crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-06 00:08:54

1313) Emma Thompson

Details

Dame Emma Thompson DBE (born 15 April 1959) is a British actress and screenwriter. She has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over four decades, including two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2018, she was made a Dame (DBE) for services to drama.

Born to actors Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law, Thompson was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she became a member of the Footlights troupe, and appeared in the comedy sketch series Alfresco (1983–1984). In 1985, she starred in the West End revival of the musical Me and My Girl, which was a breakthrough in her career. In 1987, she came to prominence for her performances in two BBC TV series, Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War, winning the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for her work on both series. In the early 1990s, she often collaborated with then-husband, actor and director Kenneth Branagh, in films such as Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), and Much Ado About Nothing (1993).

For her performance in the Merchant-Ivory period drama Howards End (1992), Thompson won the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1993, she received two Academy Award nominations—Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress—for the respective roles of the housekeeper of a grand household in The Remains of the Day and a lawyer in In the Name of the Father, becoming one of the few actors to achieve this feat. Thompson wrote and starred in Sense and Sensibility (1995), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay—making her the only person in history to win Oscars for both acting and writing—and once again won the BAFTA. Further critical acclaim came for her roles in Primary Colors (1998), Love Actually (2003), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Late Night (2019), and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022).

Other notable film credits include the Harry Potter series (2004–2011), Nanny McPhee (2005), Stranger than Fiction (2006), An Education (2009), Men in Black 3 (2012) and the spin-off Men in Black: International (2019), Brave (2012), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Cruella (2021), and Matilda the Musical (2022). Her television credits include Wit (2001), Angels in America (2003), The Song of Lunch (2010), King Lear (2018) and Years and Years (2019). She portrayed Mrs. Lovett in a Lincoln Center production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 2014. Authorised by the publishers of Beatrix Potter, Thompson has also written three Peter Rabbit children's books.

Additional Information

Emma Thompson, in full Dame Emma Thompson, (born April 15, 1959, London, England), is an English actress and screenwriter, noted for her sophisticated and witty performances and later for her award-winning scripts.

Thompson, the daughter of actors Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law, grew up in a theatrical household that gave her an appreciation for the ridiculous. While studying English literature at the University of Cambridge, she performed with the comedy troupe Footlights. Soon after graduating in 1980, she ventured into drama, distinguishing herself opposite Kenneth Branagh in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s television miniseries Fortunes of War (1987). The couple became frequent collaborators and married in 1989 (divorced 1995). Thompson starred with Branagh in Henry V (1989), which he directed, and followed with two more Branagh-directed films, the thriller Dead Again (1991), in which the couple played dual roles, and the sentimental comedy Peter’s Friends (1992).

In 1992 Thompson portrayed a pragmatic bohemian who befriends a dying woman and later marries her widower (played by Anthony Hopkins) in the screen adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Howards End. For her performance, Thompson won both an Academy Award and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for best actress. In 1993 she again starred opposite Branagh, in a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing in which she played Beatrice to Branagh’s Benedick. The breezy, colourful Much Ado won the praise of critics and attracted an unusually large and diverse audience. That year Thompson also played a 1930s housekeeper in The Remains of the Day.

In 1995 Thompson wrote and starred in Sense and Sensibility, based on Jane Austen’s novel. The film was a critical and commercial success, and Thompson won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay and a BAFTA Award for best actress. She also later married (2003) costar Greg Wise. In 2001 Thompson wrote the script for and starred in the television adaptation of the stage drama Wit, which centres on a college professor with terminal cancer. In the television miniseries Angels in America (2003), based on Tony Kushner’s play about AIDS in the 1980s, she played a homeless woman.

Thompson’s later work included such notable films as Love Actually (2003), Stranger Than Fiction (2006), and several film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series. In 2008 she starred in Brideshead Revisited, based on Evelyn Waugh’s novel, and in Last Chance Harvey, a romantic comedy set in London. The following year she appeared in two films set in 1960s England: the coming-of-age drama An Education, in which she portrayed a boarding-school headmistress, and the rock-and-roll-themed comedy Pirate Radio.

In the animated Brave (2012), Thompson provided the voice of a Scottish queen. She was acclaimed for her steely, sympathetic depiction of Mary Poppins (1934) author P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks (2013). She then narrated the family drama Men, Women & Children (2014) and played the wife of author Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) in a 2015 screen adaptation of his 1998 memoir A Walk in the Woods. Her credits from 2017 included Beauty and the Beast, a remake of the Disney classic, and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), wherein she gave a comical performance as the wife of a sculptor (Dustin Hoffman). That year Thompson also garnered critical acclaim for The Children Act, in which she played a judge contending with a marital crisis as she decides a case concerning a teenager refusing a blood transfusion on religious grounds.

Thompson then portrayed Goneril, one of King Lear’s treacherous daughters, in a televised adaptation of Shakespeare’s play and the British prime minister in the spy spoof Johnny English Strikes Again (both 2018). Her credits from 2019 included the stop-motion animated comedy Missing Link, in which she provided the voice of a yeti elder. That year she also starred as a talk show host who hires a woman of colour (Mindy Kaling) to diversify her all-white-male writing team in Late Night. Thompson later lent her voice to the family comedy Dolittle (2020). In 2021 Thompson played a demanding fashion designer in Cruella, a live-action comedy about the early life of the villain from the Disney classic One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

Thompson resumed her screenwriting career with the family film Nanny McPhee (2005), adapted from a series of books by Christianna Brand, and played the titular role, a governess with magical powers. She wrote and starred in the sequel, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010; U.S. title Nanny McPhee Returns) as well. Thompson also wrote the screenplay for Effie Gray (2014), an examination of the marriage of art critic John Ruskin; she appeared in the film in a supporting role.

Thompson was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2018.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-08 00:07:58

1314) Holly Hunter

Summary

Holly Hunter (born March 20, 1958 in Conyers, Georgia) acted in Broadcast News (1987) by James Brooks, Raising Arizona (1987) by the Coen Bros, Always (1989) by Steven Spielberg, Once Around (1991) by Lasse Hallström, The Firm (1993) directed by Sydney Pollack from the 1991 novel by John Grisham, The Piano (1993) by Jane Campion, Home for the Holidays (1995) by Jodie Foster, Living Out Loud (1998) by Richard LaGravanese, Thirteen (2003) by Catherine Hardwicke. She played Senator Finch in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Zoe Kazan’s mother in The Big Sick (2017).

Hunter acted on television in Roe vs. Wade (1989), The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993), Harlan County War (2001), When Billie Beat Bobby (2001), Saving Grace (2007-2010), Top of the Lake (2013) by Jane Campion.

Details

Holly Patricia Hunter (born March 20, 1958) is an American actress. Hunter won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Ada McGrath in the 1993 drama film The Piano. She earned three additional Academy Award nominations for Broadcast News (1987), The Firm (1993), and Thirteen (2003). She won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the television films Roe vs. Wade (1989) and The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993). She also starred in the TNT drama series Saving Grace (2007–2010).

Hunter's other film roles include Raising Arizona (1987), Always (1989), Home for the Holidays (1995), Crash (1996), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Incredibles (2004) and its sequel Incredibles 2 (2018), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and The Big Sick (2017), the latter of which earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

Early life

Hunter was born in Conyers, Georgia, the daughter of Marguerite "Dee Dee" (née Catledge), a homemaker, and Charles Edwin Hunter, a part-time sporting goods company representative and farmer with a 250-acre farm. She is the youngest of six children. Her parents encouraged her talent at an early age, and her first acting part was as Helen Keller in a fifth-grade play. She is unable to hear with her left ear due to a childhood case of the mumps. The condition sometimes leads to complications at work, and some movie scenes have to be altered from the script for her to use her right ear. She is irreligious. She began acting at Rockdale County High School in the early 1970s, performing in local productions of Oklahoma, Man of La Mancha, and Fiddler on the Roof. Hunter earned a degree in drama from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and for a while performed in local theater, playing ingenue roles at City Theater, then named the City Players.

Career

Hunter moved to New York City and roomed with fellow actress Frances McDormand, living in the Bronx "at the end of the D [subway] train, just off 205th Street, on Bainbridge Avenue and Hull Avenue". A chance encounter with playwright Beth Henley, when the two were trapped alone in an elevator, led to Hunter's being cast in Henley's plays Crimes of the Heart (succeeding Mary Beth Hurt on Broadway), and Off-Broadway's The Miss Firecracker Contest. "It was like the beginning of 1982. It was on 49th Street between Broadway and Eighth [Avenue] ... on the south side of the street," Hunter recalled in an interview. "[We were trapped] 10 minutes; not long. We actually had a nice conversation. It was just the two of us."

Hunter made her film debut in the 1981 slasher movie The Burning. After moving to Los Angeles in 1982, Hunter appeared in TV movies before being cast in a supporting role in 1984's Swing Shift. That year, she had her first collaboration with the writing-directing-producing team of brothers Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, in Blood Simple, making an uncredited appearance as a voice on an answering-machine recording. More film and television work followed until 1987, when she earned a starring role in the Coens' Raising Arizona and was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Broadcast News, after which Hunter became a critically acclaimed star.

Hunter went on to the screen adaptation of Henley's Miss Firecracker; Steven Spielberg's Always, a romantic drama with Richard Dreyfuss; and the made-for-TV 1989 docudrama Roe vs. Wade about the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. Following her second collaboration with Dreyfuss, in Once Around, Hunter garnered critical attention for her work in two 1993 films, resulting in her being nominated for two Academy Awards the same year: Hunter's performance in The Firm won her a nomination as Best Supporting Actress, while her portrayal of a mute Scottish woman entangled in an adulterous affair with Harvey Keitel in Jane Campion's The Piano won her the Best Actress award. Hunter went on to star in the comedy-drama Home for the Holidays and the thriller Copycat, both in 1995. Hunter appeared in David Cronenberg's Crash and as a sardonic angel in A Life Less Ordinary. The following year, Hunter played a recently divorced New Yorker in Richard LaGravenese's Living Out Loud; starring alongside Danny DeVito, Queen Latifah, and Martin Donovan. Hunter rounded out the 1990s with a minor role in the independent drama Jesus' Son and as a housekeeper torn between a grieving widower and his son in Kiefer Sutherland's drama Woman Wanted. Following a supporting role in the Coens' O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Hunter took top billing in the same year's television movie Harlan County War, an account of labor struggles among Kentucky coal-mine workers. Hunter would continue her small screen streak with a role in When Billie Beat Bobby, playing tennis pro Billie Jean King in the fact-based story of King's exhibition match with Bobby Riggs; and as narrator of Eco Challenge New Zealand before returning to film work with a minor role in the 2002 drama Moonlight Mile. The following year found Hunter in the redemption drama Levity.

In 2003, Hunter had the role of a mother named Melanie Freeland, whose daughter is troubled and going through the perils of being a teenager in the film Thirteen. The film was critically acclaimed along with Hunter and her co-stars and earned her nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2004, Hunter starred alongside Brittany Murphy in the romantic satire Little Black Book, and provided the voice for Helen Parr (also known as Elastigirl) in the acclaimed computer-animated superhero film, The Incredibles. She reprised the role in the Disney Infinity video game series, and in the film's long-awaited sequel Incredibles 2 in 2018.

In 2005, Hunter starred alongside Robin Williams in the black comedy-drama The Big White. Hunter became an executive producer, and helped develop a starring vehicle for herself with the TNT cable-network drama Saving Grace, which premiered in July 2007. For her acting, she received a Golden Globe Award nomination, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and an Emmy Award nomination. On May 30, 2008, Hunter received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2009, she was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award. In 2016, Hunter played Senator Finch in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Hunter's likeness was used to portray Senator Finch in the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice tie-in prequel comics, released by Dr. Pepper on February 3, 2016. Hunter stars opposite Ted Danson in the 2021 NBC comedy Mr. Mayor.

Personal life

Hunter was married to Janusz Kamiński, cinematographer of Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, from 1995 until 2001. She has been in a relationship with British actor Gordon MacDonald since 2001. The couple met in San Jose Repertory Theatre's production of playwright Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats, in which she played a woman abandoned by her lover of 14 years, played by MacDonald. In January 2006, Hunter gave birth to the couple's twin sons, Claude and Press.

Additional Information

Holly Hunter, in full Holly Paige Hunter, (born March 20, 1958, Conyers, Georgia, U.S.), is an American actress with a talent for portraying intense, driven, and often offbeat characters in both comedies and dramas.

Hunter had her first acting experience while she was still in elementary school. She joined her high school’s drama club and performed in summer stock before studying drama at Carnegie Mellon University (B.F.A., 1980). She then moved to New York City, where she became acquainted with the playwright Beth Henley. Although Hunter’s first professional appearance was in a bit part in the low-budget horror film The Burning (1981), she quickly developed a reputation as an interpreter of roles in Henley’s plays, acting in Crimes of the Heart (1981; Hunter’s Broadway debut), The Wake of Jamey Foster (1982), and The Miss Firecracker Contest (1984). In addition to her stage work, she played small roles in a few television movies as well as in Jonathan Demme’s 1984 film Swing Shift, and that same year she was an uncredited telephone voice in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Blood Simple.

Hunter starred opposite Nicolas Cage in the Coen brothers’ comedy Raising Arizona (1987) and, in a breakthrough performance, played news producer Jane Craig in James L. Brooks’s Broadcast News (1987). Hunter’s role in the film, which also starred William Hurt and Albert Brooks, earned her a Silver Bear for best actress at the Berlin International Film Festival and nominations for the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for best actress. In 1989 Hunter recreated the lead role in Miss Firecracker, the film version of Henley’s play. She was again nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of a character based on the real-life Norma McCorvey in the TV movie Roe vs. Wade (1989). She played opposite Richard Dreyfuss in Steven Spielberg’s romance Always (1989) and in Lasse Hallström’s Once Around (1991), and she starred with Gena Rowlands and Bill Pullman in the 1992 TV movie Crazy in Love.

Hunter received an Emmy Award as well as a third Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of the title character in the 1993 TV movie The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. She was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance in Sydney Pollack’s thriller The Firm (1993). Hunter’s vivid rendering of the inner life of a mute Scottish pianist who moves to New Zealand with her young daughter (played by Anna Paquin) for an arranged marriage in Jane Campion’s period romance The Piano (also 1993) earned her an Oscar for best actress in addition to a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award. Her later movies included the thriller Copycat and Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays (both 1995), Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary (1997), and the romance Living Out Loud (1998).

In 2000 Hunter played Penny, the wife of George Clooney’s character, in the Coens’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and won an Emmy nomination for her starring role in the TV movie Harlan County War. She was nominated again for her portrayal of tennis player Billie Jean King in the 2001 television film When Billie Beat Bobby. Hunter played the mother of a troubled teenager in Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003) and was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress for her performance. She voiced Elastigirl in the popular animated feature The Incredibles (2004) and its sequel, Incredibles 2 (2018).

Hunter earned nominations for both a Golden Globe (2008) and an Emmy (2009) for her starring role in the TV drama series Saving Grace (2007–10). She later appeared in the superhero movie Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and won praise for her performance in Michael Showalter’s The Big Sick (2017). Hunter then returned to television for the HBO series Here and Now (2018), a drama about a multiracial family, and in 2019 she had a recurring role in another HBO show, Succession, about a family that owns a global media empire. The following year she appeared in the Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule, which was based on the memoir of the former FBI director. Hunter was then cast as the deputy and rival of the title character in Mr. Mayor, a sitcom that debuted in 2021.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-10 00:04:32

1315) Jessica Lange

Details

Jessica Phyllis Lange (born April 20, 1949) is an American actress. She is one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having received two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award.

