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Quincy Jones

Biography

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award nominations, 28 Grammys, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992. Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores. He moved easily between musical genres, producing Lesley Gore's major pop hits of the early 1960s (including "It's My Party") and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between the jazz artists Frank Sinatra and Count Basie in the same time period. In 1968, Jones became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Eyes of Love" from the film Banning. Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the 1967 film In Cold Blood, making him the first African American to be nominated twice in the same year. Jones produced three of popstar Michael Jackson's most successful albums: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987). In 1985, Jones produced and conducted the charity song "We Are the World", which raised funds for victims of famine in Ethiopia. In 1971, Jones became the first African American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards. In 1995, he was the first African American to receive the academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second most Oscar-nominated African American, with seven nominations each. In 2013, Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the winner, alongside Lou Adler, of the Ahmet Ertegun Award. He was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time.
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Arif Zakaria

Biography

Arif Zakaria (born 11 November 1966) is an Indian actor. He has had roles in many films, beginning with his debut film Darmiyaan (1997), 1947 Earth (1998), Dance like a man (2004), and biographical projects such as Mardana and the controversial Nanak Shah Fakir. Arif Zakaria's uncle Rafiq Zakaria was a veteran politician from the Indian National Congress. His brother Asif Zakaria is also an INC politician and cousin Fareed Zakaria is an American journalist. Zakaria completed his graduation from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics. Zakaria married Namrata Sharma, a Fashion Writer, in 2002. The couple divorced in 2010. Zakaria began acting in theatre while in college and later moved on to work in television and films. He acted in numerous television serials like Chunauti, Karambhoomi, Mrityudand, Dhund, Aarzoo, Campus, Kaali - Ek Agnipariksha, etc. Arif acted in diverse roles in films like Darmiyaan, Hero, Asambhav and Dance Like a Man (English). Zakaria travelled the globe since 2005 with the Australian musical show Merchants of Bollywood, performing major roles in the production across Europe, China, France, Poland, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia (the last season in Sydney in 2010). The actor portrayed Rustom Sethna in Deepa Mehta's Earth/1947 and Major Dhillon in Shyam Benegal's Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero. He also appeared in Home Delivery: Aapko... Ghar Tak, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Deewaar and the Shah Rukh Khan film My Name is Khan. In 2011, Arif played the ghost that haunts the female protagonist in Vikram Bhatt's Haunted and was appreciated for the ghastly portrayal of a piano teacher falling in love with his young student who gets murdered while making advances towards her and rapes her as a ghost, which forces her to commit suicide in the movie. He played the role of a police officer in Jism 2, starring Sunny Leone, appeared in Lootera and in Krrish 3 as Dr. Varun Shetty. Other releases of the actor are Dee Saturday Night, Darr At The Mall, Blue Mountain (all 2014) and Nanak Shah Fakir and Ishq Forever (both 2015). He is also acting in the play Gardish Mein Taare, directed by Saif Hyder Hasan, which is based on the life of Guru Dutt. In 2015, Zakaria produced a children's film "Pinti Ka Sabun" for the Children's Film Society of India; (CFSI) this film is directed by Pramod Pathak. In 2017, Arif was seen in Vikram Bhatt's web series Spotlight - Web series as famous actor/director/producer Dev Bannerjee. Featured in the short film Aamad - written and directed by Neeraj Udhwani for the Terribly Tiny Tales web portal. Arif Zakaria also worked in Raazi, directed by Meghna Gulzar, along with Alia Bhatt and Vicky Kaushal and the film Ahaan, directed by first-time director Nikhil Pherwani; a tender story of a young man suffering from down syndrome. He is slated to shoot for an English film Swords and Sceptres, a re-telling of the story of the Rani of Jhansi. Plays the role of Gaus Khan. Shooting commenced from October 2017 in Jaipur. At present the actor is playing the role of Gen. Bakhtiyar in a romance-thriller series Qubool Hai 2.0 that will be streamed on all ZEE5 platform. Source: Article "Arif Zakaria" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Pascale Petit

