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Canada Lee
Biography
Canada Lee (born Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata; March 3, 1907 – May 9, 1952) was an American professional boxer and then an actor who pioneered roles for African Americans. After careers as a jockey, boxer and musician, he became an actor in the Federal Theatre Project, including the 1936 production of Macbeth adapted and directed by Orson Welles. A champion of civil rights in the 1930s and 1940s, Lee was blacklisted and died shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He advanced the African American tradition in theatre pioneered by such actors as Paul Robeson.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Canada Lee , licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Brion Gysin
Biography
Brion Gysin (19 January 1916 – 13 July 1986) was a British-Canadian painter, writer, sound poet, performance artist and inventor of experimental devices.
He is best known for his use of the cut-up technique, alongside his close friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs. With the engineer Ian Sommerville he also invented the Dreamachine, a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed. It was in painting and drawing, however, that Gysin devoted his greatest efforts, creating calligraphic works inspired by cursive Japanese "grass" script and Arabic script. Burroughs later stated that "Brion Gysin was the only man I ever respected."
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Lin Shaye
Biography
Lin Shaye (born October 12, 1943) is an American actress. In a career spanning over fifty years, Shaye has appeared in more than a hundred feature films. She is regarded as a scream queen due to her roles in various horror productions, which include the films Alone in the Dark (1982), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Critters (1986) and its sequel Critters 2: The Main Course (1988), Amityville: A New Generation (1993), Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), Dead End (2003), 2001 Maniacs (2005) and its sequel 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010), Ouija (2014) and its prequel Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Tales of Halloween (2015), Abattoir (2016), The Final Wish (2018), Room for Rent (2019), The Grudge (2019), Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman (2021), and the Insidious film series (2010–2026).
Shaye is also well known for her comedic roles in numerous films by the Farrelly brothers, including Dumb and Dumber (1994), Kingpin (1996), There's Something About Mary (1998), Detroit Rock City (1999), Me, Myself & Irene (2000), Stuck on You (2003), and The Three Stooges (2012).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Lin Shaye, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Gene Washington
Biography
Born January 14, 1947, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Gene Alden Washington was raised in California and attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, where he excelled as a multi-talented quarterback. He led the team to a league championship in 1964, earned Back of the Year honors, and was selected to the All-City team while also playing forward on the school's championship basketball team. In 1965, Washington was elected the fifty-year-old school's first black student body president, becoming an academic and athletic leader who was rated the number-one football recruit coming out of high school in Southern California.
Washington played three years of varsity football at Stanford University from 1966 to 1968, where he was one of only twenty-five black students in a population of 10,000. He became Stanford's first black quarterback, playing that position as a sophomore before moving to running back as a junior and wide receiver as a senior. As a senior in 1968, Washington led the Pacific Eight Conference with seventy-one receptions, 1,117 receiving yards, and eight touchdowns while earning All-American honors. He set Stanford career records for receptions with 122 and receiving yards with 1,785.
The San Francisco 49ers selected Washington with the sixteenth overall pick in the 1969 NFL Draft. Strengths included exceptional speed that made him a devastating deep threat, remarkable big-play ability evidenced by his career 17.8 yards-per-catch average, consistent touchdown production, and intelligent route-running that maximized his athletic gifts.
Washington's spectacular 1970 season saw him catch fifty-three passes for a league-leading 1,100 yards—averaging nearly twenty-one yards per reception—with twelve receiving touchdowns. He earned first-team All-Pro honors and his second consecutive Pro Bowl selection, helping the 49ers to a 10-3-1 record and their first playoff appearance in over a decade. In 1972, Washington again led the NFL with twelve touchdown receptions while averaging twenty yards per catch on forty-six receptions. During 1974, despite the 49ers starting four different quarterbacks, Washington led the league with a remarkable 21.2 yards-per-reception average.
Washington finished his career with 385 receptions for 6,856 yards and sixty touchdowns across ten NFL seasons. When he left the 49ers in 1977, he was the franchise's all-time leader in receiving yards, receptions, and touchdowns. He earned four Pro Bowl selections from 1969 to 1972 and three first-team All-Pro honors. Washington appeared in several films and television shows including: Black Gunn (1972), The Black Six (1974), Airport 1975 (1974), Lady Cocoa (1975), and episodes of Banacek (1972) and The Mod Squad (1972). He served as the NFL's director of football operations from 1994 to 2009.
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Morjana Alaoui
Biography
Morjana Alaoui (born November 30, 1982) is a Moroccan actress. She starred in Marock, Pascal Laugier's horror film Martyrs, and Rock the Casbah.
Alaoui spent her early life in the Anfa neighborhood of Casablanca, Morocco, and studied at the Casablanca American School. At 18, Alaoui moved to Paris, France, where she studied at the American University of Paris. While attending the university, she met director Laila Marrakchi, who offered her a role in the film Marock (2005). Marock was critically acclaimed and provided Alaoui national fame. In 2007, she began filming Martyrs, for which she is also known. In 2016 Alaoui starred in psychological thriller Broken directed by Shaun Robert Smith.
Source: Article "Morjana Alaoui" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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M. G. Chakrapani
Biography
Marudur Gopala Chakrapani (13 January 1911 – 17 August 1986), commonly known as M. G. Chakrapani or Ettan ("elder brother" in Malayalam), was an Indian actor based in the Tamil film industry. He was the elder brother of actor-politician M. G. Ramachandran.
