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Jason Statham
Biography
Jason Statham (/ˈsteɪθəm/ STAY-thəm; born 26 July 1967) is an English actor and producer. He is known for portraying tough, gritty, or violent characters in various action thriller films and has been credited for leading the resurgence of action films during the 2000s and 2010s. By 2017, his films had grossed over £1.1 billion ($1.5 billion), making him one of the industry's most bankable stars.
While working at local market stalls, Statham began practising Chinese martial arts, kickboxing, and karate recreationally in his youth. An avid footballer and diver, he was a member of Britain's national diving team and competed for England in the 1990 Commonwealth Games. Shortly after, he was asked to model for French Connection, Tommy Hilfiger, and Levi's in various advertising campaigns.
Statham's history of working at market stalls inspired his casting in the Guy Ritchie crime films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000). Both films were commercial hits, and they helped catapult Statham to stardom. He played supporting roles in the American action films Turn It Up (2000), Ghosts of Mars and The One (2001). From 2002 to 2008, he played the title role in the first three films in the Transporter film series (2002–2008), which solidified his status as an action star. In 2003, he appeared in the ensemble heist action film The Italian Job. He went on to play leading roles in the commercially successful films Crank (2006), The Bank Job (2008), The Mechanic (2011), Homefront (2013), Mechanic: Resurrection (2016), The Meg (2018), Wrath of Man (2021), Meg 2: The Trench (2023), and The Beekeeper (2024).
Statham has also starred as Lee Christmas in the ensemble action film series The Expendables (2010–2023) and as Deckard Shaw in the Fast & Furious franchise (2013–2023), including the spin-off Hobbs & Shaw (2019), which he co-produced. His voice acting work includes the documentaries Thai Boxing: A Fighting Chance (2002), Truth in 24 (2008) and its 2012 sequel, and the animated film Gnomeo & Juliet (2011).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Jason Statham, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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James Caan
Biography
James Edmund Caan (March 26, 1940 – July 6, 2022) was an American actor who was nominated for several awards, including four Golden Globes, an Emmy, and an Oscar. Caan was awarded a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1978.
After early roles in Howard Hawks's El Dorado (1966), Robert Altman's Countdown (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969), he came to prominence for playing his signature role of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather (1972), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. He reprised the role of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974) with a cameo appearance at the end.
Caan had significant roles in films such as Brian's Song (1971), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Gambler (1974), Rollerball (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and Alan J. Pakula's Comes a Horseman (1978). He had sporadically worked in film since the 1980s, with his notable performances including roles in Thief (1981), Gardens of Stone (1987), Misery (1990), Dick Tracy (1990), Bottle Rocket (1996), The Yards (2000), Dogville (2003), and Elf (2003).
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Nas
Biography
Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones (September 14, 1973), better known by his stage name Nas, is an American rapper and businessman. Rooted in East Coast hip hop, he is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time.
The son of jazz musician Olu Dara, Jones's musical career began in 1989 as he adopted the moniker of "Nasty Nas" and recorded demos for Large Professor. He was a featured artist on Main Source's "Live at the Barbeque" (1991), also produced by Large Professor. Nas's debut album Illmatic (1994) received universal acclaim upon release, and is considered to be one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time; in 2021, the album was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. His second album It Was Written (1996) debuted atop the Billboard 200 and charted for four consecutive weeks; the album, along with its single "If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)" (featuring Lauryn Hill), catapulted Nas into international success. Both released in 1999, Nas's albums I Am and Nastradamus were criticized as inconsistent and too commercially oriented, and critics and fans feared that his output was declining in quality.
From 2001 to 2005, Nas was involved in a highly publicized feud with Jay-Z, popularized by the diss track "Ether". It was this feud, along with Nas's albums Stillmatic (2001), God's Son (2002), and the double album Street's Disciple (2004), that helped restore his critical standing. After squashing the feud, Nas signed to Jay-Z's Def Jam Recordings in 2006 and went in a more provocative, politicized direction with the albums Hip Hop Is Dead (2006) and his untitled 9th studio album (2008). In 2010, Nas released Distant Relatives, a collaboration album with Damian Marley, donating all royalties to charities active in Africa. His 10th studio album, Life Is Good (2012), was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards. After receiving thirteen nominations, his 12th studio album, King's Disease (2020), won him his first Grammy for Best Rap Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards; he then followed it by releasing his 13th studio album, King's Disease II (2021), as the album's sequel. In the same year, his 14th studio album, Magic, was released on Christmas Eve.
