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Djimon Hounsou
Biography
Djimon Gaston Hounsou (born April 24, 1964) is a Beninese-American actor and model. He began his career appearing in music videos, made his film debut in Without You I'm Nothing and earned widespread recognition for his role as Cinqué in the Steven Spielberg film Amistad. As an actor, Hounsou has been nominated for two Academy Awards.
Hounsou became a naturalized American citizen in 2007. He was reluctant to renounce his Beninese citizenship and therefore opted to become a dual citizen of both Benin and the United States, effectively rendering him a Beninese-American.
Djimon Hounsou was born in Cotonou, Benin, in 1964, to lbertine and Pierre Hounsou. He immigrated to Lyon in France at the age of thirteen with his brother, Edmond. In 1987, he became a model and established a career in Paris. He moved to the U.S. in 1990. One year before obtaining his college degree, he dropped out of school.
In 1989, he appeared in a music video of Straight Up by Paula Abdul. Hounsou's film debut was in the 1990 Sandra Bernhard film Without You I’m Nothing, and he has had television roles on Beverly Hills, 90210 and ER and a guest starring role on Alias, but received a larger role in the science fiction film Stargate. His first on-screen appearance was in the 1990 Janet Jackson video “Love Will Never Do (Without You).” He also starred in a 2002 Gap commercial directed by Peter Lindbergh, dancing to a rendition of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom" by Arrested Development's Baba Oje.
He received wide critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award nomination for his role as Cinqué in the 1997 Steven Spielberg film Amistad. He gained further notice as Juba, in the 2000 film Gladiator. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for In America, in 2004, becoming the fourth African male to be nominated for an Oscar (along with Basil Rathbone, Cecil Kellaway and Omar Sharif). In 2006, he won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Blood Diamond; he received Broadcast Film Critics Association, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Academy Award nominations for this performance.
In 2007, Hounsou began dating model/CEO of Baby Phat, Kimora Lee Simmons. In 2008 Hounsou and Simmons visited Hounsou's family and while there, the two participated in a traditional commitment ceremony. On May 30, 2009, Simmons gave birth to their son, Kenzo Lee Hounsou, reportedly named because Kenzo means 3 (Kimora's third child).
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Herbert von Karajan
Biography
Herbert von Karajan (born Heribert Ritter[a] von Karajan; 5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years. During the Nazi era, he debuted at the Salzburg Festival, with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and during the Second World War he conducted at the Berlin State Opera. Generally regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he was a controversial but dominant figure in European classical music from the mid-1950s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate, he was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records.
The Karajans were of Macedonian Greek ancestry. Herbert's great-great-grandfather, Georg Karajan (Geórgios Karajánnis, Greek: Γεώργιος Καραγιάννης), was born in Kozani, in the Ottoman province of Rumelia (now in Greece), leaving for Vienna in 1767, and eventually Chemnitz, Electorate of Saxony.
His last name, like several other Ottoman-era ones, contains the Turkish language prefix "kara", which means "black".
He and his brother participated in the establishment of Saxony's cloth industry, and both were ennobled for their services by Frederick Augustus III on 1 June 1792, thus adding the prefix "von" to the family name. This usage disappeared with the abolition of Austrian nobility after World War I. The surname Karajánnis became Karajan. Although traditional biographers ascribed a Slovak and Serbian or simply a Slavic origin to his mother, Karajan's family from the maternal side, through his grandfather who was born in the village of Mojstrana, Duchy of Carniola (today in Slovenia), was Slovene. Aromanian heritage has also been claimed. Through the Slovene line, Karajan was related to the Slovenian-Austrian composer Hugo Wolf. He also seems to have known some Slovene.
