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Laura Benanti

Biography

Laura Benanti (born July 15, 1979) is an American actress and singer. Over the course of her Broadway career, she has received five Tony Award nominations. She played Louise in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. In 2016 she starred in She Loves Me as Amalia Balash, which was televised. She played Elsa Schräder in the 2013 NBC television production of The Sound of Music Live!, appeared as Sadie Stone in Nashville in 2014 and 2015 and that same year began playing twin sisters Alura and Astra in the TV series Supergirl. Beginning in 2017, Benanti appeared as Edie Randall in the TBS comedy The Detour. Since 2016, she has had a recurring role as First Lady Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
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Ruth Etting

Biography

From Wikipedia Ruth Etting (November 23, 1896 – September 24, 1978) was an American singing star and actress of the 1920s and 1930s, who had over 60 hit recordings and worked in stage, radio, and film. She is known as "America's sweetheart of song". Her signature tunes were "Shine On, Harvest Moon", "Ten Cents a Dance" and "Love Me or Leave Me". Her other popular recordings included "Button Up Your Overcoat", "Mean to Me", "Exactly Like You" and "Shaking the Blues Away". In Hollywood, Etting made a long series of movie shorts between 1929 and 1936, and three feature movies in 1933 and 1934. In 1936, she appeared in London in Ray Henderson's Transatlantic Rhythm. Her life was the basis for the fictionalized 1955 film Love Me or Leave Me, which starred Doris Day (as Etting), James Cagney (as Snyder) and Cameron Mitchell (as Alderman). Etting, Myrl Alderman and Moe Snyder all sold their rights to the story to MGM. Shortly before her death, Etting said she thought the screen portrayal of her was too tough and that Jane Powell would have been a better choice for the lead. For her work in films, Etting has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located on the north side of the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard.
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Michael Diamond

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Diamond was born in New York City to an upper-middle-class Jewish household. He attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York for six months. In 1979, Diamond co-founded the band The Young Aborigines. In 1981, Adam Yauch, aka MCA, a friend and follower of the band became their bass player, and on the suggestion of their then-guitar player, John Berry, the band changed their name to the Beastie Boys. By 1983,Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) joined, and their sound began to shift away from punk to hip-hop. In 1992, Mike D founded the Beastie Boys' now-defunct record label Grand Royal Records. He is also interested in interior decoration, and designed Brooklyn-themed toile wallpaper; it was used in the renovation of the Marquee nightclub in Chelsea, which reopened in January 2013. A year after the passing of MCA in 2012, Mike D told Rolling Stone he was "excited about making new stuff again" and released "Humberto Vs the New Reactionaries (Christine and the Queens Remix)" in July 2013. A remix of Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band's "Bad Dancer" by Mike D and Adam Horovitz was streamed online in August 2013. The pair is credited with “additional beats, programming and other curve balls.”
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Sean Connery

Biography

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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Nick Loren

Biography

Nick Loren (born December 14, 1970) is an American actor, Emmy nominated television host, singer-songwriter, producer, and professional stunt double. He has been the professional stunt double for John Travolta and an accredited actor in over 24 films including From Paris with Love, Old Dogs, Wild Hogs, Hairspray, A Love Song for Bobby Long, Be Cool, Swordfish, and Face/Off. Loren has been featured on Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, The Hollywood Reporter, AdAge.com, O Magazine, Dateline NBC, Eye on LA, as well as many morning shows and magazines. Description above from the Wikipedia article Nick Loren, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Mark Rosenthal

Biography

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Mark Rosenthal is an American screenwriter and film director and long-time writing partner of Lawrence Konner. Rosenthal made his debut with the pilot Cassie & Co., followed by the motion picture The Legend of Billie Jean. This was followed by such films as The Jewel of the Nile, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Mercury Rising. Star Trek VI co-writer Leonard Nimoy later alleged, in his book I Am Spock, that Konner and Rosenthal actually had nothing to do with the finished script, but the studio gave them credit for political reasons. Rosenthal co-wrote (with Konner) and directed The In Crowd (1988). Most recently, Konner and Rosenthal worked on the remakes for Mighty Joe Young and Planet of the Apes. Their latest films were Mona Lisa Smile and Flicka. Mark recorded a DVD commentary for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace for the Deluxe Edition of the film in 2006. Here he discusses the films original intentions and the many deleted scenes. Description above from the Wikipedia article Mark Rosenthal  licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Ian Cheney

