Ethan Hawke
Ethan Green Hawke is an American actor and director. He has been nominated for four Academy Awards and a Tony Award. Hawke has directed three feature films, three Off-Broadway plays, a documentary, he has written three novels. He made his film debut with the 1985 science fiction feature Explorers, before making a breakthrough appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society, he appeared in various films before taking a role in the 1994 Generation X drama Reality Bites, for which he received critical praise. Hawke starred alongside Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, all of which received critical acclaim. Hawke has been nominated twice for both the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Hawke was further honored with SAG Award nominations for both films, as well as BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for the latter, his other films include the science fiction drama Gattaca, the contemporary adaptation of Hamlet, the action thriller Assault on Precinct 13, the crime drama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, the horror film Sinister.
In 2018 he garnered critical acclaim for his performance as a protestant minister in Paul Schrader's drama First Reformed receiving numerous accolades including New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards and Critics' Choice Awards. In addition to his film work, Hawke has appeared in many theater productions, he made his Broadway debut in 1992 in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 2007 for his performance in Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia. In 2010, Hawke directed Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind, for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Director of a Play. Hawke was born in Austin, Texas, to Leslie, a charity worker, James Hawke, an insurance actuary. Hawke's parents were high school sweethearts in Fort Worth and married young, when Hawke's mother was 17. Hawke was born a year later. Hawke's parents were students at the University of Texas at Austin at the time of his birth, separated and divorced in 1974.
After the separation, Hawke was raised by his mother. The two relocated several times, before settling in New York City, where Hawke attended the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights. Hawke's mother remarried when he was 10 and the family moved to West Windsor Township, New Jersey, where Hawke attended West Windsor Plainsboro High School, he transferred to the Hun School of Princeton, a secondary boarding school, from which he graduated in 1988. In high school, Hawke aspired to be a writer, but developed an interest in acting, he made his stage debut at age 13, in a production at The McCarter Theatre of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, appearances in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School productions of Meet Me in St. Louis and You Can't Take It with You followed. At the Hun School he took acting classes at the McCarter Theatre on the Princeton campus, after high school graduation he studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh dropping out after he was cast in Dead Poets Society.
He enrolled in New York University's English program for two years, but dropped out to pursue other acting roles. Hawke obtained his mother's permission to attend his first casting call at the age of 14, secured his first film role in Joe Dante's Explorers, in which he played an alien-obsessed schoolboy alongside River Phoenix; the film was met with favorable reviews but had poor box office results, a failure which Hawke has admitted caused him to quit acting for a brief period after the film's release. Hawke described the disappointment as difficult to bear at such a young age, adding "I would never recommend that a kid act."In 1989, Hawke made his breakthrough appearance in Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society, playing one of the students taught by Robin Williams's inspirational English teacher. The Variety reviewer noted "Hawke, as the painfully shy Todd, gives a haunting performance." The film received considerable acclaim, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Film and an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
With revenue of $235 million worldwide, it remains Hawke's most commercially successful picture to date. Hawke described the opportunities he was offered as a result of the film's success as critical to his decision to continue acting: "I didn't want to be an actor and I went back to college, but the success was so monumental that I was getting offers to be in such interesting movies and be in such interesting places, it seemed silly to pursue anything else." While filming Dead Poets Society he auditioned for what would be his next film appearance, 1989's comedy drama Dad, where he played Ted Danson's son and Jack Lemmon's grandson. Hawke's next film, 1991's White Fang, brought his first leading role; the film, an adaptation of Jack London's novel of the same name, featured Hawke as Jack Conroy, a Yukon gold hunter who befriends a wolfdog. According to The Oregonian, "Hawke does a good job as young Jack... He makes Jack's passion for White Fang real and keeps it from being ridiculous or overly sentimental."
He appeared in Keith Gordon's A Midnight Clear, a well-received war film based on William Wharton's novel of the same name. In the survival drama Alive, adapted from Piers Paul Read's 1974 book, Hawke portrayed Nando Pa
Amazon (company)
Amazon.com, Inc. is an American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington that focuses in e-commerce, cloud computing, artificial intelligence. Amazon is the largest e-commerce marketplace and cloud computing platform in the world as measured by revenue and market capitalization. Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994, started as an online bookstore but diversified to sell video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, audiobook downloads/streaming, video games, apparel, food and jewelry. The company owns a publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, a film and television studio, Amazon Studios, produces consumer electronics lines including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Echo devices, is the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure services through its AWS subsidiary. Amazon has separate retail websites for some countries and offers international shipping of some of its products to certain other countries. 100 million people subscribe to Amazon Prime.
