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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He 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, Connery died at the age of 90.
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William Powell
Biography
William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 – March 5, 1984) was an American actor. A major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the Thin Man series based on the Nick and Nora Charles characters created by Dashiell Hammett. Powell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times: for The Thin Man (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Life with Father (1947). After high school, he left home for New York and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at the age of 18. In 1912, Powell graduated from the AADA, and worked in some vaudeville and stock companies. After several successful experiences on the Broadway stage, he began his Hollywood career in 1922, playing a small role as an evil henchman of Professor Moriarty in a production of Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore. His most memorable role in silent movies was as a bitter film director opposite Emil Jannings' Academy Award-winning performance as a fallen general in The Last Command (1928). This success, along with Powell's pleasant speaking voice, led to his first starring role as amateur detective Philo Vance in the "talkie" The Canary Murder Case (1929). Powell's most famous role was that of Nick Charles in six Thin Man films, beginning with The Thin Man in 1934, based upon Dashiell Hammett's novel. The role provided a perfect opportunity for Powell, with his resonant speaking voice, to showcase his sophisticated charm and witty sense of humor, and he received his first Academy Award nomination for The Thin Man. Myrna Loy played his wife, Nora, in each of the Thin Man films. Their on-screen partnership, beginning alongside Clark Gable in 1934 with Manhattan Melodrama, was one of Hollywood's most prolific, and they appeared in 14 films together. Loy and Powell starred in the Best Picture of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, with Powell in the title role and Loy as Ziegfeld's wife Billie Burke. That same year, he also received his second Academy Award nomination, for the comedy My Man Godfrey. In 1935, he starred with Jean Harlow in Reckless. A serious romance developed between them, and in 1936, they were reunited on screen and with Loy and Spencer Tracy in the screwball comedy Libeled Lady. However, Harlow surprisingly and quickly became ill, and died from uremia at the age of 26 in June 1937 before they could marry. His distress over her death, as well as a cancer diagnosis of his own, caused him to accept fewer acting roles. Powell's career slowed considerably in the 1940s, although he received his third Academy Award nomination in 1947 for his role as the cantankerous Clarence Day, Sr., in Life with Father. His last film was 1955's Mister Roberts. Powell died in Palm Springs, California, on March 5, 1984, at the age of 91 from heart failure, nearly 30 years after his retirement. He is buried at the Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California, near his third wife Diana Lewis, and his only child, his son William David Powell.
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Dusty Mitchell
Biography
Dusty Mitchell was born in Georgia, but he was raised and spent most of his childhood in the small town of Valley, Alabama except for a few brief, but impressionable years in Houston, Texas. Dusty majored in Theatre at Auburn University and served as a Security Forces troop in the Air Force. During his six years of service Dusty served two tours overseas. Finishing his military obligation with the rank of Staff Sergeant. After his military service he set his sights on working in film, studying and developing himself not only from a perspective in front of the lens, but also behind the scenes.
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Lizanne Tulip
Biography
Lizanne Tulip is a South African born, award-winning actress who moved to Los Angeles to further her career. Theatre trained in London, Lizanne has been cast in a number of feature films, short films, comedy sketches, music videos, silent movies, commercials, documentaries, industrial videos and virals. She works with highly respected LA theatre companies, including Tim Robbins' The Actors' Gang, the Antaeus Company, Playback Theatre and Theatrical Arts Foundation. Lizanne has performed in both Calendar Girls and The Secret Garden at the prestigious California Theatre of the Performing Arts. She has also enjoyed collaborating in Improvisation and Sketch performances at the LA Connection Comedy Theatre. Lizanne is playing the leading role of Krista in Hercules, Houdini, Holmes. She is trained in Ballet, Contemporary and National Dance, including Turkish Belly Dancing. A successful Voiceover Artist in two languages, Lizanne's work includes radio drama, documentaries and travel guides, commercials, dubbing, animation (Disney Junior) and audio books. She shares her voiceover and narration skills by reading to children from less advantaged backgrounds throughout Los Angeles. Lizanne is a trained Drama Therapist, working with children with special needs, primarily autism. Her aim is to also work with at-risk youth. She is furthering her studies at the Drama Therapy Institute of Los Angeles. Her focus being Alternative Healing, Creative Arts Therapy and Narradrama.
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Sibiraj
Biography
Sibiraj is an actor, working in the Tamil film industry. He is the son of Tamil film actor Sathyaraj.
Sibiraj started his acting career with the 2003 film Student Number 1, which was a box office failure. In his next four films, Jore, Mannin Maindhan, Vetrivel Sakthivel and Kovai Brothers, he acted with his father, Sathyaraj, who also produced Sibi's following project, Lee, directed by Prabhu Solomon, where he played the role of a football player. In his early years, several films he was announced to be part of, such as Perumal Swamy, Pattasu and Mamu, were shelved midway.
Subsequently, Sibiraj took a break from acting and his next release Naanayam released three years after Lee. The film directed by Shakti Soundar Rajan saw Sibiraj playing his first negative role. Although his performance was well received, the film did not fare well. Following Naanayam he went on another sabbatical, during which he pursued an acting workshop at the New York Film Academy (NYFA) in Los Angeles for three months, before returning in 2014 with Naaigal Jaakirathai, again directed by Shakti Soundar Rajan. The film, which Sibi reportedly accepted after having listening to more than 200 scripts, featured him alongside a Belgian Shepherd dog as the protagonist.
