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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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Afa Anoa'i
Biography
Afa Amituana'i Anoa'i is a retired Samoan professional wrestler and manager, who appeared as one of Kenneth Togaru's henchmen that killed Charles Symington and Ali Ferrand in the episode "By Hooker by Crook" of the series Miami Vice.
Anoai got into professional wrestling in the early 1970s, trained by Rocky Johnson and Peter Maivia (father and grandfather of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), then made his debut in 1971, and brought in his brother Sika Anoa'i (born 1945) and formed The Wild Samoans, a tag team that won three WWWF (precursor to today's WWE) Tag Team Championships (twice in 1980 and once in 1983), managed by Capt. Lou Albano for all of their reigns. They also held the NWA National Tag Team titles in 1982 and several other regional titles during their career. In 1983 Sika was injured and Afa brought in his son Samu, and would remain a team until 1984. The Wild Samoans broke up soon after, but Afa returned to the WWF as manager of Samu and Afa's nephew Fatu and they formed The Samoan Swat Team (in World Class—WCCW, and the NWA) before moving to the WWF and becoming The Headshrinkers, which won the WWF Tag Team Titles once before Afa retired in 1994. He then trained new pro wrestlers at the Wild Samoans Academy, and in 2007 he and Sika were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Anoa'i's only acting credits besides Vice was in the movies Body Slam and Mr. Nanny.
Anoa'i married his wife Lynn in 1970, and have five children; their three sons, Samula "Samu", Afa, Jr. "Manu", and Lloyd "L.A. Smooth", all became pro wrestlers, and two daughters, Monica and Lynn.
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Sandy Whitelaw
Biography
Alexander "Sandy" Whitelaw (28 April 1930 – 20 February 2015) was a British actor, producer, director and subtitler.
Whitelaw was born in London and educated in Switzerland, the UK and the United States. He represented Britain as a skier in the 1956 Olympics.
Whitelaw's film career began when he worked as an assistant to the producer David O. Selznick on the 1957 film A Farewell to Arms. He also worked for the production company Hecht-Lancaster. He went on to work for United Artists in a number of capacities, including as head of production for UA Europe.
At this time he was based in London and worked on films including Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), Federico Fellini’s Roma (1972) and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron (1971). He directed two films: Lifespan (1974), which starred Klaus Kinski, and Vicious Circles (1997), which starred Ben Gazzara. He acted in a number of films including The American Friend (1977), Broken English (1981) and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005).
Whitelaw began to work as a subtitler in the 1970s in Paris. It was the producer Pierre Cottrell who suggested that he subtitle Jean Eustache's film Mes petites amoureuses. He continued to work as a subtitler for four decades.
Whitelaw provided English subtitles for more than 1,000 films over a period of several decades. He once called it "like getting paid to do crosswords". One of the more challenging jobs he took on was the subtitling, with Stephen O'Shea, of Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Haine. Their subtitles for this film received considerable critical attention.
Source: Article "Sandy Whitelaw" from Wikipedia in english, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Michael McGrady
Biography
McGrady was born in Federal Way, Washington, to Gloria, a hair salon owner, and George McGrady, an airline mechanic. He attended Federal Way High School and the University of Washington, majoring in Business Administration. He currently splits his time between Southern California and Washington State, with his wife Ilka. McGrady had planned to become a lawyer and was working at a bank when his sister entered him in a contest for a scholarship to a local acting school. After that McGrady moved to California to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.
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Sharla Cheung
Biography
Sharla Cheung Man, also known as Cheung Man (born February 7, 1967) is an actress working in the Hong Kong film industry.
Sharla Cheung was discovered by Wong Jing, with whom she worked on many of his productions in the early 1990s. Cheung gained popularity with the numerous films she's starred in alongside Stephen Chow, in which she was frequently cast as Chow's love interest. They partnered for more than 10 films from 1988 to 1994, including All for the Winner, God of Gamblers II, Fist of Fury 1991, Fight Back to School, Royal Tramp, and King of Beggars. Another frequent co-star is Andy Lau, who appeared alongside Cheung in such films as God of Gamblers, God of Gamblers II, and Lee Rock.
