on-and-off relationship with Ross Geller (played by David Schwimmer) became one of the show’s more popular story lines. For her portrayal of Rachel, Aniston received an Emmy Award (2002) and a Golden Globe Award (2003). Along with the other cast members, she became one of the highest-paid television actors, earning $1 million for each episode by the show’s end in 2004. The popularity of Friends, which continued to grow in subsequent years, led to numerous calls for a reboot or movie. Although neither was made, in 2021 Aniston and other cast members appeared in the TV special Friends: The Reunion, in which they discussed the show.

While acting on Friends, Aniston continued to appear in feature films and was often cast as the girl-next-door type. She starred in a series of romantic comedies—including The Object of My Affection (1998)—before portraying a waitress in the cult hit Office Space (1999), which centred on disgruntled office workers. In 2002 she earned critical acclaim for her work in The Good Girl, a dramedy in which she played a bored sales clerk who has an affair with a stock boy. She starred opposite Jim Carrey in the blockbuster comedy Bruce Almighty (2003) and later appeared in the thriller Derailed (2005).

Her subsequent films included The Break-Up (2006), a dramedy that follows the dissolution of a two-year relationship; Marley & Me (2008), which centres on a couple and their Labrador retriever; and the dark comedies Horrible Bosses (2011) and Horrible Bosses 2 (2014), in which she played against type as a gender-crazed dentist. Aniston also starred in the romantic comedies He’s Just Not That into You (2009), The Bounty Hunter (2010), The Switch (2010), Just Go with It (2011), and Wanderlust (2012). In We’re the Millers (2013), she portrayed an exotic dancer who poses as a mother in a scheme to smuggle marijuana from Mexico into the United States. She appeared as a kidnapping victim in the comedy Life of Crime (2013), based on the novel The Switch by Elmore Leonard. Her turn as a woman ravaged by chronic pain in the bleak comedy Cake (2014) was widely deemed to be among her best.

Aniston returned to lighter comedic fare with director Peter Bogdanovich’s ensemble farce She’s Funny That Way (2014), in which she portrayed a therapist with few professional boundaries, and Garry Marshall’s paean to motherhood, Mother’s Day (2016). In the animated Storks (2016), she provided the voice of a busy mother. Aniston later starred as a former beauty queen whose teenage daughter enters a pageant in the Netflix movie Dumplin’ (2018). She then paired up with Adam Sandler in the comedy Murder Mystery (2019), playing a married couple framed for killing a billionaire. During this time Aniston occasionally made guest appearances on TV series, but in 2019 she took a starring role in The Morning Show, which aired on Apple TV+ and also featured Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell.

Additionally, Aniston directed one of five segments that made up the cable TV movie Five (2011), which focused on women living with breast cancer, and was one of 100 artists and other public figures to narrate the documentary film Unity (2015), which investigates human existence and interconnectivity.

Aniston’s personal life was often a source of media attention, especially her relationships with actors Brad Pitt, to whom she was married from 2000 to 2005, and Justin Theroux, whom she wed in 2015; the couple announced in 2018 that they were divorcing.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-12 17:30:52

1158) Julia Roberts

Summary

Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. One of Hollywood's most bankable stars, she is known for her leading roles in films of several genres, from romantic comedies and dramas to thrillers and action films. Many of her films have earned over $100 million worldwide, and six have ranked among the highest-grossing films of their respective years. Her top-billing films have collectively brought in over $3.8 billion globally.. She has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and three Golden Globe Awards.

Following an early breakthrough with appearances in Mystic Pizza (1988) and Steel Magnolias (1989), Roberts established herself as a leading actress when she headlined the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990), which grossed $464 million worldwide. She went on to star in numerous successful films, including Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), Hook (1991), The Pelican Brief (1993), My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Notting Hill (1999), Runaway Bride (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Twelve (2004), Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Valentine's Day (2010), Eat Pray Love (2010), August: Osage County (2013), and Wonder (2017). For her performance in Erin Brockovich, Roberts won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her performance in the HBO television film The Normal Heart (2014) and had her first regular television role in the first season of the Amazon Prime Video psychological thriller series Homecoming (2018).

Roberts was the world's highest-paid actress throughout the majority of the 1990s, as well as the first half of the 2000s. Her fee for Pretty Woman (1990) was $300,000,[6] while she was paid an unprecedented $25 million for her role in Mona Lisa Smile (2003). As of 2020, Roberts' net worth was estimated to be $250 million. People magazine has named her the most beautiful woman in the world a record five times.

Details

Julia Roberts, in full Julia Fiona Roberts, (born October 28, 1967, Smyrna, Georgia, U.S.), is an American actress whose deft performances in varied roles helped make her one of the highest-paid and most-influential actresses in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Although Roberts’s parents briefly ran an actors’ workshop when she was a child, she had no acting experience or formal training when she moved to New York City after high school to pursue a career in show business. She signed with a modeling agency upon her arrival but failed to land any jobs. Her first film role turned up after she was recommended by her older brother, actor Eric Roberts, for a bit part as his on-screen sister in Blood Red (1989), a drama set in the late 1800s; although the film was completed in 1986, its release was delayed for several years. She next made several television appearances before securing her first leading part, in Mystic Pizza (1988).