Amazon is the largest Internet company by revenue in the world and the second largest employer in the United States. In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion, which vastly increased Amazon's presence as a brick-and-mortar retailer. The acquisition was interpreted by some as a direct attempt to challenge Walmart's traditional retail stores. In 1994, Jeff Bezos incorporated Amazon. In May 1997, the organization went public; the company began selling music and videos in 1998, at which time it began operations internationally by acquiring online sellers of books in United Kingdom and Germany. The following year, the organization sold video games, consumer electronics, home-improvement items, software and toys in addition to other items. In 2002, the corporation started Amazon Web Services, which provided data on Web site popularity, Internet traffic patterns and other statistics for marketers and developers.
In 2006, the organization grew its AWS portfolio when Elastic Compute Cloud, which rents computer processing power as well as Simple Storage Service, that rents data storage via the Internet, were made available. That same year, the company started Fulfillment by Amazon which managed the inventory of individuals and small companies selling their belongings through the company internet site. In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems to automate its inventory-management business, purchasing Whole Foods Market supermarket chain five years in 2017; as of March 2019, the board of directors is: Jeff Bezos, President, CEO, Chairman Tom Alberg, Managing partner, Madrona Venture Group Rosalind Brewer, Group President, COO, Starbucks Jamie Gorelick, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale, Dorr Daniel P. Huttenlocher and Vice Provost, Cornell University Judy McGrath, former CEO, MTV Networks Indra Nooyi, former CEO, PepsiCo Jon Rubinstein, former Chairman, CEO, Inc. Thomas O. Ryder, former Chairman, CEO, Reader's Digest Association Patty Stonesifer, CEO, Martha's Table Wendell P. Weeks, President, CEO, Corning Inc.
In 2000, U. S. toy retailer Toys "R" Us entered into a 10-year agreement with Amazon, valued at $50 million per year plus a cut of sales, under which Toys "R" Us would be the exclusive supplier of toys and baby products on the service, the chain's website would redirect to Amazon's Toys & Games category. In 2004, Toys "R" Us sued Amazon, claiming that because of a perceived lack of variety in Toys "R" Us stock, Amazon had knowingly allowed third-party sellers to offer items on the service in categories that Toys "R" Us had been granted exclusivity. In 2006, a court ruled in favor of Toys "R" Us, giving it the right to unwind its agreement with Amazon and establish its own independent e-commerce website; the company was awarded $51 million in damages. In 2001, Amazon entered into a similar agreement with Borders Group, under which Amazon would co-manage Borders.com as a co-branded service, Borders pulled out of the arrangement in 2007, with plans to launch its own online store. On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Green Lantern, The Sandman, Watchmen.
The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from their shelves. In November 2013, Amazon announced a partnership with the United States Postal Service to begin delivering orders on Sundays; the service, included in Amazon's standard shipping rates, initiated in metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York because of the high-volume and inability to deliver in a timely way, with plans to expand into Dallas, New Orleans and Phoenix by 2014. In June 2017, Nike confirmed a "pilot" partnership with Amazon to sell goods directly on the platform; as of October 11, 2017, AmazonFresh sells a range of Booths branded products for home delivery in selected areas. In September 2017, Amazon ventured with one of its sellers JV Appario Retail owned by Patni Group which has recorded a total income of US$ 104.44 million in financial year 2017–18. In November 2018, Amazon reached an agreement with Apple Inc. to sell selected products through the service, via the company and selected Apple Authorized Resellers.
