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William Sylvester
Biography
William Sylvester (January 31, 1922 – January 25, 1995) was an American TV and film actor. His most famous film credit was Dr. Heywood Floyd in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968). Born in Oakland, California and married at one time to the British actress Veronica Hurst, he moved to England after the Second World War and became a staple of British B films at a time when American and Canadian actors were much in demand in order to give indigenous films some appeal in the US.
As a result, he gained top billing in one of his very first films, House of Blackmail (1953), directed by the veteran filmmaker Maurice Elvey, for whom he also made What Every Woman Wants the following year. He also starred in such minor films as The Stranger Came Home (1954, for Hammer), Dublin Nightmare (1958), Offbeat (1960), Information Received (1961), Incident at Midnight, Ring of Spies and Blind Corner (all 1963). There were also lead roles in four British horror films: Gorgo (1960), Devil Doll (1963), Devils of Darkness (1964) and The Hand of Night (1966). Among his many TV credits were a 1959 BBC version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (playing Mark Antony), The Saint, The Baron, The High Chaparral, Harry O and The Six Million Dollar Man.
His later films included You Only Live Twice (1967) and, back in the USA after his prominent role for Kubrick, Busting (1973), The Hindenburg (1975) and Heaven Can Wait (1978). He died in Sacramento, California in 1995, aged 72.
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Rosanna DeSoto
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Rosanna DeSoto (born September 2, 1950) is a Mexican-American actress who has performed in films and television. She is best known for her role in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as Azetbur, the daughter of Klingon Chancellor Gorkon. Her other film roles include La Bamba (1987) as Ritchie Valens' mother Connie Valenzuela; Stand and Deliver (1988); and Family Business (1989) as the wife of Vito McMullen (Dustin Hoffman). DeSoto's first television role was in the series A.E.S. Hudson Street (1978) as Nurse Rosa Santiago. She starred in the short-lived series The Redd Foxx Show (1986). She has made guest appearances on many TV series, including Cannon, Kung Fu, Barnaby Jones, Barney Miller, Melrose Place, The Bold and the Beautiful and Law & Order. Description above from the Wikipedia article Rosanna DeSoto, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Brendon Walsh
Biography
Brendon Walsh established himself in comedy in Austin, TX where he won the “Funniest Person In Austin” contest and that same year he appeared on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” as his original “Scary Monster” character (a terrible monster stand up comedian). You've also seen Ol' BW do stand-up comedy on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend, NBC’s Last Comic Standing, CONAN, HBO's Funny As Hell, two episodes of John Oliver's New York Stand Up Show, Comedy Central's Half-Hour and The Late Late Show on CBS with guest host Drew Carey.
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Al Bridge
Biography
Al Bridge was an American character actor, a fixture both in Westerns and in the comedies of Preston Sturges.
Although frequently billed as Alan Bridge, he was born Alfred Morton Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1891 (not as Alford Bridge in 1890, as his tombstone erroneously states).
Following service as a corporal in the U.S. Army infantry in the first World War, Bridge joined a theatrical troupe. He dabbled in writing and in 1930 sold a script to a short film, Her Hired Husband (1930). He followed this with a B-Western script, God's Country and the Man (1931), in which he made his film debut as an actor.
For the next quarter century, he managed the atypical achievement of maintaining a career in both B-Westerns and in bigger dramatic and comedy features. Ten films for director Preston Sturges represent probably his most familiar contribution to Hollywood history. Bridge also appeared frequently on television until his death in 1957 at 66.
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Harold Pinter
Biography
Harold Pinter CH CBE (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others' works.
Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refusing national service as a conscientious objector. Subsequently, he continued training at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in repertory theatre in Ireland and England. In 1956 he married actress Vivien Merchant and had a son, Daniel, born in 1958. He left Merchant in 1975 and married author Lady Antonia Fraser in 1980.
Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His second play, The Birthday Party, closed after eight performances, but was enthusiastically reviewed by critic Harold Hobson. His early works were described by critics as "comedy of menace". Later plays such as No Man's Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as "memory plays". He appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film. He also undertook a number of roles in works by other writers. He directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. Pinter received over 50 awards, prizes, and other honours, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005 and the French Légion d'honneur in 2007.
Despite frail health after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in December 2001, Pinter continued to act on stage and screen, last performing the title role of Samuel Beckett's one-act monologue Krapp's Last Tape, for the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court Theatre, in October 2006. He died from liver cancer on 24 December 2008.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Harold Pinter, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Vivica A. Fox
Biography
Vivica A. Fox (born July 30, 1964) is an American actress and producer.
She began her career on Soul Train and played roles on the daytime television soap operas Days of Our Lives and Generations. In prime time, she starred opposite Patti LaBelle in the NBC sitcom Out All Night. Fox's breakthrough came in 1996, with roles in Independence Day and Set It Off.
