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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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Karen Yu

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Chinese-American professional wrestler currently signed with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), appearing on the NXT brand. Prior to signing with WWE, Karen Q worked in Ring of Honor and Impact Wrestling. Prior to her official signing with WWE, she made her debut as early as August 2018, competing in the second annual Mae Young Classic. Professional wrestling career Karen describes her inspirations growing up including watching matches and events featuring WWE's The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. She also cited Chyna, Trish Stratus, and Lita as inspirational figures and influential leaders for the future women wrestlers. Victory Pro Wrestling (2014-2018) Karen made her professional in-ring debut in 2014 on September 6 at VPW September Salvation where she wrestled a Triple Threat match won by Nikki Addams against Q and Monique. She returned on December 6 at VPW December Devastation losing to Nikki Addams in a rematch. She returned the following year on April 11, 2015 at VPW 100 in a Triple Threat match won by Brittney Savage against Q and Nikki Addams. On June 6 at VPW Upper Limits 2015, Karen Q joined a Four Way Elimination Match for the vacant VPW Women's Championship won by Nikki Addams against Karen, Ashley America and Deonna Purrazzo. Karen's in-ring feud with Addams continued, enhanced with championship gold on the line in their following matches including Women's Championship match at VPW Carnage In Centereach X on July 25, in which Addams successfully defended the title against Karen. A championship rematch was held on September 12 at VPW Gold Rush Rumble 2015, during which Karen scored a victory by count-out, but did not win the Women's title. On October 24 at VPW Autumn Uproar, Karen teamed with Xander Page to win a tag match against Nikki Addams & Razzle Dazzle.
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Michael Vardian

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Finnish born actor and producer Michael Vardian (born Mikael Tapani Vartiainen in March 19, 1979) studied acting in Finland and in the United States. He has a degree in acting as well as in Drama Teaching. Vardian's credits include BBC hit series 'Call the Midwife' in which he played a Nordic Sailor in the second season opening episode, drama comedy 'Pride', and Rage: Midsummer's Eve - an American horror film in which he plays one of the main roles as a Finnish medical intern, 'Kimi'. Vardian lives in London and in Los Angeles. 
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Mick Micheyl

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Mick Micheyl (born Paulette Michey; 8 February 1922 – 16 May 2019) was a French singer-songwriter and sculptor. Her songs won a number of national awards and she was considered the leading star of French song in the 1950s and 60s. Micheyl was born Paulette Michey in Lyon in 1922 and studied at the Ecole Lyonnaise des Beaux-Arts; she started her career as a painter. In 1949 her song Le Marchand de Poésie (The Poetry Merchant), won a French song contest and she moved to Paris to become a singer. She recorded her first album with Pathé-Marconi Records in 1950, and sang in nightclubs and cabarets in the city such as Casino de Paris. Another of her songs, Un gamin de Paris (A child from Paris), was widely acclaimed. In 1953 she won the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles-Cros with her song Ni toi ni moi (Neither You Nor Me). She also appeared in a number of French films, including Little Jacques in 1953 and Paris Music-Hall in 1957. In the 1960s Micheyl became a television producer and presenter. She discovered and helped launch the careers of French performers such as Dave, Véronique Sanson and Michel Fugain. In 1974 she left the entertainment industry and became a sculptor, specializing in steelwork. In 2009 she was forced to stop working with steel as a number of accidents in her studio had made her lose some of her eyesight. Her work included monuments and public art in Villefranche-sur-Saône and Caluire-et-Cuire. Her work is also held in the permanent collection of Musée Masséna in Nice. In 1991 Micheyl published her autobiography, Dieu est-il bien dans ma peau? Micheyl died in Montmerle-sur-Saône, in Ain on 16 May 2019. The primary school in the town she retired to, Montmerle-sur-Saône, was renamed in her honour. Regarding Micheyl Art works "As far as it is known, the idea of making artwork on stainless steel plates, was born in Lyon, France, in the early '80s, by the hands and inventiveness of Mick Micheyl, also called 'Coeur D'Acier' or 'heart of steel ', an international well known painter since the '50s. In 1973 she had her first exposure, and to everyone's surprise, Mick Micheyl canceled all promising tours and TV shows to devote herself entirely to her true pation: the visual arts. "I Draw with light. I try to express the life and movement. The movement of a running man, or the movement of time in a forest as the day goes on"- citing herself. At 87 years of age, Mick Micheyl made ​​her last exhibition in October 2010. But her retirement has nothing to do with the beautiful age she reached... According to the media, while working in her studio, a steel filing was projected into one of her eyes. The filing was removed in a delicate surgical intervention, but unfortunately it also took off some visual capacity, which forced her to withdraw this artistic activity. As she later explained, this unfortunate accident occurred in a rare moment she forgot to use the protective goggles... Metal engraving pioneer and stern figure of this kind of art, Mick Micheyl achieved a high degree of quality and perfection, with creations of great merit and much appreciated by the public!". Source: Article "Mick Micheyl" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Georges Ulmer

