Monday, May 24, 2010

Jeffrey Donovan


Date of Birth
11 May 1968, Amesbury, Massachusetts, USA

Birth Name
Jeffrey T. Donovan

Nickname
Jeff

Height
6' (1.83 m)

Trivia
Graduated from New York University's Graduate Acting Program, where he received an MFA.

Currently lives in Los Angeles.

Attended UMass Amherst and Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts.

Enjoys gardening.

Likes to play golf.

Graduated from Amesbury High School in Amesbury, Massachusetts.


Personal Quotes
Asked about his martial arts training in a TV Guide interview (8 Aug 2008) he said: I have a black belt in karate and six years of aikido and about a year of Brazilian jujitsu."


Where Are They Now
(May 2009) In Amesbury, Massachusetts receiving an award at his former high school, Amesbury High.

Date of Birth
2 August 1932, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland

Birth Name
Peter Seamus O'Toole

Height
6' 2" (1.88 m)

Mini Biography
A leading man of prodigious talents, Irish-born Peter O'Toole was raised in Leeds, England, the son of a bookie. As a boy, he decided to become a journalist, beginning as a newspaper copy boy. Although he succeeded in becoming a reporter, he discovered the theater and made his stage debut at 17. He served as a radioman in the Royal Navy for two years, then attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates included Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Richard Harris. He spent several years on-stage at the Bristol Old Vic, then made an inconspicuous film debut in 1960. In 1962, O'Toole was chosen by David Lean to play T.E. Lawrence in Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The part made O'Toole an international superstar. He continued successfully in artistically rich films as well as less artistic but commercially rewarding projects. He received Academy Award nominations (but no Oscar) for seven different films. However, medical problems (originally thought to have been brought on by his drinking but which turned out to be stomach cancer) threatened to destroy his career and life in the 1970s. He survived by giving up alcohol and, after serious medical treatment, returned to films with triumphant performances in The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982). His youthful beauty lost to time and drink, O'Toole has found meaningful roles increasingly difficult to come by, though he remains one of the greatest actors of his generation. He has two daughters, Pat and Kate O'Toole (I), from his marriage to actress Siân Phillips. He also has a son, Lorcan O'Toole (I), by model Karen Brown. He partnered with Jules Buck in Keep Productions.

Matthew Fox


Date of Birth
14 July 1966, Abington, Pennsylvania, USA

Nickname
Foxy

Height
6' 2" (1.88 m)

Mini Biography
Matthew's parents raised longhorn cattle and horses and grew barley for Coors beer. He entered the Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts for a post-grad year after high school, and then matriculated at Columbia University where he played football and majored in Economics with the intent to end up on Wall Street. However, his girl friend's mother was a modeling agent who convinced him to try some modeling which led to a couple of TV commercials. Soon after he was sold on acting.

Adrien Brody


Date of Birth
14 April 1973, New York City, New York, USA

Height
6' 1" (1.85 m)

Mini Biography
The son of Hungarian-born photographer Sylvia Plachy and retired history professor Elliot Brody, Adrien Brody grew up an only child in the Woodhaven section of Queens, New York, where he accompanied his mother on assignments for the Village Voice. He credits her with making him feel comfortable in front of the camera. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York.

Despite a strong performance in The Thin Red Line (1998), time constraints forced the director to edit out much of Adrien's part. In spite of his later work with Spike Lee and Barry Levinson, he never became the star many expected he would become until Roman Polanski called on him to play a celebrated Jewish pianist in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. He pulled off a brilliant performance in The Pianist (2002), drawing on the heritage and rare dialect of his Polish grandmother, as well as his father, who lost family members during the Holocaust, and his mother, who fled Communist Hungary as a child during the 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union.

Ryan Gosling


Date of Birth
12 November 1980, London, Ontario, Canada

Birth Name
Ryan Thomas Gosling

Nickname
Opie

Height
6' 1" (1.85 m)

Mini Biography
Ryan Gosling was born on November 12, 1980, in London, Ontario, to Thomas and Donna Gosling, and was the second of their two children. The Gosling family, who are Mormon, moved to Cornwall, Ontario, where Ryan grew up and was home-schooled by his mother. Ryan attended Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational High School in Cornwall, where he excelled in Drama and Fine Arts. The family then relocated to Burlington, Ontario, where Ryan attended Lester B. Pearson High School in Burlington, Ontario.

Ryan first performed as a singer at talent contests with his older sister Mandi. He attended an open audition in Montreal for the TV series "The Mickey Mouse Club" ("MMC" (1989)) in January 1993 and beat out 17,000 other aspiring actors for a a spot on the show. While appearing on "MMC" for two years, he lived with co-star Justin Timberlake's family.

