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Willard Huyck

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Willard Huyck (born September 8, 1945) is an American screenwriter, director and producer, best known for his association with George Lucas. They met as students at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and along with others, they became members of a renowned group of amateur filmmakers called The Dirty Dozen. Along with his wife Gloria Katz, Huyck has created the screenplays of films including American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, as well as collaborating with George Lucas on the original Star Wars. He has directed four films, the last being the notorious Howard the Duck (1986). He still writes screenplays and scripts following Howard The Duck including Mothers, Daughters and Lovers, Radioland Murders and the upcoming Secrets of a Hollywood Nurse. His last name is pronounced "Hike." Description above from the Wikipedia article Willard Huyck, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Dustin Hoffman

Biography

Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters. Actor Robert De Niro described him as "an actor with the everyman's face who embodied the heartbreakingly human". At a young age Hoffman knew he wanted to study in the arts, and entered into the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music; later he decided to go into acting, for which he trained at the Pasadena Playhouse in Los Angeles. His first theatrical performance was 1961's A Cook for Mr. General as Ridzinski. During that time he appeared in several guest roles on television shows like Naked City and The Defenders. He then starred in the 1966 off-Broadway play Eh? where his performance garnered him both a Theatre World Award and Drama Desk Award. His breakthrough role was as Benjamin Braddock in Mike Nichols' critically acclaimed and iconic film The Graduate (1967), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. His next role was "Ratso" Rizzo in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), in which he acted alongside Jon Voight; they both received Oscar nominations, and the film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. He gained success in the 1970s playing roles that shaped the craft of his acting, crossing genres effortlessly in the western Little Big Man (1970), the prison drama Papillon (1973), playing a controversial and groundbreaking comedian in Bob Fosse's Lenny (1975), Marathon Man alongside Laurence Olivier (1976), and as Carl Bernstein investigating the Watergate scandal in All the President's Men (1976). In 1979, Hoffman starred in the family drama Kramer vs. Kramer alongside Meryl Streep. They both received Academy Awards for their performances. After a three-year break from films, Hoffman returned in Sydney Pollack's show business comedy Tootsie (1982) about a struggling actor who pretends to be a woman in order to get an acting role. He returned to stage acting with a 1984 performance as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and reprised the role a year later in a television film earning a Primetime Emmy Award. In 1987 he starred alongside Warren Beatty in Elaine May's comedy Ishtar. He won his second Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the autistic savant Ray Babbitt in the 1988 film Rain Man, co-starring Tom Cruise. In 1989, he was nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for playing Shylock in a stage performance of The Merchant of Venice. In the 1990s, he made appearances in such films as Warren Beatty's action comedy adaptation Dick Tracy (1990), Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991) as Captain Hook, medical disaster Outbreak (1995), legal crime drama Sleepers (1996), and the satirical black comedy Wag the Dog (1997) alongside Robert De Niro.
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Mira Nair

Biography

Mira Nair (born 15 October 1957) is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films. She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature, Salaam Bombay! (1988), won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Nair used the proceeds to establish an organisation for street children, called the Salaam Baalak Trust in India. She often works with longtime creative collaborator, screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, whom she met at Harvard. Nair has won a number of awards, including a National Film Award and various international film festival awards, and was a nominee at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTA Awards and Filmfare Awards. She was also awarded the India Abroad Person of the Year-2007, which was presented by Indra Nooyi, Chairperson and CEO, PepsiCo, Inc, and India Abroad Person of the Year-2006. Nair is married to political scientist Mahmood Mamdani. Their son, Zohran Mamdani, is, since 1 January 2026, Mayor of New York City. Description above from the Wikipedia article Mira Nair, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Eddie Redmayne

Biography

Edward John David Redmayne OBE (born 6 January 1982) is an English actor and model. He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a British Academy Film Award. He began his professional acting career in West End theatre before making his screen debut in 1996 with guest television appearances. His first films were Like Minds (2006), The Good Shepherd (2006) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). On the stage, Redmayne starred in the productions of Red from 2009 to 2010 and Richard II from 2011 to 2012. The former won him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Redmayne's film breakthrough came with the roles of Colin Clark in the biographical drama My Week with Marilyn (2011) and Marius Pontmercy in Tom Hooper's musical Les Misérables (2012). He garnered consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayals of physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014), and transgender artist Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl (2015), winning for the former. In 2016, he began starring as Newt Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts film series.
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Charlize Theron