Roberts’s career took off after she was cast in Steel Magnolias (1989), which featured such veteran actresses as Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, and Sally Field. Roberts received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for her heartrending portrayal of Field’s diabetic daughter. In 1990 she starred in Pretty Woman, an upbeat comedy about a romance between a woman and a business tycoon, played by Richard Gere. A huge hit, it made Roberts a household name and earned her a second Academy Award nomination.

Roberts continued to work steadily throughout the 1990s, starring in Flatliners (1990), Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), The Pelican Brief (1993), Something to Talk About (1995), Mary Reilly (1996), My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), and Stepmom (1998), for which she also served as executive producer. Her personal life at times overshadowed her professional career, however, as when her highly publicized marriage to singer Lyle Lovett abruptly ended in 1995. In 1999 Roberts starred in two popular romantic comedies, Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, the latter of which again paired her with Gere.

In 2000 Roberts launched her own production company, Shoelace Productions, and that same year she commanded $20 million for her starring role in Erin Brockovich. The film portrayed the real-life story of a law-office clerk who helped the citizens of a California town win a multimillion-dollar settlement against a utility company for health problems caused by the company’s pollution of their drinking water. For her performance, Roberts won an Academy Award for best actress. She later starred opposite Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon in the blockbuster comedy Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and its sequel Ocean’s Twelve (2004). She also appeared in the relationship drama Closer (2004).

In 2006 Roberts supplied the voice for the spider Charlotte in the animated film adaptation of E.B. White’s beloved children’s book Charlotte’s Web. That year she made her Broadway debut in Three Days of Rain, earning mixed reviews. Roberts next appeared with Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), a film based on true events surrounding the U.S. government’s involvement in the Afghan resistance to the Soviets in the 1980s. Her subsequent movies included the family drama Fireflies in the Garden (2008); Duplicity (2009), in which she played a corporate spy; and the romantic comedy Valentine’s Day (2010).

After starring in Eat Pray Love (2010), which was adapted from Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir of the same name, Roberts, playing a community-college professor, reteamed with Hanks in Larry Crowne (2011). In Mirror Mirror (2012), a comedic version of the Snow White tale, she inhabited the role of the evil queen. She then crossed swords with Meryl Streep—who played her savagely critical mother—in the family drama August: Osage County (2013), based on the play by Tracy Letts; the role earned Roberts an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. She later assumed the role of a doctor assisting gay men during the early years of the AIDS crisis in New York City in The Normal Heart (2014), a television adaptation of Larry Kramer’s play.

In the feature film Secret in Their Eyes (2015), Roberts portrayed an FBI agent whose daughter is raped and murdered. She then joined the cast of the ensemble comedy Mother’s Day (2016) as a hard-driving businesswoman. In Jodie Foster’s Wall Street thriller Money Monster (2016), Roberts’s character is the producer of a financial advice show who is taken hostage along with the host (Clooney) and their crew. In 2017 Roberts lent her voice to the animated film Smurfs: The Lost Village and played the mother of a child with a rare facial condition in Wonder. The following year she starred as a therapist working at a facility to help veterans adjust to civilian life in Homecoming, her first television series, and as a mother whose son skips his rehabilitation program to return home for Christmas in Ben Is Back. Roberts then appeared in the TV miniseries Gaslit (2022), a drama centring on Martha Mitchell, the outspoken wife of U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, and the attempts to discredit her as she sought to reveal the truth about the Watergate scandal.

Throughout her career, Roberts lent her support to numerous charitable organizations, including UNICEF and the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. In order to raise awareness for threatened species of wildlife, she narrated the documentary In the Wild: Orangutans with Julia Roberts (1998), and for Wild Horses of Mongolia (2000) she lived with Mongolian nomads for several weeks; both programs appeared on American television.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-14 00:04:54

1159) Florence Griffith Joyner

Summary

Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner (born Florence Delorez Griffith; December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998), also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and field athlete. She set world records in 1988 for the 100 m and 200 m. During the late 1980s she became a popular figure due to both her record-setting athleticism and eclectic personal style.

Griffith Joyner was born and raised in California. She was athletic from a young age and began running at track meets as a child. While attending California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she continued to compete in track and field. While still in college, she qualified for the 100 m 1980 Olympics, although she did not actually compete due to the U.S. boycott. She made her Olympic debut four years later, winning a silver medal in the 200 meter distance at the 1984 Olympics held in Los Angeles. At the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials, Griffith set a new world record in the 100 meter sprint. She went on to win three gold medals at the 1988 Olympics.

In February 1989, Griffith Joyner abruptly retired from athletics. She remained a pop culture figure through endorsement deals, acting, and designing. She died in her sleep as the result of an epileptic seizure in 1998 at the age of 38. She is buried at the El Toro Memorial Park in Lake Forest.

Details

Florence Griffith Joyner, in full Delorez Florence Griffith Joyner, née Delorez Florence Griffith, byname FloJo, (born December 21, 1959, Los Angeles, California, U.S.—died September 21, 1998, Mission Viejo, California), was an American sprinter who set world records in the 100 metres (10.49 seconds) and 200 metres (21.34 seconds) that have stood since 1988.

