1.
Taormina
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Taormina, is a small city and comune in the Metropolitan City of Messina on the east coast of the island of Sicily, Italy, midway between Messina and Catania. Taormina has been a tourist destination since the 19th century and its beaches, the most famous being Isola Bella are accessible via an aerial tramway built in 1992 on the Ionian sea and via highways from Messina in the north and Catania in the south. The area around Taormina was inhabited by the Siculi even before the Greeks arrived on the Sicilian coast in 734 BC to found a town called Naxos, the theory that Tauromenion was founded by colonists from Naxos is confirmed by Strabo and other ancient writers. The new settlement seems to have risen rapidly to prosperity, and was already a considerable town at the time of Timoleons expedition in 345 BC. It was the first place in Sicily where that leader landed, having eluded the vigilance of the Carthaginians, who were guarding the Straits of Messina, and crossed direct from Rhegium to Tauromenium. He welcomed Timoleon with open arms, and afforded him a secure resting place until he was enabled to carry out his plans in other parts of Sicily. Andromachus was not deprived of his position of power all the other tyrants were expelled by Timoleon. Little is recorded about Tauromenium for some time after this, a few years later we find that Tauromenium had fallen into the power of Hieron II of Syracuse, and was employed by him as a stronghold in the war against the Mamertines. It was also one of the cities which was left under his dominion by the treaty concluded with him by the Romans in 263 BC. Strabo speaks of it as one of the cities on the east coast of Sicily that was still subsisting in his time, though inferior in population both to Messana and Catana. Both Pliny and Ptolemy assign it the rank of a colonia and its territory was noted for the excellence of its wine, and produced also a kind of marble which seems to have been highly valued. Juvenal also speaks of the sea off its rocky coast as producing the choicest mullets, the Itineraries place Tauromenium 32 miles from Messina, and the same distance from Catania. Taormina was renamed Al-Muizziyya in honour of Caliph al-Muizz, muslim rule of the town lasted until 1078, when it was captured by the Norman count Roger I of Sicily. At this time Taormina and the surrounding Val Demone were still predominately Greek speaking, after the fall of the Normans and of their heirs, the Hohenstaufen, Taormina followed the history of Sicily under the Angevins and then the Crown of Aragon. In 1410 King Martin II of Sicily was elected here by the Sicilian Parliament, later Taormina was under Spanish suzerainty, receiving the status of city in the 17th century. In 1675 it was besieged by the French, who had occupied Messina and it received also a station on the second-oldest railroad in the region. In the late 19th century Taormina gained further prominence as the place where Wilhelm von Gloeden worked most of his life as a photographer of predominantly male nudes, there is some speculation about Taormina being an early gentlemens destination. Also credited for making Taormina popular was Otto Geleng, best known in his hometown of Berlin for his fine paintings, what distinguishes Geleng, however, is his choice to depict the more southern regions where he captured the spectacular views and light of Sicily
2.
Elizabeth Taylor
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Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian. She began as an actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well known figure for the rest of her life. The American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend in 1999, Born in London to wealthy, socially prominent American parents, Taylor moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1939, and she soon was given a film contract by Universal Pictures. Her screen debut was in a role in Theres One Born Every Minute. Taylor was then signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and had her breakthrough role in National Velvet, becoming one of the studios most popular teenaged stars. She made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s, despite being one of MGMs most bankable stars, Taylor wished to end her career in the early 1950s, as she resented the studios control and disliked many of the films to which she was assigned. She began receiving roles in the mid-1950s, beginning with the epic drama Giant. These included two film adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer, although she disliked her role in BUtterfield 8, her last film for MGM, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. She was next paid a record-breaking $1 million to play the role in the historical epic Cleopatra. During the filming, Taylor and co-star Richard Burton began having an affair which caused a scandal. Despite public disapproval, Burton and she continued their relationship and were married the first time in 1964. Dubbed Liz and Dick by the media, they starred in 11 films together, including The V. I. P. s, The Sandpiper, The Taming of the Shrew, and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Taylor received the best reviews of her career for Woolf, winning her second Academy Award, in the 1980s, she acted in her first substantial stage roles and in several television films and series, and became the first celebrity to launch a perfume brand. Taylor was also one of the first celebrities to take part in HIV/AIDS activism and she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. From the early 1990s until her death, she dedicated her time to philanthropy and she received several accolades for it, including the Presidential Citizens Medal. Taylors personal life was subject to constant media attention throughout her life and she was married eight times to seven men, endured serious illnesses, and led a jet set lifestyle, including amassing one of the most expensive private collections of jewelry. After many years of ill health, Taylor died from heart failure at the age of 79 in 2011
3.
