Trending

Popular people

Rita Azevedo Gomes

Biography

Rita Azevedo Gomes (born c. 1952) is an award-winning Portuguese film director. Her career dates from the early 70s and spans cinema, theatre and opera. In 2001 she presented her work in various film festivals including Venice, Montreal, and Turin. Altar (2002) won the prize for best director at the Angra do Heroísmo international film festival and premiered in Portugal in September 2002. This was followed in 2004 by A 15ª Pedra: Manoel de Oliveira e João Bénard da Costa em Conversa Filmada, which was shown at the Marseille, Procida and Doclisboa film festivals in 2005, as well in The Ancient Art Museum and Serralves Foundation. Also in 2005, she was commissioned by Faro Capital da Cultura to direct The Conquest of Faro, which was presented at the 2005 Turin Film Festival and had its national premiere in Faro in December 2005. A Colecção Invisível (The Invisible Collection, 2009) will have its premier in Lisbon at the Cinemateca Portuguesa. Her most recent film, A Portuguesa (The Portuguese), inspired in Robert Musil’s novel Die Portugiesin, is in post-production.
Read more

Dasari Narayana Rao

Biography

Dasari Narayana Rao (4 May 1947 – 30 May 2017) was an Indian film director, producer, screenwriter, dialogue writer, actor, lyricist, and politician known for his works predominantly in Telugu cinema, Television, and Bollywood. He has directed more than one hundred and fifty feature films in a variety of genres. His works emphasize social injustice, corruption and gender discrimination. Rao has received two National Film Awards, nine state Nandi Awards including the Raghupathi Venkaiah Award, and four Filmfare Awards South including the lifetime Achievement. During his career he has also acted in Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada languages.
Read more

Kim van Kooten

Biography

Kim van Kooten (born 26 January 1974 in Purmerend, North Holland) is a Dutch actress and screenwriter. In international cinema, she is best known for the 2003 Dutch/US co-production Phileine Says Sorry, filmed partly in New York City, in which she plays the lead. She is the author of the script of the very successful Dutch movie Alles is Liefde (Everything is Love), and won a Golden Calf for Best Actress in Phileine Says Sorry (2003), and for Best Scenario with Met grote blijdschap (2001). Description above from the Wikipedia article Kim van Kooten, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more

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.
Read more

Iwan Fals

Biography

Virgiawan Listanto or better known as Iwan Fals (born 3 September 1961) is an Indonesian singer, songwriter and guitarist of Javanese descent. In 2002, Time named him a Great Asian Hero. His musical style has been described as pop , rock , country , and folk pop , and his lyrics often reflect the dark political times of the 1970s and 1980s. Iwan Fals was included in Rolling Stone Indonesia magazine's list of The Immortals: 25 Greatest Indonesian Artists of All Time. Through his songs, he 'portraits' the social atmosphere of Indonesian life from the late 1970s to the present, the world in general, and life itself. Criticism of the behavior of a group of people (such as Surat Untuk Wakil Rakyat , Tante Lisa ), empathy for marginalized groups (e.g. Siang Seberang Istana , Lonteku ), or major disasters that hit Indonesia (or sometimes outside Indonesia, such as Ethiopia ) dominate the themes of the songs he performs. However, Iwan Fals not only sings his own compositions but also a number of other composers. Iwan, who was also active in sports, won second place in the national karate championship and fourth place in the 1989 national karate championship . He also attended national training camps and trained karate at his university, STP (Sekolah Tinggi Pulisistik). Iwan also worked as a columnist for several sports tabloids.
Read more

Gabby Soleil

Biography

Gabby Soleil had a lucky break when she was noticed by a talent manager on a street in Beverly Hills, California. In no time, she was appearing in television commercials, starting with a spot for the insurance company Met Life. The young actress received her Screen Actors Guild card at only four years old. At six, in 2001, she acted in her first role in the pilot of the short-lived sitcom "Danny," about a separated father raising two teenagers. She quickly followed up that appearance the same year with a recurring part in the final season of another sitcom, "The Hughleys," a vehicle for comedian D.L. Hughley. She played Adriana, daughter of Milsap, the best friend of the title characters, through three episodes of the program. Her longest running on-screen character came in 2002, when she landed the role of the young version of Essence Atkins's character, Deirdre Chantal "Dee Dee" Thorne, Esq., on "Half & Half," a sitcom about two half-sisters, estranged in their youth, who meet again as adults. She went on to play Young Dee Dee in eight episodes until 2006. In 2005, she began voice acting when she took on the role of Jazmine Dubois, a girl who lives across the street from the main characters in the successful animated social satire "The Boondocks," based on the comic strip by Aaron McGruder.
Read more

