crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-18 16:47:16

1363) Alec Guinness

Summary

Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played eight different characters, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, and The Ladykillers (1955). He collaborated six times with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won both the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984). In 1970, he played Jacob Marley's ghost in Ronald Neame's Scrooge. He also portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy; for the original 1977 film, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 50th Academy Awards.

Guinness began his stage career in 1934. Two years later, at the age of 22, he played the role of Osric in Hamlet in the West End and joined the Old Vic. He continued to play Shakespearean roles throughout his career. He was one of the greatest British actors who, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, made the transition from theatre to films after the Second World War. Guinness served in the Royal Naval Reserve during the war and commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Sicily and Elba. During the war he was granted leave to appear in the stage play Flare Path about RAF Bomber Command.

Guinness won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and a Tony Award. In 1959 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980 and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989. Guinness appeared in nine films that featured in the BFI's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century, which included five of Lean's films.

Details

Alec Guinness, in full Sir Alec Guinness, original name Alec Guinness de Cuffe, (born April 2, 1914, London, England—died August 5, 2000, Midhurst, West Sussex), was a British actor famous for the variety and excellence of his stage and screen characterizations. Tall and unremarkable in appearance, he played a great range of characters throughout his long career. His trademarks were subtle but telling facial expressions and exquisitely nuanced performances.

From his youth, Guinness was interested in acting, though he was not much encouraged. At age 18 he began working for an advertising agency, but he soon began to study acting and made his stage debut in 1934 as an extra at the King’s Theatre in Hammersmith, London. Three years later he got his first real break when he joined the acting company of John Gielgud. As a member of the company he appeared in such classics as Richard II (1937), The School for Scandal (1937), The Three Sisters (1937), and The Merchant of Venice (1938). In 1938 he starred in a popular modern-dress version of Hamlet at London’s Old Vic. While on leave from the Royal Navy during World War II, he made his New York stage debut in a 10-day Christmas run of Flare Path (1942–43), and in later years he appeared there in the film in T.S. Eliot’s (1964) and in a play about the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, Dylan (1964).

Guinness’s initial screen role was as Pip’s friend Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), an adaptation of the novel by Charles. After this he performed in Oliver Twist (1948) and a series of Ealing Studios comedies, notably the internationally popular Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played the roles of each of eight heirs to a dukedom, as well as The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951), and The Ladykillers (1955).

One of the more unique aspects of Guinness’s talent was his ability to disappear into a role, thus belying the dictum that actors without a consistent screen persona are not likely to become stars. Fellow actor Peter Ustinov once called Guinness “the outstanding poet of anonymity,” in reference to Guinness’s ability to create complex characterizations without incorporating his own recognizable personal traits and mannerisms. Guinness’s characters ranged from meek to malevolent, from timid bank clerks to fiery military officers, and all were noted for their depth and credibility, even those that called for him to wear layers of heavy makeup and prosthetics. As the actor once described his approach, “I try to get inside a character and project him—one of my own private rules of thumb is that I have not got a character unless I have mastered exactly how he walks…. It’s not sufficient to concentrate on his looks. You have got to know his mind….”

Among Guinness’s other notable films are The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won a best actor Academy Award; The Horse’s Mouth (1958), in which he played the artist Gulley Jimson; and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), in which he played Prince Feisal. He won a whole new generation of fans for his role as the Jedi warrior Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi in Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983). Despite this newfound popularity, however, Guinness hated his role in these movies, later stating in an interview that he had encouraged George Lucas to kill off his character: “I just couldn’t go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I’d had enough of the mumbo jumbo.” Roles that were more to his liking were those of Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984) and William Dorrit in Little Dorrit (1987). In 1980 he won a special Academy Award for memorable film performances.

Guinness also starred as the master spy George Smiley in two television miniseries, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1980) and Smiley’s People (1982). The multitalented actor, who was knighted in 1960, also wrote dramatizations (The Brothers Karamazov and Great Expectations) and a film script (The Horse’s Mouth) and coauthored the play Yahoo (1976). His autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, was published in 1986; in the following decade he released two volumes of personal diary entries: My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor (1997) and A Positively Final Appearance (1999).

Additional Information

Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).

Guinness is really most remembered for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy for which he receive a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In the 1970s, Guinness made regular television appearances in Britain, including the role of George Smiley in the serialisations of two novels by John le Carré: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.

Guinness was also one of three British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who made the transition from Shakespearean theatre in England to Hollywood blockbusters immediately after the Second World War.

Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-19 17:17:00

1364) David Niven

Summary

James David Graham Niven (1 March 1910 – 29 July 1983) was a British actor, soldier, memoirist, and novelist. Niven was known as a handsome and debonair leading man in Classic Hollywood films. He received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Born in central London to an upper-middle-class family, Niven attended Heatherdown Preparatory School and Stowe School before gaining a place at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After Sandhurst, he joined the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry. Upon developing an interest in acting, he found a role as an extra in the British film There Goes the Bride (1932). Bored with the peacetime army, he resigned his commission in 1933, relocated to New York, then travelled to Hollywood. There, he hired an agent and had several small parts in films through 1935, including a non-speaking role in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). This helped him gain a contract with Samuel Goldwyn.

Parts, initially small, in major motion pictures followed, including Dodsworth (1936), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937). By 1938, he was starring as a leading man in films such as Wuthering Heights (1939). Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Niven returned to Britain and rejoined the army, being recommissioned as a lieutenant. In 1942, he co-starred in the morale-building film about the development of the renowned Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane, The First of the Few (1942).

He went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Separate Tables (1958). Other notable films during this time period include A Matter of Life and Death (1946), The Bishop's Wife (1947), Enchantment (1948), The Elusive Pimpernel (1950), The Moon Is Blue (1953), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), My Man Godfrey (1957), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Murder by Death (1976), and Death on the Nile (1978). He also earned acclaim and notoriety playing Sir Charles Lytton in The Pink Panther (1963) and James Bond in Casino Royale (1967).

Details

David Niven, in full James David Graham Niven, (born March 1, 1910, London, England—died July 29, 1983, Château-d’Oex, Switzerland), was a British stage and motion-picture actor who personified dapper charm.

Born to a longtime military family, Niven attended Sandhurst Military Academy. He made his way to Hollywood in the mid-1930s and began performing as an extra. His first major roles were in Dawn Patrol (1938) and Wuthering Heights (1939). He rapidly became known as a steady, reliable actor who usually specialized in light comedy.

Niven served as an officer in the British army’s commando unit during World War II, and following the war he returned to films. Though known for his sure touch with light comedy, he also proved to be a substantial dramatic actor, winning an Academy Award for his role in Separate Tables (1958). Among his best-known films are The Moon Is Blue (1953), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Pink Panther (1963), and Death on the Nile (1978).

He also appeared on stage and on two television series. He published a novel, Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly (1981), and two autobiographical volumes, The Moon’s a Balloon (1971) and Bring on the Empty Horses (1975).

Niven performed in movies until the year of his death, even though he suffered in his later life from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also called Lou Gehrig’s disease). His last film was The Curse of the Pink Panther (1983).

Additional Information

James David Graham Niven was born on the feast day of St David. Following Niven senior's death at Turkey's infamous Suvla Bay, Niven's mother went on to marry his biological father, the Conservative politician Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt, but it was years before the true father/son relationship was acknowledged.

David Niven attended Stowe School and Sandhurst Military Academy and served for two years in Malta with the Highland Light Infantry. At the outbreak of World War II, although a top-line star, he re-joined the army (Rifle Brigade). He did agree to appear in two films during the war, both of strong propaganda value (Spitfire (1942) and The Way Ahead (1944)).

Despite six years' virtual absence from the screen, he came in second in the 1945 Popularity Poll of British film stars. Upon his return to Hollywood after the war he was made a Legionnaire of the Order of Merit (the highest U.S. order that can be awarded to a non-citizen), which was presented to Lt. Col. Niven by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-20 16:39:48

1365) Charlton Heston

Summary

Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor and political activist. He received his first Golden Globe Award nomination for playing Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), and won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of Ben-Hur (1959). He also starred in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Secret of the Incas (1954), Touch of Evil (1958), The Big Country (1958), El Cid (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Khartoum (1966), Planet of the Apes (1968), Julius Caesar (1970), The Omega Man (1971), Antony and Cleopatra (1972), Soylent Green (1973), The Three Musketeers (1974), Airport 1975 (1974), Earthquake (1974), Crossed Swords (1978), Mother Lode (1982), and Alaska (1996).

In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the civil rights movement. Heston left the Democratic Party in 1987 to become a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston was a five-term president of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA), from 1998 to 2003. After announcing he had Alzheimer's disease in 2002, he retired from both acting and the NRA presidency.

Details

Charlton Heston, original name John Charles Carter, (born October 4, 1923, Evanston, Illinois, U.S.—died April 5, 2008, Beverly Hills, California), was an American actor who was known for his chiseled features and compelling speaking voice and for his numerous roles as historical figures and famous literary characters.

Heston decided to become an actor after impulsively auditioning for a high-school play. His stage experience in high school resulted in a scholarship to Northwestern University. In 1946 he moved to New York City, and he made his Broadway debut in Antony and Cleopatra (1947). Soon thereafter he landed roles in live television productions. He first appeared in a Hollywood film in a starring role in William Dieterle’s Dark City (1950). Although he was still relatively unknown, his performance impressed director Cecil B. DeMille, who cast him as the circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). The film won the Oscar for best picture, and Heston received good notices for his performance. He later starred as U.S. Pres. Andrew Jackson in The President’s Lady (1953), the first of many historical roles he would undertake.

In 1956 Heston played the role for which he would remain best known, that of Moses in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. Established as a major star, Heston worked for several other noted directors, including Orson Welles in Touch of Evil (1958) and William Wyler in Ben-Hur (1959). Ben-Hur won 11 Academy Awards, including a best actor award for Heston; the film secured his position as the premiere historical character actor in Hollywood. The movies that followed placed him in several larger-than-life roles: the eponymous Spanish warrior in El Cid (1961), Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and John the Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Heston also played a U.S. military officer in 55 Days at Peking (1963), about the Boxer Rebellion.

In 1968 Heston starred in the western Will Penny, a role that he counted among his favourites, and in Planet of the Apes, the first in a short series of science-fiction films for the actor. He had a minor role in the sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and later starred in the cult favourites The Omega Man (1971) and Soylent Green (1973). Despite such excursions into eclectic fare, however, Heston continued to be known for his work in period dramas. He twice played Mark Antony, in Julius Caesar (1970) and in Antony and Cleopatra (1973), which he also directed.

Cheston’s other memorable roles include Jack London’s hero John Thornton in The Call of the Wild (1972) and Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers (1973) and its sequel The Four Musketeers (1974). He also starred in the disaster movies Skyjacked (1972), Airport 1975 (1974), and Earthquake (1974). In addition, he appeared in a number of television movies, notably portraying Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons (1988), Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1990), Sherlock Holmes in The Crucifer of Blood (1991), and Brigham Young in The Avenging Angel (1995). His last acting role was in the film drama Genghis Kahn: The Story of a Lifetime (2010).

Heston was involved in politics, both in and out of Hollywood. From 1966 to 1971 he was president of the Screen Actors Guild, and he later was chairman of the American Film Institute (1973–83). A vocal supporter of gun rights, he served as president of the National Rifle Association (1998–2003). Heston also was the recipient of various honours, including the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (1978) from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2003). In addition, he was named a Kennedy Center honoree in 1997. His various books include the autobiography In the Arena (1995).

Additional Information

With features chiseled in stone, and renowned for playing a long list of historical figures, particularly in Biblical epics, the tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome Charlton Heston was one of Hollywood's top leading men of his prime and remained active in front of movie cameras for over sixty years. As a Hollywood star, he appeared in 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments (1956) , for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also starred in Touch of Evil (1958) with Orson Welles; Ben-Hur, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (1959); El Cid (1961); and Planet of the Apes (1968). He also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth (1952); Secret of the Incas (1954); The Big Country (1958); and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston's most famous role in politics came as the five-term president of the National Rifle Association, from 1998 to 2003.

Heston was born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1923, in No Man's Land, Illinois, to Lila (Charlton) and Russell Whitford Carter, who operated a sawmill. He had English and Scottish ancestry, with recent Canadianforebears.

Heston made his feature film debut as the lead character in a 16mm production of Peer Gynt (1941), based on the Henrik Ibsen play. In 1944, Heston enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces. He served for two years as a radio operator and aerial gunner aboard a B-25 Mitchell stationed in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands with the 77th Bombardment Squadron of the Eleventh Air Force. He reached the rank of Staff Sergeant. Heston married Northwestern University student Lydia Marie Clarke, who was six months his senior. That same year he joined the military.

Heston played 'Marc Antony' in Julius Caesar (1950), and firmly stamped himself as genuine leading man material with his performance as circus manager 'Brad Braden' in the Cecil B. DeMille spectacular The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), also starring James Stewart and Cornel Wilde. The now very popular actor remained perpetually busy during the 1950s, both on TV and on the silver screen with audience pleasing performances in the steamy thriller The Naked Jungle (1954), as a treasure hunter in Secret of the Incas (1954) and another barn storming performance for Cecil B. DeMille as "Moses" in the blockbuster The Ten Commandments (1956).

Heston delivered further dynamic performances in the oily film noir thriller Touch of Evil (1958), and then alongside Gregory Peck in the western The Big Country (1958) before scoring the role for which he is arguably best known, that of the wronged Jewish prince who seeks his freedom and revenge in the William Wyler directed Ben-Hur (1959). This mammoth Biblical epic running in excess of three and a half hours became the standard by which other large scale productions would be judged, and its superb cast also including Stephen Boyd as the villainous "Massala", English actor Jack Hawkins as the Roman officer "Quintus Arrius", and Australian actor Frank Thring as "Pontius Pilate", all contributed wonderful performances. Never one to rest on his laurels, steely Heston remained the preferred choice of directors to lead the cast in major historical productions and during the 1960s he starred as Spanish legend "Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar" in El Cid (1961), as a US soldier battling hostile Chinese boxers during 55 Days at Peking (1963),played the ill-fated "John the Baptist" in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), the masterful painter "Michelangelo" battling Pope Julius II in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and an English general in Khartoum (1966). In 1968, Heston filmed the unusual western Will Penny (1967) about an aging and lonely cowboy befriending a lost woman and her son, which Heston has often referred to as his favorite piece of work on screen. Interestingly, Heston was on the verge of acquiring an entirely new league of fans due to his appearance in four very topical science fiction films (all based on popular novels) painting bleak futures for mankind.

In 1968, Heston starred as time-traveling astronaut "George Taylor", in the terrific Planet of the Apes (1968) with its now legendary conclusion as Heston realizes the true horror of his destination. He returned to reprise the role, albeit primarily as a cameo, alongside fellow astronaut James Franciscus in the slightly inferior sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Next up, Heston again found himself facing the apocalypse in The Omega Man (1971) as the survivor of a germ plague that has wiped out humanity leaving only bands of psychotic lunatics roaming the cities who seek to kill the uninfected Heston. And fourthly, taking its inspiration from the Harry Harrison novel "Make Room!, Make Room!", Heston starred alongside screen legend Edward G. Robinson and Chuck Connors in Soylent Green (1973). During the remainder of the 1970s, Heston appeared in two very popular "disaster movies" contributing lead roles in the far-fetched Airport 1975 (1974), plus in the star-laden Earthquake (1974), filmed in "Sensoround" (low-bass speakers were installed in selected theaters to simulate the earthquake rumblings on screen to movie audiences). He played an evil Cardinal in the lively The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974), a mythical US naval officer in the recreation of Midway (1976), also filmed in "Sensoround", an LA cop trying to stop a sniper in Two-Minute Warning (1976) and another US naval officer in the submarine thriller Gray Lady Down (1978). Heston appeared in numerous episodes of the high-rating TV series Dynasty (1981) and The Colbys (1985), before moving onto a mixed bag of projects including TV adaptations of Treasure Island (1990) and A Man for All Seasons (1988), hosting two episodes of the comedy show, Saturday Night Live (1975), starring as the "Good Actor" bringing love struck Mike Myers to tears in Wayne's World 2 (1993), and as the eye patch-wearing boss of intelligence agent Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994). He also narrated numerous TV specials and lent his vocal talents to the animated movie Hercules (1997), the family comedy Cats & Dogs (2001) and an animated version of Ben Hur (2003). Heston made an uncredited appearance in the inferior remake of Planet of the Apes (2001), and his last film appearance to date was in the Holocaust-themed drama of My Father (2003).

Heston narrated for highly classified military and Department of Energy instructional films, particularly relating to nuclear weapons, and "for six years Heston [held] the nation's highest security clearance" or Q clearance. The Q clearance is similar to a DoD or Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) clearance of Top Secret.

Heston was married to Lydia Marie Clark Heston since March 1944, and they have two children. His highly entertaining autobiography was released in 1995, titled appropriately enough "Into The Arena". Although often criticized for his strong conservative beliefs and involvement with the NRA, Heston was a strong advocate for civil right many years before it became fashionable, and was a recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, plus the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and did appear in a film or TV production after 2003. He died in April 2008, a memorable figure in the history of US cinema.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-21 17:21:30

1366) Burt Lancaster

Summary

Burt Lancaster, in full Burton Stephen Lancaster, (born November 2, 1913, New York, New York, U.S.—died October 20, 1994, Century City, California), was an American film actor who projected a unique combination of physical toughness and emotional sensitivity.

One of five children born to a New York City postal worker, Lancaster exhibited considerable athletic prowess as a youth. At age 19 he joined the circus and performed in an acrobatic act with partner Nick Cravat, a lifelong friend who would go on to costar in several of Lancaster’s films. Lancaster served in the United States Army during World War II and became interested in acting as a result of performing in USO shows. Following the war, he landed his first professional acting job in the Broadway play A Sound of Hunting (1945). The play was short-lived, its run lasting only two weeks, but Lancaster’s performance was noticed by a talent scout who took the actor to Hollywood. Lancaster’s debut film, Desert Fury (1947), was delayed in its release; he first came to the attention of audiences in the film noir classic The Killers (1946). With this film, Lancaster established a duality to his screen persona: he was the rugged he-man of his publicized image but also a capable actor with a penchant for offbeat roles.

Lancaster quickly gained control over his career and thus avoided Hollywood typecasting. In 1948 he cofounded Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, one of the first star-owned production companies. Along with antitrust legislation that forced studios to divest themselves of their theatre holdings, such ventures were instrumental in the downfall of the studio system. Although the films that Lancaster made for Hecht-Hill-Lancaster were not the company’s most successful, the enterprise was important in establishing Lancaster’s reputation as a versatile actor.

Lancaster appeared in numerous films of quality throughout his career, particularly during his first two decades as a screen star. His drawing power steadily increased during the late 1940s and early ’50s because of his performances in such films as I Walk Alone (1948; the first of seven films in which he costarred with his friend Kirk Douglas), All My Sons (1948), Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), Criss Cross (1949), The Flame and the Arrow (1950), Jim Thorpe—All American (1951), The Crimson Pirate (1952), and Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). He earned his first Oscar (Academy Award) nomination for From Here to Eternity (1953), the classic film in which Lancaster and costar Deborah Kerr created one of the most indelible images in film history with their beachside love scene. His series of hit roles continued throughout the 1950s with such notable films as Apache (1954), The Rose Tattoo (1955), Trapeze (1956), The Rainmaker (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), and Separate Tables (1958).

