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Ivan Passer
Biography
Ivan Passer (10 July 1933 – 9 January 2020) was a Czech film director and screenwriter, best known for his involvement in the Czechoslovak New Wave and for directing American films such as Born to Win (1971), Cutter's Way (1981) and Stalin (1992).
Passer was born in Prague, the son of Marianna (Mandelick) and Alois Passer. Passer attended King George boarding school in Poděbrady with future filmmakers Miloš Forman, Jerzy Skolimowski and Paul Fierlinger and statesman Václav Havel. He then studied at FAMU in Prague, but did not finish the course. He began his career as an assistant director on Ladislav Helge's Velká samota.
Later he collaborated with his friend Forman on all of Forman's Czech films, including Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen's Ball (1967), both of which Passer co-wrote and which were nominated for Academy Awards. He introduced Forman to cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček whom he knew from Velká samota. He then directed his first feature, Intimate Lighting, which was released in 1965 and is considered by some to be Passer's masterpiece.
In 1969, after the Warsaw Pact invasion, Passer and Forman left Czechoslovakia together. Both proceeded to the United States, with Forman becoming an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. Passer went on to make several prominent American films such as Born to Win (1971), a junkie drama starring George Segal and Karen Black, and Cutter's Way (1981), a dramatic thriller starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard.
Though best known for his idiosyncratic, often gritty dramas, he also directed comedies such as Silver Bears (1978) starring Michael Caine and Creator (1985) starring Peter O'Toole. Later in his career, he directed numerous films for television, most notably the award-winning biopic Stalin (1992) starring Robert Duvall for HBO. He was also a film professor at the University of Southern California.
Passer died on January 9, 2020 from pulmonary complications in Reno, Nevada. He was 86 years old.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ivan Passer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Chase Crawford
Biography
Chase Alexander Crawford is an American actor and film producer from Monroe, Ohio. He is known for founding the independent film company Four by Three.
Crawford was born on March 11th, 1996 in New Bern, North Carolina to Susan and Ray Crawford. He attended and graduated from Monroe High School and D Russel Lee Career-Technology Center (a Butler Tech school) in 2014. He landed his first commercial opportunity in 2013, when Taco Bell tapped him to write, direct and act in a campaign to unveil the Fiery Doritos Locos Tacos.
He had his first child and married Alexandra Crawford in early 2015.
After appearing in the 2016 Sundance Film Festival selection Goat alongside James Franco and Nick Jonas, he appeared in 2016 Toronto International Film Festival selection In the Radiant City.
In 2017, Crawford produced his first feature film, Alan and the Fullness of Time, alongside childhood friend Markus Cook. Crawford went on to produce his second feature film Moondance in 2018, and acted in a handful of films including Boy Band, Palace and Worst Christmas Ever.
In early 2020, Crawford and his company executive produced Joe Chrest's dark comedy The Cran. The film was shot in and around Bowling Green, Ohio.
In 2021, Crawford and Four by Three announced the acquisition of a dozen independent films, opening the companies distribution offering to fellow indie filmmakers. Crawford also produced Craig Brown's Shooting Doves and executive produced several independent films and comedy specials.
In December of 2021, Chase Crawford was named to the Forbes Next 1000 list.
In 2022, Crawford announced the launch of Four by Three Comedy. He also signed on to Co-Executive Produce Miguel Faus's debut feature Calladita in February 2022. The project went on to become the first European film funded by NFTs.
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Richard O'Barry
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Richard (Ric) O'Barry (born c. 1939 ) was first recognized in the 1960s for capturing and training the five dolphins that were used in the well-known TV series Flipper. O'Barry made a radical transition from training dolphins in captivity to assertively combating the captivity industry soon after Kathy, one of the Flipper dolphins, died, committing suicide in his arms, according to O'Barry . In 1970 he founded the Dolphin Project, a group that aims to educate the public about captivity and, where feasible, free captive dolphins . He was featured in the Academy Award-winning film, The Cove (2009), which used covert techniques to expose the yearly dolphin drive hunting that goes on in Taiji, Japan.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ric O'Barry, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Brett Ratner
Biography
Brett Ratner (born March 28, 1969) is an American film director and producer. He directed the Rush Hour film series, The Family Man, Red Dragon, X-Men: The Last Stand, Tower Heist, and Hercules. He is a producer of several films, including the Horrible Bosses series, as well as executive producer on other projects, including the films The Revenant and War Dogs and the television series Prison Break.
