Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is an American filmmaker, actor and composer. He is known as a creator of comedic parodies. Brooks began his career as a comic and a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows, he created, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series Get Smart, which ran from 1965 to 1970. In middle age, Brooks became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top 10 moneymakers of the year they were released, his best-known films include The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World, Part I, Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. A musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers, ran on Broadway, from 2001 to 2007. In 2001, having won an Emmy, a Grammy and an Oscar, he joined a small list of EGOT winners with his Tony Award for The Producers, he received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the 41st AFI Life Achievement Award in June 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in March 2015, a National Medal of Arts in September 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in February 2017.
Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of the past 100 years, all of which ranked in the top 15 of the list: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, Young Frankenstein at number 13. Brooks was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005, their son Max Brooks is an actor and author, known for his novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York, to Max and Kate Kaminsky, grew up in Williamsburg, his father's family were German Jews from Danzig. He had three older brothers: Irving and Bernie. Brooks' father died of kidney disease at 34, he has said of his father's death, "There's an outrage there. I may be angry at God, or at the world, for that, and I'm sure a lot of my comedy is based on hostility. Growing up in Williamsburg, I learned to clothe it in comedy to spare myself problems—like a punch in the face."Brooks was a small, sickly boy, bullied and teased by his classmates because of his size.
He grew up in tenement housing. At age 9, Brooks went to a Broadway show with his uncle Joe—a taxi driver who would drive the Broadway doormen back to Brooklyn for free and was given the tickets in gratitude—and saw Anything Goes with William Gaxton, Ethel Merman and Victor Moore at the Alvin Theater. After the show, he told his uncle that he was not going to work in the garment district like everyone else but was going into show business; when Brooks was 14 he gained employment as a pool tummler. Brooks kept his guests amused with his crazy antics. In a Playboy interview Brooks explained that one day he stood at the edge of a diving board wearing a large overcoat and 2 suitcases full of rocks who announced: "Business is terrible! I can't go on!" before jumping clothed into the pool. He was taught by Buddy Rich how to play the drums and started to earn money as a musician when he was 14. During Brooks' time as a drummer he was given his first opportunity as a comedian at the age of 16 following an ill emcee.
During his teens, Melvin Kaminsky changed his name to Mel Brooks. After being confused with the trumpeter Max Kaminsky. After attending Abraham Lincoln High School for a year, Brooks graduated from Eastern District High School with the intention of studying at Brooklyn College as a psychology major. However, Brooks was drafted into the army in 1944, where he tested into the elite Army Specialized Training Program and was sent to the Virginia Military Institute to be taught skills such as military engineering; when the ASTP was disbanded in May, 1944, Brooks underwent basic training at Oklahoma. He served in the United States Army as a corporal in the 1104 Engineer Combat Battalion, 78th Infantry Division, defusing land mines as the allies advanced into Germany during World War II; as World War II came to an end Mel Brooks took part in organizing shows for Germans and for American soldiers. After the war, Brooks started working in various Borscht Belt resorts and nightclubs in the Catskill Mountains as a drummer and pianist.
After a regular comic at one of the nightclubs was too sick to perform one night, Brooks started working as a stand-up comic, telling jokes and doing movie-star impressions. He began acting in summer stock in Red Bank, New Jersey, did some radio work, he worked his way up to the comically aggressive job of tummler at Grossinger's, one of the Borscht Belt's most famous resorts. Brooks found more rewarding work behind the scenes. In 1949 his friend Sid Caesar hired Brooks to write jokes for the NBC series The Admiral Broadway Revue, paying him $50 a week. In 1950 Caesar created the revolutionary variety comedy series Your Show of Shows and hired Brooks as a writer along with Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, head writer Mel Tolkin; the show was an immediate hit and has been influential to all variety and sketch-comedy TV shows since. Reiner, as creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, based Morey Amsterdam's character Buddy Sorell on Brooks; the film My Favorite Year is loosely based on Brooks' experiences as a writer on
Neil Simon
Marvin Neil Simon was an American playwright and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays adaptations of his plays, he received more combined Tony nominations than any other writer. Simon grew up in New York City during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage, giving him a unhappy and unstable childhood, he took refuge in movie theaters where he enjoyed watching the early comedians like Charlie Chaplin. After a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve, after graduating from high school, he began writing comedy scripts for radio and some popular early television shows. Among them were Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows from 1950, The Phil Silvers Show, which ran from 1955 to 1959, he began writing his own plays beginning with Come Blow Your Horn, which took him three years to complete and ran for 678 performances on Broadway. It was followed by two more successful plays, Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple, for which he won a Tony Award.