Lancaster won an Academy Award for one of his most powerful and charismatic performances, that of a charlatan evangelist in Elmer Gantry (1960). He was memorable in a supporting role as a Nazi war criminal in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and received another Oscar nomination for his sensitive portrayal of Robert Stroud—a prison inmate who became one of the world’s leading ornithologists—in director John Frankenheimer’s Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). Lancaster’s other standout films from the 1960s include Luchino Visconti’s Il gattopardo (1963; The Leopard); two more films for Frankenheimer, Seven Days in May (1964) and The Train (1964); The Professionals (1966); and the cult favourite The Swimmer (1968).

Although his first film of the 1970s was the blockbuster disaster epic Airport (1970), Lancaster appeared in few films of note during that decade. His supporting performance in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976) was well-received, but not until 1980 did Lancaster revive his career with an Oscar-nominated performance as an aging, small-time bookie in director Louis Malle’s Atlantic City. Other memorable character roles followed, including a turn as a dreamy, star-gazing Texas oil billionaire in the comedy Local Hero (1983), an enjoyable reunion with Kirk Douglas in Tough Guys (1986), and his moving portrayal of an aging doctor who still regrets his missed opportunity in professional baseball in the immensely popular Field of Dreams (1989). Lancaster gave his final performance in the acclaimed TV miniseries Separate but Equal (1991), after which health problems forced his retirement.

Details

Burton Stephen Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American actor and producer. Initially known for playing tough guys with a tender heart, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series. He was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actor (winning once), and he also won two BAFTA Awards and one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor. The American Film Institute ranks Lancaster as #19 of the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

Lancaster performed as a circus acrobat in the 1930s. After serving in World War II, the 32-year-old Lancaster landed a role in a Broadway play and drew the attention of a Hollywood agent. His breakthrough role was in the film noir The Killers in 1946 alongside Ava Gardner. A critical success, it launched both of their careers. Not long after in 1948, Lancaster starred alongside Barbara Stanwyck in the commercially and critically acclaimed film Sorry, Wrong Number where he portrayed the husband to her bedridden, invalid character. In 1953, Lancaster played the illicit lover of Deborah Kerr in the military drama From Here to Eternity. A box office smash, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and landed a Best Actor nomination for Lancaster.

Later in the 1950s, he starred in The Rainmaker (1956), with Katharine Hepburn, earning a Best Actor Golden Globe nomination, and in 1957 he starred in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) with frequent co-star Kirk Douglas. During the 1950s, his production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, was highly successful, with Lancaster acting in films such as: Trapeze (1956), a box office smash in which he used his acrobatic skills and for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor; Sweet Smell of Success (1957), a dark drama today considered a classic; Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), a WWII submarine drama with Clark Gable; and Separate Tables (1958), a hotel-set drama which received seven Oscar nominations.

In the early 1960s, Lancaster starred in a string of critically successful films, each in very disparate roles. Playing a charismatic biblical con-man in Elmer Gantry in 1960 won him the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor. He played a Nazi war criminal in 1961 in the all-star, war-crime-trial film, Judgment at Nuremberg. Playing a bird expert prisoner in Birdman of Alcatraz in 1962, he earned the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and his third Oscar nomination. In 1963, Lancaster traveled to Italy to star as an Italian prince in Visconti's epic period drama The Leopard. In 1964, he played a US Air Force General who, opposed by a Colonel played by Douglas, tries to overthrow the President in Seven Days in May. Then, in 1966, he played an explosives expert in the western The Professionals. Although the reception of his 1968 film The Swimmer was initially lackluster upon release, in the years after it has grown in stature critically and attained a cult following.

In 1970, Lancaster starred in the box-office hit, air-disaster drama Airport. In 1974 he again starred in a Visconti film, Conversation Piece. He experienced a career resurgence in 1980 with the crime-romance Atlantic City, winning the BAFTA for Best Actor and landing his fourth Oscar nomination. Starting in the late 1970s, he also appeared in television mini-series, including the award-winning Separate but Equal with Sidney Poitier. He continued acting into his late 70s, until a stroke in 1990 forced him to retire; four years later he died from a heart attack. His final film role was in the Oscar-nominated Field of Dreams.

Additional Information

Burt Lancaster, one of five children, was born in Manhattan, to Elizabeth (Roberts) and James Henry Lancaster, a postal worker. All his grandparents were immigrants from the north of Ireland. He was a tough street kid who took an early interest in gymnastics. He joined the circus as an acrobat and worked there until he was injured. In the Army during WWII he was introduced to the USO and to acting. His first film was The Killers (1946), and that made him a star. He was a self-taught actor who learned the business as he went along. He set up his own production company in 1948 with Harold Hecht and James Hill to direct his career. He played many different roles in pictures as varied as The Crimson Pirate (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), Elmer Gantry (1960) and Atlantic City (1980).

His production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, produced such films as Paddy Chayefsky's Marty (1955) (Oscar winner 1955) and The Catered Affair (1956). In the 1980s he appeared as a supporting player in a number of movies, such as Local Hero (1983) and Field of Dreams (1989). However, it will be the sound of his voice, the way that he laughed, and the larger-than-life characters he played that will always be remembered.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-22 01:05:51

1367) Maximilian Schell

Summary

Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was an Austrian-Swiss actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961. He was also a writer, director and producer for some movies.

He was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his role in Stalin. He also appeared in Abraham, Deep Impact, Coast to Coast, and in The Brothers Bloom. His sister was actress Maria Schell.

Details

Maximilian Schell, (born December 8, 1930, Vienna, Austria—died February 1, 2014, Innsbruck, Austria), was an Austrian actor and filmmaker who was most closely associated with the post-World War II courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg. Schell created the role of the accused Nazi war criminals’ eloquent defense attorney, Hans Rolfe, in the play’s original 1959 production on the TV anthology series Playhouse 90 and won the Academy Award for best actor for his re-creation of that role in the 1961 film adaptation; he later portrayed Ernst Janning, the chief defendant, on the Broadway stage.

Schell’s fiercely anti-Nazi family fled to Zürich after the 1938 Anschluss, in which Austria was annexed by Germany, and he served (1948–49) in the Swiss army. Schell began acting in West German films and onstage before following his older sister, actress Maria Schell, to Hollywood, where he made his debut as a German army officer in The Young Lions (1958).

Despite his rugged good looks, Schell eschewed leading-man roles in favour of more complex individuals, many of whom were drawn from the Nazi era. He earned Oscar nominations for his roles as a suspected Nazi war criminal in The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and as an anti-Nazi patriot in Julia (1977) and received Emmy Award nominations in 1992 and 1993, respectively, for his portrayal of a Holocaust survivor in Miss Rose White and of the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin in Stalin. Schell also wrote, produced, and directed several films, most notably documentaries on German actress Marlene Dietrich (1984) and on his sister Maria (2002).

Additional Information

Maximilian Schell was the most successful German-speaking actor in English-language films since Emil Jannings, the winner of the first Best Actor Academy Award. Like Jannings, Schell won the Oscar, but unlike him, he was a dedicated anti-Nazi. Indeed, with the exception of Maurice Chevalier and Marcello Mastroianni, Schell was undoubtedly the most successful non-anglophone foreign actor in the history of American cinema.

Schell was born in Vienna, Austria on December 8, 1930, but raised in in Zurich, Switzerland. (Austria became part of Germany after the anschluss of 1938), then was occupied by the allies from 1945 until 1955, when it again joined the family of nations.) He learned his craft on the stage beginning in 1952, and made his reputation with appearances in German-language films and television. He was a fine Shakespearean actor, and had a huge success with "Richard III" (he has also appeared in as the eponymous prince in a German-language version of "Hamlet").

Schell made his Hollywood debut in 1958 in the World War II film The Young Lions (1958) quite by accident, as the producers had wanted to hire his sister Maria Schell, but lines of communication got crossed, and he was the one hired. He impressed American producers as his turn as the friend of German soldier Marlon Brando, and subsequently assayed the role of the German defense attorney in the television drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) on "Playhouse 90" in 1959. He was also cast in the big screen remake, for which he won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Actor, beating out co-star Spencer Tracy for the Oscar. He also won a Golden Globe and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for the role. Schell ultimately won two more Oscar nominations for acting, in 1976 for Best Actor for The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and in 1978 as Best Supporting Actor for Julia (1977) (which also brought him the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor). He has twice been nominated for an Emmy for his TV work, and won the 1993 Golden Globe for best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a series, mini-series or made-for-TV movie for Stalin (1992).

Schell has also has directed films, and his 1974 film The Pedestrian (1973) ("The Pedestrian"), which Schell wrote, produced, directed, and starred in, was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and won the Golden Globe in the same category. His documentary about Marlene Dietrich, Marlene (1984), was widely hailed as a masterpiece of the non-fiction genre and garnered its producers a Best Documentary Oscar nomination in 1985. In 2002, Schell released Meine Schwester Maria (2002) (My Sister Maria), a documentary about the career of and his relationship with Maria Schell. Since the 1990s, Schell has appeared in many German language made-for-TV films, such as the 2003 film Alles Glück dieser Erde (2003) (All the Luck in the World) and in the mini-series The Hard Cops (2004), which was based on Henning Mankell's novel. He has also continued to appear on stage, appearing in dual roles in the 2000 Broadway production of the stage version of "Judgment at Nuremberg", and most recently in Robert Altman's London production of Arthur Miller's play "Resurrection Blues" in 2006. He died on 31st of January 2014, aged 83, in Innsbruck, Austria.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-22 18:20:07

1368) Gregory Peck

Summary

Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck the 12th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

After studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner, Peck began appearing in stage productions, acting in over 50 plays and three Broadway productions. He first gained critical success in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), a John M. Stahl–directed drama that earned him his first Academy Award nomination. He starred in a series of successful films, including romantic-drama The Valley of Decision (1944), Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), and family film The Yearling (1946). He encountered lukewarm commercial reviews at the end of the 1940s, his performances including The Paradine Case (1947) and The Great Sinner (1948). Peck reached global recognition in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing back-to-back in the book-to-film adaptation of Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and biblical drama David and Bathsheba (1951). He starred alongside Ava Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953).

Other notable films in which he appeared (1956, and its 1998 mini-series), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Cape Fear (1962, and its 1991 remake), The Omen (1976), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). Throughout his career, he often portrayed protagonists with "fiber" within a moral setting. Gentleman's Agreement (1947) centered on topics of antisemitism, while Peck's character in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder during World War II. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), an adaptation of the modern classic of the same name which revolved around racial inequality, for which he received universal acclaim. In 1983, he starred opposite Christopher Plummer in The Scarlet and The Black as Hugh O'Flaherty, a Catholic priest who saved thousands of escaped Allied POWs and Jewish people in Rome during the Second World War.

Peck was also active in politics, challenging the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and was regarded as a political opponent by President Richard Nixon. President Lyndon B. Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. Peck died in his sleep from bronchopneumonia at the age of 87.

Details

Gregory Peck, in full Eldred Gregory Peck, (born April 5, 1916, La Jolla, California, U.S.—died June 12, 2003, Los Angeles, California), was a tall, imposing American actor with a deep, mellow voice, best known for conveying characters of honesty and integrity.

A pharmacist’s son, Peck attended military school and San Diego State College before enrolling as a premed student at the University of California at Berkeley. There he developed a taste for acting, and upon graduation he headed to New York, where he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and supported himself as an usher at Radio City Music Hall and as a concession barker at the 1939 World’s Fair. He made his Broadway debut in The Morning Star (1942), the first of three consecutive flops in which he appeared, although critics liked Peck’s performances.

Invited to Hollywood, Peck made his first film appearance as a Russian guerrilla fighter in Days of Glory (1944). Because of an earlier spinal injury, he was unable to serve in World War II. This circumstance enabled him to emerge as one of the most popular leading men of the 1940s. He earned his first Academy Award nomination for his performance as an idealistic missionary priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), and three years later he received a second Oscar nomination for his interpretation of a journalist who poses as a Jew in order to expose anti-Semitism in Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). Peck’s other notable films from this decade include The Valley of Decision (1945), Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), Duel in the Sun (1946), The Yearling (1946), and Yellow Sky (1948).

Although Peck worked with most of the major Hollywood directors of the day, including Hitchcock, King Vidor, William Wellman, William Wyler, Vincente Minnelli, and Lewis Milestone, he did some of his finest work for Henry King. In King’s Twelve O’Clock High (1949), The Gunfighter (1950), David and Bathsheba (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Bravados (1958), and Beloved Infidel (1959), Peck portrayed outwardly strong and authoritative individuals whose inner demons and character flaws threaten to destroy them. He was finally honoured with an Academy Award for his performance as the ethical and compassionate Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch in the screen adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). His subsequent screen roles included an anguished father in the popular horror film The Omen (1976), the titular American general in MacArthur (1977), and a rare villainous turn as Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in The Boys from Brazil (1978). Although Peck continued to work into the early 1990s (at which time he announced that he was largely retired), his final films are mostly forgettable.

Throughout his career, Peck received the most praise for his portrayals of stoical men motivated by a quest for decency and justice; he was less successful in performances demanding a broad emotional range, such as his interpretation of Captain Ahab (1956), in which critics felt he failed to convey the compulsive qualities of one of American literature’s most complex characters. Nevertheless, he was an ingratiating performer, fully capable in roles that required him to be the moral centre of a film. Peck was also widely admired and respected as one of the motion picture industry’s most cooperative and least egotistical stars. Outside of his film work, he was tirelessly active in civic, charitable, and political causes. He served as chairman of the American Cancer Society and of the trustee board of the American Film Institute (which he cofounded), and for three years he was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Additional Information

Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child, he was sent to live with his grandmother. He never felt he had a stable childhood. His fondest memories are of his grandmother taking him to the movies every week and of his dog, which followed him everywhere. He studied pre-med at UC-Berkeley and, while there, got bitten by the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation. His debut was in Emlyn Williams' play "The Morning Star" (1942). By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film Days of Glory (1944).

Stardom came with his next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Peck's screen presence displayed the qualities for which he became well known. He was tall, rugged and heroic, with a basic decency that transcended his roles. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) as an amnesia victim accused of murder. In The Yearling (1946), he was again nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe. He was especially effective in westerns and appeared in such varied fare as David O. Selznick's critically blasted Duel in the Sun (1946), the somewhat better received Yellow Sky (1948) and the acclaimed The Gunfighter (1950). He was nominated again for the Academy Award for his roles in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which dealt with anti-Semitism, and Twelve O'Clock High (1949), a story of high-level stress in an Air Force bomber unit in World War II.

With a string of hits to his credit, Peck made the decision to only work in films that interested him. He continued to appear as the heroic, larger-than-life figures in such films as Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and Moby Dickinson (1956). He worked with Audrey Hepburn in her debut film, Roman Holiday (1953). Peck finally won the Oscar, after four nominations, for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). In the early 1960s, he appeared in two darker films than he usually made, Cape Fear (1962) and Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), which dealt with the way people live. He also gave a powerful performance as Captain Keith Mallory in The Guns of Navarone (1961), one of the biggest box-office hits of that year.

In the early 1970s, he produced two films, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972) and The Dove (1974), when his film career stalled. He made a comeback playing, somewhat woodenly, Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen (1976). After that, he returned to the bigger-than-life roles he was best known for, such as MacArthur (1977) and the monstrous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele in the huge hit The Boys from Brazil (1978). In the 1980s, he moved into television with the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (1982) and The Scarlet and the Black (1983). In 1991, he appeared in the remake of his 1962 film, playing a different role, in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was also cast as the progressive-thinking owner of a wire and cable business in Other People's Money (1991).

In 1967, Peck received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He was also been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Always politically progressive, he was active in such causes as anti-war protests, workers' rights and civil rights. In 2003, his Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute. Gregory Peck died at age 87 on June 12, 2003 in Los Angeles, California.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-23 17:00:37

1369) Sidney Poitier

Summary

Sidney Poitier was a native of Cat Island, Bahamas, although born, two months prematurely, in Miami during a visit by his parents, Evelyn (Outten) and Reginald James Poitier. He grew up in poverty as the son of farmers, with his father also driving a cab in Nassau. Sidney had little formal education and at the age of 15 was sent to Miami to live with his brother, in order to forestall a growing tendency toward delinquency. In the U.S., he experienced the racial chasm that divides the country, a great shock to a boy coming from a society with a majority of African descent.

At 18, he went to New York, did menial jobs and slept in a bus terminal toilet. A brief stint in the Army as a worker at a veterans' hospital was followed by more menial jobs in Harlem. An impulsive audition at the American Negro Theatre was rejected so forcefully that Poitier dedicated the next six months to overcoming his accent and improving his performing skills. On his second try, he was accepted. Spotted in rehearsal by a casting agent, he won a bit part in the Broadway production of "Lysistrata", for which he earned good reviews. By the end of 1949, he was having to choose between leading roles on stage and an offer to work for Darryl F. Zanuck in the film No Way Out (1950). His performance as a doctor treating a white bigot got him plenty of notice and led to more roles. Nevertheless, the roles were still less interesting and prominent than those white actors routinely obtained. But seven years later, after turning down several projects he considered demeaning, Poitier got a number of roles that catapulted him into a category rarely if ever achieved by an African-American man of that time, that of leading man. One of these films, The Defiant Ones (1958), earned Poitier his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Five years later, he won the Oscar for Lilies of the Field (1963), the first African American to win for a leading role.

He remained active on stage and screen as well as in the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. His roles in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and To Sir, with Love (1967) were landmarks in helping to break down some social barriers between blacks and whites. Poitier's talent, conscience, integrity, and inherent likability placed him on equal footing with the white stars of the day. He took on directing and producing chores in the 1970s, achieving success in both arenas.

Details

Sidney Poitier (February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022) was a Bahamian and American actor, film director, and diplomat. In 1964, he was the first Black actor and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. He received two competitive Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, and a Grammy Award as well as nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award. In 1999, he ranked among one of the "American Film Institute's 100 Stars". Poitier was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.

Poitier's family lived in the Bahamas, then still a Crown colony, but he was born in Miami, Florida, while they were visiting, which automatically granted him U.S. citizenship. He grew up in the Bahamas, but moved to Miami at age 15, and to New York City when he was 16. He joined the American Negro Theatre, landing his breakthrough film role as a high school student in the film Blackboard Jungle (1955). Poitier gained stardom for his leading roles in films such as The Defiant Ones (1958) for which he made history becoming the first African American to receive an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination. Additionally Poitier won the Silver Bear for Best Actor for his performance. In 1964, he won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (1963).

Poitier also received acclaim for Porgy and Bess (1959), A Raisin in the Sun (1961), and A Patch of Blue (1965), because of his strong roles as epic African American male characters. He continued to break ground in three successful 1967 films which dealt with issues of race and race relations: To Sir, with Love; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night, the latter of which earned him Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations. In a poll the next year he was voted the US's top box-office star. Poitier also directed various films, including A Warm December (1973), Uptown Saturday Night (1974), and Stir Crazy (1980). He later starred in Shoot to Kill (1988) and Sneakers (1992).

Poitier was granted a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974. He received numerous honors including the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1982, the Kennedy Center Honor in 1995, Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1999, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2002. In 2009, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. In 2016, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for outstanding lifetime achievement in film. From 1997 to 2007, he was the Bahamian Ambassador to Japan.

Additional Information

Sidney Poitier, (born February 20, 1927, Miami, Florida, U.S.—died January 6, 2022, Los Angeles, California), was an Bahamian American actor, director, and producer who broke the colour barrier in the U.S. motion-picture industry by becoming the first African American to win an Academy Award for best actor (for Lilies of the Field [1963]) and the first Black movie star. He also redefined roles for African Americans by rejecting parts that were based on racial stereotypes.

