Trending
Popular people
Joanna Ke
Biography
Joanna Ke is an award-winning actor, writer, producer - and sword fighter. As an actor, Joanna has had the honor of working with director Cameron Crowe, and as a writer, she studied the craft of screenwriting with the late, great Syd Field.
With nearly a decade of experience as a professional script reader working in both development and acquisitions, Joanna’s skills as a producer are strong on the development side. She has read hundreds of screenplays for studios, producers, literary management, sales agents, and screenwriters. Her experience as an actor helps her have a keen eye for character and dialogue, while her own experience as a writer helps her understand the creative process when developing a script.
Joanna was a monthly contributor to Ms. In the Biz and serves as an events producer for the non-profit The Chimaera Project, empowering women behind the camera. She also runs the Twitter account @femcharacters, highlighting the unfortunate way women are often portrayed on screen. From her professional and personal experience, Joanna firmly believes that the world needs to see more diverse stories with well-rounded female characters in leading roles, as well as a different portrayal of masculinity.
Joanna produces and writes under her Saint Joan Productions banner, championing diverse women in front of and behind the camera. She's part of the producing team for fantasy action "Man of Fire," starring Lance Reddick. Two award-winning shorts she produced, starring and directed by women, are "A Period Piece" and "Soledad."
She is in development of several projects with female leads, including the fantasy action feature “Protectress.” She wrote, produced, and stars in the proof of concept for “Protectress,” an award-winning short film with a wildly successful festival run - over 20 selections and 11 awards, including Best Performance, Best Fantasy, Best Action, and Inspiring Woman in Film for Joanna.
Joanna is a trained sword fighter, most recently portraying a sword-fighting were-cat in a post-apocalyptic fantasy action film, which earned her a Best Villain award. Wielding her broadsword is a favorite - both on and off camera.
Read more
Gary Ross
Biography
Gary Ross (born November 3, 1956) is an American screenwriter, director, and producer. He is best known for writing and directing the fantasy comedy-drama film Pleasantville (1998), the sports drama film Seabiscuit (2003), the dystopian action film The Hunger Games (2012), and the heist comedy film Ocean's 8 (2018). Ross has been nominated for four Academy Awards.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Gary Ross, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Mary Sweeney
Biography
Mary Sweeney is an American director, writer, film editor and film producer. She was briefly married to American film director David Lynch, with whom she collaborated for 20 years. Sweeney worked with Lynch on several films and television series, most notably the original Twin Peaks series (1990), Lost Highway (1997), The Straight Story (1999), and Mulholland Drive (2001). Sweeney is the Dino and Martha De Laurentiis Endowed Professor in the Writing Division of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. She was formerly the chair of the Film Independent board of directors.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Mary Sweeney, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Maria Aitken
Biography
Aitken was born in Dublin, Ireland, the daughter of Sir William Aitken, a Conservative MP, and Penelope Aitken, whose father was John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby. Her grandfather was the UK Representative to Ireland (1939–49). She is a great-niece of newspaper magnate and war-time minister Lord Beaverbrook, and sister to former Conservative cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken. She attended Riddlesworth Hall Preparatory School in Norfolk, Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset and St Anne's College, Oxford, where she graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature.
She has directed several plays in the West End and on Broadway. Her production of The 39 Steps, which ran in London for nine years, also played three years on Broadway and won Olivier and Tony Awards. In 2011, she directed Frank Langella in Man and Boy on Broadway. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Yale, NYU and Juilliard drama schools. Her extensive acting career includes leading roles at the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End. She has played more Noël Coward leads than any other actress. Her film career includes appearances in Doctor Faustus (1967), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), Half Moon Street (1986), A Fish Called Wanda (1988) (for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award), The Fool (1990), The Grotesque (1995), Fierce Creatures (1997), Jinnah (1998) and Asylum (2005).
She is the author of A Girdle Round the Earth, a story of some of the more remarkable women travellers of the last 200 years, and Style: Acting in High Comedy, published in 1996, which contends that "High comedies are not bloodless, refined, wordy plays — their themes are sex, money and social advancement. They contain a splendid contradiction: wit and elegance at the service of man's basest drives."
From Wikipedia
Read more
Tawny Kitaen
Biography
Julie Ellen "Tawny" Kitaen (August 5, 1961 – May 7, 2021) was an American actress, model, and media personality. She began her career as a television actress, appearing in the television films Malibu (1983) and California Girls (1985). She also starred in the comedies The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak and Bachelor Party (both 1984), and the horror film Witchboard (1986).
Kitaen garnered widespread recognition for her appearances in a number of heavy metal music videos, including Ratt's "Back for More" (1984) and Whitesnake's "Still of the Night", "Is This Love" and "Here I Go Again" (all 1987).
In the 2000s, Kitaen transitioned into appearing on reality television series, including The Surreal Life (2006) and Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew (2008), the latter of which documented Kitaen's issues with substance abuse.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Tawny Kitaen, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Nieves Navarro
Biography
Nieves Navarro García is a retired Spanish-born Italian actress and fashion model. Navarro worked extensively in Italian cinema appearing alongside actors such as Totò and Lino Banfi in the 1960s and 1970s. She later adopted the Americanized stage name Susan Scott for many of her productions after 1969. Navarro was also one of the first female stars of the Spaghetti Western genre and in 1972, she married the Italian director and producer Luciano Ercoli, starring in many of his productions up until the early-1980s, and was familiar for her erotically-themed roles in giallo and sex comedies.