Sophia Loren
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Sophia Loren is an Italian film actress. Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant and she appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, until her five-picture contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career. Notable film appearances around this time include The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat, after starting her family in the early 1970s, Loren spent less time on her acting career and chose to make only occasional film appearances. In later years, she has appeared in American films such as Grumpier Old Men, in 1995, she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievements, one of such awards. In 1999, Loren was acknowledged as one of the top 25 female American Screen Legends in the American Film Institutes survey, AFIs 100 Years.100 Stars. Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, Italy, the daughter of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone, Riccardo Scicolone refused to marry Villani, leaving the piano teacher and aspiring actress without support. Lorens parents had another child together, her sister Maria, in 1938, Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Sofia, and Maria lived with Lorens grandmother in Pozzuoli, during World War II, the harbour and munitions plant in Pozzuoli was a frequent bombing target of the Allies. During one raid, as Loren ran to the shelter, she was struck by shrapnel, after that, the family moved to Naples, where they were taken in by distant relatives. After the war, Loren and her returned to Pozzuoli. Lorens grandmother Luisa opened a pub in their room, selling homemade cherry liquor. Romilda Villani played the piano, Maria sang, and Loren waited on tables, the place was popular with the American GIs stationed nearby. When she was 14, Sofia entered a beauty pageant, Miss Italia 1950 and, later, she enrolled in acting class and was selected as an uncredited extra in Mervyn LeRoys film Quo Vadis, at the age of 15. In 1951, she appeared in Italian film Era lui. sì. sì. where she played an odalisque. She appeared in bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade. She began using her current stage name in La Favorita, the new name being a twist on the name of the Swedish actress Märta Torén and was suggested by Goffredo Lombardo or Carlo Ponti and her first starring role was in Aida, for which she received critical acclaim. After playing the role in Two Nights with Cleopatra, her breakthrough role was in The Gold of Naples
4.
Cary Grant
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Cary Grant was a British-American actor, known as one of classic Hollywoods definitive leading men. He began a career in Hollywood in the early 1930s, and became known for his accent, debonair demeanor. He became an American citizen in 1942, Born in Horfield, Bristol, Grant became attracted to theatre at a young age, and began performing with a troupe known as The Penders from the age of six. After attending Bishop Road Primary School and Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol, he toured the country as a stage performer and he established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s. Along with the later Arsenic and Old Lace and I Was a Male War Bride, having established himself as a major Hollywood star, he was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart. In the 1940s and 1950s, Grant forged a relationship with the director Alfred Hitchcock, appearing in films such as Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock admired Grant and considered him to have been the actor that he had ever loved working with. His comic timing and delivery made Grant what Premiere magazine considers to have quite simply. Grant was married five times, three of his marriages were elopements with actresses—Virginia Cherrill, Betsy Drake and Dyan Cannon and he has one daughter with Cannon, Jennifer Grant. After his retirement from acting in 1966, Grant pursued numerous business interests, representing cosmetics firm Fabergé. He was presented with an Honorary Oscar by his friend Frank Sinatra at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970, in 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second greatest male star of Golden Age Hollywood cinema, after Humphrey Bogart. Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18,1904 at 15 Hughenden Road in the northern Bristol suburb of Horfield and he was the second child of Elias James Leach and Elsie Maria Leach. Elias, the son of a potter, worked as a tailors presser at a factory, while Elsie. Grants elder brother, John William Elias Leach, died of tuberculous meningitis, Grant considered himself to have been partly Jewish. He had an upbringing, his father was an alcoholic. Wanting the best for her son, Elsie taught Grant song and dance when he was four and she would occasionally take him to the cinema where he enjoyed the performances of Charlie Chaplin, Chester Conklin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain and Broncho Billy Anderson. Grant entered education when he was four-and-a-half and was sent to the Bishop Road Primary School, Bristol, another biographer, Geoffrey Wansell, notes that Elsie blamed herself bitterly for the death of Grants older brother John, and never recovered from it. Grant later acknowledged that his experiences with his fiercely independent mother affected his relationships with women later in life
5.