Early life and work

Poitier was born prematurely in the United States while his parents were visiting from The Bahamas. While some references give his birth year as 1924, most sources, including Poitier himself, indicate that he was born in 1927. He grew up on Cat Island, Bahamas, and returned as a teenager to the United States, where he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and served a brief stint in a medical unit. Upon his discharge, he applied to the American Negro Theatre (ANT) in New York City. Refused a place because of his accent, he practiced American enunciation while listening to the accents of radio voices and reapplied to ANT six months later. This time he was accepted, and he began studying acting while appearing in a series of ANT productions. In 1946 he made his Broadway debut in Lysistrata.

Poitier’s first credited film role was Dr. Luther Brooks, a Black doctor who treats a bigoted white criminal, in No Way Out (1950). The movie established a significant pattern both for Poitier himself and for the Black actors who followed him: by refusing roles that played to racial stereotypes, Poitier pushed the restrictive boundaries set by Hollywood and made inroads into the American mainstream. He next appeared in Cry, the Beloved Country (1951), an adaptation of Alan Paton’s novel about a murder in apartheid South Africa; Poitier portrayed a reverend. Another of his notable early roles was Gregory Miller, an alienated high school student in the 1955 film adaptation of Evan Hunter’s novel The Blackboard Jungle (1954). Although he had a budding film career, Poitier continued to perform in live theatre and won critical acclaim on Broadway in 1959 with his starring role in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. He also starred in the 1961 film adaptation of the drama.

In the gripping drama Edge of the City (1957), Poitier starred as a dockworker whose friendship with a white coworker (John Cassavetes) raises the ire of a racist union boss. Band of Angels (1957) also examined racial tensions. Set at the time of the American Civil War, the melodrama featured Poitier as a rebellious overseer whose boss (Clark Gable) buys the daughter (Yvonne De Carlo) of a once-wealthy family, who, after her father’s death, discovers she is part Black and is sold into slavery. In The Defiant Ones (1958), Poitier was cast as a prisoner who escapes with a white inmate (Tony Curtis); the two must overcome their racial prejudices in order to elude the police. The film, which was considered provocative at the time because of its call for racial harmony, earned Poitier an Oscar nomination for best actor; he became the first African American male performer to earn a nod in the lead category. He also earned acclaim for his work in Porgy and Bess (1959); he portrayed the disabled Porgy, who loves Bess (Dorothy Dandridge), a drug addict being pursued by a number of suitors.

Poitier made history as Homer Smith, an ex-GI who helps nuns build a chapel in Lilies of the Field (1963). His Academy Award win marked the first time a competitive Oscar had been awarded to an African American male. (James Baskett had received an honorary Oscar in 1948 for his role as Uncle Remus in Song of the South [1946].) Poitier was also just the second Black actor to win an Academy Award (Hattie McDaniel had won a best supporting actress Oscar for Gone with the Wind [1939]). After appearing in the biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Poitier portrayed a man who befriends a blind girl (Elizabeth Hartman) in A Patch of Blue (1965); the moving drama also starred Shelley Winters as her abusive mother.

After the western Duel at Diablo (1966), Poitier starred in a series of acclaimed films. In To Sir, with Love (1967), he portrayed a charismatic schoolteacher who earns the respect of his students at an inner-city school. Next was In the Heat of the Night (1967), a crime drama that focused on the uneasy partnership that develops between a bigoted white Southern police chief (played by Rod Steiger) and Virgil Tibbs, an intellectual Black Philadelphia detective (Poitier). The film received the Oscar for best picture, and Poitier later reprised the role in They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971). Poitier’s other movie from 1967 was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which he portrayed the fiancé of a white woman (Katharine Houghton) who takes him home to meet her liberal parents (Spencer Tracy, in his last film, and Katharine Hepburn). The success of the movies made Poitier the top box-office draw of the year.

Poitier as a director

In 1972 Poitier made his directorial debut with Buck and the Preacher, an amiable western in which he played a con-man preacher; his costars were Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee. He next helmed A Warm December (1973), a melodrama that featured Poitier as a widowed doctor who falls in love with a woman (Esther Anderson) who has sickle cell anemia. Both films were disappointments at the box office, but the comedy Uptown Saturday Night (1974) was an enormous hit, thanks to the chemistry between Poitier and costars Bill Cosby and Belafonte. Poitier then reteamed with Cosby on Let’s Do It Again (1975) and A Piece of the Action (1977).

Poitier did not act in Stir Crazy (1980), which featured Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor as a pair of losers who are mistakenly sent to prison; the film was an enormous box-office hit. Poitier had less success with Hanky Panky (1982), which teamed Wilder and his real-life wife, Gilda Radner, and Fast Forward (1985), a musical about break dancers. Cosby returned for Poitier’s last directorial effort, Ghost Dad (1990), but the film failed to match their earlier successes.

Return to acting

After more than a decadelong break from acting, in 1988 Poitier appeared in the action thrillers Shoot to Kill and Little Nikita. His other films include Sneakers (1992) and The Jackal (1997), but most of his later credits were made-for-television movies, notably Separate but Equal (1991) and Mandela and de Klerk (1997), in which he played Thurgood Marshall and Nelson Mandela, respectively. His final role was in The Last Brickmaker in America (2001), a TV movie about a grieving widower whose job is becoming obsolete.

In 2001 Poitier, the recipient of many prestigious acting awards, was presented with an honorary Academy Award for “his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being.” A dual citizen of the United States and The Bahamas, he served as ambassador to Japan for The Bahamas from 1997 to 2007. In 2009 he was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. Poitier chronicled his experiences in This Life (1980) and The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000). Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter (2008) was a volume of advice and insights in epistolary form. He also released a suspense novel, Montaro Caine, in 2013.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-24 17:29:15

1370) Rex Harrison

Summary

Sir Reginald Carey "Rex" Harrison (5 March 1908 – 2 June 1990) was an English actor. Harrison began his career on the stage in 1924. He made his West End debut in 1936 appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, in what was his breakthrough role. He won his first Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as Henry VIII in the Broadway play Anne of the Thousand Days in 1949. He returned to Broadway portraying Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (1956) where he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

In addition to his stage career, Harrison also appeared in numerous films. His first starring role was opposite Vivien Leigh in the romantic comedy Storm in a Teacup (1937). Receiving critical acclaim for his performance in Major Barbara (1941), which was shot in London during the Blitz, his roles since then included Blithe Spirit (1945), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Cleopatra (1963), My Fair Lady (1964), reprising his stage role as Henry Higgins which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the titular character in Doctor Dolittle (1967).

In 1975, Harrison released his first autobiography. In June 1989, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He was married six times and had two sons: Noel and Carey Harrison. He continued working in stage productions until shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in June 1990 at the age of 82. His second autobiography, A Damned Serious Business: My Life in Comedy, was published posthumously in 1991.

Details

Rex Harrison, in full Sir Rex Harrison, original name Reginald Carey Harrison, (born March 5, 1908, Huyton, Lancashire, England—died June 2, 1990, New York, New York, U.S.), was an English stage and film actor best known for his portrayals of urbane, eccentric English gentlemen in sophisticated comedies and social satires.

After graduating from secondary school at age 16, Harrison began a stage apprenticeship with the Liverpool Repertory Theatre. He first appeared on the London stage in 1930, the same year his first film, The Great Game, was released. Throughout the 1930s, Harrison divided his time nearly equally between the stage and the screen, scoring a noted stage success with his role in Noël Coward’s Design for Living (1939–41). During World War II, Harrison served as a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. He achieved stardom after the war with highly praised roles in the films Blithe Spirit and The Rake’s Progress (both 1945). His first American film was the popular Anna and the King of Siam (1946).

From the late 1940s through most of the ’50s, Harrison spent much of his time on the New York stage. Harrison won a Tony Award for his performance as Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days (1948–49). His greatest stage triumph came during the 1956–59 seasons with his portrayal of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, Lerner and Loewe’s musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Because he was hopeless as a singer—Loewe once remarked that Harrison had a vocal range of one and a half notes—Harrison developed a technique of talking his way through songs that proved highly effective. For his performance, he won a second Tony Award. He repeated the role for Warner Brothers’s lavish 1964 screen adaptation and was awarded the Oscar for best actor.

During the 1970s Harrison continued to appear in motion pictures and on New York and London stages, and in 1980 he recreated the role of Higgins in a successful touring production of My Fair Lady. Harrison, who once stated that Shaw was his “contemporary in thought and feeling,” gave the greatest performance of his later years as the philosophical and mystical Captain Shotover in the 1983 Broadway and London productions of Shaw’s Heartbreak House, which was adapted into a television film in 1986. Harrison’s final performance was in a 1990 revival of Somerset Maugham’s The Circle, in which he appeared until one month before his death. He was knighted in 1989.

Additional Information

Rex Harrison was born Reginald Carey Harrison in Huyton, Lancashire, England, to Edith Mary (Carey) and William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker. He changed his name to Rex as a young boy, knowing it was the Latin word for "King". Starting out on his theater career at age 18, his first job at the Liverpool Rep Theatre was nearly his last - dashing across the stage to say his one line, made his entrance and promptly blew it. Fates were kind, however, and soon he began landing roles in the West End. "French Without Tears", a play by Terence Rattigan, proved to be his breakthrough role. Soon he was being called the "greatest actor of light comedy in the world". Having divorced his first wife Collette Thomas in 1942, he married German actress Lilli Palmer. The two began appearing together in many plays and British films. He attained international fame when he portrayed the King in Anna and the King of Siam (1946), his first American film. The death of Kay affected Harrison greatly and Lilli never returned to him. During this time Rex was offered the defining role of his career: Professor Henry Higgins in the original production of "My Fair Lady". He won the Tony for the play and an Oscar for the film version. In 1962 Harrison married actress Rachel Roberts. This union and the one following it to Elizabeth Harris (Richard's ex) also ended in divorce. In 1978 Rex met and married Mercia Tinker. He and Mercia remained happily married until his death in 1990. She was also with him in 1989 when he was granted his much-deserved and long awaited knighthood at Buckingham Palace. Rex Harrison died of pancreatic cancer three weeks after his last stage appearance, as Lord Porteous in W. Somerset Maugham's "The Circle".

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-25 14:57:05

1371) Lee Marvin

Summary

Lamont Waltman "Lee" Marvin Jr. (February 19, 1924 – August 29, 1987) was an American film and television actor. Known for his bass voice and premature white hair, he is best remembered for playing hardboiled "tough guy" characters. Although initially typecast as the "heavy" (i.e. villainous character), he later gained prominence for portraying anti-heroes, such as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger on the television series M Squad (1957–1960). Marvin's notable roles in film included Charlie Strom in The Killers (1964), Rico Fardan in The Professionals (1966), Major John Reisman in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Ben Rumson in Paint Your Wagon (1969), Walker in Point Blank (1967), and the Sergeant in The Big Red One (1980).

Marvin achieved numerous accolades when he portrayed both gunfighter Kid Shelleen and criminal Tim Strawn in a dual role for the comedy Western film Cat Ballou (1965), alongside Jane Fonda, a surprise hit which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, an NBR Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actor.

Details

Lee Marvin, (born February 19, 1924, New York, New York, U.S.—died August 29, 1987, Tucson, Arizona), was a rugged, durable American actor who was perhaps the quintessential cinematic “tough guy.”

Marvin took up acting after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, and in 1949 he began appearing in Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. The following year he had guest parts in several television shows, which led to his film debut in 1951. For the better part of 14 years, he appeared in smaller roles. His tall, lean, brutal, stone-faced appearance made him an excellent choice for the role of villain in Hollywood action movies and westerns. Many of Marvin’s early films were notable works of major directors, such as Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953), László Benedek’s The Wild One (1953), John Sturges’s Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), and Robert Aldrich’s Attack (1956). Marvin continued to make TV appearances as well, and he starred as the tough but good-hearted Lieut. Frank Ballinger in the series M Squad (1957–60).

In 1962 Marvin appeared as Liberty Valance, a mean, snarling cowboy in John Ford’s legendary The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This role led to his dual casting as a drunken cowboy hero and his nasty gun-slinging twin brother in Cat Ballou (1965), a western comedy. His performance in this film won him an Oscar, and he was soon in demand as a leading man.

Borrowing from his vast experience at playing bad guys, Marvin brought complexity to his roles as a leading man by incorporating elements of the thug. In 1967 he delivered two of his most memorable performances: in The Dirty Dozen, he portrayed the no-nonsense military commander who leads a group of condemned criminals on a deadly war mission; and in John Boorman’s Point Blank, he played an emotionless man out to exact violent revenge on the men who robbed him and left him for dead.

Marvin was sometimes miscast—for example, as a singing cowboy in Paint Your Wagon (1969), though his recording of the song “Wand’rin’ Star” became an unexpected hit. His ability to show tenderness, as he did in Monte Walsh (1970), was not often exploited by directors. His last great role was that of another determined World War II platoon leader, this time in Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One (1980).

Additional Information

Prematurely white-haired character star who began as a supporting player of generally vicious demeanor, then metamorphosed into a star of both action and drama projects, Lee Marvin was born in New York City, the son of Courtenay Washington (Davidge), a fashion writer, and Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive. The young Marvin was thrown out of dozens of schools for incorrigibility. His parents took him to Florida, where he attended St. Leo's Preparatory School near Dade City. Dismissed there as well, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. In the battle of Saipan in June 1944, he was wounded in the buttocks by Japanese fire which severed his sciatic nerve. He received a medical discharge and got menial work as a plumber's apprentice in Woodstock, NY. While repairing a toilet at the local community theater, he was asked to replace an ailing actor in a rehearsal. He was immediately stricken with a love for the theater and went to New York City, where he studied and played small roles in stock and Off-Broadway. He landed an extra role in Henry Hathaway's You're in the Navy Now (1951), and found his role expanded when Hathaway took a liking to him. Returning to the stage, he made his Broadway debut in "Billy Budd", and after a succession of small TV roles, moved to Hollywood, where he began playing heavies and cops in roles of increasing size and frequency. Given a leading role in Eight Iron Men (1952), he followed it with enormously memorable heavies in The Big Heat (1953) and The Wild One (1953). Now established as a major screen villain, Marvin began shifting toward leading roles with a successful run as a police detective in the TV series M Squad (1957). A surprise Oscar for his dual role as a drunken gunfighter and his evil, noseless brother in the western comedy Cat Ballou (1965) placed him in the upper tiers of Hollywood leading men, and he filled out his career with predominantly action-oriented films. A long-term romantic relationship with Michelle Triola led, after their breakup, to a highly publicized lawsuit in which Triola asked for a substantial portion of Marvin's assets. Her case failed in its main pursuit, but did establish a legal precedent for the rights of unmarried cohabitors, the so-called "palimony" law. Marvin continued making films of varying quality, always as a star, until his sudden death from a heart attack in 1987.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-26 18:35:57

1372) Paul Scofield

Summary

David Paul Scofield (21 January 1922 – 19 March 2008) was an English actor. During a six-decade career, Scofield achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, winning an Academy Award, Emmy, and Tony for his work. Scofield established a reputation as one of the greatest Shakespearean performers. He declined the honour of a knighthood, but was appointed CBE in 1956 and became a Companion of Honour in 2001.

Scofield received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for portraying Sir Thomas More in the Broadway production of A Man for All Seasons (1962). Four years later, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor when he reprised the role in the 1966 film adaptation, making him one of eleven to receive a Tony and Academy Award for the same role. He received the Primetime Emmy Award for Male of the Species (1969).

He garnered acclaim for his roles in films such as The Train (1964), King Lear (1971), A Delicate Balance (1973), Henry V (1989), and Hamlet (1990). He portrayed Mark Van Doren in the historical drama Quiz Show (1994) earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. For his role as Thomas Danforth in the film adaptation of The Crucible (1996) he received the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Details

Paul Scofield, in full David Paul Scofield, (born January 21, 1922, Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, England—died March 19, 2008), was an English actor noted for his powerful performances in Shakespearean and other stage roles.

Scofield was trained as an actor at the Croydon Repertory Theatre School (1939) and at the Mask Theatre School (1940) in London. After touring with companies entertaining the troops during World War II, he joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and in 1946 moved to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he had his first great success—playing the title role in Henry V, Cloten in Cymbeline, Don Adriano de Armado in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Lucio in Measure for Measure, and Hamlet, among other Shakespearean roles. He had his first starring role in commercial theatre in 1949, playing Alexander the Great in Terence Rattigan’s ill-fated Adventure Story.

Scofield had his greatest success in the role of Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, in which he appeared in London in 1960 and in New York City in 1961–62, winning the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award (1962) and other honours. The next year he appeared at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, playing in Coriolanus and Love’s Labour’s Lost. His later successes in the theatre included the roles of Uncle Vanya (1970) and Volpone (1977).

Scofield made his motion-picture debut in 1955, and he played More in the film version of A Man for All Seasons (1966), for which he won the Academy Award for best actor. He later played Lear in Peter Brook’s motion-picture version of King Lear (1971) and Tobias in A Delicate Balance (1973), written by Edward Albee and directed by Tony Richardson, from the Albee play. He also played the French king in Kenneth Branagh’s version of Henry V (1989) and Judge Thomas Danforth in a film adaptation of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1996).

Additional Information

Though his number of film roles amount to a bit over 30, Paul Scofield has cast a giant shadow in the world of stage and film acting. He grew up in West Sussex, the son of a schoolmaster. He attended the Varndean School for Boys in Brighton. The love of acting came early. While still high school age, he began training as an actor at the Croydon Repertory Theatre School (1939) and then at the Mask Theatre School (1940) in London. He took on all the experience he could handle by joining touring companies and also entertained British troops during World War II. He joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and, from there in 1946, he moved to Stratford-upon-Avon. There, in the birthplace of William Shakespeare, he had his first great successes. He had the title role in "Henry V"; he was "Cloten" in "Cymbeline"; "Don Adriano de Armado" in "Love's Labour's Lost", "Lucio" in "Measure for Measure", and then "Hamlet". And there were many more as he honed himself into one the great Shakespearean actors of the 20th century. With a rich, sonorous voice compared to a Rolls Royce being started up, in one instance, and a great sound rumbling forth from an antique crypt in yet another, he was quickly compared to Laurence Olivier.

Scofield did not move on to commercial theater until 1949, when he took the lead role of "Alexander the Great", in playwright Terence Rattigan's unfortunately ill-received "Adventure Story". And as he continued theater work, he moved toward film very carefully. From his first in 1955, Scofield was always - as with any of his acting assignments - extremely picky about accepting a particular role. It was three years before his second film. Meanwhile, Scofield had the opportunity to play a great lead part in a new play by a schoolmaster-turned-new-playwright, Robert Bolt. The play was "A Man for All Seasons" and Scofield's choice role was that of "Sir Thomas More", the great English humanist and chancellor, who defied the ogre "King Henry VIII" in his wish to put aside his first wife for "Anne Bolyne". It was a once in a lifetime part, and Scofield debuted it in London in 1960. His only appearance on Broadway was the next year in that play, which ran into 1962. It was no surprise that the work began garnering awards for him.

He returned to Shakespeare in 1962 with Peter Brook, the noted British director and producer, directing him as "Lear" at the newly formed Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at Stratford. This was a pioneering minimalist production, one of the first "bare stage" efforts - though things were pretty bare stage in Shakespeare's day. Scofield then did "Coriolanus" and "Love's Labour's Lost" for the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario in 1963. His third film came six years after his second screen appearance (1958). This was his standout performance in The Train (1964), a production of his co-star, Burt Lancaster, that grew in size and budget with the entrance of Lancaster's second choice for director, John Frankenheimer. Some of the difficulties involved might have turned someone of Scofield's discipline back to the stage thereafter, but the filming of "Seasons" arrived, and he would hardly refuse. With Robert Bolt handling the screenplay and a superlative supporting cast, the film version of A Man for All Seasons (1966) collected some thirty-three international awards, including a three-statue sweep of prime-Oscar categories plus another three for good measure. Scofield was unforgettable as the incisive man of state, able to juggle the volatile politics of the time but always keep his honor and so brimming with faith as to endure the inevitably mounting tide against him.

