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Robert Castel

Biography

Robert Castel (in Arabic: روبرت كاستل), whose real name is Robert Adolphe Moyal, is an actor, musician and comedian, born on May 21, 1933 in Algiers in the Bab El-Oued district, Algeria. Robert Castel began as a musician, tar player, then guitarist, accompanying his father, composer violinist, and singer of light French-Arab songs. Young actor in the troupe of the Regional Center of Dramatic Art of Algiers, Robert Castel plays the role of Robert Le Bègue in the theatrical improvisation show on the life of the pieds-noirs, La Famille Hernandez, which is created by Geneviève Baïlac on September 17, 1957 in Paris. Having cut his teeth in music hall, Robert Castel began his film career at the age of 24 in Les Amants De Demain by Marcel Blistène, then in Un témoin dans la ville by Édouard Molinaro. In 1962, Robert Castel left the newly independent Algeria and settled in Paris with Lucette Sahuquet (who died in 1987), whom he married. The couple inaugurated their sketches as a duo that year, notably at the Olympia where they opened for Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich and Philippe Clay. In the 1970s, the comedian, lively and provocative, did a lot of television sketches with his favorite partner and Enrico Macias. For the big screen, this dark-haired comedian, with a clear forehead, who speaks with his hands, abandoned his favorite register. Having become the figure of "pied-noir humor" in France, he played alongside Edith Piaf in Les Amants de demain by Marcel Blistène, Pierre Richard in Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire by Yves Robert, and Isabelle Huppert in Dupont Lajoie by Yves Boisset. In 1982, he made a notable appearance in Algerian cinema by playing in Hassan taxi, directed by Mohamed Slim Riad, alongside Rouiched (Ahmed Ayad), Ouardia Hamitouche and Sidali Kouiret. He appeared in more than thirty films in total, until the early 2000s. Robert Castel kept a low profile for a few years before returning to the stage, this time in a musical, in 2007 thanks to the El-Gusto project. This project, which seeks to bring together Algerian, Jewish and Muslim musicians who were part of Hadj M'hamed El Anka's Algiers Chaâbi orchestra in the early 1950s, resulted in a documentary film that won international awards, the recording of an album and an international tour that took a troupe of 42 musicians to countries such as France, Morocco, Tunisia, Switzerland, Belgium, the United States and the Netherlands. In 2008, Robert Castel signed his autobiography, Je pose 75 [son âge], mais je retaîtres tout. He returned to the stage in 2013 to present his last one-man show, "Nostalgérie". He died on December 5, 2020 in Paris, at the age of 87.
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Yoko Shimada

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Kumamoto City-born Shimada Yoko is best known in the west as Mariko from the 1980 mini-series Shogun. The lady-in-waiting role created an interest in Japan and its culture overseas and introduced Japanese history to foreign audiences. She won the Golden Globe For Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama category and was nominated for a Prime-time Emmy Award for her work on the serial in 1981. Shimada, who spoke some English for the serial, had been acting for years prior to Shogun however. She began learning ballet since age three and wanted to become a ballerina until her high high school days. Her family had moved to Tokyo when she was eight. She obtained an agent and began acting while in junior high school. The TV serial Zoku Hyouten made her famous beginning 1970. She released a nude photo book, called Kir Royal, in 1992. She was 39 and the photo book became a bestseller shifting half a million copies. At 57 she starred in an 'AV' pornography video called Mikkai in 2011. This was a tribute to her body even at that age. Shimada has a reservation for a space burial.
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Adrian Edmondson

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Adrian Edmondson was born in Bradford, Yorkshire. He went to Manchester University to study drama. Whilst he was there he met Rik Mayall, and the pair began performing as 20th Century Coyote. The act continued after university when Adrian & Rik moved to London, and they became two of the leading lights in the new 'alternative comedy' scene, performing at the newly established Comedy Store, and setting up their own club, The Comic Strip, with 'Peter Richardson', Nigel Planer, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, and Alexei Sayle. This spawned two 1980s TV series: The Young Ones (1982), and The Comic Strip Presents... (1982) In the 1990's Ade & Rik continued their partnership with a new series called Bottom (1991), which ran for three seasons and became a major success on the live circuit. It was basically a live sitcom, liberally sprinkled with slapstick humour, and the pair did 5 long tours between 1993 and 2003. Simultaneously, Adrian established himself as an actor, doing two improvised TV films under the Screen One and Screen Two umbrella, with director Les Blair: Screen Two: Honest, Decent and True (1986), and Screen One: News Hounds (1990) (winner of the BAFTA for best single drama). He was a regular in the hospital drama Holby City (1999) from 2005 - 2008. He took the lead in a drama documentary about the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster in the series Surviving Disaster (2006), and appeared as Henry Austen in the TV movie Miss Austen Regrets (2008), the film Blood (2012), and the drama series Prey (2014). But his most notable dramatic role to date is that of Count Rostov in the BBC series War & Peace (2016).
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Pasqualino De Santis