As a result of this partnership, only Apple Authorized Resellers may sell Apple products on Amazon effective January 4, 2019. Amazon.com's product lines available at its website include several media, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries and perso
Fandango (company)
Fandango is an American ticketing company that sells movie tickets via their website as well as through their mobile app. Industry revenue increased for several years after the company's formation. However, as the Internet grew in popularity and medium-sized movie-theater chains began to offer independent ticket sale capabilities through their own websites. In addition, a new paradigm of moviegoers printing their own tickets at home emerged, in services offered by PrintTixUSA and by point-of-sale software vendor operated websites like "ticketmakers.com". An overall slump in moviegoing continued into the 2000s, as home theaters, DVDs, high definition televisions proliferated in average households, turning their homes into a preferred place to screen films. On April 11, 2007, Comcast acquired Fandango, with plans to integrate it into a new entertainment website called "Fancast.com," set to launch the summer of 2007. In June 2008, the domain Movies.com was acquired from Disney. With Comcast's purchase of a majority stake in NBCUniversal in January 2011, Fandango and all other Comcast media assets were merged into the company.
In March 2012, Fandango announced a partnership with Yahoo! Movies, becoming the official online and mobile ticketer serving over 30 million registered users of the Yahoo! service. On January 29, 2016, Fandango announced its acquisition of M-GO, a joint venture between Technicolor SA and DreamWorks Animation which it would rebrand as "FandangoNOW". In February of that same year Fandango announced its acquisition of Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes from Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment; as part of the deal, Warner Bros. would become a 30% shareholder of the combined Fandango company. In December 2016, Fandango Media purchased Cinepapaya, a Peru-based website for purchasing movie tickets, for an undisclosed amount. Fandango charges a premium to use its services, ranging from 75¢ to $2.50, which reserves a ticket to be printed out upon arrival at a movie theater, thereby avoiding lines. Seating was promised for sold-out shows, but this feature was discontinued for most theaters, as not all were equipped to handle reserved seating and will call lines.
With ticket prices in many areas exceeding US$10.00, purchasing tickets through Fandango and other ticketing websites can make movie-going an expensive proposition. Fandango's advertisements play before previews at participating movie-theater chains and feature lunch bag puppets telling various one or two-line jokes and riddles centering on the company's name; the company produced an advertising segment, based on the song, "We are the World". Fandango's website offers exclusive film clips, celebrity interviews, reviews by users, movie descriptions, some web-based games to their members; as of March 5, 2015, Fandango provides customers with memberships the ability to refund or exchange their orders 2 hours before the showtime of their film. Fandango's Android app was listed among Techlands 50 Best Android Applications for 2013. Fandango is one of three major online advance movie ticket sale sites, along with MovieTickets.com and AtomTickets.com. Before being acquired by Comcast in April 2007, Fandango was owned, with the major stakeholder being the second largest movie-theater chain in the U.
S. Regal Entertainment Group, including the United Artists and Hoyts theater chains. Along with other partners, Regal founded Fandango to prevent the older MovieTickets.com from establishing a monopoly on phone and online ticketing services. It's advertising agency decided on its name because it sounded "fun and smart," "easily pronounce and remember--even though it has nothing to do with movies."Mergers of movie chains have complicated matters regarding which company provides online ticketing for a particular chain. Upon Regal's acquisition of Consolidated Theatres, that chain was under contract to MovieTickets.com. On the other hand, Regal's acquisition of the Hoyts chain resulted in Fandango taking over their online ticketing. Prior to 2012, Fandango did not provide online ticketing for many AMC Theatres. However, it provided online ticketing for those AMC Theatres part of the Loews Cineplex Entertainment chain, due to contractual obligations in place prior to the 2005 merger of the two movie chains.
Loews had attempted to break the contract in 2002 under pressure of bankruptcy and from AOL Moviefone and its partner, Loews' Cineplex subsidiary. As of February 8, 2012, Fandango began providing ticketing for all AMC Theatres in the US, after which MovieTickets.com's fellow shareholders sued AMC for breach of contract. AMC and MovieTickets.com settled in 2013, with an agreement that the theater chain's online ticketing would be available on both Fandango and MovieTickets.com. In May 2012, Fandango announced a partnership with former partner of MovieTickets.com. Atom Tickets, a movie ticketing app and website, launched in 2014, has been called a "serious competitor" for Fandango. In July 2009, it was revealed that Fandango along with other websites, including buy.com and Orbitz, were linked with controversial Web loyalty
Austin Film Festival
Austin Film Festival, founded in 1994, is an organization in Austin, that focuses on writers’ creative contributions to film. AFF was called the Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference and functioned to launch the careers of screenwriters, who have been underrepresented within the film industry. Since AFF has grown to serve all filmmakers and has added to Austin’s arts community by creating year-round programming that recognizes the art and value of storytelling through film. AFF is best known for its annual October Austin Film Festival & Conference; the Conference was the first event of its kind, bringing professional and amateur screenwriters together to celebrate the role of screenplays in filmmaking and host conversations focusing on craft and on particular films and television series. In addition, the Screenplay Competition receives more entries than any other competition in the world. Several competition finalists and semi-finalists have made sales or found managers and agents at the conference.
