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Andrea Romano
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Andrea Romano (born December 3, 1955) is an American casting director, voice director, and voice actress whose work includes Batman: The Animated Series, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Bonkers, Freakazoid, Pinky and the Brain, Teen Titans, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, The Boondocks, Static Shock, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Batman Beyond, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012 TV series), SpongeBob SquarePants and multiple Warner Bros. Animation/DC Comics direct-to-video films including: Wonder Woman and Green Lantern: First Flight. Her voice acting, as of 2010, consists of minor roles in television series, direct-to-video films, and video games.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Andrea Romano (voice director), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Olivier Messiaen
Biography
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically and melodically he employs a system he called modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from the systems of material generated by his early compositions and improvisations. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, vocal music, as well as for solo organ and piano, and also experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime.
Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and studied with Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, among others. He was appointed organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, in 1931, a post held for 61 years until his death. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s. After the fall of France in 1940, Messiaen was interned for nine months in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII-A, where he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the end of time") for the four instruments available in the prison—piano, violin, cello and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners for an audience of inmates and prison guards. He was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941 and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservatoire, positions that he held until his retirement in 1978. His many distinguished pupils included Iannis Xenakis, George Benjamin, Alexander Goehr, Pierre Boulez, Tristan Murail, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Yvonne Loriod, who became his second wife.
Messiaen perceived colours when he heard certain musical chords (a phenomenon known as synaesthesia); according to him, combinations of these colours were important in his compositional process. He travelled widely and wrote works inspired by diverse influences, including Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah, and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. For a short period Messiaen experimented with the parametrisation associated with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many global musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works).
He found birdsong fascinating, notating bird songs worldwide and incorporating birdsong transcriptions into his music. His innovative use of colour, his conception of the relationship between time and music, and his use of birdsong are among the features that make Messiaen's music distinctive. ...
Source: Article "Olivier Messiaen" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Donnie Yen
Biography
Donnie Yen Chi-tan is a Hong Kong actor, filmmaker, martial artist, and action director. He is the recipient of various accolades, including three Golden Horse Awards and five Hong Kong Film Awards. He is best known for portraying Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man in the Ip Man film series, namely Ip Man (2008), Ip Man 2 (2010), Ip Man 3 (2015), and Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019). He also served as co-producer for the spin-off Master Z: Ip Man Legacy (2018).
Born in Guangdong, Yen developed an interest in martial arts at a young age, and began experimenting with various styles, including tai chi and other traditional Chinese martial arts. At age 18, he auditioned for action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping in Hong Kong. He landed his first starring role in the 1984 Hong Kong martial arts action film Drunken Tai Chi. He made his breakthrough role as the antagonist General Nap-lan in Once Upon a Time in China II (1992), opposite Jet Li's character. He appeared in several other Hong Kong kung fu films, including Iron Monkey (1993) and Wing Chun (1994). In 1997, he starred in his directorial debut film Legend of the Wolf.
Yen made his American debut in Highlander: Endgame (2000), followed by a cameo in Blade II (2002). He went on to appear in the American films Shanghai Knights (2003), Rogue One (2016), XXX: Return of Xander Cage (2017), Mulan (2020), and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023). He has continued to be active in Hong Kong cinema, appearing in the well-received films Hero (2002), SPL: Sha Po Lang (2005), 14 Blades (2010), Wu Xia (2011), Kung Fu Jungle (2014), Chasing the Dragon (2017), Enter the Fat Dragon (2020), Raging Fire (2021), and The Prosecutor (2024), among others. In television, Yen portrayed fictional character Chen Zhen in the television series Fist of Fury (1995); he reprised the role in the 2010 film Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen.
For portraying Ip Man in the Ip Man film series (2008-2019), Yen is credited by many for contributing to the popularisation of Wing Chun in China. Alongside Kung fu, particularly Wing Chun, Yen is also known for incorporating mixed martial arts (MMA) elements into his action choreography. Aside from his acting, in 1997, he established his own production company, Bullet Films, which choreographed the action for Western blockbusters like Blade II (2002) and Stormbreaker (2006).