Heribert Ritter von Karajan was born in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary, the second son of senior consultant Ernst von Karajan (1868–1951) and Marta (née Martha Kosmač; 1881–1954) (married 1905). He was a child prodigy at the piano. From 1916 to 1926, he studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Franz Ledwinka (piano), Franz Zauer (harmony), and Bernhard Paumgartner (composition and chamber music). He was encouraged to concentrate on conducting by Paumgartner, who detected his exceptional promise in that regard. In 1926 Karajan graduated from the conservatory and continued his studies at the Vienna Academy, studying piano with Josef Hofmann (a teacher with the same name as the pianist) and conducting with Alexander Wunderer and Franz Schalk.
Karajan made his debut as a conductor in Salzburg on 22 January 1929. The performance got the attention of the general manager of the Stadttheater in Ulm and led to Karajan's first appointment as assistant Kapellmeister of the theater. His senior colleague in Ulm was Otto Schulmann. After Schulmann was forced to leave Germany in 1933 with the NSDAP takeover, Karajan was promoted to first Kapellmeister. ...
Source: Article "Herbert von Karajan" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Becca Scott
Biography
Becca Scott is an actor, improviser, host, twitch streamer, and YouTuber. She is best known for generally being an internet nerd, a host for Geek & Sundry on shows like How to Play, Game the Game, and TBD RPG, and as a correspondent for Magic: The Gathering, Games Workshop, Dell Alienware, and more. She also voiced Sophie Gray in South Park. Becca is a co-owner of the YouTube channel GoodTimeSociety, where you'll find her as the is the Keeper for the Call of Cthulhu Live Play RPG Show The Calyx, co-hosting the podcast To Boldly Watch, and talking board games on How to Game, Gameplay'd, and Good Lookin' Kickstarters. She likes puppy dogs, fine scotch, supporting social justice, and getting shredded, bro.
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Tony Carreon
Biography
Tony Carreon ( born June 30, 1926) was a prolific Filipino actor, born Juan Antonio Saiz Carrion on, in Manila, Philippines. His distinct appearance, reflecting his mixed Filipino heritage, often led to his casting in "mestizo" roles within the diverse landscape of Filipino cinema. Carreon built an extensive filmography throughout his career, showcasing his versatility across numerous productions. He is perhaps most widely recognized for his role as Mr. Carrion in the 1993 martial arts film "Angelfist." His career spanned many decades and he appeared in over 60 films. Some of his more well known roles were in the films "José Rizal" (1998), a historical drama, and "Sarah... ang munting prinsesa" (1995), a family film. He also appeared in the television series "A Dangerous Life." Standing at 1.83 meters, Tony Carreon contributed significantly to Filipino cinema, portraying diverse characters and leaving a lasting mark on the industry. He passed away on May 27, 2003, in the Philippines.
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Carole Bouquet
Biography
Carole Bouquet (born 18 August 1957) is a French actress and fashion model, who has appeared in more than 40 films since 1977. Bouquet was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
She is best known internationally for her role as the Bond girl Melina Havelock in the 1981 movie For Your Eyes Only, but she also acted in a number of mainstream European films throughout the 1980s and continues to do so in France.
She is also recognized for her work in Luis Buñuel's surrealist classic That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), and in the internationally successful film Too Beautiful For You (1989), for which she won the César Award for Best Actress. Also she received a César Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Rive droite, rive gauche (1984).
Bouquet was a model for Chanel in the 1980s-1990s. She is the widow of producer Jean-Pierre Rassam with whom she had a son, Dimitri Rassam. From 1997 to 2005, she dated actor Gérard Depardieu, with whom she had worked several times. Bouquet was engaged to him from 2003 to 2005. In 1999 she was also a member of the jury of the 4th Shanghai International Film Festival
Description above from the Wikipedia article Carole Bouquet, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Ketti Gallian
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ketti Gallian (25 December 1912 – December 1972) was a French actress.
Gallian was born in Nice. She went to Paris at the age of 15 and secured work as a model. She later went back to Nice and appeared in a number of foreign films made by Paramount.
Her performance in The Ace in which she played opposite Raymond Massey on the London stage resulted in a screen contract from Fox. However, she never managed to make a big success of acting in America, and returned to France. She died, aged 59, in Paris.