Biography

Pascale Petit (born Anne-Marie Pettit; 27 February 1938) is a French actress. She appeared in more than fifty films from 1957 to 2001 Working as a hairdresser, she entered films when her beauty was noticed by actress Françoise Lugagne whose husband Raymond Rouleau was searching for young actresses for his directorial debut The Crucible (1957). Petit played the role of Mary Warren. The following year she was awarded the Prix Suzanne Bianchetti in 1958 for her role as Rosalie in One Life (1958). During the 1960s Petit appeared as the female lead in several European international co-productions such as portraying Cleopatra in the 1962 film A Queen for Caesar. Petit appeared opposite Roger Moore, Ray Danton, Jeffrey Hunter, Guy Madison and Curd Jurgens. In the 1970s and 1980s she performed a variety of roles on French Television. Source: Article "Pascale Petit (actress)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Kumki Ashwin

Biography

Ashvin Raja or mononymouly known as Kumki Aswin is an Indian film actor who has appeared in Tamil language films. Son of producer Swaminathan of Lakshmi Movie Makers, Ashvin Raja made his film debut portraying the student Paalpandi in Rajesh's comedy film Boss Engira Bhaskaran. His performance in Prabhu Solomon's Kumki as an elephant herder alongside Vikram Prabhu and Thambi Ramaiah was also well received by film critics, and had allotted sixty six days to the film for the shoot. The success of Kumki led to him being referred to "Kumki Ashwin" henceforth.
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Ticky Holgado

Biography

Ticky Holgado (24 June 1944, in Toulouse – 22 January 2004, in Paris), pseudonym of Joseph Holgado, was a French actor and a frequent collaborator with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With Delicatessen (1991) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, Ticky Holgado saw his acting talent acknowledged. Gérard Jugnot wrote for him the character of the beggar who meets the frame in the unemployment becoming NFA (played by Jugnot) in Une époque formidable (1990). He received the Caesar of the best male bit part in 1992 for Une époque formidable and in 1996 for Gazon maudit. In September 2003, Holgado announced the remission of his lung cancer, which had considerably rarefied his appearances on the screen since 2000. On 5 January 2004, he had just begun work on a new film with Lelouch, but he succumbed to cancer on 22 January 2004. He left a posthumous message, in the form of a document which appeared on his hospital bed after taking him to surgery to remove his 4th cancerous tumor. Holgado declared there: "It is necessary to tell to people that it's absolutely necessary to stop smoking". Ticky Holgado was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery (45th division). Source: Article "Ticky Holgado" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Zhou Ye

Biography

Zhou Ye is a Chinese actress. She graduated from the 2016 undergraduate class of the Beijing Film Academy's Performance Department. She is currently under Hesong Media. In 2019, Zhou Ye made her acting debut in the youth drama film ‘Better Day. She participated in the opening ceremony of the 28th Golden Rooster Awards and was included as one of the 32 actors in the China Movie Channel Young Actors Project. In 2019, she was nominated for the Most Promising Actress award on the China Movie Channel (CCTV-6) M List. In 2020, she was nominated for the 27th Huading Awards, 14th Asian Film Awards, and the 33rd Golden Rooster Awards for Best Supporting Actress. In 2021, she won Promising Actress of the year in the Weibo movie night 2021 and Most promising Actress in the Wenrong award 2021.
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Mélanie Laurent