It made him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway." During the 1960s to 1980s, he wrote both original screenplays and stage plays, with some films based on his plays. His style ranged from romantic comedy to farce to more serious dramatic comedy. Overall, he won three. During one season, he had four successful plays running on Broadway at the same time, in 1983 became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honor. Neil Simon was born on July 1927, in The Bronx, New York, to Jewish parents, his father, Irving Simon, was a garment salesman, his mother, Mamie Simon, was a homemaker. Simon had one older brother by television writer and comedy teacher Danny Simon, he grew up in Washington Heights, during the period of the Great Depression, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School when he was sixteen, where he was nicknamed "Doc" and described as shy in the school yearbook. Simon's childhood was difficult and unhappy due to his parents' "tempestuous marriage" and financial hardship caused by the Depression.
He would sometimes block out their arguments by putting a pillow over his ears at night. His father abandoned the family for months at a time, causing them further financial and emotional hardship; as a result and his brother Danny were sometimes forced to live with different relatives, or else their parents took in boarders for some income. During an interview with writer Lawrence Grobel, Simon stated: "To this day I never knew what the reason for all the fights and battles were about between the two of them... She'd hate him and be angry, but he would come back and she would take him back, she loved him." Simon states that among the reasons he became a writer was to fulfill his need to be independent of such emotional family issues, a need he recognized when he was seven or eight: "I'd better start taking care of myself somehow... It made me strong as an independent person. To escape difficulties at home he took refuge in movie theaters, where he enjoyed comedies with silent stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy.
Simon recalls: "I was being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud." I think part of what made me a comedy writer is the blocking out of some of the ugly, painful things in my childhood and covering it up with a humorous attitude... do something to laugh until I was able to forget what was hurting. Simon acknowledged these childhood movies as having inspired him to write comedy: "I wanted to make a whole audience fall onto the floor and laughing so hard that some of them pass out." He appreciated Chaplin's ability to make people laugh and made writing comedy his long-term goal, saw it as a way to connect with people. "I was never going to be an athlete or a doctor." He began creating comedy for which he got paid while still in high school, when at the age of fifteen and his brother created a series of comedy sketches for employees at an annual department store event. And to help develop his writing skill, he spent three days a week at the library reading books by famous humorists such as Mark Twain, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman and S. J. Perelman.
Soon after graduating from high school, he signed up with the Army Air Force Reserve at New York University, was sent to Colorado as a corporal. It was during those years in the Reserve, he was assigned to Lowry Air Force Base during 1945 and attended the University of Denver from 1945 to 1946. Simon quit his job as a mailroom clerk in the Warner Brothers offices in Manhattan to write radio and television scripts with his brother Danny Simon, including tutelage by radio humourist Goodman Ace when Ace ran a short-lived writing workshop for CBS, they wrote for the radio series The Robert Q. Lewis Show, which led to other writing jobs. Max Liebman hired the duo for his popular television comedy series Your Show of Shows, for which he earned two Emmy Award nominations, he wrote scripts for The Phil Silvers Show. Simon credited these two latter writing jobs for their importance to his career, having stated that "between the two of them, I spent five years and learned more about what I was going to do than in any other previous experience."
He added, "I knew when I walked into Your Show of Shows, that this was the most talented group of writers that up until that time ha
John Hughes (filmmaker)
John Wilden Hughes Jr. was an American filmmaker. Beginning as an author of humorous essays and stories for National Lampoon, he went on to write and direct some of the most successful live-action comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s such as National Lampoon's Vacation and its sequels National Lampoon's European Vacation and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Most of Hughes' work has been set in the Chicago metropolitan area, he is best known for his coming-of-age teen comedy films which combined magic realism with honest depictions of suburban teenage life. Many of his most enduring characters from these years were written for Molly Ringwald, Hughes' muse. While out on a walk one summer morning in New York, Hughes suffered a fatal heart attack and was pronounced dead at the hospital, his legacy after his death was honored by many, including at the 82nd Academy Awards by actors with whom he had worked such as Matthew Broderick, Anthony Michael Hall and Macaulay Culkin among others. Actors whose careers Hughes helped launch include Michael Keaton, Bill Paxton, Broderick and members of the Brat Pack group.
