crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-15 16:49:00

1388) Robert Duvall

Details

Robert Selden Duvall (born January 5, 1931) is an American actor and filmmaker. With a career spanning eight decades, he is regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time.[4] He is the recipient of an Academy Award, four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Duvall began his career on TV with minor roles in 1960 on Playhouse 90 and the Armstrong Circle Theater TV series before transitioning to Broadway and film. Duvall made his Broadway debut in the play Wait Until Dark in 1966. He returned to the stage in David Mamet's play American Buffalo in 1977, earning a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play nomination. He made his feature film acting debut portraying Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Other early roles include Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), Bullitt (1968), True Grit (1969), M*A*S*H (1970), THX 1138 (1971), Joe Kidd (1972), and Tomorrow (1972), the last of which was developed at the Actors Studio and is his personal favorite.

Duvall won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Tender Mercies (1983). His other Oscar-nominated films include The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Great Santini (1979), The Apostle (1997), A Civil Action (1998), and The Judge (2014). Other notable roles include The Outfit (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974), Network (1976), True Confessions (1981), The Natural (1984), Days of Thunder (1990), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), Rambling Rose (1991), Falling Down (1993), The Paper (1994), The Scarlet Letter (1995), Slingblade (1996), Open Range (2003), Crazy Heart (2009), Get Low (2010), Jack Reacher (2012), and Widows (2018).

Throughout his career, he has starred on numerous television programs. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series for the AMC limited series Broken Trail (2007). His other Emmy-nominated roles are in the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989), the HBO film Stalin (1992), and the TNT film The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996).

Details

Robert Duvall, (born January 5, 1931, San Diego, California, U.S.), is an American actor noted for his ability to quietly inhabit any characters, particularly average working people, bringing them fully but subtly to life. In the words of critic Elaine Mancini, Duvall was “the most technically proficient, the most versatile, and the most convincing actor on the screen in the United States.”

Born to a U.S. Navy admiral, Duvall graduated from Illinois’s Principia College in 1953 and served two years in the army during the Korean War. In the years that followed, he studied drama under the noted acting teacher Sanford Meisner at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse and appeared in Off-Broadway and Broadway plays.

A brief but memorable film debut came in 1962 when Duvall played the reclusive Arthur (“Boo”) Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. For the next several years, he continued to appear in small film and television roles. That path led to major supporting parts in films with large ensemble casts, such as the repressed and self-righteous Major Frank Burns in M*A*S*H (1970) and the business-minded Mafia attorney Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972) and its sequel, The Godfather, Part II (1974). The original 1972 role earned Duvall his first Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actor.

In the late 1970s Duvall received two additional Oscar nominations for affecting portrayals of military men. His Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979) maniacally declares that he loves “the smell of napalm in the morning,” but Duvall convinces the audience of Kilgore’s compassion for his own soldiers. His nuanced depiction earned him a second Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. Bull Meechum, the career marine of The Great Santini (1980), is a warrior without a war who during peacetime inflicts an often severe discipline on his family. Duvall was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor.

Duvall wrote many of his own songs for his beautifully nuanced performance as a faded country music star running a motel and filling station in Tender Mercies (1983). For that role, he won the Academy Award for best actor. He ended the 1980s with his highly praised performance in the Emmy Award-winning TV miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989).

In the 1990s Duvall’s credits included successful Hollywood pictures such as Days of Thunder (1990), Phenomenon (1996), and A Family Thing (1996). He wrote, directed, and starred in The Apostle (1997), a pet project he spent years developing and that earned him his third Oscar nomination for best actor. Duvall’s performance in A Civil Action (1998) was honoured with his third Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. In 2002 he returned to directing with Assassination Tango, in which he played a hit man who, while on an assignment, becomes interested in the tango; he also wrote the drama.

Duvall continued his prolific acting career, appearing as Robert E. Lee in the Civil War saga Gods and Generals (2003) and as a wealthy eccentric old man who takes custody of his young nephew in Secondhand Lions (2003). Duvall won an Emmy for his role as a rancher who rescues five young Chinese girls sold into prostitution in the Old West in the television miniseries Broken Trail (2006). After taking on supporting roles in several films—including We Own the Night (2007), Four Christmases (2008), and Crazy Heart (2009)—Duvall starred as a hermit who plans his own funeral party in the whimsical Depression-era comedy Get Low (2009). He portrayed a sagacious rancher in the inspirational golf drama Seven Days in Utopia (2011), a shooting-range owner in the action movie Jack Reacher (2012), and a judge accused of vehicular homicide in The Judge (2014). Duvall received his fourth Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor for the latter role.

His later movies included the crime drama Wild Horses (2015), which he also directed and cowrote, and the thriller Widows (2018). In 2021 he appeared in 12 Mighty Orphans, a football drama based on a true story from the 1930s.

Additional Information

Veteran actor and director Robert Selden Duvall was born on January 5, 1931, in San Diego, CA, to Mildred Virginia (Hart), an amateur actress, and William Howard Duvall, a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, IL), then served a two-year hitch in the army after graduating in 1953. He began attending The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre In New York City on the G.I. Bill in 1955, studying under Sanford Meisner along with Dustin Hoffman, with whom Duvall shared an apartment. Both were close to another struggling young actor named Gene Hackman. Meisner cast Duvall in the play "The Midnight Caller" by Horton Foote, a link that would prove critical to his career, as it was Foote who recommended Duvall to play the mentally disabled "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). This was his first "major" role since his 1956 motion picture debut as an MP in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), starring Paul Newman.

Duvall began making a name for himself as a stage actor in New York, winning an Obie Award in 1965 playing incest-minded longshoreman "Eddie Carbone" in the off-Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge", a production for which his old roommate Hoffman was assistant director. He found steady work in episodic TV and appeared as a modestly billed character actor in films, such as Arthur Penn's The Chase (1966) with Marlon Brando and in Robert Altman's Countdown (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969), in both of which he co-starred with James Caan.

He was also memorable as the heavy who is shot by John Wayne at the climax of True Grit (1969) and was the first "Maj. Frank Burns", creating the character in Altman's Korean War comedy M*A*S*H (1970). He also appeared as the eponymous lead in George Lucas' directorial debut, THX 1138 (1971). It was Francis Ford Coppola, casting The Godfather (1972), who reunited Duvall with Brando and Caan and provided him with his career breakthrough as mob lawyer "Tom Hagen". He received the first of his six Academy Award nominations for the role.

Thereafter, Duvall had steady work in featured roles in such films as The Godfather Part II (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Network (1976), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Occasionally this actor's actor got the chance to assay a lead role, most notably in Tomorrow (1972), in which he was brilliant as William Faulkner's inarticulate backwoods farmer. He was less impressive as the lead in Badge 373 (1973), in which he played a character based on real-life NYPD detective Eddie Egan, the same man his old friend Gene Hackman had won an Oscar for playing, in fictionalized form as "Popeye Doyle" in The French Connection (1971).

It was his appearance as "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in another Coppola picture, Apocalypse Now (1979), that solidified Duvall's reputation as a great actor. He got his second Academy Award nomination for the role, and was named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor in the world. Duvall created one of the most memorable characters ever assayed on film, and gave the world the memorable phrase, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"

Subsequently, Duvall proved one of the few established character actors to move from supporting to leading roles, with his Oscar-nominated turns in The Great Santini (1979) and Tender Mercies (1983), the latter of which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Now at the summit of his career, Duvall seemed to be afflicted with the fabled "Oscar curse" that had overwhelmed the careers of fellow Academy Award winners Luise Rainer, Rod Steiger and Cliff Robertson. He could not find work equal to his talents, either due to his post-Oscar salary demands or a lack of perception in the industry that he truly was leading man material. He did not appear in The Godfather Part III (1990), as the studio would not give in to his demands for a salary commensurate with that of Al Pacino, who was receiving $5 million to reprise Michael Corleone.

His greatest achievement in his immediate post-Oscar period was his triumphant characterization of grizzled Texas Ranger Gus McCrae in the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989), for which he received an Emmy nomination. He received a second Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin in Stalin (1992), and a third Emmy nomination playing Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996).

The shakeout of his career doldrums was that Duvall eventually settled back into his status as one of the premier character actors in the industry, rivaled only by his old friend Gene Hackman. Duvall, unlike Hackman, also has directed pictures, including the documentary We're Not the Jet Set (1974), Angelo My Love (1983) and Assassination Tango (2002). As a writer-director, Duvall gave himself one of his most memorable roles, that of the preacher on the run from the law in The Apostle (1997), a brilliant performance for which he received his third Best Actor nomination and fifth Oscar nomination overall. The film brought Duvall back to the front ranks of great actors, and was followed by a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for A Civil Action (1998).

Robert Duvall will long be remembered as one of the great naturalistic American screen actors in the mode of Spencer Tracy and his frequent co-star Marlon Brando. His performances as "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), "Jackson Fentry" in Tomorrow (1972), "Tom Hagen" in the first two "Godfather" movies, "Frank Hackett" in Network (1976), "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in Apocalypse Now (1979), "Bull Meechum" in The Great Santini (1979), "Mac Sledge" in Tender Mercies (1983), "Gus McCrae" in Lonesome Dove (1989) and "Sonny Dewey" in The Apostle (1997) rank as some of the finest acting ever put on film. It's a body of work that few actors can equal, let alone surpass.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-16 16:34:06

1389) F. Murray Abraham

Summary

F. Murray Abraham (born Murray Abraham, October 24, 1939) is an American actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he came to prominence for his acclaimed leading role as Antonio Salieri in the drama film Amadeus (1984) for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama as well as a BAFTA Award nomination.

Abraham made his Broadway debut in the 1968 play Man in the Glass Booth. He received the Obie Award for Outstanding Performance for his roles in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1984) and William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (2011). He returned to Broadway in the revival of Terrence McNally's comedy It's Only a Play (2014), receiving a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play nomination.

He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men (1976), Scarface (1983), The Name of the Rose (1986), Last Action Hero (1993), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Dillinger and Capone (1995), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), Finding Forrester (2000), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Isle of Dogs (2018) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019).

He was a regular cast member on the Showtime drama series Homeland (2012–2018), which earned him two nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. He also starred in Mythic Quest (2020–2021), Moon Knight (2022) and The White Lotus (2022), with the latter earning him a nominations for the Golden Globe Award and the Primetime Emmy Award.

Details

F. Murray Abraham, (born October 24, 1939, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.), is an American actor who performed generally in small parts and character roles onstage and in film before coming to wider notice after winning an Academy Award for his portrayal of Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (1984).

Abraham grew up in El Paso, Texas, and was introduced to acting by a teacher in high school. He studied theatre at the University of Texas at El Paso for two years and then moved to Los Angeles. He made his first professional stage appearance in the premiere of Ray Bradbury’s play The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1965) in Los Angeles. Abraham then moved to New York City to study under Uta Hagen. He made his Off-Broadway debut in 1966 in The Fantasticks and first appeared on Broadway in 1968 in The Man in the Glass Booth. While he continued to make stage appearances during the early 1970s, including a part in the 1972–73 Broadway comedy 6 Rms Riv Vu, he also began working in film and television during that time. Abraham appeared in the 1971 movie They Might Be Giants and on TV in Nightside (1973), a pilot for a series that was not produced. He appeared in the Broadway farce The Ritz (1975–76) and played the same role in the 1976 film version of the play. Abraham performed in the Off-Broadway production of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1976) and in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s productions of John Guare’s Landscape of the Body (1977) and of The Master and Margarita (1978).

Abraham had the lead role in the short Broadway run of Teibele and Her Demon (1979), and in 1980 he starred in a Baltimore production of Cyrano de Bergerac and Off-Broadway in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. He won critical notice for his performances in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker in 1982 and in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in 1983. Abraham played Omar in Brian De Palma’s film Scarface (1983) before his surprise casting in Amadeus. His controlled multidimensional performance in the latter movie won him both the Oscar and the Golden Globe Award for best actor.

Following his wins, Abraham’s stage career nevertheless continued to outstrip his film career. He had leading parts in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1986) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1987) Off-Broadway and played the title character in Macbeth on Broadway (1986–87). He also he played Pozzo in a 1988 revival of Waiting for Godot. His later stage credits included the Broadway production It’s Only a Play (2014–15).

After performing as Bernardo Gui in the film The Name of the Rose (1986), Abraham returned to a career of mostly small parts in minor movies, punctuated by appearances in more notable films, among them Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). He also appeared in Wes Anderson’s comedies The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and the stop-motion animated Isle of Dogs (2018), and he provided the voice of the villainous Grimmel in How to Train Your Dragon: Hidden World (2019). His later films included Lady and the Tramp (2019) and The Magic Flute (2022).

In addition, Abraham had recurring roles in the TV shows The Good Wife (2009–16) and Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet (2020– ). He also played a CIA operative in the series Homeland (2011–18), which starred Claire Danes. In 2022 Abraham appeared in the second season of the anthology series The White Lotus, portraying a flirtatious grandfather on vacation with his son and grandson.

Additional Information

Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham was born on October 24, 1939 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in El Paso, Texas. His father, Fred Abraham, was a Syrian (Antiochian Orthodox Christian) immigrant. His mother, Josephine (Stello) Abraham, was the daughter of Italian immigrants. Born with the first name "Murray", he added an "F." to distinguish his stage name.

Primarily a stage actor, Abraham made his screen debut as an usher in George C. Scott's comedy They Might Be Giants (1971). By the mid-1970s, Murray had steady employment as an actor, doing commercials and voice-over work. He can be seen as one of the undercover police officers along with Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973), and in television roles including the villain in one third-season episode of Kojak (1973). His film work of those years also included the roles of a cabdriver in The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), a mechanic in The Sunshine Boys (1975), and a police officer in All the President's Men (1976).

Beyond these small roles, Abraham continued to do commercials and voice-over work for income. But in 1978, he decided to give them up. Frustrated with the lack of substantial roles, Abraham said, "No one was taking my acting seriously. I figured if I didn't do it, then I'd have no right to the dreams I've always had". His wife, Kate Hannan, went to work as an assistant and Abraham became a "house husband". He described, "I cooked and cleaned and took care of the kids. It was very rough on my macho idea of life. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me". Abraham appeared as drug dealer Omar Suárez alongside Pacino again in the gangster film Scarface (1983). He also gained visibility voicing a talking bunch of grapes in a series of television commercials for Fruit of the Loom underwear.

In 1985, he was honored with as Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for the acclaimed role of envious composer Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (1984), an award for which Tom Hulce, playing Mozart in that movie, had also been nominated. He was also honored with a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama, among other awards, and his role in the film, is still considered to be his most iconic as the film's director Milos Forman inspired the work of the role with Abraham's wide range of qualities as a great stage and film actor.

After Amadeus, he next appeared in The Name of the Rose (1986), in which he played Bernardo Gui, nemesis to Sir Sean Connery as William of Baskerville. In the DVD audio commentary, his director on the film, Jean-Jacques Annaud, described Abraham as an "egomaniac" on the set, who considered himself more important than Sean Connery, since Connery did not have an Oscar. That said, the film was a critical success. Abraham had tired of appearing as villains and wanted to return to his background in comedy, as he also explained to People Weekly magazine in an interview he gave at the time of its release.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-17 16:53:44

1390) William Hurt

Summary

William McChord Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) was an American actor. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he received various awards including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.

Hurt studied at the Juilliard School and began acting on stage in the 1970s. His film debut, in Ken Russell's science-fiction feature Altered States, was released in 1980, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year. In 1981, he had a leading role in the neo-noir Body Heat, co-starring Kathleen Turner. His starring roles in a series of critically acclaimed films garnered three consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor: Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), which he won; Children of a Lesser God (1986), and Broadcast News (1987). During this time he also starred in The Big Chill (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1988), Alice (1990), and One True Thing (1998).