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Pilar Palomero
Biography
Born in Zaragoza in 1980, she has worked as camera operator, assistant, electrician, cinematographer, script editor, editor, scriptwriter and director. She studied at the University of Zaragoza and at the ECAM, where she earned a degree as cinematography director in 2006.
After her debut as director in Sonrisas (2005, short film), she directed other short films such as Niño Balcón and Chan Chán.
Palomero's directorial debut in a feature film, the 2020 coming-of-age drama Schoolgirls, earned her two Feroz Awards (Best Direction & Best Screenplay) and two Goya Awards (Best New Director & Best Original Screenplay).
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Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Biography
Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline, was a French novelist, polemicist, and physician. His first novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932) won the Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working class speech. In subsequent novels such as Death on the Installment Plan (1936), Guignol's Band (1944) and Castle to Castle (1957) Céline further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: "What Joyce did for the English language...what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale."
From 1937 Céline wrote a series of antisemitic polemical works in which he advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany. He continued to publicly espouse antisemitic views during the German occupation of France, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944 he fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile. He was convicted of collaboration by a French court in 1951, but was pardoned by a military tribunal soon after. He returned to France where he resumed his careers as a doctor and author. Céline is widely considered to be one of the greatest French novelists of the 20th century but remains a controversial figure in France due to his antisemitism and activities during the Second World War.
The only child of Fernand Destouches and Marguerite-Louise-Céline Guilloux, he was born Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches in 1894 at Courbevoie, just outside Paris in the Seine département (now Hauts-de-Seine). The family came originally from Normandy on his father's side and Brittany on his mother's side. His father was a middle manager in an insurance company and his mother owned a boutique where she sold antique lace. In 1905, he was awarded his Certificat d'études, after which he worked as an apprentice and messenger boy in various trades.
Between 1908 and 1910, his parents sent him to Germany and England for a year in each country in order to acquire foreign languages for future employment. From the time he left school until the age of eighteen Céline worked in various jobs, leaving or losing them after only short periods of time. He often found himself working for jewellers, first, at eleven, as an errand boy, and later as a salesperson for a local goldsmith. Although he was no longer being formally educated, he bought schoolbooks with the money he earned, and studied by himself. It was around this time that Céline started to want to become a doctor. ...
Source: Article "Louis-Ferdinand Céline" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Gay Byrne
Biography
Gabriel Mary Byrne (5 August 1934 – 4 November 2019) was an Irish presenter and host of radio and television. His most notable role was as the first host of The Late Late Show over a 37-year period spanning 1962 until 1999. The Late Late Show is the world's longest-running live chat show.[4] He was affectionately known as "Uncle Gay", "Gaybo" or "Uncle Gaybo". His time working in Britain with Granada Television saw him become the first person to introduce the Beatles on-screen, and Byrne was later the first to introduce Boyzone on-screen in 1993. According to Byrne, Paul McCartney asked him to be the Beatles' agent during a sound check for his show but he declined the offer.
From 1973 until 1998, Byrne presented The Gay Byrne Hour – later The Gay Byrne Show when it expanded to two hours – on RTÉ Radio 1 each weekday morning. After retiring from his long-running radio and television shows, Byrne presented several other programmes, including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, The Meaning of Life and For One Night Only on RTÉ One and Sunday Serenade/Sunday with Gay Byrne on RTÉ lyric fm. In 2006, he was elected Chairman of Ireland's Road Safety Authority. In his retirement he was described as the "Elder Lemon of Irish broadcasting".
In 2010, The Irish Times said Byrne was "unquestionably the most influential radio and television man in the history of the Irish State". He was approached to run in the 2011 Irish presidential election but declined to run, despite topping early opinion polls.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Gay Byrne, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Melanie Irons
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Melanie Irons is an actress, psychology student, community worker and personal trainer from Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Irons came to prominence in 2013 in the aftermath of the Dunalley Fire as the creator of the Tassie Fires We Can Help Facebook page, for which she has received numerous awards. Since September 2013 she has co-starred in the award-winning indie web series Noirhouse. She is also a member of the council of Brand Tasmania, the state government agency that acts as custodian of the Tasmania brand. She is a 2015 Australia Day ambassador, won the Tasmania Non-Profit Sector of the 2013 Attorney General's Resilient Australia Awards and was a 2014 Young Australian of the Year State Finalist.
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Laurice Guillen
Biography
Laurice Guillen (born January 31, 1947) is a Filipino actress and director.
Guillen studied at St. Theresa's College, Cebu City, before working on a Masters in Mass Communication at Ateneo de Manila University, followed by a television production course under Nestor Torre, in 1967. She then began work as an actress, starring in productions of Mrs. Warren's Profession, before crossing over to film and television work, playing a seductress in Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang, and Corazon Aquino in the drama A Dangerous Life, In 2009 she accepted a role in the indie film Karera, her first role in an independent production. Other credits include in the film Sister Stella L and Moral.
Directing career
A protégé of Lino Brocka, Guillen began her first major work as a director with Init sa Magdamag. In 1984 she directed Salome, which was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival and described as "the kind of cinematic discovery that single-handedly justifies the festival's existence". Ipagpatawad Mo was also directed by Guillen, as was Dahil Mahal Kita: The Dolzura Cortez Story in 1993, before her retirement from filmmaking. Dedicating herself to the Marian movement, Guillen made pilgrimages to churches and cathedrals throughout the Philippines with her husband, believing that Mary had called on her to experience a spiritual renewal. By 1998 she was thinking about returning to filmmaking, and following a good reception of Ipagpatawad Mo by a group of priests, who encouraged her to back into filmmaking, along with an appearance on Kris Aquino's talk show, she did so.
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