Austin Film Festival attracts film lovers from all over the world, bringing a substantial number of people to Austin every October. This, as well as AFF’s partnerships with a variety of Austin hotels and restaurants—which offer promotional deals for out-of-towners and business for local hotspots—help to give Austin’s economy a boost. According to Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau estimates, AFF contributes in excess of $8 million to the local economy annually. AFF supports Austin’s youth and education system through the Young Filmmakers Program, which includes the Digital Storytelling program, a free film education program implemented in local Austin high schools, the Arts Education Outreach Program, which grants over 300 scholarships to high school students to attend the annual Festival & Conference, their annual Summer Film Camp; each October, Austin Film Festival & Conference presents a program of narrative and documentary features and shorts, including premieres, advance screenings and independent films.
Films showcase the art and craft of strong narrative storytelling and screenings are accompanied by question and answer sessions with cast members and filmmakers. Past guests of the Festival include Joel and Ethan Coen, Ron Howard, Owen Wilson, Steven Zaillian, David Milch, Wes Anderson, Robert Duvall, Buck Henry, Dennis Hopper, Shane Black, Robert Altman, Caroline Thompson, David Chase, James Franco, Johnny Depp, John Landis, Garry Shandling, Bryan Singer, Oliver Stone, James L. Brooks, Harold Ramis, Mitchell Hurwitz, Lawrence Kasdan, Claire Danes, Barry Levinson, Russell Crowe, Sydney Pollack, Mike Judge, Buck Henry, John Lasseter, Robert Rodriguez, David Simon. Recent major films screened at recent festivals include Inside Llewyn Davis, Silver Linings Playbook, The Artist, The Descendants, Jeff Who Lives at Home, 127 Hours, Black Swan, Up in the Air, Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, the US Premiere of Jeff Nichol's first film Shotgun Stories in 2007. In 2009, AFF screened Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 — winner of two Oscars in 1996 — as part of a special presentation In 2006, playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote and actor Robert Duvall were present at AFF for a special screening of their 1983 film Tender Mercies.
In 2005, Austin Film Festival hosted a screening of Shane Black’s directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, given a staged reading at the 2003 Festival. In 1998, The Coen Brothers premiered the director's cut of Blood Simple at the Festival. Dennis Hopper was on hand at the 1997 Festival for a screening of 1969’s Oscar-nominated classic Easy Rider. In 1996, AFF held an anniversary screening of 1987’s indie classic Hollywood Shuffle attended by writer/director Robert Townsend. Restive, a thriller written and directed by newcomer Jeremiah Jones won the Esurance Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, while there was a tie in Best Documentary Feature category between Adam Cornelius’ Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters and Dennis Rice’s Stories from an Undeclared War; the 2012 Austin Film Festival opened with David Chase's Not Fade Away with Chase in attendance. Julia Stiles represented both Silver Linings Playbook and It's a Disaster, the screening for which included a majority of the cast and crew.
Distinguished Screenwriter Awardee Eric Roth presented a screening of The Insider and Outstanding Television Writer awardee Chris Carter showed episodes from both The X-Files and Millennium as well as a retrospective screening of Murder By Decree. Other guest programmers included Paul Feig who selected The Human Tornado and Phil Rosenthal who selected Broadway Danny Rose; the film slate, programmed by Bears Fonte and Stephen Jannise, featured more World and U. S. Premieres than in any prior year of the festival including the world premieres of Ambush at Dark Canyon, Come Morning, Congratulations, Ex-Girlfriends, Flatland 2: Sphereland, Idol Is Dead, Last Man on Earth, Mar Del Plata, Murt Ramirez Wants to Kick My... The Muslims Are Coming!, Pictures of Superheroes, The Rep, Sample This, Spinning Plates, Spring Eddy, produced by Executive Director Barbara Morgan and written and directed by George Anson, one of the first AFF programmers. The 20th Anniversary Austin Film Festival honored actress Susan Sarandon with the 2013 Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award.