It suited Scofield for a time to keep his screen-acting to adaptations of plays, books, and ensemble pieces fitted to the big screen. Peter Brook and he teamed again for a film version of the Brook-adapted play Tell Me Lies (1968). The adaptation of Herman Melville's Bartleby (1970), despite Scofield's efforts, did not wash as an attempt to update Melville's story in the late twentieth century. Then Brook was back again to finally attempt what he said had really never been done correctly -adapting Shakespeare to film. Scofield's 1962 "Lear" was held in high esteem, and Brook decided on a film version, King Lear (1970), an even more uncompromising, even uncomfortable, desolation staging and editing of the tragedy. Despite some oddball camera work and not wholly satisfying adapting of the play, Scofield was magnificent and got his chance to show that he is perhaps the best Lear of modern times. While still keeping a concerted interest in filmed play adaptations, Scofield could be lured into more typical screen drama. He joined former co-star, Burt Lancaster, for the spy thriller, Scorpio (1973), as a memorable Russian comrade of Lancaster from the days of World War II, caught in late-Cold War spy craft brutality.

Through the 1980s, Scofield did a mix of TV and film on both sides of the Atlantic. But he was drawn back to Shakespeare and filming efforts, though in humbler parts, first in the Henry V (1989) of ambitious Kenneth Branagh, as the French king, and, the next year, in the Franco Zeffirelli, Hamlet (1990), as "The Ghost" - with the real buzz being for Mel Gibson as the dour "Prince of Denmark". Both films were well-crafted with impressive supporting casts. And Scofield could be content that as with all his roles, he was remaining consistent with himself as his own best judge of how to challenge his acting gifts. Gibson was appropriately awed, saying that working with Scofield was like being "thrown into the ring with Mike Tyson" (that is, Mike Tyson then, not now). Through the 1990s, he enjoyed his continued sampling of all acting media, even radio narration and animation voice-over.

The matter of British actors weighing upon the acceptance of knighthoods for their work began most publicly with Scofield. In 1956, after his tour of "Hamlet" with a triumph in Moscow, he gratefully accepted the appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), but thereafter he refused on three occasions the offer of knighthood. "If you want a title, what's wrong with Mr.? If you have always been that, then why lose your title? "I have a title, which is the same one that I have always had. But it's not political. I have a CBE, which I accepted very gratefully". He said this with great simplicity and charm. The matter of 'theatrical nobility' has prompted others to follow Scofield's example. One high profile example with a twist is actor Anthony Hopkins, now an American citizen, who quipped that he only accepted the knighthood because his wife wanted him to do so. In taking the oath of citizenship, Hopkins pledged to "renounce the title of nobility to which I have heretofore belonged". But Scofield's demeanor in his logically crafted refusals from the first so fit this man's very private life. Yet quite averse to being interviewed, he has always been considerate to the public for their patronage. Brilliant man and acting legacy, on and off the stage, Paul Scofield truly is a "Man for All Seasons".

Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-27 17:06:28

1373) Rod Steiger

Summary

Rodney Stephen Steiger (April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002) was an American actor, noted for his portrayal of offbeat, often volatile and crazed characters. Ranked as "one of Hollywood's most charismatic and dynamic stars", he is closely associated with the art of method acting, embodying the characters he played, which at times led to clashes with directors and co-stars. He starred as Marlon Brando's mobster brother Charley in On the Waterfront (1954), the title character Sol Nazerman in The Pawnbroker (1964) which won him the Silver Bear for Best Actor, and as police chief Bill Gillespie opposite Sidney Poitier in the film In the Heat of the Night (1967) which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, the son of a vaudevillian. He had a difficult childhood, running away from home to escape an alcoholic mother at the age of 16. After serving in the South Pacific during World War II, he began his acting career with television roles in 1947, and went on to garner critical acclaim for his portrayal of the main character in the teleplay "Marty" (1953). He made his stage debut in 1946, in a production of Curse you, Jack Dalton! at the Civic Repertory Theatre of Newark, and subsequently appeared in productions such as An Enemy of the People (1950), Clifford Odets's Night Music (1951), Seagulls Over Sorrento (1952), and Rashomon (1959).

Steiger made his film debut in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa in 1951, and subsequently appeared in films such as The Big Knife (1955), Oklahoma! (1955), Jubal (1956), Across the Bridge (1957), and Al Capone (1959). After his performance in The Pawnbroker in 1964, in which he played an embittered Jewish Holocaust survivor working as a pawnbroker in New York City, he portrayed an opportunistic Russian politician in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965). In the Heat of the Night (1967) won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Steiger, who was lauded for his performance as a Mississippi police chief who learns to respect an African-American officer (Poitier) as they search for a killer. The following year, he played a serial killer of many guises in No Way to Treat a Lady.

During the 1970s, Steiger increasingly turned to European productions in his search for more demanding roles. He portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte in Waterloo (1970), a Mexican bandit in Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker! (1971), Benito Mussolini in Last Days of Mussolini (1975), and ended the decade playing a disturbed priest in The Amityville Horror (1979). By the 1980s, heart problems and depression took their toll on Steiger's career, and he found it difficult to find employment, agreeing to appear in low-budget B movies. One of his final roles was as judge H. Lee Sarokin in the prison drama The Hurricane (1999), which reunited him with In the Heat of the Night director Norman Jewison. Steiger was married five times, and had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger, and a son, Michael Steiger. He died of pneumonia and kidney failure as a result of complications from surgery for a gallbladder tumor in 2002, aged 77, in Los Angeles, and was survived by his fifth wife Joan Benedict Steiger.

Details

Rod Steiger, in full Rodney Stephen Steiger, (born April 14, 1925, Westhampton, New York, U.S.—died July 9, 2002, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), was an American actor who used the techniques of method acting—enhanced by his powerful delivery and intensity—to inhabit a wide variety of complex characters during a half-century-long career as a performer. He was nominated for an Academy Award three times and won it once, for best actor, for his role as a racist Southern sheriff in In the Heat of the Night (1967).

Steiger dropped out of high school at age 16, lied about his age so he could join the navy, and spent most of World War II as a torpedo man on a destroyer in the Pacific. Following his discharge he took a civil service job in Newark, New Jersey, and joined a theatre group. Encouraged to pursue acting seriously, Steiger studied acting at a succession of schools in New York City, ending up at The Actors Studio. His stage debut came in 1947 with a small part in The Trial of Mary Dugan, and in 1951 he made his Broadway debut in a revival of Night Music. His film debut was also in 1951, in Teresa.

Most of Steiger’s work between 1948 and 1953 was in live television dramas, however; he appeared in more than 250 productions, most notably as the title character in the original TV version of Marty. That performance made him a TV star and helped him land one of his most memorable film parts—Charley Malloy, Marlon Brando’s character’s older brother, in On the Waterfront (1954)—and his first Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor.

Among the roles that followed were Jud Fry in Oklahoma! (1955); a tyrannical film producer in The Big Knife (1955); a haunted survivor of the Holocaust in The Pawnbroker (1964), the role he considered his finest and one that gained him a second Oscar nomination, this time for best actor; the outrageous undertaker Mr. Joyboy in The Loved One (1965); and a serial killer with a flair for disguise in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). Most of Steiger’s later work—with the possible exception of W.C. Fields and Me (1976); The Player (1992), in which he portrayed himself; the TV miniseries Tales of the City (1993); and The Specialist—was not considered to have been as accomplished or as successful as his earlier movies, however. His final film was A Month of Sundays (2001).

Additional Information

Rodney Stephen Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, to Augusta Amelia (Driver) and Frederick Jacob Steiger, both vaudevillians. He was of German and Austrian ancestry. After his parents' divorce, Steiger was raised by his mother in Newark, New Jersey. He dropped out of Westside High school at age 16 and joined the Navy. He saw action in the Pacific on a destroyer. Steiger returned to New Jersey after the war and worked for the VA. He was part of an amateur acting group, and then joined the Actors' Studio using his GI Bill benefits.

Steiger received his first film roles in the early 1950s. His first major one was in Teresa (1951), but his first lead role was in the TV version of Marty (1953). The movie version, however, had Ernest Borgnine in the lead and won him an Academy Award. Steiger's breakthrough role came in 1954, with the classic On the Waterfront (1954). Since then he has been a presence on the screen as everything from a popular leading man to a little-known character actor. Steiger made a name for himself in many different types of roles, from a crooked promoter in The Harder They Fall (1956) to the title character in Al Capone (1959). He was one of dozens of stars in the epic World War II film The Longest Day (1962). In 1964, he received his second Oscar nomination for The Pawnbroker (1964). The next couple of years he was at the height of his powers. In 1965, he starred in the dark comedy The Loved One (1965), and in David Lean's epic Doctor Zhivago (1965). In 1966, he starred in the BBC Play of the Month (1965) episode "Death of a Salesman" as math Loman in the TV version of his stage play "Death of a Salesman," but in 1967, he landed what many consider his greatest role: Sheriff Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night (1967), opposite Sidney Poitier. Steiger deservedly took home the Best Actor Oscar for his work in that film.

He took another controversial role as a man with many tattoos in The Illustrated Man (1969) and as a serial killer in the classic No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). After that, he seemed to have withdrawn from high-profile movies and became more selective in the roles he chose. He turned down the lead in Patton (1970) and also in The Godfather (1972). Among his more notable roles in the 1970s are Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971), Lolly-Madonna XXX (1973), as Benito Mussolini in The Last 4 Days (1974), Portrait of a Hitman (1979), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), F.I.S.T. (1978) and The Amityville Horror (1979). He starred in the critically acclaimed The Chosen (1981) with Robby Benson and Maximilian Schell, perhaps the highlight of his 1980s movie career. Steiger increasingly moved away from the big Hollywood pictures, instead taking roles in foreign productions and independent movies. As the 1980s ended, Steiger landed a role as the buttoned-up New York City Chief of Police in The January Man (1989).

Steiger was seriously affected by depression for 8 years. As he returned to the screen in the late 1990s he began creating some of his most memorable roles. He was the doctor in the independently-made movie Shiloh (1996), about an abused dog. He was the crazed, kill-'em-all army general in Mars Attacks! (1996) who always called his enemies peace-mongers. He took a small part as a Supreme Court judge in The Hurricane (1999) and as a preacher in the badly produced film End of Days (1999). He was still active in films moving into the new millennium.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-29 17:33:20

1374) Cliff Robertson

Summary

Clifford Parker Robertson III (September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011) was an American actor whose career in film and television spanned over six decades. Robertson portrayed a young John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, and won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Charly.

On television, Robertson portrayed retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the 1976 TV film adaptation of Aldrin's autobiographic Return to Earth, played a fictional character based on Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms in the 1977 miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors, and portrayed Henry Ford in Ford: The Man and the Machine (1987). His last well-known film appearances were as Uncle Ben in the 2002–2007 Spider-Man film trilogy.

Robertson was an accomplished aviator who served as the founding chairman of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)'s Young Eagles Program at its inception in the early 1990s. It became the most successful aviation youth advocacy program in history.

Details

Clifford Parker Robertson III became a fairly successful leading man through most of his career without ever becoming a major star. Following strong stage and television experience, he made an interesting film debut in a supporting role in Picnic (1955). He then played Joan Crawford's deranged young husband in Autumn Leaves (1956) and was given leads in films of fair quality such as The Naked and the Dead (1958), Gidget (1959) and The Big Show (1961).

He was born to Clifford Parker Robertson Jr. and Audrey Olga (nee Willingham) Robertson. Robertson Jr. was described as "the idle heir to a tidy sum of ranching money". They have divorced when he was a year old, and his mother died of peritonitis a year later in El Paso, Texas. Young Cliff was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Eleanor Willingham as well as an aunt and uncle.

He supplemented his somewhat unsatisfactory big-screen work with interesting appearances on television, including the lead role in Days of Wine and Roses (1958). Robertson was effective playing a chilling petty criminal obsessed with avenging his father in the B-feature Underworld U.S.A. (1961) or a pleasant doctor in the popular hospital melodrama The Interns (1962). However, significant public notice eluded him until he was picked by President John F. Kennedy to play the young JFK during the latter's World War II experience in PT 109 (1963).

Moving into slightly better pictures, Robertson gave some of his best performances: a ruthless presidential candidate in The Best Man (1964), a modern-day Mosca in an updated version of Ben Jonson's "Volpone", The Honey Pot (1967), and most memorably as a mentally retarded man in Charly (1968), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. His critical success with Charly (1968) allowed him to continue starring in some good films in the 1970s, including Too Late the Hero (1970), The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), and Obsession (1976).

He starred in, directed and co-produced the fine rodeo drama J W Coop (1971) and, less interestingly, The Pilot (1980). He remained active mostly in supporting roles, notably playing Hugh Hefner in Star 80 (1983). More recently, he had supporting parts in Escape from L.A. (1996) and Spider-Man (2002).

Robertson died on September 10, 2011, just one day after his 88th birthday in Stony Brook, New York.

Additional Information

Cliff Robertson, in full Clifford Parker Robertson III, (born September 9, 1923, La Jolla, California, U.S.—died September 10, 2011, Stony Brook, New York), is an American actor who enjoyed a creditable career onstage and in television and movies.

After high school, Robertson longed to go to sea and signed aboard the freighter Admiral Cole. The freighter was bombed but not sunk by a Japanese plane off the coast of the Philippines on December 7, 1941, the same day as the Pearl Harbor attack. Because of his poor eyesight, Robertson did his World War II service in the merchant marine. After the war he briefly attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Encouraged by the dean to pursue an acting career, he moved to New York, New York, where he studied at The Actors Studio.

Robertson did much of his early work in television beginning in 1950. He made his Broadway debut in Late Love (1953) and two years later his film premiere in the romantic drama Picnic (1955). He played the lead role of guitar player Val Xavier in the original stage production of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending (1957) and received acclaim for his television performance as an alcoholic in Playhouse 90’s Days of Wine and Roses (1958).

Robertson had leading parts in films such as The Naked and the Dead (1958), Gidget (1959), and Underworld U.S.A (1961), but his breakout film role was as Lieut. John F. Kennedy in the movie PT 109 (1963), about the president’s service in World War II aboard a torpedo boat sunk by the Japanese. Kennedy personally picked him for the role and advised Robertson not to imitate his distinctive accent, a choice with which Robertson heartily agreed.

Robertson earned an Emmy nomination in 1961 for his performance in The United States Steel Hour’s “The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon,” which was based on Daniel Keyes’s short story “Flowers for Algernon” (1959). Robertson played a mentally disabled floor sweeper who becomes a genius through the aid of surgery, only to revert after a time to his previous state. He was so impressed by the character and the story that he bought the film rights. Robertson had been passed over for the film adaptations of Orpheus Descending (The Fugitive Kind [1960]) and Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and thus was determined to play Charlie in a film adaptation. In 1966 Robertson earned an Emmy Award for his lead role as a businessman enmeshed in a high-stakes baccarat game in the drama “The Game” (1965), which was featured on Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre. “Flowers for Algernon” was adapted as Charly (1968) with Robertson in the lead, and his dedication to the project was rewarded with the Academy Award for best actor.

On the big screen Robertson was often cast as ambitious, talented, but obsessive men, notably as a sinister political candidate in The Best Man (1964), an amoral CIA official in Three Days of the Condor (1975), and a widower tormented by the death of his wife in Obsession (1976).

Robertson was briefly blacklisted in Hollywood after he filed a complaint in 1977 against David Begelman, the president of Columbia Pictures. Robertson accused Begelman of having forged his name on a $10,000 studio check. Robertson’s pursuit of the matter led to the revelation that Begelman had embezzled $61,000 from Columbia; he was fined $5,000 and given three years’ probation. Robertson returned to moviemaking in 1980 in The Pilot, which he directed. His later film credits include Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken (1991), Renaissance Man (1994), and Escape from L.A. (1996). In Spider-Man (2002) and its sequels (2004 and 2007), he played Peter Parker’s ill-fated Uncle Ben and delivered the famous line “With great power comes great responsibility.” Robertson also served as a spokesperson for the telecommunications company AT&T.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-10-31 00:40:33

1375) John Wayne

Summary

Marion Robert Morrison (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), professionally known as John Wayne and nicknamed The Duke or Duke Wayne, was an American actor who became a popular icon through his starring roles in films which were produced during Hollywood's Golden Age, especially through his starring roles in Western and war movies. His career flourished from the silent era of the 1920s through the American New Wave, as he appeared in a total of 179 film and television productions. He was among the top box-office draws for three decades, and he appeared with many other important Hollywood stars of his era. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Wayne as one of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema.

Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, but he grew up in Southern California. After losing his football scholarship to the University of Southern California from a bodysurfing accident, he began working for the Fox Film Corporation. He appeared mostly in small parts, but his first leading role came in Raoul Walsh's Western The Big Trail (1930), an early widescreen film epic that was a box-office failure. He played leading roles in numerous B movies during the 1930s, most of them also Westerns, without becoming a major name. John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) made Wayne a mainstream star, and he starred in 142 motion pictures altogether. According to one biographer, "John Wayne personified for millions the nation's frontier heritage."

Wayne's other roles in Westerns include a cattleman driving his herd on the Chisholm Trail in Red River (1948), a Civil War veteran whose niece is abducted by a tribe of Comanches in The Searchers (1956), a troubled rancher competing with a lawyer (James Stewart) for a woman's hand in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and a cantankerous one-eyed marshal in True Grit (1969), for which he received the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is also remembered for his roles in The Quiet Man (1952) with Maureen O'Hara, Rio Bravo (1959) with Dean Martin, and The Longest Day (1962). In his final screen performance, he starred as an aging gunfighter battling cancer in The Shootist (1976). He made his last public appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony on April 9, 1979, and died of stomach cancer two months later. In 1980, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of the United States.

Details

John Wayne, byname Duke, original name Marion Michael Morrison, (born May 26, 1907, Winterset, Iowa, U.S.—died June 11, 1979, Los Angeles, California), was a major American motion-picture actor who embodied the image of the strong, taciturn cowboy or soldier and who in many ways personified the idealized American values of his era.

Marion Morrison was the son of an Iowa pharmacist; he acquired the nickname “Duke” during his youth and billed himself as Duke Morrison for one of his early films. In 1925 he enrolled at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles), where he played football. He worked summers at the Fox Film Corporation as a propman and developed a friendship with director John Ford, who cast him in some small film roles starting in 1928. His first leading role—and his first appearance as “John Wayne”—came in director Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail (1930). During the next eight years Wayne starred in more than 60 low-budget motion pictures, mostly in roles as cowboys, soldiers, and other rugged men of adventure. He reached genuine star stature when Ford cast him as the Ringo Kid in the classic western Stagecoach (1939). After that film his place in American cinema was established and grew with each successive year. Ford’s The Long Voyage Home (1940), a film based on several Eugene O’Neill one-act plays, featured one of Wayne’s most praised performances from the early years of his stardom and offered further evidence of his commanding screen presence.

Speculation exists as to whether Wayne purposely avoided military service during World War II, but evidence suggests that his attempts to enlist in the Navy were rejected because of his age, an old football injury, and a federal government directive to draft boards to go easy on actors whose talents could be used for building morale. He spent the war years entertaining troops overseas and making films such as the popular action-adventures Flying Tigers (1942), The Fighting Seabees (1944), They Were Expendable (1945), and Back to Bataan (1945), all of which featured Wayne as quintessentially American fighting men who overcome great odds. He also appeared during this period in melodramas such as The Spoilers (1942) and Flame of Barbary Coast (1945). By the end of the war, Wayne was firmly established as one of Hollywood’s top stars.

