Trending
Popular people
Kayleigh Rae
Biography
Kayleigh Rae (born 11 August 1992), better known as Kay Lee Ray, is a Scottish professional wrestler. She is currently signed to WWE, where she performs on the NXT brand under the ring name Alba Fyre and is one-half of the current NXT Women's Tag Team Champions with Isla Dawn in their first reign.
Rae began her wrestling career in 2009 and competed on the European independent circuit. She joined Insane Championship Wrestling in 2011, and while there, became a three-time ICW Women's Champion. After competing at the inaugural Mae Young Classic in 2017, Rae signed with WWE in early 2019 and debuted for the NXT UK brand. She moved over to NXT in 2021, and her ring name was changed to Alba Fyre the following year. Rae is a former NXT UK Women's Champion, for which she holds the record for the longest reign at 649 days.
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
John Gielgud
Biography
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH, was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937. He was known for his beautiful speaking of verse and particularly for his warm and expressive voice, which his colleague Sir Alec Guinness likened to a silver trumpet muffled in silk. Gielgud is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
Read more
Richard Attenborough
Biography
Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, Kt, CBE (August 29, 1923 – August 24, 2014) was an English actor, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and politician. He was the President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Attenborough joined the Royal Air Force during World War II and served in the film unit. He went on several bombing raids over Europe and filmed action from the rear gunner's position.
As a film director and producer, Attenborough won two Academy Awards for Gandhi in 1983. He also won four BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his roles in Brighton Rock, The Great Escape, 10 Rillington Place, Miracle on 34th Street (1994) and Jurassic Park.
He was the older brother of David Attenborough, a naturalist and broadcaster, and John Attenborough, an executive at Alfa Romeo. He was married to actress Sheila Sim from 1945 until his death.
Read more
Brandon Trost
Biography
Brandon Scott Trost (born August 29, 1981) is an American cinematographer, screenwriter, and film director whose credits include writing and directing The FP (2011) with his brother Jason, as well as being the cinematographer of several films, including Crank: High Voltage, Halloween II, MacGruber, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and That's My Boy. Trost also frequently collaborates with Seth Rogen, including the films This Is the End, Neighbors, The Interview, The Night Before and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. Trost's first film as a solo director, An American Pickle, was released in 2020.
Trost was also the cinematographer of the film Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and its 2024 sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the sequels to the 2020 film adaptation of the video game Sonic the Hedgehog.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Brandon Trost, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Jean-Louis Livi
Biography
Jean-Louis Livi (born 29 January 1941) is a French film producer.
Livi was nominated for an Academy Award and two BAFTA Film Awards for producing The Father (2020).
Jean-Louis Livi is the son of Giuliano/Julien Livi (1917–1994), the older brother of Italian-French actor Yves Montand.
Between 1990 and 2006, Livi was director of the production companies Film par film and SEDIF (Société d'exploitation et de distribution de films) Productions. Since 2006, he has been the director the production company F comme film. Livi also manages the company Solivagus Productions.
Livi and Bernard Murat have been co-directors of the Théâtre des Mathurins and of the Théâtre Édouard VII in Paris.
In 2021, Livi became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Source: Article "Jean-Louis Livi" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Read more
José Giovanni
Biography
José Giovanni (22 June 1923, Paris, France – 24 April 2004, Lausanne, Switzerland) was the pseudonym of Joseph Damiani, a French writer and film-maker of Corsican origin who became a naturalized Swiss citizen in 1986.
A former collaborationist and criminal who at one time was sentenced to death, Giovanni often drew his inspiration from personal experience or from real gangsters, such as Abel Danos in his 1960 film Classe tous risques, overlooking that they had been members of the French Gestapo. In his films as well as his novels, while praising masculine friendships and advocating the confrontation of the individual against the world, he often championed the underworld but was always careful to hide his own links with the Nazi occupiers of France during World War II.
Of Corsican descent, Joseph Damiani received a good education, studying at the Collège Stanislas de Paris and the Lycée Janson de Sailly. His father, a professional gambler who was sentenced to a year in prison for running an illegal casino, owned a hotel in the French Alps in Chamonix. Joseph worked there as a young man and became fascinated by mountain climbing.
From April to September 1943 Damiani was a member of Jeunesse et Montagne (Youth and Mountain) in Chamonix, part of the Vichy Government youth movement controlled by Pierre Laval.
In February 1944 Damiani came to Paris and through his father's friend, the LVF leader Simon Sabiani, he joined Jacques Doriot's fascist French Popular Party (PPF). His maternal uncle, Ange Paul Santolini alias "Santos", who ran a restaurant patronized by the Gestapo, and his elder brother, Paul Damiani, a member of the Vichy paramilitary Milice, introduced Joseph into the Pigalle underworld.
In March 1944 Joseph Damiani went to Marseille where he became a member of the German Schutzkorps (SK), an organization which hunted down Service du travail obligatoire - STO (Compulsory Work Service) dodgers. He served as bodyguard to its Marseille chief and took part in many arrests, often blackmailing his victims.