Lange made her professional film debut in Dino De Laurentiis's 1976 remake of the 1933 action-adventure classic King Kong, which despite receiving mixed reviews, earned her the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. Lange went on to receive two Academy Awards, her first for Best Supporting Actress as a soap opera star in the comedy Tootsie (1982) and her second for Best Actress playing a bipolar housewife in Blue Sky (1994). Her other Oscar-nominated roles were for Frances (1982), Country (1984), Sweet Dreams (1985) and Music Box (1989). Her other film roles include in All That Jazz (1979), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Cape Fear (1991), Rob Roy (1995), and Big Fish (2003).

As her screen career started to decline, Lange transitioned into television starring in O Pioneers! (1992), A Streetcar Named Desire (1995) and Normal (2003). In 2010, Lange won her first Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal Big Edie in HBO's Grey Gardens (2009). Lange then gained new recognition by starring in FX's horror anthology, American Horror Story (2011–2015, 2018), which earned her two additional Primetime Emmys for its first and third seasons. She received her ninth Emmy Award nomination for her portrayal of Joan Crawford in the miniseries Feud (2017). In 2016, Lange won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the Broadway revival of Long Day's Journey into Night.

Lange is also a photographer with five published books of photography. She has been a foster parent and holds a Goodwill Ambassador position for UNICEF, specializing in HIV/AIDS in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Russia.

Additional Information

Jessica Lange, (born April 20, 1949, Cloquet, Minnesota, U.S.), is an American actress known for her versatility and intelligent performances.

Lange attended the University of Minnesota on an art scholarship but dropped out to travel. She lived in Paris, where she studied mime, before settling in New York City. A sometime model, she caught the eye of producer Dino De Laurentiis, who cast her in his big-budget remake of King Kong (1976). Lange’s film debut was ridiculed by critics, and she did not work again for more than two years. After several small roles, she attracted attention with another remake, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). Although the sexually charged drama received mixed reviews, Lange earned praise as the adulterous wife who plots to kill her husband. Her double breakthrough came in 1982. In Frances she starred as the gifted but doomed actress Frances Farmer. The emotionally draining role almost led to a breakdown, but Lange found comic relief in the gender-bending farce Tootsie, playing a vulnerable soap opera actress. She earned Academy Award nominations for both films and was named best supporting actress for Tootsie.

Shunning conventional roles for more-complex characters, Lange continued to earn acclaim for her film performances and received Oscar nominations for Country (1984), the Patsy Cline biopic Sweet Dreams (1985), and Music Box (1989). In 1995 she won an Academy Award for best actress for Blue Sky (1994). Later notable films included Cousin Bette (1998), based on the Honoré de Balzac novel; Titus (1999), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus; and the fantasy drama Big Fish (2003). In 2003 she appeared as the wife of a man who decides to have a gender-reassignment operation in the television movie Normal. Two years later she starred opposite Bill Murray in Broken Flowers, portraying a lawyer turned animal communicator. Directed by Jim Jarmusch, the film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival. Also premiering at Cannes in 2005 was the Wim Wenders-directed drama Don’t Come Knocking, which starred Lange opposite her longtime companion, playwright and actor Sam Shepard. (The two ended their 27-year relationship in 2009.)

In 2009 Lange appeared in the television movie Grey Gardens. Based on the 1975 documentary, it told the story of reclusive socialites “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale (Lange) and her daughter, “Little Edie” (Drew Barrymore). Lange won an Emmy Award for her performance. She continued her television career with the dramatic series American Horror Story, which debuted in 2011. In the first season—which was later given the subtitle Murder House—she was cast as the intrusive neighbour of a family living in a haunted mansion; the performance earned Lange another Emmy. During the show’s second season, Asylum, she starred as a sadistic nun; in the third season, Coven, she played a witch; and in the fourth season, Freak Show, she evinced the proprietress of the titular performance group. For her work in Coven, she won her third Emmy.

In 2012 Lange returned to the big screen as the mother of Rachel McAdams’s character in the romantic drama The Vow. She then played a woman whose son is murdered in In Secret (2013), an adaptation of Émile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin. The Gambler (2014) cast Lange in the role of the contemptuous, but ultimately sympathetic, mother of an English professor with a gambling problem. She later costarred with Shirley MacLaine in Wild Oats (2016), a comedy about two women who travel to the Canary Islands after one of them mistakenly receives a life insurance check for $5 million.

In 2017 Lange returned to TV anthology series with Feud, about famous quarrels. The first season centres on the conflict between Joan Crawford (played by Lange) and Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon). The following year she rejoined American Horror Story, appearing in its eighth season, Apocalypse; she reprised her role as the neighbour in Murder House. Lange was cast in 2019 as a manipulative grandmother in the Netflix series The Politician.

In addition to her screen work, Lange forged a successful stage career. After she portrayed Maggie in a 1985 television version of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Lange made her Broadway debut in 1992, playing Blanche DuBois in Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. In 2000–01 she starred as the drug-addicted Mary Tyrone in the London West End production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. After a 13-year absence, she returned to Broadway in 2005, portraying the domineering mother Amanda Wingfield in Williams’s The Glass Menagerie. In 2016 Lange earned widespread acclaim—and her first Tony Award—for reprising the role of Mary Tyrone in a Broadway staging of Long Day’s Journey into Night.

Lange was also a noted photographer, showing her prints in exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and Barcelona. She published her work in the books 50 Photographs (2008), In Mexico (2010), and Highway 61 (2019).

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-12 00:04:47

1316) Susan Sarandon

Details

Susan Abigail Sarandon (née Tomalin; born October 4, 1946) is an American actress. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for a Daytime Emmy Award, six Primetime Emmy Awards, and nine Golden Globe Awards. In 2002, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Sarandon began her acting career in the drama film Joe (1970), the soap opera A World Apart (1970–1971), and the television film F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles' (1974). She gained prominence for her role as Janet Weiss in the cult classic musical comedy horror film The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Sarandon went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress for Dead Man Walking (1995). Her other Oscar-nominated roles were in Atlantic City (1980), Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), and The Client (1994). Her other notable films include Pretty Baby (1978), The Hunger (1983), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Bull Durham (1988), Little Women (1994), James and the Giant Peach (1996), Stepmom (1998), Enchanted (2007), Speed Racer (2008), The Lovely Bones (2009), Cloud Atlas (2012), and The Meddler (2015).

Sarandon made her Broadway debut in the play An Evening with Richard Nixon (1972) and went on to receive Drama Desk Award nominations for the off-Broadway plays A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking (1979) and Extremities (1982). She returned to Broadway in the 2009 revival of Exit the King, and to off-Broadway in the 2019 play Happy Talk. On television, she is a six-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee, including for her guest roles on the sitcoms Friends (2001) and Malcolm in the Middle (2002) as well as her portrayals of Janet Good in the HBO film You Don't Know Jack (2010), Doris Duke in the HBO film Bernard and Doris (2008), and Bette Davis in the FX miniseries Feud (2017).

Also known for her social and political activism, Sarandon was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1999 and received the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award in 2006. In 2022, she joined as an ambassador to the HALO Trust, the largest humanitarian mine clearance organization.

Additional Information

Susan Sarandon, original name Susan Abigail Tomalin, (born October 4, 1946, New York, New York, U.S.), is an American film actress who transcended the early roles of her career, in which she often played characters who were highly sensual but little else, to become a performer of considerable versatility and emotional depth. In 1996 she won an Academy Award for her unglamorous yet engaging performance as a nun counseling death-row prisoners in Dead Man Walking (1995).

After graduating with a degree in drama from Catholic University of America (B.A., 1968) in Washington, D.C., Sarandon worked as a model and appeared in small film roles and television work, notably in the soap opera A World Apart. In 1975 she shined as the ingenue in the cult favourite The Rocky Horror Picture Show and starred opposite Robert Redford in The Great Waldo Pepper.

Two films directed by Louis Malle (with whom she was romantically involved) brought her greater attention: Pretty Baby (1978) and Atlantic City (1981). In both films Sarandon played women who are initially presented simply as objects of male desire but who later reveal their underlying intelligence and independence. Her performance in Atlantic City led to her first Oscar nomination. She next appeared as a modern-day Ariel in the comedy-drama Tempest (1982) and as a scientist-turned-vampire in the horror film The Hunger (1983), although these films were less successful.

Her portrayal of a sultry literature instructor in the romantic comedy Bull Durham (1988) established her star status. The film also introduced her to Tim Robbins, with whom she began a family; their relationship lasted for several decades, and the couple became known as active promoters of leftist causes. Sarandon won further Academy Award nominations for her roles as the worldly waitress-turned-outlaw in Thelma & Louise (1991), a mother searching for a cure for her son’s disease in Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), a novice lawyer in The Client (1994), and Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking, which was written and directed by Robbins. Sarandon again worked with Robbins in his film about the WPA Federal Theatre Project, Cradle Will Rock (1999), in which a group of actors attempt to produce a left-leaning musical during the 1930s.

In the early 2000s Sarandon starred in such comic dramas as Igby Goes Down (2002) and Elizabethtown (2005). Later she returned to political themes and brought her antiwar sentiments to the screen with In the Valley of Elah (2007), in which she portrayed the distraught mother of a soldier who disappears after returning home from a tour of duty in the Iraq War. Her subsequent film roles included an evil queen in Enchanted (2007) as well as maternal characters in the supernatural drama The Lovely Bones (2009), Oliver Stone’s financial drama Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), and the comedy Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011).

Sarandon continued to work steadily as she entered her late 60s. In 2012 she appeared as a librarian in the offbeat Robot & Frank, as a woman afflicted by her husband’s duplicity in the thriller Arbitrage, as a housewife arrested for the radical activities of her past in The Company You Keep, and as multiple characters in the mosaic-like epic Cloud Atlas. The following year she played a hard-nosed district attorney in the action-filled drama Snitch and had a role in the multigenerational-family farce The Big Wedding. Sarandon then assumed the role of the alcoholic grandmother of the title character in the comedy Tammy (2014). Sarandon appeared as another troublemaking parent in A Bad Moms Christmas (2017) and then starred as a mother who turns to an underground network when her journalist son is taken hostage in Syria in Viper Club (2018). Her later movie credits included The Jesus Rolls (2019), a comedy centring on a character from the cult classic The Big Lebowski (1998); the animated Fearless (2020); and Ride the Eagle (2021), a dramedy in which she was cast as a mother estranged from her son.

In addition to her film work, Sarandon also appeared on television. She guest-starred on the sitcom Friends and the drama series ER and had recurring roles on the comedy-dramas Rescue Me and The Big C. In 2006 she portrayed tobacco heiress Doris Duke in the HBO television movie Bernard and Doris. She also was cast in HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack (2010), which examined the life of Jack Kevorkian, a doctor who was a vocal supporter of physician-assisted suicide. In 2017 Sarandon appeared in the TV anthology series Feud, which recounts various famous disputes. In the first season, Bette and Joan, she starred as Bette Davis, and Jessica Lange was cast as Joan Crawford. Sarandon also had a recurring role on Ray Donovan in 2017–19.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-13 22:23:03

1317) Frances McDormand

Details

Frances Louise McDormand (born Cynthia Ann Smith; June 23, 1957) is an American actress and producer. Throughout her career spanning over four decades she has gained acclaim for her roles in small-budget independent films. McDormand has received numerous accolades, including four Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and one Tony Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting". Additionally, she has received three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.

McDormand was educated at Bethany College and Yale University. She has been married to Joel Coen of the Coen brothers since 1984. She has appeared in a number of their films, including Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), Burn After Reading (2008), and Hail, Caesar! (2016). McDormand has received three Academy Awards for Best Actress for her performances in Fargo (1996), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) and Nomadland (2020). Her other Oscar-nominated roles were in Mississippi Burning (1988), Almost Famous (2000), and North Country (2005). McDormand is the second woman in history to win Best Actress three times, and the seventh performer overall to win three competitive Academy Awards in acting categories.

On television, McDormand produced and starred as the titular protagonist in the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014), which won her the Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie and Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. On stage, McDormand made her Broadway debut in a revival of Awake and Sing! (1984). She went on to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role as a troubled single mother in Good People (2011). She was previously nominated for the 1988 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Additional Information

Frances McDormand, in full Frances Louise McDormand, (born June 23, 1957, Gibson City, Illinois, U.S.), is an American actress who was critically acclaimed for her unadorned yet magnetic interpretations of character roles in film and on television as well as on the stage.

McDormand, the daughter of a Disciples of Christ minister, spent her childhood in a succession of small Midwestern towns. She found her vocation as an actor when she was cast in a high-school play. McDormand studied theatre at Bethany College in West Virginia (B.A., 1979) and then enrolled in Yale University’s School of Drama (M.F.A., 1982). She moved to New York City to seek a career on the stage.

Her first professional acting job (1982) was in a play by Derek Walcott, for which she traveled to Trinidad and Tobago. She was cast in a central role in Joel and Ethan Coen’s first movie, Blood Simple (1984), and McDormand married Joel Coen the year the film was released. Her primary focus remained theatre, however, and that same year she made her Broadway debut in a revival of Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! In 1985 McDormand had a recurring guest part in the TV series Hill Street Blues and a bit part in Sam Raimi’s comic horror film Crimewave, and she played the baby-mad Dot in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona (1987). She won praise and an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for her portrayal of a submissive wife who chooses to unmask her racist husband in Mississippi Burning (1988), and she was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance as Stella in the 1988 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire.

McDormand played a lead role in Ken Loach’s political thriller Hidden Agenda (1990) and portrayed the protagonist’s girlfriend in Raimi’s fantasy thriller Darkman (1990). She appeared in Robert Altman’s sketch collection Short Cuts (1993) as well as the minor films Beyond Rangoon and Palookaville (both 1995). McDormand’s portrayal of the methodical, folksy, and very pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson in the Coen brothers’ celebrated Fargo (1996) earned her an Academy Award for best actress. She later appeared in Wonder Boys (2000) and was nominated for the Oscar for best supporting actress for her portrayal of the overbearing mother of the protagonist in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000). McDormand played an aging hedonist in the drama Laurel Canyon (2002) and appeared in the Jack Nicholson vehicle Something’s Gotta Give (2003). She was again nominated for the best-supporting-actress Oscar for her role as a truck driver with ALS in North Country (2005). Her subsequent films included Burn After Reading (2008), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and Moonrise Kingdom (2012).

In 2008 McDormand received rave reviews for her starring role in a Broadway revival of The Country Girl, and she later won a Tony Award for her lead role in the drama Good People (2011). She earned an Emmy Award for her portrayal of the title character in the 2014 TV miniseries Olive Kitteridge. McDormand later voiced the character Momma in the animated feature The Good Dinosaur (2015) and Interpreter Nelson in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated film Isle of Dogs (2018). She also appeared in the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar! (2016).

McDormand later starred in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), portraying a mother determined to find the killer of her daughter. For her performance, she won her second Oscar. In 2019 McDormand provided the voice of God for Good Omens, a miniseries based on Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s 1990 novel of the same name. She returned to the big screen with Nomadland (2020), in which she played a woman who, after losing her home, travels across the United States, looking for seasonal work. The drama was critically acclaimed, and McDormand received her third Academy Award for acting. She also won an Oscar as a producer of Nomadland, which was named best picture.

In 2021 McDormand reunited with Anderson, appearing as a journalist in his dramedy The French Dispatch. Later that year she costarred with Denzel Washington in The Tragedy of Macbeth, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play that was directed by McDormand’s husband; he also was credited with writing it for the screen. She later had a minor role in Sarah Polley’s Women Talking (2022), which was based on Miriam Toew’s novel about female members of a cloistered religious community.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-14 23:00:23

1318) Helen Hunt

Summary

Helen Elizabeth Hunt (born June 15, 1963) is an American actress and director. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.

Hunt rose to fame in 1992, portraying Jamie Buchman in the sitcom Mad About You which earned her three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress and four Primetime Emmy Awards for Lead Actress.

