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Thanasis Vengos

Biography

Thanasis Veggos (29 May 1926 – 3 May 2011) was a Greek actor and director born in Neo Faliro, Piraeus. He performed in around 130 films, predominantly comedies in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, starring in more than 50 among them. He is considered one of the best Greek comedy actors of all time. His famous comedic catchphrase was "Καλέ µου άνθρωπε" ("My good man"). Veggos' first appearance in a film was in Windfall in Athens, produced by Mihalis Kakogiannis, which premiered in Athens as Kiriakatiko Xsipnima on 11 January 1954. Nikos Koundouros gave him a role in Magiki polis in 1955. His first major role was in Psila ta heria Hitler ("Hands Up, Hitler"), 1962 and continued many more films. For his acting in What did you do in the war, Thanasi? (1971), the public of Thessaloniki °apotheosized° him and the movie won three awards at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. He often played everyman characters struggling to get by, but he has also played anti-heroes, he has acted in pure dramas, and on stage in the comedies of Aristophanes. His characters were often self-named "Thanasis". He often worked with directors Panos Glykofridis and Giorgos Lazaridis. In 1995, Theo Angelopoulos cast Veggos and American actor Harvey Keitel in "Ulysses Gaze". In 1997, in the role of Dikaiopoli he appeared in a live performance at the ancient Epidaurus theater. In 2000, he survived a car accident involving a collision with a train. He later participated in advertisements promoting road safety. A documentary of his life, whose title translates as A Man for All Seasons, was made in 2004. He always did his own stunts including the most dangerous ones, like hanging from a rope tied to a balcony fifty feet above a pavement without anything to break his fall, walking through a glass door, or falling down a stone staircase head first. During the "Golden Sixties" of the Greek film industry he made his most popular comedy films such as the sequel of Secret Agent 000, Papatrehas, Enas trellos Vengos and many others, also with surrealist humor, most of them by his own company Θ-Β Comedies (Θ-Β Tainies Geliou) which founded in 1964. In 2008, Veggos was appointed Commander of the Order of the Phoenix by the President of Greece, Karolos Papoulias. On 3 May 2011, he died at 7:10 a.m. He had been hospitalized at the Red Cross hospital, in Athens, since 18 December 2010. He is survived by his wife Asimina and two sons. He will always be remembered in the more than 120 films and more recent documentaries that he starred in. The phrase "τρέχει σαν το Βέγγο" (English translation: "runs like Veggos") has been adopted into common usage in the Greek language since nobody has run more or faster than Veggos in his many slapstick comedies.
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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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Paula Malcomson

Biography

Paula Malcomson (born June 1, 1970) is a Northern Irish actress born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Malcomson is sometimes credited as Paula Williams. She starred as "Trixie" in the HBO series Deadwood and Colleen in ABC's Lost. She played the role of Amanda Graystone in the Battlestar Galactica spin-off series Caprica, on the Sci Fi Channel, as well as the role of Maureen Ashby on the FX Series Sons of Anarchy. Malcomson recently guest starred in a March 2011 episode of Fringe. She will play Mrs. Everdeen in the film adaptation of The Hunger Games, her first major starring movie role.
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Rusty Schwimmer

Biography

An American film and television actress and singer. Her most prominent role so far is that of Barbara Ludzinski on The Guardian. Among her movie appearances are those as Joey B in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Mrs. Thornton in Twister, Mrs Pendleton in Amistad, Alice in EDtv, Irene "Big Red" Johnson in The Perfect Storm, Big Betty in North Country and Amelia Minchin in A Little Princess. Schwimmer has also appeared in minor roles in several television series, including episodes of Parker Lewis Can't Lose, In the Heat of the Night, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Tales from the Crypt, Married... With Children, ER, Chicago Hope, Ally McBeal, Judging Amy, The X-Files, Gilmore Girls, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Shark, Criminal Minds, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Private Practice, Six Feet Under and others. Description above from the Wikipedia article Rusty Schwimmer, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.​
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Jennifer Cooke

Biography

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jennifer Cooke (born September 19, 1964) is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as the "Star Child", Elizabeth, who is half Human/half Visitor in the 1984 television series V. She also starred in the soap opera Guiding Light as Morgan Richards Nelson from 1981-1983. Cooke played "Debbie" on the critically acclaimed NBC series "A Year in The Life". Her only well-known film role is in the 1986 horror film Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives as Megan. Cooke's only guest appearance on TV is on the HBO series The Hitchhiker. Cooke has retired from acting, but is active in the Urantia Brotherhood/Fellowship. She has been married to Celestial Seasonings co-founder Mo Siegel since 1989. Cooke is reportedly the basis for the "Alexandra Bass" heroine in Buck Winthrop's debut novel, "Delusions of Grandeur" published May 3, 2010 by Captive Audience Books. Description above from the Wikipedia article Jennifer Cooke, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Chuck Jones