Hughes was born on February 18, 1950 in Lansing, Michigan, to Marion Crawford, who volunteered in charity work, John Hughes Sr. who worked in sales. He was the only boy, had three sisters, he spent the first twelve years of his life in Grosse Pointe, where he was a fan of Detroit Red Wings #9 Gordie Howe. Hughes described himself as "kind of quiet" as a kid. I grew up in a neighborhood, girls and old people. There weren't any boys my age, so I spent a lot of time by myself, imagining things, and every time we would get established somewhere, we would move. Life just started to get good in seventh grade, we moved to Chicago. I ended up in a big high school, I didn't know anybody, but The Beatles came along changed my whole life. And Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home came out and changed me. Thursday I was one person, Friday I was another. My heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on.
In 1963, Hughes's family moved to a suburb of Chicago. This is. Hughes attended Grove School, before he attended Glenbrook North High School, which gave him inspiration for the films that made his reputation in years. While painting homecoming murals at Glenbrook North, he met a cheerleader; as a teenager, Hughes found movies as an escape. According to childhood friend Jackson Peterson, "His mom and dad criticized him a lot She would be critical of what John would want to do". Hughes was an avid fan of The Beatles, according to several friends, he knew a lot about movies and the Rat Pack. After dropping out of the University of Arizona, Hughes began selling jokes to well-established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. Hughes used his jokes to get an entry-level job at Needham, Harper & Steers as an advertising copywriter in Chicago in 1970 and in 1974 at Leo Burnett Worldwide. During this period, he created. Hughes' work on the Virginia Slims account took him to the Philip Morris headquarters in New York City.
This gave him the opportunity to spend time at the offices of the National Lampoon magazine. Hughes subsequently penned a story, inspired by his family trips as a child, to become his calling card and entry onto the staff of the magazine; the piece, "Vacation'58" became the basis for the film National Lampoon's Vacation. Among his other contributions to the Lampoon, the April Fools' Day stories "My Penis" and "My Vagina" gave an early indication of Hughes's ear for the particular rhythm of teenage dialogue as well as for the various indignities of teen life in general, his first credited screenplay, Class Reunion, was written while still on staff at the magazine. The resulting film became the second disastrous attempt by the flagship to duplicate the runaway success of Animal House, it was Hughes's next screenplay for the imprint, National Lampoon's Vacation, that would prove to be a major hit, putting the Lampoon back on the map. This, along with the success of another Hughes script, Mr. Mom, earned him a three-film deal with Universal Pictures.
Hughes's directorial debut, Sixteen Candles, won unanimous praise when it was released in 1984 due in no small part to its more honest depiction of upper middle class high school life in stark contrast to the Porky's-inspired comedies made at the time. It was the first in a string of efforts set in or around high school, including The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Some Kind of Wonderful. To avoid being pigeonholed as a maker of teen comedies, Hughes branched out in 1987 by directing the smash hit Planes and Automobiles starring Steve Martin and John Candy, his output would not be so critically well received, though films like Uncle Buck proved popular. Hughes's greatest commercial success came with Home Alone, a film he wrote and produced about
Mireille Enos
Marie Mireille Enos is an American actress. Drawn to acting from a young age, she graduated in performing arts from Brigham Young University, where she was awarded the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship. Having made her acting debut in the 1994 television film Without Consent, she has since received nominations for a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award. Early in her career, Enos appeared variously as a guest star on such television shows as Sex and the City and The Education of Max Bickford among others, she made her feature film debut with a minor part in the 2001 romantic comedy Someone Like You, but garnered wider attention for her role as Honey in the 2005 Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Her performance in the latter earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the Tony Awards, she again ventured into television roles and landed the role of twins Kathy and JoDean Marquart in the HBO drama series Big Love. Enos' breakout role was on the AMC crime drama series The Killing.