In 1997 Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Actress for starring as Carol Connelly in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets, while her portrayal of Cheryl Cohen-Greene in The Sessions (2012), gained her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other notable films include Twister (1996), Cast Away (2000), What Women Want (2000), Pay It Forward (2000), Bobby (2006), Soul Surfer (2011), and The Miracle Season (2018).

Hunt made her directorial film debut with Then She Found Me (2007), and has directed the film Ride (2014), and episodes of television series, including House of Lies, This Is Us, Feud: Bette and Joan, American Housewife, and the premiere episode of the Mad About You revival.

Details

Helen Hunt, in full Helen Elizabeth Hunt, (born June 15, 1963, Culver City, California, U.S.), is an American actress known for her caustic wit and easy charm. Her popularity on the television series Mad About You (1992–99; 2019) led to a successful film career, highlighted by her Academy Award-winning performance in As Good As It Gets (1997).

Hunt was introduced to acting by her father, a director and drama coach. She made her television debut at age nine, appearing on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Other small-screen parts soon followed, including a recurring role on St. Elsewhere and numerous made-for-television movies. After several failed television series, Hunt was offered the role of Jamie Buchman on Mad About You in 1992. Developed by and costarring Paul Reiser, the comedy followed the ups and downs of a married couple. In addition to acting, for which she received four Golden Globe (1994–95, 1997–98) and four Emmy (1996–99) awards, Hunt also spent time behind the camera, producing and directing several episodes. Mad About You wrapped production in 1999, having earned 34 Emmy nominations and 12 wins over its seven-season run. A reboot of the series aired in 2019.

Although Hunt had found fame on television, big-screen success was at first elusive. After making her film debut in Rollercoaster (1977), she appeared in a string of movies, including Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Mr. Saturday Night (1992), and Bob Roberts (1992). Though Hunt earned praise for her performances, the films failed to ignite at the box office. That changed in 1996 with Twister. The special-effects-driven movie about tornado chasers was a blockbuster, grossing more than $200 million. As offers for other big-screen ventures poured in, Hunt chose the unlikely romantic comedy As Good As It Gets. Starring opposite Jack Nicholson, who played a neurotic and bigoted writer, Hunt charmed viewers with her sympathetic and humorous turn as Carol, a single parent struggling with bills, an ill child, and an intrusive mother. In addition to winning her first Oscar, Hunt received a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Hunt next appeared onstage as the cleverly disguised Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Returning to the big screen in 2000, she starred in Cast Away as the fiancée of a man (played by Tom Hanks) lost at sea and presumed dead. What Women Want was released the same year, with Hunt playing opposite Mel Gibson. Although she appeared in few films over the following decade, she acted on Broadway in Yasmina Reza’s Life × 3 (2003) and in the TV miniseries Empire Falls (2005), which was based on a novel by Richard Russo. In 2007 Hunt directed her first feature-length film, Then She Found Me, a comedy-drama that she also cowrote, produced, and starred in.

Hunt’s subsequent movie credits included the inspirational Soul Surfer (2011) and the drama The Sessions (2012), in which she played a therapist who helps a disabled man lose his virginity. She also wrote, directed, and starred in Ride (2014), about a writer who follows her son to California when he drops out of college. In 2018 Hunt played a coach of a high-school girls’ volleyball team that is mourning the death of its star player in The Miracle Season, which was based on a true story. Her later credits included The Night Clerk (2020), a crime drama, and the TV series World on Fire (2019– ), which was set during World War II. She also appeared in the show Blindspotting (2021– ), which was inspired by the 2018 movie of the same name; the series centres on a young mother whose life is upended after her boyfriend is sentenced to prison.

Additional Information

Helen Elizabeth Hunt (born June 15, 1963) is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom Mad About You for seven years, before being cast in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets (for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress) and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Some of her other Hollywood credits include Twister, Cast Away, What Women Want and Pay It Forward. She made her directorial debut in 2007 with Then She Found Me.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-16 17:26:28

1319) Gwyneth Paltrow

Summary

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow Falchuk (born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and businesswoman. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Paltrow gained notice for her early work in films such as Seven (1995), Emma (1996), Sliding Doors (1998), and A Perfect Murder (1998). She garnered wider acclaim for her performance as Viola de Lesseps in the historical romance Shakespeare in Love (1998) which won her several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress. This was followed by roles in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Shallow Hal (2001), and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004).

After becoming a parent in 2004, Paltrow significantly reduced her acting workload. She made occasional appearances in films, such as the drama Proof (2005), which earned her a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. In 2009, she received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for the children's audiobook Brown Bear and Friends. In addition, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her guest role as Holly Holliday on the Fox musical television series Glee in 2011. From 2008 to 2019, she portrayed Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Beginning in 1995, Paltrow has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume; she was previously the face of the American fashion brand Coach. She is the founder and CEO of the lifestyle company Goop, which has been criticized for promoting pseudoscience, and has authored several cookbooks.

Details

Gwyneth Paltrow, in full Gwyneth Kate Paltrow, (born September 27, 1972, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), is an American actress and lifestyle innovator who was best known for her film portrayals of intelligent and complex characters. In 2008 she created goop, a lifestyle brand.

Paltrow was the daughter of television producer Bruce Paltrow and Tony Award-winning actress Blythe Danner. By her own account, Paltrow knew from a young age that she wanted to act, and she appeared in her first part, a stage walk-on role, at age five. Her family moved to New York City when Paltrow was 11 years old. She attended a prestigious girls’ school and studied acting at a summer camp in Vermont. She briefly attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, before appearing onstage alongside her mother in William Inge’s play Picnic at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her parents recognized her talent and passion for acting and supported her decision to leave college to pursue acting full-time.

Paltrow’s early film roles included a small part as Peter Pan’s young friend Wendy in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991) and, in a critically well-received role, as a drifter and con artist in Flesh and Bone (1993). Her career continued to progress with supporting roles as a bohemian artist in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), as Thomas Jefferson’s daughter in Jefferson in Paris (1995), and alongside Morgan Freeman and then-boyfriend Brad Pitt in the thriller Se7en (1995). Her first starring role, as the title character in the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, garnered high praise. In 1998 she appeared in five films, most notably Shakespeare in Love, in which she gave an Academy Award-winning performance as William Shakespeare’s muse Viola; the film also earned an Oscar for best picture.

Paltrow followed up with diverse roles, including a karaoke singer in Duets (2000), which was directed by her father; former child prodigy Margot Tenenbaum in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001); and late poet Sylvia Plath in Sylvia (2003). She played a gifted mathematician questioning her mental health in Proof (2005); Paltrow had originally played that role—to great praise—in the 2002 London stage production. She showcased her singing talents as a country star in the film Country Strong (2010) and in a recurring part (2010–11) on the popular musical television show Glee, for which she earned an Emmy Award. In some of her highest-grossing films, she appeared with Robert Downey, Jr., as Iron Man’s companion Pepper Potts in the blockbuster Iron Man series (2008, 2010, and 2013), a role that she reprised for The Avengers (2012), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019). She also appeared in the comic caper Mortdecai (2015), as the wife of a flamboyant art dealer and spy (Johnny Depp). In 2019 Paltrow was cast as the mother of an overachieving student in Netflix’s farcical series The Politician.

In addition to her career as an actress, Paltrow positioned herself as a lifestyle expert with the 2008 launch of goop, a digital media and e-commerce company that offered advice on such topics as style, shopping, and food. Although some of the wellness advice proved controversial because of safety and efficacy concerns, goop became hugely popular. A skin-care line and a fashion line, G. Label, were launched in 2016. Paltrow also wrote the cookbooks My Father’s Daughter (2011), It’s All Good (2013; written with Julia Turshen), and The Clean Plate: Eat, Reset, Heal (2019).

In 2003 Paltrow married Chris Martin, the lead singer and pianist of Coldplay. The couple separated in 2014 and divorced two years later. Paltrow’s characterization of the split as a “conscious uncoupling” sparked both derision and praise in the media. Some contended that the phrase only heightened the perception of Paltrow as pretentious and aloof, and others lauded the sensitivity and maturity with which the couple ended their relationship. Paltrow later married writer and producer Brad Falchuk (2018), whom she met while working on Glee.

Additional Information

Gwyneth Paltrow is an Academy Award–winning actress, the author of four New York Times–bestselling cookbooks, and the founder and CEO of the lifestyle company goop. She was born on September 27, 1972, in Los Angeles, California, to television producer Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner, a Tony Award winner and two-time Emmy Award winner. She is married to television producer, writer, and director Brad Falchuk, a Golden Globe winner and two-time Emmy Award winner. Paltrow lives with her two children, Apple (age 14) and Moses (age 12), in Los Angeles.

For the first chapter of her professional career, Paltrow was focused on acting. In 1999, she won best actress at the Academy Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Golden Globes for her role in Shakespeare in Love. She’s also received many nominations for her acting and singing talents, including best actress at the Golden Globes for her role in Proof in 2006 and Best Spoken Word Album for Children at the Grammy Awards for Brown Bear & Friends in 2009. In Country Strong, she performed the song “Coming Home,” which was nominated for best original song at the Academy Awards in 2010. In 2011, she received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Glee, and in 2013, she earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Informational Series or Special for her part in Stand Up to Cancer. Other notable film credits include Seven, Emma, Great Expectations, Sliding Doors, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Royal Tenenbaums, Sylvia, and Marvel’s Iron Man and Avengers franchises.

Beyond acting, Paltrow has shared her love of food with readers and home chefs in four New York Times–bestselling cookbooks—starting with My Father’s Daughter (2011), followed by It’s All Good (2013) and It’s All Easy (2016), which both hit number one. Her latest cookbook, The Clean Plate: Eat, Reset, Heal, was released by goop press on January 8, 2019. In the kitchen, Paltrow has become known for her delicious family recipes and healthy, nourishing meals that make eating clean less daunting and more fun.

Now Paltrow spends most of her time as the CEO of goop. Founded by Paltrow in 2008, goop was originally a lo-fi weekly newsletter, intended for family, friends, and friends of friends. A decade later, it’s grown into a 200-employee enterprise and a global brand that’s recognized for starting important conversations and pushing issues and ideas into the mainstream. goop makes its own branded lines of clothing, skin care, fragrance, vitamins and supplements, and body products. The robust content on the site focuses on wellness, food, style, work, and travel. goop’s city guides offer an insider’s perspective on the very best places to eat, shop, stay, and explore in the world’s most compelling destinations. Some of goop’s recent ventures include the book imprint goop press, goop Lab (the brand’s three permanent stores, located in Los Angeles, New York City, and London), the growing wellness summit In goop Health, a host of experiential pop-ups, and The goop Podcast.

Activism also plays a big role in Paltrow’s life. She’s involved with the Bruce Paltrow Oral Cancer Fund, a collaboration with the Oral Cancer Foundation that’s designed to commemorate her late father and help those in need. She served on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation for ten years, an organization devoted to alleviating problems caused by poverty in New York City, and she’s a global charity brand ambassador to the Frederique Constant Foundation, which directly supports the educational projects of the DonorsChoose organization. Finally, Paltrow is an advocate for clean beauty and label transparency, two pillars of the goop brand.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-18 19:02:49

1320) Hilary Swank

Summary

Hilary Ann Swank (born July 30, 1974) is an American actress and film producer. Swank first became known in 1992 for her role on the television series Camp Wilder and made her film debut with a minor role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992). She then had her breakthrough for starring as Julie Pierce in The Next Karate Kid (1994), the fourth installment of The Karate Kid franchise, and as Carly Reynolds on the eighth season of Beverly Hills, 90210 (1997–1998).

Swank came to international recognition for her performances as Brandon Teena, a transgender man, in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry (1999), and as Maggie Fitzgerald, an aspiring boxer, in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004). Both performances earned her widespread critical acclaim and numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards for Best Actress. She was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005.

Swank later ventured into producing with the films Amelia (2009), Conviction (2010), You're Not You (2014), and What They Had (2018), in all of which she also starred. Her other notable films include the television film Iron Jawed Angels (2004) and the feature films The Black Dahlia (2006), Freedom Writers (2007), The Resident (2011), The Homesman (2014), Logan Lucky (2017), The Hunt (2020), and Fatale (2020). In 2022, she starred in the television drama series Alaska Daily, which ran for one season.

Details

Hilary Swank, in full Hilary Ann Swank, (born July 30, 1974, Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S.), is an American actress who won two best actress Academy Awards, both for roles that were considered uncommonly difficult and courageous—a young transgender man in Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and a female professional boxer in Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Swank spent most of her early childhood in Bellingham, Washington, and, after her parents divorced in 1990, she and her mother moved to Los Angeles so that Swank could pursue her dream of becoming an actress. In the early 1990s she played guest roles on such TV shows as Harry and the Hendersons, Evening Shade, and Growing Pains, and she made her film debut as a high school student in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992).

Swank was a cast member in the short-lived TV sitcom Camp Wilder, and she starred as the title character in The Next Karate Kid (1994). Like her previous movie, it did not do well at the box office. Swank spent one season (1997–98) as a cast member of the popular TV series Beverly Hills 90210 before she was offered the role of Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry. In preparation for the part, Swank spent several weeks living as a man.

Swank’s next few films—the historical drama The Affair of the Necklace (2001), the thriller Insomnia (2002), and the sci-fi adventure The Core (2003)—were only marginally successful, though she did win praise for her performance as American suffragist Alice Paul in the TV movie Iron Jawed Angels (2004). Lightning struck again, however, when she took on the title role in Clint Eastwood’s boxing melodrama Million Dollar Baby. She transformed herself for the part, working out and gaining some 20 pounds (9 kg) in muscle mass. Swank’s later films included the crime movie The Black Dahlia (2006), the drama Freedom Writers (2007), the romance P.S. I Love You (2007), the Amelia Earhart biopic Amelia (2009), the thriller The Resident (2011), and the western The Homesman (2014).

In 2017 Swank appeared in Steven Soderbergh’s heist comedy Logan Lucky. She was later cast in the anthology TV series Trust (2018), about the family of oil baron J. Paul Getty. Swank also played a woman who returns home to help her family manage its matriarch’s progressing dementia in the drama What They Had (2018). In 2019 she appeared in the sci-fi thriller I Am Mother, which centres on a girl who begins to have doubts about the maternal robot raising her, and the following year in The Hunt, a controversial satire in which conservatives are kidnapped and hunted for sport by wealthy liberals. Swank then played an astronaut in the Netflix series Away (2020). In the thriller Fatale (2020), she portrayed a police detective who involves a one-night stand in an investigation. Swank returned to television for Alaska Daily (2022– ), about a disgraced journalist who joins an Alaskan newspaper, where she looks into the murders of indigenous women.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-21 00:43:51

1321) Julia Roberts

Summary

Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. Known for her leading roles in films encompassing a variety of genres, she has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and three Golden Globe Awards. The films in which she has starred have collectively grossed over $3.9 billion globally, making her one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.

After 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 starred in numerous commercially successful films throughout the 1990s, including the cult romantic comedies My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Notting Hill (1999) and Runaway Bride (1999), before winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the biographical drama Erin Brockovich (2000). Roberts achieved further film success in the following decades with 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), Wonder (2017), and Ticket to Paradise (2022). She also received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for the HBO television film The Normal Heart (2014), had her first regular television role in the first season of the Amazon Prime Video psychological thriller series Homecoming (2018), and portrayed Martha Mitchell in the Starz political limited series Gaslit (2022).

In addition to acting, Roberts runs the production company Red Om Films, through which she has served as an executive producer for various projects she has starred in, as well as for the first four films of the American Girl franchise (2004–2008). She has acted as the global ambassador for Lancôme since 2009. She was the world's highest-paid actress throughout the majority of the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s. She was paid $300,000 for Pretty Woman (1990), and received then-unprecedented fees of $20 million and $25 million for her roles in Erin Brockovich (2000) and Mona Lisa Smile (2003), respectively. 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 prostitute 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, co-starring Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper, 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 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. Also in 2022 Roberts reunited with Clooney for Ticket to Paradise, a rom-com in which a divorced couple try to stop their daughter’s wedding.