Fox has starred in the films Booty Call, Soul Food, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, Kingdom Come, Two Can Play That Game, and Boat Trip. She had leading roles in the short-lived tv shows Getting Personal and City of Angels as well as Missing, for which she received an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series. Fox starred in the movie series The Wrong... for Lifetime and played Candace Mason on Empire.
Fox made her directorial debut with First Lady of BMF: The Tonesa Welch Story about the First Lady of the Black Mafia Family in Detroit.
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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 October 31, 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
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Chuck Knipp
Biography
Chuck Knipp (born 1961) is an American and Canadian (dual citizenship) drag queen and comedian best known for his alter egos, the characters 'Shirley Q. Liquor' and 'Betty Butterfield.' A number of videos of Knipp's Butterfield were featured on several different Youtube accounts until 2007 when most disappeared. In mid-2009 a number of videos were reuploaded to the site, many of them new. Many of them feature Butterfield relating her struggle to find a religion and/or church where she feels at home.
Knipp is a citizen of both the United States and Canada, active in the ACLU and Libertarian Party and was nominated as their candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. (Texas, District 2).
Entertainer RuPaul has long been a fan and supporter of Knipp. "Critics who think that Shirley Q. Liquor is offensive are idiots. Listen, I've been discriminated against by everybody in the world: gay people, black people, whatever. I know discrimination, I know racism, I know it very intimately. She's not racist, and if she were, she wouldn't be on my new CD." In her blog, RuPaul adds: "I am very sensitive to issues of racism, sexism and discrimination. I am a gay black man, who started my career as a professional transvestite in Georgia, twenty years ago."
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Cuba Gooding Jr.
Biography
Cuba Mark Gooding Jr. (born January 2, 1968) is an American actor. He is the recipient of an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Emmy nomination.
He was born in Bronx, New York to Shirley, a singer with the Sweethearts, and Cuba Gooding, Sr., a lead vocalist of soul group The Main Ingredient. He has two brothers, musician Tommy Gooding and fellow actor Omar Gooding, and sister, April Gooding. His family moved to Los Angeles after Gooding Sr.'s music group had a hit single with "Everybody Plays the Fool" in 1972 but abandoned his family two years later. Gooding Jr. was raised by his mother and attended four different high schools: North Hollywood High School, Tustin High School, Apple Valley High School, and John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills in Los Angeles. He served as class president in three of them.
His first job as a professional entertainer was as a break-dancer performing with singer Lionel Richie at the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. After high school, Gooding studied Japanese martial arts for three years, before turning his focus toward acting. Early on, he landed guest starring roles on shows like Hill Street Blues (1981) and MacGyver (1985).
His first major role was in the John Singleton's box office surprise and critical hit Boyz n the Hood (1991). He followed this success with roles in major films like A Few Good Men (1992), Lightning Jack (1994), Outbreak (1995), Men of Honor (2000), Rat Race (2001), and The Fighting Temptations (2003) in which he co-starred alongside Beyoncé Knowles.
In 1996, he was cast as an arrogant football player on the brink of a career-ending injury in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire (1996). The film was a success and earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. His "Show Me The Money" line in the film became a nationwide catchphrase. In 1997, he had a notable supporting role in As Good As It Gets (1997). The next several years, his films were inconsistently successful; Boat Trip (2002), Norbit (2007), and Daddy Day Camp (2007), all of which had received extremely negative reviews and performed poorly at the box office.
Gooding also starred in a film titled A Murder of Crows, which he co-produced with his long time friend and business partner Derek Broes. The film was Gooding's first attempt at producing. Since then, he has had series of starring roles in grittier films released direct-to-DVD such as the revenge dramas Hero Wanted and Wrong Turn at Tahoe, as well as the sci-fi action pic Hardwired and the action comedy Lies & Illusions.
A well-received performance as Ben Carson in Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (2009) and a small supporting role in Ridley Scott's American Gangster (2007) both proved to be exceptions to this trend. An appearance in the World War II film, Red Tails, produced by George Lucas and with other prominent actors such as Terrence Howard, will mark his only return to the big screen since American Gangster.
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William Chan
Biography
William Chan Wai-Ting (born 21 November 1985) is a Hong Kong singer, dancer and actor. In 2003, he participated in New Talent Singing Awards where he won several awards. He was then signed under Emperor Entertainment Group. He began his singing career by joining Cantopop group Sun Boy'z in 2006 and left the group in 2008 to pursue a solo career, releasing his debut solo album in the same year. Since then, he has released a total of 7 albums and 6 singles.
Since 2013, he gradually shifted his career focus to mainland China. He is known for his roles in television series Swords of Legends (2014), The Mystic Nine (2016), Lost Love in Times (2017), Age of Legends (2018) and Novoland: Pearl Eclipse (2021).
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