Hurt earned his fourth Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence (2005). His later character roles include A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), The Village (2004), Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), Mr. Brooks (2007), Into the Wild (2007), The Yellow Handkerchief (2008), and Robin Hood (2010). In 2008, he portrayed Thaddeus Ross in The Incredible Hulk, a role he reprised in other Marvel Cinematic Universe films until his final appearance in Black Widow (2021).

Hurt's various television projects included the FX legal drama Damages, which earned him a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. In 2011, he portrayed Henry Paulson in the HBO movie Too Big to Fail and received another Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.

On stage, Hurt appeared in off-Broadway productions including Henry V, Fifth of July, Richard II and A Midsummer Night's Dream; and made his Broadway debut in David Rabe's dark comedy Hurlyburly, for which he received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

Details

William Hurt, (born March 20, 1950, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died March 13, 2022, Portland, Oregon), was an American actor who transitioned from roles as a leading man to a series of distinctive character roles in the latter portion of his career.

Hurt acted in repertory companies before making his screen debut in Altered States (1980). He became a leading actor with Body Heat (1981), in which he played a lawyer who kills his lover’s husband. He then appeared in the ensemble drama The Big Chill (1983). In 1986 he won an Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of a prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985).

Hurt also received Oscar nominations for best actor for his roles in Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Broadcast News (1987) and a nod for best supporting actor in A History of Violence (2005). Other notable films included The Accidental Tourist (1988), Smoke (1995), Chantal Akerman’s A Couch in New York (1996), One True Thing (1998), Syriana (2005), Into the Wild (2007), Robin Hood (2010), Winter’s Tale (2014), Days and Nights (2014), and Race (2016). He portrayed the Marvel comic character Thaddeus (“Thunderbolt”) Ross in the films The Incredible Hulk (2008), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Black Widow (2021).

On television Hurt appeared in the miniseries Dune (2000), Moby Dickinson (2011; as Captain Ahab), Bonnie and Clyde (2013), and Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (2016). He made appearances in the TV movies Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story (2002) and Too Big to Fail (2011; as Henry Paulson) and had roles in the series Damages, Humans, Trial, Goliath, and Condor.

Additional Information

William McChord Hurt was born in Washington, D.C., to Claire Isabel (McGill) and Alfred McChord Hurt, who worked at the State Department. He was trained at Tufts University and The Juilliard School and has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including the most recent nomination for his supporting role in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005). Hurt received Best Supporting Actor accolades for the role from the Los Angeles Film Critics circle and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Hurt spent the early years of his career on the stage between drama school, summer stock, regional repertory and off-Broadway, appearing in more than fifty productions including "Henry V", "5th of July", "Hamlet", "Uncle Vanya", "Richard II", "Hurlyburly" (for which he was nominated for a Tony Award), "My Life" (winning an Obie Award for Best Actor), "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" and "Good". For radio, Hurt read Paul Theroux's "The Grand Railway Bazaar", for the BBC Radio Four and "The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx. He has recorded "The Polar Express", "The Boy Who Drew Cats", "The Sun Also Rises" and narrated the documentaries, "Searching for America: The Odyssey of John Dos Passos", "Einstein-How I See the World" and the English narration of Elie Wiesel's "To Speak the Unspeakable", a documentary directed and produced by Pierre Marmiesse. In 1988, Hurt was awarded the first Spencer Tracy Award from UCLA.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-18 17:00:25

1391) Paul Newman

Summary

Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, race car driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Silver Bear, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, Newman showed an interest in theater as a child and at age 10 performed in a stage production of Saint George and the Dragon at the Cleveland Play House. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and economics from Kenyon College in 1949. After touring with several summer stock companies including the Belfry Players, Newman attended the Yale School of Drama for a year before studying at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. His first starring Broadway role was in William Inge's Picnic in 1953.

Newman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Color of Money (1986). His other Oscar-nominated performances were in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Nobody's Fool (1994), and Road to Perdition (2002). He also starred in such films as Harper (1966), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977); and Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981). He also voiced Doc Hudson in Cars (2006).

Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing. He was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of May 2021, these donations have totaled over US$570 million. Newman continued to found such charitable organizations such as the SeriousFun Children's Network in 1988 and the Safe Water Network in 2006. Newman was married twice and fathered six children. He was the husband of the actress Joanne Woodward.

Details

Screen legend, superstar, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second son of Arthur Sigmund Newman (died 1950) and Theresa Fetsko (died 1982). His elder brother was Arthur S. Newman Jr., named for their father, a Jewish businessman who owned a successful sporting goods store and was the son of emigrants from Poland and Hungary. Newman's mother (born Terézia Fecková, daughter of Stefan Fecko and Mária Polenak) was a Roman Catholic Slovak from Homonna, Pticie (former Austro-Hungarian Empire), who became a practicing Christian Scientist. She and her brother, Newman's uncle Joe, had an interest in the creative arts, and it rubbed off on him. He acted in grade school and high school plays. The Newmans were well-to-do and Paul Newman grew up in affluent Shaker Heights. Before he became an actor, Newman ran the family sporting goods store in Cleveland, Ohio.

By 1950, the 25-year-old Newman had been kicked out of Ohio University, where he belonged to the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, for unruly behavior (denting the college president's car with a beer keg), served three years in the United States Navy during World War II as a radio operator, graduated from Ohio's Kenyon College, married his first wife, Jacqueline "Jackie" Witte (born 1929), and had his first child, Scott. That same year, his father died. When he became successful in later years, Newman said if he had any regrets it would be that his father was not around to witness his success. He brought Jackie back to Shaker Heights and he ran his father's store for a short period. Then, knowing that wasn't the career path he wanted to take, he moved Jackie and Scott to New Haven, Connecticut, where he attended Yale University's School of Drama.

While doing a play there, Newman was spotted by two agents, who invited him to come to New York City to pursue a career as a professional actor. After moving to New York, he acted in guest spots for various television series and in 1953 came a big break. He got the part of understudy of the lead role in the successful Broadway play "Picnic". Through this play, he met actress Joanne Woodward (born 1930), who was also an understudy in the play. While they got on very well and there was a strong attraction, Newman was married and his second child, Susan, was born that year. During this time, Newman was accepted into the much admired and popular New York Actors Studio, although he did not actually audition.

In 1954, a film Newman was very reluctant to do was released, The Silver Chalice (1954). He considered his performance in this costume epic to be so bad that he took out a full-page ad in a trade paper apologizing for it to anyone who might have seen it. He had always been embarrassed about the film and reveled in making fun of it. He immediately wanted to return to the stage, and performed in "The Desperate Hours". In 1956, he got the chance to redeem himself in the film world by portraying boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), and critics praised his performance. In 1957, with a handful of films to his credit, he was cast in The Long, Hot Summer (1958), co-starring Joanne Woodward.

During the shooting of this film, they realized they were meant to be together and by now, so did his then-wife Jackie, who gave Newman a divorce. He and Woodward wed in Las Vegas in January 1958. They went on to have three daughters together and raised them in Westport, Connecticut. In 1959, Newman received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). The 1960s would bring Newman into superstar status, as he became one of the most popular actors of the decade, and garnered three more Best Actor Oscar nominations, for The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967). In 1968, his debut directorial effort Rachel, Rachel (1968) was given good marks, and although the film and Woodward were nominated for Oscars, Newman was not nominated for Best Director. However, he did win a Golden Globe Award for his direction.

1969 brought the popular screen duo of Newman and Robert Redford together for the first time when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was released. It was a box office smash. Through the 1970s, Newman had hits and misses from such popular films as The Sting (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974) to lesser known films as The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) to a cult classic Slap Shot (1977). After the death of his only son, Scott, in 1978, Newman's personal life and film choices moved in a different direction. His acting work in the 1980s and on is what is often most praised by critics today. He became more at ease with himself and it was evident in The Verdict (1982) for which he received his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination and, in 1987, finally received his first Oscar for The Color of Money (1986), almost thirty years after Woodward had won hers. Friend and director of Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Robert Wise accepted the award on Newman's behalf as the actor did not attend the ceremony.

Films were not the only thing on his mind during this period. A passionate race car driver since the early 1970s (despite being color-blind), he was co-founder of Newman-Haas racing in 1982, and also founded "Newman's Own", a successful line of food products that has earned in excess of $100 million, every penny of which Newman donated to charity. He also started The Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, an organization for children with serious illness. He was as well known for his philanthropic ways and highly successful business ventures as he was for his legendary actor status.

Newman's marriage to Woodward lasted a half-century. Connecticut was their primary residence after leaving Hollywood and moving East in 1960. Renowned for his sense of humor, in 1998 he quipped that he was a little embarrassed to see his salad dressing grossing more than his movies. During his later years, he still attended races, was much involved in his charitable organizations, and in 2006, he opened a restaurant called Dressing Room, which helps out the Westport Country Playhouse, a place in which Newman took great pride. In 2007, while the public was largely unaware of the serious illness from which he was suffering, Newman made some headlines when he said he was losing his invention and confidence in his acting abilities and that acting was "pretty much a closed book for me". A smoker for many years, Newman died on September 26, 2008, aged 83, from lung cancer.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-19 17:37:08

1392) Michael Douglas

Summary

Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AFI Life Achievement Award.

The elder son of Kirk Douglas and Diana Dill, Douglas received his Bachelor of Arts in drama from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His early acting roles included film, stage, and television productions. Douglas first achieved prominence for his performance in the ABC police procedural television series The Streets of San Francisco, for which he received three consecutive Emmy Award nominations. In 1975, Douglas produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, having acquired the rights to the Ken Kesey novel from his father. The film received critical and popular acclaim, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, earning Douglas his first Oscar as one of the film's producers.

Douglas went on to produce films including The China Syndrome (1979) and Romancing the Stone (1984), for which he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and The Jewel of the Nile (1985). Douglas received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (a role he reprised in the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in 2010). Other notable roles include in Fatal Attraction (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Basic Instinct (1992), Falling Down (1993), The American President (1995), The Game (1997), Traffic (2000), and Wonder Boys (2000).

In 2013, for his portrayal of Liberace in the HBO film Behind the Candelabra, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. Douglas starred as an aging acting coach in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method (2018–2021), for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy. He has portrayed Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Ant-Man (2015).

Douglas has received notice for his humanitarian and political activism. He sits on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, is an honorary board member of the anti-war grant-making foundation Ploughshares Fund and he was appointed as a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 1998. He has been married to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones since 2000.

Details

Michael Douglas, (born September 25, 1944, New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S.), is an American film actor and producer who is best known for his intense portrayals of flawed heroes.

Early life and career

Douglas, the son of film legend Kirk Douglas and British actress Diana Dill, received much of his education in filmmaking by accompanying his father to various film locations. After studying drama at the University of California at Santa Barbara (B.A., 1968), Douglas made his screen debut in Hail, Hero! (1969), a Vietnam-era antiwar film now regarded as hyperbolic and dated. He made a handful of mostly forgettable films—the best of which was the Disney-produced family adventure Napoleon and Samantha (1972)—before landing the role of Steve Keller on the popular television series The Streets of San Francisco (1972), costarring with veteran actor Karl Malden.

Success as a producer: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Douglas became a driving force in the entertainment industry when he produced a screen rendering of Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Douglas’s father had acquired the rights to Cuckoo’s Nest when he starred in a Broadway adaptation during the early 1960s, and for many years he tried to interest a producer in a film version. When his efforts failed, he sold the rights to his son, who in turn produced the second film in Hollywood history to win Academy Awards in all five major categories: best picture, best actor (Jack Nicholson), best actress (Louise Fletcher), best director (Miloš Forman), and best screenplay. From this triumph, Douglas went on to both produce and star in some of the biggest box-office hits of the next two decades. Other films Douglas produced included Starman (1984), Flatliners (1990), Face/Off (1997), and The Rainmaker (1997).

Noteworthy acting roles

Douglas coproduced and costarred in The China Syndrome (1979), a taut thriller set in a nuclear power plant that was ironically and fortuitously released the same week as the real-life nuclear crisis at Three Mile Island. He appeared with Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito in the highly successful action-adventure Romancing the Stone (1984) and its sequel, The Jewel of the Nile (1985), and again teamed with the same costars for the popular dark comedy The War of the Roses (1989). One of Douglas’s most memorable roles was in Fatal Attraction (1987), in which he portrayed a family man terrorized by a woman (memorably portrayed by Glenn Close) with whom he has an adulterous affair. In the same year, Douglas delivered an Oscar-winning performance as a ruthless, morally empty financier in Wall Street (1987). Douglas’s screen persona was well showcased in this film, in that his antiheroic character of Gordon Gekko—whose personal credo is “greed is good”—is both unctuous and charismatic. Several of Douglas’s performances flaunt this dichotomy: his villainous characters exhibit personal magnetism, and his heroes are often victim to their own inadequacies. He (like his father) was one of the few actors to build a successful career out of portraying less-than-virtuous characters.

Basic Instinct (1992), a film as controversial as it was successful, was in the same genre as Fatal Attraction and served to pigeonhole Douglas as an actor specializing in violent or sexual fare. Such films as Black Rain (1989), Falling Down (1993), and Disclosure (1994) added to this characterization. Endeavouring to change his image, Douglas starred in the romantic comedy The American President (1995), in which he portrayed a widowed chief executive.

Later films

In 2000 Douglas received widespread praise for his performances as a depressive college professor in Wonder Boys and as the recently appointed American drug czar in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic; he costarred with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the latter film, and the couple married that same year. Douglas starred alongside his father, Kirk, and his son, Cameron, in It Runs in the Family (2003), about three generations of a dysfunctional Manhattan family. He later played a secret service agent wrongly accused of being part of an assassination attempt in The Sentinel (2006), and in King of California (2007) he portrayed a patient recently released from a mental hospital who is looking for gold underneath a discount store.

Douglas reprised the role of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), a sequel set in 2008 amid the global financial crisis. Reuniting with Soderbergh, he appeared as a shady government official in the action thriller Haywire (2011) and starred as Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013), a witty account of the entertainer’s private life near the end of his career; Douglas won an Emmy Award for his work on the latter production. He joined Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline in the buddy comedy Last Vegas (2013). Douglas again displayed his comic skills as a curmudgeonly realtor in the romantic comedy And So It Goes (2014). He then produced and starred in the critically panned thriller Beyond the Reach (2014), in which he hammed it up as a psychotic big-game hunter who, after accidentally shooting a man, turns the only witness into his next quarry. Douglas then appeared as Dr. Hank Pym in the superhero movie Ant-Man (2015) and its sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018). He also played the character in Avengers: Endgame (2019).

In 2018 Douglas returned to television, appearing as an aging actor turned acting teacher in the Netflix series The Kominsky Method; the show ended in 2021. He later lent his voice to the animated series Green Eggs and Ham (2019– ), which was based on Dr. Seuss’s children’s classic; it also aired on Netflix.

Personal life

In 2010 Douglas announced that he had been diagnosed with advanced throat cancer; the following year he announced that the disease was in remission. He revealed in 2013 that he had actually been suffering from tongue cancer but had misrepresented his condition because it was known that the surgical treatment of tongue cancer was sometimes disfiguring. He had worried that public knowledge of that possibility would affect his career prospects. He was ultimately treated with chemotherapy and radiation rather than surgery.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-20 15:45:47

1393) Daniel Day-Lewis

Summary

Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an English retired actor. Often described as one of the preeminent actors in the history of cinema, he received numerous accolades throughout his career which spanned over four decades, including three Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. In 2014, Day-Lewis received a knighthood for services to drama.

Born and raised in London, Day-Lewis excelled on stage at the National Youth Theatre before being accepted at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which he attended for three years. Despite his traditional training at the Bristol Old Vic, he is considered a method actor, known for his constant devotion to and research of his roles. Protective of his private life, he rarely grants interviews, and makes very few public appearances.

Day-Lewis shifted between theatre and film for most of the early 1980s, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company and playing Romeo Montague in Romeo and Juliet and Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Playing the title role in Hamlet at the National Theatre in London in 1989, he left the stage midway through a performance after breaking down during a scene where the ghost of Hamlet's father appears before him—this was his last appearance on the stage. After supporting film roles in Gandhi (1982), and The Bounty (1984), he earned acclaim for his breakthrough performances in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), A Room with a View (1985), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988).