Though he received no formal acting training, after "MMC," Gosling segued into an acting career, appearing on the TV series "Young Hercules" (1998) and "Breaker High" (1997), as well as the films The Slaughter Rule (2002), Murder by Numbers (2002), and Remember the Titans (2000). He first attracted serious critical attention with his performance as the Jewish neo-Nazi in the controversial film The Believer (2001), which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. He was cast in the part by writer-director Henry Bean, who believed that Gosling's strict Mormon upbringing gave him the insight to understand the character Danny, whose obsessiveness with the Judaism he was born into turns to hatred. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award as Best Male Lead in 2002 for the role and won the Golden Aries award from the Russian Guild of Film Critics.

After appearing in the sleeper The Notebook (2004) in 2004, Gosling won the dubious honor of being named one of the 50 Hottest Bachelors by People Magazine. More significantly, he was named the Male Star of Tomorrow at the 2004 Show West convention of movie exhibitors.

Gosling reached the summit of his profession with his performance in Half Nelson (2006), which garnered him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. In a short time, he has established himself as one of the finest actors of his generation

Owen Wilson


Birth Name
Owen Cunningham Wilson

Nickname
O

Height
5' 10½" (1.79 m)
Mini Biography
Self-proclaimed troublemaker Owen Wilson grew up in Texas with his mother, Laura, a photographer; his father, an ad exec; and his brothers, Andrew Wilson (the eldest) and Luke Wilson (the youngest). Expelled from St. Mark's Academy in Dallas Texas in the tenth grade, Wilson finished his sophomore year at Thomas Jefferson School and then headed to a military academy in New Mexico. He then attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he met his future mentor and friend, Wes Anderson. They wrote a screenplay, Bottle Rocket (1996), and sent it to their family friend, screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, who sent it to producer Polly Platt, who gave it to James L. Brooks, who gave the Texans $5 million dollars to make it into a feature film. Despite critical praise, Bottle Rocket (1996) only grossed one million dollars. After making the film, Wilson moved to Hollywood, setting up house with his two brothers and Anderson. Fairly quickly, Owen found himself acting in a series of big budget films that scraped the bottom of the critical barrel, such as the dreadful The Cable Guy (1996), The Haunting (1999), Anaconda (1997) and Breakfast of Champions (1999). This led to more work in slightly better fare, such as Shanghai Noon (2000), Meet the Parents (2000) and Behind Enemy Lines (2001). He's known not only for his nose, which has been broken several times, but also for his 'free wheeling ways' with a script. He co-wrote the film The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) with his oft partner Wes Anderson. He has been romantically linked with singer Sheryl Crow.

Salman Khan


Birth Name
Abdul Rashid Salim Salman Khan

Nickname
Sallu
Controversal Khan
The Official Badshah Of Bollywood

Height
5' 8" (1.73 m)
Trade Mark

His dancing style

His Smile

Personal Quotes

The only person I have hurt is myself.

For me acting, comes straight from the heart. In that sense I don't act at all. I think that to feel the character's pain I have to be myself. Somewhere audiences see that.

On his childhood problems and his father's second marriage to Helen: It was very difficult in the beginning, when everybody was talking about it. My mother just couldn't take it. It hurt her terribly. She used to worry all the time, go in to depression frequently. When she cried, we children used to cry with her.

In life go straight and turn right.

(From a TV-interview) I can get caught in many things but there is one thing I will never get caught in, and that is acting - because I don't act. On screen I am like I am in real life.

Controversies

Legal troubles

On 28 September 2002, Salman was arrested for rash and negligent driving. His car had run into a bakery in Mumbai; one person who was sleeping on the pavement outside the bakery died and three others were injured in the mishap Charges of culpable homicide were laid against him, but later dropped, and he was found not guilty. However, he will still have to stand trial for a series of lesser charges pertaining to the incident.

On 17 February 2006, Khan was sentenced to one year in prison for hunting an endangered species, the CHINKARA The sentence was stayed by a higher court during appeal. On 10 April 2006, Salman was handed a five year jailterm for hunting the endangered Chinkara. He was remanded to jodhpur jail, and remained there until 13 April when he was granted bail On 24 August 2007, the Jodhpur sessions court, upheld the 5 year jail term for Khan in the Chinkara poaching case by turning down his appeal against the 2006 judgement. At the time of the hearing, he was busy with a shooting elsewhere, while his sister attended the proceedings. Day after, he was placed under police arrest in Jodhpur after a rajastan court upheld a prison sentence passed upon him for poaching. On 31 August 2007, Khan was released on bail from the Jodhpur Central jail where he has spent six days.