Robert De Niro
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Robert Anthony De Niro is an American actor, producer and director who has both Italian and American citizenship. He was cast as the young Vito Corleone in the 1974 film The Godfather Part II and his longtime collaboration with director Martin Scorsese earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake La Motta in the 1980 film Raging Bull. He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2003, the Golden Globe Cecil B, deMille Award in 2010, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016. De Niros first major roles were in the sports drama, Bang the Drum Slowly. He earned Academy Award nominations for the psychological thrillers Taxi Driver and Cape Fear, De Niro received additional nominations for Michael Ciminos Vietnam war drama, The Deer Hunter, Penny Marshalls drama Awakenings, and David O. Russells romantic comedy-drama, Silver Linings Playbook. His portrayal of gangster Jimmy Conway in Scorseses crime film, Goodfellas, other notable performances include roles in Once Upon a Time in America, Brazil, The Untouchables, Heat, and Casino. He has directed and starred in such as the crime drama A Bronx Tale. Robert Anthony De Niro was born in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, New York, the son of Virginia Admiral and Robert De Niro Sr. Both of his parents were painters, his father was of half Italian and half Irish descent, while his mother was of half German ancestry, with her other roots being French, English and Dutch. De Niros parents, who had met at the classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. De Niro was raised by his mother in the Greenwich Village and his father lived within walking distance and De Niro spent much time with him as he grew up. His mother was raised Presbyterian but became an atheist as an adult, against his parents wishes, his grandparents had him secretly baptized into the Catholic Church while he was staying with them during his parents divorce. De Niro attended PS41, an elementary school in Manhattan. He then went to Elisabeth Irwin High School, the upper school of the Little Red School House. He was accepted into the High School of Music and Art for the ninth grade, De Niro began high school at the private McBurney School and later attended the private Rhodes Preparatory School, although he never graduated from either. Nicknamed Bobby Milk for his pallor, De Niro hung out with a group of kids as a youth in Little Italy. The direction of his future had already been foreshadowed by his debut at age 10. Along with finding relief from shyness through performing, he was also fixated by cinema and he studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory, as well as Lee Strasbergs Actors Studio
6.
Colin Firth
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Colin Andrew Firth, CBE is an English actor. His films have grossed more than $3 billion from 42 releases worldwide, Firth has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as the Volpi Cup. Firths most notable and acclaimed role to date has been his 2010 portrayal of King George VI in The Kings Speech and this led to roles in films such as The English Patient, Bridget Joness Diary, Shakespeare in Love, and Love Actually. In 2009, Firth received widespread acclaim for his leading role in A Single Man, for which Firth gained his first Academy Award nomination. Firth starred in the spy movie Kingsman, The Secret Service in 2014. In 2011, Firth received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Winchester in 2007, and was made a Freeman of the City of London in 2012. He has campaigned for the rights of tribal peoples, and is a member of Survival International. Firth has also campaigned on issues of asylum seekers, refugees rights, and he commissioned and is credited as a co-author on a scientific paper on a study into the differences in brain structure between people of differing political orientations. Firth was born in the village of Grayshott, Hampshire, to parents who were both academics and teachers, Firth is the eldest of three children, he has a sister, Kate, an actress and voice coach, and a brother, Jonathan, an actor. Both of his parents were raised in India, because his grandparents, Congregationalist ministers, and his paternal grandfather. As a child, Firth travelled a lot due to his parents work and he also lived in St. Louis, Missouri when he was 11, which he has described as a difficult time. On returning to England, he attended the Montgomery of Alamein Secondary School and he was still an outsider and was the target of bullying. To counter this, he adopted the working class Hampshire accent. By the time he was 14, Firth had already decided to be a professional actor, until further education, he was not academically inclined, later saying in an interview, I didnt like school. I just thought it was boring and mediocre and nothing they taught me seemed to be of any interest at all, after his sixth form years, Firth moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre. There, he made contacts in the acting world, from which he got a job in the wardrobe department at the National Theatre. From there, he went on to study at Drama Centre London, in 1984, Firth made his film debut in the role of Tommy Judd, Guy Bennetts straight, Marxist school friend in the screen adaptation of the play. This was the start of longstanding public feud between Firth and Everett, which was later resolved and he starred with Sir Laurence Olivier in Lost Empires, a TV adaptation of J. B
7.