Her performance garnered her critical acclaim and earned her nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series at the Primetime Emmy Award and the Golden Globe Award. Enos starred as Karin Lane in the 2013 disaster film World War Z and Kathleen Hall in the 2014 romantic drama If I Stay, she continued to draw praise for her work in independent films like Never Here. Enos starred as the lead character in the short-lived ABC legal thriller The Catch. Enos was born on 22 September 1975, the daughter of Monique, a French teacher, Jon Goree Enos, her father is American, from Texas, has Scottish ancestry. Her mother is French, she is the fourth of five children all of whom work in the arts industry in some way. Her brothers are named Jongiorgi and Raphael, her sisters are named Veronique and Ginger. Her younger sister, Ginger, is a modern dancer, her family moved to Houston, Texas when Enos was five years old. There, she attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Enos studied theater at Brigham Young University, graduating with a bachelor of arts in acting in 1997.
While a student, she won the Irene Ryan Award at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. an award annually presented to the nation's top collegiate actor. Enos made her screen acting debut in the television film Without Consent, she made her feature film debut with small role in the romantic comedy Someone Like You starring Ashley Judd. On television she had number of guest-starring parts in numerous shows, including Sex and the City, Strong Medicine, Rescue Me, Without a Trace, Crossing Jordan, CSI: Miami and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, she appeared in several stage productions. She appeared in the 2005 Broadway revival production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which starred Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin. For her performance she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. In 2007, Enos joined the cast of the HBO drama series Big Love about a polygamous family, she played the roles of twin sisters JoDean Marquart and Kathy Marquart. She was a regular cast member in the third and fourth seasons.
In 2010, Enos was cast in her first lead role in a television series: detective Sarah Linden in the AMC drama series The Killing, based upon the Danish television series Forbrydelsen. She received critical acclaim for that performance, the first season was praised by most critics. Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter in his review said "It's not until you watch Enos play Sarah for a while that it sinks in—there hasn't been a female American character like her ever."Enos received nominations for an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama, three Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television. The series ended in 2014, after four seasons. After her breakout role in The Killing, Enos began her career in feature films, she played Karin Lane, the wife of Brad Pitt's character in World War Z. The film received positive reviews and was a commercial success, grossing over $540 million, she co-starred as Josh Brolin's character's wife in Gangster Squad and appeared opposite Reese Witherspoon in the crime drama Devil's Knot, based on a true story.
In 2014, she appeared in the crime thriller Sabotage directed by David Ayer and starred in drama film If I Stay directed by R. J. Cutler, based on the novel of the same name by Gayle Forman; the film was released on August 22, 2014. Enos co-starred that year alongside Ryan Reynolds in The Captive, directed by Atom Egoyan. Enos was cast as lead actress in the thriller You Were Never Here, directed by Camille Thoman. In March 2015, it was announced that Enos had been cast as the lead character in the ABC legal drama series, The Catch, produced by Shonda Rhimes, she plays the lead character Alice Vaughan, the head of a high-end private detective agency in this "humorous" thriller, which aired its first 10-episode season in spring 2016, a second season of 10 episodes in 2017 as part of ABC's "TGIT" Thursday-night lineup. In March 2015, it was announced Enos would star alongside Olivia Cooke in Katie Says Goodbye, an independent film; that same year, she starred in Behold My Heart, directed by Joshua Leonard.
Enos married actor Alan Ruck on January 4, 2008. They have two children, she has two stepchildren by Ruck's previous marriage. She was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but is no longer a practicing member. Mireille Enos on IMDb Mireille Enos at the Internet Broadway Database Mireille Enos at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Mireillee Enos on Twitter Mir
Charlie Sheen
Carlos Irwin Estévez, known professionally as Charlie Sheen, is an American actor. Sheen has appeared in films including Platoon, Wall Street, Young Guns, Eight Men Out, Major League, Hot Shots!, The Three Musketeers. In the 2000s, Sheen replaced Michael J. Fox in Spin City, his performance earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, he starred in Two and a Half Men which earned him several Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations. He most starred in the FX comedy series Anger Management, which concluded its 100-episode run in 2014. In 2010, Sheen was the highest paid actor on television and earned US$1.8 million per episode of Two and a Half Men. Sheen's personal life has made headlines, including reports of alcohol and drug abuse and marital problems, as well as allegations of domestic violence. In March 2011, his contract for Two and a Half Men was terminated by CBS and Warner Bros following his derogatory comments about the series' creator, Chuck Lorre.