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Pasquale "Pasqualino" De Santis (24 April 1927 – 23 June 1996) was an Italian cinematographer. Born in Fondi, he was the brother of film director Giuseppe De Santis. They worked together in Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi, Uomini e lupi (1956), La strada lunga un anno (1958) and La garçonnière (1960). He collaborated with Francesco Rosi in C'era una volta (1967), Uomini contro (1970), Il caso Mattei (1972), Lucky Luciano (1974), Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1979), Tre fratelli (1981), Carmen (1984), Cronaca di una morte annunciata (1987), Diario napoletano (1992) and La tregua (1996), filmed in Ukraine, where he died. He worked with Luchino Visconti (La caduta degli dei, 1969; Death in Venice, 1971; Conversation Piece, 1974; L'Innocente, 1976), Federico Fellini (Fellini: A Director's Notebook, 1969), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (The Honey Pot, 1966), Vittorio De Sica (Amanti, 1968), Joseph Losey (The Assassination of Trotsky, 1972), Carlo Lizzani (Torino nera, 1972), Robert Bresson (Lancelot du Lac, 1974; Le diable probablement, 1977; L'Argent, 1982), Ettore Scola (A Special Day, 1977; La terrazza, 1980), Giuliano Montaldo (Marco Polo, 1982). Description above from the Wikipedia article Pasqualino De Santis, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Vicellous Shannon

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Vicellous Reon Shannon is a native of Memphis, Tennessee. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Lesra Martin in the 1999 film The Hurricane, and Keith Palmer, the son of presidential candidate David Palmer in the Fox television series 24. Vicellous also played in the 2006 film Annapolis. Raised in Orange County, California, Shannon was a promising high school baseball player until being sidelined by a severely injured hamstring. He took an interest in acting and began taking the two-hour bus ride to Laguna Hills where he studied acting with R.J. Adams at The Actors Workshop, performing chores at the facility in lieu of tuition. His breakthrough role came a few years later in the television series Dangerous Minds.
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Ed Sheeran

Biography

Edward Christopher Sheeran, MBE (/ˈʃɪərən/; born 17 February 1991) is an English singer, songwriter, guitarist, record producer, and actor. He attended the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford as an undergraduate from the age of 18 in 2009. In early 2011, Sheeran independently released the extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project. After signing with Asylum Records, his debut album, + (pronounced "plus"), was released in September 2011. It topped the UK and Australian charts, reached number five in the US, and has since been certified eight-times platinum in the UK. The album contains the single "The A Team", which earned him the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 2012, Sheeran won the Brit Awards for Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act. "The A Team" was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, where he performed the song with Elton John. His second studio album, x (pronounced "multiply"), was released in June 2014. It peaked at number one in the UK and the US, and was named the second-best-selling album worldwide of 2015. In 2015, x won the Brit Award for Album of the Year, and he received the Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. His single from x, "Thinking Out Loud", earned him two Grammy Awards at the 2016 ceremony: Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance. Sheeran's third album, ÷ (pronounced "divide"), was released in March 2017. The album debuted at number one in the UK, the US and other major markets, and was the best-selling album worldwide of 2017. The first two singles from the album, "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill", were released in January 2017 and broke records in a number of countries, including the UK, Australia and Germany, by debuting in the top two positions of the charts. He also became the first artist to have two songs debut in the US top 10 in the same week. By March 2017, Sheeran had accumulated ten top 10 singles from ÷ on the UK Singles Chart, breaking the record for most top 10 UK singles from one album. His fourth single from ÷, "Perfect", reached number one in the US, Australia and the UK, where it became the Christmas number one in 2017. Released in 2019, his fourth studio album, No.6 Collaborations Project, debuted atop the UK and US charts. Sheeran has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling music artists. Two of his albums are in the list of the best-selling albums in UK chart history: x at number 20, and ÷ at number 34. Beginning in March 2017, his ÷ Tour became the highest-grossing of all time in August 2019. An alumnus of the National Youth Theatre in London, as an actor Sheeran has portrayed a recurring role on The Bastard Executioner, and in 2019, he appeared in the Richard Curtis/Danny Boyle film Yesterday.
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Ekiem Barbier