Marlon Brando
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Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American actor, film director and activist. He is credited with bringing realism to film acting and he helped to popularize the Stanislavski system of acting, studying with Stella Adler in the 1940s. Julius Caesar, The Wild One, Reflections in a Golden Eye, Last Tango in Paris, Brando was also an activist for many causes, notably the Civil Rights Movement and various Native American movements. Brando received Academy Award nominations for playing Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata, Mark Antony in Joseph L. Mankiewiczs 1953 film adaptation of Shakespeares Julius Caesar, and Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver in Sayonara, an adaption of James Micheners 1954 novel. Brando was included in a list of Top Ten Money Making Stars three times in the 1950s, coming in at number 10 in 1954, number 6 in 1955, the 1960s proved to be a fallow decade for Brando. The Godfather was then one of the most commercially successful films of all time, Brando took a four-year hiatus before appearing in The Missouri Breaks. After this, he was content with being a highly paid actor in cameo roles, such as in Superman and The Formula. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Brando was paid a record $3.7 million and 11. 75% of the profits for 13 days work on Superman. Brando was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth-greatest movie star among male movie stars whose screen debuts occurred in or before 1950. He was one of three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named in 1999 by Time magazine as one of its 100 Most Important People of the Century. He died of respiratory failure on July 1,2004, at age 80, Brando was born on April 3,1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr. a pesticide and chemical feed manufacturer, and Dorothy Julia. Brando had two sisters, Jocelyn Brando and Frances. His ancestry included German, Dutch, English, and Irish and his patrilineal immigrant ancestor, Johann Wilhelm Brandau, arrived in New York in the early 1700s from the Palatinate in Germany. Brando was raised a Christian Scientist, however, she was an alcoholic and often had to be brought home from Chicago bars by her husband. In his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, Brando expressed sadness when writing about his mother, dodie and Brandos father eventually joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Brando harbored far more enmity for his father, stating, I was his namesake and he enjoyed telling me I couldnt do anything right. He had a habit of telling me I would never amount to anything, Brandos parents moved to Evanston, Illinois, when his fathers work took him to Chicago, but separated when Brando was 11 years old. His mother took the three children to Santa Ana, California, where they lived with her mother, in 1937, Brandos parents reconciled and moved together to Libertyville, Illinois, a small town north of Chicago
8.
Charlton Heston
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Charlton Heston was an American actor and political activist. As a Hollywood star, he appeared in 100 films over the course of 60 years and he played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments, for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also starred in Touch of Evil with Orson Welles, Ben-Hur, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid and he also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth, Secret of the Incas, and The Big Country. A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a political action committee. Hestons most famous role in politics came as the president of the National Rifle Association. After being diagnosed with Alzheimers disease in 2003, he retired from acting and the NRA presidency. Heston died on April 5,2008, aged 84, from pneumonia, Charlton Heston was born on October 4,1923, to Russell Whitford Carter, a sawmill operator and Lilla. Many sources indicate he was born in Evanston, Illinois, Hestons autobiography, however, and some other sources, place his birth in No Mans Land, Illinois, which usually refers to a then-unincorporated area now part of Wilmette, a wealthy Chicago suburb. Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood, Heston was partially of Scottish descent, including from the Clan Fraser, but the majority of his ancestry was English. His earliest immigrant ancestors arrived in America from England in the 1600s and his maternal great-grandparents, William Charlton and Mary Drysdale Charlton, were English. They emigrated to Canada, where his grandmother, Marian Emily Charlton, was born in 1872, in his autobiography, Heston refers to his father participating in his familys construction business. When Heston was an infant, his fathers work moved the family to St. Helen and it was a rural, heavily forested part of the state, and Heston lived an isolated yet idyllic existence, spending much time hunting and fishing in the backwoods of the area. When Heston was 10 years old, his parents divorced, shortly thereafter, his mother remarried and the new family moved back to Wilmette. Heston attended New Trier High School and he recalled living there, All kids play pretend games, but I did it more than most. Even when we moved to Chicago, I was more or less a loner and we lived in a North Shore suburb, where I was a skinny hick from the woods, and all the other kids seemed to be rich and know about girls. Contradictions on paper and in an interview surround when Charlton became Hestons first name, the 1930 United States Census record for Richfield, Michigan, in Roscommon County, shows his name as being Charlton J. Carter at age six. Later accounts by sources and movie studio biographies say he was born John Charles Carter, interestingly, Charlton was his maternal grandmother Marians maiden name, not his mother Lillas. This is contrary to how 20th century references read and what Heston said, when Hestons maternal grandmother and his true maternal grandfather Charles Baines separated or divorced in the early 1900s, Marian Baines married William Henry Lawton in 1907
9.