Griffith started running at age seven, chasing jackrabbits to increase her speed. In 1980 she entered the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., 1983), to train with coach Bob Kersee. At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a silver medal in the 200-metre race and quickly became a media celebrity with her 6-inch (15-cm) decorated fingernails and eye-catching racing suits. Disappointed with her performance, however, she went into semiretirement. In 1987 she rededicated herself to the sport, adopting an intense weight-training program and altering her starting technique. That same year she married Al Joyner, winner of the 1984 gold medal in the triple jump and brother of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, a heptathlon champion. The changes produced dramatic results. At the 1988 Olympic trials, Griffith Joyner set a world record in the 100-metre sprint (10.49 seconds), beating the old mark by 0.27 second and improving her previous best by more than half a second. Later that year at the Olympics in Seoul, she captured three gold medals (100 metres, 200 metres, and 4 × 100-metre relay) and a silver (4 × 400-metre relay). In 1988 Griffith Joyner received the Sullivan Award as the nation’s top amateur performer. Though her remarkable performances sparked rumours of steroid use, drug tests revealed no banned substances.

After retiring in 1989, Griffith Joyner established a foundation for underprivileged children and from 1993 to 1995 served as the cochair of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. A comeback attempt in 1996 ended following a leg injury. She was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1995.

Additional Information

At the 1984 Olympic Games, in her hometown of Los Angeles, Griffith won a silver medal at 200m, although her long (15cm) and wildly painted fingernails earned her more attention from the press than her running. After marrying 1984 triple jump Olympic champion Al Joyner, she changed her name to Florence Griffith Joyner and eventually picked up the nickname "Flojo."

100m in 10.49

On 16 July 1988, at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Griffith Joyner achieved a stunning breakthrough when she ran the 100m in 10.49 seconds, obliterating Evelyn Ashford's record of 10.79. Her time was faster than the men's records in a wide range of countries, including Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and Turkey.

A tragic end to a successful career

At the Olympic Games in Seoul, Griffith Joyner twice broke the Olympic record and then won the final easily in a wind-aided 10.54. Four days later, in the semifinals, she broke the 9-year-old world record for 200m and then, 100 minutes later, she set another world record in the final with a time of 21.34 seconds. Griffith Joyner's records for 100m and 200m have yet to be broken. At the Games in Seoul, she ran in both relays, winning a third gold medal in the 4x100m and a silver in the 4x400m. In 1998, Griffith Joyner died in her sleep at the age of 38, the victim of a form of epileptic seizure that led her to suffocate.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-16 00:07:33

1160) Gillian Anderson

Summary

Gillian Leigh Anderson OBE (born August 9, 1968) is an American actress. Her credits include the roles of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the series The X-Files, ill-fated socialite Lily Bart in Terence Davies's film The House of Mirth (2000), DSU Stella Gibson in the BBC/RTÉ crime drama television series The Fall, therapist Jean Milburn in the Netflix comedy drama, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the fourth season of Netflix drama series The Crown. Among other honors, she has won two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Born in Chicago, Anderson grew up in London, England, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. She graduated from The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, then moved to New York City to further her acting career. After beginning her career on stage, she achieved international recognition for her role as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully on the American sci-fi drama series The X-Files. Her film work includes the dramas The Mighty Celt (2005), The Last King of Scotland (2006), Shadow Dancer (2012), Viceroy's House (2017) and two X-Files films: The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998) and The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008). Other notable television credits include: Lady Dedlock in Bleak House (2005), Wallis Simpson in Any Human Heart (2010), Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (2011), Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier on Hannibal (2013–2015), and Media on American Gods (2017).

Aside from film and television, Anderson has taken to the stage and received both awards and critical acclaim. Her stage work includes Absent Friends (1991), for which she won a Theatre World Award for Best Newcomer; A Doll's House (2009), for which she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award, and a portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (2014, 2016), winning the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress and receiving a second Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2019, she portrayed Margo Channing in the stage production of All About Eve for which she received her third Laurence Olivier Award nomination. In 2022, she portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt in The First Lady TV series.

Anderson has supported numerous charities and humanitarian organizations. She is an honorary spokesperson for the Neurofibromatosis Network and a co-founder of South African Youth Education for Sustainability (SAYes). She was appointed an honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2016 for her services to drama.

She has resided in London since 2002, after earlier years divided between the United Kingdom and the United States.

Details

Gillian Anderson, (born August 9, 1968, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), is an American actress and writer best known for her role as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully on the television series The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016, and 2018).

In high school Anderson thought about becoming a marine biologist, but community theatre participation whetted her appetite for acting. She earned a B.F.A. degree at the Goodman Theatre School at DePaul University, Chicago, and attended the National Theatre of Great Britain’s summer program at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, before pursuing a theatre career in New York City. Anderson appeared in the Off-Broadway production Absent Friends, winning a 1991 Theatre World Award, and in The Philanthropist at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before moving to Los Angeles.

After a few motion-picture and television appearances, Anderson got her big break when she auditioned for a part on The X-Files. At the insistence of the show’s creator, Chris Carter, she landed her first starring role, playing Dana Scully, a skeptical scientist and doctor working as an FBI special agent alongside Fox (“Spooky”) Mulder (played by David Duchovny). Together the partners investigated paranormal events and government conspiracies. The story lines as well as the chemistry between Anderson and Duchovny made The X-Files one of the most popular shows on television in the 1990s, averaging 20 million viewers each week, and in 1997 Anderson won an Emmy Award for her performance. The following year the motion picture The X-Files: Fight the Future took in more than $30 million in its first weekend. Although the television series ended in 2002, a second movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, was released in 2008.

