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Jerry Gray
Biography
Jerry Grey is a retired American professional wrestler who gained prominence in promotions like Mid South Wrestling, Florida Championship Wrestling, and Jim Crockett Promotions. He became known for defeating figures like Ric Flair. In 1984, he won his first regional title and teamed up with Tom Prichard to capture the Northwest Tag Team Championships. He later worked in Memphis as "Mega Maharishi" and returned to Florida to win the tag team titles with Bob Cook. After Florida Championship Wrestling closed, he became a wrestling promoter in the southeastern U.S.
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Ron Killings
Biography
Ronnie Aaron Killings is an American professional wrestler and rapper, best known by his ring name, R-Truth, who is currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Since working for the company, he has been a United States Champion, WWE Tag Team Champion, 24/7 Champion, and a Hardcore Champion (under the ring name K-Kwik). Killings has also worked for Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling, where he became the first African-American NWA World Heavyweight Champion. In addition to that, Ron's been an NWA World Tag Team Champion and a TNA World Tag Team Champion.
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Sammi Davis
Biography
Sammi Davis (born Samantha Davis; 21 June 1964) is a British actress.
She gained considerable praise for her performance in Ken Russell's The Rainbow (1989). She also had significant roles in Mike Hodges' A Prayer For The Dying and John Boorman's Hope and Glory (both 1987) as well as a leading role in the Emmy Award-winning American television series, Homefront (1991–1993).
Davis was married to the director Kurt Voss, whom she later divorced. After taking a few years out of the film industry to raise her family, she returned to the screen in a cameo role on Lost, playing the mother of Dominic Monaghan's character.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sammi Davis, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Madonna
Biography
Madonna (born Madonna Louise Ciccone; August 16, 1958) is an American recording artist, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983. She followed it with a series of albums in which she found immense popularity by pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos, which became a fixture on MTV. Throughout her career, many of her songs have hit number one on the record charts, including "Like a Virgin", "Papa Don't Preach", "Like a Prayer", "Vogue", "Frozen", "Music", "Hung Up", and "4 Minutes". Critics have praised Madonna for her diverse musical productions while at the same time serving as a lightning rod for religious controversy.
Her career was further enhanced by film appearances that began in 1979, despite mixed commentary. She won critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her role in Evita (1996), but has received harsh feedback for other film roles. Madonna's other ventures include being a fashion designer, children's book author, film director and producer. She has been acclaimed as a businesswoman, and in 2007, she signed an unprecedented US $120 million contract with Live Nation.
Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the world's top-selling female recording artist of all time by the Guinness World Records. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female artist in the United States, behind Barbra Streisand, with 64 million certified albums. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Madonna at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of the Billboard chart. She was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year. Considered to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" by Time for being an influential figure in contemporary music, Madonna is known for continuously reinventing both her music and image, and for retaining a standard of autonomy within the recording industry.
On May 4, 2024, with a free concert which was live streamed at the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in front of 1.6 million people, Madonna broke the record for the most attended stand-alone concert by any artist, and the all-time highest attended concert by a female artist.
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Mae Whitman
Biography
Mae Margaret Whitman (born June 9, 1988) is an American actress and singer. She began acting in commercials as a child, making her film debut at the age of six in the romantic drama When a Man Loves a Woman (1994). She achieved recognition as a child actress for her supporting roles in One Fine Day (1996), Independence Day (1996), Hope Floats (1998), and her television roles on Chicago Hope (1996–1999), JAG (1998–2001) and State of Grace (2001-2002).
Whitman gained mainstream attention for her recurring role as Ann Veal on the Fox sitcom Arrested Development (2004–2006, 2013), as Amber Holt on the NBC drama series Parenthood (2010–2015), and as Annie Marks on the NBC crime comedy Good Girls (2018–2021). For her work on Parenthood, she was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Whitman ventured into mature film roles with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), and made her leading role film debut in The DUFF (2015), for which she received critical praise and a Teen Choice Award nomination.
Whitman established herself as a prominent voice actor in children's film and television for her voice performances as Little Suzy in Johnny Bravo (1997–2004), Shanti in The Jungle Book 2 (2003), Katara in the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–2008), Rose/Huntsgirl on American Dragon: Jake Long (2005–2007), Tinker Bell in eponymous films, Wonder Girl / Cassie Sandsmark in Young Justice (2012–2022), April O'Neil in the 2012 incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Amity Blight in The Owl House (2020–2023).
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Jerry Sadowitz
Biography
Jerry Sadowitz is an American-born Scottish stand-up comedian and magician.
Notorious for his controversial brand of pitch black comedy, Sadowitz has said that audiences going to see a comedian should suspend their beliefs. He has influenced a generation of comedians, but states that "politically incorrect comedy: it's me, and it's been ripped off by loads and loads of comics". In 2007, he was voted the 15th-greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups. In the 2010 list, he was voted the 33rd-greatest stand-up comic.
Sadowitz is also widely acclaimed as one of the best close-up magicians in the world and an accomplished practitioner of sleight of hand, having written several books on magic and invented several conjuring innovations.
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Maria Carta
Biography
Maria Carta (24 June 1934 – 22 September 1994) was a Sardinian folk music singer-songwriter. She also performed in film and theatre. In 1975 she wrote a book of poetry, Canto rituale (Ritual Song).