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Edi Gathegi
Biography
Edi Mūe Gathegi (born March 10, 1979) is a Kenyan-American actor. He appeared as a recurring character, Dr. Jeffrey Cole (aka "Big Love"), in the television series House, as Cheese in the 2007 film Gone Baby Gone, as Laurent in the films Twilight and its sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and as Darwin in X-Men: First Class. Gathegi also featured in the AMC series Into the Badlands as Baron Jacobee. He has also been a recurring character in the NBC television series The Blacklist as Matias Solomon, an operative for a covert organization. Gathegi reprised the role in the 2016–2017 season crime thriller, The Blacklist: Redemption. He has also played a leading role in Startup, a television drama series on Crackle. Since 2022, Gathegi has played engineer and entrepreneur Dev Ayesa in the Apple TV+ original science fiction space drama series For All Mankind. He is set to play the role of Mister Terrific in James Gunn's film Superman (2025).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Edi Gathegi, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Benoît Poelvoorde
Biography
Benoît Poelvoorde is a Belgian actor, comedian, and filmmaker, born on September 22, 1964, in Namur, Belgium. He first gained recognition with the cult film C'est arrivé près de chez vous (1992), a darkly comedic mockumentary where he played a serial killer with unsettling charm. This film launched his career and established his unique blend of humor and intensity.
Throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, Poelvoorde became a staple of Franco-Belgian cinema, starring in comedies like Les Randonneurs (1997), Le Vélo de Ghislain Lambert (2001), and Podium (2004), where he portrayed an obsessive Claude François impersonator—a role that earned him a César nomination. His versatility allowed him to transition into more dramatic roles, such as Entre ses mains (2005) and Coco avant Chanel (2009), where he starred alongside Audrey Tautou.
In recent years, Poelvoorde has continued to balance absurdist comedy (Au poste !, Fumer fait tousser) with auteur-driven projects (Le Tout Nouveau Testament, Saint-Amour). His ability to oscillate between slapstick humor and introspective performances makes him one of the most distinctive actors in European cinema
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Alexander Korda
Biography
Sir Alexander Korda (/ˈkɔːrdə/; born Sándor László Kellner, 16 September 1893 – 23 January 1956) was a British film producer and director and screenwriter, who founded his own film production studios and film distribution company.
Born in Hungary, where he began his career, he worked briefly in the Austrian and German film industries during the era of silent films, before being based in Hollywood from 1926 to 1930 for the first of his two brief periods there (the other was during World War II). The change led to the divorce from his first wife, the Hungarian film actress María Corda, who could not make the transition because of her strong accent.
From 1930, Korda was active in the British film industry, and soon became one of the leading figures in the industry. He was the founder of London Films and, post-war, the owner of British Lion Films, a film distribution company. Korda was the first filmmaker to have been officially knighted.
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Gregory Apps
Biography
Gregory Richard "Greg" Apps is an Australian film casting consultant and actor. He cast Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Eric Bana, Sam Worthington, and Hugo Weaving in the roles that brought them to wide public recognition.
Apps was born in 1955, and from 1967 until 1973 he attended Newington College. In the 1970s, Apps began his working life as an actor. He appeared in the films The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Mad Dog Morgan, and Sunday Too Far Away and on stage in the original Melbourne/Adelaide production of The Rocky Horror Show. In 1982 he first started casting at the ABC Melbourne. He has since cast TV commercials, TV series, and over 70 feature films. For seven years he was on the board of the Australian Film Institute, and he is the current president of the Casting Guild of Australia. Apps is married to Australian actress and casting director Robyn Gibbes.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Gregory Apps, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Robert J. Ulrich
Biography
Robert J. Ulrich is an American casting director and producer active since the 1980s and best known for casting television shows including Glee, The Boys, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica, CSI, Diagnosis: Murder and Matlock. He has also cast most Ryan Murphy productions since Popular in 1999. He has been nominated for eight Emmy Awards, winning a Primetime Emmy Award for casting Glee. He has been nominated for the Artios Awards 22 times and won twice, for casting Glee and Nip/Tuck.