In the 21st century Anderson worked frequently in the United Kingdom, where she had spent much of her childhood. She was widely praised for her starring role as Lily Bart in the film The House of Mirth (2000), a British adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel. Other films in which Anderson appeared included the Irish drama The Mighty Celt (2005); The Last King of Scotland (2006), which centres on Ugandan dictator Idi Amin; and Johnny English Reborn (2011), a spy spoof starring Rowan Atkinson. In 2017 she starred in the historical drama Viceroy’s House and in Crooked House, an adaptation of an Agatha Christie mystery. She then played an MI6 agent in the comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018). Her film credits from 2019 included The Sunlit Night.

Anderson also took roles in several miniseries on British television. Among her portrayals were Lady Dedlock in Bleak House (2005), based on Charles Dickinson’s novel; Wallis Simpson in Any Human Heart (2010); and, in another adaptation of a Dickinson work, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (2011). From 2013 to 2016 she starred as a detective in the Northern Ireland-set crime drama The Fall, and during this time she also had a recurring role on the American series Hannibal (2013–15). In 2016 Anderson portrayed Anna Pavlovna Scherer in a television adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and reprised the role of Scully in a six-part X-Files miniseries. Ten additional episodes, starring Anderson and Duchovny, aired in 2018. She also appeared in American Gods in 2017, playing Media, a god who transforms into various celebrities, including Lucille Ball, David Bowie, and Marilyn Monroe.

Continuing to work steadily on TV, Anderson was later cast as a pubescent’s oversharing therapist mother in Physical relationship Education (2019– ) and as Margaret Thatcher in the fourth season (2020) of The Crown; for her work in the latter series, the actress received her second Emmy. In the debut season (2022) of The First Lady, an anthology series about U.S. first ladies, she portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt.

Anderson ventured into writing in the 2010s, coauthoring (with Jeff Rovin) The EarthEnd Saga, a trilogy following the child psychologist Caitlin O’Hara as she investigates a series of paranormal activities. The series comprises A Vision of Fire (2015), A Dream of Ice (2016), and The Sound of Seas (2016). In 2017 she cowrote (with Jennifer Nadel) the self-help manual We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-18 00:09:52

1161) Simone Biles

Summary

Simone Arianne Biles (born March 14, 1997) is an American artistic gymnast. Her seven Olympic medals tied with Shannon Miller for the most Olympic medals won by an American gymnast. Having won 25 World Championship medals, she is the most decorated gymnast in history, and is considered by many sources to be the greatest gymnast of all time. In 2022, Biles was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Joe Biden.

At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Biles won individual gold medals in the all-around, vault, and floor; bronze on balance beam; and gold as part of the United States team, dubbed the "Final Five". At the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where Biles was favored to win at least four of the six available gold medals, she withdrew from most of the competition due to struggles with "the twisties", a temporary loss of air balance awareness. She ultimately won a silver medal with the US team and a bronze medal on the balance beam. Her partial withdrawal, focus on safety, mental health, and perseverance were praised. She is also a five-time World all-around champion (2013–2015, 2018–2019), five-time World floor exercise champion (2013–2015, 2018–2019), three-time World balance beam champion (2014–2015, 2019), two-time World vault champion (2018–2019), a seven-time United States national all-around champion (2013–2016, 2018–2019, 2021), and a member of the gold medal-winning American teams at the 2014, 2015, 2018, and 2019 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. She is also a three-time World silver medalist (2013 and 2014 on vault, 2018 on uneven bars) and a three-time World bronze medalist (2015 on vault, 2013 and 2018 on balance beam).

Biles is the gymnast with the most World medals (25) and most World gold medals (19), having surpassed Vitaly Scherbo's record 23 World medals by winning her 24th and 25th, both gold, at the 2019 competition in Stuttgart. She is the female gymnast with the most World all-around titles (5). She is the sixth woman to win an individual all-around title at both the World Championships and the Olympics, and the first gymnast since Lilia Podkopayeva in 1996 to hold both titles simultaneously. She is the tenth female gymnast and first American female gymnast to win a World medal on every event, and the first female gymnast since Daniela Silivaș in 1988 to win a medal on every event at a single Olympic Games or World Championships, having accomplished this feat at the 2018 World Championships in Doha.

Details

Simone Biles, in full Simone Arianne Biles, (born March 14, 1997, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.), is an American gymnast who was considered one of the sport’s greatest athletes. At the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, she became the first female U.S. gymnast to win four gold medals at a single Games, and she was the first gymnast to win three consecutive world all-around titles (2013–15).

Biles grew up in Spring, Texas, in the Houston metropolitan area, after she and her sister Adria were adopted by their grandparents, Ronald and Nellie Biles. Simone became interested in gymnastics at age six during a day-care field trip to Bannon’s Gymnastix, and she remained there for 11 years under the direction of her coach, Aimee Boorman. Biles won a gold in floor exercise and a bronze in vault at the Women’s Junior Olympic National Championships in 2010 before breaking into the elite level of competition in 2011. Less than two years later she dominated the sport. What set Biles apart was her consistency, her exuberant personality, and the high degree of difficulty she incorporated into her routines in all four events—vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise.