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.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-23 00:03:32

1322) Halle Berry

Summary

Halle Maria Berry (born Maria Halle Berry; August 14, 1966) is an American actress. She began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to roles in The Flintstones (1994) and Bulworth (1998) as well as the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Berry established herself as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood during the 2000s. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance of a struggling widow in the romantic drama Monster's Ball (2001), becoming the first African American woman and (for 21 years, the only) woman of color to have won the award. She took on high-profile roles such as Storm in four installments of the X-Men film series (2000–2014), the henchwoman of a robber in the thriller Swordfish (2001), Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day (2002), and the title role in the much-derided Catwoman (2004). For the latter, she received US$12.5 million.

A varying critical and commercial reception followed in subsequent years, with Perfect Stranger (2007), Cloud Atlas (2012) and The Call (2013) being among her notable film releases in that period. She launched a production company, 606 Films, in 2014 and has been involved in the production of a number of projects in which she performed, such as the CBS science fiction series Extant (2014–2015). She appeared in the action films Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and made her directorial debut with the Netflix drama Bruised (2020).

Berry has been a Revlon spokesmodel since 1996. She was formerly married to baseball player David Justice, singer-songwriter Eric Benét, and actor Olivier Martinez. She has two children, one with Martinez and another with model Gabriel Aubry.

Details

Halle Berry, (born August 14, 1966, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.), is an American film actress, the first African American to win the Academy Award for best actress. She received the honour for her nuanced portrayal of Leticia Musgrove, a down-on-her-luck character in Monster’s Ball (2001).

Berry was a teenage finalist in national beauty pageants, worked in modeling, and began acting on television in 1989. Film roles in Jungle Fever (1991), directed by Spike Lee, and in Boomerang (1992), starring Eddie Murphy, first brought her notice. She starred with Jessica Lange in Losing Isaiah (1995), a drama about adoption, before earning acclaim for her portrayal of film star Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American to be nominated for a best-actress Oscar, in the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999). That performance earned her Emmy and Golden Globe awards.

Berry was cast in action roles in X-Men (2000) and its sequels (2003, 2006, 2014), Swordfish (2001), and Die Another Day (2002), an installment in the James Bond spy series. The thriller Gothika (2003) and the Batman spin-off Catwoman (2004) were the first theatrical films in which she received top billing. After starring in the television movie Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Berry played opposite Bruce Willis in the crime film Perfect Stranger (2007). She then took lead roles in the character-oriented dramas Things We Lost in the Fire (2007), as a recent widow, and Frankie & Alice (2010), as a woman with dissociative identity disorder.

In 2011 Berry appeared in the ensemble romantic comedy New Year’s Eve, and the following year she starred as a diving instructor vexed by sharks in the thriller Dark Tide. In the elaborately structured epic Cloud Atlas (2012), she performed multiple roles, including those of a 1970s journalist and a male Asian doctor from 2144. Berry later starred in the thrillers The Call (2013) and Kidnap (2017), portraying an emergency call-centre operator attempting to thwart a serial killer and a mother whose son is abducted, respectively. She then appeared in the spy movie Kingsman: The Golden Circle and starred in Kings (both 2017), playing a foster parent living in Los Angeles during the riots of 1992. She later was cast in the action thriller John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum (2019). Berry made her directorial debut with Bruised (2020), in which she starred as a washed-up mixed martial arts fighter seeking redemption in the ring and as a mother. In the sci-fi thriller Moonfall (2022), she was cast as an astronaut on a mission to prevent the Moon from colliding with Earth.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-25 00:02:01

1323) Reese Witherspoon

Summary

Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon (born March 22, 1976) is an American actress and producer. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and 2015, and Forbes listed her among the World's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2019 and 2021. In 2021, Forbes named her the world's highest earning actress, and in 2023, she was named one of the richest women in America with an estimated net worth of $440 million.

Witherspoon began her career as a teenager, making her screen debut in The Man in the Moon (1991). Her breakthrough came in 1999 with a supporting role in Cruel Intentions, and for her portrayal of Tracy Flick in the black comedy Election. She gained wider recognition for playing Elle Woods in the comedy Legally Blonde (2001) and its 2003 sequel, and for starring in the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama (2002). In 2005, she gained critical acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for portraying June Carter Cash in the musical biopic Walk the Line.

Following a career downturn, during which her sole box-office success was the romantic drama Water for Elephants (2011), Witherspoon made a comeback by producing and starring as Cheryl Strayed in the drama Wild (2014), which earned her a second nomination for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. She has since worked primarily in television, producing and starring in several female-led literary adaptations under her company Hello Sunshine. These include the HBO drama series Big Little Lies (2017–2019), the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show (2019–present), and the Hulu miniseries Little Fires Everywhere (2020). For the first of these, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series. She has also produced the film adaptations Gone Girl (2014) and Where the Crawdads Sing (2022), and the miniseries adaptation Daisy Jones & the Six (2023).

Witherspoon also owns a clothing company, Draper James, and she is involved in children's and women's advocacy organizations. She serves on the board of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) and was named Global Ambassador of Avon Products in 2007, serving as honorary chair of the charitable Avon Foundation dedicated to women's causes.

Details

Reese Witherspoon, in full Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon, (born March 22, 1976, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.), is an American actress who appeared in a wide range of genres but was perhaps best known for her romantic comedies, in which she often portrayed charming yet determined characters.

Witherspoon’s father was a U.S. Air Force doctor, and the family lived in West Germany for several years before moving to Nashville, Tennessee. As a child, she worked as a model and appeared in commercials. In 1991 she made her big-screen debut, portraying a tomboy in The Man in the Moon. That coming-of-age drama was critically acclaimed, and Witherspoon garnered accolades for her performance. Other roles followed, including a supporting role on the television miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove (1993), before she took a break from acting to briefly attend Stanford University in 1994–95. Resuming her career, she appeared in such notable films as the dark crime comedy Freeway (1996), which was inspired by the Grimm’s fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood”; Pleasantville (1998), a comedy centring on teenaged siblings in the 1990s who become trapped in a 1950s TV sitcom; and Cruel Intentions (1999), a modern take on the 18th-century novel Dangerous Liaisons, set in high school. The latter film costarred Ryan Phillippe, to whom she was married from 1999 to 2008.

In 1999 Witherspoon earned rave reviews for her portrayal of Tracy Flick, an overly ambitious high-school student running for class president, in Alexander Payne’s black comedy Election. The following year she was cast against type as the girlfriend of a serial killer (played by Christian Bale) in the violent satire American Psycho, an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s controversial novel. Also in 2000 Witherspoon had a memorable turn as the sister of Jennifer Aniston’s character on the popular television series Friends, and she provided a voice on the animated series King of the Hill.

Returning to the big screen, Witherspoon had her first major box-office hit with Legally Blonde (2001), a romantic comedy in which she played Elle Woods, a spoiled sorority girl who follows her ex-boyfriend to Harvard Law School; she reprised the role for the 2003 sequel. During that time she also appeared in the hugely popular comedy Sweet Home Alabama (2002) and in several adaptations, notably The Importance of Being Earnest (2002), which was based on the play by Oscar Wilde.

Witherspoon turned to more serious fare with Walk the Line (2005), an acclaimed biopic of country singer Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix). For the role of June Carter, she learned to sing and to play the autoharp, and her commitment to the part helped Witherspoon win an Academy Award for best actress. She then appeared in a series of romantic comedies, including the box-office hit Four Christmases (2008) and the less-seen How Do You Know (2010) and This Means War (2012). In 2011 she starred in the Depression-era drama Water for Elephants, portraying a performer in a traveling circus who is caught in a love triangle (Robert Pattinson and Christoph Waltz). Better received was Mud (2012), in which she had a supporting role as the girlfriend of a troubled loner (Matthew McConaughey) who befriends two boys.

Continuing with dramatic roles, Witherspoon appeared in The Good Lie (2014) as a job recruiter who helps Sudanese refugees who have relocated to the United States and in Wild (2014) as a woman who hikes the Pacific Crest Trail in an effort to overcome the effects of a series of tragedies. The latter film was adapted from the memoir by Cheryl Strayed, the rights to which Witherspoon had purchased through her production company. Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress.

In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice (2014), adapted from the comic crime noir by Thomas Pynchon, she played the love interest of a private investigator (Joaquin Phoenix). The farcical Hot Pursuit (2015) featured Witherspoon as a straight-laced police officer who must protect the widow of a criminal. She later supplied the voice of a pig who enters a singing contest in the animated film Sing (2016) and its sequel (2021). In 2017 she portrayed an overachieving mother in the HBO series Big Little Lies, adapted from Liane Moriarty’s best-selling novel; her costars included Laura Dern, Nicole Kidman, and Zoë Kravitz. Later that year Witherspoon appeared in the romantic comedy Home Again. She played the role of Mrs. Whatsit in the 2018 film adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s acclaimed 1962 sci-fi novel, A Wrinkle in Time. In 2019 Witherspoon reprised her role in Big Little Lies for a second season. Later that year The Morning Show, a series on Apple TV+, made its debut. It featured Witherspoon as a news reporter and also starred Aniston and Steve Carell.

In 2020 Witherspoon appeared in the Hulu miniseries Little Fires Everywhere, which was based on Celeste Ng’s novel about racial tensions and classism in an affluent suburb. She later starred with Ashton Kutcher in the romantic comedy Your Place or Mine (2023).

Witherspoon’s first book, Whiskey in a Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits (2018), is a cheery primer on Southern etiquette, cooking, and beauty.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-27 00:41:40

1324) Helen Mirren

Details

Dame Helen Mirren DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She is the recipient of numerous accolades and is the only performer to have achieved both the American and the British Triple Crowns of Acting. Mirren has received an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for portraying the same character in The Audience, three British Academy Television Awards for her performance as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Children's and Family Emmy Award.

Mirren's stage performance as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra at the National Youth Theatre in 1965 provided her an opportunity to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, before making her West End stage debut in 1975. She subsequently went on to achieve success in film and television, appearing in films such as The Madness of King George (1994), Gosford Park (2001), and The Last Station (2009), receiving Academy Award nominations for each of those performances. For her role on Prime Suspect, which ran from 1991 to 2006, she won three consecutive British Academy Television Awards for Best Actress (1992, 1993 and 1994)—a record of consecutive wins shared with Dame Julie Walters—and two Primetime Emmy Awards. She played Queen Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), and Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen (2006); she is the only actor to have portrayed both of the regnant Elizabeths on screen.

After her breakthrough role in The Long Good Friday (1980), Mirren appeared in a variety of other films including Cal (1984), for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, 2010 (1984), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), Calendar Girls (2003), The Tempest (2010), The Debt (2010), Hitchcock (2012), The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), Woman in Gold (2015), Eye in the Sky (2015), Trumbo (2015), and The Leisure Seeker (2017). She has also appeared in several action films such as Red (2010) and its sequel Red 2 (2013), as well as in the Fast & Furious film franchise The Fate of the Furious (2017), Hobbs & Shaw (2019), and F9 (2021).

In the Queen's 2003 Birthday Honours, Mirren was appointed a Dame (DBE) for services to drama, with investiture taking place at Buckingham Palace. She's received numerous honours including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013, the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2014, and Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2022.

Additional Information

Helen Mirren, original name Ilynea Lydia Mironoff, (born July 26, 1945, London, England), is a British actress especially known for her role as Detective Jane Tennison on the television series Prime Suspect (1991–96, 2003, and 2006) and for her subtle and sympathetic portrayal of Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006), for which she won an Academy Award.

Early life and stage career

Mirren was born in London of a Russian-born father and a Scottish mother. (The family’s last name was Mironoff until Helen’s father decided to Anglicize it when she was 10 years old.) She joined Britain’s National Youth Theatre at age 18 and the Royal Shakespeare Company a year later. She spent a large part of the next 15 years working with the latter, appearing in such roles as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida and Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra.

The Madness of King George, Gosford Park, and The Queen

While still starring in theatre productions, Mirren began her film career in her early 20s. Her first film to be released was A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968), which was followed by dozens of others, including the English gangster movie The Long Good Friday (1980); the King Arthur spoof Excalibur (1981); and a love story set in Northern Ireland, Cal (1984), for which she won the best actress award at the Cannes film festival. Mirren later played the unfaithful wife of a grotesque English thief in the controversial The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989) and Queen Charlotte in The Madness of King George (1994), a role for which she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. In 1997 she married director Taylor Hackford.

Mirren extended her successful film career into the 21st century. She was nominated a second time for a best supporting actress Oscar, for her role as an English housekeeper in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park (2001). In Calendar Girls (2003) she played a middle-aged Yorkshire woman who convinces her friends to pose nude for a calendar benefiting leukemia research. Mirren won both a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award and an Academy Award for best actress for The Queen (2006), a fictionalized account of the ineffectual response of Elizabeth II to the untimely death of Diana, princess of Wales, in 1997. She subsequently appeared in the adventure movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) and portrayed a newspaper editor in the thriller State of Play (2009).

Later films

Mirren’s later film roles continued to demonstrate her versatility. Her supporting turn as Leo Tolstoy’s wife, Sofya, in The Last Station (2009) earned her a fourth Oscar nomination. She then portrayed a former CIA assassin in the action comedy Red (2010) and, in a bit of cross-gender casting, starred in Julie Taymor’s 2010 film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest as the sorceress Prospera (originally Prospero). Mirren appeared as a brassy busybody in Brighton Rock (2010), an adaptation of the Graham Greene crime novel, and as a no-nonsense nanny in the comedy Arthur (2011). In the political thriller The Debt (2011), she played a former Mossad agent grappling with her past.

In 2012 Mirren portrayed Alma Reville, the wife of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, in the biographical Hitchcock. The following year she provided a voice for the animated Monsters University and returned to the steely role she had played in Red for the film’s sequel, Red 2. She crossed blades with Indian actor Om Puri in The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), in which the two played the owners of competing restaurants. In Woman in Gold (2015) Mirren portrayed Maria Altmann, a Jewish refugee who successfully sued the Austrian government to recover paintings by Gustav Klimt stolen from her family by the Nazis during World War II. Eye in the Sky (2015) featured Mirren as a British colonel who faces a moral dilemma while remotely commanding a military operation in Kenya intended to apprehend a terrorist.

Mirren’s subsequent movies from this period included the drama Collateral Beauty (2016), the sentimental comedy The Leisure Seeker (2017), and the period horror film Winchester (2018). She played the villainous Mother Ginger in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018), an adaptation of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 19th-century ballet. Among her film credits from 2019 were the thriller Anna, in which she portrayed the KGB handler of a model-turned-assassin, and The Good Liar, a cat-and-mouse drama that also featured Ian McKellen. In The Duke (2020), a dramedy based on a true story, Mirren was cast as the wife of a taxi driver who steals a famous painting. She then appeared in F9: The Fast Saga (2021), an installment in the Fast and Furious action series. In 2023 she provided the voice of the narrator in Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s film about the iconic doll.

Television work and Broadway

In addition to her film work, Mirren starred in various television roles. Her most-notable performance was as Jane Tennison, a tough detective constantly under pressure to prove that she can succeed in a traditionally male field, in the BBC television series Prime Suspect. The show aired for seven seasons and earned her three BAFTA Awards (1992–94) and two Emmy Awards (1996 and 2007). She also won Emmy Awards for titular performances in the TV movie The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999) and the miniseries Elizabeth I (2005). In the HBO movie Phil Spector (2013), about the titular record producer’s first murder trial, she portrayed a tenacious defense attorney. In 2019 Mirren was cast in the role of another strong-willed monarch in the HBO miniseries Catherine the Great, about the empress of Russia. Two years later she appeared in the sci-fi anthology series Solos. She then costarred with Harrison Ford in 1923 (2022– ), a prequel to the hugely popular series Yellowstone. Mirren was cast as the matriarch of a ranching family in Montana.