On November 17, 2015, Sheen publicly revealed that he is HIV positive, having been diagnosed about four years earlier. Carlos Estévez was born on September 3, 1965, in New York City, the youngest son of actor Martin Sheen and artist Janet Templeton, his paternal grandparents were emigrants from Ireland, respectively. His father is a "devout Catholic" and his mother is a "strict Southern Baptist". Sheen claimed. Sheen has two older brothers and Ramon, a younger sister, Renée, all actors, his parents moved to Malibu, after Martin's Broadway turn in The Subject Was Roses. Sheen's first movie appearance was at age nine in his father's 1974 film The Execution of Private Slovik. Sheen attended Santa Monica High School in Santa Monica, along with Robert Downey Jr. where he was a star pitcher and shortstop for the baseball team. At Santa Monica High School, he showed an early interest in acting, making amateur Super 8 films with his brother Emilio and school friends Rob Lowe and Sean Penn under his birth name.
A few weeks before graduation, Sheen was expelled from school for poor grades and attendance. Deciding to become an actor, he took the stage name Charlie Sheen, his father had adopted the surname Sheen in honor of the Catholic archbishop and theologian Fulton J. Sheen, while Charlie was an English form of his given name Carlos. Sheen's film career began in 1984 with a role in the Cold War teen drama Red Dawn with Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey. Sheen and Grey reunited in a small scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, he appeared in an episode of the anthology series Amazing Stories. Sheen had his first major role in the Vietnam War drama Platoon. In 1987, he starred with his father in Wall Street. Both Wall Street and Platoon were directed by Oliver Stone. In 1988, Stone asked Sheen to star in his new film Born on the Fourth of July, but cast Tom Cruise instead. Sheen was never notified by Stone, only found out when he heard the news from his brother Emilio. Sheen did not take a lead role in Stone's subsequent films, although he did have a cameo role in Money Never Sleeps.
In 1987, Sheen was cast to portray Ron in the unreleased Grizzly II: The Predator, the sequel to the 1976 low budget horror movie Grizzly. In 1988, he starred in the baseball film Eight Men Out as outfielder Happy Felsch. In 1988, he appeared opposite his brother Emilio in Young Guns and again in 1990 in Men at Work. In 1989, John Fusco, Christopher Cain, Lou Diamond Phillips, Emilio Estévez and Kiefer Sutherland were honored with a Bronze Wrangler for their work on the film Young Guns. In 1990, he starred alongside his father in Cadence as a rebellious inmate in a military stockade and with Clint Eastwood in the buddy cop film The Rookie; the films were directed by Martin Eastwood, respectively. In 1992, he featured in Beyond the Law with Michael Madsen. In 1994, Sheen was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1997, Sheen wrote his first movie, Discovery Mars, a direct-to-video documentary revolving around the question, "Is There Life on Mars?". The next year, Sheen wrote and starred in the action movie No Code of Conduct.
Sheen appeared in several comedy roles, including the Major League films, Money Talks, the spoof Hot Shots! films. In 1999, Sheen appeared in a pilot for A&E Network, called Sugar Hill, not picked up. In 1999, Sheen played himself in Being John Malkovich, he appeared in the third and fifth entries in the popular horror-spoof series Scary Movie. Sheen has done voices for animation, appearing as Charlie in All Dogs Go To Heaven 2, as well as Dex Dogtective in the Lionsgate animated comedy Foodfight. In 2012, Sheen was cast to star alongside Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray in Roman Coppola's surreal comedy film A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III. For the 2013 film Machete Kills, in which Sheen played the President of the United States, he was credited under his birth name Carlos Estévez, it was a one-time move, due to the film's Hispanic theme. The trailer and opening credits for the film used an "and introducing..." tag when showing Sheen's birth name. Sheen's next feature film project was the ensemble film 9/11, an adaptation of the 9/11 stage play Elevator written by Patrick Carson.