In 2012, The Source ranked him second on their list of the "Top 50 Lyricists of All Time". In 2013, Nas was ranked 4th on MTV's "Hottest MCs in the Game" list. About.com ranked him first on their list of the "50 Greatest MCs of All Time" in 2014, and a year later, Nas was featured on the "10 Best Rappers of All Time" list by Billboard. He is also an entrepreneur through his own record label; he serves as associate publisher of Mass Appeal magazine and the co-founder of Mass Appeal Records. Nas has released fourteen studio albums since 1994, ten of which are certified gold, platinum or multi-platinum in the U.S.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Nas, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Alexandra Neldel
Biography
Alexandra Monika Neldel is a German actress, born February 11, 1976 in Berlin. She is known for playing the role of Lisa Plenske in the series Lisa's Destiny.
Born in 1976 in Berlin to Klaus-Eberhard Neldel, Alexandra Neldel graduated from the Realschule in Berlin-Steglitz.
She is doing an apprenticeship to be a dental assistant. She also works as a hostess.
In 1996, at the age of 20, she was spotted by an agent who asked her to audition for the television series The Rhythm of Life (Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten) and was accepted. From 1996 to 1999, she played the role of Katja Wettstein, where she appeared from episode 1072 until episode 1749.
In 1997, She posed for Playboy magazine.
But it was in 2005 that she really broke through as an actress, with the role of Lisa Plenske in the series Lisa's Destiny (Verliebt in Berlin). She had to get into the skin of her character using a wig, braces and glasses. She left the series at the end of the first season, with a three-hour wedding special. In the second season, Tim Sander played the main role, but the actress returned in mid-April 2007 to help the production, due to lack of audience. Then she leaves the series permanently.
She also made a few appearances in the cinema, notably in the film Autoroute racer, in 2004.
In 2006, she obtained one of the main roles in Zodiak, the German version of the French television soap opera Zodiaque. In 2008, she played in the police series Presumé Guilty, the role of a lawyer. For this role she received the Bavarian Television Prize.
In 2008, she played the lead role of Lena Berkow, a post-war woman in the 1950s in her brand new three-part TV film Die Rebellin.
From 2010 to 2013, Alexandra starred in a trilogical TV film: La Catin under the original name Die Wanderhure, La Châtelaine, (Die Rache der Wanderhure) and The Testament of the Whore, (Das Vermächtnis der Wanderhure) where she played Marie Shärer, medieval film with actor Bert Tischendorf.
In 2014, she played Verena Vermuth in the film The Forbidden Woman, based on a novel and true events. Alexandra plays alongside Mido Hamada (vo: Die Verbotene Frau).
In 2015 Alexandra starred in numerous TV films: Beauty and the Pilot, Beauty and the Boxer, Doctors Without Borders, as well as in the series Rosa wedding planeuse, where she organizes weddings.
In 2017, she starred in Allô pizza alongside actors Moritz Bleibtreu and Lucas Gregorovitz.
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Tommy Rettig
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Thomas Noel "Tommy" Rettig (December 10, 1941 – February 15, 1996) was an American child actor and computer software engineer and author. Rettig is best remembered for portraying the character "Jeff Miller" in the first three seasons of CBS's Lassie television series, from 1954–1957, later seen in syndicated re-runs as Jeff's Collie. He also co-starred with another former child actor, Tony Dow, in the mid-1960s television teen soap opera Never Too Young and recorded the song by that title with the group The TR-4.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Tommy Rettig, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Magalie Lépine-Blondeau
Biography
Magalie Lépine-Blondeau studied theater at Cégep de Saint-Laurent, then at The National Theater School of Canada. After she obtained her degree, she made many appearances on television, cinema, and theater. She dubs characters in hundreds of films and series. She also lends her voice to Tamara Hope.
In theater, she regularly works with the director Serge Denoncourt. Under his direction, she has notably acted as Madame de Tourvel in Les Liaisons dangereuses and Roxane in Cyrano de Bergerac. She also participated in the creation of Christine, la reine-garçon, by Michel Marc Bouchard. Since September 2015, she has hosted the show Partir autrement on TV5.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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P Balachandran
Biography
P. Balachandran was an Indian writer, playwright, scenarist, director, and actor. He's known for his work in Malayalam literature and Malayalam cinema. Balachandran was best known for the play Paavam Usman for which he won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and Kerala Professional Nataka Award in the year 1989.
