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Dek Webber
Biography
Dek Webber is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor known for his deeply personal style of storytelling. By never shying away from uncomfortable truths, his work compels the audience to reflect on themes such as attraction, love, and mental illness.
He has taught screenwriting at several colleges, including Centennial, Humber, and Toronto Film College. Dek was also a love doctor and official coach for the Toronto Star’s "Get A Relationship Challenge," where he helped men and women meet the opposite sex and form successful relationships. Currently, he is working on the feature film version of Love Bound.
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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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Priya Rajvansh
Biography
Priya Rajvansh (1937 – 27 March 2000), born Vera Sunder Singh, was an Indian film actress, who is known for her performance in Hindi films like, Heer Raanjha (1970) and Hanste Zakhm (1973), amongst a handful of films she did during her career.
Priya Rajvansh was born as Veera Sunder Singh in Shimla. Her father Sunder Singh was a Conservator in the Forest Department. She grew up in Shimla along with her brothers, Kamaljit Singh (Gulu) and Padamjit Singh. She studied at Auckland House, where she was school captain, and Convent of Jesus and Mary, Shimla. She passed intermediate from St. Bede's College, Shimla in 1953, and joined Bhargava Municipal College (BMC), during this period, she acted in several English plays at Shimla's noted Gaiety Theatre.
Her father was on a UN assignment, so after graduation she joined the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, UK.
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Rachel Yakar
Biography
Rachel Yakar (3 March 1936 – 24 June 2023) was a French operatic soprano and academic voice teacher. She was known for Mozart roles such as Elvira in Don Giovanni, Baroque opera and contemporary opera. She was a member of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 1964 to 1991, and appeared also in Paris, at the Royal Opera House in London and at festivals including Bayreuth and Glyndebourne. She received international attention as Poppea in the 1977 production of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Oper Zürich conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, which was recorded and filmed. She made many more recordings reviving Baroque operas in historically informed performance. Her portrayal of Debussy's Mélisande was described as ideal. She was admired not only for her voice and diction but also for her stage presence. After her retirement from the stage she taught at the Paris Conservatoire. Ivan A. Alexandre from Diapason summarised her performing: "A darling of the Baroque pioneers and a Mozartian at heart and in style, the soprano from Lyon was also the intimate voice of Strauss, Debussy and Messiaen."
Yakar was born in Lyon on 3 March 1936 to a family of Greek-Turkish origin. She first trained to be a fashion designer. She then studied voice at the Paris Conservatoire, and further for four years with Germaine Lubin. In 1963, she made her debut at the Strasbourg opera.
She moved to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 1964, where she remained a member of the ensemble for more than 25 years. She appeared there in more than 40 productions, including leading roles such as the female title role in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Mozart's Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Verdi's Gilda in Rigoletto and Desdemona in Otello, Tchaikovsky's Tatjana in Eugene Onegin, and Puccini's Mimi in La Bohème and Liù in Turandot. She also appeared there in the title roles of Dvořák's Rusalka, Arabella by Richard Strauss, and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, and as Antonia in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Marguerite in Gounod's Faust and Anne in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. She was a favourite with the audience due to her stage presence.
Already before her official debut, Yakar was invited to perform at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1961, as Rosina in Henry Barraud's Lavinia. She returned for Najade in Ariadne auf Naxos in 1966, alongside Tatiana Troyanos as the Composer, Régine Crespin as Ariadne and Mady Mesplé as Zerbinetta.
Yakar participated in the world premiere of Klebe's Das Märchen von der schönen Lilie at the Schwetzingen Festival on 15 May 1969. She first appeared at the Palais Garnier in Paris in 1970 as Gilda in Rigoletto and Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen. In the mid and late 1970s, she performed more and more internationally. She appeared at the Bayreuth Festival in 1975 and 1976 as Freia in Das Rheingold, Gerhilde in Die Walküre, and a Flower Maiden in Parsifal. ...
Source: Article "Rachel Yakar" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Costa-Gavras
Biography
Konstantinos "Kostas" Gavras (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος "Κώστας" Γαβράς; born 12 February 1933), known professionally as Costa-Gavras, is a Greek-French film director, screenwriter, and producer who lives and works in France. He is known for political films, such as the political thriller Z (1969), which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Missing (1982), for which he won the Palme d'Or and an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Most of his films have been made in French, but six have been in English, including Hanna K..
Description above from the Wikipedia article Costa-Gavras, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Arnis Līcītis
Biography
Arnis Līcītis (January 8, 1946 – January 21, 2022) was a Latvian actor.
Born in Riga in 1946, Līcītis was the son of actors Alfrēds Videnieks and Helga Līcīte. He attended secondary school at Riga State Gymnasium No.1 and subsequently graduated from the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music.