Wayne’s screen image was permanently defined in the many classic films he made with directors Ford and Howard Hawks during the postwar years and into the early 1960s. For Ford, Wayne starred in what has come to be known as the “Cavalry Trilogy”: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950), three elegiac films in which Wayne portrays stoic cavalry officers of the Old West. Wayne’s roles in these and other films for Ford offer a somewhat complex representation of the American character in that they exhibit unflagging patriotism but are disillusioned by, and resigned to, the inherent hypocrisies within America. In this manner the Ford-Wayne films both honour and undermine the mythology of the Old West, nowhere more so than in The Searchers (1956), a film considered by some to be the greatest western ever made. Wayne’s character in this film pursues a noble goal (rescuing his kidnapped niece from a renegade Comanche leader), but his obsessive behaviour and blatant bigotry reveal him to be as mad as he is heroic. Ford’s exploration of the dark underbelly of Old West legends culminated in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), a film that both questions and justifies the “when the truth interferes with the legend, print the legend” philosophy of 19th-century journalists of the American West. In all, the Ford-Wayne films present an Old West rendered obsolete by the very society it helped to create. Wayne also appeared in films for Ford that were not westerns, including standouts such as The Quiet Man (1952) and Donovan’s Reef (1963).

Howard Hawks’s collaborations with Wayne are less iconoclastic than Ford’s, but no less revered. Red River (1948), another candidate for the greatest western of all time, features Wayne as an autocratic, monomaniacal cattle baron at odds with the orphan boy he has reared (portrayed in adulthood by Montgomery Clift in his first screen role) and the modern values he represents. Wayne did not work with Hawks again until Rio Bravo (1959), a film born of Hawks’s and Wayne’s dissatisfaction with the popularity of High Noon (1952), the Gary Cooper western in which citizens of a western community are portrayed as weak-willed and cowardly when their sheriff asks their help in forming a posse. The sheriff portrayed by Wayne in Rio Bravo, conversely, is determined to do his duty with or without help from anyone. Although greeted with lukewarm reviews upon its release, Rio Bravo is now regarded as a classic western. Hawks and Wayne remade essentially the same story twice, in El Dorado (1967) and in Rio Lobo (1970), Hawks’s final film.

Wayne’s standout films for other directors include Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), in which his performance as an uncompromisingly tough Marine sergeant earned an Oscar nomination; Hondo (1953), perhaps the only classic western filmed in 3-D; The Alamo (1960), an epic-length film that Wayne himself directed and in which he starred as Davy Crockett; The Longest Day (1962) and In Harm’s Way (1965), two hugely successful World War II epics; and McLintock! (1963), a slapstick western farce that was his only successful comedy. After a screen career of more than 40 years, Wayne was honoured with an Academy Award for his portrayal of the drunken, cantankerous, but endearing U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969), a role he reprised opposite Katharine Hepburn in Rooster Cogburn (1975), a partial remake of the Hepburn–Humphrey Bogart classic The African Queen (1951). Wayne’s final film, The Shootist (1976), in which he portrays an aging gunfighter who is dying of cancer, was praised by many as his best western since Rio Bravo. This role was a poignant screen farewell for an actor who himself would succumb to cancer three years later.

Wayne endured criticism throughout his career from those who questioned his versatility as an actor. His ability to convey quiet tenderness, however, and his capacity for multilayered portrayals of complex characters, as in Red River and The Searchers, was often overlooked. Wayne himself was also the subject of controversy: his outspoken right-wing politics were admired by conservatives but derided by liberals as being naively jingoistic. His politics notwithstanding, he is considered a towering cinematic icon and, to some, the greatest Hollywood star of all time. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Additional Information

John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Iowa, to Mary Alberta (Brown) and Clyde Leonard Morrison, a pharmacist. He was of English, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and Irish ancestry.

Clyde developed a lung condition that required him to move his family from Iowa to the warmer climate of southern California, where they tried ranching in the Mojave Desert. Until the ranch failed, Marion and his younger brother Robert E. Morrison swam in an irrigation ditch and rode a horse to school. When the ranch failed, the family moved to Glendale, California, where Marion delivered medicines for his father, sold newspapers and had an Airedale dog named "Duke" (the source of his own nickname). He did well at school both academically and in football. When he narrowly failed admission to Annapolis he went to USC on a football scholarship 1925-7. Tom Mix got him a summer job as a prop man in exchange for football tickets. On the set he became close friends with director John Ford for whom, among others, he began doing bit parts, some billed as John Wayne. His first featured film was Men Without Women (1930). After more than 70 low-budget westerns and adventures, mostly routine, Wayne's career was stuck in a rut until Ford cast him in Stagecoach (1939), the movie that made him a star. He appeared in nearly 250 movies, many of epic proportions. From 1942-43 he was in a radio series, "The Three Sheets to the Wind", and in 1944 he helped found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a Conservative political organization, later becoming its President. His conservative political stance was also reflected in The Alamo (1960), which he produced, directed and starred in. His patriotic stand was enshrined in The Green Berets (1968) which he co-directed and starred in. Over the years Wayne was beset with health problems. In September 1964 he had a cancerous left lung removed; in 1977 when Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope was being made, John Waynes archive voice was used for the character Garindan ezz Zavor, later in March 1978 there was heart valve replacement surgery; and in January 1979 his stomach was removed. He received the Best Actor nomination for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and finally got the Oscar for his role as one-eyed Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969). A Congressional Gold Medal was struck in his honor in 1979. He is perhaps best remembered for his parts in Ford's cavalry trilogy - Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950).

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-02 00:31:42

1376) George C. Scott

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George Campbell Scott (October 18, 1927 – September 22, 1999) was an American actor, director, and producer who had a celebrated career on both stage and screen. With a gruff demeanor and commanding presence, Scott became known for his portrayal of stern but complex authority figures. Described by The Guardian as "a battler and an actor of rare courage", his roles earned him numerous accolades including two Golden Globes, and two Primetime Emmys as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards and five Tony Awards.

Though he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing General George S. Patton in Patton (1970), he became the first actor to refuse the award, having warned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences months in advance that he would do so on the basis of his belief that performances can't be compared to others. His other Oscar-nominated roles include in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), The Hustler (1961), and The Hospital (1971). Scott's other notable films include The Hanging Tree (1959), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Dr. Strangelove (1964), The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), Petulia (1968), The Day of the Dolphin (1973), Movie Movie (1978), The Exorcist III (1990), and The Rescuers Down Under (1990).

Scott gained fame for his roles on television earning two Primetime Emmy Awards for his performances in Hallmark Hall of Fame (1971), and 12 Angry Men (1997). He also played leading roles in Jane Eyre (1970), Beauty and the Beast (1976), and A Christmas Carol (1984). Scott continued to maintain a prominent stage career even as his film stardom waned, and by the end of his career he had accrued five Tony nominations for his performances in Comes a Day (1959), The Andersonville Trial (1960), Uncle Vanya (1974), Death of a Salesman (1975), and Inherit the Wind. He directed several of his own films and plays and often collaborated with his wives Colleen Dewhurst and Trish Van Devere.

Additional Information

George C. Scott, in full George Campbell Scott, (born October 18, 1927, Wise, Virginia, U.S.—died September 22, 1999, Westlake Village, California), was an American actor whose dynamic presence and raspy voice suited him to a variety of intense roles during his 40-year film career.

Scott was born in Virginia but reared and educated near Detroit. He served a four-year stint in the marines during the late 1940s before studying journalism and drama at the University of Missouri. He supported himself with several unskilled jobs throughout the early 1950s, taking numerous roles in television and repertory theatre productions. By 1957 Scott considered himself a failure at acting and was working as an IBM machine operator when he was cast in the title role in Joe Papp’s production of Shakespeare’s Richard III (1957). The production was a great critical success, and Scott’s performance was highly praised; one New York critic described Scott as “the meanest Richard III ever seen by human eyes.” For the next two years, he played a succession of quality roles in Off-Broadway and Broadway productions.

He made his film debut in the 1959 western The Hanging Tree and was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor for his second film role, that of an unctuous assistant prosecutor in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959). So riveting was Scott’s screen presence that many critics thought he stole scenes from star James Stewart by doing nothing but sitting in a chair and following the action with his eyes. His next film role was that of gambler Bert Gordon in The Hustler (1961). Again nominated for an Oscar, Scott refused the nomination in what would become a characteristic gesture; he believed that competition among actors demeaned the profession. He was not nominated a few years later when he turned in a brilliant performance as the apelike Gen. Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964).

During the 1960s Scott appeared in several Broadway plays but continued to make one Hollywood film per year. His notable films from the last half of the decade included The Bible (1966), The Flim-Flam Man (1967), and Petulia (1968). In 1970 he took on the role with which he is most associated: Gen. George S. Patton in Patton. Again Scott refused an Academy Award nomination; nevertheless, he won an Oscar for his remarkable tour de force. Choosing to recognize his talent rather than respect his wishes, the Academy again nominated him for his work in Paddy Chayefsky’s satire The Hospital (1971).

Scott appeared in few box office blockbusters during the final three decades of his career, preferring to act in smaller films with prestigious directors and well-written scripts. Among those that have become cult favourites are They Might Be Giants (1971), The Day of the Dolphin (1973), Islands in the Stream (1977), Movie, Movie (1978), and Hardcore (1979). During his later years, Scott’s appearances on television and on the New York stage overshadowed his film work. On Broadway, he starred in Uncle Vanya (1973), Death of a Salesman (1975), and Sly Fox (1976), and he reached television audiences with memorable roles in Jane Eyre (1970), The Price (1971), Oliver Twist (1982), A Christmas Carol (1984), The Last Days of Patton (1986), and 12 Angry Men (1997). Scott was reteamed with his 12 Angry Men costar, Jack Lemmon, for his final performance, a television production of Inherit the Wind (1999).

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-03 17:37:45

1377) Gene Hackman

Summary

Eugene Allen Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an American retired actor and novelist. In a career that spanned more than six decades, he received two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globes, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and the Silver Bear. Hackman's two Academy Award wins included one for Best Actor for his role as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in William Friedkin's acclaimed thriller The French Connection (1971) and the other for Best Supporting Actor for his role as "Little" Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Western film Unforgiven (1992). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), I Never Sang for My Father (1970), and Mississippi Burning (1988).

Hackman gained further fame for his portrayal as Lex Luthor in Superman (1978) and its sequels Superman II (1980) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). He also acted in The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Conversation (1974), Reds (1981), Hoosiers (1986), No Way Out (1987), Get Shorty (1995), Crimson Tide (1995), The Birdcage (1996), Absolute Power (1997), and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).

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Gene Hackman, in full Eugene Alden Hackman, (born January 30, 1930, San Bernadino, California, U.S.), is an American motion-picture actor known for his rugged appearance and his emotionally honest and natural performances. His solid dependability in a wide variety of roles endeared him to the public.

Hackman left home at age 16 and enlisted in the marines for five years, entering the Korean conflict. He began a study of journalism and television production at the University of Illinois but left it to pursue acting at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He found work in a number of summer stock and Off-Broadway plays in New York, as well as a bit part as a policeman in the film Mad Dog Coll (1961). He landed his first Broadway role in 1964 as a young suitor in Muriel Resnick’s Any Wednesday. His performance attracted the attention of Hollywood agents, and Hackman was subsequently cast in the film Lilith (1964), which starred Warren Beatty.

Additional Information

Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Anna Lyda Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After several moves, his family settled in Danville, Illinois. Gene grew up in a broken home, which he left at the age of sixteen for a hitch with the US Marines. Moving to New York after being discharged, he worked in a number of menial jobs before studying journalism and television production on the G.I. Bill at the University of Illinois. Hackman would be over 30 years old when he finally decided to take his chance at acting by enrolling at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Legend says that Hackman and friend Dustin Hoffman were voted "least likely to succeed."

Hackman next moved back to New York, where he worked in summer stock and off-Broadway. In 1964 he was cast as the young suitor in the Broadway play "Any Wednesday." This role would lead to him being cast in the small role of Norman in Lilith (1964), starring Warren Beatty. When Beatty was casting for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), he cast Hackman as Buck Barrow, Clyde Barrow's brother. That role earned Hackman a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, an award for which he would again be nominated in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). In 1972 he won the Oscar for his role as Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection (1971). At 40 years old Hackman was a Hollywood star whose work would rise to new heights with Night Moves (1975) and Bite the Bullet (1975), or fall to new depths with The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Eureka (1983). Hackman is a versatile actor who can play comedy (the blind man in Young Frankenstein (1974)) or villainy (the evil Lex Luthor in Superman (1978)). He is the doctor who puts his work above people in Extreme Measures (1996) and the captain on the edge of nuclear destruction in Crimson Tide (1995). After initially turning down the role of Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), Hackman finally accepted it, as its different slant on the western interested him. For his performance he won the Oscar and Golden Globe and decided that he wasn't tired of westerns after all. He has since appeared in Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Wyatt Earp (1994), and The Quick and the Dead (1995).

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-04 16:29:39

1378) Jack Lemmon

Summary

John Uhler Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor. Considered equally proficient in both dramatic and comic roles, Lemmon was known for his anxious, middle-class everyman screen persona in dramedy pictures, leading The Guardian to coin him "the most successful tragi-comedian of his age."

He starred in over sixty films and was nominated for an Academy Award eight times, winning twice, and received many other accolades, including six Golden Globe Awards (counting the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award), two Cannes Film Festival Awards, two Volpi Cups, one Silver Bear, three BAFTA Awards, and two Emmy Awards. In 1988, he was awarded the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the American cinema.

His best known films include Mister Roberts (1955, for which he won the year's Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), Irma la Douce (1963), The Great Race (1965), Save the Tiger (1973), for which he won Best Actor), The China Syndrome (1979), Missing (1982), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). He also acted in several Broadway plays, earning Tony Award nominations for Tribute and the 1986 revival of Long Day's Journey into Night.

Lemmon had a long-running collaboration with actor and real-life friend Walter Matthau, which The New York Times called "one of Hollywood's most successful pairings," that spanned ten films between 1966 and 1998; The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Odd Couple (1968) and its sequel The Odd Couple II (1998), The Front Page (1974), Buddy Buddy (1981), JFK (1991), Grumpy Old Men (1993) and its sequel Grumpier Old Men (1995), The Grass Harp (1995), and Out to Sea (1997).

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Jack Lemmon, in full John Uhler Lemmon III, (born February 8, 1925, Newton, Massachusetts, U.S.—died June 27, 2001, Los Angeles, California), was an American screen and stage actor who was adept at both comedy and drama and was noted for his portrayals of high-strung or neurotic characters in American films from the 1950s onward.

Lemmon attended Harvard University and was president of the school’s Hasty Pudding Club, an organization renowned for its annual satiric revues. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and graduated from Harvard in 1947, after which he moved to New York City. There he worked as a piano player and actor, taking roles in radio dramas and live television programs. He made his Broadway debut in a revival of the farce Room Service (1953). Although the production was unsuccessful, his performance led to a contract with Columbia Pictures the following year.

Lemmon’s first two film appearances were opposite Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You and Phffft! (both 1954). His Academy Award-winning performance as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts (1955) firmly established him as one of the screen’s brightest new comic actors. He went on to deliver solid performances in other comedies, including My Sister Eileen (1955), Operation Mad Ball (1957), Bell, Book and Candle (1958), and It Happened to Jane (1959), all directed by Richard Quine.

Two films directed by Billy Wilder helped establish Lemmon as a major star. Some Like It Hot (1959), an American comedy classic, featured Lemmon as a jazz musician posing as a woman, and The Apartment (1960) reinforced the character type for which he became known, that of a tense, excitable, and baffled individual who painfully progresses to a deeper understanding of the world. He received Oscar nominations for both films, as well as for Days of Wine and Roses (1962), in which he gave a harrowing portrayal of an alcoholic advertising executive.

Wilder teamed Lemmon with Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie (1966), the first of many comedies for the pair. Their most famous teaming was in The Odd Couple (1968), based on Neil Simon’s stage hit. The film established the pattern for most of their appearances together, with a fussy neurotic (Lemmon) butting heads with a carefree scalawag (Matthau). Other Lemmon-Matthau films included The Front Page (1974), Buddy Buddy (1981), Grumpy Old Men (1993), Grumpier Old Men (1995), and The Odd Couple II (1998).

In 1970 Lemmon made his directorial debut with Kotch, starring Matthau, and he later won his second Oscar for his performance in Save the Tiger (1973). He appeared in two more Neil Simon comedies, The Out-of-Towners (1970) and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1974), and garnered additional Oscar nominations for The China Syndrome (1979), Tribute (1980), and Missing (1982).

As he aged into character roles, Lemmon remained no less prolific. His acclaimed performances of later years included his portrayal of James Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night in both a stage revival (1986) and a television adaptation (1987); a down-and-out real estate salesman in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992); a smooth-talking con man in The Grass Harp (1995); and two TV renderings of classic American dramas, 12 Angry Men (1997) and Inherit the Wind (1999), both of which costarred George C. Scott. Lemmon also won an Emmy Award for his touching portrayal of a dying college professor in the television film Tuesdays with Morrie (1999).

Among Lemmon’s many honours were the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1988, the Screen Actors Guild’s Life Achievement Award in 1990, and a Kennedy Center Honor in 1996.

Additional Information

Jack Lemmon was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Mildred Lankford Noel and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., the president of a doughnut company. His ancestry included Irish (from his paternal grandmother) and English. Jack attended Ward Elementary near his Newton, MA home. At age 9 he was sent to Rivers Country Day School, then located in nearby Brookline. After RCDS, he went to high school at Phillips Andover Academy. Jack was a member of the Harvard class of 1947, where he was in Navy ROTC and the Dramatic Club. After service as a Navy ensign, he worked in a beer hall (playing piano), on radio, off Broadway, TV and Broadway. His movie debut was with Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You (1954). He won Best Supporting Actor as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts (1955). He received nominations in comedy (Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960)) and drama (Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The China Syndrome (1979), Tribute (1980) and Missing (1982)). He won the Best Actor Oscar for Save the Tiger (1973) and the Cannes Best Actor award for "Syndrome" and "Missing". He made his debut as a director with Kotch (1971) and in 1985 on Broadway in "Long Day's Journey into Night". In 1988 he received the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute.

Jack Lemmon was born on February 8, 1925 in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He initially acted on TV before moving to Hollywood for the big screen, cultivating a career that would span decades. An eight time Academy Award nominee, with two wins, Lemmon starred in over 60 films including Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Irma la Douce (1963), The Odd Couple (1968), Save the Tiger (1973) and Grumpy Old Men (1993). Some of his most beloved performances stemmed from his collaborations with acclaimed director Billy Wilder and with his fellow friend and actor Walter Matthau.

A versatile and beloved performer, Jack Lemmon was a celebrated virtuoso in both comedy and drama. The only child of Mildred Lankford Noel and John Uhler Lemmon Jr., who was the president of a doughnut company, Lemmon had a fairly affluent upbringing. He attended the prestigious Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard College (Class of 1947). At Harvard, Lemmon found his passion for theater. He was also a member of the V-12 Navy College Training Program and served briefly as an ensign on an aircraft carrier during World War II before returning to Harvard following his time served in the military.

After college, Lemmon moved to New York City and spent much of his time there playing piano in a bar before landing small roles on the radio, stage and television. Two years later, Lemmon earned his first big role in the comedy war drama Mister Roberts (1955) with Henry Fonda and James Cagney. His complex portrayal of a somewhat dishonest but sensitive character earned him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Lemmon would go on to work on a number of films with comedian and close friend Ernie Kovacs, including Bell Book and Candle (1958). In 1959, Lemmon gave one of the top comedic performances of his career when he starred alongside Tony Curtis in the romantic comedy film Some Like It Hot (1959), the first of several collaborations with director Billy Wilder. Lemmon also received critical acclaim for his portrayal of C.C. 'Bud' Baxter in the The Apartment (1960) while working again with Wilder. Lemmon enjoyed great success on the big screen throughout the 1950s and 60s.