He earned Academy Awards for his roles in My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Lincoln (2012). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in In the Name of the Father (1993), Gangs of New York (2002), and Phantom Thread (2017). Other notable films include The Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), The Crucible (1996), and The Boxer (1997). He retired from acting from 1997 to 2000, taking up a new profession as an apprentice shoe-maker in Italy. Although he returned to acting, he announced his retirement again in 2017.

Details

Daniel Day-Lewis (born April 29, 1957, London, England) is a British actor known for his on-screen intensity and for his exhaustive preparation for roles.

Day-Lewis was the second child of Cecil Day-Lewis, one of the leading British poets of the 1930s, and actress Jill Balcon and was the grandson of motion-picture producer Sir Michael Balcon. He began acting at Bedales, a liberal school in Petersfield, England, and at age 13 he landed a small role in the film Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). He then went on to perform with the Bristol Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare theatrical companies before appearing in his first adult roles in the films Gandhi (1982) and The Bounty (1984). In 1985 Day-Lewis displayed his versatility by playing a gay hooligan in My Beautiful Laundrette and a staid Edwardian-era Englishman in an adaptation of E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View; the films brought him international acclaim, as did his performance as an adulterous surgeon in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). His portrayal of Christy Brown, an artist almost completely disabled by cerebral palsy, in the film My Left Foot (1989) won him numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor. In the course of making the film, Day-Lewis spent the entire time in a wheelchair and learned to paint with his left foot.

Day-Lewis subsequently starred in a number of successful films, including The Last of the Mohicans (1992), as the frontiersman Natty Bumppo; The Age of Innocence (1993), Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel; In the Name of the Father (1993), which earned him an Academy Award nomination; and The Crucible (1996), based on Arthur Miller’s play. After appearing in The Boxer (1997), Day-Lewis took a break from acting and worked for a time as a cobbler’s apprentice in Italy.

In 2002 he returned to the screen as a murderous anti-immigrant gang leader in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, a drama set in the mid-19th century. He subsequently starred in the intimate The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), which was written and directed by Miller’s daughter Rebecca, whom he had married in 1996. In 2008 Day-Lewis won a second Academy Award, for his transformative performance as self-made oil tycoon Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007). His later film roles included an Italian film director in the star-studded musical Nine (2009) and U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s biographical Lincoln (2012). For his nuanced performance in the latter film, he won an unprecedented third best-actor Oscar. Day-Lewis next starred as a fashion designer whose pursuit of perfection begets tension in his romantic relationships in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread (2017). For this role, which he had previously announced would be his last, Day-Lewis earned his sixth Oscar nomination.

Day-Lewis was named a knight bachelor in 2014.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-21 16:49:15

1394) Jeremy Irons

Summary

Jeremy John Irons (born 19 September 1948) is an English actor and activist. He is known for his roles on stage and screen having won numerous accolades including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. He is one of the few actors who have achieved the "Triple Crown of Acting" having won Oscar, Emmy, and Tony Awards for Film, Television and Theatre.

Irons received classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and started acting career on stage in 1969. He appeared in many West End theatre productions, including the Shakespeare plays The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, and Richard II. In 1984, he made his Broadway debut in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, receiving the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

His first major film role came in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor. After starring in dramas such as Moonlighting (1982), Betrayal (1983), The Mission (1986), and Dead Ringers (1988), he received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune (1990). Other notable films include Kafka (1991), Damage (1992), M. Butterfly (1993), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Lolita (1997), The Merchant of Venice (2004), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Appaloosa (2008), and Margin Call (2011). He voiced the role of Scar in Disney's The Lion King (1994) and played Alfred Pennyworth in the DC Extended Universe (2016–2023) series of films.

On television, Irons's break-out role came in the ITV series Brideshead Revisited (1981). He received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his performance for his performance in the miniseries Elizabeth I (2005). He starred as Pope Alexander VI in the Showtime historical series The Borgias (2011–2013) and as Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias in HBO's Watchmen (2019). In October 2011, he was named the Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Details

Jeremy Irons (born September 19, 1948, Cowes, Isle of Wight, England) is a British actor whose performances were noted for their sophistication and gravitas.

Irons made his London stage debut in Godspell (1973) and appeared on Broadway in The Real Thing (1984, Tony Award). After his screen debut in Nijinsky (1980), Irons won notice for his performance in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) and became widely popular after appearing in the television series Brideshead Revisited (1981), which was based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh. Irons offered deliciously wicked turns in Dead Ringers (1988) and Reversal of Fortune (1990). In the latter film he starred as Claus von Bülow, a wealthy socialite convicted of the attempted murder of his wife. For his portrayal of the enigmatic von Bülow, Irons won an Academy Award.

Irons subsequently appeared in the sensual drama Damage (1992), the action movie Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), and as Humbert Humbert in Lolita (1997), a controversial adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel. In the animated blockbuster The Lion King (1994), Irons provided the voice of a villainous lion.

Irons’s film roles in the early 21st century included supporting characters in Being Julia (2004), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Appaloosa (2008), Margin Call (2011), The Words (2012), Race (2016), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and Justice League (2017); a different cut of the latter film was released in 2021 as Zach Snyder’s Justice League. He also costarred as mathematician G.H. Hardy in the Srinivasa Ramanujan biopic The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015); as the architect of a tower that becomes the site of a class war in High-Rise (2015), an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel; and as a villain in the fantasy adventure Assassin’s Creed (2016), based on a video game. Irons later appeared in the spy thriller Red Sparrow (2018). His credits from 2021 included Munich: The Edge of War, in which he portrayed Neville Chamberlain, and House of Gucci, a true-crime drama involving a family and its luxury fashion brand.

In addition, Irons acted in several made-for-television movies, notably Longitudes (2000) and The Colour of Magic (2008), and he won an Emmy Award for his performance as the earl of Leicester in the miniseries Elizabeth I (2005). In the Showtime series The Borgias (2011–13), he starred as another Renaissance-era historical figure, Pope Alexander VI. Irons returned to television in 2019, playing a former superhero in the HBO series Watchmen.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-22 16:30:58

1395) Anthony Hopkins

Summary

Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins CBE (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor, director, and producer. One of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actors, he is known for his performances on the screen and stage. Hopkins has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Laurence Olivier Award. He has also received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005 and the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2008. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama in 1993.

After graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 1957, Hopkins trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He was then spotted by Laurence Olivier, who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre in 1965. Productions at the National included King Lear (his favourite Shakespeare play), Coriolanus, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In 1985, he received great acclaim and a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in the David Hare play Pravda. His last stage play was a West End production of M. Butterfly in 1989.

Hopkins early film roles include The Lion in Winter (1968), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and The Elephant Man (1980). He won two Academy Awards for Best Actor for playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and an octogenarian with dementia in The Father (2020), becoming the oldest Best Actor Oscar winner for the latter. His other Oscar-nominated films include The Remains of the Day (1993), Nixon (1995), Amistad (1997), and The Two Popes (2019). Other notable films include 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Howards End (1992), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Shadowlands (1993), Legends of the Fall (1994), The Mask of Zorro (1998), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Thor franchise (2011–2017).

For his work on television, Hopkins received a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for his performance in War and Peace (1972). He won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series for The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (1976) and The Bunker (1981). Other notable projects include the BBC film The Dresser (2015), PBS's King Lear (2018), and the HBO series Westworld (2016–2018).

Details

Anthony Hopkins, (born December 31, 1937, Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales), is a Welsh stage and film actor of burning intensity, often seen at his best when playing pathetic misfits or characters on the fringes of insanity.

Early life and career

Hopkins had early ambitions to be a concert pianist. He began acting at age 18 when he joined a YMCA dramatic club. He received a scholarship to the Cardiff College of Music and Drama, and he toured with the Arts Council as a stage manager and actor after his graduation. He then spent two years with the Royal Artillery. Upon his demobilization he resumed his acting career, making his professional debut in 1960. A self-described “actor of instinct,” he gained needed training by enrolling at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1961 and graduated as a silver medalist two years later. He first appeared on the London stage in Lindsay Anderson’s production of Julius Caesar (1964). It was during this period that he appeared in his first film, the Anderson-directed short subject The White Bus (released in 1967).

Initial success

Hopkins was accepted into Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre company in 1965, and he understudied Olivier in several productions before attracting critical attention with his performances as Edgar in August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death and as Andrey Prozorov in Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters (both 1967). At last attracting the attention of the critics, he soon found himself being promoted as the “new Olivier,” and it was during this initial burst of adulation that he landed the juicy role of Prince Richard the Lionheart in the 1968 film version of James Goldman’s play The Lion in Winter. In 1974 he enjoyed a double professional triumph when he starred in the American television miniseries QB VII and also played the role of Dr. Martin Dysart in the original Broadway production of Equus.

Despite years of promise and glowing reviews, Hopkins found his career impeded by his recalcitrant attitude and battles with alcoholism. After waking up in a Phoenix hotel room in 1975 and not being able to remember how he got there, Hopkins resolved to reform: “I led a pretty self-destructive life for a few decades. It was only after I put my demons behind me that I was able to fully enjoy acting.” His career gained momentum, and his subsequent screen credits included acclaimed performances as a mentally unhinged ventriloquist in Magic (1978) and as Joseph Merrick’s doctor in The Elephant Man (1980), as well as sharply etched portrayals of two roles previously associated with Charles Laughton: Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982) and Captain Bligh in The Bounty (1984). During this period Hopkins won Emmy Awards for his performances as Bruno Richard Hauptmann in The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (1976) and as Adolf Hitler in The Bunker (1981). In 1989 he made his West End stage debut in the musical drama M. Butterfly.

Hannibal Lecter, Richard M. Nixon, and John Quincy Adams

While critical acclaim has been lavished upon Hopkins’s rich, full-blooded characterizations of such real-life personalities as Yitzhak Rabin, John Quincy Adams, Richard M. Nixon, C.S. Lewis, and Pablo Picasso, the film role with which he is most identified, and for which he received an Academy Award, was that of the horrifyingly brilliant serial killer Hannibal (“the Cannibal”) Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). He received subsequent Oscar nominations for his roles as a duty-bound butler in Remains of the Day (1993), as the 37th U.S. president in Nixon (1995), and as Adams in Amistad (1997). Other notable roles in the 1990s included 20th-century patriarchs in Howards End (1992), Legends of the Fall (1994), and Meet Joe Black (1998) as well as storied adventurers in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and The Mask of Zorro (1998).

Hopkins revived his celebrated portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002) before leading the cast of a 2003 adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain. In 2005 he starred as a brilliant mathematician afflicted with mental illness in Proof and as a New Zealand motorcycle racer in The World’s Fastest Indian. After enlivening the legal thriller Fracture (2007), Hopkins appeared in several big-budget movies rooted in mythology, including Beowulf (2007; as King Hrothgar) and The Wolfman (2010).

Later movie and television roles

Hopkins played the Norse god Odin in Thor (2011) and its sequels, Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Thor: Ragnarok (2017). He also starred in the kaleidoscopic drama 360 (2011) and as film director Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock (2012), which centred on the making of the classic suspense movie Psycho (1960). In the ensemble action comedy Red 2 (2013) Hopkins stole scenes as an eccentric nuclear scientist, and in the biblical drama Noah (2014) he dispensed wisdom to the title character as Methuselah. In 2015 he starred in the crime drama Solace, playing a doctor who is assisting in the hunt for a serial killer. After playing a string of villainous characters, Hopkins appeared in Transformers: The Last Knight in 2017. Hopkins later portrayed the eponymous hero in a televised adaptation (2018) of William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Hopkins then starred as Benedict XVI in the Netflix film The Two Popes (2019), about the friendship between Benedict and the future Pope Francis. For his performance, Hopkins earned his fifth Oscar nomination. He garnered further acclaim—including his second Academy Award—for his portrayal of a man struggling with dementia in The Father (2020). In 2022 Hopkins appeared in several movies, including Armageddon Time, a coming-of-age tale that addresses issues of bigotry and privilege. His other notable credits included the HBO TV series Westworld (2016– ), a sci-fi thriller in which he was cast as the creator of an adult theme park featuring humanlike robots.

Directorial efforts

In addition to acting, Hopkins also wrote and directed the film August (1996) and the surreal Slipstream (2007). The former was adapted from Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya, and the latter followed an aging screenwriter as he encountered his characters in real life. Hopkins played the lead in both films.

Awards and honours

For lifetime achievement, Hopkins received a Golden Globe Award (2006) and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award (2008). After being made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1987, he was knighted in 1993.

Additional Information

Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre, invited by Laurence Olivier, who could see the talent in Hopkins. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967).

From this moment on, he enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. Many successes came later, and Hopkins' remarkable acting style reached the four corners of the world. In 1977, he appeared in two major films: A Bridge Too Far (1977) with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell. In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980). Two good television literature adaptations followed: Othello (1981) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982). In 1987 he was awarded with the Commander of the order of the British Empire. This year was also important in his cinematic life, with 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), acclaimed by specialists. In 1993, he was knighted.

In the 1990s, Hopkins acted in movies like Desperate Hours (1990) and Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). His most remarkable film, however, was The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He also got a B.A.F.T.A. for this role.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-26 17:17:28

1396) Al Pacino

Details

Alfredo James Pacino (born April 25, 1940) is an American actor. Considered one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century, Pacino has received numerous accolades: including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards achieving the Triple Crown of Acting. He has also been honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2007, the National Medal of Arts in 2011, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016.

A method actor, Pacino studied at HB Studio and the Actors Studio, where he was taught by Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg. Pacino went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Scent of a Woman (1992). His other Oscar-nominated roles include The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), ...And Justice for All (1979), Dickinson Tracy (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and The Irishman (2019). He also acted in The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Scarface (1983), The Godfather Part III (1990), Carlito's Way (1993), Heat (1995), Donnie Brasco (1997), The Devil's Advocate (1997), The Insider (1999), Any Given Sunday (1999), Insomnia (2002), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

On television, Pacino has acted in several productions for HBO, including Angels in America (2003) and the Jack Kevorkian biopic You Don't Know Jack (2010), winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for each. Pacino starred in the Amazon Prime Video series Hunters (2020–23). He has also had an extensive career on stage. He is a two-time Tony Award winner, winning Best Featured Actor in a Play in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? (1969) and Best Actor in a Play for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1977).

Pacino made his directing debut with the documentary Looking for Richard (1996); Pacino had played the lead role on stage in 1977. He has also acted as Shylock in a 2004 feature film adaptation and 2010 stage production of The Merchant of Venice. Pacino directed and starred in Chinese Coffee (2000), Wilde Salomé (2011), and Salomé (2013). Since 1994, he has been the joint president of the Actors Studio.

Additional Information

Al Pacino (born April 25, 1940, New York, New York, U.S.) is an American actor best known for his intense, explosive acting style.

Early career

After growing up in East Harlem and the Bronx, Pacino moved at age 19 to Greenwich Village, where he studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio and appeared in many Off-Broadway and out-of-town productions, including Hello, Out There (1963) and Why Is a Crooked Letter (1966). He took further acting lessons from Lee Strasberg and played a small part in the film Me, Natalie in 1969. The same year, he made his Broadway debut and won a Tony Award for his performance in the play Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie? Pacino’s first leading role in a film came with The Panic in Needle Park (1971), a grim tale of that became something of a cult classic.