Read more
John Lazar
Biography
John La Zar was born and raised in San Francisco, California. He trained at the American Conservatory Theatre and has studied acting with Uta Hagen, Bill Ball, Jack Kosslyn, and Paul Shenar. La Zar was portraying the titular role in a University of Hawaii stage production of "Caligula" when he was approached by 20th Century Fox studio casting agent Phil Benjamin to audition for the part of deranged and debauched rock'n'roll music producer Ronnie 'Z-Man' Barzell in Russ Meyer's delightfully outrageous camp cult classic "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." John's wonderfully wild and eccentric performance as 'Z-Man' should have led to bigger and better things, but alas did not. A majority of La Zar's subsequent roles have been decidedly minor: funny as sleazy pimp Carl McKinney in Meyer's typically off-the-wall "Supervixens," a Palestine general in the "David & Goliath" episode of "Greatest Heroes of the Bible," a limousine driver in "Eddie Presley," a warlock in "Night of the Scarecrow," and a strip club patron in "Stripteaser." However, on occasion John has landed a more substantial part; he's especially memorable as evil sorcerer Jarek in the enjoyably silly tongue-in-cheek sword and sorcery fantasy hoot "Deathstalker II." La Zar had a recurring role as scientist Dr. Fez on the soft-core cable TV series "Click." In addition to his regrettably sparse film and TV credits, John has acted in stage productions of such plays as "The Crucible," "Macbeth," "Carnival," "High Mass," "No Exit," and "Everyman." Outside of acting, La Zar is also a ballet dancer, master swordsman, and expert martial artist. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Read more
Patrick Hernandez
Biography
Patrick Pierre Hernandez (born 6 April 1949) is a French singer who had a worldwide hit with "Born to Be Alive" in 1979.
Born to a Spanish father and an Italian mother in Le Blanc-Mesnil, Seine-Saint-Denis, Hernandez grew up in the 1960s and was interested in music. He toured dancehalls and ballrooms in southern France with a number of groups over the next decade. Hernández met his music partner Hervé Tholance, an arranger, guitarist, and vocalist, during that period. The two formed a duo and achieved local success backing French musicians such as Francis Cabrel, Laurent Voulzy, and the French group Gold.
In 1978, Hernandez met the producer Jean Vanloo with disco music at its peak, and signed a recording contract. Hernández went to Waterloo, Belgium to work on songs.
After working for about a year, the songs were released on the Aariana sub-label Aquarius Records (in France) in November 1978. The first single that was released was the disco song "Born to Be Alive". Its success was immediate, and in January 1979, Hernandez received his first gold record from Italy. The song spread throughout Europe, where it hit #1 in France in April and remained there until July. By then, the United States had caught on, and after some remixing, the record was signed to the A-Tom-Mik label and later Columbia Records. The remixed version was released on a commercial 12" single; it peaked on the US Billboard disco chart at #1 and crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100 peaking at #16. It sold over one million copies in the US. The track reached #10 in the UK Singles Chart. By year's end, Hernandez had racked up 52 gold and platinum records from more than 50 countries.
While Hernandez was touring the United States, he was accompanied by Vanloo and his friend Jean-Claude Pellerin. Vanloo and Pellerin held auditions in New York that spring for dancers to accompany Hernández on his worldwide tour. The chosen dancers included a young Madonna.
Hernandez's follow-ups to "Born to Be Alive" did not fare as well in the US. "Disco Queen" backed with "Show Me the Way You Kiss" sold poorly, but the album Born to Be Alive sold well and won him a Billboard Award in February 1980. As a result of this lack of subsequent success he has earned the title of "One Hit Wonder."
In 1981, Hernandez released the import 12" single of "Goodbye", first released on Aariana Records and then a remixed version on the parent-label Aquarius Records (in France). It was not released in the US, although an album followed the single's release, but found no market in the US.
Source: Article "Patrick Hernandez" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Read more
Jon Hamm
Biography
Jonathan Daniel Hamm (born March 10, 1971) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Don Draper in the period drama series Mad Men (2007–2015), for which he won numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
Hamm also acted in lead roles in the films Stolen (2010), Million Dollar Arm (2014), Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016), Beirut (2018), and Confess, Fletch (2022), as well as his supporting roles in The Town (2010), Sucker Punch (2011), Bridesmaids (2011), Baby Driver (2017), Tag (2018), Bad Times at the El Royale (2018), The Report (2019), Richard Jewell (2019), No Sudden Move (2021), and Top Gun: Maverick (2022). He also provided voice acting roles in the animated films Shrek Forever After (2010), Minions (2015), and Transformers One (2024).
He has appeared in the Sky Arts series A Young Doctor's Notebook, the Channel 4 dystopian anthology series Black Mirror, the Amazon Prime fantasy series Good Omens, the FX superhero series Legion (2018), and the FX crime anthology series Fargo. He was Emmy-nominated for his roles in 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and The Morning Show. He has also acted in Parks and Recreation and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Jon Hamm, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
David Wilmot
Biography
David Wilmot is an award-winning Irish stage, screen, and television actor. Wilmot's theatre credits include Six Characters in Search of an Author at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, As You Like It with the Druid Theatre Company in Galway, and Juno and the Paycock in London's West End. He originated the role of Padraic in The Lieutenant of Inishmore at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2001, played it at the Barbican Center in 2002, then joined the 2006 off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company production, which later transferred to Broadway. He was nominated for the 2006 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor and the Theatre World Award for his performance.
Wilmot portrayed Dr. Ed Costello in sixteen episopdes of The Clinic on RTÉ. He was nominated for the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor in a TV Drama. Wilmot's screen credits include Michael Collins (1996), I Went Down (1997), The Devil's Own (1997), The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1998), Intermission (2003), Laws of Attraction (2004), King Arthur (2004), and Six Shooter (2006). He was named Best Supporting Actor in Film and nominated Best New Talent for Intermission at the 2003 Irish Film and Television Awards.
Description above from the Wikipedia article David Wilmot, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
