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Fritz Kortner

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Fritz Kortner (12 May 1892 – 22 July 1970) was an Austrian-born stage and film actor and theatre director. Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn. He studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After graduating, he joined Max Reinhardt in Berlin in 1911 and then Leopold Jessner in 1916. Also in that year he made his first appearance in a silent film. He became one of Germany's best known character actors. His speciality was playing sinister and threatening roles, though he also appeared in the title role of 1930's Dreyfus. With the coming to power of the Nazis, Kortner, being Jewish, chose to flee Germany in 1933. He emigrated to the United States, where he found work as a character actor and theatre director for a time before returning to Germany in 1949. Upon his return, he became noted for his innovative staging and direction, particularly of classics such as his Richard III (1964) in which the king crawls over piles of corpses at the end. Kortner died in Munich. Description above from the Wikipedia article Fritz Kortner, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Nick Dudman

Biography

Nick Dudman and his team created the makeup effects and the magical animatronic creatures ( and the CG scanning models ) in all of the Harry Potter films, garnering BAFTA nominations for the first four in the series, and also for the seventh. The final installment, “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows-Part 2” earned him an Oscar nomination for best makeup as well as another BAFTA nomination. In 2006 Nick Dudman was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2007 he was presented with the Canadian Genie Award for Special Achievement in Makeup for Beowulf and Grendel. Dudman got his start in films working on the Jedi master Yoda, as a trainee to British makeup artist Stuart Freeborn, on the second in the Star Wars series – The Empire Strikes Back. After apprenticing with Freeborn for four years on films such as Superman II and Top Secret!, Dudman was asked to head up the English makeup prosthetics shop for Ridley Scott’s Legend, applying Tim Curry’s “Darkness” makeup amongst others. Subsequently, he has worked on Mona Lisa, High Spirits, Willow, Interview With the Vampire, Batman (creating Jack Nicholson’s Joker) and Judge Dredd among many others. In 1995, his career path widened into animatronics and large scale creature effects when he was asked to oversee the creature department for the Luc Besson film The Fifth Element, for which he won a BAFTA for best Visual Effects. Since then he has supervised the creatures / makeup effects departments on a series of blockbusters including Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. Having completed the ten-year challenge of the Harry Potter franchise, Nick is looking for yet more creative challenges and expanding his role to make most use of his unique experience. His latest work includes Paddington and all three seasons of Penny Dreadful, Showtime’s gothic horror series, which have garnered two BAFTA Craft award nominations for Best Makeup with a win for season one, three EMMY Nominations, one for each season, and two Hollywood Guild of Makeup Artists and Hairdressers nominations for Best Special Effects Makeup. He has also supervised the installation of creatures at The Making of Harry Potter Tour at Warner Bros Leavesden Studios. The Creature Shop section of the tour houses a permanent display of the work created by Nick and his teams over the entire Harry Potter series. His latest finished project is as the Makeup Effects Designer on Seasons One and Two of Legendary’s “Carnival Row”and as Makeup Effects Designer on Seasons One and Two of Sony’s “The Wheel of Time”. In 2013 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the Arts University, Bournemouth, and in 2022, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bolton. Nick Dudman is currently developing Julian May’s “The Saga of the Exiles” as a Television series.
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Sean Connery

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Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who 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 31 October 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sean Connery, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Wesley Snipes

Biography

Wesley Trent Snipes (born July 31, 1962) is an American actor, film producer, and martial artist. He has starred in numerous action-adventures, thrillers, and dramatic feature films and is well-known for his role as Blade in the Blade trilogy. Snipes formed a production company titled Amen-Ra Films in 1991 and a subsidiary, Black Dot Media, to develop projects for film and television. Snipes has been training in martial arts since age twelve, earning a high ranking 5th dan black belt in Shotokan Karate and 2nd dan black belt in Hapkido. He has also trained as a student of Capoeira under Mestre Jelon Vieira and in a number of other disciplines including various styles of kung fu. At age 23, Snipes was discovered by an agent while performing in a competition. He made his film debut in the 1986 Goldie Hawn vehicle Wildcats. Later that year, he appeared on the trendy 1980's TV show Miami Vice as a drug-dealing pimp in the episode 'Streetwise' (first aired December 5, 1986). In 1987, he appeared as Michael Jackson's nemesis in the Martin Scorsese-directed music video "Bad" (he is seen in only the long version of the video) and the feature film Streets of Gold. That same year, Snipes was also considered for the role of Geordi La Forge in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Snipes' performance in the music video "Bad" caught the eye of director Spike Lee. Snipes turned down a small role in Lee's Do the Right Thing for the larger part of Willie Mays Hayes in Major League, beginning a succession of box-office hits for Snipes. Lee would later cast Snipes as the jazz saxophonist Shadow Henderson in Mo' Better Blues and as the lead in the interracial romantic drama Jungle Fever. Another important role for Snipes was the powerful drug lord Nino Brown in New Jack City, which was written specifically for him by Barry Michael Cooper. Another film in which his character was involved in drugs was the somber movie Sugar Hill. Although Snipes is more known for his roles in action films like Passenger 57, Demolition Man (with Sylvester Stallone), Money Train, U.S. Marshals (a sequel of The Fugitive) and Rising Sun (with Sean Connery), he has also had success in comedies like White Men Can't Jump, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar where he played a drag queen together with Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo. Snipes has also been critically acclaimed for his roles in dramas like The Waterdance and Disappearing Acts. Snipes has been married twice; first, to April Snipes from 1985-1990 with whom he has a son, Jelani Asar Snipes, born in 1988. Jelani had a cameo role in Snipes' 1990 film Mo' Better Blues. In 2003, Snipes wed painter Nakyung 'Nikki' Park, who is the mother of his four youngest children: son Akhenaten Kihwa-T Snipes; daughter Iset Jua-T Snipes (born July 31, 2001); son Alaafia Jehu-T Snipes (born May 26, 2004); and son Alimayu Moa-T Snipes (born March 26, 2007). Snipes spends a lot of time in Park's home country of South Korea, which he calls his "second home."  
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Russell Metty