Stardom: The Godfather, Serpico, and Scarface

Director Francis Ford Coppola cast Pacino in the film that would make him a star, The Godfather (1972). The saga of a family of gangsters and their fight to maintain power in changing times, The Godfather was a wildly popular film that won the Academy Award for best picture and earned Pacino numerous accolades—including his first of many Oscar nominations—for his intense performance as Michael Corleone, a gangster’s son who reluctantly takes over the “family business.” Pacino solidified his standing as one of Hollywood’s most dynamic stars in his next few films. In Scarecrow (1973), he teamed with Gene Hackman in a bittersweet story about two transients, and his roles in Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975) displayed Pacino’s characteristic screen qualities of brooding seriousness and explosive rage. He also repeated the role of Michael Corleone for Coppola’s The Godfather, Part II (1974), a film that, like its predecessor, won the best picture Oscar.

Pacino’s next few films did not fare as well. Bobby Deerfield (1977) was notable as his first box-office failure since he had become a star. The dark comedy …And Justice for All (1979) featured some of Pacino’s most memorable scenes, but Cruising (1980) and the light comedy Author! Author! (1982) were critical and popular disasters.

In Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983), Pacino returned to the kind of combustible, high-intensity role that had made him famous. As gangster Tony Montana, Pacino gave a highly charged, unrestrained performance that, although loved by some and deplored by others, ranks among his most unforgettable. His next film, Revolution (1985), was an expensive flop, and Pacino did not appear in another film for four years.

Academy Award and later films

Sea of Love (1989), his biggest hit in years, reestablished Pacino as a major film star. In 1990 he reprised the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III and gave a hilarious portrayal of grotesque gangster Big Boy Caprice in Dickinson Tracy. Frankie and Johnny (1991) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), both adaptations of plays, continued his string of well-received films, and he won a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of a bitter blind man in Scent of a Woman (1992). Pacino’s other notable films of the 1990s included Carlito’s Way (1993); Heat (1995), a crime drama in which he played a detective hunting a thief (Robert De Niro); Donnie Brasco (1997), in which he starred as a low-level mobster who unknowingly befriends an FBI agent (Johnny Depp); and Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday (1999). Also in 1999 Pacino appeared opposite Russell Crowe in The Insider; based on real-life events, it examines tobacco companies and their efforts to conceal the dangerous side effects of cigarettes.

Pacino’s prolific acting career continued into the 21st century. In 2002 he starred with Robin Williams in the thriller Insomnia, and he later appeared in Ocean’s Thirteen (2007), the final installment of a popular comedy trilogy that featured George Clooney and Brad Pitt. After skewering his public persona with a role as himself in the Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill (2011), Pacino played an aging gangster in Stand Up Guys (2012). He evinced the isolation of a small-town locksmith in Manglehorn (2014) and the late-life epiphany of a rock star in Danny Collins (2015). After a series of roles in unremarkable movies, Pacino joined a cast of colourful characters in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019). He then costarred with De Niro in The Irishman (2019), his first film with director Martin Scorsese. In the mob drama, which received a theatrical release before airing on Netflix, Pacino played labour leader Jimmy Hoffa, whose disappearance in 1975 caused much speculation. For his performance, Pacino earned his 10th Oscar nomination. In 2021 he appeared as a lawyer in American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally, which was based on the true story of Mildred Gillars, a radio propagandist for the Nazi government during World War II. That year Pacino was also cast in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, which centres on the true story of the murder of Maurizio Gucci, who headed his family’s luxury fashion brand.

TV and stage work

In between his big-screen work, Pacino appeared in several television productions for HBO. For his role as homophobic lawyer Roy Cohn in Angels in America (2003), an adaptation of Tony Kushner’s two-part play about AIDS in the 1980s, he won an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. His performance as Jack Kevorkian, a doctor who assisted in the suicide of terminally ill patients, in the movie You Don’t Know Jack (2010) earned him the same awards. He later starred as another controversial figure in David Mamet’s Phil Spector (2013), which was set during the embattled record producer’s first trial for murder. In Paterno (2018) Pacino played legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, whose reputation was tarnished by a gender-abuse scandal that occurred during his tenure. In the Amazon series Hunters (2020–23), he portrayed a Holocaust survivor who leads a group of people searching for Nazis in the 1970s.

Pacino frequently returned to the stage throughout his career, notably winning a Tony Award for his leading role in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1977). He also starred in such plays as William Shakespeare’s Richard III (1973 and 1979), Julius Caesar (1988), and The Merchant of Venice (2010); Mamet’s American Buffalo (1980, 1981, and 1983) and Glengarry Glen Ross (2012); and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (1992, 2003, and 2006). In 1992 Pacino originated the role of Harry Levine, a washed-up writer who is depressed about his lack of success, in the Broadway drama Chinese Coffee; he later directed and starred in a 2000 film adaptation. He also directed the documentary films Looking for Richard (1996) and Wilde Salomé (2011), which offered behind-the-scenes looks at two of his stage productions.

In 2001 Pacino received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement). His other awards included the National Medal of Arts (2011) and a Kennedy Center Honor (2016).

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-29 19:19:59

1397) Tom Hanks

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Thomas Jeffrey Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Hanks' films have grossed more than $4.9 billion in North America and more than $9.96 billion worldwide, making him the fourth-highest-grossing actor in North America. He has received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor both in 2016, as well as the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2020.

Hanks made his breakthrough with leading roles in a series of comedy films which received positive media attention, such as Splash (1984), The Money Pit (1986), Big (1988), and A League of Their Own (1992). He won two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor for starring as a lawyer suffering from AIDS in Philadelphia (1993) and the title character in Forrest Gump (1994).[8] Hanks collaborated with film director Steven Spielberg on five films: Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Bridge of Spies (2015), and The Post (2017), as well as the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), which launched him as a director, producer, and screenwriter. He has also frequently collaborated with film directors Ron Howard, Nora Ephron, and Robert Zemeckis.

Hanks' other films include the romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You've Got Mail (1998); the dramas Apollo 13 (1995), The Green Mile (1999), Cast Away (2000), Road to Perdition (2002) and Cloud Atlas (2012); and the biographical dramas Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Captain Phillips (2013), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Sully (2016), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), News of the World (2020) and Elvis (2022). He has also appeared as the title character in the Robert Langdon film series, and voiced Sheriff Woody in the Toy Story film series (1995–2019). Hanks directed the comedy That Thing You Do! (1996), followed by the romantic comedy Larry Crowne (2011), both of which he acted in.

In 1998, Hanks launched his production company Playtone which has an exclusive television development deal with HBO. For his work on television, Hanks has also won seven Primetime Emmy Awards for his work as a producer of various limited series and television movies, including From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Band of Brothers (2001), John Adams (2008), The Pacific (2009), Game Change (2012), and Olive Kitteridge (2015). He made his Broadway debut in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy (2013) earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination.

Additional Information

Tom Hanks (born July 9, 1956, Concord, California, U.S.) is an American actor whose cheerful everyman persona made him a natural for starring roles in many popular films. In the 1990s he expanded his comedic repertoire and began portraying lead characters in dramas.

After a nomadic childhood, Hanks majored in drama at California State University and performed in summer stock in Cleveland, Ohio, playing a variety of classical roles. In the late 1970s he moved to New York City, where he had a small part in a horror film in 1980.

Hanks gained notice for his comic abilities as a costar of the television series Bosom Buddies (1980–82). His work in the hit film Splash (1984) earned him leads in other comedies, including Bachelor Party (1984), Volunteers (1985), and The Money Pit (1986). He successfully mixed comedy with drama in Nothing in Common (1986) and Punchline (1988), and his portrayal of a boy in an adult body in Big (1988) earned him an Academy Award nomination and launched him on the path to becoming one of the era’s most popular stars.

After starring opposite actress Meg Ryan in the romantic comedy Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), Hanks reteamed with her in Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998), both directed by Nora Ephron. He portrayed the drunken manager of a women’s baseball team in the comedy A League of Their Own (1992) and delivered an Oscar-winning performance as a gay lawyer with AIDS in Philadelphia (1993). Another Academy Award, for the phenomenally popular Forrest Gump (1994), made him the first actor to win back-to-back best actor Oscars since Spencer Tracy.

Hanks earned further Oscar nominations for lead actor for his dramatic performances in Saving Private Ryan (1998), which was directed by Steven Spielberg, and Cast Away (2000). Additional serious roles during this time came in Apollo 13 (1995), The Green Mile (1999), and Road to Perdition (2002). In the blockbuster Toy Story series (1995, 1999, 2010, and 2019), Hanks provided the voice of the animated cowboy Woody.

In 2002 Hanks starred with Leonardo DiCaprio in Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, and he portrayed Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology, in the 2006 film adaptation of Dan Brown’s hugely popular The Da Vinci Code; he reprised the role of Langdon in Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016). In Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), Hanks appeared as the real-life senator Charlie Wilson, who assisted the Afghan resistance to the Soviets in the 1980s, and he later portrayed a father killed in the September 11 attacks in the drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011). For the mystical epic Cloud Atlas (2012), which wove together multiple narratives, he took on six roles, ranging from a 19th-century surgeon to a postapocalyptic tribesman.

In 2013 Hanks made his Broadway debut in Lucky Guy, a play by Ephron based on the life of journalist Mike McAlary, and he captured a Tony Award nomination for his starring performance as the colourful hard-nosed newsman. Later that year he returned to the big screen with Captain Phillips, a drama based on the true story of an American cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009, and Saving Mr. Banks, a comedy based on the efforts of Walt Disney to obtain the film rights to P.L. Travers’s novel Mary Poppins (1934). Hanks then portrayed lawyer James B. Donovan, who defended (1957) Soviet spy Rudolf Abel and later orchestrated his 1962 release in exchange for American pilot Francis Gary Powers, in Steven Spielberg’s Cold War drama Bridge of Spies (2015).

A Hologram for the King (2016), an adaptation of a novel by Dave Eggers, starred Hanks as a salesman who journeys to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to revive his fortunes. Also in 2016 he appeared as the title character in Sully, Clint Eastwood’s drama based on the true story of a commercial airline pilot who made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. After starring in The Circle, Hanks reunited with Spielberg for The Post (both 2017), about publication of the Pentagon Papers. In the drama, he portrayed Ben Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post. In 2019 Hanks played another real person, Mister Rogers, in the biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. For his performance, Hanks received his sixth Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor.

He then returned to World War II in Greyhound (2020), a drama based on the C.S. Forester novel The Good Shepherd. Hanks starred as a naval commander escorting Allied convoys across the Atlantic; he also penned the screenplay. His other credits from 2020 included the drama News of the World, an adaptation of a novel by Paulette Jiles. Set in the 19th century, the film centres on an itinerant news reader trying to return a young girl to her family several years after she was kidnapped by Native Americans. In 2021 Hanks starred in Finch, a postapocalyptic drama about an ailing man who builds a robot to look after his dog. The following year he played Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, a biopic about the legendary performer. His other credits from 2022 include A Man Called Otto, an adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s best-selling novel about a man whose grumpy exterior hides a generous spirit.

In addition to his acting, Hanks wrote and directed the comedy That Thing You Do! (1996), about a fictional 1960s rock band. He later cowrote, directed, and starred opposite Julia Roberts in the romance Larry Crowne (2011), playing an unemployed man who enrolls in community college. Hanks also produced a number of films and such television miniseries as From the Earth to the Moon (1998), which documents the Apollo space program, and the World War II dramas Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010). In 2009 he narrated Beyond All Boundaries, a documentary about World War II that used animation, archival footage, and sensory effects, including shaking seats; the 35-minute film was produced for the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. He also wrote the short-story collection Uncommon Type (2017) and the novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece (2023), about the filming of a superhero movie.

Hanks was the recipient of numerous acting honours, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement). In addition, he received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2014 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-30 21:27:25

1398) Nicolas Cage

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Nicolas Kim Coppola (born January 7, 1964), known by his stage name Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and film producer. Born into the Coppola family, he is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe Award.

Cage first gained attention for his romantic roles in Valley Girl (1983), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Moonstruck (1987), and Raising Arizona (1987). For starring as an alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas (1995), he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He received another Academy Award nomination for his performance as twins Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation (2002).

Cage established himself in mainstream action films, such as The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), Face/Off (1997), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), the National Treasure film series (2004–2007), the Ghost Rider film series (2007–2011), and Kick-math (2010). He also took on dramatic roles in City of Angels (1998), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), and The Family Man (2000). He has voiced characters in The Croods franchise (2013–present) and in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). He earned renewed critical recognition for his starring roles in Mandy (2018), Pig (2021), The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) and Dream Scenario (2023).

Cage owns the production company Saturn Films and has produced films such as Shadow of the Vampire (2000) and The Life of David Gale (2003), and has directed Sonny (2002). He was ranked No. 40 in Empire magazine's The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time list in 2007 and was placed No. 37 in Premiere's 100 Most Powerful People in Hollywood in 2008.

Additional Information

Nicolas Cage (born January 7, 1964, Long Beach, California, U.S.) is an American actor, perhaps best known for his performances in action films and big-budget summer blockbusters. He received an Academy Award for his work in Leaving Las Vegas (1995).

The nephew of motion-picture director Francis Ford Coppola, he made his acting debut in 1981 in a television pilot. He then landed a role in the teenage comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and in 1983 appeared in Coppola’s Rumble Fish. Wanting to differentiate himself from his uncle, he subsequently began using the last name Cage. His first starring role came in Valley Girl (1983), a lighthearted romance about suburban punk rockers. In 1984 Cage, by then a strong proponent of the Stanislavsky method of acting, appeared in Coppola’s The Cotton Club as well as in Racing with the Moon and Birdy. Throughout the late 1980s he starred in numerous comedies, including Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona (1987), in which he played a small-time criminal who, along with his wife, a former police officer, kidnaps one of a set of quintuplets.

After several lacklustre films in the early 1990s, Cage earned critical acclaim with his Oscar-winning performance as a self-destructive alcoholic writer in Leaving Las Vegas. He went on to star in a series of large-budget explosive-laden films that were hits at the box office. In The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), and Face/Off (1997), he appeared opposite such actors as Sean Connery, John Cusack, and John Travolta, respectively. Other notable action films and thrillers include Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), about a group of car thieves attempting a single-night heist of 50 cars; Windtalkers (2002), a portrayal of Navajo code talkers during World War II; and National Treasure (2004) and its sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), which featured Cage as a treasure hunter searching for historical artifacts.

In 2002 Cage appeared in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation, playing twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman, and was again nominated for an Academy Award. That same year he made his directorial debut with Sonny, a film he also produced. After portraying a firefighter in World Trade Center (2006), Oliver Stone’s film about the September 11 attacks, Cage took on roles as an astrophysicist in the science-fiction thriller Knowing (2009) and a police detective struggling with drug and gambling addictions in Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009).

Cage was a prolific actor, occasionally making more than five movies in a single year. A number of his films went straight to video. His notable film work included Kick-math (2010), an action comedy about an ordinary teenager who dreams of becoming a superhero, and the action thriller Ghost Rider (2007) and its sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011), in which he appeared as a demonically possessed motorcyclist. His atypically subdued work in Joe (2013), in which he played a former criminal who takes a protective interest in one of his young employees, was widely acclaimed. Cage then assumed the role of an airline pilot in Left Behind (2014), an adaptation of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’s highly successful novel (1995) about the Rapture, and in Oliver Stone’s Snowden (2016) he was cast as a former intelligence officer.

For the 2021 drama Pig, Cage drew praise for his portrayal of a truffle hunter searching for his stolen pig. He then appeared as a version of himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022), an action comedy that references a number of his other movies. The actor also lent his voice to such animated films as The Croods (2013), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), and The Croods: A New Age (2020).

In 2009 Cage was named Global Citizen of the Year by the United Nations for his humanitarian efforts, notably his involvement in creating a fund for former child soldiers.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-12-05 18:05:02

1399) Geoffrey Rush

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Geoffrey Roy Rush AC (born 6 July 1951) is an Australian actor. He is known for his eccentric leading man roles on stage and screen. He is among 24 people who have won the Triple Crown of Acting, having received an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Tony Award. He also received three British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. Rush is the founding president of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts and was named the 2012 Australian of the Year.