In 2013, her first year as a senior competitor, the 4-foot 9-inch (1.45-metre) Biles won the all-around title at her first world gymnastics championships, becoming the first African American woman to claim the title. She also prevailed in the floor exercise, earned the silver medal in vault, and took home the bronze medal in balance beam. At the 2014 world championships, Biles captured four gold medals: in the women’s team competition and the individual all-around, balance beam, and floor exercise events. She also took the silver medal in vault.

Biles claimed her third consecutive U.S. all-around title in 2015, becoming the first woman to accomplish that feat since Kim Zmeskal in 1992. At the 2015 world championships, she completed her hat trick of all-around titles. She also secured the balance beam and floor exercise titles, the bronze medal in vault, and a share of the team title. Those wins brought her career total to 14 world championship medals, the most ever earned by a U.S. gymnast, male or female. In addition, her 10 world championship gold medals were the most won by a female gymnast in the sport’s history.

Biles, who was too young to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics, was a favourite entering the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. She lived up to expectations, first leading the United States to gold in the team event and then winning the individual all-around. She also won the floor and vault events, becoming the fifth female gymnast to claim four gold medals at a single Olympics. Biles also captured a bronze in the balance beam to bring her medal total to five. She subsequently took a break from gymnastics, and in 2018 she announced that she had been a victim of Larry Nassar, a former doctor for the U.S. national gymnastics team who was convicted of physically abusing numerous athletes. That year Biles returned to competition. At the 2018 U.S. national championships, she became the first female gymnast in nearly 25 years to win all five events, including a record-setting fifth all-around title. Biles became the most-decorated female gymnast in world championships history when she won four golds (including another all-around title), one silver, and one bronze at the 2018 championships to bring her career total at that competition to 20 medals.

Biles continued to make history in 2019. At that year’s world championship she became the first gymnast in more than six decades to win five gold medals, including one in the all-around event. In addition, Biles bypassed Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus to become the gymnast with the most world championship medals (25). Also in 2019 she won five medals at the U.S. national championships, four of which were gold. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, no major events were held in 2020. The break, however, had little effect on Biles. At the 2021 U.S. Classic she became the first female gymnast to land the sport’s most difficult vault, the Yurchenko double pike, during a competition. Later that year she competed at the U.S. national championships, where she captured her seventh all-around title. She also won three other gold medals and one bronze.

There were high expectations for Biles as she entered the 2020 Tokyo Games, which were delayed until 2021. However, she withdrew from most events due to “the twisties,” a mental block in which gymnasts lose their spatial orientation during aerial moves. Her decision not to compete sparked discussions about the pressure placed on athletes and their mental health concerns. Biles did return for the final event, the balance beam, and she won a bronze medal.

Biles’s memoir, Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, a Life in Balance (written with Michelle Burford), was published in 2016. Biles was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-20 00:09:22

1162) Katie Taylor

Summary

Katie Taylor (born 2 July 1986) is an Irish professional boxer and former footballer. She is a two-weight world champion and the current undisputed lightweight champion, having held the WBA title since 2017; the IBF title since 2018; and the WBC, WBO, and The Ring magazine titles since 2019, as well as having held the WBO junior-welterweight title in 2019. Following her victory over Delfine Persoon in 2019, she became one of only eight boxers in history (female or male) to hold all four major world titles in boxing—WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO—simultaneously.

In her amateur boxing career, Taylor won five consecutive gold medals at the Women's World Championships, gold six times at the European Championships, and gold five times at the European Union Championships. Hugely popular in Ireland, she is credited with raising the profile of women's boxing at home and abroad. Regarded as the outstanding Irish athlete of her generation, she was the flag bearer for Ireland at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony before going on to win an Olympic gold medal in the lightweight division.

Taylor turned professional in 2016 under Matchroom Boxing. As of September 2022, Taylor is ranked as the world's best active female lightweight by BoxRec and the best active female boxer, pound-for-pound, by The Ring and BoxRec. She is known for her fast-paced, aggressive boxing style.

(WBA : World Boxing Association, WBC : World Boxing Council, WBO : World Boxing Organization, IBF : International Boxing Federation).

Details

Katie Taylor (Irish: Cáit Táilliúir; born 2 July 1986) is an Irish professional boxer and former footballer. She is a two-weight world champion and the current undisputed lightweight champion, having held the WBA title since 2017; the IBF title since 2018; and the WBC, WBO, and Ring magazine titles since 2019, as well as having held the WBO junior-welterweight title in 2019. Following her victory over Delfine Persoon in 2019, she became one of only eight boxers in history (female or male) to hold all four major world titles in boxing—WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO—simultaneously.

In her amateur boxing career, Taylor won five consecutive gold medals at the Women's World Championships, gold six times at the European Championships, and gold five times at the European Union Championships.

Hugely popular in Ireland, she is credited with raising the profile of women's boxing at home and abroad. Regarded as the outstanding Irish athlete of her generation, she was the flag bearer for Ireland at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony before going on to win an Olympic gold medal in the lightweight division.

Taylor turned professional in 2016 under Matchroom Boxing, and is known for her fast-paced, aggressive boxing style, which has been compared to that of a male boxer.

As of November 2020, Taylor is ranked as the world's best active female lightweight by BoxRec, and the best active female, pound-for-pound, by The Ring and BoxRec.