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Georges Ulmer (1919–1989) was a Danish-born composer, librettist, and actor who became a naturalized French citizen. He was born Jørgen Frederik Ulmer on 16 February 1919 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and died on 29 September 1989 at Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was the father of singer Laura Ulmer. Ulmer grew up in Spain, where he started work as a musical performer, writer, and composer for the movies. However, it was in France that he quickly found a permanent place in the musical firmament with his immortal cliché of Parisian tourism, Pigalle, which he co-wrote in 1944 with the lyricist, Géo Koger, and composed with Guy Luypaerts. Other than his own interpretation, the song was also covered by Jean Sablon, Charles Dumont, Franck Pourcel, Paul Anka, Bing Crosby, Petula Clark, Silvio Berlusconi, and many others. Source: Article "Georges Ulmer" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Rika Zaraï

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Rika Zaraï (Hebrew: ריקה זראי; 19 February 1938 – 23 December 2020) was a Franco-Israeli singer and writer. Rika Gozman (later Zarai) was born in Jerusalem. Her father came from Odessa (now Ukraine) in the Russian Empire, and her mother from Valozhyn (now Belarus), then in Poland. She passed her baccalaureate at the age of 17 and enlisted directly in the Israel Defense Forces, a year before her compulsory service would have drafted her. She attended the Jerusalem Music Conservatory where she obtained a first prize in piano. During her 18 months of army service, she was appointed producer of the entertainment troupe of the IDF Central Command. On November 9, 1969, she was the victim of a car accident. The singer sank into a coma for six days and remained immobilized in a cast for eight months. Despite a reserved medical prognosis, she recovered completely after three years. It was during her painful convalescence that Rika composed, as a snub to her suffering, the song Balapapa, with joyful lyrics and which would be a great success. In addition to her musical career, Rika Zaraï distinguished herself in the promotion of herbal medicine from the 1980s. After having studied alternative medicine for eleven years, she published under her name in 1985 a book Ma médecine naturelle (English: My natural medicine), which has sold 2 million copies. Its positions in this field have met with strong opposition, particularly from French pharmacists. On June 3, 2008, Rika Zaraï was hospitalized urgently following a stroke. She was placed in intensive care at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, suffering in particular from partial paralysis on the left side of the body. In the 1950s, the Israeli writer, Aharon Megged, wrote a musical for the IDF Central Command entertainment troupe about five soldiers falling in love with five country girls. In 1956, it was produced commercially by the Ohel theater starring Rika Zarai. The music was written by her husband Yochanan Zarai, with lyrics and melodies by Naomi Shemer. In 1969, Zarai rose to fame with her songs Casatschok and Alors je chante, the French version of Vivo Cantando. She went on to have a successful career in Europe, where she popularized Israeli classic songs such as Hava Nagila, Yerushalayim shel zahav and Hallelujah. After publishing other books in the 1990s and continuing to study health, she returned to singing in 2000 with the album Hava. She sang at the Queen in Paris in 2000, and the oriental version of Hava nagila was successful in nightclubs where she sang until 2004. On February 3, 2020, twelve years after her stroke, she sang in public during the Night of the Depression party organized by Raphaël Mezrahi at the Folies Bergère in Paris. Zarai sang in Hebrew, English, French, Italian, Spanish and German. She lived in Paris but visited Israel periodically. Source: Article "Rika Zaraï" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Mia Martini

