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Giorgos Kotanidis
Biography
Giorgos Kotanidis (23 May 1945, Drama - 28 January 2020, Athens) was a Greek actor, director and writer.
Until the age of twelve, he lived in Drama, the birthplace of his parents who had come as refugees from Pontus. He studied at the Drama School of the National Theatre, abandoning his studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He was one of the creators of the Free Theatre in Allos Pagratiou and later during his theatrical career he collaborated with many troupes and directors, playing theatrical roles of all kinds. He also played several roles in Greek and international cinema, as well as on television. Politicized and integrated into the Left, he participated in the student movement. For his action against the dictatorship, he was repeatedly imprisoned and tortured.
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Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin
Biography
Born on he small mountain town of Boda, Ethiopia on this day in 1936, Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin was one of his country’s most important literary figures and the best known.
Considered by many to be Ethiopia’s greatest playwright, Tsegaye had earned a degree in 1959 from the Blackstone School of Law in Chicago but his interests soon turned to drama.
Even though he wrote in English, he is best known for his use of his own Ethiopian languages. Accounts state that he wrote more than 30 plays, most in Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, and translated many Western works into Amharic, including those of Shakespeare, Brecht and Molière.
His Amharic plays focus mainly on contemporary Ethiopia, particularly the plight of young people in urban settings and the need to respect traditional morality, as in Crown of Thorns (1959). Oda Oak Oracle (1965), which is said to be his best-known verse play written in English, is based on Ethiopian history and focuses on religious conflict.
Later in the 1960s, he decided to write about the common man, rather than religion and royalty, and this marked the beginning of modern Ethiopian theatre.
As a poet, Tsegyaye published several poems, mostly on subjects related to war and peace, having had a father who fought for his country during the Italian occupation. His English poetry appeared in Ethiopian journals and was included in several anthologies of African poetry, including New Sum of Poetry from the Negro World (1966).
In 2002, the newly formed African Union even adopted one of his poems as its anthem. The poet and playwright, who founded Addis Ababa University’s theatre department, was also a celebrated human rights activist who also promoted Ethiopian culture during his travels. He won a variety of awards, including the Human Rights Watch Free Expression award in New York in 1982 and the Honorable Poets Laureate Golden Laurel Award given by the Congress of World Poets.
But his achievements did not come without difficulties. His career covered three major regimes: Emperor Haile Selassie I’s rule, Mengistu Hailemariam’s dictatorship, and former rebel leader Meles Zenawi, who ruled Ethiopia for more than 20 years.
All the three regimes banned his plays. He once indicated that of 49 works, about 36 had at one time or another been censored. The acclaimed Ethiopian playwright who was also the country’s poet laureate died February 25, 2006, in New York, U.S. after moving there to receive treatment for kidney disease.
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Fuyuyuki Asunaro
Biography
Fuyuyuki Asunaro is Japanese. He is a member of J-Pop band Juliana no Tatari (Juliana's Curse).
He dropped out of Rakuno Gakuen University and is a member of the 9th class of Watanabe Comedy School. His hobbies are sweets, visiting shrines and temples, and Mölkky. His special skills are tambourine, tap dancing, magic, and human soap bubbles. He has also appeared as an actor in reenactments of the TBS program "Before and After Being Taught". He would like to be a regular on a children's program in his hometown of Hokkaido.
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David Alan Graf
Biography
Los Angeles native David Alan Graf has been an actor for over twenty years, gracing both the large and small screen. His performance in the independent sleeper Bang (available on video) as a supposedly legitimate movie producer has been lauded by critics as both satirical and disturbing. In "Pups", his portrayal of a humiliated bank manager held hostage by two compulsive young teenagers in love, brought the following comments from critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun: "(A) very real unraveling persona of a man who can't believe this is happening to him. David Alan Graf's portrayal of a kindly bank manager coming apart takes us inside the bank hostage situation itself."
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Veronica Lake
Biography
Veronica Lake (November 14, 1922 – July 7, 1973) was an American film actress and pin-up model. She received both popular and critical acclaim, most notably for her role in Sullivan's Travels and her femme fatale roles in film noir with Alan Ladd during the 1940s, and was well-known for her peek-a-boo hairstyle. Her success did not last; she had a string of broken marriages and long struggles with mental illness and alcoholism until she died of hepatitis.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Veronica Lake, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Sara Allgood
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sara Ellen Allgood (29 November 1879 – 13 September 1950) was an Irish actress who held both Irish and American citizenship. She first studied drama with the Irish nationalist Daughters of Ireland and was in the opening of the Irish National Theatre Society.
In 1904, she had her first big role in Spreading the News and was a full-time actress the following year. In 1915, she toured Australia and New Zealand as the lead in Peg o' My Heart. Her acting career continued in Dublin, London, and the U.S. She appeared in a number of films, most notably being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Beth Morgan in the 1941 film How Green Was My Valley. She became an American citizen in 1945 and died of a heart attack in 1950.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 - October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
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Émile Reynaud
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles-Émile Reynaud (8 December 1844 – 9 January 1918) was a French inventor, responsible for the praxinoscope (an animation device patented in 1877 that improved on the zoetrope) and the first projected animated films. His Pantomimes Lumineuses premiered on 28 October 1892 in Paris. His Théâtre Optique film system, patented in 1888, is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used. The performances predated Auguste and Louis Lumière's first paid public screening of the cinematographe on 26 December 1895, often seen as the birth of cinema.
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Joe Forte
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Joe Forte is an American screenplay writer and painter. Born in New Jersey, he is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Writer of Firewall, the 2006 thriller starring Harrison Ford, and producer of 2005 film, "Say I Do". Forte is currently adapting the award-winning novel for New Line Cinemas, and is creating a one-hour drama series for 20th Century Fox called The Pack, based on the book by New York indie novelist Jason Starr.
"Wonder", a solo exhibition of Forte's most recent baseball card, was shown at Bergamont Station's James Gray Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, in Oct-Nov of 2008.
Forte lives in Los Angeles, United States and has been a mentor and panelist for UCLA, the Sedona Film Festival and Cinestory.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Joe Forte, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Pierce Brosnan
Biography
Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE (May 16, 1953) is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist who holds Irish and American citizenship.
After leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years. Following a stage acting career he rose to popularity in the television series Remington Steele (1982–87). After Remington Steele, Brosnan took the lead in many films such as Dante's Peak and The Thomas Crown Affair. In 1995, he became the fifth actor to portray secret agent James Bond in the official film series, starring in four films between 1995 and 2002. He also provided his voice and likeness to Bond in the 2004 video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing.
Since playing Bond, he has starred in such successes as The Matador (nominated for a Golden Globe, 2005), Mamma Mia! (National Movie Award, 2008), and The Ghost Writer (2010). In 1996, along with Beau St. Clair, Brosnan formed Irish DreamTime, a Los Angeles-based production company.
In later years, he has become known for his charitable work and environmental activism. He was married to Australian actress Cassandra Harris from 1980 until her death in 1991. He married American journalist and author Keely Shaye Smith in 2001, becoming an American citizen in 2004.
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