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Russell Metty, A.S.C. (September 20, 1906 – April 28, 1978) was an American cinematographer who won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color, for the 1960 film Spartacus. Metty's career began around 1925 as an assistant with Standard Film Laboratory, who was then was hired by Paramount Pictures working in the camera department. He left for RKO in 1929. He became a regular cameraman at Universal Studios, and was a regular collaborator with the German film director Douglas Sirk, making eleven films all together with Sirk.
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Walker Scobell

Biography

Born into a military family, Walker has lived all over from sunny California to the mountains of Colorado. Walker learned to love acting in elementary school drama class and through his wonderful experience in a middle school play. After a trip to California, he decided to pursue a career in acting and started working on his craft right then and there. Walker has always done everything he can to make people laugh and developed quite the imagination - going so far as to surprise everyone on a class trip by suddenly emerging in a full Spider-Man costume! A huge fan of superhero movies, his favorites include Deadpool and Avengers: Endgame. When he isn't performing, Walker takes great joy in some of the more extreme sports such as snowboarding, skateboarding, and parkour!
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Maria Pia Conte

Biography

Born Maria Pia Vaccarezza in Genoa, the daughter of a carpenter, Conte spent her youth in Sestri Levante before moving to Genoa to study classical ballet. After a few experiences as a child actress, she was first noted as a fotoromanzi model, then she decided to pursue an acting career and enrolled the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, graduating in 1962. Conte made her acting debut in 1961, in the Marco Bellocchio's short film La colpa e la pena, then she appeared in a number of films and TV-series, often in secondary roles, being sometimes credited as Mary P. Count. She was also occasionally active as a voice actress and a dubber. She retired in the late 1970s. She was married to actor Giuseppe Rinaldi (1919-2007) and is the mother of actress Francesca Rinaldi.
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Laurie Walters

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Walters was born in San Francisco, California, and was, by several years, the oldest of the eight actors playing the Bradford children, though her character, Joanie Bradford, was the third-oldest child in the family. Walters is six months older than Betty Buckley (born July 3, 1947), who played her character's stepmother. Walters' first screen role was as Sheila Grove in 1973's The Harrad Experiment. Walters made guest appearances on a number of other television series through the 1980s, such as Cheers and Highway to Heaven, as well as on two Eight Is Enough reunion specials, but she has not acted on television since 1993. Walters, as of 1999, lived in Los Angeles, where she worked as an environmentalist.[citation needed] More recently, she has acted in plays in the Southern California area and directed theater productions in Ojai, California, under her married name, Laurie Walters Slade. Walters was later in charge of film acquisitions for a subscription-based film service called Ironweed Films.
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Andrew Levitas

Biography

Levitas' feature film directorial debut Lullaby, from his own screenplay, stars Amy Adams, Richard Jenkins, Terrence Howard, Jennifer Hudson, and Garrett Hedlund. The film, an exploration of patients' rights, was described by Pete Hammond (Deadline) as a "strong human drama" with "Jenkins a true actor's actor, delivering a very Oscar-worthy supporting turn." Levitas' latest directing project Minamata follows photojournalist W. Eugene Smith who takes on a secret commission by Life magazine and travels to the Japanese coastal town of Minamata to expose corporate negligence and government cover-ups by documenting one of the world's most horrifying environmental disasters. Levitas has also produced The White Crow (Ralph Fiennes, Adele Exarchopoulos), My Zoe (Julie Delpy, Daniel Brühl, Gemma Arterton), Georgetown (Vanessa Redgrave, Annette Bening), Farming (Kate Beckinsale, Gugu Mbatha-Raw), The Gateway (Bruce Dern, Olivia Munn, Frank Grillo), and The Quarry (Michael Shannon) among others. Levitas maintains studios in New York and London. He is Global Patron of The Wilderness Foundation.
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Donna DeGregorio

Biography

Donna DeGregorio was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States to Iliana Orselli and Donald DeGregorio. The youngest of 4 girls. Donna is of Italian American descent. She is an Actress, Model, Host and has performed in numerous stage plays. Donna has appeared on HBO, Comedy Central, MTV, USA, TruTv and Bravo. She studied acting at Playhouse West under the instruction of Tony Savant. She previously studied improvisation and musical theatre at the Walnut Street Theatre in PA. Donna is a certified Personal Trainer/Health Coach which landed her a recurring role as Sparkle on Broad City-Comedy Central as a Personal Trainer. She has appeared on Season 2, 3 and 4.
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