Audrey Hepburn
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Audrey Hepburn was a British actress, model, dancer and humanitarian. Recognized as a film and fashion icon, Hepburn was active during Hollywoods Golden Age and she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend in Golden Age Hollywood and was inducted into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame. Born in Ixelles, a district of Brussels, Hepburn spent her childhood between Belgium, England and the Netherlands, following minor appearances in several films, Hepburn starred in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi after being spotted by French novelist Colette, on whose work the play was based. She shot to stardom for playing the role in Roman Holiday, for which she was the first actress to win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe. The same year Hepburn won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine, Hepburn won a record three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In recognition of her career, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from BAFTA. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and the Special Tony Award and she remains one of the few people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards. Hepburn appeared in films as her life went on, devoting much of her later life to UNICEF. She had contributed to the organisation since 1954, then worked in some of the poorest communities of Africa, South America and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in December 1992. A month later, Hepburn died of cancer at her home in Switzerland at the age of 63. Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston or Edda Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston on 4 May 1929 at number 48 Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles and her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was a British subject born in Auschitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. He was the son of Victor John George Ruston, of British and Austrian descent and Anna Wels, Hepburns mother, Ella van Heemstra, was a Dutch baroness. At age nineteen, Ella had married Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford, an oil based in Batavia, Dutch East Indies. They had two sons, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander Quarles van Ufford and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford, Hepburns parents were married in Batavia in September 1926. At the time, Ruston worked for a company, but soon after the marriage, the couple relocated to Europe. After a year in London, they moved to Brussels, where he had assigned to open a branch office. After three years spent travelling between Brussels, Arnhem, The Hague and London, the family settled to the suburban Brussels municipality of Linkebeek in 1932, Hepburns early childhood was sheltered and privileged. In the mid-1930s, Hepburns parents recruited and collected donations for the British Union of Fascists, Joseph left the family abruptly in 1935, which Hepburn later professed was the most traumatic event of my life
10.
Gregory Peck
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Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor who was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. Peck continued to major film roles until the late 1980s. His performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor and he had also been nominated for an Oscar for the same category for The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentlemans Agreement and Twelve OClock High. Other notable films he appeared in include Spellbound, Roman Holiday, Moby Dick, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, How the West Was Won, The Omen, President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among Greatest Male Stars of Classic Hollywood cinema and he was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983. His father was of English and Irish heritage and his mother of English and she converted to her husbands religion, Roman Catholicism, when she married his father, and Peck was raised as a Catholic. Pecks parents divorced when he was five and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother, at the age of 10 he was sent to a Catholic military school, St. Johns Military Academy in Los Angeles. While he was a student there, his grandmother died, at 14, he moved back to San Diego to live with his father, attended San Diego High School, and after graduating enrolled for one year at San Diego State Teachers College. While there he joined the team, took his first theatre and public-speaking courses. Peck however had ambitions to be a doctor and the following year gained admission to the University of California, Berkeley, as an English major, standing 6 ft 3 in, he rowed on the university crew. Although his tuition fee was only $26 per year, Peck still struggled to pay, at Berkeley, encouraged by the acting coach, who saw in him perfect material for university theatre, Peck became more and more interested in acting. He was recruited by Edwin Duerr, director of the universitys Little Theater, Peck would later say about Berkeley that, it was a very special experience for me and three of the greatest years of my life. It woke me up and made me a human being, in 1997, Peck donated $25,000 to the Berkeley rowing crew in honor of his coach, the renowned Ky Ebright. He was often broke and sometimes slept in Central Park and he worked at the 1939 Worlds Fair and as a tour guide for NBCs television broadcasting. In 1940, Peck learned more of the craft, working in exchange for food, at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, appearing in five plays including Family Portrait. His stage career began in 1941 when he played the secretary in a Katharine Cornell production of George Bernard Shaws play The Doctors Dilemma, unfortunately, the play opened in San Francisco just one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He made his Broadway debut as the lead in Emlyn Williams The Morning Star in 1942 and his second Broadway performance that year was in The Willow and I with Edward Pawley. Twentieth Century Fox claimed he had injured his back while rowing at university, ive been trying to straighten out that story for years
11.