Biography

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio. He directed many of the classic short animated cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester, Pepé Le Pew and a slew of other Warner characters. Three of these shorts (Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening and What's Opera, Doc?) were later inducted into the National Film Registry. Chief among Jones' other works was the famous "Hunting Trilogy" of Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (1951–1953). After his career at Warner Bros. ended in 1962, Jones started Sib Tower 12 Productions and began producing cartoons for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, including a new series of Tom and Jerry shorts and the television adaptation of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. He later started his own studio, Chuck Jones Productions, which created several one-shot specials, and periodically worked on Looney Tunes related works.
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Warner Oland

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Warner Oland (born Johan Verner Ölund, October 3, 1879 – August 6, 1938) was a Swedish-American actor most remembered for playing several Chinese and Chinese-American characters: the Honolulu Police detective, Lieutenant Charlie Chan; Dr. Fu Manchu; and Henry Chang in Shanghai Express. His family emigrated to the United States when he was 13. He pursued a film career that would include time on Broadway and dozens of film appearances, including 16 Charlie Chan films. After several years in theater, including appearances on Broadway as Warner Oland, in 1912 he made his silent film debut in Pilgrim's Progress, a film based on the John Bunyan novel. As a result of his training as a Shakespearean actor and his easy adoption of a sinister look, he was much in demand as a villain and in ethnic roles. Over the next 15 years, he appeared in more than 30 films, including a major role in The Jazz Singer (1927), one of the first talkies produced. Oland's normal appearance fit the Hollywood expectation of caricatured Asianness of the time, despite his having no definitively proven Asian cultural background. Oland portrayed a variety of Asian characters in several movies before being offered the leading role in the 1929 film, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. It was the first onscreen portrayal of the Fu Manchu character in film. Oland continued to appear onscreen as an Asian, probably more often than any other white actor in the history of cinema. In Old San Francisco, Oland played an Asian unsuccessfully impersonating a white man. Oland was the first actor to play a werewolf in a major Hollywood film, biting the protagonist, played by Henry Hull, in Werewolf of London (1935). Once again, Oland's character was Asian. A box office success, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu made Oland a star, and during the next two years he portrayed the evil Dr. Fu Manchu in three more films (although the second one was purely a cameo appearance). Firmly locked into such roles, he was cast as Charlie Chan in the international detective mystery film Charlie Chan Carries On (1931) and then in director Josef von Sternberg's 1932 classic film Shanghai Express opposite Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong. The enormous worldwide box office success of his Charlie Chan film led to more, with Oland starring in 16 Chan films in total. The series, Jill Lepore later wrote, "kept Fox afloat" during the 1930s, while earning Oland $40,000 per movie. Oland took his role seriously, studying the Chinese language and calligraphy.
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Bruno Langley

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British actor who came to fame playing Todd Grimshaw in Coronation Street, a role he played on and off for sixteen years from 2001 to 2017. He was sacked from the show in October 2017 prior to his pleading guilty to two counts of sexual assault in November of that year. He was sentenced to a twelve month community order and registered as a sex offender. Langley also played Adam Mitchell, a brief companion to Christopher Eccleston's Doctor in the 2005 series and appeared as Damon in the movie The League of Gentlemen Apocalypse.
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Michael Lake

Biography

Michael Lake is an Australian actor and producer who has over thirty-six years' experience in production and management within the Australian and international film industry. For the past 14 years Lake has run the Warner Roadshow Studios and during this time he has been instrumental in attracting productions valued at $1.6 billion to the Gold Coast, resulting in around $800 million being spent within the region. From 1998 to 2005 he split his time between the Gold Coast and Los Angeles where he was Executive Vice President of World Wide Feature Film Production for Village Roadshow Pictures. In 2006 he returned to the Gold Coast to establish his own production company and consult to Warner Roadshow Studios and Production Services.
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George Chandler

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia George Chandler (June 30, 1898 – June 10, 1985), born in Waukegan, Illinois, was an American actor. He made his screen debut in 1928, ultimately appearing, throughout his career, in over 140 films, usually in smaller supporting roles. Chandler is perhaps best known for playing the character of Uncle Petrie Martin on the television series Lassie. Early in his performing career he had a vaudeville act, billed as "George Chandler, the Musical Nut", which featured comedy and his violin. He served in the United States Army during World War I. In addition to many film roles throughout the years 1928-1979, Chandler appeared, from 1951 onward, in numerous television series. He was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1960. George Chandler died in Panorama City, California, the result of cancer, on June 10, 1985. He was 86.
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