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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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John Milius
Biography
John Frederick Milius is an American filmmaker. He was one of the writers for the first two Dirty Harry films, received an Academy Award nomination as screenwriter of Apocalypse Now, and wrote and directed The Wind and the Lion, Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn.
He wrote a number of iconic film lines such as "Charlie don't surf" and "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," from Apocalypse Now, and the famous Dirty Harry one-liners delivered by Clint Eastwood, including "Go ahead, make my day" and "Ask yourself one question, 'do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?". Milius also wrote the USS Indianapolis monologue in the film Jaws; the sequence performed by Robert Shaw. After his work on Rough Riders (1997), Milius became an instrumental force in lobbying Congress to award President Theodore Roosevelt the Medal of Honor (posthumously), for acts of conspicuous gallantry while in combat on San Juan Hill. Milius made two films featuring Roosevelt: The Wind and the Lion (where he was played by Brian Keith) and the made-for-TV film Rough Riders (where Tom Berenger took the role).
The character of John Milner from the 1973 George Lucas film American Graffiti was inspired by Milius, who was a good friend of Lucas while they were at USC film school. Likewise, the character Walter Sobchak in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski, made by his friends the Coen Brothers, was partly based on Milius. The novella "Blind Jozef Pronek and Dead Souls" by Aleksandar Hemon features an episode with Milius, who is described as "sitting at a desk sucking on a cigar as long as a walking stick."
In 2013 a documentary about his life, titled Milius, was released.
Writer Nat Segaloff called Milius:
"The best writer of the so-called USC Mafia, a tight-knit group that resuscitated—some say homogenised American cinema in the 1970s... Raised on Ford, Hawks, Lean and Kurosawa, shaped by filmmakers as disparate as Fellini and Delmer Daves, Milius favours history books over comic books, character over special effects, and heroes with roots in reality, time, place and customs. Milius' stories reflect his own deeply held ethic, which embraces the values of tradition, adventure, spiritualism, honour and an intense loyalty to friends... Although he privately chafes at his public image as a gun-toting, liberal baiting provocateur, he allows himself to be painted as such, at times even holding the brush. He plays the Hollywood game like a pro, yet sticks to his own rules; he is a romantic filmmaker who avoids love scenes; his movies contain violence, yet no death in them is without meaning."
Milius himself once said:
"Never compromise excellence. To write for someone else is the biggest mistake that any writer makes. You should be your biggest competitor, your biggest critic, your biggest fan, because you don’t know what anybody else thinks. How arrogant it is to assume that you know the market, that you know what’s popular today [...] Write what you want to see. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to have any true passion in it, and it’s not going to be done with any true artistry."
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Jüri Järvet
Biography
Jüri Järvet (June 18, 1919 – July 5, 1995) was an Estonian actor. His name sometimes appears as Yuri Yevgenyevich Yarvet, an incorrect back-transliteration from the Russian transliteration Юри Евгеньевич Ярвет. His birthname was Georgi Kuznetsov, and he took the Estonian form in 1938.
Järvet is best known in the West for the role of Dr. Snaut in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, but he played in numerous other films both in Russian and his native Estonian. He was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1975, and the USSR State Prize in 1981.
Järvet played the title role in a powerful version of King Lear (1971) filmed on bleak landscapes in his native Estonia by Russian director Grigori Kozintsev and released in 1970. Kozintsev shared the screenwriting credit with Boris Pasternak; the score was by Dmitri Shostakovich.
His son Jüri Järvet Jr. has also acted in several movies, including All My Lenins and Khrustalyov, My Car!.
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Joan Micklin Silver
Biography
Joan Micklin Silver (May 24, 1935 – December 31, 2020) was an American director.
She was born in Omaha, Nebraska and received her B.A. From Sarah Lawrence College.
Her early low budget film Hester Street received Best Actress Oscar nomination for actress Carol Kane. Her 1977 film Between the Lines was entered into the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. She is also known for the film Crossing Delancey which was released in 1988 and stars Amy Irving. She also conceived and directed the musical revue A... My Name Is Alice with Julianne Boyd.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Joan Micklin Silver, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Avril Lavigne
Biography
Avril Ramona Lavigne (born 27 September 1984 in Belleville, Ontario ) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, fashion designer, and occasional actress. She has sold over 30 million copies of her albums worldwide and she is currently one of the top-selling artists releasing albums in the U.S, with more than 10 million copies certified by the Recording Industry Association of America. The famous Billboard magazine named Avril Lavigne the no.10 pop-rock artists of the 2000s as well as the 28th overall best artist of the decade based on album sales, chart success, and cultural relativity in the United States.