The Fortune Cookie (1966) served as the start of a comedic partnership between Lemmon and Walter Matthau and the two would come together again, two years later, for The Odd Couple (1968), one of their most endearing films together. As the 1970s came around, Lemmon began to undertake more dramatic roles and won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Save the Tiger (1973). Throughout the 80s and 90s, Lemmon continued to excel in his character performances and earned a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1988.

Sometimes referred to as "America's Everyman", Lemmon's versatility as an actor helped the audience more closely identify and relate to him. He was able always to elicit a laugh or sympathy from his viewers and his charismatic presence always shined on the big screen. He often portrayed the quintessence of aspiring man and established a lasting impression on the film industry.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-05 17:02:25

1379) Art Carney

Summary

Arthur William Matthew Carney (November 4, 1918 – November 9, 2003) was an American actor and comedian. A recipient of an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and six Primetime Emmy Awards, he was best known for his role as Ed Norton on the sitcom The Honeymooners (1955–1956).

His film roles include Harry and Tonto (1974), The Late Show (1977), House Calls (1978), Going in Style (1979) Firestarter, The Muppets Take Manhattan (both 1984), and Last Action Hero (1993).

Details

(1918–2003). American actor Art Carney had a long and varied career in radio, television, theater, and film. He won an Academy Award for the dramatic leading role in the movie Harry and Tonto (1974). He is probably best known, however, for his television role of Ed Norton on the show The Honeymooners.

Arthur William Matthew Carney was born on November 4, 1918, in Mount Vernon, New York. He began his performing career doing impressions with the Horace Heidt Orchestra and later moved to radio. After being drafted in 1944, he was wounded on D-Day (June 6) and thereafter walked with a limp. Following his military service, he returned to radio performing and then expanded into television.

Carney’s most identified TV character would turn out to be sewer worker (or “underground sanitation expert”) Ed Norton, second banana to Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden, in The Honeymooners. From 1951 to 1957—including one season (1955–56) as a half-hour sitcom—and occasionally thereafter in the 1960s and ’70s, the two characters and their wives were seen in sketches on various Gleason variety shows and in a few specials.

In addition to his Honeymooners appearances, Carney had roles in numerous drama series episodes and made-for-TV movies. He also appeared on Broadway, where his roles included the original Felix Unger in The Odd Couple (1965). Notable among his films were The Late Show (1977) and Going in Style (1979). Carney won seven Emmy Awards—five for his performances as Norton—and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He died on November 9, 2003, in Chester, Connecticut.

Additional Information

Art Carney was an American actor with a lengthy career but is primarily remembered for two roles. In television, Carney played municipal sewer worker Ed Norton in the influential sitcom "The Honeymooners" (1955-1956). In film, Carney played senior citizen Harry Coombes in the road movie "Harry and Tonto" (1974). For this role, Carney won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

In 1918, Carney was born in an Irish American family in Mount Vernon, New York. His father was publicist Edward Michael Carney, and his mother was housewife Helen Farrell. Carney was the youngest of the family's six sons. He was educated at Mount Vernon High School (at the time called "A.B. Davis High School").

In the 1930s, Carney was a singer with the orchestra of big band leader Horace Heidt (1901-1986). They appeared often in radio shows, and were regulars in the pioneering game show Pot o' Gold (1939-1947). Carney had an uncredited cameo in the film adaptation "Pot o' Gold" (1941), which was his film debut.

His career was interrupted when he was drafted for World War II service. He served as an infantryman and machine gun crewman for the duration of the war. He fought in the Invasion of Normandy (1944), where he was wounded in the leg by shrapnel. Following his injury, his right leg was shorter than his left one. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

Following the War, Carney appeared regularly on radio as a character actor. He also served as a celebrity impersonator, imitating the voices of (among others) Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Dwight David Eisenhower. He had a recurring role as the Red Lantern in the fantasy adventure series "Land of the Lost" (1943-1948), and another as Charlie the doorman in radio and television version of the sitcom The Morey Amsterdam Show (1948-1950).

Carney was first paired with fellow actor Jackie Gleason (1916-1987) in 1950, in a comedy sketch appearing in the variety series "Cavalcade of Stars" (1949-1952). Gleason appeared as lunchroom loudmouth Charlie Bratten, and Carney as mild-mannered victim Clem Finch. Due to good chemistry between the two actors, Carney became a show regular and appeared in several other comedy sketches with Gleason. "Cavalcade of Stars" was eventually reworked into "The Jackie Gleason Show" (1952-1957), with Gleason as the lead actor and Carney as his sidekick.

The most notable of the recurring sketches was "the Honeymooners", pairing the verbally abusive Ralph Kramden (Gleason) with his optimistic best friend Ed Norton (Carney). The sketch eventually was eventually given its own series, "The Honeymooners" (1955-1956). The series only lasted for 1 season, and a total of 39 episodes. The sitcom was canceled due to low ratings, but found success in syndication. Its depiction of the American working class was popular and influenced several other sitcoms. The popular animated sitcom "The Flintstones" (1960-1966) started as a Honeymooners parody, with the character Barney Rubble based on Ed Norton.

Due to his popularity as Gleason's sidekick, Carney was offered a number of lead roles in television. He starred in the television special "Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf" (1958), adapted from the story "Peter and the Wolf" (1936) by Sergei Prokofiev. He was eventually given his own show "Art Carney Special" (1959-1961), which was not particularly successful.

Carney had few notable guest star roles in television during the 1960s. He played an alcoholic department store Santa Claus in the episode "The Night of the Meek" (1960) of The Twilight Zone, and portrayed the villain "The Archer" in two episodes of "Batman". He opened the 1970s by playing both Santa Claus and villain Cosmo Scam in the Christmas television special "The Great Santa Claus Switch" (1970), where he appeared alongside Jim Henson's Muppets.

Carney had suffered a career decline until the 1970s, in part due to his alcoholism. He first found success in film as the leading character "Harry and Tonto" (1974), as a lonely senior citizen who goes on a cross-country journey with his pet cat. His critical success in the role and winning an Academy Award helped revive his career. He was offered many new film roles, though few leading ones.

Among his better-known film roles were the deranged preacher John Wesley Gore in "W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings" (1975), aging detective Ira Wells in "The Late Show" (1977), senile surgeon Dr. Amos Willoughby in "House Calls" (1978), and thrill-seeking bank robber Al in "Going in Style". During this period, Carney won both the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor and the Pasinetti Award for Best Actor.

Carney had a notable role in the television film "Star Wars Holiday Special" (1978) as Trader Saun Dann, a member of the Rebel Alliance. In the 1980s, Carney was mostly reduced to minor roles again. He is better remembered as the kind-hearted farmer Irv Manders in the horror film "Firestarter" (1984) and theatrical producer Bernard Crawford in the comedy-drama "The Muppets Take Manhattan" (1984). He mostly retired from acting by the late 1980s.

Carney emerged from retirement to play the supporting role of Frank Slater in "Last Action Hero" (1993). Frank is depicted as the "favorite second cousin" of the film's protagonist Jack Slater (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger). Frank's death provided motivation for the revenge-seeking protagonist. Frank's final line in the film was "I'm outta here", and this was indeed Carney's last appearance in a film before his death.

Carney lived in retirement until 2003. He died in his sleep in November 2003, in his home near Westbrook, Connecticut. His death was attributed to unspecified "natural causes". He was 85 years old and had reportedly managed to stay sober since he originally quit drinking in 1974. He is interred at the Riverside Cemetery in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Carney was survived by his wife Jean Myers, who died in October 2012. Carney was the grandfather of politician Devin Carney, who served in the Connecticut General Assembly.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-06 16:45:21

1380) Jack Nicholson

Summary

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. He received numerous accolades throughout his five-decade-spanning career, 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.

Details

Jack Nicholson, original name John Joseph 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.

Stardom: Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

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.

The Shining, Terms of Endearment, and As Good as It Gets

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 · 2023-11-07 15:09:35

1381) Peter Finch

Summary

Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch (28 September 1916 – 14 January 1977) was an English-Australian actor of theatre, film and radio.

Born in London, he emigrated to Australia as a teenager and was raised in Sydney, where he worked in vaudeville and radio before becoming a star of Australian films. Joining the Old Vic Company after World War II, he achieved widespread critical success in Britain for both stage and screen performances. One of British cinema's most celebrated leading men of the time, Finch won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role five times, and won a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of crazed television anchorman Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network.

According to the British Film Institute, "it is arguable that no other actor ever chalked up such a rewarding CV in British films, and he accumulated the awards to bolster this view". He died only two months before the 49th Academy Awards, making him the first person to win a posthumous Oscar in an acting category. As of 2023, the only other person to have done so was fellow Australian Heath Ledger.

Details

Peter Finch, (born September 28, 1916, London, England—died January 14, 1977, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), was an English actor who was noted for his ability to portray complex characters with subtlety and warmth.

While Finch was a toddler, his parents divorced owing to his mother’s extramarital affair, and it was not until decades later that Peter discovered that George Ingle Finch, a chemist and noted mountaineer, was not his biological father. Peter grew up in France, India, and Australia, where he launched an acting career in the 1930s. He performed in repertory theatre, appeared in a few Australian films, and became a popular radio actor. During World War II he served in the Australian armed forces before returning to acting. He formed the Mercury Mobile Players repertory theatre, and a performance with the troupe in 1948 so impressed Laurence Olivier, that he signed Finch to a personal contract.

Finch moved to London in 1949. For several years he worked in theatre, radio, and television as well as film, but, after costarring with Elizabeth Taylor in the Hollywood movie Elephant Walk (1954), he focused more exclusively on cinema work. Finch’s performance as an Australian POW in Malaya (now in Malaysia) in A Town Like Alice (1956) won him the first of five British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards as best actor. He played a doctor in both Windom’s Way (1957) and Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story (1959), the latter of which starred Audrey Hepburn. Finch was cast as Alan Breck Stewart in the Walt Disney production Kidnapped (1960), and he showcased his versatility in the title role of The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960). He later won praise as a womanizing MP in the political drama No Love for Johnnie (1961). His other notable films included The Pumpkin Eater (1964) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967).

In 1972 Finch received an Academy Award nomination for his role as a homosexual doctor in John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). Finch was, however, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Howard Beale in his last theatrical movie, Network (1976). His vivid portrait of the unbalanced television newscaster who cries, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” earned Finch an Academy Award. He died of a heart attack several months before the awards ceremony, becoming the first performer to be awarded an Oscar posthumously. He also received a posthumous Emmy nomination for playing Yitzhak Rabin in the 1976 TV movie Raid on Entebbe.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-08 16:10:33

1382) Richard Dreyfuss

Summary

Richard Stephen Dreyfuss (born October 29, 1947) is an American actor. He is known for starring in popular films during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, including American Graffiti (1973), Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), The Goodbye Girl (1977), The Competition (1980), Stand by Me (1986), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Stakeout (1987), Nuts (1987), Always (1989), What About Bob? (1991), and Mr. Holland's Opus (1995).

Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1977 for The Goodbye Girl (at the time, the youngest-ever actor—age 30–to win), and was nominated in the same category for Mr. Holland's Opus in 1995. He is the recipient of a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, and was nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2002; for his starring role in the CBS drama series The Education of Max Bickford, and his portrayal of Alexander Haig in the Showtime film The Day Reagan Was Shot, respectively.

Details

Richard Dreyfuss, (born October 29, 1947, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.), is an American film actor known for his portrayals of ordinary men driven to emotional extremes.

After spending his early childhood in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, Dreyfuss moved with his family to California, where he began acting in plays at the West Side Jewish Community Center in Beverly Hills, California. He studied drama for a year at San Fernando Valley State College, Northridge, California, and shortly thereafter he won a recurring role on the short-lived television series Karen (1964). During the late 1960s and early ’70s Dreyfuss acted mostly onstage in everything from repertory theatre to Broadway shows, and he landed occasional small roles on television. Bit parts in Valley of the Dolls (1967) and The Graduate (1967) led to his first major screen appearance, as gangster Baby Face Nelson in Dillinger (1973), for which he received critical praise.

Dreyfuss’s breakthrough role was that of intelligent, angst-ridden high-school graduate Curt Henderson in George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973). The character was the first in a long line of average fellows in stressful situations that Dreyfuss would portray in the coming decade. With a slightly stocky frame and plain, Everyman features, Dreyfuss was well-suited to a variety of “ordinary Joe” roles, but his nuanced performances revealed the quiet turmoil and insecurities that often lie beneath such ordinariness.

His subsequent films helped establish Dreyfuss as one of the top stars of the 1970s. His portrayal of an overly ambitious, self-destructive young entrepreneur in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) remains one of his most-praised performances. For director Steven Spielberg, Dreyfuss starred in two of the most popular films of the decade: first as scruffy young marine biologist Matt Hooper in Jaws (1975), and then as a family man whose behaviour becomes increasingly unstable after encountering a UFO in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Dreyfuss capped this successful period with an Academy Award-winning performance in the Neil Simon comedy The Goodbye Girl (1977); at age 29, Dreyfuss became the then youngest recipient of a best actor Oscar.

In the late 1970s and early ’80s Dreyfuss appeared in a handful of moderately successful films, including The Big Fix (1978), The Competition (1980), Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981), and The Buddy System (1983), but his career had declined, and he suffered from a well-publicized problem with drug addiction. He made a strong comeback costarring with Bette Midler and Nick Nolte in the Paul Mazursky comedy Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). With his career back on track, Dreyfuss appeared in such notable films as the comedy adventure Stakeout (1987) and the psychological drama Nuts (1987), in which he costarred with Barbra Streisand. One of Dreyfuss’s best films from this period was director Barry Levinson’s Tin Men (1987), a comedy both darkly satiric and nostalgically bittersweet, in which Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito portray rival aluminum-siding salesmen in early 1960s Baltimore.

Dreyfuss maintained his popularity into the 1990s, although many of his later films—such as Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), What About Bob? (1991), and Once Around (1991)—were more critical favourites than box-office successes. His sensitive multilayered performance as a musician who foregoes dreams of a composing career to teach high school in Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995) earned Dreyfuss another Oscar nomination.

Some of his best-known work at the turn of the 21st century was made for television. He received good notices for his portrayal of gangster Meyer Lansky in the David Mamet-scripted teleplay Lansky (1999), and he portrayed the president of the United States in the well-regarded live TV adaptation of Fail Safe (2000). From 2001 to 2002 he starred as a history professor in the series The Education of Max Bickford. He made appearances on other television shows, among them Weeds, Parenthood, and Your Family or Mine. He portrayed corrupt investment manager Bernie Madoff in the television miniseries Madoff (2016).

Dreyfuss continued to act in feature films, and his later movies included Poseidon (2006), a remake of The Poseidon Adventure (1972); W., Oliver Stone’s biopic of Pres. George W. Bush in which Dreyfuss starred as Vice Pres. Cheney; and the romantic comedy My Life in Ruins (2009). He then stole scenes as a Jewish drug mogul in the comedy-thriller Leaves of Grass (2009). In 2010 he appeared in the horror movie Piranha 3D in a role intended as an homage to his character in Jaws and then played a wealthy villain in the action comedy RED. Dreyfuss’s roles from 2018 included a man courting a successful judge (played by Candice Bergen) in the romantic comedy Book Club and a Russian gangster in Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s directorial debut, Bayou Caviar. The Last Laugh and Astronaut were among his films released in 2019.

In collaboration with Hugo Award-winning author Harry Turtledove, Dreyfuss released a critically praised novel, The Two Georges (1996), a humorous look at what American life might be like had the United States not won the Revolutionary War.

Additional Information

Richard Dreyfuss is an American leading man, who has played his fair share of irritating pests and brash, ambitious hustlers.

He was born Richard Stephen Dreyfus in Brooklyn, New York, to Geraldine (Robbins), an activist, and Norman Dreyfus, a restaurateur and attorney. His paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and his mother's family was Russian Jewish.

Richard worked his way up through bit parts (The Graduate (1967), for one) and TV before gaining attention with his portrayal of Baby Face Nelson in John Milius' Dillinger (1973). He gained prominence as a college-bound young man in American Graffiti (1973) and as a nervy Jewish kid with high hopes in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974). By the latter part of the 1970s Dreyfuss was established as a major star, playing leads (and alter-egos) for Steven Spielberg in two of the top-grossing films of the that decade: Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He won a Best Actor Oscar in his first romantic lead as an out-of-work actor in The Goodbye Girl (1977). Dreyfuss also produced and starred in the entertaining private eye movie The Big Fix (1978). After a brief lull in the early 1980s, a well-publicized drug problem and a string of box-office disappointments (The Competition (1980), Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981), The Buddy System (1984)), a clean and sober Dreyfuss re-established himself in the mid-'80s as one of Hollywood's more engaging leads. He co-starred with Bette Midler and Nick Nolte in Paul Mazursky's popular Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). That same year he provided the narration and appeared in the opening and closing "bookends" of Rob Reiner's nostalgic Stand by Me (1986). He quickly followed that with Nuts (1987) opposite Barbra Streisand, Barry Levinson's Tin Men (1987) in a memorable teaming with Danny DeVito, and Stakeout (1987) with Emilio Estevez. Dreyfuss continued working steadily through the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, most notably in Mazursky's farce Moon Over Parador (1988), Spielberg's Always (1989), Postcards from the Edge (1990) and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990). He appeared as a member of an ensemble that included Holly Hunter, Gena Rowlands and Danny Aiello in the romantic comedy Once Around (1991) and as a pop psychiatrist, the author of several successful self-help books, who is driven to the edge by nutcase Bill Murray in the popular comedy What About Bob? (1991). Dreyfuss has also remained active in the theater ("Death and Maiden", 1992) and on TV. In his next project he starred the thriller Silent Fall (1994) with John Lithgow and Linda Hamilton, being the film debut of Liv Tyler, Steven Tyler's daughter (Aerosmith's lead vocals). Just later Dreyfuss made Another Stakeout (1993), sequel of Stakeout (1987) where was team again with Emilio Estevez accompanied of Rosie O'Donnell, the adaptation of Neil Simon's play Lost in Yonkers (1993) and followed with a supporting turn as the querulous political opponent in The American President (1995). Dreyfuss received some of the best notices of his career as a determined, inspiring music teacher coping with a deaf son and the demands of his career in Mr. Holland's Opus (1995). Closing the 20th century he was in Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan (1996) with Andy Garcia, the crime comedy Mad Dog Time (1996) as the mob boss Vic, the screwball comedy Krippendorf's Tribe (1998) about an anthropologist who creates a false lost New Guinea tribe for not losing his job in the university, TV movie Lansky (1999) about the infamous mob boss to end, the too TV movie Fail Safe (2000) playing The President, and The Crew (2000), about four older mobsters retired in Miami, partnering with Hollywood legends Burt Reynolds, Dan Hedaya and Seymour Cassel.