He scripted many films including Ulladakkam (1991), Pavithram (1994), Agnidevan (1995), Punaradhivasam (2000), and Kammatti Paadam (2016). His directorial debut was Ivan Megharoopan (2012). He also acted in a few films, the most notable being Trivandrum Lodge (2012).
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Luke Pensabene
Biography
Luke Anthony Pensabene is an American film actor, film producer, cinematographer, and United States Marine Corps veteran. He appeared in the films Fletcher and Jenks (2016), The Phantom Hour (2016), and produced the films South of 8 (2016), Friend of the World (2020), and Hacksaw (2020). Pensabene is a recipient of The Vigil Honor and was nominated for acting at the GI Film Festival San Diego in 2017.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Luke Pensabene", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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George Kirby
Biography
George Kirby (June 8, 1923 – September 30, 1995) was an American comedian, singer, and actor from Chicago, Illinois.
Kirby broke into show business in the 1940s at the Club DeLisa, a South Side establishment that employed a variety-show format and preferred to hire local singers, dancers, and comedians. His first recording was as a stand-up blues singer, performing "Ice Man Blues" on a Tom Archia session done in 1947 for Aristocrat Records.
He was one of the first African-American comedians to begin to appeal to white as well as black audiences during the height of the Civil Rights era, appearing between 1966 and 1972 on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He was an excellent impressionist — targeting, somewhat scandalously for the time, many white actors such as John Wayne and Walter Brennan rather than solely black stars such as Bill Cosby and Pearl Bailey — and, for a man of his ample girth, an unexpectedly agile dancer. He also did vocal impressions of such singers as Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.
In 1970, he was allowed to produce a television special, The George Kirby Show, to gauge whether he could attract an audience for a weekly series. This led to his hosting a sketch comedy and variety show, Half the George Kirby Comedy Hour, which lasted for 22 episodes in 1972; it was also one of the actor-comedian Steve Martin's first credits in front of the camera. The series was in many ways an uneasy compromise between Kirby's natural gifts and what the public would accept of black actors at the time; a regular feature was a shaggy dog story segment entitled the "Funky Fable". He was also a regular in the British-produced ABC Comedy Hour series The Kopycats, alongside such other impressionists as Rich Little, Charlie Callas, Marilyn Michaels, and Frank Gorshin.
Following the demise of his show, Kirby's career declined, especially as audiences began to look for more cutting-edge comedy. He had been an occasional drug addict; now, to make up for lost income, he took to selling drugs. In 1977 he sold heroin to an undercover cop; he plea bargained to a ten year prison term and was released after 42 months. His career never again reached its former heights, but he did register featured guest appearances on Gimme a Break with Nell Carter, Crazy Like a Fox, and 227. He then took ill with what was later diagnosed as Parkinson's Disease. He was well-loved enough within the comedy community that friends and admirers formed the "Friends of George Kirby", which performed an all-star tribute to him in 1995 to help pay his mounting medical bills, only a few months before he died.
Description above from the Wikipedia article George Kirby, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Joanna Kerns
Biography
Joanna Crussie DeVarona Kerns is an American actress and director best known for her role as Maggie Seaver on the family situation comedy Growing Pains from 1985 to 1992.
After Growing Pains ended, she turned to directing. She directed one episode of Growing Pains while starring on the show and got hooked. She has also directed episodes of television shows including Dawson's Creek, Titans, Scrubs, Private Practice, Psych, Felicity, Grey's Anatomy, Privileged, ER, Ghost Whisperer, Army Wives, Pretty Little Liars, Switched at Birth, The Goldbergs, This Is Us, and Fuller House.
She has also made notable appearances in feature films, including A*P*E, Girl, Interrupted, and the 2007 comedy Knocked Up. She has also starred in a number of TV movies.
In 1974, Kerns met a commercial producer, Richard Kerns, on the set of a commercial, and they married two years later. Their marriage lasted nine years and the couple had a daughter, Ashley Cooper. In 1994, she married Marc Appleton, a prominent Los Angeles architect. In August 2019, she filed for divorce from Appleton.
She previously dated comedian and actor Freddie Prinze a short time before he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The two had worked together on the 1976 TV movie, The Million Dollar Rip-Off.
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