Early life

Taylor was born on 2 July 1986 in Bray, County Wicklow, the daughter of Irish mother Bridget (née Cranley) and English father Peter Taylor. She has an older sister named Sarah and two older brothers named Lee and Peter, the latter of whom is a mathematics professor at Dublin City University. Her father, who was born near Leeds and grew up in Birmingham, first visited Bray to work with his father in the amusement arcades on the seafront. After meeting and marrying Bridget, he decided to settle in Bray. In 1986, he became an Irish senior light heavyweight champion boxer. Originally an electrician by trade, he eventually became Taylor's full-time boxing coach. He also coached Adam Nolan who, like Taylor, represented Ireland at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Bridget also developed an interest in boxing and became one of the earliest female referees and judges in Ireland.

Between 1999 and 2005, Taylor attended St. Kilian's Community School in Bray. Her three older siblings all attended the same school.

As well as boxing and playing association football at school, she also played ladies' Gaelic football and camogie with her local GAA clubs, Bray Emmets and Fergal Ógs.

She was a member of Bray Runners, a local athletics club, and several American colleges reportedly offered her sports scholarships while she was still studying at St Killian's. However, she opted instead to attend University College Dublin. Although UCD is well known for sports scholarships, Taylor qualified via her Leaving Cert results. As her sporting career began to take off, she chose not to complete her studies at UCD.

Amateur boxing career

Taylor first began boxing in 1998, aged 12. Her father coached her and her two older brothers, Lee and Peter, at St Fergal's Boxing Club, which operated out of a former boathouse in Bray. At 15, she fought the first officially sanctioned female boxing match in Ireland at the National Stadium and defeated Alanna Audley from Belfast.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-22 00:04:53

1163) Ada Hegerberg

Ada Martine Stolsmo Hegerberg (born 10 July 1995) is a Norwegian professional footballer who plays as a striker for the Division 1 Féminine club Lyon and the Norway national team.

Hegerberg has represented Norway at the youth international level, and made her debut for the senior team in 2011. In 2013, she was a part of the silver medalist team at the 2013 UEFA Women's Championship. She was on team Norway at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, the 2017 UEFA Women's Championship and the 2022 UEFA Women's Championship.

Hegerberg was awarded the 2016 UEFA Best Women's Player in Europe Award on 25 August 2016, and in 2017 and 2019 was named BBC Women's Footballer of the Year. In 2018 she was the first-ever recipient of the Ballon d'Or Féminin. She holds the record for most goals in a UEFA Women's Champions League season (15), and is currently the all-time highest goalscorer in UEFA Women's Champions League (59).

International career

At the age of 15, Hegerberg was on team Norway under-19 that played at the 2011 UEFA Women's U-19 Championship. She was also included in the squad for the final tournament, where Norway reached the final. Hegerberg was on team Norway that played at 2012 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup into the quarter-final. She and Andrine scored the goals in a 2–1 win over Canada in the group stage. She made her senior debut for Norway as a substitute in a 3–1 defeat to Northern Ireland in Lurgan on 19 November 2011.

Hegerberg made her championship debut on team Norway that played at the 2013 UEFA Women's Championship; a 1–1 draw with Iceland on 11 July 2013. She scored her first goal in the tournament as Spain were defeated 3–1 in the quarter-final and played the entire 90 minutes as Norway lost the final 1–0 to Germany.

Hegerberg was on team Norway at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. She scored three goals in three group stage games, highlighted by a two-goal performance in Norway 3–1 over Ivory Coast. Hegerberg was nominated for the Best Young Player Award for her efforts.

In January 2016, Hegerberg was awarded the 2015 Norwegian Gold Ball, given to the best footballer in Norway. The previous time it was awarded to a woman was 20 years earlier.

In the summer of 2017, Hegerberg decided to stop representing the national team as a form of protest due to a dispute with the NFF about how they treat women's football. Despite some improvements including the doubling of the remuneration pot for women, Hegerberg felt there was "still a long way to go" so has continued to refuse to be called up and missed the 2019 World Cup. She described her time with the national team "deeply depressing", giving her "nightmares" and leaving her "mentally broken".

In March 2022, Hegerberg ended her five year exile from the national team. On her first game back on 7 April, Hegerberg scored a hat-trick in a 5–1 win against Kosovo in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup qualification.

Personal life

In June 2019, Hegerberg married Thomas Rogne.

Views on COVID-19 impact on football

In May 2020, in an online interview with ESPN, Hegerberg said that women's football would suffer due to COVID-19 because it is the sport's "weakest link". "We're kind of at the stage where we're still in need of that help and when you see football as a whole and the men's football is struggling you can also imagine yourself how the women's football is affected of this." Hegerberg stressed not losing track of women's football, especially as positives have emerged in terms of support for the game: "We need to raise our voices obviously to keep the subject warm."

Sponsors and media

The Norwegian is one of the most in-demand athletes in the world. After being awarded the Ballon d'Or in 2018, Hegerberg became an ambassador for the watchmaker Hublot, as well as the financial technology company Mastercard. During the summer of 2019, after attending events such as the UEFA Champions League Final and the French Open for her sponsor Mastercard, she became the global ambassador of the Danone Nations Cup, the biggest international tournament of U12, for both girls and boys. In the summer of 2020, after six years collaborating with sports equipment supplier Puma, Nike and herself announced a long-term partnership. The American giant immediately elevated Hegerberg in multiple marketing campaigns, reinforcing its will to support activism, Hegerberg being known as a gender equality and sustainability activist.