Mirren made her Broadway debut in 1995 as Natalya in Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, and she returned in 2002 in August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death; both performances generated Tony Award nominations. Additional British stage credits included Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending (2000) and Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (2003). She received a Laurence Olivier Award for The Audience (2013), for which she reprised the role of Queen Elizabeth II. Mirren also garnered a Tony Award for her performance in a 2015 Broadway production of the play.

Mirren was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2003.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-29 00:10:31

1325) Marion Cotillard

Summary

Marion Cotillard (born 30 September 1975)[2] is a French actress. Known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters in both European and Hollywood productions, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, a European Film Award, a Lumières Award and two César Awards. She became a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2010, and was promoted to Officer in 2016, the same year she was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour. She has served as a spokeswoman for Greenpeace since 2001. She was the face of the Lady Dior handbag for nine years, and since 2020 she is the face of the fragrance Chanel No. 5.

Cotillard started acting as a child in theatre and in TV films. She had her first English-language role in the TV series Highlander (1993), and made her feature film debut in The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed (1994). Her breakthrough came in the successful French film Taxi (1998), which earned her a César Award nomination for Most Promising Actress. She made her Hollywood debut in Big Fish (2003), and won her first César Award for Best Supporting Actress for A Very Long Engagement (2004). She had her major English-language role up to that point in A Good Year (2006).

For her portrayal of French singer Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose (2007), Cotillard won her second César Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Lumières Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first and (as of 2023) only actor to win an Academy Award for a French-language performance, and also the second actress to have won this award for a non-English language performance. She earned several critics' awards for The Immigrant (2013) and Two Days, One Night (2014), three more Golden Globe nominations for Nine (2009), Rust and Bone (2012), and Annette (2021), and received a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Two Days, One Night in 2015, her second nomination for a French-language film, becoming one of only seven actors to receive multiple Academy Award nominations for non-English language performances. She has continued to star in major English-language films such as Public Enemies (2009), Inception (2010), Contagion (2011), Midnight in Paris (2011), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Macbeth (2015), Allied (2016), and Annette (2021).

Cotillard has played Joan of Arc on stage in several countries between 2005 and 2022 in the oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake. She has narrated several documentaries and provided voice acting for the animated films The Little Prince (2015), April and the Extraordinary World (2015), the French version of Minions (2015), and Charlotte (2021). Her other notable French, Belgian and Canadian films include La Belle Verte (1996), Pretty Things (2001), Love Me If You Dare (2003), Dikkenek (2006), Little White Lies (2010), and It's Only the End of the World (2016).

Details

Marion Cotillard, (born September 30, 1975, Paris, France), is a French actress whose Academy Award-winning performance as Edith Piaf in La Môme (2007; also released as La Vie en rose) propelled her to international fame.

Cotillard grew up in Orléans, France, in an artistic household: her father, Jean-Claude Cotillard, was an actor and director, and her mother, Niseema Theillaud, was an actress. Her parents performed together in a theatre troupe, and Cotillard got her first taste of acting when she appeared onstage in a play written by her father. At the age of 16, she moved to Paris to pursue a professional acting career.

In her first prominent film role, in the Luc Besson-penned Taxi (1998), Cotillard played the girlfriend of a pizza delivery man turned vigilante taxi driver. The movie spawned two sequels over the next five years, and the Taxi franchise became one of France’s most successful. In 2005 she earned a César Award, France’s most-esteemed film award, for her performance as a vengeful prostitute in Un Long Dimanche de fiançailles (2004; A Very Long Engagement). While that film and the Taxi series cemented Cotillard’s star status in her own country, she became known to American audiences with her turn in American director Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2003), in which she had a small but memorable role. Her next foray into Hollywood was less successful: she appeared in the poorly received A Good Year (2006), which starred Russell Crowe.

In 2007 Cotillard garnered international attention for her portrayal of the legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf in La Môme. Cotillard, who stunningly captured the gauche grace of Piaf, was widely and effusively praised for her mercurial, often-tortured performance that captured the diminutive singer in a way rarely seen on-screen. She won numerous honours for her portrayal, including an Academy Award, a César, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe. She later starred in Public Enemies (2009) as the girlfriend of criminal mastermind John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp), who was responsible for robbing a string of American banks during the Great Depression. In 2009 Cotillard also appeared in Nine. The musical featured an all-star cast that included Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Kate Hudson.

After furthering her career with a role as a femme fatale in the brainy science fiction thriller Inception (2010), Cotillard returned to France to star in the ensemble dramedy Les Petits Mouchoirs (2010; Little White Lies); she also appeared in the sequel (2019). In 2011 she portrayed the mistress of Pablo Picasso in Woody Allen’s romantic fantasy Midnight in Paris, as well as a doctor tracking the spread of a deadly virus in Steven Soderbergh’s thriller Contagion. Cotillard’s character in The Dark Knight Rises (2012) was the love interest for the tortured superhero Batman. In the gritty romance De rouille et d’os (2012; Rust and Bone), she starred as an orca trainer struggling to recover from the loss of her legs in a gruesome occupational accident. Cotillard evoked the vicissitudes of a Polish woman recently arrived in 1920s America in The Immigrant (2013).

In the Dardenne brothers’ Deux jours, une nuit (2014; Two Days, One Night), she evoked the struggles of a young woman attempting to save her job by persuading her colleagues to forfeit their bonuses. Her moving performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. Cotillard then portrayed the murderous wife of the title character in Macbeth (2015), a film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic play. Her 2016 credits included the romantic thriller Allied, in which she starred with Brad Pitt and portrayed a member of the French Resistance who might be a German spy, and the action adventure Assassin’s Creed, based on a video game.

In 2017 Cotillard starred in the romantic thriller Les Fantômes d’Ismaël (Ismael’s Ghosts) and in the comedy Rock’n Roll, playing herself; the latter featured her longtime boyfriend Guillaume Canet, who also directed the film. Gueule d’ange (2018; Angel Face) centres on an alcoholic mother and her young daughter. Cotillard later lent her voice to the family comedy Dolittle (2020). Her credits from 2021 included the unconventional musical Annette, in which she played an opera singer.

In addition to her film work, Cotillard used her high public profile to bring attention to the aims of Greenpeace, working for the environmental organization as a spokesperson. She also contributed to Dessins pour le climat (“Drawings for the Climate”), a book of drawings published by Greenpeace in 2005 to raise funds for the group.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-08-30 21:46:15

1326) Sandra Bullock

Summary

Sandra Annette Bullock (born July 26, 1964) is an American actress and producer. She has received numerous awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. She was the world's highest-paid actress in 2010 and 2014. In 2010, she was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world.

After making her acting debut with a minor role in the thriller Hangmen (1987), Bullock received early attention for her supporting role in the action film Demolition Man (1993). Her breakthrough in the action thriller Speed (1994) led to leading roles in the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995), and the dramas A Time to Kill (1996) and Hope Floats (1998). She achieved further success in the following decades with the comedies Miss Congeniality (2000), Two Weeks Notice (2002), The Proposal (2009), The Heat (2013), Ocean's 8 (2018), and The Lost City (2022); the dramas Crash (2004) and The Unforgivable (2021); and the thrillers Premonition (2007) and Bird Box (2018). For her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy in the biographical drama The Blind Side (2009), Bullock won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was nominated for the same award for playing an astronaut stranded in space in the science fiction thriller Gravity (2013), which is her highest-grossing live-action film.

In addition to acting, Bullock is the founder of the production company Fortis Films. She has produced some of the films in which she has starred, including Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005) and All About Steve (2009), and served as an executive producer on the ABC sitcom George Lopez (2002–2007), on which she made numerous appearances. Dubbed "America's sweetheart" by the media, Bullock was also named the Most Beautiful Woman by People magazine in 2015.

Details

Sandra Bullock, in full Sandra Annette Bullock, (born July 26, 1964, Arlington, Virginia, U.S.), is an American actress and film producer known for her charismatic energy and wit onscreen, especially as girl-next-door characters in romantic comedies.

Bullock spent most of her childhood in Nürnberg, West Germany, though she often traveled with her mother, who was a German opera singer, and occasionally performed in her mother’s productions. Bullock attended high school in Virginia, and she later studied drama at East Carolina University. In 1986 she moved to New York, where she studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. After receiving positive attention for the Off-Broadway play No Time Flat, Bullock made her motion-picture debut in Hangmen (1987) and took supporting roles in such films as Religion, Inc. (1989) and the television movie Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989). Her first leading role was in Who Shot Pat? (1989), a romantic coming-of-age film that examines racial tensions in the 1950s. In 1990 Bullock starred in the short-lived TV series Working Girl, playing an ambitious New York City executive.

In 1992 Bullock displayed her earnest charm in the romantic comedy Love Potion No. 9. This led to a series of films the following year, including the thriller The Vanishing; Demolition Man, in which she starred alongside action star Sylvester Stallone, and the drama Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. Her big breakthrough, however, was the thriller Speed (1994), about a policeman (played by Keanu Reeves) who, with the assistance of a plucky passenger (Bullock), must deactivate a bomb on a bus. In 1996 Bullock earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance in the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995). Seeking parts outside her typical romantic comedy roles, she appeared in the thriller The Net (1995); A Time to Kill (1996), based on the legal novel of the same name by best-selling author John Grisham; and In Love and War (1996), a drama about Ernest Hemingway’s wartime romance that inspired his novel A Farewell to Arms (1929).

In the late 1990s Bullock founded the production company Fortis Films, which in 1998 produced the romantic drama Hope Floats and the comedy Practical Magic; Bullock starred in both movies. That same year her voice was featured in the animated The Prince of Egypt. She returned to familiar territory as an endearing but eccentric lead in the romantic comedy Forces of Nature (1999), opposite Ben Affleck. In 2000 her performance in 28 Days was praised, as she balanced humour with vulnerability to portray a writer and party girl who is sent to rehabilitation. Later that year Bullock had a box office hit with Miss Congeniality, a comedy in which she played an FBI agent who goes undercover as a beauty pageant contestant.

Continuing to pursue work in all genres of film, she starred as a homicide detective in Murder by Numbers (2002), as a playwright who has a difficult relationship with her mother in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002), and as an underappreciated lawyer in Two Weeks Notice (2002). She later appeared as the racist wife of a Los Angeles district attorney in the critically acclaimed Crash (2004). Bullock took another serious role when she portrayed the American author Harper Lee in Infamous (2006), a biopic about writer Truman Capote. In 2006 she reunited with Reeves in The Lake House, a romance about two people who fall in love by sending letters forward and backward in time.

In 2009, after appearing in the romantic comedies The Proposal and All About Steve, Bullock starred as a determined mother in the sports drama The Blind Side; she won numerous accolades for her performance, including an Academy Award for best actress. Another maternal role followed in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), a film about a boy coping with the death of his father in the September 11 attacks. In 2013 Bullock earned laughs as half of a mismatched pair of female FBI agents in the broad, raunchy comedy The Heat. Later that year she starred with George Clooney in Gravity, an acclaimed drama about astronauts struggling to survive after their spacecraft has been destroyed; Bullock earned an Oscar nomination for her performance. She then voiced the villainous Scarlett Overkill in the animated comedy Minions and depicted the struggles of an American political strategist guiding a Bolivian presidential campaign in the dark farce Our Brand Is Crisis (both 2015).

In 2018 Bullock played the mastermind of a jewelry heist in Ocean’s 8, the female-driven reboot of the Ocean’s franchise. She was also cast as a mother who takes a perilous journey blindfolded in Bird Box, a supernatural thriller in which an obscure force causes destruction to those who look upon it. In her next film, The Unforgivable (2021), Bullock portrayed a convicted murderer who searches for redemption and her younger sister after being released from prison. She returned to comedy with The Lost City (2022), about a romance writer who is kidnapped.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-02 00:03:49

1327) Natalie Portman

Summary

Natalie Portman (née Hershlag, June 9, 1981) is an Israeli-born American actress. She has had a prolific film career since her teenage years and has starred in various blockbusters and independent films, receiving multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.

Portman began her acting career at age twelve, when she starred as the young protégée of a hitman in the action film Léon: The Professional (1994). While in high school, she made her Broadway debut in a 1998 production of The Diary of a Young Girl and gained international recognition for starring as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999). From 1999 to 2003, Portman attended Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology. She reduced her number of acting roles, but continued to act in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (2002, 2005) and in The Public Theater's 2001 revival of Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull.

In 2004, Portman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for playing a mysterious stripper in the romantic drama Closer. Portman's career further advanced with her starring roles as Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta (2005), Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and a troubled ballerina in the psychological horror film Black Swan (2010), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She went on to star in the romantic comedy No Strings Attached (2011) and portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic Jackie (2016), which earned her a third Academy Award nomination. Portman has also featured as Jane Foster in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Thor (2011), Thor: The Dark World (2013), and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), which established her as one of the world's highest-paid actresses.

Portman's directorial ventures include the short film Eve (2008) and the biographical drama A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015). She is vocal about the politics of the United States and Israel, and is an advocate for animal rights and environmental causes. She is married to dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she has two children.

Details

Natalie Portman, byname of Natalie Hershlag, (born June 9, 1981, Jerusalem), is an Israeli American actress known for the aristocratic poise and nuance with which she evinced the struggles of complex precocious young women.

Natalie Hershlag was born in Jerusalem; her mother was American and her father, who later became a fertility doctor, was Israeli. In 1984 the family moved to the United States, eventually settling in Syosset, Long Island, New York. After a brief stint in modeling, Hershlag turned to acting, securing her first film role in Léon (1994; The Professional). She starred opposite French actor Jean Reno as an adolescent girl training to be an assassin after her parents have been murdered. Hershlag assumed her maternal grandmother’s last name at this time in order to protect herself from unwanted attention as a result of the role, which had sexual overtones. She then appeared in Michael Mann’s crime thriller Heat (1995) as a troubled teenager.

Portman worked steadily, accepting supporting roles in the relationship drama Beautiful Girls (1996), Woody Allen’s musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and Tim Burton’s alien-invasion comedy Mars Attacks! (1996) before appearing as the elaborately costumed Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequel Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999). Portman reprised the role in the film’s two sequels (2002, 2005). The trilogy, though spurned by critics and excoriated by many aficionados of the earlier films, was nonetheless highly lucrative and established Portman as a recognizable face.

During that time Portman also starred as the resentful daughter to Susan Sarandon’s flamboyant single mother in Anywhere but Here (1999) and as a homeless and pregnant teen who gives birth in a Wal-Mart store in Where the Heart Is (2000). In addition to acting, Portman attended Harvard University, graduating in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. In 2004 she won acclaim for the humanity she brought to both the romantic comedy Garden State and the Mike Nichols relationship drama Closer. The latter role earned her a Golden Globe for best supporting actress and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

Portman again demonstrated the facility with which she alternated between genres as a shaven-headed revolutionary in the dystopian fantasy V for Vendetta (2005), a brassy gambler in Wong Kar-Wai’s moody romance My Blueberry Nights (2007), and the doomed queen Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). She played a grieving military spouse in Brothers (2009) and both directed and appeared in segments of New York, I Love You (2009), a compilation of short films. Her role as the disturbed ballerina Nina Sayers in the thriller Black Swan (2010) won her an Academy Award for best actress. During the filming of that movie, she met Benjamin Millepied, a dancer and choreographer, and the couple married in 2012.