Rush started his professional acting career with the Queensland Theatre Company in 1971. He studied for two years at the L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq starting in 1975. Rush starred in international productions of Waiting for Godot, The Winter's Tale and The Importance of Being Earnest. He made his Broadway debut in the absurdist comedy Exit the King in 2009, where he received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance. He received a nomination for Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play for Diary of a Madman in 2011.

He gained prominence for his role in Shine (1996), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor; his other Oscar-nominated roles were for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Quills (2000), and The King's Speech (2010). Rush gained mainstream popularity for his role as Captain Hector Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (2003–2017). His other notable films include in Elizabeth (1998), Les Misérables (1998), Frida (2002), Finding Nemo (2003), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), Munich (2005), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and The Book Thief (2013).

Rush is also known for his performances in television receiving Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie nominations for his portrayals of comedian Peter Sellers in the HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), and scientist Albert Einstein in National Geographic anthology series Genius (2017), winning for the former.

Additional Information

Geoffrey Rush, (born July 6, 1951, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia), is an Australian film and theatre actor who deployed his craggy features and sly wit to memorable effect, particularly as villainous or unbalanced characters.

Rush was raised in a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In 1968 he joined a theatre troupe attached to the University of Queensland in Brisbane and enrolled at the university the next year. He was recruited by the Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) in 1971 and debuted in their production of Wrong Side of the Moon. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1972, and, after a stint with QTC, enrolled in a directing course in London and a mime school in Paris. Upon returning to Australia in 1977, Rush resumed his relationship with QTC.

Rush made his film debut as a detective in the crime thriller Hoodwink in 1981, but he remained primarily a theatre actor for the next decade. He appeared in productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1982, 1983), Twelfth Night (1984), and King Lear (1988) for Lighthouse (now called the State Theatre Company of South Australia) in Adelaide. In 1988 he toured Victoria state as Jack Worthing in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest; he reprised the role for a national tour and a further production (1990–91, 1992). Rush was also acclaimed for his performances in Diary of a Madman (1989), an adaptation of a Nikolay Gogol short story staged by the Belvoir Street Theatre, and Oleanna (1993), for the Sydney Theatre Company.

Rush came to the attention of an international audience when he portrayed savant pianist David Helfgott in the film Shine (1996), a role for which he won an Academy Award for best actor. Rush then turned in nuanced interpretations of Inspector Javert in Les Misérables (1998) and spy master Sir Francis Walsingham in Elizabeth (1998); he reprised the latter role in the 2007 sequel. As theatre manager Philip Henslowe in Shakespeare in Love (1998) and as a supervillain in the spoof Mystery Men (1999), Rush demonstrated his comedic skills, which were on more subtle display in his impish rendering of the Marquis de Sade in Quills (2000).

Rush garnered further attention for his over-the-top portrayal of the pirate captain Hector Barbossa in the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean series: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Dead Man’s Chest (2006), At World’s End (2007), On Stranger Tides (2011), and Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). Rush also continued to appear onstage, and in 2009 he made his Broadway debut in Exit the King as the dying monarch Berenger I, for which he won the Tony Award for best actor. The following year he received additional acclaim for his performance as a speech therapist assisting King George VI of England in the film drama The King’s Speech; Rush earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. He was also lauded for his comparatively muted performance in the World War II drama The Book Thief (2013), in which he played a German man who, with his wife, shelters an abandoned girl and a Jewish refugee. In 2016 Rush appeared in the action fantasy Gods of Egypt, and the following year he portrayed Albert Einstein in the first season of the TV series Genius. He later starred as the celebrated Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti in Final Portrait (2017), which focused on a brief period in 1964 when the artist worked on a portrait of his friend and art critic James Lord.

In 2017 The Daily Telegraph published articles that claimed Rush had sexually harassed a female costar. Rush denied the allegations and sued the newspaper’s publisher for defamation. In 2019 he won the case, with the judge ruling that the articles were “a recklessly irresponsible piece of sensationalist journalism of the very worst kind.” Rush was awarded nearly $2 million (U.S.), a record then in Australia for a defamation payout to one person.

In addition to winning an Oscar, Rush was the recipient of various honours. Notably, in 2012 he was named Australian of the Year.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-12-08 22:58:40

1400) Jack Nicholson

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John Joseph Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American retired actor and filmmaker. Nicholson is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of his generation. Throughout his five-decade career, Nicholson appeared in 80 films, for which he received numerous accolades, including three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, a Grammy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He also received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1994 and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In many of his films, he played rebels against the social structure.

Nicholson has won three Academy Awards, for Best Actor for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and As Good as It Gets (1997) and for Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment (1983). He was Oscar-nominated for Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Detail (1974), Chinatown (1974), Reds (1981), Prizzi's Honor (1986), Ironweed (1987), A Few Good Men (1992) and About Schmidt (2002). Nicholson is also known for his notable roles in Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Shining (1980), Heartburn (1986), Broadcast News (1987), Batman (1989), Hoffa (1992), Mars Attacks! (1996), Something's Gotta Give (2003), The Departed (2006) and The Bucket List (2007).

Nicholson has directed three films, Drive, He Said (1971), Goin' South (1978), and The Two Jakes (1990). He is one of only three male actors to win three Academy Awards and one of only two actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting in films made in every decade from the 1960s to the 2000s (alongside Michael Caine). Nicholson's 12 Academy Award nominations make him the most nominated male actor in the Academy's history.

Additional Information

Jack Nicholson (born April 22, 1937, Neptune, New Jersey, U.S.) is one of the most prominent American motion-picture actors of his generation, especially noted for his versatile portrayals of unconventional, alienated outsiders.

Early life and career

Nicholson, whose father abandoned his family, grew up believing that his grandmother was his mother and that his mother was his older sister; it was not until he had attained fame that Nicholson himself learned the truth. After graduating from high school, he moved to California, where he took an office job in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s animation department. During the years 1957–58 he performed on stage with the Players Ring Theater in Los Angeles and landed some small roles on television. About this time he met B-film king Roger Corman, who offered him the leading role in his low-budget film The Cry Baby Killer (1958). Nicholson spent the next decade playing major roles in B-films (including several more for Corman), occasional supporting roles in A-films (such as Ensign Pulver, 1964), and guest roles on such television series as The Andy Griffith Show. He also dabbled in screenwriting, with his best-known credits being Corman’s LSD-hallucination film The Trip (1967) and the surrealistic romp Head (1968), a box-office failure starring the Monkees that has since attracted a cult following.

Nicholson’s big break finally came with Easy Rider (1969), a seminal counterculture film starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as drifting, drug-dealing bikers and Nicholson in a scene-stealing, Oscar-nominated supporting performance as an alcoholic lawyer. Nicholson’s newfound stardom was secured with his leading role in Five Easy Pieces (1970), an episodic, existentialist drama and a major entry in Hollywood’s “art film” movement of the early 1970s. Nicholson’s portrayal of a man alienated from his family, friends, career, and lovers garnered him an Oscar nomination for best actor. His next successful film, director Mike Nichols’s Carnal Knowledge (1971), was a darkly humorous condemnation of male sexual mores; it was perhaps mainstream Hollywood’s most sexually explicit film to date. Nicholson’s performance as an emotionally empty, predatory chauvinist showcased his talent for interjecting humour into serious situations as a means to underscore inherent irony—typically, his darkest characters are wickedly funny.

Nicholson earned another Oscar nomination for The Last Detail (1973), in which he portrayed a rowdy military police officer who reluctantly escorts a young sailor to military prison. He next starred in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), an homage to the film noir detective films of the 1940s and a widely acknowledged cinematic masterpiece. Nicholson’s brilliant performance as stylish private eye Jake Gittes, who realizes too late his impotence in the face of wealth and corruption, earned him a fourth Oscar nomination. The actor capped this highly successful period with his first Oscar win, for One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), in which his iconoclastic, free-spirited characterization of mental institution inmate R.P. McMurphy serves as a metaphor for the hopelessness of rebellion against established authority. Other notable Nicholson films from this period included Michelangelo Antonioni’s Professione: reporter (1975; The Passenger), in which Nicholson portrays a depressed reporter who assumes a dead man’s identity, and Tommy (1975), director Ken Russell’s garish production of the Who’s rock opera, featuring Nicholson in a supporting singing role as the title character’s doctor.

His stardom assured, Nicholson worked sporadically during the next few years. He costarred with Marlon Brando in the Arthur Penn western The Missouri Breaks (1976), an uneven yet compellingly quirky film; and he directed and starred in another revisionist western, Goin’ South (1978). His next notable role was in director Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980); an adaptation of the Stephen King novel, it is a film over which critical opinion remains divided but the one with Nicholson’s ax-wielding rampage—culminating in his demonic cry of “Heeeere’s Johnny!”—that became one of the indelible cinematic images of the era. Nicholson appeared in several quality films during the 1980s, garnering further Academy Award nominations for Reds (1981), Prizzi’s Honor (1985), and Ironweed (1987) and winning a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a drunken-but-decent ex-astronaut in Terms of Endearment (1983). Two of his most popular performances of the decade came in The Witches of Eastwick (1987) and Batman (1989), which featured Nicholson’s over-the-top comic turns as the Devil and the Joker, respectively.

By the 1990s Nicholson was regarded as a screen icon. He began the decade by directing and starring in The Two Jakes (1990), a sequel to Chinatown that generated lukewarm reviews. Better-received were Hoffa (1992), in which he portrayed the controversial Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, and A Few Good Men (1992), in which his supporting performance as a dyspeptic marine colonel earned him his 10th Oscar nomination, an all-time record for a male actor. His 11th nomination, for his portrayal of a misanthropic writer in As Good as It Gets (1997), resulted in Nicholson’s third Oscar (his second for best actor).

Later work

At the beginning of the 21st century, Nicholson continued to star in dramatic roles. After playing a world-weary former cop in Sean Penn’s The Pledge (2001), he scored another personal triumph with his much-lauded performance as the title character in About Schmidt (2002), a movie about a retired widower seeking to mend his relationship with his daughter. Nicholson’s understated acting in the melancholic comedy earned him a 12th Academy Award nomination. In 2006 he appeared as Irish mobster Frank Costello in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. Nicholson continued his success in comedic roles when he starred as an over-the-top psychiatrist in Anger Management (2003) and as an aging playboy who falls in love with a playwright (played by Diane Keaton) in Something’s Gotta Give (2004). In The Bucket List (2007) Nicholson and Morgan Freeman portray two terminally ill men who escape a hospital ward so they can accomplish everything they want to do before dying. He later appeared as an irascible father in the romantic comedy How Do You Know (2010), his fourth collaboration with director James L. Brooks.

Although Nicholson’s widely imitated trademarks of a devilish smile and a slow, detached speaking style remained constant throughout the years, his screen persona mellowed in its metamorphosis from iconoclastic leading man to mainstream character actor, and his characters of later years reflect in many ways the maturation of his generation. As he entered his 60s, he often played men with a youthful rebellious streak but who have also learned the value of sensitivity. Nicholson was awarded the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1994.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-12-13 17:11:27

1401) Roberto Benigni

Details

Roberto Remigio Benigni Cavaliere di Gran Croce; born 27 October 1952) is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director. He gained international recognition for writing, directing and starring in the Holocaust comedy-drama film Life Is Beautiful (1997), for which he received the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best International Feature Film. Benigni was the first actor to win the Best Actor Academy Award for a non–English language performance.

Benigni made his acting debut in 1977's Berlinguer, I Love You, which he also wrote, and which was directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. Benigni's directorial debut was the 1983 anthology film Tu mi turbi, which was also the acting debut of his wife, Nicoletta Braschi. He continued directing and also starring in the comedic films Nothing Left to Do But Cry (1984), The Little Devil (1988), Johnny Stecchino (1991), The Monster (1994), Pinocchio (2002), and The Tiger and the Snow (2005).

Benigni acted in the Jim Jarmusch films Down by Law, Night on Earth (1991) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). He also acted in Blake Edwards' Son of the Pink Panther (1993), Woody Allen's To Rome with Love (2012), and Matteo Garrone's Pinocchio (2019).

Additional Information

Roberto Benigni (born October 27, 1952, Misericordia, Arezzo, Italy) is an Italian actor and director known for his comedic work, most notably La vita è bella (1997; Life Is Beautiful), for which he won an Academy Award for best actor.

Benigni was the son of a poor tenant farmer who had worked in a German forced-labour camp during World War II. The elder Benigni used humour in retelling his experiences, which helped shape his son’s comedic skill. Benigni briefly attended a Jesuit seminary in Florence, and, after a stint as a magician’s assistant, he joined an underground theatre group in the late 1960s. There he cowrote a semiautobiographical monologue that led to a tour of Italy and the film Berlinguer, ti voglio bene (1977; Berlinguer: I Love You). A string of movies followed, and in 1983 he made his directorial debut with Tu mi turbi (You Upset Me), which he also wrote and starred in. The film featured his wife, actress Nicoletta Braschi, who frequently appeared in his work and played his onscreen spouse in Life Is Beautiful. Benigni again performed triple duties in Il piccolo diavolo (1988; “The Little Devil”) and Il mostro (1994; The Monster). His fourth film as director, writer, and actor, Johnny Stecchino (1991), a Mafia farce, set box-office records in Italy.

By the mid-1990s Benigni had won over European audiences with his mimicry and exaggerated facial expressions—gestures that were reminiscent of his idol, Charlie Chaplin. In the United States, however, he was relatively unknown. His appearance in such American movies as Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law (1986) and Night on Earth (1988) and Blake Edwards’s Son of the Pink Panther (1993) had garnered little attention. Life Is Beautiful, however, established Benigni as an international star. The movie—which he wrote, directed, and acted in—was released in the United States in 1998 and became one of the highest-grossing non-English-language films in American box-office history. At the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony, Benigni became only the second person (after Sophia Loren) to win an Academy Award for an acting performance in a foreign-language film. Life Is Beautiful also received an Oscar for best foreign-language film, which added to the movie’s more than 30 international awards, including the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival (1998). The tragicomedy follows Guido Orefice, an Italian Jew who falls in love and marries before his life is brutally interrupted by World War II. Interned in a Nazi concentration camp, he turns the experience into a humorous game in order to protect his young son. Although some critics charged that the film made light of the Holocaust, Benigni’s aim was to offer a touching account of hope amid desperation.

In 1999 Benigni appeared in the French action film Astérix & Obélix contre César, based on the popular European comic-book series. His next project was Pinocchio (2002), a story he had long wanted to film. The comedy, in which he starred as the titular character, was popular with Italian moviegoers, but it did not have the same success internationally. Benigni’s appearance in a 1986 short film by Jarmusch was included in the well-received Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), a collection of vignettes centring on the consumption of the eponymous addictive substances. He later directed, cowrote, and starred in La tigre e la neve (2005; The Tiger and the Snow), which treats the Iraq War in much the same way as Life Is Beautiful treated the Holocaust, playing its absurdities for laughs and using it to frame a love story. This time, however, critics were less receptive to Benigni’s handling of the topic.

In 2006 Benigni premiered TuttoDante (“All About Dante”), a one-man show about Dante’s The Divine Comedy in which he ebulliently interpreted and recited excerpts from the poem. After the show proved vastly popular in Italy, he performed it internationally. Benigni returned to movie screens in Woody Allen’s ensemble comedy To Rome with Love (2012), which was set in the Italian capital. He next starred in Pinocchio (2019), though in this adaptation he played Geppetto.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-12-14 22:39:51

1402) Kevin Spacey

Details

Kevin Spacey Fowler (born July 26, 1959) is an American actor. Known for his work on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and two Laurence Olivier Awards. Spacey was named an honorary Commander and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 and 2015, respectively.

Spacey had small roles in Mike Nichols' comedy-drama films Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988). He won two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for playing a con man in The Usual Suspects (1995) and Best Actor for playing a suburban husband and father going through a midlife crisis in American Beauty (1999). His other films include Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Se7en (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), Pay It Forward (2000), Superman Returns (2006), 21 (2008), Margin Call (2011), and Baby Driver (2017). He has also directed the films Albino Alligator (1996) and Beyond the Sea (2004).