Biography

Charlize Theron (/ʃɑːrˈliːz ˈθɛrən/ shar-LEEZTHERR-ən; Afrikaans: [ʃarˈlis ˈtrɔn]; born 7 August 1975) is a South African and American actress and producer. One of the world's highest-paid actresses, she is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. In 2016, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Theron came to international prominence in the 1990s by playing the leading lady in the Hollywood films The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999). She received critical acclaim for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003), for which she won the Silver Bear and Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first South African to win an acting Oscar. She received another Academy Award nomination for playing a sexually abused woman seeking justice in the drama North Country (2005). Theron has starred in several commercially successful action films, including The Italian Job (2003), Hancock (2008), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), Prometheus (2012), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), The Fate of the Furious (2017), Atomic Blonde (2017), The Old Guard (2020), F9 (2021), and Fast X (2023). She received praise for playing troubled women in Jason Reitman's comedy-dramas Young Adult (2011) and Tully (2018) and for portraying Megyn Kelly in the biographical drama Bombshell (2019), for which she received her third Academy Award nomination. Since the early 2000s, Theron has ventured into film production with her company Denver and Delilah Productions. She has produced numerous films, in many of which she had a starring role, including The Burning Plain (2008), Dark Places (2015), and Long Shot (2019). Theron became an American citizen in 2007, while retaining her South African citizenship. She has been honoured with a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Description above from the Wikipedia article Charlize Theron, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Faye Dunaway

Biography

Dorothy Faye Dunaway (born January 14, 1941) is a European-American actress. She is the recipient of such accolades as an Academy Award, three Golden Globes, and a British Academy Film Award. Her career began in the early 1960s on Broadway. She made her screen debut in the 1967 film The Happening, and rose to fame that same year with her portrayal of outlaw Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. Her most notable films include the crime caper The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the drama The Arrangement (1969), the revisionist western Little Big Man (1970), an adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic The Three Musketeers (1973), the neo-noir mystery Chinatown (1974), for which she earned her second Oscar nomination, the action-drama disaster The Towering Inferno (1974), the political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975), the satire Network (1976), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, and the thriller Eyes of Laura Mars (1978). Her career evolved to more mature and character roles in subsequent years, often in independent films, beginning with her controversial portrayal of Joan Crawford in the 1981 film Mommie Dearest. Other notable films in which she has appeared include Barfly (1987), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), Arizona Dream (1994), Don Juan DeMarco (1995), The Twilight of the Golds (1997), Gia (1998) and The Rules of Attraction (2002). Dunaway also performed on stage in several plays including A Man for All Seasons (1961–63), After the Fall (1964), Hogan's Goat (1965–67), A Streetcar Named Desire (1973) and was awarded the Sarah Siddons Award for her portrayal of opera singer Maria Callas in Master Class (1996). Description above from the Wikipedia article Faye Dunaway, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Fortunio Bonanova

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Fortunio Bonanova, pseudonym of Josep Lluís Moll, (13 January 1895 – 2 April 1969) was a Spanish baritone singer and a film, theater, and television actor. He occasionally worked as a producer and director. According to Lluis Fàbregas Cuixart, the pseudonym Fortunio Bonanova referred to his desire to seek fortune, and his love of the Bonanova neighborhood in his native Palma. As a young man, living under his birthname, he was a professional telegraph operator. He studied music with the Italian Giovachini. In 1921, he debuted as a singer in Tannhäuser, at the Teatre Principal in Palma. That year, along with a group of Majorcan intellectuals and Jorge Luis Borges (who was briefly living in Majorca with his parents and sister), he signed the Ultraist Manifesto, using the name Fortunio Bonanova. Also in 1921, he appeared in a silent film of Don Juan Tenorio by the brothers Baños, which was shown the following year in New York City and Hollywood. He later directed his own Don Juan in 1924. In 1927, he acted in Love of Sunya, directed by Albert Parker and starring Gloria Swanson. In 1932 he had small parts in Hollywood productions featuring Joan Bennett and Mary Astor. In the same period, he appeared in New York in several operas as well as the zarzuelas La Canción del Olvido ("The song of forgetting"), La Duquesa del Tabarín ("The Duchess of Tabarín"), Los Gavilanes, and La Montería. In 1934, he returned to Spain, where he had a major role in the film El Desaparecido ("The disappeared one") written and directed by Antonio Graciani. In 1935 he acted and sang in the film Poderoso Caballero ("A Big Guy"), directed by Màximo Nossik. In 1936, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he returned to the United States, where he played the role of Captain Bill in a film called Capitán Tormenta, directed by Jules Bernhardt. A sequence of increasingly larger acting and singing roles mostly in English-language films followed, especially after 1940. Among his roles were Signor Matiste, Susan Alexander Kane's opera coach in Citizen Kane (1941); General Sebastiano in Five Graves to Cairo (1943); Don Miguel in The Black Swan (1942); Fernando in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943); Sam Garlopis in Double Indemnity (1944); and a singing Christopher Columbus in Where Do We Go From Here?. He continued for the next several decades in a miscellany of character roles.
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Sangili Murugan