After an impressive body of work in the early 1990s (she starred in about 50 films between 1990 and 1995), Sharla Cheung moved into producing in 1995 with Dream Lover (starring Tony Leung Ka-fai and Wu Chien-lien). However, Cheung was unhappy with it and she remade the film as Romantic Dream (starring Cheung and Lau Ching-wan). Both versions opened in 1995. The films, however, were commercial failures, and Cheung then retired from the film industry to focus on various business interests.
Cheung made a comeback in acting in the early 2000s to star in several television series. She appeared in such TV series as My Celebrity Boyfriend in 2003 and Legend of the Book's Tower in 2005 alongside Nicky Wu. In 2006, she portrayed Diao Chan, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, opposite Ray Lui, in the TV series Diao Chan.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sharla Cheung, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Walter Gotell
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter Gotell (15 March 1926 – 5 May 1997) was a German actor, known for his role as General Gogol, head of the KGB, in the James Bond film series.
Gotell was born in Bonn, Germany; his family emigrated to the United Kingdom after the Nazis came to power. A fluent English speaker, he started in films as early as 1943, usually playing German henchmen, such as in We Dive at Dawn (1943).
He began to have more established roles by the early fifties, starring in The African Queen (1951), Ice-Cold in Alex (1958), The Guns of Navarone (1961), 55 Days At Peking (1963), Lancelot and Guinevere (1963), The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965), Lord Jim (1965), Black Sunday (1977), The Boys From Brazil (1978), and Cuba (1979).
Gotell won the role of KGB General Anatol Gogol in The Spy Who Loved Me for being a look-alike of the former head of Soviet secret police Lavrentiy Pavlovitch Beria. His first role in the James Bond films came in 1963, when he played the henchman Morzeny in From Russia with Love. Starting in the late 1970s, he played the recurring role of General Gogol in the James Bond series, beginning with The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977. The character returned in Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), A View to a Kill (1985) and The Living Daylights (1987). As the Cold War developed, the role of leader of the KGB was seen to change attitudes to the West - from direct competitor to collaborator. His final appearance, as the Cold War began to become less imminent, sees him transferred to a different, more diplomatic role. Gotell is one of a few actors to have played a villain and a Bond ally in the film series (others being Joe Don Baker, Charles Gray and Richard Kiel).
Throughout his career, Gotell also made numerous guest appearances in a wide array of television series. He played Chief Constable Cullen in Softly, Softly: Taskforce between 1969 and 1975. He guested in many series including Danger Man, Knight Rider, The A-Team, Airwolf, The X-Files, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, MacGyver, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Miami Vice, Cagney and Lacey, The Saint, and many others.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Walter Gotell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Connie Marshall
Biography
A promising blue-to-gray-eyed, blonde-haired child actress of the post-WWII years who had more talent than she was given credit for, little Connie Marshall was born on April 28, 1933 in New York City. Her parents were not of show business stock, her father being a lieutenant with the Allied Military Government in Europe. She was a direct descent of this country's first Chief Justice, John Marshall, and was also a descendant of Geradus Beekamn, who was the first colonial governor of New York.
A strikingly sensitive-looking tyke with sad, beady eyes, she broke into the competitive side of show business quite young (age 5) as a pig-tailed model for commercial newspapers and magazines. Frequently used by New York photographers, artists and caricaturists, she began her acting career a year later quite by happenstance. A failed screen test taken in Hollywood was, by luck, seen by 20th Century-Fox director Lloyd Bacon who just happened to be casting the role of little Mary Osborne in the warm family comedy-drama Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944). The film went on to star the future husband and wife team of Anne Baxter and John Hodiak, who first met and fell in love while shooting this picture. Director Bacon stopped looking when he came across Connie.