In Broadway theatre, Spacey starred in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in 1986. He won a Tony Award in 1991 for his role in Lost in Yonkers. He won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in a revival of The Iceman Cometh in 1999. Spacey portrayed the title role in Richard III in 2011 and Clarence Darrow in a West End production of Darrow in 2015. He was the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 to 2015, for which he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award. In 2017, he hosted the 71st Tony Awards.

In television, Spacey portrayed Ron Klain in Recount (2008) and produced Bernard and Doris (2008), both for HBO Films. From 2013 to 2017, he starred as Frank Underwood in the Netflix political drama series House of Cards, which won him a Golden Globe Award and two consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor. Both Spacey and the show itself were nominated for five consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Drama Series, respectively.

In 2017, Spacey faced several allegations of sexual misconduct. In the wake of these claims, Netflix cut ties with Spacey, shelving his biopic of Gore Vidal and removing him from the last season of House of Cards. His completed role as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's film All the Money in the World (2017) was reshot with Christopher Plummer. Spacey has denied the accusations and was found not liable in a 2022 lawsuit in New York. In a separate case in London, he was acquitted by a jury of sexual assault charges in 2023.

Additional Information

Kevin Spacey (born July 26, 1959, South Orange, New Jersey, U.S.) American actor on stage and screen, especially known for his dynamic roles in dark comedies.

Early life and career

When Spacey was a young boy, his family moved frequently, ultimately settling in southern California. In high school he began taking drama classes and subsequently appeared in numerous school productions. He also displayed his impersonation talent in comedy club performances. Following graduation he attended Los Angeles Valley College, but in 1979 he moved to New York City and enrolled in the Juilliard School. After two years Spacey moved on and soon made his professional debut in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I. In 1982 he appeared in his first Broadway production, Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. Notable stage roles in Hurlyburly (1985) and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1986) followed, as did appearances in the films Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988).

Se7en, L.A. Confidential, and American Beauty

In 1991 Spacey won a Tony Award for featured actor for his performance as the mobster Uncle Louie in Neil Simon’s hit Lost in Yonkers. Following his theatrical success, he earned praise for his work in such films as Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Swimming with Sharks (1994), and Se7en (1995). His performance in The Usual Suspects (1995) as a double-talking con man earned him an Academy Award for best supporting actor. After appearing in the well-received crime drama L.A. Confidential (1997), Spacey returned to the stage in 1998 and received the Evening Standard, London Theatre Critics’ Circle, and Laurence Olivier best actor awards for his portrayal of Hickey in O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. In 1999 he starred as a frustrated husband and father in the dark comedy American Beauty. His ability to show the alienation and vulnerability of his character, Lester Burnham—a middle-class family man obsessed with a beautiful classmate of his teenage daughter—brought Spacey enthusiastic critical acclaim, and he won an Academy Award for best actor.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-12-16 22:53:03

1403) Russell Crowe

Summary

Russell Ira Crowe (born 7 April 1964) is an actor. He was born in New Zealand, spent 10 years of his childhood in Australia, and moved there permanently at age 21. He has earned various accolades, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a British Academy Film Award.

Crowe began acting in Australia and had his breakout role in the drama Romper Stomper (1992). He gained international recognition for his starring roles as a police detective in the thriller L.A. Confidential (1997) and Jeffrey Wigand in the drama The Insider (1999). Crowe gained wider stardom for playing the title role in the period film Gladiator (2000), winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. Further acclaim came for portraying mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. in the biopic A Beautiful Mind (2001). He has since starred in the war film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), the sports drama Cinderella Man (2005), the Western 3:10 to Yuma (2007), the crime drama American Gangster (2007), the thriller State of Play (2009), and the action film Robin Hood (2010).

Crowe later starred as Javert in the musical Les Misérables (2012), as Jor-El in the superhero film Man of Steel (2013), as Noah in the biblical drama Noah (2014), and as Zeus in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). In 2014, he made his directorial debut with the drama The Water Diviner, in which he also starred. He has been the co-owner of the National Rugby League (NRL) team South Sydney Rabbitohs since 2006.

Details

Russell Ira Crowe (born 7 April 1964) is an Academy Award-winning actor. He was born in New Zealand, spent ten years of his childhood in Australia, and moved there permanently at age 21. He came to international attention for his role as Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the epic historical film Gladiator (2000), for which he won an Academy Award, Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, Empire Award, and London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Leading Actor, along with 10 other nominations in the same category.

His other award-winning performances include tobacco firm whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand in the drama film The Insider (1999) and mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. in the biopic A Beautiful Mind (2001). He has also starred in films such as the drama Romper Stomper (1992), the mystery-detective thriller L.A. Confidential (1997), the epic war film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), the biographical boxing drama Cinderella Man (2005), the western 3:10 to Yuma (2007), the crime drama American Gangster (2007), the thriller-drama State of Play (2009), and Robin Hood (2010).

He later starred as Javert in the musical drama Les Misérables (2012), Jor-El in the superhero epic Man of Steel (2013), Noah in the biblical fantasy drama Noah (2014), Jackson Healy in the action comedy The Nice Guys (2016), Jekyll / Hyde in The Mummy (2017), Marshall Eamons in Boy Erased (2018), the psychotic Man in Unhinged (2018), Jake Foley in Poker Face (2022), Zeus Panhellenios in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), and Nikolai Kravinoff in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU) film Kraven the Hunter (2023).

In 2014, he made his directorial debut with the drama The Water Diviner, in which he also starred. He has earned various accolades, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, two Golden Globe Awards, a British Academy Film Award, and an Academy Award out of three consecutive nominations (1999, 2000, and 2001). He has been the co-owner of the National Rugby League (NRL) team South Sydney Rabbitohs since 2006.

Additional Information

Russell Crowe (born April 7, 1964, Wellington, New Zealand) is a New Zealand-born Australian actor known for his commitment, intensity, and ruggedly handsome good looks. He won an Academy Award for Gladiator (2000).

At age four Crowe moved with his family to Australia. He was the son of film and television set caterers, and he made his acting debut at age six on Australian television in the wartime spy adventure series Spyforce. After returning to New Zealand in the late 1970s, Crowe cofounded the rock band Roman Antix, serving as songwriter, guitarist, and lead singer; the group later re-formed as 30 Odd Foot of Grunts and released three full-length albums before disbanding in 2005. Some of the band’s members joined his newer venture, Russell Crowe & the Ordinary Fear of God. In the mid-1980s Crowe began performing in musicals, and from 1986 to 1988 he toured with The Rocky Horror Picture Show as the cross-dressing Dr. Frank N. Furter.

In 1990 Crowe started a film career, appearing in the war drama Prisoners of the Sun and The Crossing, a drama centred on a romantic triangle. In these early efforts, he displayed an innate ability to inhabit the characters he portrayed and for his next film, Proof (1991), received a best supporting actor award from the Australian Film Institute (AFI). Crowe’s career reached a turning point with Romper Stomper (1992), in which he played a menacing neo-Nazi. His performance earned him an AFI best actor award and attracted the attention of Hollywood. After starring as a gay man searching for love in The Sum of Us (1994), Crowe appeared in his first American film, the western The Quick and the Dead (1995). It had little success at the box office, however, as did a series of Hollywood films that followed.

Only with the role of Bud White, a brutish but vulnerable policeman, in the 1950s crime drama L.A. Confidential (1997) did Crowe’s gift for complex performance combine with a well-written story line to help produce a commercial and critical hit. He acted in a number of films in the late 1990s, earning an Academy Award nomination for his role as tobacco-industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider (1999). Two years later he took the academy’s best actor award for his role as Maximus, a Roman general-turned-gladiator in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. His commanding performance, which blended scenes of yearning love with those of brutal physical violence, helped make the epic one of the highest-grossing films of 2000. He won a third nomination for the best actor award with his starring role in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the story of John Forbes Nash, a real-life Nobel Prize-winning mathematician suffering from schizophrenia.

Crowe also earned critical approval as Captain Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), a seafaring epic based on the fiction series by Patrick O’Brian. In Cinderella Man (2005) he played real-life boxer James J. Braddock, who staged a timely comeback to help his family out of financial hardship during the Great Depression. After portraying an outlaw in the western 3:10 to Yuma (2007), Crowe starred as an honest policeman working in a corrupt department who tries to bring a drug lord (played by Denzel Washington) to justice in American Gangster (2007). He subsequently appeared in the CIA thriller Body of Lies (2008) and State of Play (2009), in which he played an investigative reporter.

In 2010 Crowe portrayed the titular outlaw hero in the action drama Robin Hood—his fourth collaboration with Scott—and starred as a mild-mannered man attempting to free his wife from prison in the thriller The Next Three Days. In The Man with the Iron Fists (2012), an homage to kung fu movies, he played a roguish English soldier in feudal China, and in the musical Les Misérables (2012) he performed the role of the determined police inspector Javert. Crowe subsequently appeared as a corrupt New York City mayor in the crime drama Broken City (2013); as Superman’s father, Jor-El, in Man of Steel (2013); as a New York crime boss in the fantasy Winter’s Tale (2014); and as the titular biblical figure in Noah (2014).

In 2016 Crowe and Ryan Gosling portrayed a pair of seedy private investigators looking into the death of a math actress in the dark comedy The Nice Guys. The following year Crowe starred as Dr. Henry Jekyll in the action-horror film The Mummy. He later assumed the role of a Baptist preacher who sends his son to a gay conversion therapy program in Boy Erased (2018), which was based on a memoir of the same name (2016). In 2019 Crowe was cast as Roger Ailes, the founding president of the Fox News Channel, in the miniseries The Loudest Voice. He later appeared in the thriller Unhinged (2020), playing a man who terrorizes a woman after a traffic incident. In Taika Waititi’s irreverent superhero film Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Crowe portrayed the god Zeus.

Crowe moved into feature-film directing with The Water Diviner (2014), in which he starred as a father attempting to locate his sons, who he believes were killed in the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I. Crowe had previously codirected the documentary Texas (2002), about 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-12-19 20:07:21

1404) Denzel Washington

Details

Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, producer and director. In a career spanning over four decades, Washington has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and two Silver Bears. He was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2019, and in 2020 The New York Times named him the greatest actor of the 21st century. In 2022, Washington received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

After training at the American Conservatory Theater, Washington began his career in theatre, acting in performances off-Broadway. He first came to prominence in the NBC medical drama series St. Elsewhere (1982–1988), and in the war film A Soldier's Story (1984). Washington won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an American Civil War soldier in Glory (1989) and for Best Actor for playing a corrupt cop in Training Day (2001). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in Cry Freedom (1987), Malcolm X (1992), The Hurricane (1999), Flight (2012), Fences (2015), Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) and The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021).

He established himself as a leading man with starring roles in Mo' Better Blues (1990), Mississippi Masala (1991), Philadelphia (1993), Courage Under Fire (1996), Remember the Titans (2000), Man on Fire (2004), Inside Man (2006), and American Gangster (2007). He starred in The Equalizer trilogy (2014–2023). Washington directed and starred in the films Antwone Fisher (2002), The Great Debaters (2007), and Fences (2015).

Washington made his Broadway debut in Checkmates (1988). He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for starring in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's play Fences in 2010. He later directed, produced, and starred in the film adaptation in 2016. Washington has since returned to Broadway in the revivals of Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun (2014) and the Eugene O'Neill play The Iceman Cometh (2018).

Additional Information

Denzel Washington (born December 28, 1954, Mount Vernon, New York, U.S.) is an American actor celebrated for his engaging and powerful performances. Throughout his career he was regularly praised by critics, and his consistent success at the box office helped to dispel the perception that African American actors could not draw mainstream white audiences.

After graduating from Fordham University (B.A., 1977), Washington began to pursue acting as a career and joined the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. After several successful stage performances in California and New York, he made his screen debut in the comedy Carbon Copy (1981). He first began to receive national attention for his work on the television drama St. Elsewhere (1982–88). For the film Cry Freedom (1987), he portrayed South African activist Stephen Biko, and he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. Two years later he won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his performance as a freed slave fighting in the Union army in the American Civil War film Glory (1989).

Washington’s skill as an actor and his popular appeal as a leading man were firmly established in the 1990s. He gave memorable performances in the romantic comedy Mississippi Masala (1991), the Shakespearean comedy Much Ado About Nothing (1993), the courtroom drama Philadelphia (1993), the hard-boiled mystery Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and the military thriller Crimson Tide (1995). The latter was the first of several popular movies he made with director Tony Scott. During this time he also frequently worked with director Spike Lee, starring in Mo’ Better Blues (1990), He Got Game (1998), and most significantly Malcolm X (1992). Portraying the civil rights activist Malcolm X, Washington gave a complex and powerful performance and earned an Academy Award nomination for best actor. He received a second best-actor nomination for his portrayal of boxer Rubin Carter in the film The Hurricane (1999).

In Training Day (2001), Washington played a corrupt and violent police detective, the performance for which he became only the second African American actor (the first was Sidney Poitier) to win an Oscar for best actor. After starring in director Jonathan Demme’s 2004 update of the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, Washington reteamed with Lee for the crime drama Inside Man (2006). He later appeared as a drug kingpin opposite Russell Crowe’s determined narcotics officer in American Gangster (2007) and as a dispatcher caught in the middle of a subway train hijacking in Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009).

In 2010 Washington starred in the postapocalyptic action drama The Book of Eli and collaborated again with Scott on the action thriller Unstoppable. He subsequently portrayed a rogue CIA agent in South Africa in the spy thriller Safe House (2012) before giving an Oscar-nominated performance in Flight (2012) as a heroic airplane pilot hiding a substance-abuse problem. The action comedy 2 Guns, in which Washington was cast as a covert drug-enforcement operative, followed in 2013. After playing Robert McCall, a mysterious vigilante, in the action thriller The Equalizer (2014), Washington appeared in The Magnificent Seven (2016), a remake of the 1960 classic western. In 2017 he starred in Roman J. Israel, Esq., portraying an idealistic Los Angeles lawyer who begins to question his principles. For his performance, Washington received his eighth Oscar nomination for acting. He then reprised his role as Robert McCall in The Equalizer 2 (2018). In the crime drama The Little Things (2021) he played a detective hunting a serial killer. Also in 2021 Washington starred with Frances McDormand in The Tragedy of Macbeth, Joel Coen’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. Washington received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the titular character.

Additionally, Washington directed and appeared in the biographical films Antwone Fisher (2002), about a U.S. serviceman with a troubled past, and The Great Debaters (2007), which centres on an inspirational debate coach at an African American college in the 1930s. He also helmed A Journal for Jordan (2021), a drama based on a true story about a journalist’s romantic relationship with a soldier.

In addition to his film work, Washington occasionally acted onstage. In 2005 he starred as Brutus in Julius Caesar. Five years later he appeared in the Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Fences, a family drama set in the 1950s that explores issues of identity and racism. For his performance, Washington won a Tony Award in 2010. He later directed and starred in a film adaptation (2016) of the play, and his performance earned him an Oscar nomination. In 2018 he returned to Broadway as Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.

In 2016 Washington received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe Award for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment”). He later was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2022).

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-12-22 20:13:12

1405) Adrien Brody

Summary

Adrien Nicholas Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's war drama The Pianist (2002), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at age 29, becoming the youngest actor to win in that category. He also became the second American male actor to win the César Award for Best Actor for the same film. He has starred in several other films and has received several other awards including nominations for a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Brody has also starred in The Thin Red Line (1998), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Hollywoodland (2006), Cadillac Records (2008), Predators (2010) and See How They Run (2022). He has frequently collaborated with filmmaker Wes Anderson, appearing in his films The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023). He portrayed Salvador Dali in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), and Arthur Miller in Andrew Dominik's Blonde (2022).