Hegerberg has had a massive media impact over the past years, widely considered as the number one spokesperson for her sport, given the numerous interviews she gave for women's football.

On 19 November 2020, the US-based streaming platform ESPN+ published a documentary about Hegerberg: My Name is Ada Hegerberg.

Hegerberg has been named one of the most powerful women in sport by a number of media, including Sports Illustrated.

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Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-24 00:16:28

1164) Jennifer Love Hewitt

Summary

Jennifer Love Hewitt (born February 21, 1979) is an American actress and singer. Hewitt began her career as a child actress and singer, appearing in national television commercials before joining the cast of the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated (1989–1991). She had her breakthrough as Sarah Reeves Merrin on the Fox teen drama Party of Five (1995–1999) and rose to fame as a teen star for her role as Julie James in the horror films I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and its 1998 sequel, as well as her role as Amanda Beckett in the teen comedy film Can't Hardly Wait (1998).

Hewitt's other notable films include Heartbreakers (2001), The Tuxedo (2002) and the two Garfield live-action films (2004–2006). She has starred as Melinda Gordon on the CBS supernatural drama Ghost Whisperer (2005–2010), Riley Parks on the Lifetime drama series The Client List (2012–2013), Special Agent Kate Callahan on the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds (2014–2015), and since 2018, Maddie Buckley on the Fox first-responder procedural 9-1-1. She was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film for The Client List pilot film (2010).

In music, Hewitt has released four studio albums to date. After her debut album, Love Songs (1992), was released at age 12 exclusively in Japan, she went on to record Let's Go Bang (1995), and Jennifer Love Hewitt (1996). Her most successful single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was the 1999 release "How Do I Deal", which peaked at number 59. In addition to music and acting, Hewitt has served as a producer on some of her film and television projects. She has appeared in several magazines' lists of the world's most beautiful women.

Details

Jennifer Love Hewitt (born February 21, 1979) is an American actress and singer. She is most known for playing "Sarah Reeves" in the Fox television series Party of Five from (1995-1999), and as "Julie James" in the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies. She also played "Melinda Gordon" on the CBS television series Ghost Whisperer.

Biography:

Early life and career

Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas. Her father is Herbert Daniel Hewitt. Her mother was Patricia Mae (née Shipp, died 2012). She moved to Garland, Texas in 1987. Hewitt grew up in Killeen, Texas. After the divorce of her parents, Hewitt and her only sibling, Todd Hewitt, grew up with her mother.

As a young girl, Hewitt liked music. At the age of three, she sang The Greatest Love of All at a livestock show. By the time she was five, Hewitt did tap dancing and ballet. At the age of ten she moved to Los Angeles, California, with her mother for a career in both acting and singing.

After moving to Los Angeles, Hewitt was in more than twenty television commercials. She was a child actor on the Disney Channel variety show Kids Incorporated (1989–1991). Hewitt became a young star after getting the role of 'Sarah Reeves' on the Fox Television show Party of Five (1995–1999). She joined the cast during its second season.

Movie and music career

Hewitt's first movie role was in the independent movie Munchie (1992). Hewitt became very well known after a lead role in the horror movie I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). She also played in the sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998). Other movie roles included the high school comedy Can't Hardly Wait (1998) and the romantic comedy Heartbreakers (2001). In 2002, she worked with Jackie Chan in the action comedy The Tuxedo.

She has released four albums with some success, mostly in Europe and Japan. Her first album was released in Japan, where she is widely known.

Personal life

Hewitt married actor Brian Hallisay in 2013. The couple's daughter named Autumn James Hallisay, born on November 26, 2013. Their son named Atticus James Hallisay, born on June 24, 2015.

Jai Ganesh · 2022-10-26 00:02:59

1165) Danica Patrick

Summary

Danica Sue Patrick (born March 25, 1982) is an American former professional racing driver. She is the most successful woman in the history of American open-wheel car racing—her victory in the 2008 Indy Japan 300 is the only win by a woman in an IndyCar Series race.

Born to a working-class family in Beloit, Wisconsin, Patrick began karting at the age of ten and achieved early success by winning her class in the World Karting Association Grand National Championship three times in the mid-1990s. She dropped out of high school with her parents' permission in 1998, and moved to the United Kingdom to further her career. Patrick competed in Formula Vauxhall and Formula Ford before returning to the United States in 2001 due to a lack of funding. In 2002, she competed in five Barber Dodge Pro Series races for Rahal Letterman Racing. Patrick later raced in the Toyota Atlantic Series for the next two years. Her best effort was third in the championship standings for the 2004 season where she became the first woman to win a pole position in the series.

She first drove in the IndyCar Series with Rahal Letterman Racing in 2005 and took three pole positions, equaling Tomas Scheckter's record of poles in a rookie season. She was named the Rookie of the Year for both the 2005 Indianapolis 500 and the 2005 IndyCar Series. She improved over the next two years with Rahal Letterman Racing in 2006 and later Andretti Green Racing in 2007. In 2008, Patrick followed up her Japan victory to place sixth overall in the drivers' standings. She improved on this to secure fifth the following season, which saw her finish a career-high third at the Indianapolis 500, the best performance by any woman at the race. Patrick's overall form declined during 2010, but she still managed two-second-places at oval tracks before leaving IndyCar after the 2011 season to focus on stock car racing full-time.