Ratner got his start directing with music videos in the 1990s and directed his first motion picture, Money Talks, in 1997. Overall, the films Ratner has directed have earned over $2 billion at the global box office. Ratner is the co-founder of RatPac Entertainment, a film production company. Ratner led RatPac's partnership with Dune Entertainment in September 2013 for a co-producing deal with Warner Bros. that included 75 films. RatPac Entertainment has co-financed 81 theatrically released motion pictures, exceeding $17 billion in worldwide box office receipts. RatPac's co-financed films have been nominated for 59 Academy Awards, 25 Golden Globes, and 43 BAFTAs and have won 25 Academy Awards, 8 Golden Globes, and 24 BAFTAs. In January 2017, Ratner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture industry, located at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2017, numerous women in Hollywood came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, sexual assault, or harassment against Ratner.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Brett Ratner, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Michael Zaslow
Biography
Michael Zaslow was born on November 1, 1942 in Inglewood, California and was an actor and writer, best known for his work in daytime dramas, or soap operas. He was married twice, to Joanne Dorian and Susan Hufford, by whom he had two daughters, Helena and Marika. He died on December 6, 1998 in New York City, succumbing to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a nerve-cell disorder better known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Michael's Broadway credits included Fiddler on the Roof, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Boccaccio, and Onward Victoria, while he appeared in the films You Light Up My Life, Meteor, and Seven Minutes in Heaven, and guested on numerous primetime series, from Star Trek (1966) to Law and Order (1990). He acted in several soap operas, namely CBS's Search for Tomorrow (1951) and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1967), and ABC's One Life to Live (1968), and wrote for NBC's Another World (1964). But he was best known for portraying the manipulative businessman Roger Thorpe on the CBS daytime drama Guiding Light, the longest running dramatic series of any genre, beginning January 25, 1937 on radio, and playing from June 30, 1952 to September 18, 2009 on television. Michael received four Emmy nominations playing the villainous Roger Thorpe from 1971 to 1980, and again from 1989 to 1997, and garnered a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1994 for the role. He was a favorite of both critics and fans.
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Barbara Barrie
Biography
Barbara Barrie (born Barbara Ann Berman, May 23, 1931) is an American actress of film, stage and television. She is also an accomplished author.
Her film breakthrough came in 1964 with her performance as Julie in the landmark film One Potato, Two Potato, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. She is best known for her role as Evelyn Stoller in Breaking Away, which brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1979 and an Emmy Award nomination in 1981 when she reprised the role in the television series based on the film.
On television she is perhaps best known for her portrayal, between 1975 and 1978, of the wife of the namesake captain in the detective sitcom Barney Miller. Barrie also is known for her extensive work in the theatre, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1971 for originating the role of Sarah in Stephen Sondheim's Company.
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Michael Ironside
Biography
Frederick Reginald Ironside (born February 12, 1950), known professionally as Michael Ironside, is a Canadian actor. He has worked as a voice actor, producer, film director, and screenwriter in movie and television series in various Canadian and American productions. He gained early widespread recognition for his terrifying portrayal of the deadly psychic Darryl Revok in David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981) and was equally chilling as the misogynistic psychopath Colt Hawker in Visiting Hours (1982). Ironside followed that up by playing Jester in Top Gun (1986). Recently, Ironside is known for his roles as Eddie Williams in Nobody (2021) and Charles Purdy in BlackBerry (2023).
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Dude Walker
Biography
Dude Walker is an American voice-over talent and actor based in New York City. He is known for his voice-over work and narration in video games, movies, TV shows, and radio.
He narrated the true-crime series Cold Case Files: Dead West, Dead Silent, the reality show Celebrity Watch Party, Space Voyages, The High Court with Doug Benson, and a short titled Dead Harvest. He appeared on House of Cards, The West Wing, and the movie Minority Report.
He has voiced for video games including Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, Heroes of Newerth as Odin Allfather, Star Wars: The Old Republic as Ardun Kothe and Security Officer Stansun (and additional voices), Star Wars: The Old Republic - Shadow of Revan as Ardun Kothe (and additional voices), and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
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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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Varun Dhawan
Biography
Varun Dhawan is an Indian actor working in Bollywood films. The son of film director David Dhawan, he studied Business Management in England, after which he worked as an assistant director to Karan Johar on the 2010 drama My Name Is Khan. Dhawan made his acting debut with Johar's 2012 romantic comedy Student of the Year, a box office success, for which he received a Filmfare nomination for Best Male Debut. In 2014, he starred as the protagonist of two commercially successful comedies— Main Tera Hero and Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania.
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