The film featured Whoopi Goldberg, Gina Gershon, Luis Guzmán, Wood Harris, Jacqueline Bisset and Bruce Davison. In 2000, Sheen debuted on the small screen when he replaced Michael J. Fox for the last two seasons of the sitcom Spin City (which had fellow Ferris Bu
Sean Penn
Sean Justin Penn is an American actor and filmmaker. He has won two Academy Awards, for his roles in the biopic Milk. Penn began his acting career in television, with a brief appearance in episode 112 of Little House on the Prairie, December 4, 1974, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in the drama Taps, a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Penn garnered critical attention for his roles in the crime dramas At Close Range, State of Grace, Carlito's Way, he became known as a prominent leading actor with the drama Dead Man Walking, for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination and the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Penn received another two Oscar nominations for Woody Allen's comedy-drama Sweet and Lowdown and the drama I Am Sam, before winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and a second one in 2008 for Milk, he has won a Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival for the Nick Cassavetes-directed She's So Lovely, two Best Actor Awards at the Venice Film Festival for the indie film Hurlyburly and the drama 21 Grams.
Penn made his feature film directorial debut with The Indian Runner, followed by the drama film The Crossing Guard and the mystery film The Pledge. Penn directed one of the 11 segments of 11'09"01 September 11, a compilation film made in response to the September 11 attacks, his fourth feature film, the biographical drama survival movie Into the Wild, garnered critical acclaim and two Academy Award nominations. In addition to his film work, Penn engages in political and social activism, including his criticism of the George W. Bush administration, his contact with the Presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, his humanitarian work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Penn was born in Santa Monica, California, to actor and director Leo Penn, actress Eileen Ryan, his older brother is musician Michael Penn. His younger brother, actor Chris Penn, died in 2006, his paternal grandparents were Ashkenazi Jewish emigrants from Lithuania and Russia, while his mother is a Catholic of Irish and Italian descent.
Penn attended Santa Monica High School. He began making short films with some of his childhood friends, including actors Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen, who lived near his home. Penn appeared in a 1974 episode of the Little House on the Prairie television series as an extra when his father, directed some of the episodes. Penn launched his film career with the action-drama Taps, where he played a military high school cadet. A year he appeared in the hit comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in the role of surfer-stoner Jeff Spicoli. Next, Penn appeared as a troubled youth, in the drama Bad Boys; the role jump-started his career as a serious actor. Penn played Andrew Daulton Lee in the film The Falcon and the Snowman, which followed an actual criminal case. Lee was a former drug dealer by trade, convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union and sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled in 1998. Penn hired Lee as his personal assistant because he wanted to reward Lee for allowing him to play Lee in the film.
Penn starred in the drama At Close Range. He stopped acting for a few years in the early 1990s, having been dissatisfied with the industry, focused on making his directing debut; the Academy Awards first recognized his work in nominating him for playing a racist murderer on death row in the drama film Dead Man Walking. He was nominated again for his comedic performance as an egotistical jazz guitarist in the film Sweet and Lowdown, he received his third nomination after portraying a mentally handicapped father in I am Sam. Penn won for his role in the Boston crime-drama Mystic River. In 2004, Penn played Samuel Bicke, a character based on Samuel Byck, who in 1974 attempted and failed to assassinate President Richard Nixon, in The Assassination of Richard Nixon; the same year, he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Next, Penn portrayed governor Willie Stark in an adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's classic 1946 American novel All the King's Men; the film was a critical and commercial failure, named by a 2010 Forbes article as the biggest flop in the last five years.
In November 2008, Penn earned positive reviews for his portrayal of real-life gay-rights icon and politician Harvey Milk in the biopic Milk, was nominated for best actor for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards. The film earned Penn his fifth nomination and second win for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Penn starred as Joseph C. Wilson in a film adaptation of Valerie Plame's 2007 memoir, he co-starred in the drama The Tree of Life, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. In 2015, Penn starred in The Gunman, a French-American action thriller based on the novel The Prone Gunman, by Jean-Patrick Manchette. Jasmine Trinca, Idris Elba, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance and fellow Oscar-winner Javier Bardem appear in supporting roles. Penn plays Jim Terrier, a sniper on a mercenary assassination team who kills the minister of mines of the Congo. Penn made his directorial debut with The Indian Ru
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Atlantis is a Canadian-American adventure and military science fiction television series and part of MGM's Stargate franchise. The show was created by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper as a spin-off series of Stargate SG-1, created by Wright and Jonathan Glassner and was itself based on the feature film Stargate. All five seasons of Stargate Atlantis were broadcast by the Sci-Fi Channel in the United States and The Movie Network in Canada; the show premiered on July 16, 2004. The series was filmed in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; the story of Stargate Atlantis follows the events of Stargate SG-1's seventh season finale episode "Lost City" and eighth season premiere episode "New Order", in which the cast of that series discovered an Antarctic outpost created by the alien race known as the Ancients. In the pilot episode "Rising", Stargate Command sends an international team to investigate the outpost, where Dr. Daniel Jackson discovers the location of Atlantis, the legendary city created by the Ancients, Colonel Jack O'Neill visits the outpost after having been put in stasis and retrieved from it.