Patrick began racing stock cars in 2010 in the NASCAR Nationwide Series (now Xfinity Series) with her best result coming in the form of a fourth-place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2011. She placed a career-high tenth in the 2012 season standings and was the second woman to clinch a pole position in the Nationwide Series after Shawna Robinson in 1994. Patrick started in the Sprint Cup Series (now NASCAR Cup Series) in 2012. She became the first woman to win a Cup Series pole position by setting the fastest qualifying lap for the 2013 Daytona 500, finishing eighth. Patrick bested Janet Guthrie's record for the most top-ten finishes by a woman in the Sprint Cup Series in 2015. She stopped racing full-time after the 2017 season, but competed at the 2018 Daytona 500 and the 2018 Indianapolis 500 before officially retiring.

Details

Danica Patrick, in full Danica Sue Patrick, (born March 25, 1982, Beloit, Wisconsin, U.S.), is an American race car driver and the first woman to win an IndyCar championship event.

Patrick’s racing career began with go-karts in her hometown of Beloit, Wisconsin, at age 10. At age 16, after national success in go-karts, Patrick left high school to race Formula Fords and Vauxhalls in the United Kingdom. She placed second in the 2000 Formula Ford festival, the best-ever finish for an American in that spawning ground for future professionals.

Patrick returned to the United States in 2002 after being signed to her first U.S. Indy-car racing contract by former Indy driver Bobby Rahal. She was then promoted to Toyota Formula Atlantic open-wheel cars. Although she never won in that series, she finished third in the drivers’ overall ranking in 2004, which led to a chance to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. Three other women—Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James, and Sarah Fisher—had previously qualified for the Indy 500, the most prestigious auto race in the United States. In her first appearance at Indy, in 2005, Patrick set the fastest lap in practice (229.88 mph [369.956 km/hr]), but she could not duplicate this feat during official qualifying. She became the first woman to lead the classic race (three times for a total of 19 laps) and eventually finished fourth. She was named Rookie of the Year for 2005 and was voted Indy Racing League (IRL) Most Popular Driver in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

Patrick began racing with the Andretti Green Racing (AGR) team in 2007. On April 20, 2008, in her 50th start in the IRL, Patrick secured the first big win of her career—the Firestone IndyCar 300 race at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit in Motegi, Japan. Patrick, driving a Dallara-Honda for AGR, skillfully avoided taking a late pit stop in the race and finished 5.86 seconds ahead of former IRL titlist Hélio Castroneves of Brazil to become the first woman to win an IndyCar championship event. Patrick’s victory, and her sixth-place finish in the season-long drivers’ championship, silenced many critics who, in light of her lucrative merchandising and endorsement pursuits, had wondered at times whether she was just a marketing phenomenon.

Beginning in 2010, Patrick raced a partial season in NASCAR’s lower-tier Nationwide Series in addition to continuing to compete in IndyCar racing. In August 2011 she announced that she would move to NASCAR full-time in 2012 and would participate in both Nationwide and Sprint Cup (top-tier) races. Patrick won the pole position for the 2013 Daytona 500, becoming the first woman to start a Sprint Cup race from the pole. She also became the first woman to lead a lap in that race, and she finished in eighth place. In 2017 she announced that she would be retiring after the following year’s Indy 500. In that event she crashed during lap 68.

Patrick cowrote several books, including the memoir Crossing the Line (2006) and Pretty Intense: The 90-Day Mind, Body, and Food Plan that Will Absolutely Change Your Life (2017). She later hosted the podcast Pretty Intense. In addition, Patrick occasionally acted, and her credits included the film Charlie’s Angels (2019).

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Math Is Fun Forum

#1176 2022-09-17 00:05:52

Re: crème de la crème

#1177 2022-09-19 00:03:09

Re: crème de la crème

#1178 2022-09-21 14:16:03

Re: crème de la crème

#1179 2022-09-22 19:57:30

Re: crème de la crème

#1180 2022-09-24 00:11:13

Re: crème de la crème

#1181 2022-09-26 00:15:08

Re: crème de la crème

#1182 2022-09-28 00:09:45

Re: crème de la crème

#1183 2022-09-29 00:06:18

Re: crème de la crème

#1184 2022-09-30 00:10:22

Re: crème de la crème

#1185 2022-10-02 00:04:25

Re: crème de la crème

#1186 2022-10-03 00:04:37

Re: crème de la crème

#1187 2022-10-05 00:10:30

Re: crème de la crème

#1188 2022-10-06 00:03:09

Re: crème de la crème

#1189 2022-10-07 00:17:35

Re: crème de la crème

#1190 2022-10-08 19:26:32

Re: crème de la crème

#1191 2022-10-10 00:02:04

Re: crème de la crème

#1192 2022-10-11 21:51:11

Re: crème de la crème

#1193 2022-10-12 17:30:52

Re: crème de la crème

#1194 2022-10-14 00:04:54

Re: crème de la crème

#1195 2022-10-16 00:07:33

Re: crème de la crème

#1196 2022-10-18 00:09:52

Re: crème de la crème

#1197 2022-10-20 00:09:22

Re: crème de la crème

#1198 2022-10-22 00:04:53

Re: crème de la crème

#1199 2022-10-24 00:16:28

Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

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