His start in the 21st century was with the adaption of Luis Sepúlveda's novel The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (2001), playing an old man to must to hunt a female jaguar turned crazy. It was followed by the supporting apparition in the comedy Who Is Cletis Tout? (2001) and another TV movie about 1981 Ronald Reagan's shooting The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001). After the short-lived TV series The Education of Max Bickford (2001) about a teacher in a women's college where his daughter is student, Dreyfuss returned to cinema in Silver City (2004) and the box-office bomb Poseidon (2006) with Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum and Josh Lucas. Playing former vice-president Dickinson Cheney in the Oliver Stone's biopic W. (2008) and Irv, the cunning tourist in Greece turned in assistant of a troubled tour guide in My Life in Ruins (2009), Dreyfuss participated in low-budget productions as Leaves of Grass (2009) and The Lightkeepers (2009), for making a cameo in the wild and crazy Piranha 3D (2010) about prehistoric men-eater piranhas that make a bloodbath in a spring break. Returning to first line playing evil Alexander Dunning in the actioner RED (2010), his further productions included Paranoia (2013) as Liam Hemsworth's father partnering Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, road movie Cas & Dylan (2013) opposites Tatiana Maslany and the biopic TV mini-series Madoff (2016) about the infamous multi-billion-dollar and hustler Bernie Madoff. Tireless and always implied in new projects, Dreyfuss played George, the funny online date of Candice Bergen in Book Club (2018), the comedy and road movie The Last Laugh (2019) with Chevy Chase, and the set in wilderness thriller Daughter of the Wolf (2019) with Gina Carano and Brendan Fehr. Making his 73rd birthday in 2020, Dreyfuss is an example of talent, diversity and love for his work, touching not only all the genres in cinema but leaving an unforgettable footprint at any of them.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-09 16:42:14

1383) Jon Voight

Summary

Jonathan Paul Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an American actor. Voight is associated with the angst and unruliness that typified the late-1960s counterculture. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and four Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2019, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Voight first came to prominence for his performance as Joe Buck, a would-be gigolo, in Midnight Cowboy (1969). The role earned him a BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award. During the 1970s, he played a businessman mixed up with murder in Deliverance (1972); a paraplegic Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor; and a penniless ex-boxing champion in the remake of The Champ (1979). He received Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Runaway Train (1985).

For his portrayal as sportscaster Howard Cosell in Ali (2001), he earned nominations for the Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Other notable credits include roles in Heat (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996), The Rainmaker (1997), Enemy of the State (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), Holes (2003), Glory Road (2006), and Transformers (2007). He is also known for his role in the National Treasure film series.

Voight is also known for his television roles including as Nazi officer Jürgen Stroop in Uprising (2001) and Pope John Paul II in the eponymous miniseries (2005). His role as Mickey Donovan in the Showtime drama series Ray Donovan brought him newfound acclaim and attention among critics and audiences, as well as his fourth Golden Globe win in 2014. He also appeared in thriller series 24 in its seventh season.

Despite originally adopting liberal views, Voight has gained attention in his later years for his outspoken conservative and religious beliefs. He is the father of actress Angelina Jolie and actor James Haven.

Details

Jon Voight, (born December 29, 1938, Yonkers, New York, U.S.), is an American actor who achieved stardom with his portrayal of the street hustler Joe Buck in the groundbreaking film Midnight Cowboy (1969) and went on to have a successful career taking on challenging leading and character roles in a wide range of movies and television shows.

Voight began acting while in high school and earned (1960) a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He moved to New York City and studied (1960–64) under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. Voight made his Broadway debut in 1961 in the role of Rolf in The Sound of Music. He continued working in theatre through most of the 1960s and in addition began making guest appearances on such television shows as Naked City, The Defenders, Coronet Blue, and Gunsmoke. Voight’s first film appearance was in the title role of the low-budget Fearless Frank (1967), and he had a small part in John Sturges’s Hour of the Gun (1967) before he was cast in the Academy Award winner Midnight Cowboy. He garnered an Oscar nomination for best actor for his performance.

Voight appeared in Mike Nichols’s war comedy Catch-22 and starred as an angry young man in The Revolutionary, both in 1970. He delivered a memorable performance as a city businessman forced to fight for his life in Deliverance (1972), and he portrayed the writer Pat Conroy in the film memoir Conrack (1974). Voight followed a lead role in the conventional thriller The Odessa File (1974) with a moving portrayal of a paralyzed Vietnam War veteran in the drama Coming Home (1978) that earned him Golden Globe and Oscar awards for best actor; the Cannes film festival also named him best actor for the role. He starred in the sports melodrama The Champ (1979) and earned another Oscar nomination for best actor for his turn as an escaped convict in the thriller Runaway Train (1985).

Voight later played Captain Woodrow Call in the TV miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove (1993), Jim Phelps in the movie Mission: Impossible (1996), a murderous government bureaucrat in Enemy of the State (1998), and the father of the title character (played by his real-life daughter, Angelina Jolie) in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Voight received a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the sports broadcaster Howard Cosell in the biopic Ali (2001).

Voight’s later films included the fantasy Holes (2003) and the adventure movies National Treasure (2004) and Transformers (2007). In 2017 he appeared as the gruff father of an art dealer who befriends a homeless man in Same Kind of Different As Me, which was based on the best-selling memoir of the same name. His movie credits from 2018 included the family drama Orphan Horse. In addition, Voight played the father of the title character in the TV series Ray Donovan (2013–20), for which he received Emmy Award nominations in 2014 and 2016; he also appeared in Ray Donovan: The Movie (2022). During this time he was cast as Chief Justice Warren E. Burger in Roe v. Wade (2019), a film about the controversial legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion.

In 2019 Voight was awarded a National Medal of Arts, cited “for his exceptional capacity as an actor to portray deeply complex characters.”

Additional Information

Jon Voight is an American actor of German and Slovak descent. He has won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role as paraplegic Vietnam War veteran Luke Martin in the war film "Coming Home" (1978). He has also been nominated for the same award other two times. He was first nominated for his role as aspiring gigolo Joe Buck in "Midnight Cowboy" (1969), He was last nominated for the award for his role as escaped convict Oscar "Manny" Manheim in "Runaway Train" (1985). He was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, for his role as sports journalist Howard Cosell (1918-1995) in "Ali" (2001).

In 1938, Voight was born in Yonkers, New York. His parents were professional golfer Elmer Samuel Voight (original name Elemír Vojtka) and his wife Barbara Agnes (Kamp). His paternal grandfather was a Slovak immigrant, as were the parents of his paternal grandmother. His maternal grandfather was a German immigrant, as were the parents of his maternal grandmother. His maternal great-uncle was political activist Joseph P. Kamp (1900-1993), a leader of the anti-communist organization "Constitutional Educational League".

Voight has two siblings: volcanologist Barry Voight (1937-) and singer-songwriter James Wesley Voight (pseudonym Chip Taylor, 1940-). Barry is most famous for first predicting and then investigating the eruption of Mount St. Helens (1980). James is most famous for writing the hit songs "Wild Thing" (1965) and "Angel of the Morning" (1967).

Voight was educated at Archbishop Stepinac High School, an all-boys Roman Catholic high school located at White Plains, New York. At the time, the school was operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. He took an interest in acting in his high school years, performing a comedic role in the school's annual musical, "The Song of Norway". He graduated in 1956, at the age of 18.

Voight continued his education at The Catholic University of America, located in Washington, D.C.. He majored in art, and graduated in 1960. He was 22-years-old at the time of graduation. He then moved to New York City, having decided to pursue an acting career.

In the early 1960s, Voight primarily worked as a television actor. He guest starred in episodes of then-popular television series, such as "Naked City", "The Defenders", "NET Playhouse", "12 O'Clock High", and "Gunsmoke". His first notable theatrical role was playing the illegal immigrant Rodolfo in a 1965 Off-Broadway production of the play "A View from the Bridge" (1955) by Arthur Miller (1915-2005). In the play, Rodolfo is the love interest of the American girl Catherine, and disliked by her uncle and guardian Eddie Carbone (who is in love with his niece).

Voight made his film debut in the superhero comedy "Fearless Frank" (1967), playing the role of the eponymous superhero. Frank was depicted as a murder victim who gets resurrected and granted superpowers by a scientist. Voiight's second film role was playing historical gunman and outlaw Curly Bill Brocius (1845-1882) in the Western film "Hour of the Gun" (1967). The historical Brocius was an an enemy of the Esrp family, and was killed by Wyatt Earp (1848-1929).

Voigh't third film appearance was "Midnight Cowboy" (1969), his first great success. He played the role of a naive hustler from Texas who tries to become a gigolo in New York City. The film was critically acclaimed, and became the only X-rated feature to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Voight was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, but the award was instead won by rival actor John Wayne (1907-1979).

Voight's first role in the 1970s was playing lieutenant Milo Minderbinder in the black comedy "Catch-22" (1970). The film was based on a 1961 satirical novel by Joseph Heller (1923-1999), and offered a satirical view on war and bureaucracy. Voight's next role was playing the left-wing student A in the political drama "The Revolutionary" (1970).

Voight found further critical acclaim with the thriller film "Deliverance" (1972), playing Atlanta businessman Ed Gentry. In the film, Gentry and his first are targeted by villainous mountain men in the northern Georgia wilderness. The film earned about 46 million dollars at the domestic box office, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

His subsequent roles included idealistic schoolteacher Pat Conroy in "Conrack" (1974), journalist Peter Miller in "The Odessa File" (1974). His next great success was playing paraplegic war veteran Luke Martin in "Coming Home" (1978), in a role inspired by the life of war veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic (1976-). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for this film. His co-star Jane Fonda (1937-) won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in this film.

Voight's early 1980s roles included conman Alex Kovac in "Lookin' to Get Out" (1982) and widowed father J. P. Tannen in "Table for Five" (1983). His next big success was the role of escaped convict Oscar "Manny" Manheim in "Runaway Train" (1985). He was again nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, but the Award was instead won by rival actor William Hurt (1950-).

Voight's next role was that of Jack Chismore in the drama film "Desert Bloom" (1986). Chismore is depicted as a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who is trying to raise three stepdaughters. He frequently abuses his stepdaughter Rose Chismore (played by Annabeth Gish), but is genuinely concerned for her safety when Rose runs away from home. This film was Voigh's last film role for several years, as he took a hiatus from acting.

Voight returned to acting with the drama film "Eternity" (1990), where he was also the screenwriter. The film deals with reincarnation, as a medieval war within brothers continues in modern American politics. Following his return to acting, Voight started appearing frequently in television films and miniseries. He also guest-starred in a 1994 episode of "Seinfeld", playing himself.

Voight returned to film acting with the crime drama "Heat" (1995), where he had a minor role as a fence. He had a more substantial role in the spy film "Mission: Impossible" (1996), where he played spymaster James Phelps. The film was an adaptation of the popular television series "Mission: Impossible" (1966-1973), about the adventures of a group of secret agents. The role of James Phelps was previously played by actor Peter Graves (1926-2010). The film was a great commercial success, earning about 458 million dollars at the worldwide box office.

Voight appeared in six different films in 1997, one of the busiest years of his career. The most notable among them was the horror film "Anaconda" (1997), where he played obsessive hunter Paul Serone, the film's main antagonist. The film won about 137 million dollars at the box office, despite a mostly negative critical reception. For this role, Voight was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor. He lost the award to rival actor Kevin Costner (1955-).

His next notable role was that Thomas Brian Reynolds, agent of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the action thriller "Enemy of the State" (1998). In the film, the NSA conspires to expand the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies over individuals and groups, at the cost of American citizens' right to privacy. The film was another box office success in Voight's career, earning about 251 million dollars at the box office.

In the same year, Voight played inspector Ned Kenny in the crime film "The General" (1998). The film was loosely based on the career of Irish crime boss Martin Cahill (1949-1994), who was nicknamed "the General". The film was critically acclaimed and director John Boorman won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director.

Voight's next notable role was that of domineering coach Bud Kilmer in the sports film "Varsity Blues" (1999). The film dealt with the difficulties in the life of the players of a Texas-based high school football team, and was not expected to attract much attention by audiences. It earned about 54 million dollars at the box office, making it a modest box office hit. It is credited with introducing Voight to a next generation of fans.

Voight's final film in the 1990s was "A Dog of Flanders" (1999), based on a 1872 novel by Ouida (1839-1908). He played the role of artist Michel La Grande, the mentor of Nello (played by Jeremy James Kissner), who is eventually revealed to be Nello's biological father. The film failed at the box office, failing to earn as much as its modest budget.

Voight appeared in no film released in 2000, but had a busy year in 2001. He appeared in several box office hits of the year. He played President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945, term 1933-1945) in the war drama "Pearl Harbor", Lara Croft's father Lord Richard Croft in the action film "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider", coal-miner and working class father Larry Zoolander in action comedy "Zoolander", and sports journalist Howard Cosell in the biographical film "Ali". For his role in "Ali", Voight was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The award was instead won by rival actor Jim Broadbent (1949-). It was Voight's fourth and (so far) last nomination for an Academy Award.

Voight had a notable role playing Pope John Paul II (1920-2005, term 1978-2005) in the miniseries "Pope John Paul II" (2005). He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, but the award was instead won by rival actor Andre Braugher (1962-).

Voight had a supporting role as John Keller, United States Secretary of Defense in the science fiction film "Transformers" (2007). The film was based on the Transformers toy line by Hasbro.It earned about 710 million dollars at the box office, one of the most commercially successful films in Voight's career.

In 2009, Voight had a notable television role, playing Jonas Hodges, the CEO of a Virginia-based private military company in the then-popular television series "24" (2001-2010, 2014). He was a main antagonist in the seventh season of the series. His role was inspired by the careers of Hessian colonel Johann Rall (c. 1726-1776), German industrialist Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1907-1967), and private military company CEO Erik Prince (1969-).

His 2010s notable film roles include the role of Dracula's enemy Loonardo Van Helsing in the horror film "Dracula: The Dark Prince" (2013), football coach Paul William "Bear" Bryant (1913-1983) in the sports drama "Woodlawn" (2015), and newspaper owner Henry Shaw Sr. in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (2016). "Fantastic Beasts" earned about 814 million dollars at the worldwide box office, being one of the most commercially successful films that Voight ever appeared in.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-10 17:05:23

1384) Dustin Hoffman

Details

Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor. As one of the key actors in the formation of New Hollywood, Hoffman is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Hoffman has received numerous honors, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1997, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999, and the Kennedy Center Honors Award in 2012. Actor Robert De Niro has described him as "an actor with the everyman's face who embodied the heartbreakingly human".

Hoffman studied at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music before he decided to go into acting, for which he trained at the Pasadena Playhouse. He received two Academy Awards for Best Actor, for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Rain Man (1988). His other Oscar-nominated roles are for The Graduate (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Lenny (1975), Tootsie (1982), and Wag the Dog (1997). Other notable roles include in Little Big Man (1970), Papillon (1973), Marathon Man (1976), All the President's Men (1976), Ishtar (1987), Dickinson Tracy (1990), and Hook (1991).

In the 21st century, Hoffman has appeared in films such as Finding Neverland (2004), I Heart Huckabees (2004), and Stranger than Fiction (2006), as well as Meet the Fockers (2004) and the sequel Little Fockers (2010) and The Meyerowitz Stories (2017). Hoffman has done voice work for The Tale of Despereaux (2008) and the Kung Fu Panda film series (2008–2016). In 2012, he made his directorial debut with Quartet.

Hoffman made his Broadway debut in the 1961 play A Cook for Mr. General. He subsequently starred as math Loman in the 1984 revival of Death of a Salesman and reprised the role a year later in a television film, earning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. In 1989, he received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination for his role as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. He received three Drama Desk Awards for his performances in Eh? (1967), Jimmy Shine (1969), and Death of a Salesman (1984).

Additional Information

Dustin Hoffman, (born August 8, 1937, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), is an acclaimed American actor known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable types. Short in stature and not typically handsome, he helped to usher in a new Hollywood tradition of average-looking but emotionally explosive leading men.

Hoffman began acting at age 19 after dropping out of music studies at California’s Santa Monica City College. He then moved to New York City, where he struggled for several years in odd jobs and eventually landed small parts on television and leading roles Off-Broadway, where he won an Obie Award.

After appearing in the minor comedy The Tiger Makes Out (1967), Hoffman was cast in his second film, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate (1967), beating out contemporaries Robert Redford and Charles Grodin. Hoffman was 30 years old when he played the 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock, an upper-middle-class college graduate who, in a search for a meaningful future, aimlessly drifts into an affair with a married woman who is the age of his parents. A tremendously successful social comedy, the film struck a nerve with youthful audiences disenchanted with the American establishment, and Hoffman was launched as a star.

In John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, which won an Academy Award for best picture of 1969, Hoffman played “Ratso” Rizzo, a tubercular homeless man who develops a friendship with an unsuccessful male prostitute (played by Jon Voight). Grim and downbeat in its depiction of a heartless New York City, the film was another unlikely success for Hoffman.

The actor moved smoothly into the 1970s playing numerous antiheroes such as the powerless witness to Native American genocide in Little Big Man (1970), the cowardly mathematician who violently defends his home in Straw Dogs (1971), the self-destructive comic Lenny Bruce in Lenny (1974), and an ex-convict who cannot resist the lure of crime in Straight Time (1978). The decade also saw Hoffman playing journalist Carl Bernstein as he and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) investigate the Watergate scandal in All the President’s Men (1976).

Thrice previously nominated for the Oscar, Hoffman finally won a best actor award for his sympathetic portrayal of a divorced single father in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and earned another nomination for Tootsie (1982), in which he played an out-of-work actor who, while masquerading as a woman, finds steady employment on a daytime soap opera.

Two returns to the stage proved great triumphs for Hoffman in the 1980s. First was his much-lauded performance as math Loman in the 1984 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which was adapted for television the following year by CBS and earned Hoffman an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Always determined to select a challenging variety of roles, he next appeared on stage in London as Shylock in Sir Peter Hall’s production of The Merchant of Venice (1989). For his film work, Hoffman closed out the decade with another best actor Oscar for his convincing depiction of a middle-aged autistic savant in Rain Man (1988). Not unlike Hoffman’s earlier roles, Rain Man’s Raymond Babbitt is a difficult character to embrace because of his emotionless nature, but the actor elicits just the right amount of sympathy from an audience.

After a disappointing series of big-budget Hollywood projects such as Hook (1991), Billy Bathgate (1991), Hero (1992), Outbreak (1995), and Sphere (1998), the actor returned to form as a sleazy, fame-hungry Hollywood producer who coconspires to fool the entire world into believing that the United States is at war with Albania in Wag the Dog (1997), a biting political satire that gave Hoffman his seventh Academy Award nomination. He later portrayed the grand inquisitor in the French production of Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), and in 2003 he appeared in the courtroom thriller Runaway Jury. In 2004 he starred opposite Lily Tomlin in I Heart Huckabees, a comedy about a husband-and-wife detective team that helps clients solve their existential problems, and with Robert De Niro in the broad comedy Meet the Fockers.

Hoffman’s subsequent films include Stranger Than Fiction (2006) and the children’s fantasy Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (2007). Hoffman and Stranger Than Fiction costar Emma Thompson played lonely strangers who fall in love in Last Chance Harvey (2008). He reprised his Meet the Fockers role in its sequel, Little Fockers (2010), and later appeared as the title character’s father in the dark comedy Barney’s Version (2010). In addition, Hoffman lent his voice to the computer-animated films The Tale of Despereaux (2008), Kung Fu Panda (2008), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), and Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016).

Shifting his focus to television, Hoffman starred as an ex-con gambler on the HBO series Luck (2011–12), a drama set in the world of professional horse racing. He returned to the big screen as a restaurant owner in Chef (2014) and then appeared in the television adaptation Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot (2015), based on a children’s book about a bachelor romancing his tortoise-loving neighbour (Judi Dench). In 2017 he starred in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), playing a sculptor preparing for a retrospective of his work in New York.

In 2012, at the age of 75, Hoffman made his debut as a film director with Quartet, an ensemble comedy about former opera singers residing in an English retirement home. That same year he was named a Kennedy Center honoree.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-11 15:39:08

1385) Robert De Niro

Details

Robert Anthony De Niro (born August 17, 1943) is an American actor. Known for his collaborations with Martin Scorsese, he is considered to be one of the most influential actors of his generation. De Niro is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2009, De Niro received the Kennedy Center Honor, and earned a Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama in 2016.