Later roles for Portman included a dowdy supermarket cashier in Hesher (2010) and a scientist in the action fantasies Thor (2011), Thor: The Dark World (2013), and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). She also took on lighter fare, appearing opposite Ashton Kutcher in the romantic comedy No Strings Attached (2011) and portraying a warrior princess in the bawdy period comedy Your Highness (2011). Portman then appeared as an unfaithful wife in Terrence Malick’s Hollywood parable Knight of Cups (2015) and as a hard-bitten pioneer in the vengeance tale Jane Got a Gun (2016).

Portman earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Jackie (2016), about Jacqueline Kennedy in the days after her husband’s assassination. She next portrayed a waitress seduced by a music producer in Malick’s Song to Song (2017), a romantic drama set against the Austin, Texas, music scene, and then led a largely female cast in Annihilation (2018), a sci-fi thriller in which she played a biologist who goes on a dangerous secret mission. Portman then garnered critical acclaim for her performance as a pop music diva staging her comeback in Vox Lux (2018), but her next movies, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (2018) and Lucy in the Sky (2019), were not well received. In 2020 she narrated the family documentary Dolphin Reef.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-04 00:10:36

1328) Meryl Streep

Summary

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

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

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

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

Details

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

Early life

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later films

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

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

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

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-06 00:36:36

1329) Jennifer Lawrence

Summary

Jennifer Shrader Lawrence (born August 15, 1990) is an American actress. Lawrence is known for starring in both action film franchises and independent dramas, and her films have grossed over $6 billion worldwide. The world's highest-paid actress in 2015 and 2016, she appeared in Time's 100 most influential people in the world list in 2013 and the Forbes Celebrity 100 list from 2013 to 2016.

Lawrence began her career as a teenager with guest roles on television. Her first major role was as a main cast member on the sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007–2009). She made her film debut with a supporting role in the drama Garden Party (2008), and had her breakthrough playing a poverty-stricken teenager in the independent film Winter's Bone (2010). Lawrence gained stardom portraying the mutant Mystique in the X-Men film series (2011–2019) and Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games film series (2012–2015). The latter made her the highest-grossing action heroine.

Lawrence collaborated with filmmaker David O. Russell on three films, which earned her various accolades. For portraying a troubled young widow in the romance Silver Linings Playbook (2012) she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the second-youngest winner in the category at age 22. Lawrence won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for playing an unpredictable wife in the black comedy American Hustle (2013). She also received Golden Globe Awards for both, and for portraying businesswoman Joy Mangano in the biopic Joy (2015). A series of mixed reviewed films and the media scrutiny of her role choices led to a small break from acting. Lawrence returned with the streaming film Don't Look Up (2021), after which she produced and starred in the drama Causeway (2022) and comedy No Hard Feelings (2023).

Lawrence is a feminist and advocates for women's reproductive rights. In 2015, she founded the Jennifer Lawrence Foundation, which advocates for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Special Olympics. Lawrence formed the production company Excellent Cadaver in 2018. She is an active member of the nonpartisan nonprofit anti-corruption organization RepresentUs and has served as a spokesperson in its videos about protecting democracy.

Details

Jennifer Lawrence, in full Jennifer Shrader Lawrence, (born August 15, 1990, Indian Hills, northeast of Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.), is an American actress who was known for her versatility on-screen and her accessible, honest off-screen persona. At the age of 22 she won the Academy Award for best actress for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook (2012).

Lawrence knew from an early age that she wanted to act, and she began performing in school plays and local theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. At the age of 14, in 2005, hoping to break into acting and modeling, she went with her mother to New York City to visit talent agencies. While there, she was discovered by a talent scout and subsequently auditioned for his agency. She spent the summer of that year in New York, performing small acting roles and modeling for advertisements. On the basis of that success, after Lawrence’s early graduation from high school, the family moved to Los Angeles to allow her to further her career.

From 2007 to 2009 Lawrence played the teenaged daughter of a psychotherapist in the cable television comedy The Bill Engvall Show. She soon followed that with the role that proved to be her big break, the lead in the movie Winter’s Bone (2010). For her portrayal of Ree, a poor rural teenager tracking down her missing criminal father in the Ozark Mountains, Lawrence, at the age of 20, received her first best actress Academy Award nomination.

Lawrence rose to greater fame in the role of the shape-shifting mutant Mystique in X-Men: First Class (2011), a role she reprised in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), and Dark Phoenix (2019). She made the transition to stardom upon being cast as heroine Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (2012)—the film version of the first book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins’s runaway best-selling young-adult novels. As Katniss, Lawrence played a character with some similarities to Ree, another tough teenager using outdoor survival skills to stay alive in dire circumstances. Lawrence also starred in another notable film in 2012, director David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook. In that movie she played Tiffany Maxwell, a young widow who befriends a man struggling with mental illness (played by Bradley Cooper). She won critical acclaim in the popular film and became the second youngest woman to win the Academy Award for best actress (2013). Lawrence then appeared as the wife of a con artist (Christian Bale) in Russell’s cat-and-mouse romp American Hustle (2013); the role earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.

She reprised the role of Katniss in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014), and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015). Lawrence again paired with Cooper in Serena (2014), a poorly received drama set in a lumber camp in 1929. In 2015 she portrayed a benighted single mother whose entrepreneurial talents propel her to wealth and success in Russell’s Joy; for her performance, Lawrence received her fourth Oscar nomination. She narrated A Beautiful Planet (2016), a documentary featuring footage of Earth taken from the International Space Station. Her other 2016 credit was the sci-fi romance Passengers, in which she played a writer who was among 5,000 hibernating intergalactic travelers heading to another planet. In 2017 Lawrence starred in the psychological thriller Mother! as the second wife of a famous poet, whose peaceful life in a secluded mansion is disrupted by the arrival of strangers. She then played a former ballerina who becomes a Russian spy in the thriller Red Sparrow (2018). In the dramedy Don’t Look Up (2021), Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio were cast as astronomers who try to warn humankind of an impending comet strike that will destroy Earth.

During this time Lawrence began to seek out more personal projects. This led to her starring role in Causeway (2022), an understated drama about an Afghanistan War veteran who returns home after suffering a brain injury.

Lawrence’s personal life was often a source of media attention. In 2019 she married Cooke Maroney, an art dealer. Three years later the couple’s son, Cy, was born.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-07 21:28:18

1330) Cate Blanchett

Details

Catherine Elise Blanchett (born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actress and producer. Regarded as one of the best performers of her generation, she is known for her versatile work across independent films, blockbusters, and stage. She has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards.

A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Blanchett began her career on the Australian stage. Making her film debut in 1997, she came to international prominence for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in biographical period drama Elizabeth (1998), for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. Her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in the biopic The Aviator (2004) won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing a neurotic former socialite in the comedy-drama Blue Jasmine (2013). Blanchett's other Oscar-nominated roles are in Notes on a Scandal (2006), I'm Not There (2007), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Carol (2015), and Tár (2022), making her the most-nominated Australian. Her biggest commercial successes include The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Cinderella (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Ocean's 8 (2018), and Don't Look Up (2021).

Blanchett has performed in over twenty stage productions. She and her husband, Andrew Upton, were the artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company from 2008 to 2013. Some of her stage roles during this period were in acclaimed revivals of A Streetcar Named Desire, Uncle Vanya, Big and Little and The Maids. She made her Broadway debut in 2017 in The Present, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She has also received two Emmy Award nominations for producing and starring as Phyllis Schlafly in the period drama miniseries Mrs. America (2020).

Blanchett is the recipient of several honorary awards. The Australian government awarded her the Centenary Medal in 2001, and she was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2017. In 2012, she was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. In 2015, she was honoured by the Museum of Modern Art and received the British Film Institute Fellowship. Blanchett has received honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the University of New South Wales, University of Sydney and Macquarie University. Time named her one of its 100 most influential people in the world in 2007. In 2018, she was ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses.

Additional Information

Cate Blanchett, in full Catherine Elise Blanchett, (born May 14, 1969, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), is an Australian actress known for her multidimensional characters and wide range of roles.

Early life and career

Blanchett grew up in suburban Melbourne with an Australian mother and an American father, who died when Blanchett was 10 years old. She studied art history at the University of Melbourne before graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992. Her professional acting career began on the Australian stage. She performed with the Sydney Theatre Company in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Timothy Daly’s Kafka Dances. In 1993 she starred opposite Geoffrey Rush in David Mamet’s Oleanna, as a student who accuses her teacher of sexual harassment.

Films: Elizabeth and the Lord of the Rings series

Blanchett made her television debut in 1993, and she soon landed leading roles in the miniseries Heartland (1994) and Bordertown (1995). She moved to feature films with Paradise Road (1997), a historical drama about a Japanese war camp in World War II. Blanchett’s reputation grew with her next two feature films: the bittersweet romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997; later released as The Wedding Party) and Oscar and Lucinda (1997), in which she played a rebellious heiress ostracized from Australian society. Her breakthrough role was as young Queen Elizabeth I in the 1998 film Elizabeth, which earned her an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award for best actress. Blanchett was praised for capturing the emotional complexity of the queen’s development from a lovestruck adolescent to an indomitable political force who represses her emotional vulnerability.

Blanchett subsequently appeared in films that covered numerous genres and character types, securing her reputation as a versatile actress. She took supporting parts in Pushing Tin (1999), a comedy about air traffic controllers, and in the dramatic thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). As the lead character in The Gift (2000), she played a psychic whose visions involve her in the investigation of a local woman’s murder. In 2001 she portrayed a kidnapped housewife who falls in love with her captors in Bandits. She next appeared as the elf queen Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, and 2003), the film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy.

In the western The Missing (2003), Blanchett brought her trademark complexity to the role of a young woman forced to confront her estranged father (played by Tommy Lee Jones) in order to reclaim her kidnapped daughter. She earned further critical acclaim for her performance as an Irish journalist who runs afoul of the mob in Veronica Guerin (2003). In 2004 she starred in Wes Anderson’s offbeat comedy The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, playing a pregnant reporter in a bizarre love triangle with the ship’s captain (played by Bill Murray) and someone who may be his son (played by Owen Wilson).

Hepburn, Dylan, and Academy Awards

Returning to her study of historical characters, Blanchett portrayed Hollywood star Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (2004), Martin Scorsese’s biopic of the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes, and won an Academy Award for the role. She later appeared in the dramas Babel (2006), The Good German (2006), and Notes on a Scandal (2006). In the unconventional biopic I’m Not There (2007), she starred as one of several characters based on the musician Bob Dylan at different stages in his life. As the character Jude, a star making the dramatic shift from acoustic folk to electric rock, Blanchett was praised for capturing the elusive and bewildering qualities attributed to Dylan. Her performance earned her another Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award for best supporting actress.

In 2007 Blanchett reprised her role as the English queen in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which explores Elizabeth’s political battles with Spain and her personal relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh; she earned another Oscar nomination for her performance. The following year she played the Soviet villain Irina Spalko in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), another addition to the series of action-adventure films following the dashing archaeologist. In 2008 she also starred opposite Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a drama about a man who ages backward. Two years later she appeared as Marion Loxley in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. The action drama starred Russell Crowe in the title role as the outlaw hero.

In the thriller Hanna (2011), Blanchett portrayed a CIA agent in pursuit of a former agent and his teenage daughter, whom he has trained to be an assassin. Blanchett again assumed the role of Galadriel in the Hobbit trilogy—An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), all based on the Tolkien novel that preceded The Lord of the Rings. Her performance in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2013), as a socialite struggling to cope with a decline in circumstances, won her further acclaim, including an Oscar for best actress; she also received her third Golden Globe. She played a French art historian and Resistance member in The Monuments Men (2014), which fictionalized Allied efforts to recover art stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

Blanchett then sank her teeth into the role of the wicked stepmother of the title character in Cinderella (2015). In Truth (2015) she played CBS producer Mary Mapes, who was fired after the accuracy of a segment by reporter Dan Rather on U.S. Pres. George W. Bush’s military service was called into question. Carol, a drama in which she played a married socialite who enters a romantic relationship with a younger store clerk (Rooney Mara), earned her a seventh Oscar nomination. She then joined the ensemble of Knight of Cups (2015), Terrence Malick’s experimental meditation on Hollywood, and later appeared in his film Song to Song (2017), a romantic drama set against the Austin, Texas, music scene. Also in 2017 Blanchett earned critical praise for her vivacious portrayal of Hela, the goddess of death, in Thor: Ragnarok. The next year she starred in Ocean’s 8, the female-driven reboot of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise from the early 2000s, and The House with a Clock in Its Walls, an adaptation of a 1973 children’s fantasy novel.

Blanchett was then lauded for her guest appearance as a performance artist akin to Marina Abramović on the mockumentary TV series Documentary Now! in 2019. That year she also played the eponymous character in Where’d You Go, Bernadette, a film based on the best-selling novel. Blanchett’s credits from 2020 included the TV miniseries Mrs. America, in which she portrayed the activist Phyllis Schlafly, who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. In 2021 Blanchett appeared in the films Don’t Look Up, a dramedy about an impending comet strike that will destroy Earth, and Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. In the latter, a film noir adapted from a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the actress played a manipulative psychoanalyst who meets a scheming carnival worker (Bradley Cooper). Blanchett earned widespread acclaim for her performance in Tár (2022), a character study about a trailblazing conductor whose career is derailed by allegations of sexual misconduct. In addition to winning a Golden Globe, she also earned her eighth Oscar nomination.

Stage work

In addition to her film work, Blanchett remained active in the theatre. In 2008 she and her husband, writer Andrew Upton, became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. Blanchett left the position in 2013, though Upton remained. Her performances with the company included Hedda Gabler (2004) and The War of the Roses (2009). In 2017 she made her Broadway debut in The Present, which was based on a play by Anton Chekhov. For her performance, Blanchett received a Tony Award nomination.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-09 00:31:50

1331) Julianne Moore

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Julie Anne Smith (born December 3, 1960), known professionally as Julianne Moore, is an American actress. Prolific in film since the early 1990s, she is particularly known for her portrayals of emotionally troubled women in independent films, as well as for her roles in blockbusters. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Emmy Awards.

After studying theatre at Boston University, Moore began her career with a series of television roles. From 1985 to 1988, she was a regular in the soap opera As the World Turns, earning a Daytime Emmy for her performance. She made her film debut in 1990, and continued to play supporting roles throughout the early 1990s. Moore made her breakthrough with Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), followed by critically acclaimed performances in Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and Safe (1995). Starring roles in the blockbusters Nine Months (1995) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) established her as a Hollywood leading lady.

Moore went on to receive Oscar nominations for her roles in the period films Boogie Nights (1997), The End of the Affair (1999), Far from Heaven (2002) and The Hours (2002); in the first of these, she played a 1970s math actress, while in the other three, she starred as a mid-twentieth century unhappy housewife. Other notable films include The Big Lebowski (1998), Magnolia (1999), Hannibal (2001), Children of Men (2006), A Single Man (2009), The Kids Are All Right (2010), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), and Maps to the Stars (2014). She won a Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Sarah Palin in the HBO film Game Change (2012), and the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of an Alzheimer's patient in Still Alice (2014). Among her highest-grossing releases are the final two films in The Hunger Games film series and the spy film Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017).

In addition to her acting work, Moore has written a series of children's books about a character named Freckleface Strawberry. In 2015, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2020, The New York Times named her one of the greatest actors of the 21st century. She is married to director Bart Freundlich, with whom she has two children.

Additional Information

Julianne Moore, byname of Julie Anne Smith, (born December 3, 1960, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, U.S.), is an American actress known for her exacting and sympathetic portrayals of women at odds with their surroundings, often in films that examined social issues.