Robert J. Ulrich began his career as a stage actor, but realized he would not be successful. He moved into casting and says he learned more about acting his first time behind the table than in his previous career.
Known for casting musical television series, Ulrich told The Hollywood Reporter that "it's so much more fun when you're doing a musical, because people are singing and your day's suddenly better". He developed this musical casting process for the show Rhapsody, which did not get greenlit. Initially, he would have auditionees sing a cappella or with a backing track, but insisted on bringing a live pianist for the callbacks, saying in 2020 that "great singers are better with a piano and less trained singers are much better with a piano". He has also said that having live piano sets actors at ease. The pianist he found for the Rhapsody callbacks was Brad Ellis, whom he would use for subsequent musical auditions as well as integrating into shows like Glee. Ulrich's musical casting process has not changed since Rhapsody, and he encourages actors to showcase themselves. He has also opined that for television, he considers acting ability above singing and that actors from the stage "should bring it down for the screen".Sometimes for auditions later in a show a pianist will not be used.
Ulrich became involved with Glee through his business partner Eric Dawson, who had worked with creator Ryan Murphy on multiple occasions; Dawson suggested Ulrich should be involved due to his musical background.While working on the show he helped develop the reality series The Glee Project, which he described as an extension of the comedy-musical's casting process. In 2021, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Ulrich does not find musical casting challenging, as he has many connections with triple threat performers; for Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist he cast several actors he had seen for prior auditions, including Jane Levy, who had previously auditioned for him for The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again, and Michael Thomas Grant and Alex Newell who had been contestants on The Glee Project.
He is affiliated with professional guilds The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Casting Society of America, the Producers Guild of America, and Teamsters Local 399.
He was also a producer of Billy Boy, a 2017 film written by and starring Glee performers Melissa Benoist and Blake Jenner
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Lorelei Moxon
Biography
Lorelei Moxon is a filmmaker, composer, and musician based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She won the Kzoo 48 Film Festival in 2024 with her sci-fi short film "Motherboard Loves You". From terrorizing her family in fourth grade with her recorder practicing, to playing flute and piccolo in symphony orchestras, to scoring her peers' short films, she has always had a passion for music. Growing up, she was obsessed with the magic of movies, and always wanted to be 'in' on the secret of how they were made. After falling in love with surrealist and cowboy films in high school, Lorelei decided to investigate this persistent mystery.
Now, as she pursues a Bachelor's in Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan, Lorelei combines her extensive musical knowledge, her infatuation with film, and her endless supply of determination to explore themes of deep friendship, surreal horror, and the absurd.
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Jean-Michel Larqué
Biography
Jean-Michel Larqué (born 8 September 1947) is a French former professional footballer, and now a sports journalist. He has also been player-coach of RC Paris, his only experience as head-coach.
Larqué was born in Bizanos, Pyrénées-Atlantiques. As a player, Larqué played as a midfielder, and was one of the most important players for AS Saint-Étienne in the 1960s and 70s where he won all his titles. He finished his playing career in Paris with Paris Saint-Germain and RC Paris. He holds the joint–record for most Ligue 1 titles won (seven), along with his Saint-Étienne teammate Hervé Revelli, as well as Thiago Silva and Marco Verratti of Paris Saint–Germain, and Grégory Coupet, Juninho, and Sidney Govou of Lyon.
After having retired as a player, he became a football journalist: redactor for Onze Mondial magazine, but also on the radio Radio Monte Carlo with his programme, Larqué foot and on TV where he is a commentator. Between 1980 and 1984 he commented football matches on Antenne 2 and between 1985 and 2005 on TF1 with Thierry Roland. With the departure of Thierry Roland for M6, TF1 chose Thierry Gilardi (died on 25 March 2008) of Canal+ to comment with Larqué. His style is notable for his constant repetition of the same phrase. In 1983, he also created training schools for young footballers from 7 to 19 where came Florent Malouda, Bruno Cheyrou, Benoït Cheyrou and Fabrice Fernandes.
Source: Article "Jean-Michel Larqué" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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