De Niro studied acting at HB Studio, Stella Adler Conservatory, and Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. His first collaboration with Scorsese was with the 1973 film Mean Streets. De Niro earned two Academy Awards, one for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II (1974) and the other for Best Actor portraying Jake LaMotta in Scorsese's drama Raging Bull (1980). His other Oscar-nominated roles were for Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), Awakenings (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and Silver Linings Playbook (2012).

He has also acted in the films 1900 (1976), The King of Comedy (1982), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Brazil (1985), The Mission (1986), Goodfellas (1990), This Boy's Life (1993), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Heat (1995), Casino (1995), Jackie Brown (1997), Joker (2019), The Irishman (2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). He directed and acted in both A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). His comedic roles include Midnight Run (1988), Wag the Dog (1997), Analyze This (1999), the Meet the Parents films (2000–2010), and The Intern (2015).

Also known for his television roles, De Niro portrayed Bernie Madoff in the HBO film The Wizard of Lies (2017), earning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination. He received further Emmy Award nominations for producing the Netflix limited series When They See Us (2019), and for portraying Robert Mueller on Saturday Night Live.

De Niro and producer Jane Rosenthal founded the film and television production company TriBeCa Productions in 1989, which has produced several films alongside his own. Also with Rosenthal, he founded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002. Six of De Niro's films have been inducted into the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Additional Information

Robert De Niro, (born August 17, 1943, New York City, New York, U.S.), is an American actor famous for his uncompromising portrayals of violent and abrasive characters and, later in his career, for his comic depictions of cranky old men.

Early life and rise to stardom

The son of two Greenwich Village artists, De Niro dropped out of school at age 16 to study at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting. After working in a few Off-Off-Broadway plays, he appeared in his first film, Brian De Palma’s The Wedding Party (filmed 1963, released 1969). Thereafter he appeared in several minor films, the most notable being The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971). It was not until his performance in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) that he was widely recognized as an excellent actor. Mean Streets (1973) marked De Niro’s first association with director Martin Scorsese, with whom he would do some of his most celebrated work.

Director Francis Ford Coppola, whose massively popular The Godfather (1972) had won the Academy Award for best picture, was so impressed by De Niro in Mean Streets that he offered the actor the part of young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II (1974), forgoing even a screen test. De Niro’s brilliant take on the part that was created by Marlon Brando in the first Godfather film earned him a best supporting actor Oscar and made him an international star.

Following The Godfather, Part II, De Niro worked with some of cinema’s most noted directors in such films as Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), Elia Kazan’s The Last Tycoon (1976), and Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978), the last one receiving the Oscar for best picture. But it was his films with Scorsese for which De Niro acquired a reputation for masterfully portraying extremely dark and unappealing figures. He received an Oscar nomination for his role as the isolated and violent Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) and won the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980). Known for his intense role preparation, De Niro spent weeks driving a taxi in New York City before filming Taxi Driver, and he gained more than 50 pounds (about 23 kg) to portray La Motta. By the end of the 1970s, he was widely considered one of the best actors of his generation.

In the 1980s De Niro appeared in a series of box office failures that have nevertheless become cult favourites. Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1983), which offered a desolate look at the hazards of celebrity, won critical praise but little public interest, whereas Sergio Leone’s epic Once upon a Time in America (1984) suffered from postproduction studio interference, as did Terry Gilliam’s futuristic satire Brazil (1985). De Niro also performed in more conventional films during that era, including True Confessions (1981), Falling in Love (1984), The Mission (1986), and De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987).

De Niro revealed a talent for comedy in Midnight Run (1988) and won some of the best notices of his career for his depiction of a catatonic patient in Awakenings (1990). GoodFellas (1990) reunited De Niro with Scorsese for a brutal look at organized crime. Most critics agreed that Scorsese and De Niro had returned to form, but two further collaborations, Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995), were met with mixed reviews. In 1993 the actor starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy’s Life, a 1950s drama about a difficult teenager and his abusive stepfather.

Comedies and later work

De Niro later appeared in Michael Mann’s crime thriller Heat (1995), which pitted him against actor Al Pacino. He continued to explore his comedic side in such films as the satirical Wag the Dog (1997); Analyze This (1999) and its sequel, Analyze That (2002); and Meet the Parents (2000) and its sequels, Meet the Fockers (2004) and Little Fockers (2010). In 2008 De Niro reteamed with Pacino in the police drama Righteous Kill, and the following year he starred in Everybody’s Fine, portraying a widower who discovers various truths about his adult children. He later took supporting roles in the thrillers Machete (2010) and Limitless (2011), the action drama Killer Elite (2011), and the ensemble romantic comedy New Year’s Eve (2011).

In 2012 De Niro starred as a destitute writer reconnecting with his estranged son in the drama Being Flynn and played another paternal role in the seriocomic Silver Linings Playbook. The latter film earned him his first Oscar nomination in more than two decades. In The Family (2013) De Niro starred as a mobster turned informant whose family moves to France in the witness protection program. He then teamed with Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, and Kevin Kline in the buddy comedy Last Vegas (2013).

De Niro’s later credits included Grudge Match (2013), in which he and Sylvester Stallone played superannuated boxers who reunite for one last fight, and the workplace comedy The Intern (2015), in which he was featured as the title character opposite Anne Hathaway. He took a supporting role as the embittered father of an entrepreneur (Jennifer Lawrence) in Joy (2015) and had the title role in Dirty Grandpa (2016). His other credits from 2016 included Hands of Stone, in which he portrayed the trainer of boxer Roberto Durán. The following year he starred in the HBO TV movie The Wizard of Lies, playing Bernie Madoff, a hedge-fund investor who operated the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Beginning in 2018, De Niro frequently guest starred on Saturday Night Live, playing special counsel Robert Mueller. Movies from 2019 included Joker, a gritty origin story about the iconic Batman villain, and Scorsese’s The Irishman, a mob drama about a hit man who allegedly murdered Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino); the latter film received a theatrical release before airing on Netflix. In 2020 De Niro starred in the family dramedy The War with Grandpa. Two years later he had a supporting role in David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, a satire about a fascist plot to overthrow the U.S. government in the 1930s.

De Niro later reunited with Scorsese and DiCaprio on Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). The true-crime drama centers on the murder of oil-rich Osage tribal members in the 1920s. It premiered at the Cannes film festival and received widespread praise.

Directing and awards

In addition to acting, De Niro also directed several films. In 1993 he made his directorial debut with A Bronx Tale, a movie about the Mafia set in the 1960s. He later directed the highly acclaimed The Good Shepherd (2006), which centres on the origins of the CIA and the compromises made by an agent over the span of his career.

In 2009 De Niro was named a Kennedy Center honoree, and two years later he received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement). In 2016 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-12 16:21:35

1386) Henry Fonda

Summary

Birth Date: May 16, 1905
Death Date: August 12, 1982
Birth Place: Grand Island, Nebraska

A beloved, enduring screen star who embodied an idealized yet recognizable vision of the average but nonetheless intelligent and honorable American man, Henry Fonda began his acting career in his native Nebraska with the Omaha Community Playhouse. He worked his way to Broadway in 1929 and arrived in Hollywood in 1934. Fonda's benign, paternal presence landed him roles ranging from conscientious US presidents, in "Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939) and "Fail-Safe" (1964), to the patient juror who saves an innocent man's life in "Twelve Angry Men" (1957). He continued both his stage and screen careers through the 1970s, performing in such fine films as the romantic comedy "The Lady Eve" (1941), the John Ford Westerns "Drums Along the Mohawk" (1939), "My Darling Clementine" (1946) and "Fort Apache" (1948), the Sergio Leone "spaghetti" Western "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1969, one of his rare villainous roles) and the political drama "Advise and Consent" (1962). Amazingly, for years Fonda's only Oscar nomination was for his moving work as itinerant farm worker Tom Joad in Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940); a year after the Academy granted him an honorary award, though, he won another statuette as best actor Oscar for his swan-song performance in "On Golden Pond" (1981).

Details

Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor whose career spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. On screen and stage, he often portrayed characters that embodied an everyman image.

Born and raised in Nebraska, Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor and made his Hollywood film debut in 1935. He rose to film stardom with performances in films like Jezebel (1938), Jesse James (1939) and Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

In 1941, Fonda starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedy classic The Lady Eve. After his service in World War II, he starred in two highly regarded Westerns: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and My Darling Clementine (1946), the latter directed by John Ford. He also starred in Ford's Western Fort Apache (1948). During a seven-year break from films, Fonda focused on stage productions, returning to star in the war-boat ensemble movie Mister Roberts in 1955, a role he championed on Broadway. In 1956, at the age of 51, Fonda played the title role of 38-year-old Manny Balestrero in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Wrong Man. In 1957, Fonda starred as Juror 8, the hold-out juror, in 12 Angry Men, a film he co-produced and that earned him a BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor.

Later in his career, Fonda played a range of characters, including a villain in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and the lead in the romantic comedy Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball. He also portrayed military figures, such as a colonel in Battle of the Bulge (1965) and Admiral Nimitz in Midway (1976).

Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for his final film role in On Golden Pond (1981), which co-starred Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane Fonda. He was too ill to attend the ceremony and died from heart disease five months later.

Fonda was the patriarch of a family of actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda and grandson Troy Garity. In 1999, he was named the sixth-Greatest Male Screen Legends of the Classic Hollywood Era (stars with a film debut by 1950) by the American Film Institute.

Additional Information

Henry Fonda, (born May 16, 1905, Grand Island, Nebraska, U.S.—died August 12, 1982, Los Angeles, California), was an American stage and film actor who appeared in more than 90 films over six decades and created quintessential American heroes known for their integrity.

Early life and career

Fonda grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and the surrounding area. He studied journalism at the University of Minnesota but returned home during his sophomore year. He began acting at the Omaha Community Playhouse at the behest of Marlon Brando’s mother, Dorothy, a Playhouse cofounder. In 1928 Fonda moved to the East Coast to pursue his acting career. He soon joined the University Players Guild, a small summer-stock theatre troupe in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where he met, among others, Joshua Logan, Jimmy Stewart, and Margaret Sullavan, who became the first of his five wives.

Fonda made his Broadway debut in 1929, with a small part in The Game of Love and Death. Other stage appearances followed, and in 1934 he played his first leading role on Broadway in The Farmer Takes a Wife. He reprised the role in his movie debut the next year. In 1936 Fonda married socialite Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw, and the couple had two children, Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda, both of whom became noted actors. Frances Fonda later died.

Trained on the stage to project his voice, Fonda quickly adapted to film by underplaying his roles, which gave him a quietly intense screen persona. This reserved approach prevented him from becoming a romantic screen idol, although his good looks and adaptable presence made him a successful leading man in the period drama Jezebel (1938), with Bette Davis, and the romantic comedies The Lady Eve (1941), with Barbara Stanwyck, and The Big Street (1942), with Lucille Ball.

During this time, Fonda began appearing in movies directed by John Ford, and their collaborations produced a number of classic films that established Fonda as a star. He portrayed a gallery of populist American icons, including the gentle, modest Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and the dispossessed farmer and ex-convict Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel. The latter role earned Fonda particular praise and his first Academy Award nomination. He also appeared in Ford’s classic westerns My Darling Clementine (1946), playing the legendary sheriff Wyatt Earp, and Fort Apache (1948), in which he starred as the inflexible Lieut. Col. Owen Thursday, a character modeled on George Armstrong Custer.

Although the typical Fonda character frequently moves in a world of men—the American West, the army, the navy—he is less a man of action than one of quiet thought. In films such as The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), his characters embody the voice of conscience and reason. Their integrity and decency, rather than physical strength or athletic grace and exuberance, provide the impetus for their heroism.

After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Fonda starred in several films before making a triumphant return to Broadway in the title role of Mister Roberts (1948–51). He played an idealistic officer on a cargo ship whose attempts to transfer are thwarted by a tyrannical captain. For his performance, Fonda won a Tony Award. He then starred in two more successful Broadway productions—Point of No Return (1951–52) and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1954–55)—before making the screen version of Mister Roberts (1955). Ford was the initial director on the comedy, but he was replaced by Mervyn LeRoy, in part because of arguments with Fonda over plot elements. The film was a huge success, and the role became one of Fonda’s most iconic. He created another quintessential character in Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957). In the courtroom drama, Fonda played Juror 8, a lone holdout who tries to convince the rest of the jury that the defendant might be innocent. Fonda, a producer of the film, received his second Oscar nomination when it was nominated for best picture.

Later work

Fonda continued to alternate between Broadway and Hollywood and appeared occasionally on television. On the stage he gave acclaimed performances as a Nebraska lawyer involved with a young woman from the Bronx in Two for the Seesaw (1958), as Clarence Darrow in an eponymous one-man show (1974), and as a U.S. Supreme Court justice in First Monday in October (1978). His other notable film roles included those of an innocent man on trial for robbery in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956), an American president in Fail-Safe (1964), a villain (a rare role for Fonda) in Sergio Leone’s Once upon a Time in the West (1968), and a bit part in Wanda Nevada (1979), directed by and starring his son, Peter. In 1981 Fonda appeared in his last feature film, On Golden Pond, playing a cantankerous husband and father during what may be his final summer. The dramedy costarred Katharine Hepburn and Jane Fonda and was a critical and commercial success. For the role, Henry finally won an Academy Award as best actor. Also in 1981 he costarred with Myrna Loy in the TV movie Summer Solstice.

Fonda was the recipient of numerous honours. In 1978 the American Film Institute presented him with its Life Achievement Award, and in 1981 he received an honorary Academy Award “in recognition of his brilliant accomplishments and enduring contribution to the art of motion pictures.” Fonda published his memoirs, Fonda: My Life (cowritten with Howard Teichmann), in 1981.

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Jai Ganesh · 2023-11-13 15:27:25

1387) Ben Kingsley

Summary

Sir Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji; 31 December 1943) is an English actor. He has received various accolades throughout his career spanning five decades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Grammy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. Kingsley was appointed Knight Bachelor in 2002 for services to the British film industry. In 2010, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2013, he received the Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Filmed Entertainment.

Born to an English mother and an Indian Gujarati father with roots in Jamnagar, Kingsley began his career in theatre, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967 and spending the next 15 years appearing mainly on stage. His starring roles included productions of As You Like It (his West End debut for the company at the Aldwych Theatre in 1967), Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Also known for his television roles, he received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performances in Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story (1989), Joseph (1995), Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001), and Mrs. Harris (2006).

In film, Kingsley is known for his starring role as Mahatma Gandhi in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982), for which he subsequently won the Academy Award for Best Actor and BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He also appeared as Itzhak Stern in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), receiving a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Subsequent roles have included Maurice (1987), Bugsy (1990), Twelfth Night (1996), Sexy Beast (2000), House of Sand and Fog (2003), Elegy (2008), Shutter Island (2010), and Hugo (2011).

Kingsley played the character of Trevor Slattery in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in Iron Man 3 (2013), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and the upcoming Disney+ series Wonder Man. He also acted in the blockbusters Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), Ender's Game (2013). Kingsley lent his voice to the films The Boxtrolls (2014), and The Jungle Book (2016).

Details

Ben Kingsley, (born December 31, 1943, Scarborough, Yorkshire, England), is a British actor recognized for playing a wide range of roles, including that of the title character in Gandhi (1982), for which he won an Academy Award for best actor.

Kingsley, of English and Indian descent, first began acting in amateur theatrical productions in Manchester, England. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967 and debuted on Broadway with the company in 1971. In addition, he acted extensively on television, beginning in 1966. During the remainder of the 1970s, Kingsley acted in plays, most notably Hamlet. Although he made his film debut in 1973 in Fear Is the Key, Kingsley did not return to cinema until he was cast as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in the early 1980s. To prepare for the role of the legendary Indian leader, he did extensive research, including adopting Gandhi’s habits of practicing yoga and eating a vegetarian diet. Critics noted his strong resemblance to Gandhi in the film, and the performance remains one of Kingsley’s most acclaimed characterizations.

Kingsley followed his role in Gandhi with such films as Betrayal (1983), Turtle Diary (1985), and Pascali’s Island (1988). He was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for his performance as Meyer Lansky in the Las Vegas crime drama Bugsy (1991). In the 1990s he also played a child’s chess coach in Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), a Jewish accountant in World War II-era Poland in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993), and a man taken captive by his neighbour in Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden (1994). In 1996 he starred as the jester Feste in a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Kingsley continued to embrace diverse roles into the early 21st century. For his scene-stealing performance in Sexy Beast (2000), in which he played an acerbic over-the-top gangster, he earned a third Academy Award nomination. Kingsley garnered another Oscar nomination for his role as an Iranian immigrant being harassed by the former owner of his new home in House of Sand and Fog (2003). Convincing performances followed in the television movie Mrs. Harris (2005) and in the films Oliver Twist (2005), You Kill Me (2007), and Transsiberian (2008). He subsequently took supporting roles in the Martin Scorsese films Shutter Island (2010) and Hugo (2011), in the latter portraying French film pioneer Georges Méliès.

Kingsley later appeared in the satire The Dictator (2012), which starred Sacha Baron Cohen; as the sinister archenemy of the superhero Iron Man in Iron Man 3 (2013); and as a half-Maori war hero in the 2013 adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi novel Ender’s Game. He played the colleague of a war photographer who has lost a friend in War Story (2014) and Hungarian leader Miklós Horthy in the World War II drama Walking with the Enemy (2013). In 2014 Kingsley voiced a scrofulous cross-dressing pest exterminator in the animated adventure The Boxtrolls and joined the ensemble of Ridley Scott’s biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings as the Jewish elder Nun. In director Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk (2015), he played the mentor of high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who in 1974 traversed the space between the towers of the World Trade Center on a cable.

Kingsley then voiced a computer-animated version of the panther Bagheera in the 2016 live-action adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. In 2018 he starred in Backstabbing for Beginners, a fictional account of the corruption scandal that plagued the oil-for-food program run by the United Nations, and Operation Finale, portraying Adolf Eichmann, a former Nazi officer, as he is tracked and captured in Argentina by a team of secret agents determined to bring him to justice. In 2019 Kingsley played a member of Mossad in both The Red Sea Diving Resort and Spider in the Web.

Kingsley was knighted in 2001.

Additional Information

Exuding an air of gravitas in whatever role he played, Academy Award winner Sir Ben Kingsley made a specialty of playing historical characters, ranging from Dmitri Shostakovich in "Testimony" (1987) to mobster Meyer Lansky in "Bugsy" (1991). His most acclaimed performance, however, was in Sir Richard Attenborough's epic biopic "Gandhi" (1982), in which he played the title role of one of the 20th Century's most revered and influential figures. Thanks to that Oscar-winning performance, Kingsley went from being a relatively obscure character actor to an international star overnight. In the 1990s, Kingsley dramatically reinvented himself by taking on shadier, more morally ambiguous characters, such as the smarmy bad guy in "Sneakers" (1992), a trusted associate of Oskar Schindler in "Schindler's List" (1993), and the physician-torturer of "Death and the Maiden" (1994). Kingsley later delivered one of the most explosive performances of his career as the uninhibitedly ferocious criminal Don Logan in the British gangster feature "Sexy Beast" (2001), a role that transformed his image while earning a ton of award buzz. He went on to a variety of roles in the dark character drama "House of Sand and Fog" (2003), Roman Polanski's adaptation of Charles Dickinson' "Oliver Twist" (2005), the high-energy crime thriller "Lucky Number Slevin" (2006), and Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller "Shutter Island" (2010). By the time he co-starred in the fantastical "Hugo" (2011), Kingsley was long established as one of Hollywood's most gifted and esteemed performers.

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