Biography

Mélanie Laurent (born 21 February 1983) is a French actress, filmmaker, and singer. The recipient of two César Awards and a Lumières Award, she is an accomplished actress in the French film industry. Globally, she is best known for her roles in Inglourious Basterds, Now You See Me, 6 Underground, and Operation Finale. Born in Paris to a Jewish family, Laurent was introduced to acting at the age of sixteen by Gérard Depardieu, who cast her in a minor role in the romantic drama The Bridge (1999). She gained wider recognition for her supporting work in several French films, most notably the 2006 comedy Dikkenek, for which she won Étoiles d'Or for Best Female Newcomer. Her breakthrough role came in the 2006 drama film Don't Worry, I'm Fine, for which she later won the César Award for Most Promising Actress and the Prix Romy Schneider. Laurent made her Hollywood debut in 2009 with the role as Shosanna Dreyfus in Quentin Tarantino's blockbuster war film Inglourious Basterds. Her performance won the Online Film Critics Society and the Austin Film Critics Association Best Actress Awards. While she has worked mainly in independent films, including Paris (2008) and Enemy (2013), Laurent also appeared in commercially successful Hollywood films, including the comedy drama Beginners (2011), and the caper film Now You See Me (2013), the former earning her a nomination at the San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress. Laurent's other notable works include the art-house drama The Round Up (2010), the comedy drama Et soudain, tout le monde me manque (2011), and the mystery thriller Night Train to Lisbon (2013). She is also known for voicing Mary Katherine and Disgust in the French dubs of Epic (2013) and Inside Out (2015) respectively. Additionally, she starred in Chris Weitz's 2018 drama Operation Finale with Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley, telling the story of the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. In addition to her film career, Laurent has appeared in stage productions in France. She made her theatre debut in 2010 in Nicolas Bedos's Promenade de santé. The short film De moins en moins (2008) marked her debut as a filmmaker. Her feature film directorial debut is The Adopted (2011). Respire (2014), her second production as a director, was screened at the International Critics' Week section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. She made her singing debut with a studio album En t'attendant in May 2011; the album contains twelve songs, five of which are co-written and co-produced by Irish folk musician Damien Rice.
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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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Miho Nakayama

Biography

Miho Nakayama (中山 美穂, Nakayama Miho, born 1 March 1970) is a Japanese singer and actress. She is affiliated with Big Apple Co., Ltd.[3][4] Nakayama is nicknamed Miporin (ミポリン), and sometimes uses the pseudonyms Mizuho Kitayama (北山 瑞穂, Kitayama Mizuho) or Issaque (一咲(いっさく), Issaku) when she writes the lyrics. Nakayama made her debut on 21 June 1985 with her single "C", as well as a starring role in the film Be-Bop High School. Throughout her career as a singer and actress, Nakayama recorded 22 studio albums and scored eight No. 1 singles on Oricon's charts; two of them selling over a million copies each. In 1995, director Shunji Iwai cast Nakayama in the starring dual roles of Hiroko Watanabe and Itsuki Fujii in the film Love Letter. The film was a huge box-office success, and Nakayama won Best Actress awards for her role in the film at the 38th Blue Ribbon Awards, the 17th Yokohama Film Festival[8] and the 18th Hochi Film Awards. Nakayama was nominated for a Best Actress Japanese Academy Award in 1998 for her role in Tokyo Biyori, and has appeared in a number of TV series including Love Story (2001).
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John Wood

Biography

John Wood (5 July 1930 – 6 August 2011) was an English stage and screen actor known for his distinguished career in both classical and contemporary theater. He was born on July 5, 1930, in Derbyshire, England. Wood gained prominence as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he performed in numerous Shakespearean productions. Wood's notable stage roles include performances in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," "The Rivals," and "Travesties," among many others. He also appeared in various productions on Broadway, earning critical acclaim for his performances in plays such as "Amadeus" and "The Winslow Boy." In addition to his stage work, John Wood had a presence in film and television. He starred in movies like "WarGames" (1983) and "Chocolat" (2000). His television credits include appearances in series such as "The Avengers," "Inspector Morse," and "Midsomer Murders." John Wood was highly regarded for his exceptional acting talent, particularly his ability to portray complex characters with depth and nuance. He received several awards throughout his career, including a Tony Award for his performance in "Travesties" and a Laurence Olivier Award for his work in "The Philanthropist." Sadly, John Wood passed away on August 6, 2011, in England, leaving behind a legacy of remarkable performances in the world of theater and film.
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