Throughout her 25-year career she covered the richly diverse genres of traditional music of her native Sardinia (Cantu a chiterra, ninne nanne—children's lullabies, gosos, Gregorian chants, and more), often updating them with a modern and personal touch. She succeeded in bringing Sardinian folk music into wider popular awareness in demonstrations at a national level in Italy (like the Canzonissima in 1974) as well as internationally (especially in France and the United States).
Maria Carta won the Miss Sardinia beauty contest in 1957 and later participated in the national Miss Italy competition.
Around 1960, she moved to Rome where she met the screenwriter Salvatore Laurani whom she later married. She attended the Centro Nazionale di Studi di Musica Popolare, directed by Diego Carpitella, at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia and at the same time she pursued a musical and ethnographic research path with important productions and collaborations.
In 1971, she made two albums: Sardegna canta and Paradiso in re, and in the meantime she attended the ethnomusicologist Gavino Gabriel. The same year RAI broadcast the television documentary Incontro con Maria Carta (photography by Franco Pinna and texts by Velia Magno), in which she sang and recited with Riccardo Cucciolla.
In 1972, she played at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in the Medea by Franco Enriquez. The same year she met Amália Rodrigues, with whom she held a concert at the Teatro Sistina. In 1973, the two artists made a tour in Sardinia.
In 1974, she participated in Canzonissima, interpreting the traditional Sardinian Ave Maria Deus ti salvet Maria. She reached the final and was ranked second in the group of folk music with the song Amore disisperadu. In 1975, she held an important concert at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. In 1976, she served as Communal Councilwoman for the Italian Communist Party, in the city council of Rome and remained in office until 1981.
In 1980, she participated in the Festival d'Avignon; in 1987 she performed in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City; and in 1988 in St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco.
She caught the attention of such directors as Francis Ford Coppola – who gave her the first of two of her widely-seen film roles as the mother of Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974) – and Franco Zeffirelli, who cast her as Martha, the sister of Lazarus, in Jesus of Nazareth (1977).
In 1985, she was awarded, as songwriter, the Targo Tenco for dialectal/regional music.
In the last years of her life, Carta gave her time to the University of Bologna where she conducted a series of classes and advised student theses on which she had relevant personal, human experience and scholarly background.
In 1991, the President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, named her a "Commendatore della Repubblica" ("Knight of the Republic"), similar to the British CBE.
Source: Article "Maria Carta" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Jasmine
Biography
Jasmine (born Sara Lvovna Manakhimova, Semendueva in her first marriage, in the second - Shor (born in the city of Derbent, Dagestan ASSR, USSR) - Russian singer, actress, TV presenter, fashion model and designer; Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (2014), Honored Artist of Dagestan ( 2009). Laureate and owner of 9 Golden Gramophone awards; 1 MTV Russia Music Awards ("Best Performer of 2005"); 17 Song of the Year awards. Since the start of her musical career, Jasmine has released 10 studio albums. Since October 26, 2022 for interference in the internal affairs of Moldova under the sanctions of the United States of America.
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Paul Grimault
Biography
Paul Grimault (23 March 1905 – 29 March 1994) was one of the most important French animators. He made many traditionally animated films that were delicate in style, satirical, and lyrical in nature.
His most important work is Le Roi et l'oiseau, which ultimately took over 30 years to produce. He began it as La Bergère et le Ramoneur (The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep) in 1948 and it was highly anticipated, but Grimault's partner André Sarrut showed the film unfinished in 1952, against Grimault's wishes. This caused a rift between partners and a stop in production. In 1967, Grimault got possession of the film and subsequently was able to complete it in 1980 under a new title, Le Roi et l'oiseau, incorporating some footage from the original and re-hiring the original animators, together with some new, younger ones. There are many names for it in English that have been used in various releases, including: The King and the Bird (literal), The King and the Mockingbird, The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird and The King and Mr. Bird (1980).
He also collected his best shorts in a retrospective compilation movie, La table tournante (1988), which is included in the deluxe edition of Le Roi et l'oiseau.
In 1936 Grimault founded, with André Sarrut, Les Gémeaux, which was the second significant French animation venture, following the work of Émile Cohl, which had closed years earlier. During World War II, Americans films being unavailable, its films found a captive audience. The studio produced a number of shorts, then closed its doors in 1952 following the expense of making La Bergère et le Ramoneur, which was the first feature-length French animated movie.
Grimault was part of the agitprop group Groupe Octobre. At this group he met Jacques Prévert, with whom he went on to collaborate on several animated films, most notably Le roi et l'oiseau.
Source: Article "Paul Grimault" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Marcy Swenson
Biography
As an executive coach working with growth-stage CEOs and tech leaders, a startup founder with multiple exits, and a managing partner at a seed-stage investment fund, Marcy has deep knowledge of the entrepreneur’s journey from multiple perspectives.
Following a successful career co-founding three tech companies over 20 years, Marcy became one of the first executive coaches working specifically with startup founders, contributing to effective leadership and growth at companies such as Lyft, Reddit, Twilio, and Pivotal Labs.
Marcy is also faculty at 7pathsforward.com, training and mentoring senior coaches worldwide to be more effective with their own clients.
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