The series was a ratings success for the Sci Fi Channel, was popular in Europe and Australia. Although it received little critical response, Stargate Atlantis was honored with numerous awards and award nominations in its five-season run. After Stargate Atlantis was cancelled, the show's co-creators began working on the already-conceptualized Stargate Universe which the network had approved to have a bigger budget, be less mythology-dependent, have more focus on character development. Merchandise for Stargate Atlantis includes games and toys, print media, an original audio series. With the cancellation of Stargate Universe, the intended direct-to-DVD Stargate Atlantis movie, entitled Stargate: Extinction, was cancelled. Stargate Atlantis follows the present-day adventures of Major John Sheppard and his military team from Earth that, along with two dozen other teams, explore distant planets in the Pegasus Galaxy, they use an alien device known as a Stargate, built millions of years ago by an advanced race of humans known as the Ancients.
The expedition is based in the Lost City of Atlantis on the planet "Lantea". The city was built millions of years ago and abandoned 10,000 years ago by the Ancients. Five to ten million years ago, due to a plague in the Milky Way Galaxy, they were forced to flee to the Pegasus Galaxy, there they seeded life on hundreds of worlds as they had done to Earth in the Milky Way. After encountering a powerful enemy known as the Wraith and going to war with them for one hundred years, the Ancients lost and were forced to submerge their city beneath Lantea's ocean, which, in the Stargate universe, is the source of the Greek myth of the Lost City of Atlantis. Stargate: Atlantis episodes feature a self-contained story that contributes to the larger storyline of the war against the Wraith and the Atlantis residents' search for the means to destroy their enemy; each season has featured a two-part episode, some episodes that, while not technically two-parters, feature direct continuity with the story of the previous episode.
Each episode begins with a cold open, sometimes preceded by a recap of events relevant to the upcoming narrative. The opening credits feature an original theme by Joel Goldsmith. Though they were drastically cut at the start of season 2, the full credits were recovered after the mid-season two-parter, they were again cut short in the 5th season. Season one began airing in the United States on July 16, 2004; the Atlantis expedition, led by Dr. Elizabeth Weir, arrives at Atlantis, the city of the Ancients; the expedition finds itself in a dire situation that forces them to seek new friends, the Athosians, but they acquire a powerful new enemy: the Wraith. Due to the power requirements for reaching Lantea, they are unable to contact Earth; the expedition must survive in a new galaxy, while deciphering the Ancients' technology in order to find a way to destroy the Wraith and to acquire important new knowledge. Major Sheppard puts together a team consisting of himself, Dr. Rodney McKay, Lt. Ford and the Athosian leader Teyla Emmagan, who serve as Atlantis' first contact team.
In one of their first missions, they make another enemy, the Genii, a human militaristic civilization with a 1950s level of technology. After several more revelations about the Wraith are made, the expedition prepares to evacuate. Just before they do, a military contingent from Earth arrives to help defend the city against the impending Wraith attack long enough for Earth's latest battleship to arrive; the season ends with a cliffhanger, while the city is still under siege by the Wraith. Season two began airing in the United States on July 15, 2005, it picked up where Season 1 ended; the Atlantis expedition avoids being culled by the Wraith by making them believe Atlantis had been destroyed, they recover semi-regular contact with Earth, thanks to the Daedalus and the new Zero Point Module recovered by SG-1. Sheppard is promoted to Lt. Colonel and former Runner Ronon Dex replaces Lt. Ford, who went missing in action at the end of the battle with the Wraith; the central plot of the second season is the development of Dr. Beckett's retrovirus, which can, turn a Wraith into a human.
While an incomplete version makes a young Wraith girl lose all her humanity and turns Sheppard into an Iratus bug, a more developed version is tested on a living Wraith, "Michael", with mixed results. Michael's Wraith faction propose