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Mia Martini (born Domenica Rita Adriana Bertè; 20 September 1947 – 12 May 1995) was an Italian singer, songwriter and musician. She is considered, by many experts, one of the most important and expressive female voices of Italian music, characterised by her interpretative intensity and her soulful performance. Her debut album, Oltre la collina with the song "Padre davvero" is regarded as one of the best Italian albums made by a female artist. Hit songs like "Piccolo uomo", "Donna sola", "Minuetto", "Inno", "Al mondo", "Che vuoi che sia se t'ho aspettato tanto", "Per amarti" and "La costruzione di un amore" made her one of the most popular artists of Italian music in the 1970s, both nationally and internationally. She is the only female artist to have won two Festivalbar consecutively, respectively in 1972 and in 1973. In 1977, two important encounters occurred in Martini's life: the first with Charles Aznavour, with whom she began a musical collaboration, and the second with singer-songwriter Ivano Fossati, with whom she started an artistic and sentimental partnership. She returned to the music scene in 1981, after she underwent two vocal-cord surgeries that changed her vocal timbre and extension. In 1982, she sang "E non finisce mica il cielo", written by Fossati, at Sanremo Music Festival, where she received the Critics Award, which was created specifically for her interpretation and which was named after her as "Mia Martini" Critics Awards from 1996, the year after her death. In 1983, she was forced to leave the music industry and quit her career, as the music sector and colleagues considered her a person bringing bad luck and barred her from participating in any music and TV events, radio shows and concerts. This kept her away from the music scene for seven years. Only in 1989 was she able to reprise her career, when she returned to perform at Sanremo Music Festival, singing "Almeno tu nell'universo", which brought her a new success. Martini's later hits included "Gli uomini non cambiano", "La nevicata del '56" and "Cu' mme", the latter with Roberto Murolo. She represented Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest twice, in 1977 with the song Libera and in 1992 with the song Rapsodia. She died on 12 May 1995 in Cardano al Campo at the age of 47. Domenica Rita Adriana Bertè was born in Bagnara Calabra, (Reggio Calabria), in southern Italy, on 20 September 1947, the second of four daughters: the oldest, Leda (born in 1946), Loredana (born in 1950) and the youngest Olivia (born in 1958). Martini's father, Giuseppe Radames Bertè (1921-2017), was a teacher of Latin and Greek. He was born in Villa San Giovanni, he moved to Marche with his family, first working as a professor and later becoming High School headmaster in Ancona. Martini's mother, Maria Salvina Dato (1925-2003), born in Bagnara Calabra, was an elementary school teacher. "Mimì" (Martini's nickname) spent her childhood in Porto Recanati, in Marche region, where she showed early an interest in music. She began to perform at parties and dance halls, and entered some song contests for new voices. In 1962 she convinced her mother to take her to Milan for an audition, with the hope to get a record deal. ... Source: Article "Mia Martini" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Valerie Perrine

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Valerie Ritchie Perrine (born September 3, 1943) is a American actress and model. For her role as Honey Bruce in the 1974 film Lenny, she won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles, the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other film appearances include Superman (1978), The Electric Horseman (1979), and Superman II (1980). Description above from the Wikipedia article Valerie Perrine, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Liza Koshy