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Robert Merle
Biography
Robert Merle (28 August 1908 – 27 March 2004) was a French novelist.
Merle was born in 1908 in Tébessa, French Algeria. His father Félix, who was an interpreter "with a perfect knowledge of literary and spoken Arabic", was killed in 1916 in the Dardanelles. Young Merle and his mother moved to Paris, where he attended three lycées and the Sorbonne.
Merle was professor of English Literature at several universities until the outbreak of the second world war in 1939. During World War II Merle was conscripted in the French army and assigned as an interpreter to the British Expeditionary Force. In 1940 he was in the Dunkirk evacuation on the beach of Zuydcoote — which he called a "blind and abominable lottery" — and was captured by the Germans. Merle was taken prisoner to Stalag VID at Dortmund, and escaped, but was recaptured at Belgian customs. He was repatriated in July 1943, and after the war was awarded the Croix du Combattant.
Merle used his experiences at Dunkirk in his 1949 novel Week-end at Zuydcoote, which became a "sensational success" and won the Prix Goncourt. A 1964 feature film adaptation, Weekend at Dunkirk, was directed by Henri Verneuil and starred Jean-Paul Belmondo. It was a box office hit and made both men famous.
Merle's 1967 novel Un animal doué de raison (lit. A Sentient Animal), a stark Cold War satire inspired by John Lilly's studies of dolphins and the Caribbean Crisis, was translated into English and filmed as The Day of the Dolphin (1973) starring George C. Scott. Merle's post-apocalyptic novel Malevil (1972) was also adapted into a 1981 film. His 1952 novel La mort est mon métier was adapted into a 1977 film, his 1962 novel L'île was filmed as a 1987 miniseries and Le propre de l'homme (1989) was adapted into a 1996 TV movie.
Among Merle's other works are the 1950 play Flamineo, based on John Webster's The White Devil, the 1948 biography Oscar Wilde (extended in 1955 as Oscar Wilde, or The Destiny of Homosexuality), and various translations including Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In 1965 Merle wrote Moncada: premier combat de Fidel Castro and Ahmed Ben Bella, and around this time translated the diaries of Che Guevara. Until the invasion of Afghanistan by the Red Army, Merle was a sympathizer of the French Communist Party. He said: "I was just a minor militant, and my fellow Reds did not approve of what I wrote. As for the student riots of May 1968, I never believed in the reality of that revolution. The only thing of value that came out of it was the liberation of sexual relationships."
Merle's "major achievement" was his 13-book series of historical novels, Fortune de France (1977–2003), which recreate 16th and 17th century France through the eyes of a fictitious Protestant doctor turned spy. A "genuine scholar of language", Merle wrote the novels using many of the appropriate French speech rhythms and idioms of the historical period. The series made Merle a household name in France, with the author repeatedly called the Alexandre Dumas of the 20th century.
Merle was married three times, and had four sons and two daughters. He died in 2004 at age 95 of a heart attack in Montfort-l'Amaury, France.
Source: Article "Robert Merle" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Ele Keats
Biography
Recognized as "the essence of health, talent and sincerity", Ele Keats has worked with some of the most acclaimed artists in Hollywood since her acting debut at 15 in the famous Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial. Born in Paris to copywriter Sacha Georgescu and Ford model Jan McGuire, Keats was raised in New York City and Germany before relocating to Los Angeles at 12 where she pursued her model and acting career. A trained singer and dancer, Keats quickly established herself as a familiar face on television, appearing in numerous commercials and starring as Anny in Fox's teen soap-opera
Tribes (1990). More film roles followed, including
There Goes My Baby (1994), Garry Marshall'sFrankie & Johnny (1991) (opposite Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer), the Disney musicalNewsies - The News Boys (1992) (opposite Christian Bale and Robert Duvall) and Frank Marshall's acclaimed drama Les survivants (1993) (opposite Ethan Hawke and Vincent Spano). On television, she has worked in numerous renowned series such asDiagnostic: meurtre (1993), Les anges du bonheur (1994), "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (2000)_ and "Cold Case" (2003)_ and has appeared in more than one hundred national TV commercials. More recently, Keats has kept building her solid career with roles in
Steven Soderbergh's Eros (2004) (opposite Robert Downey Jr.), Hairshirt (1998), Monday(2006), American Decaf (2011) and Snowflake (2014).