Early life and career

Smith was the eldest of three children; her American father was a military lawyer and judge, and her Scottish immigrant mother was a homemaker who later in life became a psychiatric social worker. She earned a bachelor’s degree in acting from Boston University in 1983 and moved to New York City soon thereafter. Smith assumed the stage name Julianne Moore, the latter portion of which was her father’s middle name, because all variations of her own name were already registered with the Actors’ Equity Association. She appeared in several plays and television programs before beginning a three-year arc on the soap opera As the World Turns in 1985. Her portrayals of a psychologist and, eventually, her half sister, earned her a Daytime Emmy Award in 1988. Meanwhile, she had appeared in Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater (1987) and trod the boards as Ophelia in a production of Hamlet (1988) staged by the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She returned to the Public Theater in two Churchill one-acts—staged as Ice Cream with Hot Fudge—in 1990.

A supporting role in the domestic thriller film The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) brought Moore to wider attention. Her bold turn as an artist in director Robert Altman’s ensemble drama Short Cuts (1993) was particularly remarked upon. Altman had cast Moore after seeing her in a long-running New York workshop production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which was filmed by Louis Malle as Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Her first starring role was in Todd Haynes’s Safe (1995), in which she played a woman succumbing to an indeterminate malady.

Rise to stardom

Though Moore had bit roles in mainstream fare such as The Fugitive (1993), her first marquee billing came with the Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World (1997), in which she played a paleontologist. She returned to her indie roots with the family drama The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), which was directed by future husband Bart Freundlich (they married in 2003). That performance, however, was eclipsed by her turn as kindly math actress Amber Waves in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997); her complex and sympathetic portrayal earned Moore her first Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actress. She then played a narcissistic artist in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski (1998) and the calculating Mrs. Cheveley in the film adaptation (1999) of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband.

In both Neil Jordan’s adaptation (1999) of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair and Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), Moore’s characters dealt with the ramifications of adultery. The former film earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress. In 2001 she assumed the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling—originated by Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)—in its sequel, Hannibal. Her renderings of women suffocated by the repressive social mores of the 1950s in Haynes’s Far from Heaven (2002) and Stephen Daldry’s The Hours (2002) led to best actress and best supporting actress Oscar nods, respectively.

Movies of the early 21st century

Moore followed several tepidly received relationship comedies with Alfonso Cuarón’s much-lauded futuristic dystopia Children of Men (2006) and later a vampy turn as the unstable Barbara Baekeland (who married the heir to the Bakelite fortune and was murdered by her son) in Savage Grace (2007). She gave more-subdued performances as a woman in love with her best friend (played by Colin Firth) in fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man (2009); a woman who cheats on her partner in The Kids Are All Right (2010); and an unhappy woman married to Steve Carell’s character in Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011).

In 2012 Moore delivered an Emmy-winning performance as 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in the HBO film Game Change before starring in What Maisie Knew, a modern-day adaptation of the Henry James novel. Her later films included the dramedy The English Teacher (2013); Carrie (2013), a horror film based on Stephen King’s classic novel; Non-Stop (2014), an action thriller set on an airplane; and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015), adaptations of a young-adult novel from the series by Suzanne Collins. Moore was particularly praised for the subtlety with which she depicted the struggles of a linguistics professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer disease in Still Alice (2014). For her performance, she earned an Oscar for best actress. Moore then gleefully stalked the screen as a vengeful witch in the fantasy adventure Seventh Son (2014) and as an unstable actress in David Cronenberg’s trenchant Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars (2014). She evoked the anguish of a dying woman who must fight to pass her pension benefits on to her domestic partner (played by Ellen Page) in Freeheld (2015), which was based on a true story.

In 2017 Moore reteamed with Todd Haynes for Wonderstruck, portraying a glamorous film actress, and then played a wife and her twin sister in the dark comedy Suburbicon. The following year she starred as a renowned opera singer caught in a hostage situation in the adaptation of Ann Patchett’s novel Bel Canto and as a divorced woman seeking love on her own terms in Gloria Bell. Moore later portrayed a wealthy media mogul who makes a series of startling revelations when she considers donating a large sum to an orphanage in After the Wedding (2019). In the biopic The Glorias (2020), she played feminist icon Gloria Steinem. In 2021 Moore appeared in the thriller The Woman in the Window and the musical Dear Evan Hansen. That year she also lent her voice to the animated Spirit Untamed and starred as a grieving widow in the miniseries Lisey’s Story, adapted from a Stephen King novel.

Books

Moore wrote the children’s book Freckleface Strawberry (2007), about her experiences with childhood bullying because of her red hair and freckles. She penned several sequels, and in 2010 the first volume was adapted as a stage musical. Her other children’s books included My Mom Is a Foreigner, but Not to Me (2013).

Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-10 22:43:38

1332) Brie Larson

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Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers (born October 1, 1989), known professionally as Brie Larson, is a American actress. Known for her supporting roles in comedies as a teenager, she has since expanded to leading roles in independent films and blockbusters. Larson is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.

At age six, Larson was the youngest student admitted to a training program at the American Conservatory Theater, and she began her acting career in 1998 with a comedy sketch on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She appeared as a regular in the 2001 sitcom Raising Dad and briefly dabbled with a music career, releasing the album Finally Out of P.E. in 2005. Larson subsequently played supporting roles in the comedy films Hoot (2006), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), and 21 Jump Street (2012), and appeared as a sardonic teenager in the television series United States of Tara (2009–2011).

Her breakthrough came with a leading role in the acclaimed independent drama Short Term 12 (2013), and she continued to take on supporting parts in the romance The Spectacular Now (2013) and the comedy Trainwreck (2015). For playing a kidnapping victim in the drama Room (2015), Larson won the Academy Award for Best Actress. The 2017 adventure film Kong: Skull Island marked her first big-budget release, after which she starred as Captain Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Captain Marvel (2019).

Larson has co-written and co-directed two short films, and made her feature film directorial debut with the independent comedy-drama Unicorn Store (2017). For producing the virtual reality series The Messy Truth VR Experience (2020), she won a Primetime Emmy Award. A gender equality activist and an advocate for sexual assault survivors, Larson is vocal about social and political issues.

Additional Information

Brie Larson, original name Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers, (born October 1, 1989, Sacramento, California, U.S.), is an American actress whose compelling and understated performance as a young woman who has been kidnapped and held prisoner by a sexual predator in the independent film Room (2015) won her an Academy Award.

Larson was mostly homeschooled by her parents, who also encouraged her early theatrical ambitions. She made her public debut as a young child in a parody commercial on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. She also acted in guest roles on other TV shows, including an appearance in 1999 on Touched by an Angel, during her childhood, and she appeared as a daughter of the title character in the 2001–02 sitcom Raising Dad. In 2003 Larson was cast as a teen drag racer in the Disney Channel TV movie Right on Track, and in 2005 she recorded an album of teen pop music, Finally Out of P.E.

Larson was once again cast as the daughter of the title character in the critically praised 2009–11 TV series United States of Tara. During that time she also won notice in a small part in the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). Larson played teenagers in the crime thriller Rampart (2011) and the comedy 21 Jump Street (2012) before undertaking both her first starring role and her first adult role, as a supervisor in a group home for troubled teens, in Short Term 12 (2013). She acted with Mark Wahlberg in The Gambler (2014) and with Amy Schumer in Trainwreck (2015) before her breakthrough in Room. In addition to an Oscar, Larson also won a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for her work in the film, which was based on a 2010 novel by Emma Donoghue.

In 2017 the highly sought-after Larson starred in a number of films, notably the King Kong remake Kong: Skull Island and The Glass Castle, a drama about a dysfunctional family. That year she also made her directorial debut with Unicorn Store, in which she starred as a twentysomething obsessed with unicorns. She later played Carol Danvers, a U.S. Air Force pilot who becomes a superhero, in Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame, both 2019. Larson’s other credits that year included the drama Just Mercy, about a civil-rights attorney’s efforts to free an innocent man on death row.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-12 00:03:17

1333) Emma Stone

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Emily Jean "Emma" Stone (born November 6, 1988) is an American actress and producer. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award. In 2017, she was the world's highest-paid actress and named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Born and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, Stone began acting as a child in a theater production of The Wind in the Willows in 2000. As a teenager, she relocated to Los Angeles and made her television debut in In Search of the New Partridge Family (2004), a reality show that produced only an unsold pilot. After small television roles, she appeared in a series of well-received teen comedy films, such as Superbad (2007), Zombieland (2009), and Easy A (2010). The last of these was Stone's first leading role, earning her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Following this breakthrough, she had supporting roles in the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) and the period drama The Help (2011), and gained wider recognition as Gwen Stacy in the 2012 superhero film The Amazing Spider-Man and its 2014 sequel.

Stone received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a recovering drug addict in Birdman (2014) and Abigail Masham in Yorgos Lanthimos's The Favourite (2018). For playing an aspiring actress in the romantic musical La La Land (2016), she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. After a leading role in the dark comedy miniseries Maniac (2018), she starred in the sequel Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) and portrayed the title role in the crime comedy Cruella (2021). She has since starred in Lanthimos' science fantasy film Poor Things (2023).

On Broadway, Stone has starred as Sally Bowles in a revival of the musical Cabaret (2014–2015). Stone and her husband, Dave McCary founded the production company Fruit Tree in 2020, under which they have produced the films When You Finish Saving the World (2022) and Problemista (2023).

Additional Information

Emma Stone, byname of Emily Jean Stone, (born November 6, 1988, Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.), is an American actress known for her natural charm, husky voice, and adaptability to a wide range of roles.

Stone gained her earliest acting experience performing with the Valley Youth Theatre in Phoenix. During her freshman year in high school, she persuaded her parents to allow her to move to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. She and her mother took an apartment there, and Stone was homeschooled between auditions. Her first role came in 2005 when she landed the part of Laurie Partridge in The New Partridge Family, a pilot for a proposed television series. More TV roles followed, and in 2007 Stone made her film debut acting with Jonah Hill and Michael Cera in the teen comedy Superbad. Stone continued to appear in similar movies, of which the most notable was the horror comedy Zombieland (2009). The following year Stone achieved her first starring role, in the teen comedy Easy A (2010), as a high school girl who pretends to have slept with a gay friend and various other social outcasts in order to give them a patina of coolness. The movie proved to be her breakthrough.

Stone appeared with Ryan Gosling in the well-received romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) and then was cast in the role of Skeeter, the aspiring author who interviews African American housemaids (played by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer) about their experiences working for white families in Tate Taylor’s The Help—her first experience outside comedy. Stone then played Peter Parker’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, in the superhero movies The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and she took another turn as Gosling’s love interest in the widely panned crime flick Gangster Squad (2013). She also costarred with Colin Firth in Woody Allen’s romantic comedy Magic in the Moonlight (2014).

Stone was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance as the emotionally unstable daughter of the lead character, played by Michael Keaton, in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014). It was her 2014 Broadway debut in the part of Sally Bowles in Cabaret, however, that caught the eye of director Damien Chazelle. He cast her as the aspiring actress Mia, whose bittersweet romance with jazz pianist Sebastian (Gosling) forms the plotline in the movie musical La La Land (2016). Stone’s mesmerizing performance brought her a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and the Oscar for best actress in a leading role.

In 2017 Stone starred in Battle of the Sexes as tennis champion Billie Jean King in the 1973 match against Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell). She then reteamed with her Superbad costar Jonah Hill in the TV miniseries Maniac (2018), in which they portrayed two strangers who partake in a pharmaceutical trial that promises to end their troubles. That same year Stone starred alongside Rachel Weisz in the dark period romp The Favourite; they played cousins competing for the favour of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman). For her performance, Stone received her third Oscar nomination. She then reprised her role from Zombieland for the 2019 sequel. She later lent her voice to the animated family film The Croods: A New Age (2020). In 2021 Stone took the title role in Cruella, a live-action comedy about a young Cruella De Vil, the villain of the Disney classic One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-13 17:11:17

1334) Olivia Colman

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Sarah Caroline Sinclair (née Colman; born 30 January 1974), known professionally as Olivia Colman, is an English actress and comedian. Known for her work in film and television, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Emmy Awards, three British Academy Television Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.

A graduate of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Colman's breakthrough came in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show (2003–2015). Her other comedic roles on television include Green Wing (2004–2006), That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006–2008), Beautiful People (2008–2009), Rev. (2010–2014), Flowers (2016–2018), and Fleabag (2016–2019). Colman received the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance for the comedy programme Twenty Twelve (2011–2012) and Best Supporting Actress for the crime programme Accused (2012).

She was acclaimed for her performance in the ITV crime-drama series Broadchurch (2013–2017), for which she received a British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. Colman also appeared in the BBC One thriller miniseries The Night Manager (2016), for which she received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. She played Queen Elizabeth II from 2019 to 2020 in the Netflix period-drama series The Crown, for which she received a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Other television roles include Les Misérables (2019), Landscapers (2021), and Heartstopper (2022–present).

For her portrayal of Anne, Queen of Great Britain in the period black-comedy film The Favourite (2018), Colman won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She received additional Academy Award nominations for her performances in The Father (2020) and The Lost Daughter (2021). Other notable film credits include Hot Fuzz (2007), Tyrannosaur (2011), The Iron Lady (2011), Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), Locke (2013), The Lobster (2015), Murder on the Orient Express (2017), The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021), Empire of Light (2022), and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022).

Additional Information

Olivia Colman, married name Sarah Caroline Olivia Sinclair, (born January 30, 1974, Norwich, Norfolk, England), is a British actress who first garnered attention for her comedic work on television and who later had success in a series of dramatic roles in film and TV. Colman won numerous accolades, most notably an Academy Award for her performance in The Favourite (2018).

Early life and education

Colman was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England, the daughter of Mary (née Leakey) Colman, a nurse, and Keith Colman, a surveyor. The family moved frequently as her parents renovated houses. While attending Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk, Colman discovered acting. Her first role was the lead in the school’s production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Although she had dreams of becoming an actress, Colman initially decided to pursue other career options. After graduating from Gresham’s School in 1992, she studied teaching at Homerton College in Cambridge.

During this time, however, Colman joined the amateur drama club Footlights, which is affiliated with the University of Cambridge. That experience led her to enroll at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School—which lists Patrick Stewart, Jeremy Irons, and Daniel Day-Lewis among its alumni—to study drama. She graduated in 1999. Two years later she married Ed Sinclair, whom she had met at Footlights. The couple have three children.

TV success: Broadchurch and The Crown

Colman made her TV acting debut in 2000 on the BBC Two sketch comedy program Bruiser. Over the next several years she appeared on a number of comedy shows, in roles of varying importance. Her credits from 2001 to 2005 include People Like Us, The Office, Gash, and Look Around You. She also regularly acted on BBC Radio comedies. Colman began to earn more notice through her work with the comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, whom she had met while a member of Footlights. In 2003 she began portraying Sophie Chapman on their series Peep Show, which was a huge hit during its nine seasons, and from 2006 to 2008 she appeared regularly in That Mitchell and Webb Look.

Catapulted by her success in comedy, Colman began appearing in a number of popular series, including Doctor Who, Skins, and Rev. She also played the matriarch of an eccentric family in the black comedy Flowers (2016–18). In 2016 Colman showcased her dramatic skills in The Night Manager, a six-episode limited series based on a John le Carré novel; it starred Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. She also starred with David Tennant in the crime series Broadchurch (2013–17). For her portrayal of Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller, Colman won the BAFTA TV Award for best actress in 2014.

Colman’s TV success continued with her portrayal of Elizabeth II in the third (2019) and fourth (2020) seasons of Netflix’s acclaimed The Crown; she won an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe for her performance. She also had a recurring role as Godmother in Fleabag (2016–19), a popular series created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. In 2021 Colman starred with David Thewlis in Landscapers, a true-crime miniseries that aired on HBO. It centres on the British couple Susan and Christopher Edwards, who were convicted of murdering Susan’s parents. Colman later played Miss Havisham in the miniseries Great Expectations, an adaptation of the novel by Charles Dickinson.