In television, he has played Luca Changretta in the fourth season of the BBC series Peaky Blinders (2017), and Pat Riley in the HBO sports drama series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (2022–2023). He earned Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his roles as Harry Houdini in the History Channel miniseries Houdini (2014), and investor Josh Aaronson in the HBO series Succession (2021).

Details

Adrien Brody (born April 14, 1973, Queens, New York, U.S.) is an American actor who won the Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of Władysław Szpilman, the title character of Roman Polanski’s Holocaust film The Pianist (2002).

Brody took acting classes as a child, and he performed in experimental and Off-Broadway plays before he reached high school. He attended the Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and played an orphan in the 1988 television movie Home at Last, about the orphan train program. Brody made his big-screen debut in a small part in the anthology movie New York Stories (1989). He briefly attended both Stony Brook University and Queens College before moving to Los Angeles. Brody appeared in the independent film The Boy Who Cried math (1991) and in Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill (1993). He took the part of a baseball player in Angels in the Outfield (1994) and starred in the unsuccessful drama Ten Benny (1995). He was cast in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998), but his part largely disappeared in editing. Brody won notice for his performance as an aspiring punk rocker in Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam (1999), and he appeared in Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights (1999) and Ken Loach’s Bread and Roses (2000).

In The Pianist, based on the real-life memoir of Szpilman, Brody gave a quiet dignity to the character, an accomplished musician who initially appears nonplussed at Nazi encroachment but soon realizes the horrors of the Holocaust. His performance netted him the César Award for best actor in addition to the Oscar. Brody’s later roles included the village idiot in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004), a playwright in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005), Leonard Chess in Cadillac Records (2008), and Salvador Dalí in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011). Among his subsequent films were the World War II drama Da hong zha (2018; Air Strike) and Clean (2020); he cowrote the latter, which centres on a garbage man with a violent past. During this time Brody also appeared in a number of Wes Anderson’s films, including The Darjeeling Limited (2007), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and The French Dispatch (2021). In addition, he voiced the Field Mouse in Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).

Brody occasionally appeared on television. He starred as the title character in the miniseries Houdini (2014), and for his performance he earned an Emmy Award nomination. In 2017 Brody had a recurring role on the series Peaky Blinders. He later starred in Chapelwaite (2021), a miniseries based on Stephen King’s short story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” about a sea captain in the 1850s who returns to his family home and discovers that it may be haunted. Also in 2021 Brody earned praise—and later an Emmy nomination—for his portrayal of a billionaire investor in the TV series Succession. In the limited series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (2022), Brody was cast as Pat Riley, coach of the Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA.

Additional Information

Adrien Nicholas Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor and producer. He received widespread recognition and acclaim after starring as Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at age 29, becoming the youngest actor to win in that category. Brody is the second male American actor after Christopher Lambert to receive the César Award for Best Actor.

Other successful films that Brody has starred in are The Thin Red Line (1998), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Predators (2010) and Midnight in Paris (2011). He is a frequent collaborator of Wes Anderson's, having starred in four of Anderson's films, The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and The French Dispatch (2021). In 2017, he portrayed Luca Changretta in the fourth season of the BBC series Peaky Blinders. In 2022, he starred in the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde (2022) and also starred as Pat Riley in the first season of the HBO sports drama series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-12-31 21:02:56

1406) Sean Penn

Summary

Sean Justin Penn (born August 17, 1960) is an American actor and film director. He has won Academy Awards for his roles in the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the biopic Milk (2008).

Penn began his acting career in television, with a brief appearance in episode 112 of Little House on the Prairie on December 4, 1974, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in the drama Taps (1981), and a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and Bad Boys (1983), Penn garnered critical attention for his roles in the crime dramas At Close Range (1986), State of Grace (1990), and Carlito's Way (1993). He became known as a prominent leading actor with the drama Dead Man Walking (1995), for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination and the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival. Penn received another two Oscar nominations for Woody Allen's comedy-drama Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and the drama I Am Sam (2001), before winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and a second one in 2008 for Milk. He has also won a Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival for the Nick Cassavetes-directed She's So Lovely (1997), and two Volpi Cups for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for the indie film Hurlyburly (1998) and the drama 21 Grams (2003).

Penn made his feature film directorial debut with The Indian Runner (1991), followed by the drama film The Crossing Guard (1995) and the mystery film The Pledge (2001); all three were critically well received. Penn directed one of the 11 segments of 11'09"01 September 11 (2002), a compilation film made in response to the September 11 attacks. His fourth feature film, the biographical drama survival movie Into the Wild (2007), garnered critical acclaim and two Academy Award nominations.

In addition to his film work, Penn has engaged in political and social activism, including his criticism of the George W. Bush administration, his contact with the Presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, and his humanitarian work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Details

Sean Penn, (born August 17, 1960, Santa Monica, California, U.S.), is an American film actor and director known for his versatility and intense performances.

The son of show-business parents, Penn chose to forgo college and instead joined the Los Angeles Repertory Theater. After a few television appearances, including a role in an episode of Barnaby Jones (1979), he moved to New York City in 1980. Well-received performances in the Off-Broadway Heartlands and the film Taps (both 1981) paved the way for Penn’s fame-making role as the underachieving surfer Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). He followed with a variety of roles that showcased his intensity and versatility—including a teenage delinquent in Bad Boys (1983), a punk rocker-burglar in Crackers (1984), a World War II marine about to ship out in the romance Racing with the Moon (1984), and a spy selling U.S. government secrets to the KGB in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)—garnering favourable notices from critics even when the vehicle he performed in was not as well liked. Penn’s career took a downturn, however, during his relationship with pop star Madonna, whom he married in 1985. There were frequent confrontations with paparazzi, a number of them combative, and Penn spent a month in jail in 1987. The marriage ended in 1989—but not before the couple had costarred in Shanghai Surprise (1986), a film reviled by most critics.

Penn’s subsequent movies did better, however, and he also branched out, writing and directing Indian Runner (1991) and directing The Crossing Guard (1995). He earned his first Academy Award nomination for Dead Man Walking (1995), starring opposite Susan Sarandon as a death-row inmate. He appeared with his second wife—Robin Wright (married 1996; divorced 2010)—in She’s So Lovely (1997), for which he was named best actor at the Cannes film festival, and later garnered Oscar nominations for Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and I Am Sam (2001). Another impressive directorial effort came with The Pledge. The drama featured Jack Nicholson as a police detective who vows to find a child killer. In 2003 Penn won the best actor honours at the Venice Film Festival for 21 Grams (2003), and the following year he received a best actor Oscar for his role as the grief-stricken father of a murdered young woman in Mystic River (2003).

Penn’s subsequent films include The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004), based on an actual attempt on the president’s life; The Interpreter (2005); and All the King’s Men (2006), an adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s novel about a populist politician. Penn returned to directing with Into the Wild (2007). The film—based on Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book of the same name—chronicles the journey of Christopher McCandless, an idealistic college graduate who repudiates materialistic society as he hitchhikes through the American West and ventures alone into the Alaskan wilderness.

His ebullient portrayal of Milk earned him a second Academy Award for best actor. Penn played another real-life figure, retired U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, in Fair Game (2010). The thriller was based on the 2003 scandal in which White House officials leaked the identity of Wilson’s wife—Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent—in an alleged attempt to discredit his criticism of the U.S.-led Iraq War.

In Terrence Malick’s impressionistic drama The Tree of Life (2011), Penn appeared as a man haunted by memories of his childhood. Penn later portrayed a former rock star turned Nazi hunter in This Must Be the Place (2011), mid-20th-century mob boss Mickey Cohen in the noir drama Gangster Squad (2013), and a reformed assassin whose past catches up with him in The Gunman (2015). Penn also voiced characters in animated fare, including Persepolis (2007) and Angry Birds (2016). He starred as a seasoned astronaut in the TV series The First (2018), a fictional account of the pioneer manned mission to Mars; it was canceled after one season. Penn returned to the big screen in The Professor and the Madman (2019), about the early compilation of The Oxford English Dictionary.

In 2021 Penn directed and starred in the drama Flag Day, in which a young woman (played by his daughter, Dylan Penn) discovers her father’s criminal past. Later that year he appeared in Paul Thomas Anderson’s coming-of-age dramedy Licorice Pizza. In the TV miniseries Gaslit (2022), Penn portrayed U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, who was involved in the Watergate scandal.

Penn was a political activist, and he often attracted controversy for his stances, most notably his opposition to the Iraq War and his criticism of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush. He participated in the recovery efforts in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina (2005) and in Haiti after a large-scale earthquake (2010). In 2018 Penn published his first novel, Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff, a satire about a divorced assassin.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-01-07 22:59:19

1407) Leland Clark

Details

Leland C. Clark Jr. (December 4, 1918 – September 25, 2005) was an American biochemist born in Rochester, New York. He is most well known as the inventor of the Clark electrode, a device used for measuring oxygen in blood, water and other liquids. Clark is considered the "father of biosensors", and the modern-day glucose sensor used daily by millions of diabetics is based on his research. He conducted pioneering research on heart-lung machines in the 1940s and '50s and was holder of more than 25 patents. Although he developed a fluorocarbon-based liquid that could be breathed successfully by mice in place of air, his lifelong goal of developing artificial blood remained unfulfilled at the time of his death. He is the inventor of Oxycyte, a third-generation perfluorocarbon (PFC) therapeutic oxygen carrier designed to enhance oxygen delivery to damaged tissues.

Professional life

Clark received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Antioch College in 1941 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry and physiology from the University of Rochester in 1944. Clark began his professional career as an assistant professor of biochemistry at his alma mater, Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio. When he left Antioch in 1958, he was head of the department. From 1955 to 1958, he held a simultaneous appointment the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine as a Senior Research Associate in Pediatrics and Surgery. In 1958, Clark moved to Alabama to join the Department of Surgery, University of Alabama Medical College as an associate professor of biochemistry. He later became professor of biochemistry in the same department.

In 1962, he invented the first biosensor with Champ Lyons. Clark later became professor of research pediatrics at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Research Foundation in 1968 and remained there until he retired in 1991. Afterwards, he helped to found the company Synthetic Blood International, now known as Oxygen Biotherapeutics, Inc., which markets his invention Oxycyte.

Other Clark inventions were put into production and marketed by Yellow Springs Instrument Company.

He was a founding member of the Editorial Board of the scientific journal Biosensors & Bioelectronics in 1985.

Personal life

Clark was known as "Lee" to his friends. He met Eleanor Wyckoff while an undergraduate student at Antioch and they were married in 1939. She assisted him in his research throughout his career. They had four daughters.

Honors and awards

Dr. Clark received the following recognition for his work: National Research Council Fellowship (1941). NIH Research Career Award (1962). Distinguished Lecturer Award, American College of Chest Physicians (1975). Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry (1984). Horace Mann Award for Service to Humanity, Antioch College (1984). Heyrovsky Award in Recognition of the Invention of the Membrane-Covered Polarographic Oxygen Electrode (1985). American Association for Clinical Chemistry Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Chemistry (1989). American Heart Association Samuel Kaplan Visionary Award (1991). Enshrinement into the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame (1991). Pharmacia Biosensor’s Sensational Contributions to the Advancement of Biosensor Technology Award (1992). Daniel Drake Award for Outstanding Achievements in Research, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (1993). Elected to the National Academy of Engineering (1995). National Academy of Engineering Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize (2005).

Additional Information

Known as the “Father of Biosensors,” Dr. Leland C. Clark invented the first device to rapidly determine the amount of glucose in blood. His sensor concept permits millions of diabetics to monitor their own blood-sugar levels. He is most well-known as the inventor of the Clark electrode, a device used for measuring oxygen in blood, water and other liquids.

Early Life:

Leland C. Clark was born on December 04 in 1918 in Rochester, New York. Leland started high school and discovered that science was an educational discipline, complete with course work, lab sessions and grades. He attended Antioch College and the University Of Rochester School Of Medicine, where he received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and physiology. He quickly became an assistant professor of biochemistry at Antioch and a research associate and chairman of the biochemistry department at a renowned Institute.

He served as a professor of research pediatrics and head of the division of neurophysiology at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Research Foundation from 1968 until he retired in 1991.

Contributions and Achievements:

Now talking about his great inventions, he conducted pioneering research on heart-lung machines in the 1940s and 50s and was holder of more than 25 patents. He is also the inventor of Oxycyte, a third-generation per fluorocarbon (PFC) therapeutic oxygen carrier designed to enhance oxygen delivery to damaged tissues. Clark had studied the electrochemistry of oxygen gas reduction at platinum metal electrodes, in fact, Pt (platinum) electrodes used to detect oxygen electrochemically are often referred to generically as “Clark electrodes”.

More than almost any single invention, the Clark Oxygen Electrode has revolutionized the field of medicine for the past 50 years. The Clark oxygen electrode remains the standard for measuring dissolved oxygen in environmental and industrial applications.

Clark, one of the century’s most prolific biomedical inventors and researchers, is also recognized for pioneering several medical milestones credited with saving thousands of lives and advancing the technology of modern medicine. His research accomplishments include the development of the first successful heart-lung machine, the advancement of technology leading to the development of one of the first intensive care units in the world, and pioneering research in biomedical applications of per fluorocarbons and biosensors.

Later Life:

Leland published more than 400 scientific papers in biomedicine and generated numerous US and foreign patents, mainly in the field of medical instrumentation and fluorocarbons. He is the beneficiary of numerous honors and awards including induction into the National Academy of Engineering and the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame.

Leland Clark received the American Physiological Society’s Heyrovsky Award, in recognition of the invention of the membrane polarographic oxygen electrode. He was a person who gave his all and was very dedicated to helping and using his talents to make a difference, to improve the quality of life for others. This great man died on September 25, 2005 at the age of 86.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-01-16 18:02:27

1408) Arno Allan Penzias

Details

Arno Allan Penzias (born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.

Early life and education

Penzias was born in Munich, Germany, the son of Justine (née Eisenreich) and Karl Penzias, who ran a leather business. His grandparents had come to Munich from Poland and were among the leaders of the Reichenbach Strasse Shul. At age six, he and his brother Gunther were among the Jewish children evacuated to Britain as part of the Kindertransport rescue operation. Some time later, his parents also fled Nazi Germany for the United States, and the family settled in the Garment District of New York City in 1940. In 1946, Penzias became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1951 and after enrolling to study chemistry at the City College of New York, he changed majors and graduated 1954 with a degree in physics, ranked near the top of his class.

Following graduation, Penzias served for two years as a radar officer in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. This led to a research assistantship in the Columbia University Radiation Laboratory, which was then heavily involved in microwave physics. Penzias worked under Charles Townes, who later invented the maser.

Penzias enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University in 1956, earning a PhD in physics in 1962.

Career

Penzias went on to work at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey, where, with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he worked on ultra-sensitive cryogenic microwave receivers, intended for radio astronomy observations. In 1964, on building their most sensitive antenna/receiver system, the pair encountered radio noise which they could not explain. It was far less energetic than the radiation given off by the Milky Way, and it was isotropic, so they assumed their instrument was subject to interference by terrestrial sources. They tried, and then rejected, the hypothesis that the radio noise emanated from New York City. An examination of the microwave horn antenna showed it was full of bat and pigeon droppings (which Penzias described as "white dielectric material"). After the pair removed the dung buildup the noise remained. Having rejected all sources of interference, Penzias contacted Robert Dickinson, who suggested it might be the background radiation predicted by some cosmological theories. The pair agreed with Dickinson to publish side-by-side letters in the Astrophysical Journal, with Penzias and Wilson describing their observations and Dickinson suggesting the interpretation as the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the radio remnant of the Big Bang. This allowed astronomers to confirm the Big Bang, and to correct many of their previous assumptions about it.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in 1975. Penzias and Wilson received the 1978 Nobel Prize, sharing it with Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (Kapitsa's work on Low-temperature physics was unrelated to Penzias and Wilson's). In 1977, the two had received the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1979, Penzias received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. He is also the recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence. In 1998, he was awarded the IRI Medal from the Industrial Research Institute.