Tom Cruise
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Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, known professionally as Tom Cruise, is an American actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has won three Golden Globe Awards and he started his career at age 19 in the film Endless Love. After portraying supporting roles in Taps and The Outsiders, his first leading role was in the romantic comedy Risky Business, Cruise became a full-fledged movie star after starring as Pete Maverick Mitchell in the action drama Top Gun. One of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood, Cruise starred in more successful films in the 1980s, including the dramas The Color of Money, Cocktail, Rain Man. In 2012, Cruise was Hollywoods highest-paid actor,16 of his films grossed over $100 million domestically,22 have grossed in excess of $200 million worldwide. In 2002, Cruise won the Saturn Award for Best Actor for Vanilla Sky, in 2003, he won an AFI Movie of the Year Award for The Last Samurai and an Empire Award for Best Actor for Minority Report. Cruise is an advocate for the Church of Scientology and its associated social programs. Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York, the son of Mary Lee, a special teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III. He has three sisters, Lee Anne, Marian, and Cass and they are of English, German, and Irish ancestry. One of Cruises paternal great-great-great-grandfathers, Patrick Russell Cruise, was born in north County Dublin in 1799, he married Teresa Johnson in County Meath and they left Ireland for the United States that same year and settled in New York. They had a daughter, Mary Paulina Russell Cruise, whose son Thomas Cruise Mapother was Cruises great-grandfather, a cousin, William Mapother, is also an actor, he and Cruise have appeared in five films together. Cruise grew up in poverty, and had a Catholic upbringing. The family was dominated by his father, whom Cruise has described as a merchant of chaos. Cruise has said that he was beaten by his father, whom he has called a bully and he stated, He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a lesson in my life—how hed lull you in, make you feel safe and then. For me, it was like, Theres something wrong with this guy, Cruise spent part of his childhood in Canada. His family moved to Beacon Hill, Ottawa, in late 1971 so that Cruises father could take a position as a consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces. There, Cruise attended the newly opened Robert Hopkins Public School for much of grade four, in grade four, Cruise first became involved in drama, under the tutelage of George Steinburg
12.
Melanie Griffith
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Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. Griffith began her career as an adolescent in nonspeaking film roles before making her debut opposite Gene Hackman in Arthur Penns Night Moves. She rose to prominence for her role in Brian De Palmas Body Double, other roles include in John Schlesingers Pacific Heights, Milk Money, the neo-noir film Mulholland Falls, as Charlotte Haze in Adrian Lynes Lolita, and Another Day in Paradise. She later starred as Barbara Marx in The Night We Called It a Day, and has appeared on the television series Nip/Tuck, Raising Hope, and Hawaii Five-0. After acting on stage in London, in 2003 she made her Broadway debut in a revival of the musical Chicago, Griffith was born in New York City to actress Tippi Hedren and Peter Griffith, a former child stage actor and advertising executive. She is of Swedish, Norwegian, German, and English descent and her mother married agent and producer Noel Marshall. During her childhood and adolescent years, she lived part of the time in New York with her father and part-time in Antelope Valley, California, Griffith appeared in advertisements and briefly worked as a child model before abandoning the career, citing extreme shyness as the reason. While attending the Hollywood Professional School, Griffith was advanced in her studies, Griffith began acting at nine months of age in a commercial and later appeared as an extra in Smith. Her first major role was in Arthur Penns Night Moves, in which she did several racy nude scenes at the age of 17 and this drew attention to her and typecast her as a nymphet in films such as Smile, The Drowning Pool, and One on One. She was cast as Melanie, the daughter of her real mother, Tippi Hedren, in the film Roar. During the filming she was attacked by a lion and had 50 stitches to her face, it was feared she would lose an eye but in the end the wound was not disfiguring. She then appeared in the made-for-television movie Shes in the Army Now with Jamie Lee Curtis and Steven Bauer, whom she married shortly after the film premiered. Griffiths well-known drug and alcohol addictions stalled her career, but she made a comeback at age 26 with her role as an actress in the Brian De Palma thriller Body Double. The film, although a failure, earned her the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. It led to her first starring role in Jonathan Demmes Something Wild, Griffith also starred in the science fiction film Cherry 2000, which went straight to video in 1988 but has also become a cult favorite. Griffiths performance was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, Griffiths next major role was opposite Matthew Modine in the urban thriller Pacific Heights. Griffith received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the successful TV movie Buffalo Girls, in 1998 she appeared in Woody Allens Celebrity which featured an all-star cast. Later that year, she starred as a heroin user in the independent film Another Day in Paradise
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