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André Bormanis
Biography
Andre Bormanis (born February 13, 1959) is an American television producer, screenwriter, and author of the book Star Trek: Science Logs. Bormanis is most notable for his involvement in the long-running Star Trek franchise and was the science consultant on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise. He also wrote several episodes of the Star Trek: Voyager series, became a writer and producer on the Enterprise series and acted as a science/technical advisor on two Next Generation films.
He was also a writer and producer of the CBS science fiction drama Threshold, the CBS drama series Eleventh Hour, a writer for Tron: Uprising, and the director of scientific research for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. In 2017, Bormanis became a science consultant and a writer-producer on The Orville.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Andre Bormanis, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Snuff Garrett
Biography
Snuff Garrett or Tommy Garrett, was an American record producer whose most famous work was during the 1960s and 1970s. At seventeen, Garrett was a disc jockey in Lubbock, Texas, where he met Buddy Holly. In 1959, Garrett became a staff producer at Liberty Records in Hollywood at the age of 19, after having joined the label to work in the promotions department. Although not a musician, Garrett showed he had a knack for finding hit songs, going on to produce a string of hits and becoming the label's head of A&R until he left Liberty in 1966.
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Orazio Orlando
Biography
Orazio Orlando (14 June 1933 – 18 December 1990) was an Italian film, stage and television actor.
He is best remembered for his film roles in Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) and Property Is No Longer a Theft (1973), Pupi Avati's Help Me Dream (1981) and Alberto Bevilacqua's Woman of Wonders, or La donna delle meraviglie (original title) (1985).
At 57 years old, he died of a heart attack on the Teatro Flaiano stage in Rome during the rehearsal of the play Ad Eva aggiungi Eva.
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Robert Badinter
Biography
Robert Badinter (born 30 March 1928) is a French lawyer, politician and author who enacted the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981, while serving as Minister of Justice under François Mitterrand. He has also served in high-level appointed positions with national and international bodies working for justice and the rule of law.
Robert Badinter was born 30 March 1928 in Paris to Simon Badinter and Charlotte Rosenberg. His Bessarabian Jewish family had immigrated to France in 1921 to escape pogroms. During World War II, after the Nazi occupation of Paris, his family sought refuge in Lyon. His father was captured in the 1943 Rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup and deported with other Jews to the Sobibor extermination camp, where he died shortly thereafter.
Badinter graduated in law from Paris Law Faculty of the University of Paris. He then went to the United States to continue his studies at Columbia University in New York City where he got his MA. He continued his studies again at the Sorbonne until 1954. In 1965, Badinter was appointed as a professor at University of Sorbonne. He continued as an Emeritus professor until 1996.
Badinter started his career in Paris in 1951, as a lawyer in a joint work with Henri Torrès. In 1965, along with Jean-Denis Bredin, he founded the law firm Badinter, Bredin et partenaires, (now Bredin Prat) where he practiced law until 1981.
Badinter's activism against the death penalty began after Roger Bontems's execution on 28 November 1972. Along with Claude Buffet, Bontems had taken a prison guard and a nurse hostage during the 1971 revolt in Clairvaux Prison. While the police were storming the building, Buffet slit the hostages' throats. Badinter served as defense counsel for Bontems. Although it was established during the trial that Buffet alone was the murderer, the jury sentenced both men to death. Badinter was outraged by unfair impositions of the death penalty and, after witnessing the executions, further dedicated himself to the abolition of the death penalty.
In this context, he agreed to defend Patrick Henry. In January 1976, 8-year-old Philipe Bertrand was kidnapped. Henry was soon picked up as a suspect, but released because of a lack of proof. He gave interviews on television, saying that those who kidnapped and killed children deserved death. A few days later, he was again arrested, and shown Bertrand's corpse hidden in a blanket under his bed. Badinter and Robert Bocquillon defended Henry, making the case not about Henry's guilt, but against applying the death penalty. Henry was sentenced to life imprisonment and paroled in 2001. ...
Source: Article "Robert Badinter" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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