On April 26, 2019, the Nürnberger Astronomische Gesellschaft e.V. (NAG) inaugurated the 3-m radio telescope at the Regiomontanus-Sternwarte, the public observatory of Nuremberg, and dedicated this instrument to Arno Penzias.

On September 11, 2023, the Radio Club of America said that Penzias would be honored by the club with the inauguration of a new award in 2023: “Dr. Arno A. Penzias Award for Contributions to Basic Research in the Radio Sciences.” The club said the award recognizes his significant contributions to basic research involving RF and related subjects and that it would inspire future generations of scientific professionals. The first recipient of the new award will be named in 2024, the club said.

Penzias was a resident of Highland Park, New Jersey in the 1990s. He has a son, David, and two daughters, Mindy Penzias Dirks, PhD, and Rabbi Shifra (Laurie) Weiss-Penzias.

Additional Information

Arno Penzias, (born April 26, 1933, Munich, Germany), is a German American astrophysicist who shared one-half of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics with Robert Woodrow Wilson for their discovery of a faint electromagnetic radiation throughout the universe. Their detection of this radiation lent strong support to the big-bang model of cosmic evolution. (The other half of the Nobel Prize was awarded to the Soviet physicist Pyotr Kapitsa for unrelated work.)

Educated at City College of New York in New York City and Columbia University, where he received a doctorate in 1962, Penzias joined Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. In collaboration with Wilson he began monitoring radio emissions from a ring of gas encircling the Milky Way Galaxy. Unexpectedly, the two scientists detected a uniform microwave radiation that suggested a residual thermal energy throughout the universe of about 3 K. Most scientists now agree that this is the residual background radiation stemming from the primordial explosion billions of years ago from which the universe was created. From 1976 to 1979 Penzias was director of the Bell Radio Research Laboratory. He later served as vice president of research (1981–95) and as vice president and chief scientist (1995–98) at Bell Laboratories, which was spun off as part of Lucent Technologies in 1996.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-01-26 20:37:19

1409) Robert Woodrow Wilson

Summary

Robert Woodrow Wilson (born January 10, 1936, Houston, Texas, U.S.) is an American radio astronomer who shared, with Arno Penzias, the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for a discovery that supported the big-bang model of creation. (Soviet physicist Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa also shared the award, for unrelated research.)

Educated at Rice University in Houston and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he received his doctorate in 1962, Wilson then worked (1963–76) at the Bell Laboratories at Holmdel, New Jersey, where, in collaboration with Penzias, he began monitoring radio emissions from a ring of gas encircling the Milky Way Galaxy. The two scientists detected an unusual background radiation that seemed to permeate the cosmos uniformly and indicated a temperature of 3 kelvins (three degrees above absolute zero). This radiation appeared to be a remnant of the big bang, the primordial explosion billions of years ago from which the universe originated.

In 1976 Wilson became head of Bell’s Radio Physics Research Department. In 1994 he began working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Wilson contributed to many scientific journals on such subjects as background temperature measurements and millimetre-wave measurements of interstellar molecules. He became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1979.

Details

Robert Woodrow Wilson (born January 10, 1936) is an American astronomer who, along with Arno Allan Penzias, discovered cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in 1964. The pair won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for its discovery.

While doing tests and experiments with the Holmdel Horn Antenna at Bell Labs in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, Wilson and Penzias discovered a source of noise in the atmosphere that they could not explain. After removing all potential sources of noise, including pigeon droppings on the antenna, the noise was finally identified as CMB, which served as important corroboration of the Big Bang theory.

In 1970, Wilson led a team that made the first detection of a rotational spectral line of carbon monoxide (CO) in an astronomical object, the Orion Nebula, and eight other galactic sources. Subsequently, CO observations became the standard method of tracing cool molecular interstellar gas, and detection of CO was the foundational event for the fields of millimeter and submillimeter astronomy.

Life and work

Robert Woodrow Wilson was born on January 10, 1936, in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Lamar High School in River Oaks, in Houston, and studied as an undergraduate at Rice University, also in Houston, where he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society. He then earned a PhD in physics at California Institute of Technology. His thesis advisors at Caltech included John Bolton and Maarten Schmidt.

Wilson and Penzias also won the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. Wilson received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1987.

Wilson remained at Bell Laboratories until 1994, when he was named a senior scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Wilson has been a resident of Holmdel Township, New Jersey.

Wilson married Elizabeth Rhoads Sawin in 1958.

Wilson is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President George W. Bush in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Wilson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2009.

Additional Information

Robert Woodrow Wilson was a co-winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arno Penzias. In the mid-1960s the team conducted research at Bell Laboratories that supported the Big Bang theory of creation of the universe.

Although his career took him to cosmic heights, Wilson’s beginnings were pretty well grounded. Wilson was born on 10 January 1936 and was reared in Houston, Texas. The son of an oil company employee, Wilson often accompanied his father to the Texas oil fields. Doing so put him in the midst of machinery and electronic equipment, a burgeoning interest for the young Wilson. Wilson attended Houston’s public schools and excelled in science and math. He went on to earn a degree in physics from Rice University in 1957 and then a Ph.D, also in physics, from the California Institute of Technology in 1962. His dissertation concerned the use of radio astronomy in the galactic mapping of portions of the Milky Way.

In 1963 Wilson left California for New Jersey, the site of the legendary Bell Laboratories. Once there, Wilson began working with Arno Penzias, the only other radio astronomer at Bell Labs. By 1964, Penzias and Wilson were using the most sensitive radio astronomy antenna available to conduct research in radio astronomy and satellite communications. Using their sophisticated equipment, Wilson and Penzias discovered that a faint signal pervaded all space. Because the signal was so faint and pervasive, they felt the noise could have any one of a number of sources. Systematically they eliminated the possibilities until they were sure that the entire universe itself was the source. Princeton University physicist Robert H. Dickinson who had been the first to propose the idea of “cosmic background radiation” remaining from the initial big bang that gave rise to the universe concurred with the findings of Penzias and Wilson. This was a fundamental breakthrough in understanding the origin of the universe and Penzias and Wilson were rewarded with the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics. (A third honoree that year was the Russian Peter Kapitza, who won for work unrelated to that of Wilson and Penzias).

After their pioneering research on cosmic background radiation, Wilson and Penzias both enjoyed prolific and long-term careers at Bell Labs. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Wilson has received many awards for his work. These include the Henry Draper Medal in 1977 and the Herschel Medal, also awarded in 1977.

(Radiation falls toward the earth from outer space. This cosmic radiation initially appeared to become weaker as wavelengths of the radiation became shorter. However, when Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias studied cosmic radiation in 1964, they discovered that microwaves with a wavelength of about 7 centimeters were stronger than expected. At first they thought that the results were caused by distortions or faults in the measurements, but that was not the case. This cosmic background radiation probably is a remnant of the Big Bang when the universe was created.)

Jai Ganesh · 2024-02-06 17:05:25

1410) Peter D. Mitchell

Summary

Peter Dennis Mitchell, (born Sept. 29, 1920, Mitcham, Surrey, Eng.—died April 10, 1992, Bodmin, Cornwall), is a British chemist who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for helping to clarify how ADP (adenosine diphosphate) is converted into the energy-carrying compound ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in the mitochondria of living cells.

Mitchell received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1950. He served as director of the chemistry and biology unit in the department of zoology of the University of Edinburgh from 1955 to 1963. In 1964 he joined the Glynn Research Laboratories as director of research.

Mitchell studied the mitochondrion, the organelle that produces energy for the cell. ATP is made within the mitochondrion by adding a phosphate group to ADP in a process known as oxidative phosphorylation. Mitchell was able to determine how the different enzymes involved in the conversion of ADP to ATP are distributed within the membranes that partition the interior of the mitochondrion. He showed how these enzymes’ arrangement facilitates their use of hydrogen ions as an energy source in the conversion of ADP to ATP.

Details

Peter Dennis Mitchell (29 September 1920 – 10 April 1992) was a British biochemist who was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his theory of the chemiosmotic mechanism of ATP synthesis.

Education and early life

Mitchell was born in Mitcham, Surrey on 29 September 1920. His parents were Christopher Gibbs Mitchell, a civil servant, and Kate Beatrice Dorothy (née) Taplin. His uncle was Sir Godfrey Way Mitchell, chairman of George Wimpey. He was educated at Queen's College, Taunton and Jesus College, Cambridge where he studied the Natural Sciences Tripos specialising in Biochemistry.

He was appointed a research post in the Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge, in 1942, and was awarded a Ph.D. in early 1951 for work on the mode of action of penicillin.

Career and research

In 1955 he was invited by Professor Michael Swann to set up a biochemical research unit, called the Chemical Biology Unit, in the Department of Zoology, at the University of Edinburgh, where he was appointed a Senior Lecturer in 1961, then Reader in 1962, although institutional opposition to his work coupled with ill health led to his resignation in 1963.

From 1963 to 1965, he supervised the restoration of a Regency-fronted Mansion, known as Glynn House, at Cardinham near Bodmin, Cornwall - adapting a major part of it for use as a research laboratory. He and his former research colleague, Jennifer Moyle founded a charitable company, known as Glynn Research Ltd., to promote fundamental biological research at Glynn House and they embarked on a programme of research on chemiosmotic reactions and reaction systems.

Chemiosmotic hypothesis

In the 1960s, ATP was known to be the energy currency of life, but the mechanism by which ATP was created in the mitochondria was assumed to be by substrate-level phosphorylation. Mitchell's chemiosmotic hypothesis was the basis for understanding the actual process of oxidative phosphorylation. At the time, the biochemical mechanism of ATP synthesis by oxidative phosphorylation was unknown.

Mitchell realised that the movement of ions across an electrochemical potential difference could provide the energy needed to produce ATP. His hypothesis was derived from information that was well known in the 1960s. He knew that living cells had a membrane potential; interior negative to the environment. The movement of charged ions across a membrane is thus affected by the electrical forces (the attraction of positive to negative charges). Their movement is also affected by thermodynamic forces, the tendency of substances to diffuse from regions of higher concentration. He went on to show that ATP synthesis was coupled to this electrochemical gradient.

His hypothesis was confirmed by the discovery of ATP synthase, a membrane-bound protein that uses the potential energy of the electrochemical gradient to make ATP; and by the discovery by André Jagendorf that a pH difference across the thylakoid membrane in the chloroplast results in ATP synthesis.

Protonmotive Q-cycle

Later, Peter Mitchell also hypothesized some of the complex details of electron transport chains. He conceived of the coupling of proton pumping to quinone-based electron bifurcation, which contributes to the proton motive force and thus, ATP synthesis.

Awards and honours

In 1978 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory." He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1974.

Additional Information

Peter Mitchell was born in Mitcham, in the County of Surrey, England, on September 29, 1920. His parents, Christopher Gibbs Mitchell and Kate Beatrice Dorothy (née) Taplin, were very different from each other temperamentally. His mother was a shy and gentle person of very independent thought and action, with strong artistic perceptiveness. Being a rationalist and an atheist, she taught him that he must accept responsibility for his own destiny, and especially for his failings in life. That early influence may well have led him to adopt the religious atheistic personal philosophy to which he has adhered since the age of about fifteen. His father was a much more conventional person than his mother, and was awarded the O.B.E. for his success as a Civil Servant.

Peter Mitchell was educated at Queens College, Taunton, and at Jesus college, Cambridge. At Queens he benefited particularly from the influence of the Headmaster, C.L. Wiseman, who was an excellent mathematics teacher and an accomplished amateur musician. The result of the scholarship examination that he took to enter Jesus College Cambridge was so dismally bad that he was only admitted to the University at all on the strength of a personal letter written by C.L. Wiseman. He entered Jesus College just after the commencement of war with Germany in 1939. In Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos he studied physics, chemistry, physiology, mathematics and biochemistry, and obtained a Class III result. In part II, he studied biochemistry, and obtained a II-I result for his Honours Degree.

He accepted a research post in the Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge, in 1942 at the invitation of J.F. Danielli. He was very fortunate to be Danielli’s only Ph.D. student at that time, and greatly enjoyed and benefited from Danielli’s friendly and unauthoritarian style of research supervision. Danielli introduced him to David Keilin, whom he came to love and respect more than any other scientist of his acquaintance.

He received the degree of Ph.D. in early 1951 for work on the mode of action of penicillin, and held the post of Demonstrator at the Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1955. In 1955 he was invited by Professor Michael Swann to set up and direct a biochemical research unit, called the Chemical Biology Unit, in the Department of Zoology, Edinburgh University, where he was appointed to a Senior Lectureship in 1961, to a Readership in 1962, and where he remained until acute gastric ulcers led to his resignation after a period of leave in 1963.

From 1963 to 1965, he withdrew completely from scientific research, and acted as architect and master of works, directly supervising the restoration of an attractive Regency-fronted Mansion, known as Glynn House, in the beautiful wooded Glynn Valley, near Bodmin, Cornwall – adapting and furnishing a major part of it for use as a research labotatory. In this, he was lucky to receive the enthusiastic support of his former research colleague Jennifer Moyle. He and Jennifer Moyle founded a charitable company, known as Glynn Research Ltd., to promote fundamental biological research and finance the work of the Glynn Research Laboratories at Glynn House. The original endowment of about £250,000 was donated about equally by Peter Mitchell and his elder brother Christopher John Mitchell.

In 1965, Peter Mitchell and Jennifer Moyle, with the practical help of one technician, Roy Mitchell (unrelated to Peter Mitchell), and with the administrative help of their company secretary, embarked on the programme of research on chemiosmotic reactions and reaction systems for which the Glynn Research Institute has become known. Since its inception, the Glynn Research Institute has not had sufficient financial resources to employ more than three research workers, including the Research Director, on its permanent staff. He has continued to act as Director of Research at the Glynn Research Institute up to the present time. An acute lack of funds has recently led to the possibility that the Glynn Research Institute may have to close.

Beside his interest in communication between molecules, Peter Mitchell has become more and more interested in the problems of communication between individual people in civilised societies, especially in the context of the spread of violence in the increasingly collectivist societies in most parts of the world. His own experience of small and large organisations in the scientific world has led him to regard the small organisations as being, not only more alive and congenial, but also more effective, for many (although perhaps not all) purposes. He would therefore like to have the opportunity to become more deeply involved in studies of the ways in which sympathetic communication and cooperative activity between free and potentially independent people may be improved. One of his specific interests in this field of knowledge is the use of money as an instrument of personal responsibility and of choice in free societies, and the flagrant abuse and basically dishonest manipulation of the system of monetary units of value practised by the governments of most nations.

Peter Mitchell died on April 10, 1992.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-02-12 18:03:31

1411) Werner Arber

Details

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

Life and career

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

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

Arber received his doctorate in 1958 from the University of Geneva. He then worked at the University of Southern California in phage genetics with Gio ("Joe") Bertani starting in the summer of 1958. Late in 1959 he accepted an offer to return to Geneva at the beginning of 1960, but only after spending "several very fruitful weeks" at each of the laboratories of Gunther Stent (University of California, Berkeley), Joshua Lederberg and Esther Lederberg (Stanford University) and Salvador Luria (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Arber notes that it was in 1963, while he was a researcher in Stent's Berkeley lab, when experiments produced the first evidence that modification in E. coli B and K is brought about by nucleotide methylation.

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

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

Werner Arber is member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 1981. In 1981, Arber became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.[8] Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in January 2011, making him the first Protestant to hold the position. In 2017, Arber retired as President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and was replaced by German scientist Joachim von Braun.

Personal life

Arber is married and has two daughters, including Silvia Arber.

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

Additional Information

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

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

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

Jai Ganesh · 2024-02-17 16:20:25

1412) Daniel Nathans

Details

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

Early life and education

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

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

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

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

Career

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

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

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

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

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

Additional Information

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

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

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

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