Sarandon presented a retrospective screening of John Turturro’s Romance and Cigarettes, joined a conversation on the art and craft of storytelling with the other 2013 awardees, Vince Gilligan, Jonathan Demme (Ex
Variety (magazine)
Variety is a weekly American entertainment trade magazine and website owned by Penske Media Corporation. It was founded by Sime Silverman in New York in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville. In 1933 it added Daily Variety, based in Los Angeles. Variety.com features breaking entertainment news, box office results, cover stories, photo galleries and more, plus a credits database, production charts and calendar, with archive content dating back to 1905. Variety has been published since December 16, 1905, when it was launched by Sime Silverman as a weekly periodical covering theater and vaudeville with its headquarters in New York City. Sime was fired by The Morning Telegraph in 1905 for panning an act which had taken out an advert for $50, said that it looked like he would have to start his own paper in order to be able to tell the truth. With a loan of $1,500 from his father-in-law, he launched Variety as editor. In addition to Sime's former employer The Morning Telegraph, other major competitors on launch were The New York Clipper and the New York Dramatic Mirror.
The original cover design, similar to the current design, was sketched by Edgar M. Miller, a scenic painter, who refused payment; the front cover contained pictures of the original editorial staff, who were Alfred Greason, Epes W Sargeant and Joshua Lowe, as well as Sime. The first issue contained a review by Sime's son Sidne known as Skigie, claimed to be the youngest critic in the world at seven years old. In 1922, Sime acquired The New York Clipper, reporting on the stage and other entertainment since 1853 and folded it two years merging some of its features into Variety. In 1922, Sime launched the Times Square Daily, which he referred to as "the world's worst daily" and soon scrapped. During that period, Variety staffers worked on all three papers. After the launch of The Hollywood Reporter in 1930, which Variety sued for alleged plagiarism in 1932, Sime launched Daily Variety in 1933, based in Hollywood, with Arthur Ungar as the editor, it replaced Variety Bulletin, issued in Hollywood on Fridays.
Daily Variety was published every day other than Sunday but on Monday to Friday. Ungar was editor until 1950, followed by Joe Schoenfeld and Thomas M. Pryor, succeeded by his son Pete; the Daily and the Weekly were run as independent newspapers, with the Daily concentrating on Hollywood news and the Weekly on U. S. and International coverage. Sime Silverman had passed on the editorship of the Weekly Variety to Abel Green as his replacement in 1931. Green remained as editor from 1931 until his death in 1973. Sime's son Sidne succeeded him as publisher of both publications. Following his death from tuberculosis in 1950, his only son Syd Silverman, was the sole heir to what was Variety Inc. Young Syd's legal guardian Harold Erichs oversaw Variety Inc. until 1956. After that date Syd Silverman managed the company as publisher of both the Weekly Variety in New York and the Daily Variety in Hollywood, until the sale of both papers in 1987 to Cahners Publishing for $64 million, he remained as publisher until 1990 when he was succeeded on Weekly Variety by Gerard A. Byrne and on Daily Variety by Sime's great grandson, Michael Silverman.
Syd became chairman of both publications. In 1953, Army Archerd's "Just for Variety" column appeared on page two of Daily Variety and swiftly became popular in Hollywood. Archerd broke countless exclusive stories, reporting from film sets, announcing pending deals, giving news of star-related hospitalizations and births; the column appeared daily for 52 years until September 1, 2005. On December 7, 1988, the editor, Roger Watkins and oversaw the transition to four-color print. Upon its launch, the new-look Variety measured one inch shorter with a washed-out color on the front; the old front-page box advertisement was replaced by a strip advertisement, along with the first photos published in Variety since Sime gave up using them in the old format in 1920: they depicted Sime and Syd. For twenty years from 1989 its editor-in-chief was Peter Bart only of the weekly New York edition, with Michael Silverman running the Daily in Hollywood. Bart had worked at Paramount Pictures and The New York Times.
