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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 31 October 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sean Connery, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Lawrence Foster

Biography

Lawrence Foster (born October 23, 1941) is an American conductor of Romanian ancestry. He is currently the artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and the music director of the Marseille Opera and the Orchestre philharmonique de Marseille. Foster was born in Los Angeles, California, to Romanian parents. His father died when Foster was three years old. He was later adopted by his father-in-law which is why the last name is not traditionally Romanian. Foster studied conducting with German conductor Fritz Zweig and piano with Joanna Grauden, both in Los Angeles. His other teachers and mentors have included Karl Böhm, Bruno Walter, and Franz Waxman. Foster became the conductor of the San Francisco Ballet at the age of 18, and served as assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. He was awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood in 1966. In 1969 he was named chief guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. He has held music directorships with the Houston Symphony, the Ojai Music Festival, the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National Orchestra of Catalonia, among others. In 1990, Foster was appointed music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School. From 2002 to 2013, Foster was the music director of the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon, Portugal. He also served as music director of the Orchestre National de Montpellier and the Opéra National de Montpellier from 2009 to 2012. In February 2012, Foster was announced as the next music director of Opéra de Marseille and the Orchestre philharmonique de Marseille. As of 2019 Foster is the artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR). Foster is particularly noted as an interpreter of the works of George Enescu, and has made a comprehensive survey of commercial recordings of Enescu's music. He served as artistic director of the George Enescu Festival from 1998 to 2001. In 2003, Foster was decorated by the Romanian President for services to Romanian music. Foster has recorded a number of discs for Pentatone, including Gordon Getty's opera Usher House, Schumann's symphonies, orchestral works by Kodály, Bartók and Ligeti, and piano and violin concertos by Bruch, Korngold, Rachmaninoff, Grieg and Chopin, with various soloists. His recording of Enescu's Oedipe was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros in France. Source: Article "Lawrence Foster" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Daniel Baldwin

Biography

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Daniel Leroy Baldwin (born October 5, 1960) is an American actor, producer and director. He is the second oldest of the four Baldwin brothers, all of whom are actors. Daniel Baldwin is known for his role as Detective Beau Felton in the popular NBC TV series Homicide: Life on the Street. Other films of his include Ned Blessing: The True Story of My Life (1992), Mulholland Falls (1996), Vampires (1998), The Pandora Project (1998), Stealing Candy (2002), Paparazzi (2004), and Grey Gardens (2009). Description above from the Wikipedia article Daniel Baldwin, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Yuri Norstein

Biography

PAR Yuri Norstein (Russian: Ю́рий Бори́сович Норште́йн, Yuriy Borisovich Norshteyn; born 15 September 1941), is a Soviet and Russian animator best known for his animated shorts, Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales. Since 1981 he has been working on a feature film called The Overcoat, based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol of the same name. According to the Washington Post, "He is considered by many to be not just the best animator of his era, but the best of all time". Yuri Norstein was born to a Jewish family in the village of Andreyevka, Penza Oblast, during his parents' World War II evacuation. He grew up in the Maryina Roshcha suburb of Moscow. After studying at an art school, Norstein initially found work at a furniture factory. Then he finished a two-year animation course and found employment at studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1961. The first film that he participated in as an animator was Who Said "Meow"? (1962). After working as an animation artist in some fifty films, Norstein got the chance to direct his own. In 1968 he debuted with 25th October, the First Day, sharing directorial credit with Arkadiy Tyurin. The film used the artwork of 1920s-era Soviet artists Nathan Altman and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. The next film in which he had a major role was The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971), a co-production with Russian animation director Ivan Ivanov-Vano under whose direction Norstein had earlier worked on 1969's Times of the Year. Throughout the 1970s Norstein continued to work as an animator in many films, and also directed several. As the decade progressed his animation style became ever more sophisticated, looking less like flat cut-outs and more like smoothly-moving paintings or sophisticated pencil sketches. His most famous film is Tale of Tales, a non-linear, autobiographical film about growing up in the postwar Soviet world. Norstein uses a special technique in his animation, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three-dimensional look. The camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep (one every 25–30 cm). The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera (to give the effect of a character moving closer or further away). For many years he has collaborated with his wife, the artist Francheska Yarbusova, and the cinematographer Aleksandr Zhukovskiy. Source: Wikipedia
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Malcolm Young

Biography

Malcolm Mitchell Young (6 January 1953 – 18 November 2017) was an Australian musician and songwriter. He was best known as the co-founder, rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist, and songwriter of the rock band AC/DC. Except for a brief absence in 1988, he was with the band from its beginning in 1973 until retiring in 2014 due to health reasons. As a member of AC/DC, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. Though his younger brother Angus was the more visible of the brothers, Malcolm was described as the driving force and the leader of the band. In 2014, he stated that despite his retirement from the band, AC/DC was determined to continue making music with his blessing. As the rhythm guitarist, he was responsible for the broad sweep of the band's sound, developing many of their guitar riffs and co-writing the band's material with Angus. Young left AC/DC in mid-2014 to receive treatment for dementia. In September 2014, the band's management announced that he would be retiring permanently. He died from the effects of dementia on 18 November 2017.
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Ana Claudia Talancón