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Kiana Tom
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Kiana Tom is a television host, fitness expert, author, actress, and businesswoman.
Kiana Tom is part Hawaiian, Chinese and Irish. Her name in Hawaiian means “calm water” or "moon goddess".
She was the star and founder of the fitness series, Kiana's Flex Appeal on ESPN, author of Kiana's Body Sculpting book (St. Martin's Press, NY) and recipient of the United States Sports Academy Award. She was interviewed on behalf of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, Emcee to the Governor's Ball at the inaugural X Games in Newport RI, Ms. Shape Magazine. She was also a cheerleader for the Oakland Raiders.
In 1995, Tom created, hosted and co-produced her fitness series, Kiana's Flex Appeal, a lifestyle, health and fitness program on ESPN. Tom wrote numerous exercise routines and created the segments: home gym, pro gym, target training, aqua flex training. The show ended in 2001.
Due to Kiana Tom's Flex Appeal's initial high ratings, ESPN chose to develop other shows around Kiana Tom, including Kiana's Too Fit 2 Quit, Summer Sizzle with Kiana & Hot Summer Nights with Kiana.
She posed nude for May 2002 edition of Playboy magazine. According to one interview, she was such a perfectionist that she had to wait until the right time in her career where she felt her body was in the best shape it's ever been. She had also started getting threatening letters, due to her celebrity status and was forced to call in the FBI. She further elaborates by stating that she never answers the door, never gives her address and uses a different name when checking into a hotel.
Since that time, Tom has hosted ABC Super Bowl Nightlife, Host and Reporter for the Extreme Sports shows, X Games, Extreme Energy, Fitness America Pageant Series, Blade Warriors, King of the Mountain, news anchor for Turner Broadcasting, made guest appearances on the Drew Carey Show, Family Law and in Eminem's Grammy Award winning Music Video of the Year "Without Me". Kiana co-starred in her first movie, Universal Soldier: The Return with Jean Claude Van Damme, Sony/Columbia Tristar Pictures. According to the New York Times review, dated August 1999, the presence of the fitness guru compounded the physicality of the film.
In 2009, Kiana Tom, now the mother of two children, was working on a new show, FitMomTV.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Kiana Tom, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Elham Al Fadalah
Biography
Elham Al-Fadala, a Kuwaiti actress, was born on June 18, 1974. She completed high school and began her artistic career by co-starring with Dawood Hussein and Hassan Al-Ballam in the play "At the Door, Youth" in 2000. From 2003 to 2008, she worked in productions produced by Scope Center, owned by writer Fajr Al-Saeed, under an exclusive contract. She has appeared in dozens of productions across theater and television. Her most notable works include "Qannas Khaitan," "Dunya Al-Qawi," and "Maskanak Youfi."
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Zeudi Araya
Biography
Zeudi Araya is an Eritrean-Italian actress, singer, model, and film producer who rose to fame in 1970s Italian cinema. Crowned Miss Eritrea in 1969, she was discovered while visiting Italy and made her film debut in La ragazza dalla pelle di luna (1972), directed by Luigi Scattini. Araya quickly became a cult icon in Italian erotic and exotic dramas, often playing sensual, mysterious characters set against lush tropical backdrops. She starred in a string of stylish and provocative films throughout the decade—including The Off-Road Girl (1973), Il corpo (1974), and La peccatrice (1975)—often with soundtracks composed by Piero Umiliani. Known not just for her beauty but her magnetic screen presence, she also lent her voice to several of these films, notably singing on the soundtrack of La ragazza fuoristrada.
Beyond acting, Araya’s legacy expanded through her marriage to famed Italian producer Franco Cristaldi. After his death in 1992, she took over the family company Cristaldifilm, helping preserve and promote Italian cinema classics such as Cinema Paradiso. Though she gradually stepped away from acting, she became a respected film archivist and producer. Zeudi Araya remains a unique figure in European cinema history: a trailblazing African actress who challenged stereotypes, embodied 1970s glamour, and later helped shape the future of Italian film from behind the scenes.
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