In April 2009, Bart moved to the position of "vice president and editorial director", characterized online as "Boffo No More: Bart Up and Out at Variety". From mid 2009 to 2013, Timothy M. Gray oversaw the publication as Editor-in-Chief, after over 30 years of various reporter and editor positions in the newsroom. In October 2012, Reed Business Information, the periodical's owner, sold the publication to Penske Media Corporation. PMC is the owner of Deadline Hollywood, which since the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike has been considered Variety's largest competitor in online showbiz news. In October 2012, Jay Penske, Chairman and CEO of PMC, announced that the website's paywall would come down, the print publication would stay, he would invest more into Variety's digital platform in a townhall. In March 2013, Variety owner Jay Penske appointed three co-editors to oversee different parts of the publication's industry coverage; the decision was made to stop printing Daily Variety with the last printed edition published on March 19, 2013 with the headline "Variety A
Liam Cunningham
Liam Cunningham is an Irish stage and screen actor. He is known for playing Davos Seaworth in the HBO epic-fantasy series Game of Thrones, he has been nominated for the London Film Critics' Circle Award, the British Independent Film Award, has won two Irish Film & Television Awards, shared a BAFTA with Michael Fassbender, for their crime-drama short film Pitch Black Heist. Cunningham was born in East Wall, an inner city area of the Northside of Dublin, he grew up in Kilmore West with a brother. Cunningham pursued a career as an electrician. In the 1980s, Cunningham moved to Zimbabwe for three years where he maintained electrical equipment at a safari park and trained Zimbabwean electricians. After returning to Ireland, Cunningham became dissatisfied with his work as an electrician and decided to pursue his interest in acting, he began to work in local theatre. He appeared in a production of "Studs" at The Tricycle Theatre in London. Cunningham's debut film role came in Into the West, his on-screen acting continued with roles in War of the Buttons, A Little Princess, before making his first major break-out role in Jude, playing Phillotson.
He continued with character roles in RKO 281, Falling for a Dancer, Shooting the Past, When the Sky Falls and Stranded. Cunningham came to international prominence with his role as Captain Ryan in the critically acclaimed, independent horror film, Dog Soldiers. Since he has starred in acclaimed films roles including, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, The Guard, Black Butterflies and The Escapist and in numerous high budget British and American films including The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Clash of the Titans and Harry Brown. On television, he appeared as President Richard Tate in the BBC programme Outcasts. In 2012, Cunningham joined the main cast for the second season of HBO's Game of Thrones portraying former smuggler Davos Seaworth, in 2013 he starred in The Numbers Station alongside John Cusack, he was cast in season 5 of the BBC series Merlin as a sorcerer. He featured in the music video for "High Hopes" by Irish alternative rock band Kodaline from their EP The High Hopes.
In April 2013, he was cast in the seventh season of the hit BBC1 series Doctor Who in the episode "Cold War", where he played Captain Zhukov, the commander of a Russian submarine in 1983 facing one of the Ice Warriors. He guest starred in the second season of the VH1 television series Stay Closer, with Sandra Bullock and Jessica Chastain. In 2015, he played the father in Brady Corbet's directorial debut film, The Childhood of a Leader. Cunningham resides in Dublin with his wife Colette, with whom he has three children, daughter Ellen and sons Liam Jr. and Sean. In 2015, Cunningham was one of over 100 artists who signed a letter to The Guardian announcing support for a cultural boycott of Israel Liam Cunningham on IMDb
Rutger Hauer
Rutger Oelsen Hauer is a Dutch actor and environmentalist. He has acted in films, his career began in 1969 with the title role in the Dutch television series Floris. His film credits include Flesh+Blood, Blind Fury, Blade Runner, The Hitcher, Escape from Sobibor, Wedlock, Sin City, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Osterman Weekend, The Blood of Heroes, Batman Begins, Hobo with a Shotgun, The Rite. Hauer founded an AIDS awareness organization. Hauer was born on 23 January 1944 in the son of drama teachers Teunke and Arend Hauer, he has one older and two younger. The Hauer siblings grew up in Amsterdam. Since his parents were occupied with their careers, he and his sisters were brought up by nannies, he went to a Waldorf school. At the age of 15, Hauer spent a year scrubbing decks aboard a freighter. Returning home, he worked as an electrician and a joiner while finishing his high school diploma at night. Hauer attended the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam for acting classes, with a short interruption when he was drafted to serve as a combat medic in the Royal Netherlands Army.