Educated at the Gardner School in New York, where she appeared in a few plays, and the Fox Studio School, Connie also studied ballet and ballroom dancing. She made a strong impression in her very first film, with a natural forlorn ease as one of the Osborne children that also included up-and-coming Bobby Driscoll. With Connie's second picture Sentimental Journey (1946), she was handed her best weepy-eyed showcase. Fatally ill actress Maureen O'Hara adopts an orphan girl (Connie) so her Broadway producer husband John Payne will have someone to care for after she passes away. The treacly plot follows the difficult adjustment between the grief-stricken two who are left behind, but eventually guided together by O'Hara's spirit. The pathetic storyline was a bit much but Connie held her own beautifully and received rave reviews.
Connie continued to show precocious promise in the post-war years in both sentimental drama and lightweight comedy with Dragonwyck (1946) as the daughter of Vincent Price; Home, Sweet Homicide (1946) as an amateur young sleuth who tries to solve a neighborhood murder aided by brother and sister Peggy Ann Garner and Dean Stockwell; Mother Wore Tights (1947) as the daughter of song-and-dance team Betty Grable and Dan Dailey; and the noted comedy classic Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) as one of the Blandings offspring of Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. These subsequent film roles, however, didn't match in importance when compared to her first two films.
Connie was to work with the silver screen's top movie stars over the years, including Gene Tierney and Joan Crawford, but once she outgrew her precociousness, her career began to fade away. She attempted TV with the short-lived series "Doc Corkle" (1952) and appeared as a feisty teen co-star opposite Gene Autry in his film oater Saginaw Trail (1953), but by 1954, after an un-billed part in Rogue Cop (1954), Connie was literally and figuratively out of the picture.
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Carmen Filpi
Biography
Character actor Carmen Filpi was born on March 22, 1923 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The son of Remigio and Rosa Gatto Filpi, Carmen graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1942. Moreover, Filpi served in the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II. As Hobo Joe, his rendition of "Jimmy Crack Corn" puts Pee-wee over the edge and sends him jumping off a moving train. Filpi, who also had small parts in Burton's films Beetlejuice and Ed Wood, died in 2003 from cancer-related illnesses at 80.
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Kateřina Lírová
Biography
Herečka Kateřina Lírová se narodila 17. dubna 1951 v Praze do herecké rodiny. Její tatínek byl známý herec Jiří Lír a maminka herečka Drahomíra Fialková, známá například z role Nely, služebné Viktorie, z Herzova dramatu MORGIANA (1972). Kateřina Lírová v roce 1975 úspěšně absolvovala DAMU a poté nějaký čas účinkovala ve studiu Ypsilon v libereckém Naivním divadle. Co se týče filmu, tak v něm ztvárnila spíše vedlejší role, jako například ve filmu HOLKA NA ZABITÍ (1975) role poštmistrová Jitka, JÁ UŽ BUDU HODNÝ, DĚDEČKU (1978) dcera divadelního herce Bergnera (M.Kopecký), VÍTR V KAPSE (1982) role zdravotní sestřičky nebo TV seriál TŘETÍ PATRO (1985). Kateřina Lírová je také známá z tzv. studiových TV pohádek. Není žádným tajemstvím, že byla provdána za herce O. Havelku - prvorepublikového gentlemana, s nímž má syna Vojtěcha (*1986). Manželství se ovšem rozpadlo, kvůli manželově nevěře. V současné době se Kateřina Lírová živí jako scénáristka klipů a dramaturgyně.
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Blaise Miller
Biography
A military brat, Blaise bounced around the country with his family before they put down roots in Virginia. After receiving his B.A in Theater, Blaise packed up his things and moved to the Windy City. While in Chicago he gained extensive stage time at Second City and IO. In 2005, after 4 years of writing and acting in shows, he decided that it was time to make the move to Los Angeles. Blaise has established himself as a working actor, carving a niche for himself in independent films playing likable everyman types. In 2008, Blaise won the lead role in the dark comedy The Scenesters and followed that up by snagging lead roles in Super Zeroes, Spring Eddy, Holiday Road, It's A Disaster and a supporting role in Congratulations. Blaise is a founding member of the comedic film group The Vacationeers, with whom he continues to collaborate.
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