In Lyon, in August 1944, posing as a German police officer along with an accomplice (Orloff, a Gestapo agent who was shot for treason at the Liberation), Damiani blackmailed Joseph Gourentzeig and his brother-in-law Georges Edberg, two Jews who were in hiding. Gourentzeig had bribed a member of the Milice - a friend of Damiani’s – in an attempt to secure his parents' release from a detention camp. They were not freed and Gourentzeig's father, Jacob, was shot by the Germans shortly after, on 21 August 1944, along with 109 Jewish hostages in the Bron (Lyon airport) massacre.
After the Liberation in Paris on 18 May 1945, Joseph Damiani, his brother Paul, Georges Accad, a former Gestapo agent, and Jacques Ménassole, a former member of the Milice wearing a French Army lieutenant's uniform - all posing as Military Intelligence officers - abducted Haïm Cohen, a wine merchant, accusing him of being a black marketeer. He was tortured until he gave them the key to his safe and a check for 105,000 francs. He was then shot and his body thrown into the Seine. Joseph Damiani cashed the check at Barclay's Bank under the identity of "Count J. de Montreuil". ...
Source: Article "José Giovanni" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Read more
Bob Murawski
Biography
Bob Murawski (born June 14, 1964) is an American film editor. He was awarded the 2010 Academy Award for Best Film Editing for his work on The Hurt Locker, which he shared with his wife, fellow editor Chris Innis. He often works with film director Sam Raimi, having edited the Spider-Man trilogy, Oz the Great and Powerful, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Murawski is an elected member of the American Cinema Editors and is (with Sage Stallone) the co-founder of Grindhouse Releasing, an acclaimed film distribution company specialising in re-releases of cult films.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Bob Murawski, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Christiane Legrand
Biography
Christiane Legrand (21 August 1930 – 1 November 2011) was a French soprano.
Legrand was born in Paris. Her father Raymond Legrand was a conductor and composer renowned for hits such as Irma la douce, and her mother was Marcelle Ter-Mikaëlian (sister of conductor Jacques Hélian), who married Legrand in 1929. Her maternal grandfather was of Armenian descent and considered a member of the bourgeoisie. Legrand studied piano and classical music from the time she was four. Jazz critic and composer André Hodeir discovered her in 1957, and she became the lead singer in the most notable French jazz vocal groups of the 1960s, including Les Double Six.
Legrand was the original lead soprano of The Swingle Singers and was the vocalist who dubbed the part of Madame Emery in Les parapluies de Cherbourg, the music for which was composed by her brother Michel Legrand. She also sang the part of Judith in his Les demoiselles de Rochefort. Her commercial recordings of music for the concert hall included a recording of Laborinthus II of Luciano Berio.
Legrand sang the lead role on the French Disney recording of the score to the film Mary Poppins (1964) and lent her talents to numerous other film projects. Legrand was the featured soprano on the track "Fires (Which Burn Brightly)" on the 1973 Procol Harum album Grand Hotel.
Her niece Victoria Legrand is a member of the American indie pop group Beach House. Another niece, Eugénie Angot, is an equestrian.
Source: Article "Christiane Legrand" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Read more
Michel Legrand
Biography
Michel Jean Legrand (24 February 1932 – 26 January 2019) was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, jazz pianist, and singer. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written more than 200 film and television scores, in addition to many songs. His scores for two of the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations. Legrand won his first Oscar for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and additional Oscars for Summer of '42 (1971) and Barbra Streisand's Yentl (1983).
Legrand was born in Paris, France, to his father, Raymond Legrand, who was himself a conductor and composer, and his mother, Marcelle Der-Mikaëlian, who was the sister of conductor Jacques Hélian. Raymond and Marcelle were married in 1929. His maternal grandfather was Armenian.
Legrand composed more than two hundred film and television scores. He won three Oscars and five Grammys. He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris from the age of 11, working with, among others, Nadia Boulanger and graduated with top honors as both a composer and a pianist. He burst upon the international music scene at 22 when his 1954 album I Love Paris became a surprise hit. He established his name in the United States by working with such jazz stars as Miles Davis and Stan Getz. His sister Christiane Legrand was a member of The Swingle Singers and his niece Victoria Legrand is a member of the dream pop band Beach House.
Legrand composed music for Jacques Demy's films The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) (from which Recit de Cassard came and in turn, in English became the standard Watch What Happens) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), from which the relyricized "You Must Believe in Spring" is considered a jazz standard. Legrand appeared and performed in Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 (1961). He also composed music for Joseph Losey's Eva (1962), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) (which features "The Windmills of Your Mind"), Ice Station Zebra (1968), The Picasso Summer (1969), The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970), The Go-Between (1971), Summer of '42 (1971), Clint Eastwood's Breezy (1973), The Three Musketeers (1973), Orson Welles's last-completed film F for Fake (1974), TriStar Pictures 1998 family film Madeline, and would later compose the score for Welles's posthumously released movie The Other Side of the Wind (2018). He also composed the score for Yentl (1983), as well as the film score for Louis Malle's film Atlantic City (1980). His instrumental version of the theme from Brian's Song charted 56th in 1972 on the Billboard's pop chart.
Legrand died of sepsis, during the night of 25–26 January 2019, at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he had been hospitalized for two weeks for a pulmonary infection. His funeral was held in Paris at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on 1 February 2019. He was interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. He remained active until his death and had concerts scheduled to take place in the spring. ...
Source: Article "Michel Legrand" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Read more