He became an actor in the troupes of the Latvian National Theatre, the Valmiera Drama Theatre, the Latvijas PSR Valsts Jaunatnes teātris, and the Riga Russian Theatre. He then began working for the Riga Film Studio in 1965.[
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Chevy Chase
Biography
Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase (born October 8, 1943) is an American comedian, writer, and television and film actor, born into a prominent entertainment industry family. Chase worked a plethora of odd jobs before moving into comedy acting with National Lampoon. He quickly became a key cast member in the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live, where his Weekend Update skit soon became a staple of the show. As both a performer and writer, he earned three Primetime Emmy Awards out of five nominations. Chase is also well-known for his portrayal of the character Clark Griswold in four National Lampoon's Vacation films, and for his roles in other successful comedies such as Caddyshack (1980), Fletch (1985), and ¡Three Amigos! (1986). He has hosted the Academy Awards twice (1987 and 1988) and briefly had his own late-night talk show, The Chevy Chase Show. He played the character Pierce Hawthorne on the NBC comedy series Community from 2009 to 2014.
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Bob Simmons
Biography
Bob Simmons (Fulham, London, England, 31 March 1923 – 21 October 1987) was an English actor and stunt man who worked in many British-made films, most notably the James Bond series.
Simmons was a former Army Physical Training Instructor at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst who had initially planned to be an actor but thought a career in performing stunts would be more lucrative and interesting. Simmons first worked for Albert R. Broccoli and Irving Allen's Warwick Films on the film The Red Beret, which included future Bond film regulars director Terence Young, screenwriter Richard Maibaum and cameraman, later director of photography Ted Moore. Simmons later worked in many other Warwick Films and worked for Allen in his The Long Ships and Genghis Khan, where he had his eye injured when kicked by a horse.
When Albert R. Broccoli began to produce the James Bond films, Simmons tested as an actor for the Bond role, but until his death in 1987, he became the stunt coordinator for every Bond film except From Russia with Love, which he joined later in the production, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Man with the Golden Gun. He appeared in the gun barrel sequence for Sean Connery in three James Bond films: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger. Simmons is the only person to officially perform the scene, while not starring in the main role of James Bond. Simmons was also Connery's stunt double. Simmons also had a role as SPECTRE agent Jacques Bouvar in the pre-title sequence of the fourth film, Thunderball.
Simmons developed a stunt technique involving trampolines, first used in You Only Live Twice, whereby stuntmen would bounce off a trampoline in concert with a triggered explosion so as to simulate being blown into the air. This was used in many other films, including by Simmons again in The Wild Geese, where Simmons also doubled for Richard Burton.
Upon retirement, Simmons wrote an autobiography entitled Nobody Does It Better titled after the theme song for the 1977 Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. He died on 21 October 1987.
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Bill Stevenson
Biography
Bill Stevenson (born February 18, 1969) also credited as Billy, is an American actor.
Stevenson contributed music to the comedy film, Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985). Early on in his acting career, he landed roles in various films, including Like Father, Like Son (1987), Little Nikita (1988), The 'Burbs (1989), and Say Anything (1989). His film career continued throughout the nineties in productions like The Last Seduction (1994) and Outbreak (1995).
He also worked in television during the 90's, including appearances on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Friends, Melrose Place, Step by Step, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, NewsRadio, Murphy Brown, Dream On, and Tom (CBS, 1993-94). He shifted from film to television work through the early 2000s and beyond, appearing on series including ER, Prison Break, Desperate Housewives, Southland, Better Off Ted, NCIS, The Middle, Mike & Molly, Hot in Cleveland, Ghosted, Workaholics (Comedy Central), and Fresh Off The Boat, Speechless, Grace and Frankie, and Homecoming.
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Kim Basinger
Biography
Kimila Ann Basinger (born December 8, 1953) is an American actress and former fashion model. She has garnered acclaim for her work in film and television, for which she has received various accolades including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Following a brief but successful career modeling in New York, Basinger moved to Los Angeles where she began acting on television in 1976. She appeared in several made-for-TV films, including a remake of From Here to Eternity (1979), before making her feature debut in the drama Hard Country (1981). Hailed as a sex symbol of the 1980s and 1990s, Basinger came to prominence for her performance of Bond girl Domino Petachi in Never Say Never Again (1983). She went on to receive a Golden Globe nomination for her work in The Natural (1984), starred in the erotic drama 9½ Weeks (1986), and played Vicki Vale in Tim Burton's Batman (1989), which remains the highest-grossing film of her career. For her femme fatale portrayal in L.A. Confidential (1997), Basinger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other films include No Mercy (1986), Blind Date (1987), My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988), Cool World (1992), The Real McCoy (1993), I Dreamed of Africa (2000), 8 Mile (2002), The Door in the Floor (2004), Cellular (2004), The Sentinel (2006), The Burning Plain (2009), Grudge Match (2013), and Fifty Shades Darker (2017).
Divorced from makeup artist Ron Snyder and actor Alec Baldwin, Basinger cohabits with her longtime hairdresser, Mitch Stone. She had a high-profile relationship between marriages with the late musician Prince, with whom she recorded an album, Hollywood Affair, and is the mother of social media influencer Ireland Baldwin from her marriage to Alec.
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