Biography

Elizabeth Shaila Koshy (born March 31, 1996) is an American actress, television host, comedian and YouTuber. She began her career on Vine in 2013, before starting a YouTube channel. Among her acting roles have been Aday Walker in Tyler Perry's horror comedy film Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016) and The Explorer in the YouTube Premium series Escape the Night (2017). She starred as Violet Adams in the Hulu drama television series Freakish (2016–2017). From 2017 to 2018, she was a contributor to the MTV television series Total Request Live. Since 2018, Koshy has produced and starred as the title character in the YouTube Premium comedy series Liza on Demand. From 2018 to 2019, she hosted the Nickelodeon game show revival Double Dare, for which she received an Emmy Award nomination. In 2020, she starred in the Netflix dance-comedy film Work It. Koshy's main YouTube channel has amassed more than 17 million subscribers, and her two channels have a total of more than 2.5 billion combined views. She has received four Streamy Awards, four Teen Choice Awards, and a Kids' Choice Award. She was included in the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment list and the Time 2019 list of the 25 Most Influential People on the Internet and its 2019 100 Next list.
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Jonathan Bar-Giora

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Jonathan Bar Giora (born July 8, 1962) is an Israeli composer and pianist. Since 2000, Bar Giora has composed over 150 Israeli films, such as Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi, Time of Favor, Queen Shoshana, You only Die Twice and more. He also worked as a composer, arranger and producer with Israeli performers such as Yossi Banai, Miri Mesika, Shalom Chanoch, Meir Banai, Rita, Riki Gal and many others. Between 2011-2015 Bar Giora served as the head of the soundtrack department at the Sapir Academic College, where we continues to teach as a senior lecturer. He also lectures at Beit Berl's film school and at the Maaleh School of Film and Television. At age 16, Bar Giora started playing Jazz in local clubs. All through the 1980s he played jazz and wrote music-related articles for the local press. In 1990 he staged a one man show "I'd be delighted to meet you after the plague", which he wrote, composed and performed (Director: Shlomo Vazana). A secondary character in that show, Michel Clayderlast, became successful when Bar Giora created "Live Elevator Music". A performance-art show debuted at the 1990 Israel Festival, featuring Clayderlast playing 20-second bits of popular music live inside an elevator (20 seconds being the average time elevator users spend inside). In 1991 he staged Erua Mochi, a rock spectacle presenting a new musical style: "Live Acid". The band, led by Bar Giora, played looped music live in an attempt to reduce fears among live musicians, in a time when increasingly popular electronic and sampled music threatened to wipe all their job opportunities. 1992 was dedicated to Jesse's Carnival, a gloomy cabaret show with singer-songwriter Jonathan Licht. In 1993, Bar Giora created a Fringe theatre show named Entebbe- The Musical with Etgar Keret. Bar Giora composed all of the songs and original score, and the show won first prize at Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre. In 1994 he created "Sea of Blues"' - an evening of bluesy and jazzy covers to middle eastern hits. The rest of the 90s were dedicated to theater music and TV live performances (Musical Director of Ad Eser, a weekly talk show, and many others). In 1999 he wrote the music for Pgisha Le'eiyn Kets, a special CD dedicated to the poetry of Nathan Alterman, read by Israeli actor Yossi Banai. That same year he composed Joseph Cedar's feature film Time of Favor. It was a first in a series of more than 150 movie scores (TV dramas and documentaries included) which were created by Bar Giora since. In 2018 the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem & Haifa Cinematheques held a special tribute to his musical work for films and television. That same year "Helicon Music" released the album "Themes" , the first anthology of music composed by Bar Giora for the movies. It was the first in a series of over 10 soundtrack albums composed by Bar Giora to be released by "Helicon Music" Early in 2020 the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra Ashdod dedicated a concert to Bar Giora's works titled "Soundtrack of the Heart". Early 2021 saw the release of "Sharim Tfilayla" - an album arranged and produced by Bar Giora, starring some of Israel's leading performers, such as Ninet, Shalom Chanoch, Ester Rada, Miri Mesika, Alon Eder and others.
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