Films: The Lobster, The Favourite, and The Lost Daughter

While continuing to appear in a variety of television series, Colman began to gain attention for her work in films. She was cast as Police Constable Doris Thatcher in the comedy Hot Fuzz (2007), and in 2011 she had a starring role in Paddy Considine’s feature-length debut movie, the drama Tyrannosaur. In the latter film she portrayed an abused wife who befriends a self-destructive man, and Colman was named best actress by the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA). Her other films from 2011 include The Iron Lady, in which Colman was cast as the daughter of Margaret Thatcher (played by Meryl Streep).

In 2015 Colman appeared in Yorgos Lanthimos’s acclaimed surrealist film The Lobster, playing the manager of a hotel where single people must find a spouse within 45 days. The Lobster won the Jury Prize at the Cannes film festival, and Colman received another BIFA award, this one for best supporting actress. She reteamed with Lanthimos for The Favourite (2018), a dramedy in which she played Queen Anne, an eccentric and sickly ruler whose affections are sought by two competing women (Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone). Colman’s performance was widely acclaimed, earning her several major awards, including her first Academy Award (for best actress in a leading role).

Colman became something of a mainstay at the major award ceremonies. She earned praise—and an Oscar nomination—for her work in Florian Zeller’s The Father (2020), in which she starred alongside Anthony Hopkins as a daughter coping with her father’s declining mental capacity. Colman also received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of a divorced professor in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (2021), an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel. In 2022 Colman starred in the comedy Joyride and in Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light, about employees at a struggling movie theatre in the 1980s. She also lent her voice to several animated films, including The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), and to the TV miniseries Watership Down (2018).

Other activities

In 2015 Colman began working with UNICEF, and five years later she became president of the organization’s U.K. branch. She is especially noted for her advocacy of humanitarian aid in war-torn and impoverished countries. Colman also is involved with Amnesty International. In 2019 she was awarded the honorary rank of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-15 20:29:52

1335) Renée Zellweger

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Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress. The recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards, she was one of the world's highest-paid actresses by 2007.

Born and raised in Texas, Zellweger studied English literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Initially aspiring for a career in journalism, she was drawn to acting following her brief work on stage while in college. Following minor roles in Dazed and Confused (1993) and Reality Bites (1994), her first starring role came with the slasher film Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994). She rose to prominence with starring roles in the romantic comedy Jerry Maguire (1996), the drama One True Thing (1998), and the black comedy Nurse Betty (2000), winning a Golden Globe Award for the last of these.

For portraying Bridget Jones in the romantic comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002), Zellweger gained consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a loquacious farmer in the war film Cold Mountain (2003). She reprised her role as Jones in the sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), and, following a career downturn and hiatus, in Bridget Jones's Baby (2016). In 2019, Zellweger starred in her first major television role in the Netflix series What/If, and portrayed Judy Garland in the biopic Judy, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress. She has since starred as Pam Hupp in the NBC crime miniseries The Thing About Pam (2022).

Additional Information

Renée Zellweger, in full Renée Kathleen Zellweger, (born April 25, 1969, Katy, Texas, U.S.), is an American film actress who was known for her portrayals of vulnerable characters in such films as Jerry Maguire (1996), Nurse Betty (2000), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), and Judy (2019).

Zellweger began acting while she was a student at the University of Texas (B.A., 1991), initially in commercials. She had a small role in the 1992 TV movie A Taste for Killing. After an uncredited appearance in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), Zellweger earned her first movie credit with a bit part in Reality Bites (1994), directed by Ben Stiller. She had leading roles in the minor Texas films Love and a .45 (1994) and Empire Records (1995), and she starred with a then equally unknown Matthew McConaughey in The Return of the Texas Chainsaw MassacreThe Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1994; rereleased as Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation). Zellweger’s surprise casting as the love interest of Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire catapulted her to stardom.

Zellweger won a Golden Globe Award for her role as a sweetly deluded waitress in Neil LaBute’s Nurse Betty (2000), and she received nominations for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award as well as both critical and popular praise for her portrayal of a British woman bent on self-improvement in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), based on a best-selling 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. She earned a second Golden Globe Award and a second Oscar nomination for best actress for her performance as the murderess Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002). Zellweger showed her range with her portrayal of the gruff and capable Ruby Thewes in the American Civil War melodrama Cold Mountain (2003), a performance that netted her the BAFTA, the Golden Globe, and the Oscar for best supporting actress.

Zellweger’s later films included the sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004); the biopic Miss Potter (2006), in which she played the children’s author Beatrix Potter; George Clooney’s football comedy Leatherheads (2008); the coming-of-age story My One and Only (2009); and the further sequel Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016). She played a woman who encourages her art-dealer husband to befriend a homeless man in Same Kind of Different As Me (2017), which was based on the best-selling memoir of the same name. In 2019 Zellweger was cast as a venture capitalist who makes an indecent proposal in the Netflix series What/If. That same year she starred in the biopic Judy, assuming the role of Hollywood icon Judy Garland at the tail end of her career. For her performance, Zellweger received both an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for best actress. She next appeared as a murderer in The Thing About Pam (2022), a true-crime TV miniseries.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-17 00:31:50

1336) Jessica Chastain

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Jessica Michelle Chastain (born March 24, 1977) is an American actress and producer. Known for primarily starring in projects with feminist themes, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, in addition to nominations for two Tony Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012.

Chastain developed an interest in acting from an early age and made her professional stage debut in 1998 as Shakespeare's Juliet. After studying acting at the Juilliard School, she was signed to a talent holding deal with the television producer John Wells. She was a recurring guest star in several television series, and took on roles in several stage productions. After making her film debut at age 31 in the drama Jolene (2008), Chastain had her breakthrough in 2011 with six film releases, including the dramas Take Shelter (2011) and The Tree of Life (2011). She received Academy Award nominations for playing an aspiring socialite in the period drama The Help (2011) and a CIA analyst in the thriller Zero Dark Thirty (2012).

Greater commercial success came with the science fiction films Interstellar (2014) and The Martian (2015), and the horror film It Chapter Two (2019). Chastain received further acclaim for playing strong-willed women in the dramas A Most Violent Year (2014), Miss Sloane (2016), and Molly's Game (2017), and the television miniseries Scenes from a Marriage (2021). She went on to portray Tammy Faye Bakker in the biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021), winning the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Tammy Wynette in the miniseries George & Tammy (2022).

On Broadway, Chastain has starred in revivals of The Heiress (2012) and A Doll's House (2023). The latter earned her a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She is the founder of the production company Freckle Films, which was created to promote diversity in film, and is an investor in the soccer club Angel City FC. She is vocal about mental health issues, as well as gender and racial equality. She is married to fashion executive Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, with whom she has two children.

Additional Information

Jessica Chastain, in full Jessica Michelle Chastain, (born March 24, 1977, Sacramento, California, U.S.), is an American actress who was known for the luminous authenticity of her performances in a variety of roles. She specialized in playing flawed but strong women.

Chastain was born to teen parents and raised by her mother, a vegan chef, and, later, her stepfather, a firefighter. She became interested in acting as a child after her grandmother took her to see a play. She struggled in high school, but in 1998 she graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. That year she made her professional debut in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet in Mountain View, California. She then moved to New York City to enroll in the Juilliard School (B.F.A., 2003), after which she relocated to Los Angeles to pursue a film career.

For several years Chastain alternated guest appearances in television shows with stage work. Notably, she starred with Al Pacino in a Los Angeles production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (2006). In 2008 she made her film debut, cast in the title role of Jolene. The following year she played Desdemona in an Off-Broadway production of Othello. She shared a role with Helen Mirren in the thriller The Debt (2010), about Mossad agents haunted by their past. Chastain’s true breakthrough came in 2011, when she appeared in several movies, most notably Terrence Malick’s meditation The Tree of Life and the blockbuster The Help. In the latter, Chastain portrayed an ostracized housewife who hires an African American maid (Octavia Spencer) to fool her husband into thinking that she knows how to cook and do housework. For her performance, Chastain earned an Academy Award nomination.

Chastain’s credits in 2012 included Lawless, about Depression-era bootleggers in rural Virginia, and Kathryn Bigelow’s thriller Zero Dark Thirty, in which the actress played a CIA analyst who helps find Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11 attacks; for her work in the latter, she garnered another Oscar nod. Chastain continued to show her range, starring in the horror film Mama (2013) and taking on disparate roles in Liv Ullmann’s Miss Julie, from the August Strindberg play; the gangster movie A Most Violent Year; and Christopher Nolan’s powerful science-fiction drama Interstellar (all 2014).

Chastain next played the head of a mission to Mars that is forced to abandon one crew member (Matt Damon) on the planet in The Martian (2015). In 2016 she was cast as the wife of the title character (Chris Hemsworth) in the fairy-tale-based The Huntsman: Winter’s War and won praise for her portrayal of a driven and powerful lobbyist in Miss Sloane. She chose to work with female directors for her next two movies—Niki Caro’s The Zookeeper’s Wife, in which a Warsaw couple uses a zoo to help Jews escape Nazis during World War II, and Woman Walks Ahead, Susanna White’s biopic about a white woman who became involved in the Lakota struggle for land rights in the late 19th century (both 2017).

Chastain later appeared in the franchise film X-Men: Dark Phoenix and the horror movie It Chapter Two (both 2019). In 2020 she starred in the crime drama Ava. The following year she and Oscar Isaac portrayed a couple whose relationship is falling apart in the TV miniseries Scenes from a Marriage, a remake of Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 series. Also in 2021 she appeared as the title character in the biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye, about Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, married televangelists who were brought down by scandal. For her performance, Chastain earned her first Oscar, for best actress. In the espionage thriller The 355 (2022), she was part of an all-star cast that included Lupita Nyong’o and Penélope Cruz.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-09-18 22:41:37

1337) Michelle Yeoh

Details

Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng (born Yeoh Choo Kheng; 6 August 1962) is a Malaysian actress. Credited as Michelle Khan in her early films in Hong Kong, she rose to fame in the 1990s after starring in Hong Kong action films where she performed her own stunts. These roles include Yes, Madam (1985); Magnificent Warriors (1987); Police Story 3: Supercop (1992); The Heroic Trio (1993); and Holy Weapon (1993).

After moving to the United States, Yeoh gained international recognition for starring in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and in Ang Lee's martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the latter for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Her career progressed with roles in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Sunshine (2007), The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), Reign of Assassins (2010), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), and The Lady (2011), in which she portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi.

Yeoh played supporting roles in the romantic comedies Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and Last Christmas (2019), the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and had a voice role in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023). She also starred in the television series Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2020), The Witcher: Blood Origin (2022), and American Born Chinese (2023). For her starring role as an overwhelmed mother navigating the multiverse in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first Asian to win the award, and the first Malaysian to win an Academy Award in any category.

The film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes ranked her the greatest action heroine of all time in 2008. In 1997, she was chosen by People as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World", and in 2009 the same magazine listed her as one of the "35 All-Time Screen Beauties". In 2022, Time named her one of the world's 100 most influential people on its annual listicle and its Icon of the Year.

Additional Information

Michelle Yeoh, also called Michelle Khan, original name Yeoh Choo Kheng, (born August 6, 1962, Ipoh, Malaysia), is a Malaysian actress considered to be one of the greatest female action movie stars, especially known for performing her own frequently dangerous stunts. She also earned accolades for her acting, and in 2023 she became the first Asian performer to win the Academy Award for best actress, for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

Early life

Yeoh was born into a wealthy Malaysian family. From an early age, she was involved in various physical activities, including basketball and swimming, though she was particularly interested in ballet. As a teenager, she attended the Royal Academy of Dance in London, but a back injury ended her dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer. She subsequently planned on opening a ballet school, but in 1983 her mother entered her in the Miss Malaysia pageant. Yeoh won, and she later appeared in a commercial with Jackie Chan. The ad led to an acting contract with a Hong Kong production company, which suggested her early stage name, Michelle Khan.

Star of Hong Kong films

In 1984 Yeoh made her big-screen debut, appearing in the action-drama Mao tou ying yu xiao fei xiang (The Owl vs. Bumbo). Although cast as the love interest, she was drawn to the fight sequences, noting that their choreography and rhythm were reminiscent of dancing. Hoping to again express herself physically, Yeoh began intense training, and her dance background proved invaluable. She was flexible, fast, and highly tolerant of pain. In 1985 she starred in the martial arts movie Huang jia shi jie (Yes, Madam!), about two female police officers. It was an early entrant in the so-called “girls with guns” genre. A series of other action films followed for Yeoh, but in 1988 she married film producer Dickinson Poon and retired. Although Yeoh hoped to start a family, she was unable to have children. After the couple divorced in 1992, she resumed her acting career.

In 1992 Yeoh starred with Chan in Ging chaat goo si III: chiu kup ging chaat (Police Story 3: Supercop; also called Supercop). The action-comedy film featured a number of incredible stunts. In one memorable sequence, Yeoh hung from one side of a speeding van, swung onto the roof to avoid a bus, rolled toward the back, tumbled off, and landed on the hood of a pursuing car. That and subsequent films, including Chiu kup gai wak (1993; Supercop 2), established her as a leading star in Hong Kong. Her stunts typically highlighted her grace, precision, and fearlessness. However, Yeoh suffered a number of serious injuries during her career. For instance, during the filming of A Jin de gu shi (1996; The Stunt Woman) in 1995, she almost broke her back. While recuperating, she considered retiring again, but a conversation she had with American director Quentin Tarantino, who was a fan, encouraged her to continue acting.

Global fame and later movies

In 1997 Yeoh became known to a wider audience with Tomorrow Never Dies, a James Bond film in which she played a Chinese agent. A departure from the typical “Bond girl,” her character is as intelligent and capable as the British spy. The film was also notable because Yeoh was hired for her acting, not her stunt work. She attained global stardom with Ang Lee’s Wo hu cang long (2000; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The critically acclaimed film combined spectacular action scenes with a heartfelt love story between warrior Yu Shu Lien (Yeoh) and martial arts master Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat). It was a box office sensation and won several Academy Awards.

A series of English-language films followed. In 2005 Yeoh appeared in the drama Memoirs of a Geisha, and three years later she played an ancient sorceress in the action-adventure film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Continuing to show her range as an actress, she starred in The Lady (2011), a biopic about Aung San Suu Kyi, an embattled activist whose efforts to bring democracy to Burma (now Myanmar) earned her the 1991 Nobel Prize for Peace. In 2016 Yeoh reprised the role of Yu Shu Lien in Wo hu cang long: qing ming bao jian (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny). The following year she appeared in the second installment of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Her high-profile projects continued with Crazy Rich Asians (2018), a rom-com based on Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel. Hugely popular, the movie featured Yeoh as a steely matriarch who objects to her son’s girlfriend. During this time she also had a recurring role on the TV show Star Trek: Discovery.

In 2021 Yeoh appeared in another Marvel movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The next year, she garnered rave reviews for Everything Everywhere All at Once, the first Hollywood film in which she had the lead role. In the sci-fi comedy, Yeoh was cast as a laundromat owner who must save the multiverse. The role required her to play various versions of the character, one of whom is an actress who is also a martial arts expert. For her portrayal, Yeoh won the Oscar for best actress, becoming the first Asian performer to receive that award. In addition, she also earned a Golden Globe Award. Her other 2022 films include Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank and Minions: The Rise of Gru—animated comedies to which she lent her voice.

Math Is Fun Forum

#1351 2023-08-06 00:08:54

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#1353 2023-08-10 00:04:32

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#1354 2023-08-12 00:04:47

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#1355 2023-08-13 22:23:03

Re: crème de la crème

#1356 2023-08-14 23:00:23

Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

#1358 2023-08-18 19:02:49

Re: crème de la crème

#1359 2023-08-21 00:43:51

Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

#1362 2023-08-27 00:41:40

Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

#1364 2023-08-30 21:46:15

Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

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Re: crème de la crème

#1367 2023-09-06 00:36:36

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#1368 2023-09-07 21:28:18

Re: crème de la crème

#1369 2023-09-09 00:31:50

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