Biography

Born in Toulouse in 1993, Ekiem Barbier is a writer, filmmaker, and musician. In 2012, he directed and composed the music for several fiction and animated short films. He then entered the Montpellier School of Fine Arts. In 2015, he joined the In Extremis collective, with which he contributed to several exhibitions. He obtained his Higher Diploma in Fine Arts (DNSEP) in 2017. That same year, he began taking an interest in documentary filmmaking and directed Anent, shot in the Ecuadorian Amazon, as well as Marlowe Drive, in collaboration with Guilhem Causse and Quentin L’helgoualc’h. He continues his research with a particular focus on a sensitive dimension of anthropology and experimentation, through a poetic and digital gaze. Ekiem currently lives and works in Marseille.
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Peter Archer

Biography

Peter Archer (1943-2000) was an Australian entrepreneur, martial arts champion, and actor. He was best known for his role as Parsons in the 1973 martial arts film Enter the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee. Archer was born in Queensland, Australia, in 1943. He grew up on a farm and developed a down-to-earth personality. He was also a skilled athlete and martial artist, holding black belts in both Goju-ryu and Shotokan karate. In the early 1970s, Archer moved to Hong Kong to pursue a career in acting. He landed his first major role in Enter the Dragon, in which he played a sadistic karate student who is defeated by Lee. Archer's performance was well-received, and he went on to appear in several other martial arts films, including Bruce Lee and Kung Fu Mania (1992) and Bruce Lee: The Intercepting Fist (1999). In addition to his acting career, Archer was also a successful businessman. He started a company called Jackel Australia, which marketed and distributed baby products and dye products. Archer died of cancer in Sydney, Australia, in 2000. He was 56 years old.
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S. P. Muthuraman

Biography

SP. Muthuraman is an Indian film director who works in the Tamil film industry. He has directed nearly 75 films in Tamil. He was one of the most successful commercial directors in Tamil cinema. Initially he worked mainly with Sivaji Ganesan, Jaishankar and Kamal Haasan. In the late 1970s, his association with Rajinikanth proved to be extremely successful, as they went on work together in 25 films. Muthuraman was mainly responsible for moulding Rajini's career and turning him into a commercial star. He has received two South Filmfare Awards and a Best Director award from the Tamil Nadu State Government. He was also the associate producer of the Rajinikanth starrer Sivaji.
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Turgay Tanülkü

Biography

1953 Uşak'ta doğdu, Ankara devlet konservatuvarı tiyatro yüksek bölümünden 1976'da mezun oldu. Aynı yıl Ankara Devlet Tiyatrosu'nda göreve başladı. 1970-71 döneminde Leningrad'da Tiyatro akademisi'nin drama kurslarına katıldı ve Psikojimnastik eğitimi aldı. Turgay Tanülkü körler okulu, Çocuk islahevleri ve Türkiye'de 8 Bölge Cezaevinde Tiyatro grupları kurdu. Halen kurduğu gruplarla çalışmalarını sürdürüyor. Tanülkü 1987-89 yılları arasında Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Sahne ve Görüntü Sanatları Tiyatro Anasanat Dalı Oyunculuk bölümü]]'nde Rol ve Sahne dersleri verdi. Sanatçı 1984'te Konya'da Uluslararası Reji ödülü aldı. Ankara Yarı Açık Cezaevi Oyuncuları'nın oynadığı Yasalar ve İnsanlar, Misafir adlı oyunlarla Almanya Yeşiller Partisi barış ödülünü Reji dalında, 1988-89 döneminde aldı. Ayrıca meslek hayatı boyunca birçok Sinema, Televizyon ve Seslendirme çalışmalarıda yapmıştır. Halen Devlet Tiyatroları Sanatçı kadrosunda yer almaktadır.
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