Biography

Sangili Murugan is a Tamil film actor, script writer and producer. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was an actor doing negative and supporting roles in Tamil films. He has also worked as production controller in a number of films. His birth name is Muthuvel Servai Murugan; the prefix "Sangili" was added to his name after the character he played in his first film Oru Kai Osai. He is the founder and owner of the production and distribution company, Murugan Cine Arts, and has produced over 12 films.
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Donnie Yen

Biography

Donnie Yen Chi-tan is a Hong Kong actor, filmmaker, martial artist, and action director. He is the recipient of various accolades, including three Golden Horse Awards and five Hong Kong Film Awards. He is best known for portraying Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man in the Ip Man film series, namely Ip Man (2008), Ip Man 2 (2010), Ip Man 3 (2015), and Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019). He also served as co-producer for the spin-off Master Z: Ip Man Legacy (2018). Born in Guangdong, Yen developed an interest in martial arts at a young age, and began experimenting with various styles, including tai chi and other traditional Chinese martial arts. At age 18, he auditioned for action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping in Hong Kong. He landed his first starring role in the 1984 Hong Kong martial arts action film Drunken Tai Chi. He made his breakthrough role as the antagonist General Nap-lan in Once Upon a Time in China II (1992), opposite Jet Li's character. He appeared in several other Hong Kong kung fu films, including Iron Monkey (1993) and Wing Chun (1994). In 1997, he starred in his directorial debut film Legend of the Wolf. Yen made his American debut in Highlander: Endgame (2000), followed by a cameo in Blade II (2002). He went on to appear in the American films Shanghai Knights (2003), Rogue One (2016), XXX: Return of Xander Cage (2017), Mulan (2020), and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023). He has continued to be active in Hong Kong cinema, appearing in the well-received films Hero (2002), SPL: Sha Po Lang (2005), 14 Blades (2010), Wu Xia (2011), Kung Fu Jungle (2014), Chasing the Dragon (2017), Enter the Fat Dragon (2020), Raging Fire (2021), and The Prosecutor (2024), among others. In television, Yen portrayed fictional character Chen Zhen in the television series Fist of Fury (1995); he reprised the role in the 2010 film Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen. For portraying Ip Man in the Ip Man film series (2008-2019), Yen is credited by many for contributing to the popularisation of Wing Chun in China. Alongside Kung fu, particularly Wing Chun, Yen is also known for incorporating mixed martial arts (MMA) elements into his action choreography. Aside from his acting, in 1997, he established his own production company, Bullet Films, which choreographed the action for Western blockbusters like Blade II (2002) and Stormbreaker (2006).
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Callum McDougall

Biography

​Callum McDougall is a British film producer and unit production manager. McDougall began his journey in the film industry in 1979 as a production runner on projects like Victor/Victoria and the Hammer House of Horror television series. He progressed to roles such as third assistant director on films including Curse of the Pink Panther, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, The Keep, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, and The Bride.  As a key second assistant director, McDougall worked on over twenty films and television series, notably Club Paradise, Gothic, The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill, Air America, The Witches, Jim Henson's The Storyteller, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Inspector Morse, and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, where he was later promoted to unit manager for two additional seasons.  In the 1990s, McDougall transitioned into production management. His credits as a unit production manager include GoldenEye, Fierce Creatures, 101 Dalmatians (live-action), Tomorrow Never Dies, and Alien Love Triangle. He also served as the executive in charge of production for DNA Films on Beautiful Creatures, Strictly Sinatra, and The Final Curtain.  McDougall's producing credits are extensive. He co-produced The Beach and Die Another Day, produced the comedy film The Parole Officer, and served as executive producer on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Wrath of the Titans, Skyfall, Spectre, Into the Woods, We Are Many, and Mary Poppins Returns.  His most acclaimed work was the 2019 World War I film 1917, which he produced. The film received critical acclaim and numerous awards, including two BAFTA Awards for Best Film and Outstanding British Film, the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture—Drama, the Producers Guild of America Award, and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), the Producers Guild of America (PGA), and the Directors Guild of America (DGA).
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