Biography

Born on May 1st, 1980 in Cancun, Mexico. Her first performance was in her home town Quintana Roo in Cancun. She studied acting in Cancun with the Cuban professor Albio Paz. She later went to Mexico City to continue her studies at the Acting Workshop of Héctor Mendoza and Raúl Quintanilla. She has starred in various soap operas such as 'Al norte del corazón', 'Señora','Romántica obsesión' (for which she won the Sol de Oro award in 1999 for Best New Actress) and 'Amor latino'. Her big screen debut was with the movie 'El Cometa by Marisa Sistach, playing the character Valentina, for which she was nominated for the Ariel award for Best New Actress. Now we see her alongside 'Gael García Bernard' in 'El Crimen del Padre Amaro' in the role of Amelia. That movie has brought her world-wide celebrity.
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Ju Jingyi

Biography

Ju Jingyi is a Chinese singer and actress. She rose to fame as a member of Chinese idol girl group SNH48 and was part of Team NII until her graduation in December 2017. As a member of SNH48, during the annual General Elections, she was elected as No.4 (2014), No.2 (2015), No.1 (2016) and No.1 (2017) among over 100 members. As an actress, she is known for her role in the popular historical romance drama "Legend of Yunxi"(2018) mythology drama remake "The Legend of White Snake" (2019), and "In A Class of Her Own" (2020). She has participated in TV shows "I Want To Live Like This" (2020), and "Young Periplous 2" (2020). Ju Jingyi studied at The Attached Middle School of Sichuan Conservatory of Music, majoring in violin, but dropped out to audition for SNH48. Ju has been referred to as a "once in 4000 years idol" by Chinese fans since 2014, however, due to a slight mistranslation, she has also been called a "once in 4000 years beauty" by the media, causing her to gain in popularity and criticism. (Wikipedia)
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Fei Zhenxiang

Biography

Chinese actor and director. Born in an aristocratic family in Liyuan. Graduated from Beijing Opera Art Vocational College. In 1991 Fei was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor at the 12th China Film Golden Rooster Award for his film "Heart Fragrance". In 1993 13-year Fei played Zhang Fengyi's childhood "Little Stone" in the movie "Farewell My Concubine". After following director Chen Kaige for many years, he has studied with director Guan Hu for many years, and gradually turned into director.
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Marco Armiliato

Biography

Marco Armiliato studied piano at the Paganini-Conservatoire in his hometown of Genova. In the 90s, he became intensely active in the big opera houses of the world. At the New York Met, he conducted Il trovatore, La Bohème, Stiffelio, Madama Butterfly, Sly, Aida, Turandot, La Fille du Ré­giment and Rigoletto, and at the San Francisco Opera La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, Turandot, La traviata, Tosca, Aida and Ca­valleria rusticana. At the Wiener Staatsoper, where he made his debut in 1996 with Andrea Chénier, he has conducted among others, Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Bohème, Carmen, Cavalleria rusticana, Don Carlo, L’elisir d’amore, Falstaff, La forza del de­stino, Lucia di Lammermoor, Manon, Manon Lescaut, Pagliacci, Simon Boccanegra, Stiffelio, Tosca, La traviata, Turandot and Werther. He received further engagements at the opera houses of Barcelona, Madrid, Zurich, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Turin, Rome, at the Deutsche Opera Berlin, the Bavarian State Opera, at the ROH Covent Garden, at the Théâtre du Châtelet and Opéra Bastille in Paris, at the Hamburg State Opera and Verona. He is also internationally successful as a concert conductor.
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Werner Segtrop

Biography

Werner Segtrop (17 Juli 1905 in Dortmund;  6 August 1961 in Ost-Berlin) war ein deutscher Schauspieler undSynchronsprecher. Werner Segtrop, geboren 1905 in Dortmund, war vor allem als Theaterschauspieler zwischen den 1930 er und 1950er Jahren aktiv. So spielte Segtrop unter anderem in Thomas Langhoffs Egmont-Inzsenierung den Buyck. Nach dem Krieg spielte er auch als Schauspieler regelmäßig in verschiedenen deutschen Kinoproduktionen mit, unter anderem in Peter Pewas Film Straßenbekanntschaft, in Gustav von Wangenheims Filmdrama Und wieder 48, 1949 in Die blauen Schwerter unter der Regie von Wolfgang Schleif, 1951 in Falk Harnacks Das Beil von Wandsbek oder 1956 in Martin Hellbergs Produktion Thomas Müntzer – Ein Film deutscher Geschichte. Darüber hinaus arbeitete Werner Segtrop auch gelegentlich als Synchronsprecher, so lieh er zum Beispiel seine Stimme Rex Ingram, der den Dschinn spielte, in dem Fantasy-Klassiker Der Dieb von Bagdad.
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