Hiten Kumar

Biography

Hiten Kumar, born Hiten Mehta in Mumbai, Maharashtra, is a beloved name in Gujarati cinema. Son of Ishwarlal and Urmila Mehta, he is the second among three siblings elder brother Pankaj and younger sister Bhavna. A passionate actor since college, he began his journey through intercollegiate drama competitions and theatre in the early 1980s, earning Best Actor awards while studying at Mumbai University. Though he worked at LIC as a Development Officer for 10 years, his love for acting kept him involved in theatre. He performed in over 45 plays in Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, and English, gradually making a mark in Gujarati commercial theatre. After many struggles and rejections in films and TV, his major breakthrough came in 1995–96 with the Gujarati film Unchi Medina Uncha Mol, earning him the Gujarat State Award for Best Villain. His iconic rise came with Desh Re Joya Dada Pardesh Joya (1997), directed by Govind Patel, which broke all records in Gujarati cinema, grossing ₹22 crore when ticket prices were just ₹7–11. He followed it with hits like Maiyar Ma Mandu Nathi Lagtu (2001), which won 11 State Awards. In a career spanning over 27 years, he acted in more than 130 Gujarati films, winning 9 Gujarat State Awards and 90+ awards from other organizations. His versatility spans roles from hero to villain, aged characters to psychologically intense ones—as seen in Vash, later remade by Ajay Devgn as Black Magic. He has also appeared in Hindi films like Jayate, Raakh, and Simran, and is now working on new Gujarati projects for 2024, while exploring cinema in other Indian languages. TMDB mini biography by: Ashvin Borad
Read more

Terence Fisher

Biography

Terence Fisher (23 February 1904 – 18 June 1980) was a film director who worked for Hammer Films. He was born in Maida Vale, a district of London, England. Fisher was one of the most prominent horror directors of the second half of the 20th century. He was the first to bring gothic horror alive in full colour, and the sexual overtones and explicit horror in his films, while mild by modern standards, were unprecedented in his day. His first major gothic horror film was "The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957), which launched Hammer's long association with the genre and made British actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee leading horror stars of the era. He went on to film a number of adaptations of classic horror subjects, including "Dracula" (1958), "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1959) and "The Mummy" (1959). Given their subject matter and lurid approach, Fisher's films, though commercially successful, were largely dismissed by critics during his career. It is only in recent years that Fisher has become recognised as an auteur in his own right. His films are characterised by a blend of fairy-tale, myth and sexuality. They draw heavily on Christian themes, and there is usually a hero who defeats the powers of darkness by a combination of faith in God and reason, in contrast to other characters, who are either blindly superstitious or bound by a cold, godless rationalism. Description above adapted from the Wikipedia article Terence Fisher, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more

N. Azhagamperumal

Biography

Azhagam Perumal is a Tamil film director and actor. He worked as an assistant to director Mani Ratnam from Thalapathi to Iruvar, before leaving to make his independent project. When Mani Ratnam was shooting Alaipayuthey, he was looking for someone like Jagathy Sreekumar to play the quirky house owner, which Azhagam Perumal eventually did, making his acting debut. He had initially announced his directorial debut in 1998 as Mudhal Mudhalaaga, a romantic film featuring Arvind Swamy and Karisma Kapoor in the lead roles, which failed to take off. He then started shooting the film Udhaya in 1999 with Vijay and Simran in the lead roles but the film saw massive delays and Azhagam Perumal, meanwhile, began another film, the romantic comedy Dumm Dumm Dumm with R. Madhavan and Jyothika in the lead roles, in which his mentor Mani Ratnam worked as the screenwriter and producer. The film released in 2001 and was a success. After Alaipayuthey, he was offered acting offers but he declined as he wanted to revive and complete Udhaya.
Read more

King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden

Biography

Carl XVI Gustaf (born 30 April 1946) is King of Sweden. Carl XVI Gustaf is the longest-reigning monarch in Swedish history, having surpassed King Magnus IV's reign of 44 years and 222 days on 26 April 2018. Carl Gustaf was born during the reign of his paternal great-grandfather, King Gustaf V. He is the youngest child and only son of Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten, and Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. His father died in January 1947 in an airplane crash in Denmark when Carl Gustaf was nine months old. Carl Gustaf became crown prince and heir apparent to the Swedish throne at the age of four when his grandfather Gustaf VI Adolf acceded to the throne in 1950. Carl Gustaf acceded to the throne upon his grandfather's death on 15 September 1973. Shortly after he became king, the new 1974 Instrument of Government took effect, formally stripping the monarchy of its remaining executive powers. As a result, Carl Gustaf no longer performs many of the duties normally accorded to a head of state in parliamentary regimes, such as the formal appointment of the prime minister, signing legislation into law, and being commander-in-chief of the nation's military. The new instrument explicitly limited the king to ceremonial and representative functions, while he retained the right to be regularly informed of affairs of state. As head of the House of Bernadotte, Carl Gustaf has also been able to make a number of decisions about the titles and positions of its members. In June 1976, Carl Gustaf married Silvia Sommerlath. They have three children: Victoria, Carl Philip, and Madeleine. The King's heir apparent, after passage on 1 January 1980 of a new law establishing absolute primogeniture, is his eldest child, Crown Princess Victoria. Before the passage of that law, Victoria's younger brother, Carl Philip, was briefly the heir apparent, as of his birth in May 1979.
Read more