Chakrapani was born in Vadavannur, Kingdom of Cochin (now Kerala), on 13 January 1911. His parents, Gopala Menon and Sathyabhama, named him Neelakantan, but was soon changed to Chakrapani because of his father's religious beliefs. Soon after his birth, the family migrated to Ceylon where Chakrapani's two younger siblings (brother M. G. Ramachandran and a sister) were born. His father, Gopala Menon, worked as a magistrate in Kandy, until he suffered an early death. Chakrapani's sister also died while they were in Ceylon.
Sathyabhama took her sons to Kumbakonam, India to be close to her brother. Chakrapani studied at Yanaiadi School, but left after the seventh grade. His mother then enrolled him and Ramachandran in the Madurai Original Boys Company (MOBC), a professional Tamil theatre company, where Ramachandran found success, but Chakrapani did not.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He 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, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Adiz Rajabov
Biography
Adiz Rajabov (born January 6, 1984, in Bukhara, Uzbekistan SSR) is an Uzbek film and theater actor known for his versatile performances in Uzbek cinema and television.
After completing high school, Rajabov entered the Tashkent State Institute of Theater and Art, graduating in 2005. Since that year, he has been a member of the acting troupe of Uzbekfilm, one of Uzbekistan’s most important film studios. He also became a theater actor at the Diydor Theater in 2016.
Rajabov began gaining recognition through his early film roles, including his first leading performance in Nahotki sen (Could It Be You). He rose to wider popularity after appearing in Sohib Abbosxon’s romantic drama Sen meni sevasanmi (Do You Love Me?) in 2006. In 2007, he delivered a memorable performance as a villain in Bo‘rilar (Wolves), a role that brought him significant attention from audiences.
He continued to establish himself as one of Uzbekistan’s recognizable actors with roles in films such as Super Kelinchak (2008), where he played Sardor, Geolog (2014), Sarvqomat Dilbarim (2018), a Kyrgyz-Uzbek co-production that received international recognition, and the Japanese-Uzbek production To the Ends of the Earth (2019). He also appeared in the historical film Muqimiy (2020).
With more than 35 film and television roles throughout his career, Adiz Rajabov has become known for his ability to portray a wide range of characters, from dramatic heroes to complex antagonists. His dedication to both cinema and theater has made him an important figure in modern Uzbek entertainment.
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Larry Grayson
Biography
Larry Grayson (born William Sulley White; 31 August 1923 – 7 January 1995) was an English comedian and television presenter. He hosted the BBC's Saturday-night peak-time TV game show The Generation Game in the late 1970s and early 1980s, employing his high-camp, English music hall humour.
His camp stand-up act consisted primarily of anecdotes about a cast of imaginary friends including Everard, Apricot Lil, Slack Alice and Pop-it-in Pete the Postman. A museum in his home town Nuneaton documents his life and work, and a memorial has been established.
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Annie Fratellini
Biography
Annie Violette Fratellini (14 November 1932 – 1 July 1997) was a French circus artist, singer, film actress and clown.
She was born Annie Violette Fratellini on 14 November 1932, in Algiers, French Algeria, where her parents, who were circus performers, were touring. She was the fourth generation of one of Europe's most illustrious clown dynasties, the Fratellini Family, a French circus family of Italian descent. Her father was Victor Fratellini, a clown and acrobat; her mother, Suzanne (née Rousseau), was the daughter of Gaston Rousseau, the director of the Cirque de Paris, a huge circus building located Avenue de la Motte-Picquet in Paris that was active from 1906 to 1930. Her grandfather was Paul Fratellini, one of the Fratellini brothers, the legendary clown trio that was the Toast of Paris (and Europe) between the two world wars.
Although she made her debut in the ring at age 13 at the famous Cirque Medrano in Paris, she eventually ran away from the circus when she was 18 years old, and begun a music-hall and recording career as a musician and singer. She also became a film actress, appearing notably in 1965 in La Métamorphose des cloportes a film directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre (1927–2007), whom she had married in 1954. They had one daughter, Valérie.
In 1969, she starred in Pierre Étaix's Le grand amour. They fell in love and married that same year. Pierre Étaix (1928–2016), who had been a comedian and Jacques Tati's assistant before becoming a filmmaker himself, had a passion for the circus and clowns. Annie Fratellini had an inherited talent for comedy, and Pierre Étaix convinced her to take it seriously. Together, they created a classic European clown duo in which Étaix was the Clown to Fratllini's Auguste (the comic character of the duet). They made their debut on tour with the French Cirque Pinder.
In 1975, Étaix and Fratellini opened the École Nationale du Cirque, one of Paris's (and Europe's) first two professional circus schools, and created the Nouveau Cirque de Paris, an intimate, high-end traveling circus that was the performing arm of the school, and in which they regularly performed their act. Pierre Étaix and Annie Fratellini divorced in 1987, and Annie continued to run the school and the circus, performing her clown act with her daughter, Valérie. The school has become the Académie Fratellini, one of France's two major state-sponsored circus schools.
Annie Fratellini died from cancer on 1 July 1997, at Neuilly-sur-Seine and is buried at the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, France, near the other members of her illustrious family.
Source: Article "Annie Fratellini" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
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