Biography

Ian Cheney is an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker. He has completed ten feature documentaries, including King Corn (2007), The Greening of Southie (2008), The City Dark (2011), The Search for General Tso (2014), Bluespace (2015), The Most Unknown (2018), The Emoji Story (2019), Thirteen Ways (2019), Picture a Scientist (2020) and The Long Coast (2020). His short films include Two Buckets (2006), Truck Farm (2010), The Melungeons (2013), The Smog of the Sea (2016) and The Measure of a Fog (2017). He received bachelor’s & master’s degrees from Yale University, and an MFA in Film from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A former MacDowell Fellow & Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, he lives in midcoast Maine. For more information about Ian’s films, visit www.wickedelicate.com.
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Jonathan Salway

Biography

Jonathan Salway (Teacher/Actor) Jonathan trained as an actor at the Drama Studio in London and at the University of California. He has worked in London“s West End (where he acted alongside Benedict Cumberbatch), for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the BBC and on Londongrad for Russian TV as well as touring the UK, Ireland, Italy and Germany. His roles have included Gerald in An Inspector Calls, Trotter in Agatha Christie”s The Mousetrap, Sherlock Holmes, Frank in Educating Rita and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As a director he has taken award-winning shows to the Edinburgh festival, including a co-devised piece called A Space Oddity and a musical The Selfish Gene The Musical. He is Artistic Director of the Moscow English Theatre where he has acted and appeared in several shows at the Mayakovsky Theatre in Moscow and on tour to Kaliningrad.
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Albert Hall

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Albert P. Hall (born November 10, 1937) is an American actor. Born in Brighton, Alabama, Hall graduated from the Columbia University School of the Arts in 1971. That same year he appeared Off-Broadway in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and on Broadway in the Melvin Van Peebles musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death. His most famous film role to date is probably that of Chief Phillips in Francis Ford Coppola's award-winning Apocalypse Now. Contemporary audiences may recognise Hall as stern judge Seymore Walsh, a recurring guest-role, on Ally McBeal and The Practice. Hall also has made guest appearances on Kojak, Miami Vice, Matlock, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Strong Medicine, 24, Sleeper Cell and Grey's Anatomy. Description above from the Wikipedia article Albert Hall, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Édith Piaf

Biography

Édith Piaf (born Édith Giovanna Gassion, 19 December 1915 – 10 October 1963) was a French singer, lyricist and actress. Noted as France's national chanteuse, she was one of the country's most widely known international stars. Piaf's music was often autobiographical, and she specialized in chanson réaliste and torch ballads about love, loss and sorrow. Her most widely known songs include "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "L'Accordéoniste" (1940), and "Padam, padam..." (1951). Since her death in 1963, several biographies and films have studied her life, including 2007's La Vie en rose. Piaf has become one of the most celebrated performers of the 20th century. Despite numerous biographies, much of Piaf's life is unknown. She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville, Paris. Legend has it that she was born on the pavement of Rue de Belleville 72, but her birth certificate says that she was born on 19 December 1915 at the Hôpital Tenon, a hospital located in the 20th arrondissement. She was named Édith after the World War I British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed 2 months before Édith's birth for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity. Piaf – slang for "sparrow" – was a nickname she received 20 years later. Louis Alphonse Gassion (1881–1944), Édith's father, was a street performer of acrobatics from Normandy with a past in the theatre. He was the son of Victor Alphonse Gassion (1850–1928) and Léontine Louise Descamps (1860–1937), known as Maman Tine, a "madam" who ran a brothel in Bernay in Normandy. Her mother, Annetta Giovanna Maillard, better known professionally as Line Marsa (1895–1945), was a singer and circus performer born in Italy of French descent on her father's side and of Italian and Kabyle on her mother's. Her parents were Auguste Eugène Maillard (1866–1912) and Emma (Aïcha) Saïd Ben Mohammed (1876–1930), daughter of Said ben Mohammed (1827–1890), an acrobat born in Mogador and Marguerite Bracco (1830–1898), born in Murazzano in Italy. Annetta and Louis-Alphonse divorced on 4 June 1929. Piaf's mother abandoned her at birth, and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha). When her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I, he took her to his mother, who ran a brothel in Bernay, Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf. The bordello had two floors and seven rooms, and the prostitutes were not very numerous – "about ten poor girls", as she later described. In fact, five or six were permanent while a dozen others would join the brothel during market days and other busy days. The sub-mistress of the brothel was called "Madam Gaby" and Piaf considered her almost like family, since she became godmother of Denise Gassion, Piaf's half-sister born in 1931. Edith believed her weakness for men came from mixing with prostitutes in her grandmother's brothel. ... Source: Article "Édith Piaf" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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