Hauer joined an experimental troupe, with which he remained for five years before Paul Verhoeven cast him in the lead role of the 1969 television series Floris, a Dutch medieval action drama. The role made him famous in his native country, Hauer reprised his role for the 1975 German remake Floris von Rosemund. Hauer's career changed course; the film found box office favour abroad and at home, Hauer looked to appear in more international films. Within two years, Hauer made his English-language debut in the British film The Wilby Conspiracy. Set in South Africa, the film was an action-drama with a focus on apartheid. Hauer's supporting role, was noticed in Hollywood, he returned to Dutch films for several years. During this period, he made Katie Tippel and worked again with Verhoeven on Soldier of Orange, Spetters; these two films paired Hauer with fellow Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé. Hauer made his American debut in the Sylvester Stallone film Nighthawks as a psychopathic and cold-blooded terrorist named Wulfgar.
The following year, he appeared in arguably his most famous and acclaimed role as the eccentric and violent but sympathetic anti-hero Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction thriller Blade Runner, in which he improvised the famous tears in rain monologue. He went on to play the adventurer courting Theresa Russell in Eureka, the investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in The Osterman Weekend, the hardened Landsknecht mercenary Martin in Flesh & Blood, the knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke, he appeared in The Hitcher, in which he played a mysterious hitchhiker tormenting a lone motorist and murdering anyone in his way. At the height of Hauer's fame, he was set to be cast as RoboCop though the role went to Peter Weller; that same year, Hauer starred as Nick Randall in Wanted: Dead or Alive as the descendant of the character played by Steve McQueen in the television series of the same name. In The Legend of the Holy Drinker, Hauer showed a more soulful side. Phillip Noyce attempted to capitalize, with far less success, on Hauer's spiritual qualities in the martial arts action adventure Blind Fury.
Hauer returned to science fiction with The Blood of Heroes, in which he played a former champion in a post-apocalyptic world. By the 1990s, Hauer was well known for his humorous Guinness commercials as well as his screen roles, which had involved low-budget films such as Split Second, Omega Doom, the film adaptation of'The Beans of Egypt Maine' and New World Disorder, he appeared in the Kylie Minogue music video "On a Night Like This". In the late 1980s and 1990s, as well as in 2000, Hauer acted in several British and American television productions, including Inside the Third Reich, Escape from Sobibor, Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight as Amelia Earhart's navigator Noonan, Hostile Waters, The 10th Kingdom, Smallville and Salem's Lot. In 1999, Hauer was awarded the Dutch "Best Actor of the Century Rembrandt Award". Hauer played an assassin in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a villainous cardinal with influential power in Sin City and a devious corporate executive running Wayne Enterprises in Batman Begins.
He played the title role in the 2005 movie Dracula III: Legacy. He hosted the British reality television documentary Shock Treatment in 2005, he starred in Goal! 2: Living the Dream... as Real Madrid coach Rudi Van Der Merwe. In 2007 he recorded the voice-overs for the UK advertising campaign for Lurpak butter. In 2009, his role in avant-garde filmmaker Cyrus Frisch's Dazzle, received positive reviews; the film was praised in Dutch press as "the most relevant Dutch film of the year". The same year, Hauer starred in the title role of Barbarossa, an Italian film directed by Renzo Martinelli. In April 2010, he was cast in the live action adaptation of the short and fictitious Grindhouse trailer Hobo With a Shotgun. In March 2011, it was announced that Hauer would play vampire hunter Van Helsing in legendary horror director Dario Argento's Dracula 3D. Rutger Hauer starred as Ravn in The Last Kingdom in 2015. Hauer starred as Niall Brigantin season 6 of HBO's True Blood. In 2017, Hauer voi
